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What it takes to stand up to authority

bbc.com

41–50 of 80 posts

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#41

> Assigning negative term after term to harmless groups of people was intended to be emotionally wearing and to make most participants feel uncomfortable. Plenty dropped out as it got more intense. For those who carried on, it was a belief that they were contributing to something important – a rigorous scientific study – that drove them to push through. It's a pretty sloppy to assume that they believed this because o…

I found that study a really strange one as well. They seem to be operating on the tacit assumption that all of the participants are mush-minded simpletons who think "assigning negative terms" in some study somehow had some relevance to anything anywhere in the world. That's absurd. I invite you to find yourself a quiet room and dedicate yourself to writing the most insidious, invective, negative diatribes aimed at me…

Don't underestimate the power of subconscious processes, e.g. we like things we already know or even words that contain letters of our name [1]. There exists an incredible amount of these biases.

> There are a million guarantees that what is being done is thoroughly and totally meaningless.

There are a million subtle ways to influence behavior and thinking. It's very likely that the scientists aren't able to properly measure the effects (because it's hard to isolate the control variables), but the resulting knowledge won't be zero. I agree with you that many scientists overestimate their understanding of the underlying mechanisms - IMO it's still too much hand-waving - in reality our knowledge about social psychology is very limited.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#42
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that study a really strange one as well. They seem to be operating on the tacit assumption that all of the participants are mush-minded simpletons who think "assigning negative terms" in some study somehow had some relevance to anything anywhere in the world. That's absurd. I invite you to find yourself a quiet room and dedicate yourself to writing the most insidious, invective, negative diatribes aimed at me…

It is not about to what it does with person on picture, it is about what it does with person that is writing them. The way it affects their thinking and feelings toward target, how much they are aware it is affecting them, the way it makes them more and more comfortable with insulting person on pic and what they think or feel about that. The discomfort is partly because you can make yourself like or hate people you d…

I can see that, but I don't understand how simply 'attaching a label' could lead to any real earnest sentiment. If I train myself, day in and day out, to tag a photo of children 'racist', is the presumption that I will start to actually think that children generally believe in fundamental qualitative differences between people that break along racial lines? That isn't how my brain works. If someone asks me 'hey, are kids racists?' I don't think 'hmmm... do I FEEL LIKE kids are racists?'... I think 'Hmmm... do I have any evidence or have I come across any resources that suggest children might harbor racist tendencies?' And 'well I attached all those labels' doesn't qualify as evidence of anything except me wasting my time. Words have power, but they're not magical.

It certainly can be frightfully easy to lead people down a path into forming tons of negative associations about some group or topic, and that will result in a trained emotional response pretty reliably..... but it's just an emotional response. It doesn't mean anything, and can't be used to support or detract from anything in terms of what is true.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#43

I'm not sure we can do much to understand the role of authority without understanding the role of conditioning in what makes people act. For instance, why are most schools so regimented and rule-rich? For efficiency, certainly, but not all school rules increased efficiency. I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules.

> I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules. If it existed, it seems like there would be evidence of this, in the literatures of educational research, training, and school management. I doubt there is conspiracy of school principals. Schools are bureaucracies, and like every bureaucracy they have rules, often rules that seem nonsensical to people who haven't had to manage one. Pe…

I don't think that's true. For one, there are many publications about strict education and until relatively recently, it was the leading school of thought; we have movies featuring them, even praising them (Harry Potter for example - that was an example of a school lead as a benevolent dictatorship - that of course turned out bad later in the series). For two, people mostly don't read books about parenting but then they're parenting their kids somehow - how? Well, with whatever they picked up from their parents, TV, fiction books... Isn't it possible that it might be the same with teaching? I have some experience with working in education. Most of my former colleagues almost never think about the way they teach; you ask them why did they punish a student for disobedience (aka "he drank water even though I told him not to") and they say "because that's how it's done", you asked them why are they explaining something in that way and they don't know, they just do.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#44
post #21

>Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex – the outermost layer of the front part the brain – they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population. WOW, that's going to come in handy when some government decides to weaponize it.

How would a government weaponize this? By going around damaging people's brains with brute force?

The answer is in the article, oddly enough.

The BBC is at one level all about free speech, uniquely funded and good for you. At another level it is deeply tied into the military establishment in the UK. Since the beginning job applicants have had to pass the Room 101 test and that is a real thing - any socialist types simply did not get employed. They would not be blacklisted and unable to work in the industry, however, the commercial channels (ITV) did not pay for training, you had to get that from the BBC and then you could work elsewhere thanks to that experience.

To quote Napoleon (the old enemy) "Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." The BBC has approximately four TV channels that shape the minds of the British public. Consequently people in the UK are highly invested in a set of ideas that cannot be thrown out on a wholesale basis.

From time to time there will be high profile events that get reported by the BBC in a way that is not consistent with facts on the ground. Yet people will attend such an event, go home and, despite seeing events with their own eyes, decide that they must have understood the situation incorrectly to believe what 'Auntie BBC' said, to then take that on as the 'correct' interpretation of events.

To think otherwise, i.e. to 'believe' one's own eyes requires a subversive mindset or, as is more likely to be the case, a conspiracy minded mindset where everything from moon landings to flouride is up for reinterpretation. We have all met those types of people - 'nutters' - so those that did see something different to the reported story learn not to say what they saw with their own eyes. To do so would cast them out of the herd and in with the 'nutter herd'. We are social animals and being outcast like that is worse than death.

If someone who happens to be sane does relate 'what they saw with their own eyes' to the rest of the herd then it is unlikely that members of the wider herd are going to believe them even if they do not come along with 'moon landings/contrails/whatever' baggage. This is because they are highly invested in the BBC world view and the latitude that it allows. The spectrum will range from Hillary to Trump but not as far as Bernie. Bernie is mainstream, but you get the idea. It is a fixed stage, outside this allowed latitude there will be terrorists and the KKK. The voice of protest will be allowed in this Overton Window with people such as Russell Brand or, in times gone past, Tony Benn. These folk don't have to be 'covert CIA operatives acting as gatekeepers', they just operate within the same Overton Window as everyone else, playing their role quite naturally, the sponges for dissenting voices that don't go along with whomever is in Number 10.

The implications of going with the BBC world view are generally good. You can go on anti-Trump protests posting your pics onto Instagram so everyone knows you are solidly against racism and whatever else it is easy to object to. There is no danger of being cast outside the herd.

The BBC has a veritable 'full spectrum dominance' with radio all around the world, the web as well as their mainstay 'free to air, advert free' television. Britain might not rule the waves any more but the airwaves are doing nicely.

I have not given any incident of where reality and BBC reality differ, however, people that suffered at Hillsborough, people that lived through the miner's strike, people that were there at Bloody Sunday, people that were abused by BBC 'disc jockeys' have had this problem to live with. Due to injustice they have had to 'rebel'. Nobody could speak out about the 'disc jockey' whose name we do not speak of until he died and was buried under six foot of concrete (he knew that his grave would not lay undisturbed). Yet everyone in the BBC knew. And in the wider press. And he was only a 'disc jockey' without any nuclear weapons or henchmen.

Hence, in the UK at least, the BBC is how the government has weaponised 'mind control' and made questioning authority not something one does. People just do not have the mindset to do so as they have been encultured to be British.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#45
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not about to what it does with person on picture, it is about what it does with person that is writing them. The way it affects their thinking and feelings toward target, how much they are aware it is affecting them, the way it makes them more and more comfortable with insulting person on pic and what they think or feel about that. The discomfort is partly because you can make yourself like or hate people you d…

I can see that, but I don't understand how simply 'attaching a label' could lead to any real earnest sentiment. If I train myself, day in and day out, to tag a photo of children 'racist', is the presumption that I will start to actually think that children generally believe in fundamental qualitative differences between people that break along racial lines? That isn't how my brain works. If someone asks me 'hey, are…

> it's just an emotional response. It doesn't mean anything, and can't be used to support or detract from anything in terms of what is true.

Emotional responses are more important for your belief system and vice versa than you seem to realize. "what is true" is based on your belief system. It may not seem visible, but all those small interactions shape our emotions and belief system.

It's like training data for a neural network which has functional components and meta-learning capabilities (this is essentially what a brain is). Saying "this training data doesn't affect my neural network" or "this part (emotions) of my neural network doesn't affect another part (reasoning)" is not correct when training neural networks. Why would you assume that this is any different for your biological neural network? Every interaction shapes your brain, however small it seems.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a government weaponize this? By going around damaging people's brains with brute force?

The answer is in the article, oddly enough. The BBC is at one level all about free speech, uniquely funded and good for you. At another level it is deeply tied into the military establishment in the UK. Since the beginning job applicants have had to pass the Room 101 test and that is a real thing - any socialist types simply did not get employed. They would not be blacklisted and unable to work in the industry, howev…

It is interesting. Believing one's own eyes grounds individuals to a reasoning system that is directly connected to truth - their own direct experience of their existence. It's terrifying to think some people intentionally try to override that system with the intent to control, without true care for the individual.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction here is some further evidence of the actual mechanism through which this operates, and, critically, evidence that we can actively work to improve our ability to challenge immoral authority. The $64 billion dollar question, though, is whether anyone in society will see it as reasonable to expect themselves or anyone else to abandon their intuition which tells them to follow without question, the 'natur…

Then we would need to train everyone to be essentially an ubermensch - they need to be able to operate on meta-levels and use metacognition all the time. This is a hard task, you need cognitive resources (which means you have enough sleep, food, resilience, mental energy and a stress-free environment) and a lot of time and it's also very demanding to doubt essential beliefs about oneself and ones' own values. So I do…

I'm not sure exactly what 'ubermensch' implies, but I think I understand the point of what you are saying. And I agree, it is unreasonable, even biologically, to expect human beings to effectively perform at their mental peak continuously. Brains don't work that way. But, that's also not necessary. The vast majority of situations we face in day to day life don't really call on us to be able to muster complex well-reasoned arguments with nuance. When deciding whether to buy a gift for a partner, you're fine to go with whether that feels like the right thing to do.

The problem comes in when people take a positive stance against ever trusting the use of reason. Where they see someone stepping back, and dealing with a topic dispassionately, and alarm bells start going off. They immediately distrust the person, and if their conclusions contradict the gut intuitive reaction they have to a topic, they will side with the intuitive reaction. The 'intuitive reaction' of human brains is essentially documented in any comprehensive list of common logical fallacies. They were things we feel ought to be true, but we know are not. Things like a terrible person can't make good points, if a person is wrong about one thing they must be wrong about others, if things happened close together spatially or temporally they must be causally connected, if something is natural it must be better than artificial, etc. At that point, it doesn't matter if anyone in the group is practicing metacognition and solid reasoning, because they will be actively resisted for precisely that.

Societies view of intellectualism changes on the scale of centuries. It was at a height before World War I, almost to the point of fanaticism. It made people willing to believe that science and reason would usher in a utopia by default, because it was not capable of doing otherwise. Then, mustard gas rolled down hillsides into trenches. Mechanized tanks crawled battlefields. The creations of science were used to wreak the most horrible suffering, and society paused at that. By the time the concentration camps were unveiled after the end of the eugenics (all widely accepted as true and reasonable by the scientific community of the time), the horror wasn't new. And the 20th century kept the hits on coming, with tragedy after tragedy laid at the feet of science and reason. We may know now that all of those people made critical errors and overreached with hubris or were outright corrupt, but that doesn't matter terribly much to the person who never understood it well to begin with. All they know is that it's not a sure thing, and it can lead to stupendous tragedy. The tragedies born by anti-intellectualism, such as Pol Pots purging of intellectuals, Maos similar practices that resulted in profound starvation and the deaths of millions, couldn't get much airtime in the face of society shrinking away from reason.

I don't think this is a simple problem. In fact, I have often referred to it as the single biggest problem facing the human species. Civilization includes its own undoing. At the beginning, lethal danger, famine, disease, and other terrors of the past make people willing to try anything - even dispassionate reason. And then they build a civilization. Whose primary, if not sole, goal is to remove danger from the lives of as many as possible. This must, absolutely must, include removing the dangers which motivated the willingness to reason and ignore intuition. Given enough time, arguing for expansion of the infrastructure of civilization becomes harder. Given more time, arguing for maintenance of the existing infrastructure becomes harder. People revert to relying on intuition if for no other reason than it is easier and no longer bears many negative consequences. And when the infrastructure begins to fail, and danger re-asserts itself, it is naive to think people would see the error of their ways and return to reason. There is no historical basis for such a hope. The mother whose unvaccinated child dies of measles does not blame herself. No, they will blame not having gone far enough. They will blame what remains of the infrastructure, and call for it to be dismantled. And they will continue until humanity returns to its 'default state' of slogging through the mud, racked with disease, starving, killing each other over whose god is stronger.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might. Give people empty calories, take away the amino acids, vitamins, enzymes and other nutrients require for normal brain activity, and people get numbed and dumbed down, apathetic, weak. I have always stood up to authority and as I have improved my health, my will power and energy to stand up to authority has increased substantially.

Yeah - my intuition is there is a correlation, but really I’d love to see any sort of research that relates to this.

Very difficult to measure IMO - a causality analysis requires more control over the variables. It's too easy to make measurement errors in social psychology studies.

Who would be willing to eat fast-food and put themselves on a bad diet to test if their ability to resist authority deteriorates? The sampling bias alone would be too big and skews the whole result.

And people learn: Maybe their behavior in authority tests changed not because of their diet but because they get confronted with those tests more often. We can't be sure that they slept enough or that the food is responsible for their change in behavior.

Designing such a study and pulling it off without making major mistakes is harder than writing completely bug-free code for a big software project.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#49
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were too many factors contributing to the Nazi events. You cant simply point at it and make definitive conclusion over some bare-bone simple events. You also cant assume that 1933 Germans would react the same way to the authority then 2018 Dutch.

Not to mention, the world is much more connected now. Most German citizens were unaware of the death camps until the end of the war.

They knew full well about other abuse that was done to Jews, opposition and others too. Nazi were pretty bad openly, beating Jews in streets, beating people who shopped in Jewish stores, taking away their possessions, restricting their rights. All that long before they invented death camps.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#50

I'm not sure we can do much to understand the role of authority without understanding the role of conditioning in what makes people act. For instance, why are most schools so regimented and rule-rich? For efficiency, certainly, but not all school rules increased efficiency. I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules.

> I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules. If it existed, it seems like there would be evidence of this, in the literatures of educational research, training, and school management. I doubt there is conspiracy of school principals. Schools are bureaucracies, and like every bureaucracy they have rules, often rules that seem nonsensical to people who haven't had to manage one. Pe…

Every single government primary and secondary education system on Earth is a direct descendant of the Prussian one. Non-existent to very limited choice of how one spends ones time, constant ranking and grading to inure people to dominance behaviours that do not come naturally, and all in groups that are age normed rather than competence or ability normed.

School doesn’t have a singular purpose because there’s no one out there who designed it but learning definitely isn’t in the top five things it does. The people who did design the progenitor of modern school systems designed it to get people to sit down, shut up and do as they were told, and to love the government.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/04/school-is-to-submit.ht...

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