Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoops, it looks like you forgot to su and kill the Unix memes you are infected with.
Nothing wrong with such memes, they are like good bacteria. We are talking about memes that want you to take actions (coercive memes) like spending your money on one product/service, or join a religion and then bomb the temple of another religion.
Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
61–70 of 88 posts
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#62I am immune. The trick is to become conscious of the process. Put another way: the immune mind operates on a higher level of abstraction and can objectively see lower levels - you allow the memes to run in brain cycles but you are su and kill them. It's like when you are watching a movie and at some point you realize (feel) it is fake reality, then you learn to do it on purpose everytime: you watch the movie layer fr…
Unix meme aside, that's what I do. Awareness of manipulation reduces its effectiveness. Bringing in another meme, "I see the fnords!" ;) Hofstadter's stuff has also been instructive.
The paid content masquerading as journalism is particularly irritating. You can also see similar bias in the regular news stories. There are lots of tricks you can use to color the facts of a story to get the audience to respond in a particular way.
Lighting, framing, background, ambient sounds, subject placement--all these things can be employed for rhetorical effect. For instance, authority figures might be filmed at a slight upward angle from below the eye line, to make them appear slightly taller than anyone viewing the image. Fat people will be filmed from shoulders up if favored, from the waist up if unfavored, and from the neck down for vaguely defamatory stories. Pay attention to whose faces are shown with police mugshots, and whose faces are shown with license photos, military photos, school photos, or photos intended for other purposes. Watch out for different wording in captions and infobars. Listen for odd euphemisms that suddenly pop up in several places at once, or for different people who mysteriously say almost exactly the same things, as though they read from the same script.
It's almost harder to see anything that isn't a fnord.
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unix meme aside, that's what I do. Awareness of manipulation reduces its effectiveness. Bringing in another meme, "I see the fnords!" ;) Hofstadter's stuff has also been instructive.
But once you see the fnords, you can't un-see them. The paid content masquerading as journalism is particularly irritating. You can also see similar bias in the regular news stories. There are lots of tricks you can use to color the facts of a story to get the audience to respond in a particular way. Lighting, framing, background, ambient sounds, subject placement--all these things can be employed for rhetorical effe…
It's the tricks that you describe that are the "fnords". And once you see them explicitly as tricks, they lose their power over you.
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#64Wise synthesis of a growing problem. Author says "I've decided to 'opt-out' of this war entirely." What mental gymnastics does he use when watching a YouTube ad for example? The subliminal effect of much advertising is pernicious and cannot be entirely avoided, it seems to me.
> What mental gymnastics does he use when watching a YouTube ad for example? No ads on youtube here so no mental gymnastics required. Probably one of ghostery, ublock or umatrix takes care of those for me. The only way they can reliably serve those is when they splice them onto the actual video but that hasn't happened yet. On some sites pre-roll ads do cause the main video to be paused for as long as the ad would ru…
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unix meme aside, that's what I do. Awareness of manipulation reduces its effectiveness. Bringing in another meme, "I see the fnords!" ;) Hofstadter's stuff has also been instructive.
Indeed! GEB has been a bible in this regard (pun intended).
Maybe it's better to start with I Am a Strange Loop.[0]
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing wrong with such memes, they are like good bacteria. We are talking about memes that want you to take actions (coercive memes) like spending your money on one product/service, or join a religion and then bomb the temple of another religion.
I guess my point is no one is truly immune from meme infection as its a side effect of having a brain, its not something you can control.... "Enjoy." "I'm lovin it."
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#67It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw . Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution. Religion is a coherent,…
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#68It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw . Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution. Religion is a coherent,…
I appreciate your point of view, but doesn't this deny human nature, replacing subjectivity with a kind of sterile mechanistic objectivity? We can make rational choices. For instance, we could remove advertisements from public places and roads.
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
But once you see the fnords, you can't un-see them. The paid content masquerading as journalism is particularly irritating. You can also see similar bias in the regular news stories. There are lots of tricks you can use to color the facts of a story to get the audience to respond in a particular way. Lighting, framing, background, ambient sounds, subject placement--all these things can be employed for rhetorical effe…
I beg to differ. It's the tricks that you describe that are the "fnords". And once you see them explicitly as tricks, they lose their power over you.
They constantly remind you that other people see you as an object to be manipulated, rather than as a person with its own individual motivations, thoughts, and opinions. And then you can also look at other people around you, and see that the same tricks still have power over them.
Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes
#70Shamelessly reposting an earlier comment of mine ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9909259 ) because I feel it's relevant here: --- >For quite some time I've felt that advertising/marketing, at least the sort we've had for the past century or so, is inherently immoral. The fact that it's a necessary evil in our economic system doesn't stop it from being an evil. >Modern advertising is not merely informing people…
I completely disagree and I find your choice of words - "it's too deep for you", "it's tricking you!", "it's eeevil!" to be distasteful. Seems like a political ad for going to the "righteous side" of being against ads. There has been only one brand that I can recall to have bought because of "hidden" advertising. Budweiser. I used to see the characters from my favorite series drinking it while eating pizza or other d…
If you recall it, then they did not do a very good job at hiding it, right?