There are oligarch and foreign interest bots degrading American cohesion. This is not done by magic, but by science, and likely by those who take at least a cursory glance at the cognitive biases of mankind. Understand the way a person thinks, manipulate their in-group and out-group thinking, and you can extract more or less whatever you want from them. And if you can propagandize people to believe the correct message, you can actually get them to contain themselves in such a way that they never conflict with your goals in a serious way.
I will start with what I know best. Mainstream stenography’s hostility towards voice writers and digitals. From a psychological perspective, I understand it well. You tell a class of people for 50 years that technology is coming for their jobs and eventually you’re left with a country where some of us become ignorant, assuming that no technology can ever do what we do because we’ve been hearing it for half a century; some of us become doomers, resigned to waiting for the end of the party; some of us become radicalized truth seekers, forever doomed to study history and watch it repeat. But you know what I realized? None of that stuff really matters, because no matter who is more technically correct, the winner tends to be whoever has the manpower, money, and desire to keep telling the story. The truth, to a degree, becomes irrelevant.
But it goes further than that. Entire cultures and systems of operation can be founded, more or less, on a lie. For example, you can look at the legal analyses I’ve done over the years, misclassified employees versus independent contractors, absolute right to discuss pay and working conditions versus antitrust concerns. The summary of it is that under the law, there are factors a judge would look at in determining whether someone was factually an independent contractor or employee no matter what the hiring entity and hired entity called the relationship. And to some this is government intrusion into a private business relationship, and to others this is a legal mechanism to protect people that largely don’t even have the education to understand their rights are being violated.
In fact, in my experience, people that have been propagandized to be hostile toward someone willing to speak out against established doctrine and tell it like it is. And that’s when the politicians nope out and are like “sure I’ll do a carve out so you have less protection than the average misclassified employee.” They know what they’re doing. They don’t care because they want you to like them and if getting you to like them means robbing you of your rights, whose fault is that? All the orgs, associations, and corporations get to declare victory and all the court reporters cheer. Because we won fewer rights than normal employees, hooray!
I have also seen this in political commentary and thought online. People (or bots?) propagandized into believing the system doesn’t work, that violence is necessary, that they should give up their own political power for dreams of a better tomorrow that will never come for as long as they give up their own political power. See the loop? Contained. And, again, in my experience, hostile to anyone trying to tell them they are contained. Obviously both political parties are interested in your vote, but if they can get you to abstain from voting it’s a solid victory for them because you won’t be voting against them or attempting to reform their party to more closely resemble a coalition capable of addressing the many needs of the United States of America.
A good microcosm of this psychological phenomenon is the court system itself. The side willing to burn more money inevitably has an advantage with regard to pushing things its way in an arena where, as jury science tells us, your expert is more likely to be trusted if they are likable. The truth, to a degree, becomes irrelevant, if it is ever even presented in court at all.
P.S.
Knicks Parade today. This commute has been an experience.
Chris, you’re absolutely right! There’s a lot to unpack here.
As far as “the truth, to a degree, becomes irrelevant” claim, I do get what you’re saying and do somewhat agree. California voice writers, today, pass and RPR, something a lot of NYS reporters would struggle with. So their claim is they can do the job as well as anyone if that’s the benchmark to pass. And why do machine reporters spout off half truths that only the machine can “really” do the job? It’s partially what you’re saying/implying, that it’s motivated reasoning. But as to the “truth,” there’s two truths you’re co-mingling. One is which methodology is “better”, if any, and one is if the voice-naysayers are being truthful in what they’re saying, that they actually believe machine writing is superior. Those question of which methodology is better, if any, is one that would take a dedicated experiment to expose, which is kind of being run via CA vs NY reporting. But if people are treating that “truth” (that voice is equivalent, addresses the reporter shortage, etc) as irrelevant as they disparage voice writing, it might be because they don’t have the knowledge about what voice brings to the table. And they might not have that knowledge because they are not curious. And they might not be curious because that would disconnect them from their in-group, that would threaten their high salary, their identity, so they don’t go looking for that “truth” of which methodology is better. I would opine that all humans avert their eyes from some information. But that doesn’t mean it’s “irrelevant” to them, it just means they’re not on psychologically stable ground to change their beliefs that much. When they’re acting as though it’s irrelevant, it’s their defense mechanism of last resort to highly relevant information that they can’t handle. It’s cognitive dissonance. There’s an upstream filtering mechanism that prevents us from on boarding information that would send us into a tailspin in terms of relationship and self-concept. None of this makes us bad or dishonest, it makes us human.
The same goes for the politics you’re alluding to. I’m not going to wade too far into those waters, but you specifically mentioned violence. Oftentimes, people believe their violence is justified, that it’s self defense, that it was provoked, that they’re doing the right thing. And saying violence is wrong invokes the same dissonance. And just like voice vs steno, some people believe they have a more far-sighted rationalization of their ways and persist, despite evidence to the contrary. Don’t forget that when you challenge a person with what you believe to be good evidence, they can be receiving it as a threat to their identity, which has decades of buildup. And on boarding your evidence would throw into question all of their relationships and direction. So you think you’re discussing best practices, they think they’re discussing who they are.
As far as believing the expert you’d rather get a beer with, that’s a bit different. It’s because people are going off vibes. Many interested decision makers try to heed the specific recommendations of experts, be it in public health, in city planning, in business management. But jurors, if we’re brutally honest, are not the interested decision makers we’d hope our leaders would be. That’s why the best trial lawyers have as much charisma as they do persuasiveness.
Two books I’d recommend Chris. The newer one is called “mistakes were made, but not by me.” An older one, but still good, is “War is a force that gives us meaning.” It’s one I have meant to reread several times, but haven’t. But it’s about how people can be swept into nationalism in war times which does give a lot of physiological benefits, such as a social network, a calling, a cause, and self-esteem.
A la the Knicks parade. How’s that for full circle.
I’m glad I posted. This comment was everything.
On the nose with this! EXACTLY!