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We all wear tinfoil hats now

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Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#41

Post by raxxorrax »

pjc50 wrote: post #13
raxxorrax wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful, the hammer of logic is quite small. It is a mighty but very restricted tool. Cambridge Analytica was made responsible for large scale social media manipulation. I don't think logical positivism lets you confirm this widely believed story. At least not without even identifying the type of manipulation. What kind of message was employed? Who and how many were targeted? Did it really change the opinions of peop…

I think the distinction I was looking for was between statements like "advertising affects behaviour" and "propaganda affects behaviour" which, in the 21st century, are generally considered true and almost obvious even if we can't identify the specific pump handle to remove to stop the cholera epidemic; versus "wifi is beaming images into my brain". Certainly "person X made a political decision based on the informati…

There certainly is a qualitative difference, I agree. But the societal relevance cannot be derived from the degree or order of irrational thought. Someone believing he is regularly abducted by aliens is perhaps more irrational than someone saying a company distorted and manipulated voters on a large scale. The latter allows you to dismiss a whole plethora of different opinions without effort and it was used for political talking points while the former might summon some smiles from others.

On the other hand it is quite rational for people getting angry if they are told they are the victim of propaganda or anything really. And this is where both cases you presented can converge. I think the author of the article was hinting at this. A case where both perpetrator and victims can be dismissed as irrational.

> even if we can't identify the specific pump handle

I think we often can and it is shocking we use the handle excessively and with glee. We know it for classical advertising at least. Although today there are more empirical approaches because social media allows to conduct various tests. In these cases the handle is indeed yet unknown.

>> rational society doesn't mean that much > Only if you care about [..] evidence-based interventions

I was thinking more about the self perception as a rational actor. The 18th/19th century had a lot of rationalists and they were instrumental in secularizing societies. But in the end their approaches fell flat somewhat. Some went the way of utilitarianism or egoism because they were lacking answers they thought could be rationally derived. I think the criticism of Kant is on spot here.

I don't think that many people would want to live in a purely rational society on that matter, because it would be horrible. But you see it resurfacing a lot. You like the color blue more than red? -> Irrational, your mental state needs fixing... Exaggerated of course.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#42

Post by dTal »

llcoolv wrote: post #2

This is an extremely one-sided and biased article. Basically, it presumes that manipulating public opinion begins with Cambridge Analytica, being completely oblivious to the excesive lies, public shaming, character assasinations, alarmism that the agents of the "solid establishment consensus" (The Guardian, NYT, BBC, Deutsche Welle, etc) routinely perform.

I'm not seeing where it presumes that, or why you think that makes it "one-sided" as though different types of social control are on opposite sides. I also find it curious that your shit-list includes a variety of liberal and centrist sources with decent journalistic standards, but doesn't mention the elephant in the room of Fox News. Taken together, your comment comes across as a partisan defense of Cambridge Analytica.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#43

Post by tic_tac »

The idea that targeted political advertising is unreasonably effective to the point of constituting mind control is ridiculous. It assumes people have no independent agency. While advertising can be effective it's definitely not mind control.

It's the same story with money on elections. People were and are extremely paranoid about monied interests dominating elections, but we have seen Trump beat Hillary with half her money and now Bloomberg will inevitably drop out of the Democratic primary even though he is outspending everyone else combined.

People have far more agency than armchair psychologists and sociologists would like to believe.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#44

Post by dTal »

RandomTisk wrote: post #30
llcoolv wrote: post #2

This is an extremely one-sided and biased article. Basically, it presumes that manipulating public opinion begins with Cambridge Analytica, being completely oblivious to the excesive lies, public shaming, character assasinations, alarmism that the agents of the "solid establishment consensus" (The Guardian, NYT, BBC, Deutsche Welle, etc) routinely perform.

What bothers me the most about the CA-Stole-Elections drumbeat is how devoid these kinds of articles are with evidence. They don't qualify which or how many votes were ultimately changed, but it's a well enough hypothesis so writer after writer keeps making bolder and broader claims about CA's influence. Now how many votes are changed due to the media's overwhelming (90%+) negativity about Brexit and Trump? If CA swa…

No, it's fundamentally different and worse, because there's no indication it's happening at all. There's no possibility to mount any kind of defense of rebuttal. To use your war analogy, it's as if someone suddenly invented invisibility cloaks.

The fact that we don't have much evidence about what Cambridge Analytica did is the whole problem.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#45

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #35
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should definitely pause ! We are steady but surely moving towards the very dystopia made up by paranoid minds ages ago. I just think the article made it sound like these fears are unfounded. It's crazy to me that it's still legal to have political advertising, heck, it's crazy to me that advertising in it's current form is legal at all.

We’ve had political advertising in this country since Thomas Paine, and much of it has been scurrilous. I would say that this is a natural consequence of having a free press, but places with a nonfree press also have political advertising (as a propaganda organ of the state) so maybe it is just a consequence of having media available in general.

A free press doesn't necessarily mean that the press can do whatever it wants, exactly like free speech doesn’t mean that you can say whatever you want whenever you want to. I think it’s fairly easy to set up some rules about political advertisement, we already do it for other stuff like alcohol, tobacco, porn etc. I’m not implying that we should ban the media from covering politics, it’s just the blatant advertisement on social media and television.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#46

Post by jfengel »

34679 wrote: post #39

I'll put my "hat" on for a moment and ask: Why doesn't the FEC enforce its policy on the identification of political advertisements and who paid for them when it comes to social media activity? Why is it that a 30 second radio ad needs to have "Paid for by the Candidate X campaign", but millions of dollars worth of paid online trolls needn't disclose a thing? According to their own published rules, this sort of activ…

For question 1: Because the FEC has nobody in charge. There are only three commissioners, and all of them have terms that expired years ago. The current President has made only one appointment.

The commission still operates, but it's not large -- only about 300 employees to monitor all Federal election activity.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#47

Post by 34679 »

jfengel wrote: post #46
34679 wrote: post #39

I'll put my "hat" on for a moment and ask: Why doesn't the FEC enforce its policy on the identification of political advertisements and who paid for them when it comes to social media activity? Why is it that a 30 second radio ad needs to have "Paid for by the Candidate X campaign", but millions of dollars worth of paid online trolls needn't disclose a thing? According to their own published rules, this sort of activ…

For question 1: Because the FEC has nobody in charge. There are only three commissioners, and all of them have terms that expired years ago. The current President has made only one appointment. The commission still operates, but it's not large -- only about 300 employees to monitor all Federal election activity.

I've been asking that question since 2015.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#48

Post by alwaysanagenda »

mech1234 wrote: post #25

I strongly urge all people who wish to be informed citizens to consume news sources from diverse sources. Selection bias of what events get covered is a huge source of political spin, and using diverse sources is the only way to eliminate selection bias. Consider any statement with morally-significant wording to be the spin, and whatever is left over to be the facts on the ground worth considering. The vast majority…

I recommend citizen journalists Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak who produce a twice-weekly media deconstruction on their podcast NoAgendaShow.com

There are no ads or corporate sponsors or outside influences -- and never will be. The podcast has run nearly 12 years strong and it has been 100% listener supported.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#49

Post by jfengel »

34679 wrote: post #47
jfengel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For question 1: Because the FEC has nobody in charge. There are only three commissioners, and all of them have terms that expired years ago. The current President has made only one appointment. The commission still operates, but it's not large -- only about 300 employees to monitor all Federal election activity.

I've been asking that question since 2015.

The power vacuum at the top has existed since before then. Commissioners' terms started expiring, without being replaced, in 2007. It's practically impossible for them to devote resources to new things like online activities.

And the organization has always been under-staffed. Investigating a charge is difficult. They have to prove their case in order to sanction anybody -- and they have limited power to act even when they do. Fines in the tens of millions of dollars are couch-cushion money for wealthy donors. Or the organizations simply disappear.

The organization has its hands full just managing the many, many campaign committees that are actually complying with the law (or trying to). Its ability to track down violations is limited, and growing more limited by the day.

Re: We all wear tinfoil hats now

#50

Post by mistermann »

alwaysanagenda wrote: post #48
mech1234 wrote: post #25

I strongly urge all people who wish to be informed citizens to consume news sources from diverse sources. Selection bias of what events get covered is a huge source of political spin, and using diverse sources is the only way to eliminate selection bias. Consider any statement with morally-significant wording to be the spin, and whatever is left over to be the facts on the ground worth considering. The vast majority…

I recommend citizen journalists Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak who produce a twice-weekly media deconstruction on their podcast NoAgendaShow.com There are no ads or corporate sponsors or outside influences -- and never will be. The podcast has run nearly 12 years strong and it has been 100% listener supported.

I do now and then, they have a perfectly valid perspective but they are obviously very biased to the right.
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