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The coming automation of propaganda

warontherocks.com

91–93 of 93 posts

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#91
post #90
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your counterargument is therefore not with the principle of Epistocracy but rather with the implementation. I've thought about this before and I think I have a way to construct the voting test in a way that is robust to being "hacked". Copy and paste to follow: 1. There is already a de facto voting test for some fraction of Americans. Its called the citizenship test. And I for one find it offensive to basic reasoning…

The problem with the principle of epistocracy is the implementation. When what's at stake is control of an entire country, huge amounts of resources will be directed towards subverting any system that you create. What's good enough for the purposes of immigration control isn't necessarily good enough for the purposes of voting. A civics exam would select the most motivated groups who are willing to cram, as well as t…

>What's good enough for the purposes of immigration control isn't necessarily good enough for the purposes of voting.

Did you read section 2? The immigration exam is only a third of the questions on my proposed ballot.

>You want motivated immigrants who are willing to study in order to enter your country, but you don't necessarily want to restrict voting to the group of people who are most willing to put in effort, because that group includes everyone on the political fringe.

Did you read section 3.1/3.2? Unless "the fringe" is 80% of people, voting will not be restricted to only the fringe under 3.1. It is less clear how the alternative proposal 3.2 skews the weights of extremists.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#92
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than opinion polls, I would love to see some specific accusations with specific supporting evidence, that doesn't consist of a 500 page narrative. I've never encountered anyone who could provide this.

You could look at the executive summaries of the two sections of the 500 page narrative.

Which contain narrative stories, not specific falsifiable evidence, which is why no one, including you, is ever able to link to anything specific. It's like the cafe scene in Inception.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#93
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very 20th century view of propaganda. Modern propaganda doesn't need to be factually incorrect to be effective, it just needs to direct the attention of the audience in a manner that suits the propagandist. You can push pretty much any agenda in a very convincing manner simply by choosing to emphasise or de-emphasise certain facts; we are in many ways more powerfully influenced by what we consider to be impo…

The trouble is, that definition of "modern propaganda" desacribes the entire press. For example, take the FBI's use of the latest mass shootings to push for encryption backdoors - those shootings make up a tiny proportion of deaths, but we prioritize emotive stories that get large amounts of press. This has also lead to some terribly ill-conceived gun control campaigns that downplay the importance of the guns most of…

The press is a propaganda engine. Chomsky has been saying this for decades.
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