-Google Measuring Brain Waves.
But the company has been experimenting with YouTube ads by reading brain waves to see how people respond to them. Garett Rogers sat in on a webcast hosted by Google’s Leah Spalding and MediaVest’s Yaakov Kimelfield.
Spalding and Kimelfield revealed the results of a study that employed “neuromarketing” (we’ll get to that in a minute) firm NeuroFocus “to measure the impact of YouTube overlay advertisements on attention levels, emotional engagement, and other psychological metrics.”
They decided YouTube overlay ads were effectively compelling and improved positive brand response. Why is Google, previously primarily focused on click-through rates, so interested in brain waves suddenly? Spalding says it’s about how memorable an ad is and its impact, and how important it is to “look beyond” the click through. …
Those of us in the web marketing and search arena both love and fear Google. Google, directly or indirectly, makes us money and can send our sites millions of visitors; on the other hand, Google knows a LOT about us. Their Toolbar, Analytics, Adsense, Gmail, and, of course, Search are all happily gathering petabytes of data about our behavior. Now, Google is employing neuromarketing technology to peer inside our brains: …
Having a high profile, tech savvy firm like Google not only sponsor a neuromarketing study but trumpet the results to the public is indeed a good thing for both Neurofocus and the industry. As is common with so many neuromarketing studies, this one didn’t actually tie ad viewing to eventual consumer behavior, but focused on the emotional activation caused by the ad. That’s not all bad, though – just showing that these overlay ads are processed by the brain is good news for Google and others promoting them as a viable advertising strategy. …
The firm used biometric measures such as brainwave activity, eye-tracking and skin response to gauge the impact of ads. Based on criteria including attention level, emotional engagement and memory retention, it then comes up with an overall “effectiveness” score for ads.
The study revealed that viewers found overlays “compelling and engaging,” generating high attention and emotional engagement levels across different brands and types of video. On a one to 10 scale, the ads scored a 6.6 in effectiveness, which is considered showing “a high effect.”
The combination of overlays with companion banners also grabbed users’ attention more than banner ads alone, scoring a 6.6 compared to a 6.3 for just banners. The overlay-display combo was also found to improve brand response over banners alone, based on study participants’ brainwave activity.
Yaakov Kimelfeld, MediaVest senior vice president for digital research and analytics at MediaVest, said the study “will be instrumental in showing that overlays actually work.” While advertisers may still be more comfortable with pre-rolls, which approximate TV commercials, Kimelfeld noted that “the interruption model is going away, even on TV.”
Google, with the help of NeuroFocus, used a sample group of participants, and measured things likes skin responses, eye movement and an EEG brain scan. EEG is a more portable and convenient, but slightly less accurate way to measure alpha and beta waves in the brain compared other common methods that require you to be laying horizontal in a machine. …
Click through was important.. but since we’re looking at brand impact, it’s not enough to just look at the click through rate (CTR). CTR will not give us any indication as far as how memorable an ad is, or metrics on brand impact, etc. For these reasons it’s important to include and consider CTR but to look beyond that. — Leah Spalding, Google
NeuroFocus solves the 3 classic conundrums of advertising – What specific components of the ad do people pay attention to? Where exactly in the ad are they emotionally engaged, and why? Finally, and most importantly what specific components of the ad do they retain in long term memory. Clear answers to these questions enables you the advertiser to get at the core of what makes your ads effective.
Neuroscience provides a deep, clear view into the real-world, real-time reactions of consumers at the most elemental level: their brainwaves.
YOUR CUSTOMER IS COMMUNICATING TO YOU. 2,000 TIMES A SECOND.
We capture that communication…measure it…analyze it…understand it like never before.
Applying our patented technology and proprietary techniques, NeuroFocus puts those cutting edge findings to work helping to improve the effectiveness of every aspect of our clients’ product and brand development, or program content through to the full spectrum of their marketing communications campaigns and materials.
The human brain reacts to stimuli in milliseconds. NeuroFocus captures these reactions thousands of times every second.
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Our sophisticated methodologies measure:
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From those we derive gauges of:
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-Is The Internet Altering Our Brains?
CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) – The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.Gary Small, a neuroscientist at UCLA in California who specializes in brain function, has found through studies that Internet searching and text messaging has made brains more adept at filtering information and making snap decisions.
But while technology can accelerate learning and boost creativity it can have drawbacks as it can create Internet addicts whose only friends are virtual and has sparked a dramatic rise in Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses.
Small, however, argues that the people who will come out on top in the next generation will be those with a mixture of technological and social skills.
“We’re seeing an evolutionary change. The people in the next generation who are really going to have the edge are the ones who master the technological skills and also face-to-face skills,” Small told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“They will know when the best response to an email or Instant Message is to talk rather than sit and continue to email.”
In his newly released fourth book “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind,” Small looks at how technology has altered the way young minds develop, function and interpret information.
Small, the director of the Memory & Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior and the Center on Aging at UCLA, said the brain was very sensitive to the changes in the environment such as those brought by technology.
He said a study of 24 adults as they used the Web found that experienced Internet users showed double the activity in areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning as Internet beginners.
“The brain is very specialized in its circuitry and if you repeat mental tasks over and over it will strengthen certain neural circuits and ignore others,” said Small.
“We are changing the environment. The average young person now spends nine hours a day exposing their brain to technology. Evolution is an advancement from moment to moment and what we are seeing is technology affecting our evolution.”
Small said this multi-tasking could cause problems.
He said the tech-savvy generation, whom he calls “digital natives,” are always scanning for the next bit of new information which can create stress and even damage neural networks.
“There is also the big problem of neglecting human contact skills and losing the ability to read emotional expressions and body language,” he said.
“But you can take steps to address this. It means taking time to cut back on technology, like having a family dinner, to find a balance. It is important to understand how technology is affecting our lives and our brains and take control of it.”
-Computer analysis suggests Obama is ‘king of spin’, insane McCain clinically depressed.
When he analysed the speeches of John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, he found that even though the speeches were rehearsed, written by professionals and delivered by trained speakers, there were discernable differences between them. “It’s clear that the speeches are still highly individualised,” says Skillicorn. “This makes sense as the speeches have to, in some manner, reflect the speaker’s own voice and opinions. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to deliver them convincingly.”
Additionally, he says, little details count: pronouns such as “we” and “I” are often substituted subconsciously, no matter what is written in the script.
Each of the candidates had made speeches containing very high and very low levels of spin, according to Skillicorn’s program, depending on the occasion. In general though, Obama’s speeches contain considerably higher spin than either McCain or Clinton. For example, for their speeches accepting their party’s nomination for president, Obama’s speech scored a spin value of 6.7 – where 0 is the average level of spin within all the political speeches analysed, and positive values represent higher spin. In contrast, McCain’s speech scored -7.58, while Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention scored 0.15. Skillicorn also found that Sarah Palin’s speeches contain slightly more spin than average.
So the analysis appears to back up McCain’s claim that he is a “straight talker”. However, for the purposes of political speech-making this may not be an entirely good thing for him. “Obama uses spin in his speeches very well,” says Skillicorn. For example, Obama’s spin level skyrockets when facing problems in the press, such as when Jeremiah Wright, the reverend of his former church, made controversial comments to the press.
“When you see these crises come along, the spin goes up,” Skillicorn says. “Obama is very good at using stirring rhetoric to deal with the issues. And it seems to work if you look at what happens in the polls afterwards.”
McCain does not seem as adept at using spin to his advantage, and his “straight talk” can make his speeches fall flat from a motivational point of view, according to Branka Zei Pollermann, founder of the Vox Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, who has analysed the candidates’ voices for communication consultants Clearwater Advisors, based in London.
“The voice analysis profile for McCain looks very much like someone who is clinically depressed,” says Pollermann, a psychologist who uses voice analysis software in her work with patients. Previous research on mirror neurons has shown that listening to depressed voices can make others feel depressed themselves, she says.
-Are Political Views Hard-wired?
We know that political marketing – the art of persuading voters to support your candidate – is perhaps the most challenging and least productive form of marketing. A couple of years ago in The Neuroscience of Political Marketing, I described how research shows that political ads seem to go through an “emotional filter” that, in essence, causes voters to discount messages that are inconsistent with their current beliefs. Thus, an accusation that one’s favored candidate took money from special interest groups is likely to be dismissed as a partisan smear rather than evaluated rationally. If that wasn’t enough to frustrate political marketers, there’s now sketchy evidence that our political views may be determined by more fundamental brain wiring attributes.
People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative political positions on many hot-button issues, according to unusual new research published yesterday.
The finding suggests that people who are particularly sensitive to signals of visual or auditory threats also tend to adopt a more defensive stance on political issues, such as immigration, gun control, defense spending and patriotism. People who are less sensitive to potential threats, by contrast, seem predisposed to hold more liberal positions on those issues. [From The Washington Post- Startle Response Linked to Politics by Shankar Vedantam.]
The research was conducted at the University of Nebraska by political scientist John Hibbing and others. They first surveyed a group of voters to determine their political views. Then, months later, they monitored their skin conductance (skin moisture is known to be a stress indicator) while showing them both neutral photos and startling photos (e.g., a spider on the face of a terrified person and an individual with a bloody face.) They also startled subjects by playing a loud sound while measuring their blink intensity. In both cases, subjects with a stronger startle response tended to hold more conservative political views.
The research couldn’t determine whether these response levels were present from birth or had been shaped by the individual’s environment.
Regardless of the origin of these differences between individuals, the research suggests that the fundamental beliefs of many voters may have its basis in their brain’s wiring and that changing attititudes for these individuals will be at best extremely difficult. Once again, the focus has to return to the swing voters whose prewired preferences may not be that strong.
-Primitive emotions, herd mentality and raging hormones are hidden drivers of stock bubbles and crashes
But this keystone belief in how markets function is now under mounting attack after this month’s global stocks crash, the latest in a string of financial shocks over the past two decades.
Proponents of rival concepts say that primitive emotions, herd mentality and raging hormones are among the invisible motors that help inflate an asset bubble and then prick it.
“In standard economic theory, the way that prices in all markets are meant to be set depends on people being rational and having access to all available information,” says David Tuckett of the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London.
“This way of looking at things is almost completely wrong,” he said. “Markets are operated by human beings.”
Investigators into the theories of behavioural or emotional finance say conscious decisions are only the surface of a river with deep and powerful undercurrents.
A boom-and-bust event can follow a distinct path, they say.
At first, investors are skeptical about dipping into a market.
When they perceive that neighbours or peers are getting rich by buying a given stock, they cautiously make a purchase and their confidence builds as the stock’s value rises.
The gains fuel enthusiasm, which leads to the euphoric conviction, as the price spirals higher, that this is an easy way to wealth.
At this point — when the bubble is most inflated — the investor becomes indifferent to warning signs, such as share values or price-earnings ratios that are stratospherically high.
What happens when the market starts to tank? The initial response is dismissal, for the investor still believes that his stocks will come back up and there is no point in selling.
As prices slip further, denial cedes to fear and then, suddenly, to panic.
Traumatised by their loss, investors vow never to invest in stocks again — a sentiment that can be durably enforced if many others have also been burned.
A famous example of this process was “Tulip Mania”, which occurred in the 17th-century Netherlands.
Tulip bulbs, then a rarity in Europe, scaled extraordinary heights in the course of a mad year, only to fall just as abruptly.
At the Mania’s peak in 1636, a single bulb of a particularly coveted strain, the Viceroy tulip, changed hands for the equivalent of more than 25,500 euros (36,720 dollars) today. When the bubble burst, there was a wave of moralising and calls for tighter controls against speculators.
Trond Andresen, who specialises in behavioural analysis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, says investors may think less about the intrinsic value of a stock and more about the perception of its value.
This is an important distinction, he says.
“Short-term volatility is created when you have people running after each other,” he argues.
“If people stopped chasing what they think the other person is thinking, rather than actually trying to value a stock on their own best terms without second-guessing people, the volatility would disappear.”
John Coates, a Cambridge University researcher into biochemistry and behaviour, says market fluctuations are amplified by hormones.
Bush is a fool? No, he’s playing US as the fools!
Bush is a fool? No, he’s playing US as the fools!
Everyday you see allegations that Bush is a fool… an idiot… he’s stupid… incompetent and so on. He often appears to be just that, so the assertion isn’t and commonly held belief isn’t without precident.
In truth it’s a mixture of his act, and what lying with virtually every breath he can muster is doing to his brain he when tries to talk. The incompetence that’s become the legacy of his presidency is mostly an act to coverup their true intentions, so they can get away with things like concentration of power, mass murder, neo-imperialism, degradation of of our “rights”, and so on.
Bush: The 10 Year Difference ; Source
Lying comsumes major cognitive “computing” power. Memories are generally like physical embodiments of of networks of “neurons” in the physical structure of the brain. When lying, instead of the subconscious easily conjuring up an embedded memory directly from the “unconscious” brain (where it’s stored / associated) and into the conscious mind and speech, a ‘twirling of the cognitive kaleidoscope’ is required to articulate the lie while crossexamining it with all of the other lies the person has commited on the topic, and any related. The comparison between simply reciting something you know (or think you know) is true, compared to when you have to consciously engage in a lie, is like comparing a matchbox car and a RC truck.
But isn’t Bush just some backwoods good ‘ol boy? No, he’s an ivy leaguer. He might be a chump style cut and run type who likes to do a little partying, but that’s not the issue with Bush today.
The Bush we all know today. LINK
Even if he does resort to drinking from time to time these days, with all of the emotional baggage he’s carrying around from this presidency (even if he didn’t have anything to do with things like allowing 911 to happen as the evidence suggests) he’s still got the best doctors / psychologists / etc. Him being the president surely has him on the best brainboosting nutritional suppliments, mental healtcare, propagandists engineering hsi speeches and staged events, and so on. And we all know Bush is the type to go jogging regularly so it’s not liek he’s a total burnout from whatever partying he does do.
The backwoods good ‘ol boy routine is Bush’s impersonation of how he views American’s, most particularly those he’s trying to have self-identify with him. He’s laughing in our faces. His entire act and his speeches are carefully crafted and groomed by some of the world’s top propagandists, perhaps even the world best propagandists. If you doubt that then you have much to learn about the spectre of politicians and presidents, because virtually every time you see the bigshots the event is staged.
Bush’s cronies playing the same act to avoid the law:
The Daily Show: Bush’s Band of Idiot Geniuses
People say Bush and his administration are stupid. Arrogent is more like it. People allege that “CT’ers” consider Bush and his administration stupid and incompetent in attempts to refute allegations that he/they could have had complucuty in 911. I would tend to think that CT’ers would be inclined to not fall for their incompetence game, as that act is the entire ‘justification’ for how 911 ‘was able’ to happen, and how they could have possibly “skrewed up” so bad taking us into Iraq etc. Instead of Iraq being an idiotic accident, it was a carefully crafted plan that was planned long before Bush became president, and the planners even included his brother Jeb over at PNAC.
There’s a choice documentary specifically about and titled “Stupidity”. In it they study the entire spectrum of stupidity, and the important view they present is how smart people like comedians use stupidity to be successful. The part important for this discussion is the surprise twist ending where they assert that perhaps GWB could be using stupidity to achieve “success”.
Now I wont go as far as calling him a genius, but he’s smarter than many would believe, and then there’s the propagandists behind him.
*Pseudo-Individualism used to Divide & Conquer
In observing this phenomenon in virtually everyone I know, I selected the term “pseudo-individualism” as most appropriate. With a little researching I learned that a past scholar also used this term. Bernard Gendron first coined the phrase in reference to Cadillacs and part-interchangeability. His point was that the manufacturers produce numerous cars each year, but when you actually strip off all of the “external trappings” you’re left with essentially the same car.
“Advertising encourages us to believe that packaging differences reflect differences in the essence of the product, while they are really part interchangeable. Gendron states, pseudo-individualization glamorizes style over the real inner content”. LINK
My concept isn’t much different…
We’re all trained to be several ways, our entire lives. This goes whether we like or adhere to ‘them’ or not. The ways in question here would be self-serving, self-centered, over-competitive, and so on. We’re all trained to obsess over our Self, and to seek out ‘neo-individuality’.
The result is a society that is at large self-centered and ultimately selfish. Countless of millions of people who mostly are more or less are concerned with their own interests bar none. Now this isn’t everyone, and some in degrees more than others, but as a whole it is the m.o. that is adhered to. To not consciously acknowledge and confront this phenomenon is to accept it because it does persist and it’s waiting to take us all along for the lonely ride.
The essence of this individuality driven utopia is everyone thinking about themselves, and as a result everyone is working against each other. This can be observed for most people in normal day to day life. For instance, “it’s not my job” on something that technically isn’t anyones job in particular. Therefore everyone should do the task as a team for it be be easier, but instead everyone blows it off and blames everyone else for as long as possible.
When it’s all said and done there’s a major contradiction: everyone’s doing the same exact thing, and operating on the same exact “program”. The only difference is everyone’s being selfish and working against each other, while tellng themselves they’re extra special above all others because they like different things or have nicer stuff. The quest for individuality actually becomes counter-individuality, as everyone’s operating on the same program, more or less, however we feel different because we may just so happen to like different tastes or have more / better stuff, and the pseudo-individuaism concept isn’t exactly something you’re going to hear about on TV.
This reality is handed to us by our elite masters and their lifestyle promoting TV “programming”, and even at school with the over-competitiveness we’re indoctrinated with in things like nationalism and sports fanaticism. We’re filed into the category known as “consumers”, and on this count alone we’re all connected in the same social group according to those who spoon feed us this entire melodrama.
While we’re all obsessed over our Self, our elite masters remain in total control, whether you realize it or not, and you’re probably consuming more of their defunct goods to feel more like an individual. In light of this view, we’re divided as a society into parts of millions of self-serving individuals, when in truth we’re mostly all doing the same exact thing, no matter how selfish it may be.
Divide and Conquer.
EDIT: I forgot to add a paragraph about ignorance in the selfish context, as it’s sort of the primary motivation for my strong stance on this one. My interactions with virtually all people has taught me that most everyone actually wants to be ignorant (uninformed). Everyone just wants to pump ther brains full of mindless ignorance inducing entertainment. Since people suffer, due to inaction thanks to those who could push for change not being informed, I view it as selfishness, especially after one being shown enough reason to care and maybe try to self-inform or do anything in general yet they still cover their ears and shout “lalalalalalala”.
See Also:
*Ignorance isn’t bliss: The I Dimension
It’s time to rethink what “Ignorance” ‘itself’ really is, and see how ‘it’ truely isn’t bliss. We generally only think of “ignorance” as some concept in human understanding or even lifestyle. Here it’s time I redefine our concept of “ignorance”, and give it a capitol “I”. It requires looking into ones Self to understand the meaning of Ignorance, because it is the opposite of ones Self.
The Self is everything. It’s the core of each of our existence. It’s the foundation of life, in a sick sort of sense, because we’re trained our entire lives to obsess over ourselves. Now this applies to everyone in this society, even if you don’t overly obsess, because it’s the way we’re all trained regardless. Therefore, it affects us each on a daily basis, and it affects us even if we don’t realize it, because we’re subjected to it whether we realize it or not, or like it or not. This is often subtle, like the implicit messages in the TV commercials. You know, the other ‘thing’ they’re promting besides the products actual qualities and practical virtues.
We’re all trained to only think about ourselves, and our own personal interests, and what will make us “feel” good. This training that I speak of hardly even needs to be explained… it goes without saying. The fact that it exists and goes without saying shall be the precident here, although it’s also the reason that it dominates hundreds of millions of people, and because it does we’re forced to participate even. It’s a reality that parallels ‘every man for himself’. We live in a ‘world’ that is the result of overlapping decades and generations of indoctrinating (programming) propaganda. It’s been happening so long and so many adhere to it that it’s “normal”. This phenomena isn’t even merely propagated by the “Media”, societies ‘program’ those within them through “Socialization”.
It’s just our Selfs, and the exception of the handfuls of people we keep around us or social groups we Self-identify with. But it’s still the Self in the center. It’s almost impossible for us to not naturally be self-centered, but then we’re also indoctrinated to be self-centered, over-competitive, materialistic, under-confident (worried about our Self) and so on.
So then, what is Ignorance? In the meantime of our Self obsession, and whatever social groups our Self is Self-identified with, there’s that other ‘thing’. There’s a huge world out there with billions of people, and that external ‘thing’ which we generally don’t think about is our defintion of Ignorance. This definition of Ignorance isn’t even as narrow as the whole “world” ‘out there”, no. It’s even ‘right here’ “at home”. Odds are it’s even right down your street whether you acknowledge it or not.
Ignorance is everything, but your Self. It’s everywhere. It’s always. And it’s growing. It’s expanding like the American Empire. It’s enveloping the globe, and it’s arguably spawning from within our own “home”. But you may be thinking “no, I’m still ‘free’, it’s not in my home”? Yes it is. You just haven’t acknowledged it. The Self doesn’t “feel” subjected, so therefore you have no concept of being a subject. This is where the Self meets Ignorance, because Ignorance is everything that is ignored, and “feelings” like “being free” are subjective states based on interpretation. We interpret based on what we’ve learned, and we’ve been trained to ignore that which does not benefit our Self.
Ignorance in fact isn’t bliss. You may feel bliss, but You aren’t Ignorance. The numbers and full scope here are another thing that go without saying. Just like the things that lead to Ignorance not being bliss. But why is Ignorance not bliss? Because we ignore Ignorance. We Ignore that which is not our Self.
This argument pushes to anecdotally prove that Ignorance isn’t bliss. It also pushes you to prove it wrong by resisting living a lifestyle of ignorance.
Paying Attention to Not Paying Attention
Paying Attention To Not Paying Attention
By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science WriterMon Mar 19, 9:31 PM ET
Researchers are studying a pervasive psychological phenomenon in which oh man we’ve got to finish doing the taxes this weekend … C’mon, admit it. Your train of thought has derailed like that many times. It’s just mind-wandering. We all do it, and surprisingly often, whether we’re struggling to avoid it or not.
Mainstream psychology hasn’t paid much attention to this common mental habit. But a spate of new studies is chipping away at its mysteries and scientists say the topic is beginning to gain visibility.
Someday, such research may turn up ways to help students keep their focus on textbooks and lectures, and drivers to keep their minds on the road. It may reveal ways to reap payoffs from the habit.
And it might shed light on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which can include an unusually severe inability to focus that causes trouble in multiple areas of life.
More generally, scientists say, mind-wandering is worth studying because it’s just too common to ignore.
Michael Kane, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, sampled the thoughts of students at eight random times a day for a week. He found that on average, they were not thinking about what they were doing 30 percent of the time.
For some students it was between 80 and 90 percent of the time. Out of the 126 participants, only one denied any mind-wandering at the sampled moments.
Prior work has also turned up average rates of 30 percent to 40 percent in everyday life.
“If you want to understand people’s mental lives, this is a phenomenon we ought to be thinking about,” Kane said.
Of course, a lot of mind-wandering is harmless, as when you think about a work problem while munching a cheeseburger. The problem comes when it distracts you from something you should be paying attention to.
The result of that can be tragic. Kane noted the 2003 case of a college professor who drove to work in Irvine, Calif., one hot August day, parked and went to his office. Whatever was going through his mind, he’d lost track of the fact that his 10-month-old son was in the back seat. The boy died in the heat. In 2004, virtually the same thing happened in Santa Ana, Calif.
A more common task that demands concentration is reading. Even here, people’s minds wander 15 to 20 percent of the time, said Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. And they often don’t realize it, he said.
He and colleagues had college students read passages from “War and Peace” and other books. The volunteers pushed a button every time they noticed their thoughts straying, and that happened regularly, Schooler said.
But more surprisingly in such experiments, when the volunteers are interrupted at random times and asked what they’re thinking, “we regularly catch people’s minds wandering before they’ve noticed it themselves,” Schooler said. And these stealth episodes appear to hamper reading comprehension, he said.
In Kane’s study, scheduled for publication later this year, volunteers carried devices that beeped at random times and asked questions about their thoughts. Most of the time when caught mind-wandering, the students said they’d deliberately stopped focusing on what they were doing.
Their wandering thoughts trained more on everyday things than on fantasies, and much more than on worries. That’s similar to what previous studies have found. “A lot of what they’re reporting is … mental to-do lists,” Kane said.
But what leads to this?
“The mind is always trying to wander, every chance it gets,” Schooler said. In his view, the mind has not only the goal of achieving whatever task we’re focused on, but also personal goals simmering outside of our immediate awareness. These are things like making plans for the future, working out everyday problems, and better understanding oneself. Sometimes, one of these goals hijacks our attention. And so our mind wanders.
Brain-scanning evidence links mind-wandering to basic operation of the brain. Malia Mason of Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues recently reported that mind-wandering taps into the same circuitry that people use when they’re told to do nothing — when their brains are on “idle.”
Schooler, who’s studying brain-wave activity associated with mind wandering, welcomes what he sees as a surge of interest in the topic. He and others say there’s plenty to learn.
One goal is finding ways to help people realize when their mind is wandering and bring it under control, Schooler said. He plans to test whether meditation training might help.
But there’s even a more basic question, he said. Why is the brain wired to wander? What could possibly be good about that?
“Mind-wandering is probably more often helpful than harmful,” Kane said. For one thing, the cost is low: despite notable exceptions, life usually doesn’t demand our full attention.
“A lot of human daily life is autopilot,” he said. “There’s a whole lot of what we need to do that we can do without thinking about it, from driving to eating …. We do occasionally miss that turn on the way home, but we get through the day pretty well.”
Given that, a mechanism that encourages us to devote some idle brain capacity to planning and solving problems “seems like a pretty good use of time,” he said.
Schooler is exploring the idea that mind-wandering promotes creativity. “It’s unconstrained, it can go anywhere, which is sort of the perfect situation for creative thought,” he said.
Mason points out that just because the human brain wanders doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a good reason for it. Maybe, she said, the mind wanders simply because it can.
But even she sees an upside.
“I can be stuck in my car in traffic and not go absolutely crazy because I’m not stuck in the here and now,” she said. “I can think about what happened last night. And that’s great.”
Bush beckons followers to engage in propaganda
Bush calls for surge in ‘Support Our Troops’ bumper stickers
President Bush called on citizens Wednesday during a speech in Detroit, Michigan, to consider a surge in ‘Support Our Troops’ bumper stickers in a final push to victory in Iraq. With American forces taking more casualties, and the number of dead surpassing the nearly 3,000 killed during the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, Bush has come under criticism for his “shortsighted and poorly planned” policies in the Middle East.
Rememeber that memories are physical structures inside the brain, and the more a network a brain cells (memory) is “excited” it is thus reinforced. This is why the Nazi’s, and also “cult of personality” types, plant their symbols and faces everywhere. Constant “excitation” of memories or mindsets, especailly social group based mindsets, reinforces the target mindset to take hold of the target individuals mind (preferably all throughout the day).
Exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon well known to advertisers: people express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them. This effect has been nicknamed the “familiarity breeds liking” effect. In interpersonal attractiveness research studies, the term exposure principle is used to characterize the phenomenon in which the more often a person is seen by someone the more attractive and intelligent that person appears to be.
Simply exposing experimental subjects to a picture or a piece of music briefly led those subjects to later rate it more positively than other, similar stimuli which they had merely not been shown earlier. In another experiment, students were shown a Chinese character on a tachistoscope faster than could be perceived consciously. Later, students rated these characters as better than those to which they had not been exposed. When asked, the students were able to cite specific and detailed reasons why they preferred the characters that they did (which must have been at least partially rationalization).
The effect might be explained by the idea that recognizing a familiar environment makes us feel safe. This effect was first studied by Robert Zajonc. A related effect relevant to advertising and propaganda is the sleeper effect.
The new “surge” comes as no surprise after Bush recently called for another “surge” of some $670 million in a media PR propaganda.
Bush Calls For Another Surge…In Propaganda
All told, the (president’s proposed fiscal year 2008) budget calls for $668.2 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency that supervises all US government non-military propaganda.
At the same time Bush’s budget proposes steep cuts to federal funds for public broadcasting by nearly 25%. According to the Association of Public Television Stations, the Bush budget would cut up to $145 million from the $460 million proposed FY 2008 budget for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.
And exactly one year ago, the (admitted) total for propaganda spending was $2.3 Billion (tax payer dollars) since 2003 alone.
Bush Admin. spent over $2.6 Billion on advertising and P.R. since 2003, GAO finds
The Administration spent $2.6 billion on contracts with advertising agencies ($2.4 billion), public relations firms ($297 million), and media organizations and individual members of the media ($25 million).
The Department of Defense spent the most on media contracts, with contracts worth $2.1 billion. The Department of Health and Human Services spent more than $300 million on these contracts, the Department of Treasury spent $252 million, and the Department of Homeland Security spent $24 million during this period.
Sports = Propaganda
This is an oldie I wrote for the 2007 Superbowl. The main attraction was “Football”, but it applies overall to media-driven modern sports fanaticism in general. At the end is a supplemental post -I thought of the following day- involving “property of” tshirts.
It turns out that sports, or at least they way they’re dramatized and pumped into society, fits right into the elitist mass media indoctrination / propaganda model.
In our society, “Football” is the major force driving that model, however, ironically, another sport named “Football” is the major driving force in most other societies. For many years, even before I ever had any coherent understanding of propaganda, I always felt that US calling “Football” “Football” was like some sort of idiot test.
We’re dealing with a sport that literally stole it’s name from a prior existing sport that involves kicking a ball around the field, and for clarification you violate penalties if you touch the ball with your hands. Perhaps the usage of the word foot is significant as it’s the furthest thing from the brain.
Somehow we took the name from a sport that deserves no name besides football, and we applied that title to a sport where you can’t even advance up the field unless you can catch and/or hold onto the ball. For fairness, they do kick the ball from time to time, in plays that last only seconds and are marginal in nature, but in truth the ball isn’t even specifically designed to be kicked. The idiot test is where they hand us these titles that clearly contradict themselves, and they prove their point when we gobble it up. And you thought TV (mass) society was amusing? On a lighter note, the “Idiot test” could be more as a form of conformity test, but even in that case it can again be argued as in Idiot Test.
This would all be example of propaganda, but I feel this sort of element is more specifically a measure of effectiveness of propaganda in general. This can be observed in other categories of media such as conditioning Christians into being foaming at the mouth rabid hawks who obsess over war even to degrees that parallel, or at least would lead to, the same mentality as people engaged in acts of genocide. Or for the “Liberals”, training them to support abortion while chastising capitol punishment or fur trade, and vice-versa.
Chomsky argues that the role of the mass media (who are controlled by only 5 mega-conglomerates) is to keep us diverted and focused on mindless issues. It’s interesting to take note of that idea, and then analyze the Superbowl phenomenon in that context. It turns out that usually the Superbowl annually draws more ratings than any other possible event. It’s almost safe to assume that nothing in recent years has gained exceptionally higher ratings than perhaps September 11th, which didn’t count in the ratings game.
Chomsky’s argument seems to hold ground considering the annual Superbowl event attracts more attention than any sort of political issue or event whether it be presidential elections, Constitutional Amendments, breaking news of severe violations of liberties and even wars. It seems that as long as we have our Superbowl then everything is alright. I could argue that that sort of fallacious logic is why our current ongoing and increasing national tragedy exists, but I won’t go there today.
“Within crowds, people think they are acting as individuals, but like the other forms of group behavior, they are being shaped by the collective action of others. People in crowds seem to take on a collective identity, and it may even be difficult to distinguish between individual and group behavior. Crowds seem to act as one even though there may be great diversity within them.” –[Andersen & Taylor] “Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society” [College Edition] [2006]
These arguments apply to all of sports (and ultimately all social group settings), though really, “Football” is the poster-child of this phenomenon. Especially in this society, which is dripping with the elements herein, and American “Football” just so happens to be the ultimate example of the imperial propaganda model compared to its opposition.
“But wait! Such subtleties aren’t propaganda”, you argue? That’s the whole idea really, in fact many of it’s most hardcore fans openly prefer the over-competitive nature that it is, or is at least over-dramatized as being. And now the nature of this form of propaganda comes into view.
These are age old crowd / social dynamics and leadership influence that go back at least as far as the Roman Empire. In those days they used to pack over 45,000 Romans in the Colosseum to watch people get brutally murdered. The hit movie The Gladiator depicted these scenes, and the ironic thing is that the scenes were probably accurate, if not watered down while at the same time they creators of the film might have even used the Superbowl annual “Group Think” event as the primary influence in their vision of the ancient crowds.
To add to the imperial nature of our American “Football”, it’s the most militaristic in nature in comparison to the other mainstream sports. Some might argue that the crowds over in Europe, a place where many still to this day rationalize colonialism (imperialism), get into riots over the “Football” games.
It’s true and quite fascinating, from a sociological perspective, the whole “hooligan” social phenomenon. For these arguments I suggest you consider what it’d be like if the 50 “States” were literally 50 different “countries” bound by no (pseudo) federal union. If they were pumping our total cognitive dominating mainstream propaganda model into such an environment there would possibly be some state to state wars by now, in part driven by the intense competitive us vs. them rivalry mentality combined with our militarized society.
In truth propaganda applies to virtually all media. More specifically, it applies to media or stimulus that appeals to irrational emotions, and in purest form it seeks o manipulate through social group related irrational emotions. From there you have 2 different eras worth of propaganda. The French propagandist, Jacques Ellul, in his 1965 manuscript titled “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” summarized the nature of both old and modern propaganda as this:
“We now come to an absolutely decisive fact. Propaganda is very frequently described as a manipulation for the purpose of changing ideas or opinions, of making individuals “believe” some idea or fact, and finally of making them adhere to some doctrineall matters of mind. Or, to put it differently, propaganda is described as dealing with beliefs or ideas. If the individual is a Marxist, it tries to destroy his conviction and turn him into an anti-Marxist, and so on. It calls on all the psychological mechanisms, but appeals to reason as well. It tries to convince, to bring about a decision, to create a firm adherence to some truth. Then, obviously, if the conviction is sufficiently strong, after some soul searching, the individual is ready for action.
This line of reasoning is completely wrong. To view propaganda as still being what it was in 1850 is to cling to an obsolete concept of man and of the means to influence him; it is to condemn oneself to understand nothing about modern propaganda. The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to lead to a choice, but to loosen the reflexes. It is no longer to transform an opinion, but to arouse an active and mythical belief.”
Ellul’s full manuscript later demonstrates that Modern Propaganda doesn’t actually dismiss the old uses, if anything it exploits them to even more disturbing levels by exploiting individuals psychological weaknesses in all new ways. His argument in that section was mainly emphasizing the significance of “modern” (1965) propaganda.
Edward Bernays, who was instrumental in crafting modern propaganda, stated in his book “Propaganda” [1928]:
“This general principle, that men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual psychology. It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do.”
Many of the “motives” Bernays spoke of were irrational social behaviors. Bernays spoke more in terms of the differing perspectives of politics and advertising, whereas the other propagandists in this article were more in tune with the political / control dimensions of propaganda. Ellul explains this irrational social context in much deeper dimensions:
“Actually, just because men are in a group, and therefore weakened, receptive, and in a state of psychological regression, they pretend all the more to be “strong individuals.” The mass man is clearly sub- human, and is more unstable, but thinks he is firm in his convictions. If one openly treats the mass as a mass, the individuals who form it will feel themselves belittled and will refuse to participate. If one treats these individuals as children (and they are children because they are in a group), they will not accept their leader’s projections or identify with him. They will withdraw and we will not be able to get anything out of them.”
Never-mind that we observe the players are treated to follow orders like children. (More on what happens when we observe people later)
The sports degree of propaganda actually fulfills Joseph Goebbels (Nazi Minister of Propaganda) 14th and 16-A Principles of Propaganda:
#14: Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses
b. They must be capable of being easily learned
c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations
d. They must be boomerang-proof
#16 Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
Chomsky points out that sports function as an indoctrination tool that is “a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority”. When viewing sports in this context it’s quite plain as day. I’d like to expand on this and point out that it also indoctrinates us with emotional (irrational) us vs. them mentality, which helps solidify the same behavior and thinking that you find with people who are heavily biased in politics or blind nationalism. In other words, it helps create and maintain the same type of irrational thinking that you also find in the mass delusional political and nationalism spectrums.
To deepen, or perhaps define the extreme degrees of irrational mentality you must look no further than the extreme-competitiveness projected by not only the direct content from the game but the media itself. I’m probably treading on dangerous water here, as many may view this as part of the nature of America itself. However, this is an important perspective considering the ways such a seemingly innocent form of media can affect a person who isn’t considerate of these potentialities.
“Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve. It must therefore utilize the most common feelings, the most widespread ideas, the crudest patterns, and in so doing place itself on a very low level with regard to what it wants man to do and to what end. Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.” - Ellul
Some quick examples would be the ways these can apply to everyday life such as the ‘compete with your neighbors’ mindset, and other related concepts lie selfishness that has society so divided in this country. Even if people can agree on issues that have significant importance, they still refuse to band together for other ideological reasons. A good example for this is how even the “Skeptics” will agree that the 9/11 Commission Report is seriously flawed and more or less discredited (despite sticking to the overall premise), needing a real independent investigation, however they generally refuse to try to work with the “conspiracy nutters” to get a real investigation.
It’s really just a good example of Sociology’s “Competition Theory“, which identifies that competition between different groups can erupt into conflicts such as wars or riots when groups must compete for limited resources. With something like football there isn’t much to ultimately compete for beyond power through the victory of ones self-identified group, however the repeated (and subjective for those who are unwitting) experience builds and maintains the irrational us vs. them framework that political biases and blind nationalism feed from.
These concepts are all virtually identical to the framework that rationalizes imperialism and fascism as somehow being normal and even natural. In a historical context, it can be argued that there have always been empires. In response, in the modern context, what’s fascinating is that the only existing empires are those of the U.S., with the U.K. being the still existing yet mostly marginalized empire. In any case, regardless of your view on sports in particular, what hyper-competitive sports teach us is this sort of mindset that then bleeds into our other thinking patterns.
Some may not see the significance of these arguments as being very legitimate, however, one needs to only look at basic neuro-physiology to see ‘conventional’ scientific proof. I state conventional because most of this article is social science (Sociology), which not many are used to seeing the Sociological Perspective, otherwise, the world would be a far different and near rational place. Anyways, the science that I speak of in this case comes in the form of “Mirror Neurons“, which are specialized brain cells that ‘record’ witnessed actions as if you yourself are doing it. (i.e. monkey see monkey do; you yawn I yawn)
The only possible way for you to not be in a subjective state while watching (anything really) is to be objected to it, or in the more rare case understand it completely in these contexts. This applies in varying degrees, but it can be more or less determined on your degree of cohesion to 1: the media, and 2: the content. The content (of anything) is expanded in this light by A: if you like it (it activates your brains rewards centers), and B: if it applies to you in a social group context. If it’s a social group “exciting” concept or issue or symbol then this is the dead ringer in developing irrational Bias complexes.
Expanding on raw neuroscience, we develop our thinking patterns in the same way that we develop our physical skills such as playing “football”. As Chomsky points out, “it’s striking to see the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in sports” (neurally possessing) “exotic information” “about arcane issues”. The people he was referring to (’commoner’ callers to sports radio talk shows) seemed to express a sort of genius in sports from his observations. This goes to show the intellectual potential in virtually every human being, and at the same time the general model for human learning and thinking pattern development.
The more you watch (insert media=propaganda here) the more it physically embeds into the physical structures in your brain, and thus influence your thinking. As a side note, the use of symbols and such throughout our environment acts to “excite” these physical structures throughout our day. Why do you think the Nazi’s had their symbol (this also applies to any flag) virtually everywhere? In fairness, if you oppose the content and/or medium of the media you stand to oppose it. Despite this optimism, too much exposure to any view can still succumb to even opposed ‘neural stimulus’ as shown by children of alcoholics or any other undesirable behavior that often tend to grow up openly denouncing such deviant behavior but later adopt it themselves.
Perhaps if said children somehow were trained in neuroscience, psychology and sociology they could perhaps have far superior resistance to these overt and covert psychological forces? In other words don’t be too paranoid about watching sports whatsoever. It actually adds a whole new dimension of observation understanding these rules while watching the crowds on the TV.
“Propaganda must not only attach itself to what already exists in the individual, but also express the fundamental currents of the society it seeks to influence. Propaganda must be familiar with collective sociological presuppositions, spontaneous myths, and broad ideologies. By this we do not mean political currents or temporary opinions that will change in a few months, but the fundamental psycho-sociological bases on which a whole society rests, the presuppositions and myths not just of individuals or of particular groups but those shared by all individuals in a society, including men of opposite political inclinations and class loyalties.” - Ellul
The fascinating thing with the Superbowl is it annually creates a Fad (the entire nation embraces these teams as their own hometown heros) that reaches Craze proportions. Focusing on the crowds and festivities (manifested projection of medium) related to the Superbowl, rather than the content itself, is the ultimate example of sociology (Collective Behavior) in action. This “Collective Preoccupation” completely follows the Fad phase model.
First, you have the Latent Period being the entire playoffs up to kickoff. Next comes the Breakout Period being kickoff. Finally, you have the Decline Period, which is often passing out drunk after many hour sof keg beer and liquor. If your team lost, or you lost that drunken round of wrestling (that you started) there’s a higher probability of fighting with your girlfriend on the way home from the party. In any case, you’re “Superbowl mindset’ will be constantly “excited” constantly during the latent period. If you happen to have a ’strong’ Superbowl Mindset, it scientifically neuters your ability to think for yourself during such periods of excitation, especially without this wisdom.
“To be effective, propaganda must constantly short- circuit all thought and decision. It must operate on the individual at the level of the unconscious. He must not know that he is being shaped by outside forces (this is one of the conditions for the success of propaganda), but some central core in him must be reached in order to release the mechanism in the unconscious which will provide the appropriate — and expected — action.” -Ellul
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As Andersen & Taylor point out: “People involved in crazes tend to be highly focused on the craze behavior. They may seem fanatical, devoted to the craze above all else.” You will see plenty of this today, perhaps in yourself.
Another key topic in the Collective Behavior scope of Sociology is “Scapegoating“, which Anderson and Taylor define as “when a group collectively identifies another group as a threat to the perceived social order and incorrectly blames the the other group for problems they may have caused.” You’ll probably witness this behavior when (crazed) fans of the team that loses nitpicks some discrepancy against the opposing team (after losing money).
Shall I go on?
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We Own You!
Bitch!
This seemed like a good followup to yesterdays sports / Superbowl – Propaganda expose. Property means ownership. Obey. I think the images speak for themselves:
Give us your mind!
Culture of surveillance may contribute to delusional condition
Source: IHT
Psychosis in the 21st century looks something like this: You think your every move is being filmed for a reality television show starring you, and that everyone in your life is an actor.
Or you think you are under intense surveillance by an army of spies, whom you refer to as the “www people,” as in the World Wide Web, and they wiretap your furniture and appliances.
Or else you refuse to drink water because you fear that another cup drawn from your faucet will, once and for all, deplete the world’s water supply.
Those thoughts are from three case studies of what psychiatrists interested in the intersection of mental illness, culture and society are calling, respectively, Truman Show delusion, Internet delusion and climate change delusion; all of them a window, through madness, into the modern world.
If you have delusions of grandeur in this century, you are probably not Napoleon, but you may be Bill Gates.
The Truman Show delusion, or Truman Syndrome, has drawn attention in recent months, in the United States and Britain, as psychiatrists in both countries describe a small but growing number of psychotic patients who describe their lives as mirroring that of the main character in the 1998 film “The Truman Show.”
Played by Jim Carrey, Truman Burbank leads a mundane existence in the suburbs, starting from the time he was in the womb, while being filmed for a documentary television show that he cannot escape.
Everyone is in on it, including his wife, and no one will believe Truman when he discovers clues that his life is being chronicled all the time by cameras.
With Internet delusion, patients typically incorporate the Internet into paranoid thoughts, including a fear that the Web is somehow monitoring or controlling their lives, or being used to transmit photographs or other personal information.
The delusions are fueling a chicken-and-egg debate in psychiatry: Are these merely modern examples of classic paranoia fed by the cultural landscape, or is there something about media like reality television and the Internet that can push people over the sanity line?
“Most likely these people would be delusional anyway,” said Dr. Joel Gold, a psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, who said he saw five patients at the hospital from 2002 to 2004 with Truman Show delusion. Gold and his brother, Dr. Ian Gold, the Canada research chair in philosophy and psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, came up with the term “Truman Show delusion.”
“But the more radical view is that this pushes some people over the threshold; the environment tips them over the edge,” said Joel Gold, who is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University. “And if culture can make people crazy, then we need to look at it.”
One way of looking at the delusions and hallucinations of the mentally ill is that they represent extreme cases of what the general population, or the merely neurotic, are worried about. Schizophrenics and other paranoid patients can take common fears – like identity theft because of information transmitted on the Internet, or the loss of privacy because of the prevalence of security cameras to fight crime – and magnify them, psychiatrists say.
“There is the old saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there’s not somebody after you,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University.
The prevailing view in psychiatry is that a delusion is just a delusion, psychosis is psychosis, and the scenery is incidental. Fear, a sense of persecution and grandiosity are static features of delusional thinking, many psychiatrists say.
During World War II, for example, psychotics might have believed a neighbor was a Nazi. During the Cold War, they might have thought the KGB or CIA was following them. In a post-Sept. 11 world, the persecutor might be Al Qaeda or the Department of Homeland Security.
“Cultural influences don’t tell us anything fundamental about delusion,” said Vaughan Bell, a psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College in London, who has studied Internet delusion.
“We can look at the influence of television, computer games, rock ‘n’ roll, but these things don’t tell us about new forms of being mentally ill,” said Bell, who said he had also treated patients who believed they were part of a reality television show.
British psychiatrists, writing in this month’s edition of the British Journal of Psychiatry about the phenomenon, called it the Truman syndrome and said they had seen a growing number of patients claiming to be the stars of a filmed reality show.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines a delusion, considered still to be little understood in psychiatry, as, essentially, a false belief that is not grounded in reality and that is held with absolute conviction despite proof to the contrary. The manual lists a caveat that a belief is not delusional if it is something widely accepted by other members of a person’s culture or subculture – for example, religious faith. But some psychiatrists say the exception is too vague.
Some experts studying conditions like Truman Show delusion and other culture-bound delusions, which are specific to a time or place, are questioning the premise that culture is only incidental to psychosis, even as a growing body of evidence has pointed to brain abnormalities and other biological causes for illnesses like schizophrenia.
Psychiatrists have studied delusions like turabosis, which is the belief that one is covered in sand, and which has been documented in Saudi Arabia but would be unlikely to occur in, say, North Dakota. Another study found a delusion occurring only in rural West Bengal, India, in which women and men bitten by dogs believe they have become pregnant with puppies.
Joel Gold, who is writing a book about Truman Show delusion with his brother, said that three of the five patients he saw with the condition specifically mentioned the film. He said what distinguishes this delusion from most others is that it involves the patient’s entire world, and everything real is unreal.
Psychiatrists say that other movies whose characters are living in an unreal world or being watched by malevolent forces, including “The Matrix,” “Edtv” and even the film based on George Orwell’s “1984,” have come up in conversations with psychotic patients. But the premise of “The Truman Show” (”What if you were watched every moment of your life?” according to a promotional blurb) is strikingly similar to what patients describe as their own experiences.
Reinforcing their beliefs is the fact that in the movie, Truman is right about being watched and recorded at all times. Every other character is part of the conspiracy.
Since the Golds first presented their findings in 2006, they have learned of about 40 cases of people who say they are experiencing the delusion or have in the past. Sometimes patients contact them directly.
Recently, Joel Gold received an e-mail message from a woman who told him, “It’s my show.”
Ad Lab: Stage Design Magic as Propaganda Tool
One of the most interesting (for this blog) stories from the Iraq war was about the design of the U.S. military’s press room in Qatar:
“A scene in which the US army spokesman, General Tommy Franks, addressed journalists cost $200,000 and was produced by a designer who had worked for Disney, Metro Goldwyn Mayer and the television programme Good Morning America. In 2001 the White House had put him in charge of creating background designs for presidential speeches – unsurprising to those aware of the ties between the Pentagon and Hollywood.
More surprising was the Pentagon decision to recruit David Blaine for interior design; he is a magician famous in the US for his TV show and for conjuring tricks such as levitating or being shut in a cage without food.” (Le Monde Diplomatique, Jan 2008, but the details have been widely circulated since the war’s start).
Today, pictures of the two stages for the upcoming democratic extravaganza are making rounds on the net. Take a look at the designs: Republican (still a computer rendering; here’s another angle) and Democratic. From GOPConvention2008.com: “The stage was designed to facilitate the candid and personal tone that Americans have come to expect from Senator McCain. The intimate setting will be a fitting backdrop for Senator McCain’s acceptance speech.”
And some behind-the-scenes details from Denver Post: “They [DNC] will bring so many lights and speakers — as many as 300,000 pounds’ worth — the ceiling will have to be reinforced to hold them.”
Would love to know who’s behind the designs.
Update: thanks to AdLab’s readers (Nishad and Bonniel; see comments), we now know: for DNC, it’s Tribe Design and it’s David Nash (exec. producer, it’s his fifth straight convention; press release) for RNC.
Let me see if I can pull some pictures of other similar gatherings elsewhere. Should be a fun study. Stay tuned.
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Scheherazade in the White House
By Christian Salmon
A few days before the 2004 presidential election, Ron Suskind, a columnist who had been investigating the White House and its communications for years, wrote in The New York Times about a conversation he had with a presidential adviser in 2002. “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community’, which he defined as people ‘who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’ ” (1).
Suskind’s article was a sensation, which the paper called an intellectual scoop. Columnists and bloggers seized on the phrase “reality-based community” which spread across the internet. Google had nearly a million hits for it in July 2007. Wikipedia created a page dedicated to it. According to Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University: “Many on the left adopted the term. ‘Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community’, their blogs said. The right then jeered at the left’s self-description. (‘They’re reality-based? Yeah, right…’)” (2).
The remarks, which were probably made by Karl Rove a few months before the Iraq war, are not just cynical and Machiavellian. They sound like they come from the theatre rather than from an office in the White House. Not content with renewing the ancient problems discussed in cabinet offices, pitting idealists against pragmatists, moralists against realists, pacifists against warmongers or, in 2002, defenders of international law against supporters of the use of force, they display a new concept of the relationship between politics and reality. The leaders of the world’s superpower were not just moving away from realpolitik but also from realism to become creators of their own reality, the masters of appearance, demanding a realpolitik of fiction.
Disney to the rescue
The US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 provided a spectacular illustration of the White House’s desire to create its own reality. Pentagon departments, keen not to repeat the mistakes of the first Gulf war in 1991, paid particular attention to their communications strategy. As well as 500 embedded journalists integrated into sections of the armed services, great attention was paid to the design of the press room at US forces headquarters in Qatar: for a million dollars, a storage hangar was transformed into an ultramodern television studio with stage, plasma screens and all the electronic equipment needed to produce videos, geographic maps and diagrams for real time combat.
A scene in which the US army spokesman, General Tommy Franks, addressed journalists cost $200,000 and was produced by a designer who had worked for Disney, Metro Goldwyn Mayer and the television programme Good Morning America. In 2001 the White House had put him in charge of creating background designs for presidential speeches – unsurprising to those aware of the ties between the Pentagon and Hollywood.
More surprising was the Pentagon decision to recruit David Blaine for interior design; he is a magician famous in the US for his TV show and for conjuring tricks such as levitating or being shut in a cage without food. Blaine claimed in a book in 2002 that he was the successor to Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, a 19th century magician who agreed to go to Algeria at the French government’s request to help it quell an uprising by showing that his magic was better than that of the rebels (3). It is not known whether that is what the Pentagon expected from Blaine but it seems that use was made of his illusionist talents for special effects.
Scott Sforza, a former ABC TV producer who worked within the Republican propaganda machine, created many backgrounds against which Bush made important statements during his terms of office. On 1 May 2003 he stage-managed the presidential speech on the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier before a sign reading “Mission accomplished: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
The show didn’t end there. Bush landed aboard the carrier in a fighter plane renamed Navy One; on it was written “George Bush, Commander-in-Chief”. He was seen leaving the cockpit dressed in a flight suit, his helmet under his arm as if he were returning from war in a remake of Top Gun (the film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who is a familiar face in Hollywood-Pentagon operations; he made a reality TV show, Profiles from the Front Line, on the war in Afghanistan).
The former New York Times theatre critic, Frank Rich, described the television coverage of this event and said it was fantastic – like theatre. David Broder of The Washington Post was captivated by what he called Bush’s physical posture (4). Sforza had to stage the scene carefully so that the city of San Diego, about 60km away, was not seen on the horizon when the carrier was supposed to be out in open sea in the combat zone.
But the staging was never as explicit as on 15 August 2002 when Bush solemnly spoke of national security in front of Mount Rushmore with its sculptures of the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. During his speech the cameras were placed at an angle that allowed Bush to be filmed in profile, his face superimposed on to those of his predecessors.
The image becomes the story
For Bush’s speech on the first anniversary of 9/11, in which he prepared US public opinion for the Iraq invasion by glorifying the “great struggle that tests our strength and even more our resolve”, Sforza rented three barges to take the team to the foot of the Statue of Liberty, which he had lit from below. He chose the camera angles so that the statue appeared in the background during the speech. Frank Rich, commenting on this, quoted Michael Deaver, who stage-managed Ronald Reagan’s declaration of candidacy speech in 1980 with the Statue of Liberty in the background. According to Deaver, people understood that what was around the speaker’s head was as important as the head itself (5).
What is around the head turns an image into a legend: “Mission accomplished”, the Founding Fathers, the Statue of Liberty – over time the image becomes the story. But the event must resonate with the viewer, must make two moments interact: what is represented in the image and the actual moment it is seen. This resonance produces the desired emotion. For Americans in 2002 nothing could have had a greater emotional impact than a speech on war on the first anniversary of 9/11. The country had just come back from summer holidays and was ready to concentrate on important matters.
According to Ira Chernus, professor at the University of Colorado, Karl Rove applied the “Scheherazade strategy”: “When policy dooms you, start telling stories – stories so fabulous, so gripping, so spellbinding that the king (or, in this case, the American citizen who theoretically rules our country) forgets all about a lethal policy. It plays on the insecurity of Americans who feel that their lives are out of control” (6). Rove did this with much success in 2004 when Bush was re-elected, diverting voters’ attention away from the state of the war by evoking the great collective myths of the US imagination.
As Chernus explains, Rove was “betting that the voters will be mesmerised by John Wayne-style tales of real men fighting evil on the frontier – at least enough Americans to avoid the death sentence that the voters might otherwise pronounce on the party that brought us the disaster in Iraq.” Chernus believed that Rove invented simplistic good-against-evil stories for his candidates to tell and tried to turn every election into a moral drama, a contest of Republican moral clarity versus Democratic moral confusion. “The Scheherazade strategy is a great scam, built on the illusion that moralistic tales can make us feel secure, no matter what’s actually going on out there in the world. Rove wants every vote for a Republican to be a symbolic statement” (7). This August Rove was forced to resign by Democrat members of Congress. He announced his decision with an admission which could have applied to all his work: “I feel like I’m Moby Dick… they’re after me.”
Undecided Voters Not So Undecided
These days, you can’t even trust undecided people. Individuals who honestly believe that they can’t choose between two available options may in fact already know what to do, thanks to attitudes that lurk outside their awareness, a new study indicates.
Rapid mental associations made by individuals who were undecided on a controversial political issue frequently predicted opinions these people later formed on that issue, psychologist Bertram Gawronski of Canada’s University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, and his colleagues report in the Aug. 22 Science.
“One could say that people sometimes have already made up their minds, even though they do not know it yet,” Gawronski says.
“Political pollsters might learn that there are some questions better left unasked,” remarks psychologist Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The new findings suggest that pollsters should be skeptical of voters who label themselves as undecided because those voters’ unconscious minds may have other ideas. The conscious answers these people give could be misleading.
Gawronski recommends that pollsters consider adding measures of automatic associations to their survey repertoires.
His team interviewed 129 residents of Vicenza, Italy, during the last two months of 2007 about the impending enlargement of a U.S. military base in their community, a polarizing issue at the time. Earlier this year, the Italian government approved the base expansion without holding a public vote.
In initial interviews, 32 residents favored the expansion and 64 opposed it. Another 33 participants said they were undecided. Everyone completed a 10-item questionnaire assessing their views on probable consequences of the proposed expansion.
Participants also took a computer-based test measuring automatic mental associations. First, they practiced pressing a left-hand key as quickly as possible when positive words, such as joy and lucky, appeared on the screen and a right-hand key as quickly as possible when negative words, such as awful and pain, appeared on the screen. Then they were instructed to press a left-hand key when they saw either images of the U.S. military base or positive words and to press a right-hand key only when they saw negative words.
In a third trial, participants pressed a left-hand key only for positive words and pressed a right-hand key for either images of the U.S. military base or negative words.
One week later, none of the decided citizens had changed their minds. Among the others, 14 were still undecided while 19 had switched to a pro or con position. Everyone repeated the automatic mental associations test.
The undecided people who later made up their minds showed distinct responses<!–[if !supportAnnotations]–> on the first association test. Those who ended up endorsing the expansion were faster and more accurate at pressing the key for both positive words and military base images. Those who eventually opposed the expansion were faster and more accurate at pressing the key for both negative words and military base images. The same pattern held on the second association test.
Participants who stayed undecided showed no strong positive or negative associations to the military base images at any time.
Participants who began with strong pro or con opinions showed strong positive or negative associations to military base images when first tested, and even stronger associations one week later. Their automatic associations consistently coincided with their conscious views.
The Individual and the Masses
Any modern propaganda will, first of all, address itself at one and the same time to the individual and to the masses. It cannot separate the two elements. For propaganda to address itself to the individual, in his isolation, apart from the crowd, is impossible. The individual is of no interest to the propagandist; as an isolated unit he presents much too much resistance to external action. To be effective, propaganda cannot be concerned with detail, not only because to win men over one by one takes much too long, but also because to create certain convictions in an isolated individual is much too difficult.
Propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins. And that is why, in particular, experiments undertaken in the United States to gauge the effectiveness of certain propaganda methods or arguments on isolated individuals are not conclusive they do not reproduce the real propaganda situation. Conversely, propaganda does not aim simply at the mass, the crowd. A propaganda that functioned only where individuals are gathered together would be incomplete and insufficient.
Also, any propaganda aimed only at groups as such — as if a mass were a specific body having a soul and reactions and feelings entirely different from individuals’ souls, reactions, and feelings — would be an abstract propaganda that likewise would have no effectiveness. Modern propaganda reaches individuals enclosed in the mass and as participants in that mass, yet it also aims at a crowd, but only as a body composed of individuals.
What does this mean? First of all, that the individual never is considered as an individual, but always in terms of what he has in common with others, such as his motivations, his feelings, or his myths. He is reduced to an average; and, except for a small percentage, action based on averages will be effectual. Moreover, the individual is considered part of the mass and included in it (and so far as possible systematically integrated into it), because in that way his psychic defenses are weakened, his reactions are easier to provoke, and the propagandist profits from the process of diffusion of emotions through the mass, and, at the same time, from the pressures felt by an individual when in a group.
Emotionalism, impulsiveness, excess, etc. — all these characteristics of the individual caught up in a mass are well known and very helpful to propaganda. Therefore, the individual must never be considered as being alone; the listener to a radio broadcast, though actually alone, is nevertheless put of a large group, and he is aware of it. Radio listeners have been found to exhibit a mass mentality. All are tied together and constitute a sort of society in which all individuals are accomplices and influence each other without knowing it.
The same holds true for propaganda that is carried on by door-to-door visits (direct contacts, petitions for signatures); although apparently one deals here with a single individual, one deals in reality with a unit submerged into an invisible crowd composed of all those who have been interviewed, who are being interviewed, and who will be interviewed, because they hold similar ideas and live by the same myths, and especially because they are targets of the same organism. Being the target of a party or an administration is enough to immerse the individual in that sector of the population which the propagandist has in his sights; this simple fact makes the individual part of the mass. He is no longer Mr. X, but part of a current flowing in a particular direction. The current flows through the canvasser (who is not a person speaking in his own name with his own arguments, but one segment of an administration, an organization, a collective movement); when he enters a room to canvass a person, the mass, and moreover the organized, leveled mass, enters with him. No relationship exists here between man and man; the organization is what exerts its attraction on an individual already part of a mass because he is in the same sights as all the others being canvassed.
Conversely, when propaganda is addressed to a crowd, it must touch each individual in that crowd, in that whole group. To be effective, it must give the impression of being personal, for we must never forget that the mass is composed of individuals, and is in fact nothing but assembled individuals. Actually, just because men are in a group, and therefore weakened, receptive, and in a state of psychological regression, they pretend all the more to be “strong individuals.”
The mass man is clearly sub- human, but pretends to be superman. He is more suggestible, but insists he is more forceful; he is more unstable, but thinks he is firm in his convictions. If one openly treats the mass as a mass, the individuals who form it will feel themselves belittled and will refuse to participate. If one treats these individuals as children (and they are children because they are in a group), they will not accept their leader’s projections or identify with him. They will withdraw and we will not be qble to get anything out of them. On the contrary, each one must feel individualized, each must have the impression that he is being looked at, that he is being addressed personally. Only then will he respond and cease to be anonymous (although in reality remaining anonymous).
Thus all modern propaganda profits from the structure of the mass, but exploits the individual’s need for self-affirmation; and the two actions must be conducted jointly, simultaneously. Of course this operation is greatly facilitated by the existence of the modern mass media of communication, which have precisely this remarkable effect of reaching the whole crowd all at once, and yet reaching each one in that crowd. Readers of the evening paper, radio listeners, movie or TV viewers certainly constitute a mass that has an organic existence, although it is diffused and not assembled at one point. These individuals are moved by the same motives, receive the same impulses and impressions, find themselves focused on the same centers of interest, experience the same feelings, have generally the same order of reactions and ideas, participate in the same myths — and all this at the same time what we have here is really a psychological, if not a biological mass. And the individuals in it are modified by this existence, even if they do not know it.
Yet each one is alone — the newspaper reader, the radio listener. He therefore feels himself individually concerned as a person, as a participant. The movie spectator also is alone; though elbow to elbow with his neighbors, he still is, because of the darkness and the hypnotic attraction of the screen, perfectly alone. This is the situation of the “lonely crowd,” or of isolation in the mass, which is a natural product of present- day society and which is both used and deepened by the mass media. The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass it is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.
We must emphasize this circle which we shall meet again and again the structure of present-day society places the individual where he is most easily reached by propaganda. The media of mass communication, which are part of the technical evolution of this society, deepen this situation while making it possible to reach the individual man, integrated in the mass; and what these media do is exactly what propaganda must do in order to attain its objectives.
In reality propaganda cannot exist without using these mass media. If, by chance, propaganda is addressed to an organized group, it can have practically no effect on individuals before that group has been fragmented. Such fragmentation can be achieved through action, but it is equally possible to fragment a group by psychological means. The transformation of very small groups by purely psychological means is one of the most important techniques of propaganda. Only when very small groups are thus annihilated, when the individual finds no more defenses, no equilibrium, no resistance exercised by the group to which he belongs, does total action by propaganda become possible.
-Excerpt from “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” By Jacques Ellul (1965)
‘Divided They Blog’ – Political Bias Ideological Amplification on the Blogosphere
A blog study made during the 2004 ‘election’ worth noting.
ABSTRACT:
In this paper, we study the linking patterns and discussion topics of political bloggers. Our aim is to measure the degree of interaction between liberal and conservative blogs, and to uncover any differences in the structure of the two communities. Specifically, we analyze the posts of 40 “A-list” blogs over the period of two months preceding the U.S. Presidential Election of 2004, to study how often they referred to one another and to quantify the overlap in the topics they discussed, both within the liberal and conservative communities, and also across communities. We also study a single day snapshot of over 1,000 political blogs. This snapshot captures blogrolls (the list of links to other blogs frequently found in sidebars), and presents a more static picture of a broader blogosphere. Most significantly, we find differences in the behavior of liberal and conservative blogs, with conservative blogs linking to each other more frequently and in a denser pattern.
SNIPPET:
Recently, Welsch [17] studied a single-day snapshot of the network neighborhoods of Atrios, a popular liberal blog, and Instapundit, a popular conservative blog. He found the Instapundit neighborhood to include many more blogs than the Atrios one, and observed no overlap in the URLs cited between the two neighborhoods. The lack of overlap in liberal and conservative interests has previously been observed in purchases of political books on Amazon.com [9]. This brings about the question of whether we are witnessing a cyberbalkanization [13, 15] of the Internet, where the prolif-
eration of specialized online news sources allows people with different political leanings to be exposed only to information in agreement with their previously held views. Yale law professor Jack Balkin provides a counter-argument11 by pointing out that such segregation is unlikely in the blogosphere because bloggers systematically comment on each other, even if only to voice disagreement.
In this paper we address both hypotheses by examining in a systematic way the linking patterns and discussion topics of political bloggers. In doing so, we not only measure the degree of interaction between liberal and conservative blogs, but also uncover differences in the structure of the two communities. Specifically, we analyze the posts of 40 A-list blogs over the period of two months preceding the U.S. Presidential Election of 2004, to study how often they referred to one another and what the overlap was in the things they discussed, both within the liberal and conservative communities, and also across communities. We also study a single day snapshot of over 1,000 political blogs. This snapshot captures blogrolls (the list of links to other blogs frequently found in sidebars), and presents a more static picture of a broader blogosphere.
From both samples we found that liberal and conservative blogs did indeed have different lists of favorite news sources, people, and topics to discuss, although they occasionally overlapped in their discussion of news articles and events. The division between liberals and conservatives was further reflected in the linking pattern between the blogs, with a great majority of the links remaining internal to either liberal or conservative communities. Even more interestingly, we found differences in the behavior of the two communities, with conservative blogs linking to a greater number of blogs and with greater frequency. These differences in linking behavior were not drastic, and we can not speculate how much they correlated, if at all, with the eventual outcome of the election. They were nonetheless interesting, and we believe they show an insightful glimpse into the online political discourse leading up to the election.
SEE ALSO:
*Neuroscience proves that the politically biased are legally insane and medically addicted/diseased!
The Neuropsychology of Pseudo-Skepticism
*Political Delusions
Global Village or Cyber-Balkans? Modeling and Measuring the Integration of Electronic Communities
Marshall W. Van Alstyne
Boston University – Department of Management Information Systems; MIT – Center for E-Business
Erik Brynjolfsson
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Sloan School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
ABSTRACT:
Information technology can link geographically separated people and help them locate interesting or useful resources. These attributes have the potential to bridge gaps and unite communities. Paradoxically, they also have the potential to fragment interaction and divide groups. Advances in technology can make it easier for people to spend more time on special interests and to screen out unwanted contact. Geographic boundaries can thus be supplanted by boundaries on other dimensions. This paper formally defines a precise set of measures of information integration and develops a model of individual knowledge profiles and community affiliation. These factors suggest specific conditions under which improved access, search, and screening can either integrate or fragment interaction on various dimensions. As IT capabilities continue to improve, preferences—not geography or technology—become the key determinants of community boundaries.
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SNIPPET:
Empowered by search engines, recommender systems, search agents, and automatic filters, information technology (IT) users are spending more of their waking hours on the Internet, choosing to interact with information sources customized to their individual interests. But, does the emergence of global information infrastructure necessarily imply the emergence of the global village–a virtual community of neighbors freed of geographic constraints? Or, will the borders merely shift from those based on geography to those based on interest?
In this paper, we show that an emerging global village represents only one of a range of possible outcomes. Improved communications access and filtering technologies can, in some circumstances, lead to more fragmented intellectual and social interaction. In particular, we show that preferences can reshape social, intellectual, and economic neighborhoods as distinct from those based on geography. Just as separation in physical space can divide geographic groups, we find that separation in virtual knowledge space can divide special interest groups. In certain cases, the latter can be more insular. We introduce several formal indices of integration and then show both algebraically and graphically the conditions under which these indices rise or fall with different preferences and levels of access.
The conclusion that increased connectivity and improved filtering can actually lead to less integration is based on two observations. First, bounded rationality–a limit on the human capacity for information processing (Simon 1957)–can lead to specialization, which decreases the range of overlapping activities. As IT eliminates geographical constraints on interaction, the constraints of bounded rationality become increasingly important. Information transmission and bandwidth have increased across all distances except the last 12 inches–between people and machines. Regardless of how fast data scrolls across the screen, absorption is bounded. In the limit, people must choose some information contacts over others. Filters, even sophisticated electronic filters, must be selective in order to provide value. Thus, certain contacts, ideas, or both, will be screened out.
The second observation is that IT can provide a lubricant that enables the satisfaction of preferences against the friction of geography. On the one hand, those with a preference for specialization, whether intrinsic or driven by external rewards, may seek more focused contact than available locally. Thus, local heterogeneity can give way to virtual homogeneity as specialized communities coalesce across geographic boundaries. On the other hand, preferences for broader knowledge, or even randomized information, can also be indulged. In the presence of IT, a taste for diverse interaction leads to greater integration–underscoring how the technology serves mainly to amplify individual preferences. IT does not predetermine one outcome.
The same mechanisms that affect the specialization of knowledge also affect the degree to which interactions among people and communities become more or less integrated. The Internet can provide access to millions of other users and a wide range of knowledge sources, but no one can interact with all of them. Bounded rationality implies that a citizen of cyberspace still has a finite set of “neighbors” with whom he or she can meaningfully interact, but that nongeographic criteria increasingly influence the selection of these neighbors. Nongeographic criteria for selecting acquaintances can include common interests, status, economic class, academic discipline, religion, politics, or ethnic group. In some cases, the result can be a greater balkanization along dimensions that matter far more than geography, while in other cases more diverse communities can emerge. Our analysis suggests that automatic search tools and filters that route communications among people based on their views, reputations, past statements, or personal characteristics are not necessarily benign in their effects.
Preferences themselves need not remain unaffected by such tools. Because the Internet makes it easier to find like-minded individuals, it can facilitate the creation and strength of fringe communities that have a common ideology but are dispersed geographically. Thus, particle physicists, oenophiles, Star Trek fans, and members of militia groups have used the Internet to find each other, swap information, and stoke each others’ passions. In many cases, their heated dialogues might never have reached critical mass as long as geographic separation diluted them to a few participants per million. Once connected, their subsequent interactions can further polarize their views or even ignite calls-to-action (Sunstein 2002). The Internet can also facilitate the de facto secession of individuals or groups from their geographic neighborhoods. One study found that increased hours spent using the Internet can be strongly associated with a loss of contact with one’s social environment and spending less time with human beings (Nie and Erbring 2000). Another study found that users decreased their local knowledge while their knowledge of national events remained about the same (Kraut et al. 2002). Consistent with the predisposition arguments presented below, the latter study also found that introverts decreased on measures of community involvement and increased in loneliness, while extroverts increased their involvement and decreased in loneliness. The Internet can apparently lead to spending less time interacting with geographic neighbors, isolating individuals on some dimensions even as it integrates them on others.
We do not argue that increased specialization or balkanization must always result from increased connectivity. On the contrary, we believe that the Internet has enormous potential to elevate the nature of human interaction. Indeed, we find that if preferences favor diversity, increased connectivity reduces specialization and increases integration. Strong ties and social bonding provide important social benefits (Wellman and Wortley 1990, Putnam 2000). However, our analysis also indicates, other factors being equal, all that is required to reduce integration in most cases is that preferred interactions are more focused than existing interactions. A desire for increased focus and improved filtering of noisy communications is a natural response to data and computational overload. Although the conventional wisdom has stressed the integrating effects of the technology, we examine critically the claim that a global village is the inexorable result of increased connectivity and develop a suite of formal measures to address this question.
2. Related Literature
To characterize group information sharing, we draw on related literature from a variety of perspectives, including theories of attraction (Blau 1977), dynamic social interaction (Latane 1996), group stability (Carley 1990), group diversity (Ancona and Caldwell 1992), social networks (White et al. 1976, Wellman and Wortley 1990, Wellman and Gulia 1997), network measures (Banks and Carley 1996, Sunil et al. 1995, Teachman 1980, Wasserman and Faust 1994, Watts and Strogatz 1998), and diffusion models (Valente 1995).
Like Blau (1977), we use an attribute vector, such as age, sex, race, religion, and employment, to predict social differentiation, group formation, and individual tendencies toward social interaction, but we focus on information access. Blau’s homophily model of attributes, for example, predicts that two white male postal workers share more in common than either might share with a black female executive. Based on differences among individuals and the assumption that influence declines with distance, Latane (1996) argues that group patterns emerge as a function of the strength, immediacy, and number of social factors acting on individuals. Latane’s Dynamic Social Impact Theory holds that people become more similar to their neighbors, leading to spatial clustering, and that changing patterns may exhibit nonlinearity as opinions resist outside pressure up to a threshold, which we model explicitly in Corollary 1. An empirical study in support of this theory found that group members came to resemble their neighbors in electronic space, opinions on unrelated topics became correlated, and majority factions increased in size, but minority factions became more coherent (Latane and Bourgeois 1996).
Group stability is also considered in Carley’s (1990, p. 332) “constructural” model, where groups “form and endure because of discrepancies in who knows what.” Shared knowledge leads to interaction and, in turn, interaction leads to shared knowledge. The modeling parameters and analysis resemble those introduced here, with a few exceptions. First, Carley’s simulation analysis tracks the complex dynamic character of group boundaries over time. In contrast, our derivations are analytical and focus on comparative static results and equilibrium conditions. Second, most models of this type (e.g., triad completion, constructural, degree variance) eventually homogenize in the sense that interaction probabilities between all pairs of agents become equal (Banks and Carley 1996). In our model, homogenization and balkanization can both result. The key difference is the interaction of preferences with bounded capacity; for if agents in our model had unbounded capacity, integration would always result. Indeed, even with bounded capacity and a preference for diversity, integration still results. In this sense, the models are consistent and complementary.
Unlike “learning” models in the literature, our model does not explicitly treat information spreading perfectly from person to person. Simulations have shown that results presented here are qualitatively similar if either information decays with time or attenuates with distance (as in Zipf 1946) or is “sticky” (as in von Hippel 1998) in terms of the expertise required to process it. Either factor can move equilibrium knowledge profiles from homogeneity toward clustering, contingent on preferences. If perfect knowledge transfers are allowed, but extreme preferences prevent intergroup interaction, then subsequent results are unchanged. If learning is allowed, but balkanization refers to group formation apart from what members know, then results are also unchanged.
A contrasting perspective appears in Watts and Strogatz (1998), which models small-world phenomena. Their model considers paths between agents in which groups exhibit a high degree of local clustering but also a fairly short average path length between individuals. Through simulation and analysis, they show that adding random links to a structured network, which has high local clustering and long average path lengths, can reduce average path length much more rapidly than it reduces clustering. Thus, local communities could appear to have numerous in-group ties, while the distance to members of out-groups appears fairly short–an idea first captured in Milgram’s phrase “six degrees of separation,” implying that any two people across the globe could be linked by a chain of only six people. (1)
To the extent that data diffuses more rapidly, shorter paths between distant people will promote more integrated information. Transfer also depends, however, on preferences. Intermediate people in a chain must be willing to serve as conduits for data that need not necessarily pertain to them. In a dramatic demonstration of this, Dodds et al. (2003) tried to recreate the Milgram letter-passing experiment. Despite the ease of using e-mail over standard mail, fully 98% of chains failed to complete (Dodds et al. 2003). (2) Thus, news of popular interest, terrorist attacks, and jokes-of-the-day diffuse rapidly, while subtle ideas or those of parochial interest, like new mathematical theorems, diffuse slowly. Subtle ideas may also require sophisticated knowledge to convey. Subtle information is less likely to diffuse rapidly without loss from node to node, as the child’s game of “telephone” illustrates even for simple rumors. Related critical mass and threshold models of diffusion also appear in Valente (1995). One difference is that Valente allows for “opinion leaders,” whereas the present research treats the agents equally in the analysis.
Information integration also differs from group integration. Although the former measures the knowledge individuals have in common, the latter measures the communities they commonly form. The first considers the overlap in what people know, while the second considers the overlap in how they spend their time. As IT can affect both, we introduce measures of knowledge profiles and community membership that…
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
The Neuropsychology of Pseudo-Skepticism
CLICK IMAGE:
NOTE: Long ago, before I came across the term ‘pseudo-skeptic’, I decided to call them “skeptinazi’s” or “skeptifascists” for lack of a better term. I probably should have thought of the pseudo version early on, but I was compelled to the more derogatory forms after constantly dealing with these types who are all too often rash and nasty types during online debates. I later learned that the concept had been discussed since around 1987, by a man named Marcello Truzzi, and there’s even a good Wikipedia entry on it.
Skeptic: one who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions.
By definition, a skeptic doubts even the norm, to get to the truth. This is how I got where I am, right now. In the case of the Skeptinazi, they seem to latch onto the norm, and doubt anything that goes against it. If they do view something they can’t argue, they seem to brush it off as if it never happened, and don’t appear to take that into consideration when analyzing other related topics. Its really case sensitive if this is specifically related to wishful thinking, or just lack of ability to really see the big picture.
This post is actually a rushed mashup and expansion of 2 older posts, so please excuse the format. Below I’ll list many other of these ‘psuedo-skeptic fallacies, but first I’ll primarily focus on the most prevalent fallacy that befools them: “Conspiracies Don’t Exist”.
Pseudo-skeptic fallacies are sort of get out of jail free cards that the typically fascist demeanored self-described “Skeptics” (note the capitol S) typically pull out when it’s time to actually think (about the unthinkable). Usually they’ll resort to pulling this card out after all else fails, but sometimes they even go the extra mile to actually pull this out from the onset of the debate or discussion to frame you as being a ‘nutjob’ pick-your-word to go for total victory by destroying you.
Fallacy : a misconception resulting from incorrect reasoning
This article destroys that claim / mindset, and can effectively make them wish they never tried framing dissenters as being the “fantasy world” (this is Popular Mechanics terminology for anyone who doubts the official 9/11 narrative) tinfoil hat wearing nut-bag etc.
The “Conspiracies Don’t Exist” ‘fallacy’ is a particular favorite of those who actually want to debate things of this nature yet surely go for the ‘accepted’ belief of the case, and in the context of (them not) doubting the 9/11 event narrative [in particular] (despite vast flaws and contradictory evidence) violates the definition of skepticism. To ‘weigh’ evidence in the goal of making it suit preconceptions and ideal realities isn’t skepticism. 9/11 isn’t the only example, but it’s surely the choicest besides irrational binary political bias mud-flinging.
Skeptic: someone who habitually doubts accepted beliefs.
For those who actually try to talk to people about an issue like 911 you’ll surely deal with the wishfully ignoramus mindset that avoids the discussion at all costs. In most cases, it seems that those who are new to the concepts in general won’t always go for this approach either. Now when you get to those who are already experienced with the prospect that “the government” could have “done it” the odds of encountering the “conspiracies don’t (or CANT) exist” arguments multiply. When you get to the Skeptinazi you’re almost certain to encounter this, in fact, if you don’t it may be safe to assume that the potential Skeptinazi isn’t actually “sophisticated” enough to qualify as a ‘member’ of the ’sophisticated’ Skeptinazi social group.
Skeptic: one who is yet undecided as to what is true; one who is looking or inquiring for what is true; an inquirer after facts or reasons.
“Sophistication” in this regard actually means the scale of bias that affects the person. In abstract terms, this mostly applies to the strength of the mindset and the time under which the delusional and irrational individual has been self-enslaved to the mindset. In all fairness, this can also apply to true “conspiracy theorists” who irrationally believe in all conspiracy ‘theories’, even those without merit or even evidence to the contrary. True “conspiracy theorists” are the ideological polar opposite of the Skeptinazi. A good reference is the politically biased delusionalists from the left / right paradigm mentality.
For clarification: The ‘conspiracies don’t exist’ theory is actually more than a card to pull, it’s actually deep mindset that is used when analyzing anything (ideal contradicting) from daily news and actual direct research by those who follow the ideology.
Skeptic: of or pertaining to a sceptic or skepticism; characterized by skepticism; hesitating to admit the certainly of doctrines or principles; doubting of everything.
The “Skeptinazi” title is the term I used, years ago, in response to observing the social-impostors that present themselves as being the rational higher sort of cognitive class than the “kooky tinfoil hat wearing nut-bags” that dare to doubt the 911 official version or have gripes with the ever increasing totalitarian political / technological enslavement that we’re all witnessing. They present themselves as being the true “skeptics”, but in truth they’re only skeptical of basically any and all claims against their own ideal fantasies of reality. They’ll persistently present themselves as being fancy status members like “Logicians”, but bias social-psycho-neuroscience still dictates they’re entire mindset and methods of interpreting information to suit ones psychological needs / wants.
Truzzi’s Pseudoskeptic Attributions:
-The tendency to deny, rather than doubt.
-Double standards in the application of criticism.
-Tendency to discredit, rather than investigate.
-Use of ridicule or ad hominem attacks in lieu of arguments.
-Pejorative labeling of proponents as ‘promoters’, ‘pseudoscientists’ or practitioners of ‘pathological science.
-Presenting insufficient evidence or proof.
-Assuming criticism requires no burden of proof.
-Making unsubstantiated counter-claims.
-Counter-claims based on plausibility rather than empirical evidence.
-Suggesting that unconvincing evidence is grounds for dismissing it.
They naively think that by memorizing the most-common-logical-fallacy lists they can overcome irrational human behavior / thinking patterns. This mindset is a fallacy in of itself: Argumentum ad Ignorantiam. Don’t get me wrong, knowing at least some of fallacies on the list can not only help you in better interpreting the information you’re pouring over but can also help you maintain a higher degree of being “right”. However, knowing these fallacies alone cannot save you from being biased, which is important, because fMRI brain scans have proved that politically biased people self-deceive themselves to maintain their ideal constructs of reality.
Logical fallacies are like philosophical extensions of “cognitive biases“, yet cognitive biases are the neurological underpinnings of logical fallacies and more. Don’t forget that philosophy was the precursor to neuroscience / psychology / sociology / etc. In fact, worthy philosophy goes back to times when most cultures still believed we think with our hearts.
It’s quite likely that some of the most common fallacies might even deserve their own cognitive bias classifications, but its safe to say that virtually all of them are connected to said cognitive biases in some way. In many cases they’re the result of complexes of cognitive biases. These mindset complexes actually stem from the overall belief system of the brain in question, or rather the mindset.
So far in my studies, I’ve studied roughly 100 known cognitive biases, and researching them in the contexts of the critical mindset complexes -that I consider to be Political Bias, Nationalism Bias and the omnipotent Skeptinazi Bias- I’ve identified an average of 23 cognitive biases involved in the normal mindset behavior / thinking patterns of those social groups. Said cognitive biases, in the mindset of any involved, or even in deeper in cases of the unwitting (masses) proves to be a cognitive determinant that super-cedes the mere logical fallacy in the chain of cognitive hierarchy.
Also worth noting, yet out of context, is that this same large set of cognitive biases have the potential to affect literally every “normal” or “healthy” human being alive. These are a critical set of cognitive flaws of the brain that can be exploited (but this issue deserves it’s own story…).
There have been cognitive bias studies where an extra control group was given full explanations of the cognitive bias that was under the spotlight of the study. In virtually all cases (that I’ve read at least) it’s been found that the educated control groups still fall for the same cognitive bias snare. This may seem daunting, but that doesn’t mean that virtually all people can’t overcome them because a great deal of the physical structuring of the brain that occurs during long term memory storage happens during naps and sleep. It seems very plausible, based on my full spectrum brain / mind research, that the same control group wouldn’t fall for the bias test so easily after learning about it, being stumped by it (trial and error; learn the hard way) and then have one or more nights for the brain to do its reconfiguring work during sleep.
The mind is resistant to change (practice makes perfect), and then there’s Motivated Reasoning. Motivated Reasoning is ultimately the overall model for these biased decision making mindsets that I further into sociological categorizations (Skeptinazi, Deep Nationalist, Political Party, etc Complexes). My current framework for this is currently vast yet still expanding.
What’s important to note here are these various cognitive dynamics and the fact that Skeptinazi’s and the like are virtual slaves to maintaining their mindset. One fundamental reason is because memories and thought patterns are physical structures inside the brain. The longer they’ve “hardwired” themselves to the mindset(s) the more resistant and therefore more irrational they become in maintaining the ideal reality that they’ve chosen or more than likely have been indoctrinated with. Luckily for avoiding pessimism, said physical thought pattern structures in the brain can change thanks to “neural plasticity“, however, one must understand these combined dynamics to have good hopes of truly overcoming them to achieve powers resembling actual free thought.
In any case, the Skeptinazi social group does typically have the upper hand in debates because the true Skeptinazi practically worships the logical fallacy list, and it is an important framework in understanding human thought and decision making like the other examples above.
Now for the sake of the truth warriors I must lay out some choice historical examples that in their own right destroy the conspiracies don’t exist ideal:
-The DARPA / NASA / Google joint artificial intelligence system that is nothing of any sort of theory, but rather an absolute fact that involves ‘public’ websites. (NOTE: Dig around this site for details, and stay tuned.) Despite those websites being public, the mainstream press completely avoid the issue. I’ve yet to find even a PC magazine article that merely mentions the “Manhattan Project” (or greater, yet more public and obvious) scale operation. Oddly enough, not even the usual conspiracy alarmist sites report on this undeniable issue. Wouldn’t think that ‘conspiracy theorist’ alarmists, Bible prophecizers, transhumanists and PC future tech magazine writers would be prematurely ejaculating over covering this unprecedented and ongoing story?
-The North American Union; that without Lou Dobbs there would be hardly any mainstream coverage of. Destruction of American sovereignty and nobody notices? Could this be a sort of statistic to represent this ‘conspiracies don’t exist’ mentality? Probably mostly a representation of where the “interests” of our ‘media’ masters are focused, and how virtually the masses really know are shaped and prescribed by the elite.
-Echelon: the worldwide spy system that has been in operation for roughly 3 decades and wasn’t accepted as real until the White House itself finally leaked to the public roughly a year ago. This is a system that has involved tens of thousands of people including not just moles or other loyalists but people from every level from construction worker to US Presidents.
-American Imperialism: I can list dozen of examples of this and not even just where we were bamboozled into false beliefs of the event but events we never even knew about, many of which of become “true” thanks to mostly recent declassifications yet still few actually know about them (typically unless you directly search for info). We’re not just talking the false reasons given for virtually every war or skirmish since the end of WW2, but actual overthrows of democratic governments to install military dictatorships. Countless tens of thousands, both military and corporate, involved with millions of innocent people dead. Perhaps hundreds of millions denied “freedom” or democracy.
-The Manhattan Project: not exactly a “conspiracy”, yet a good example. Many cite this example as for demonstrating that BIG secrets can be kept, but I especially maintain it now that we have a modern day equivalent as stated just above. This involved more than 130,000 people, yet according to Skeptinazi’s “if more than 2 or 3 people know then everyone knows”. There is nearly 300 million people in this country, all divided into over-competitive irrational fractions. I wonder if the 130,000 people from the Manhattan Project all had a gun to not only their own heads but also the heads of the families and loved ones that the invincible reach of the maybe only 130 loyalists that could be wittingly involved in an overthrow of our already imperialist and highly corrupted nation?
-Nuremburg: The Nazi trials were unprecedented. The challenge was how to even approach building the case. The primary strategy and directive was to treat the entire thing as a conspiracy, and tying the defendants to said conspiracy was ultimately the primary means of convicting anyone.
Is it really necessary for me to go on? 100′000’s of thousands of people involved (past and present) in those mere five examples, and millions of innocent people dead, yet “conspiracies don’t exist”.
MORE PSEUDO-SKEPTIC FALLACIES:
There are many tactics and side-steps, the Skeptinazi will use to ‘win’ any argument. Here are some that I’ve personally experienced:
Argumentum ad Loose Changium (NEW): This is the flawed mentality driven position that our “Skeptics” have been employing for a good couple years now. Its a mainstream sort of perception, also. You see the old “Loose Change 2nd Edition” had quite a few flaws, some rather drastic. Back in the day LC2E was a sort of phenomenon. In those days Google Video still showed how many views a video had and they had a Top 100 listing. I think at one point I had noticed something around 10,000,000 views. So that film naturally got much of the attention. So it didn’t take too long before there were tons of pages and threads refuting it every way they could. Thats fine, if something has flaws of course, but it should be noted that these types paint everything as a one sided argument. That is, the opposition is 99% wrong without a leg to stand on, and they’re 99.5% right.
Back on point, the entire world of 9/11 discussion has devolved into a LC2E is the entire 9/11 conspiracy universe. That is, mentioning something 9/11 related that isn’t even in that film results in red herring discussions related to LC2E.
The entire mindset boils down to this: “LC2E had been debunked, therefore there can be no 9/11 Conspiracy”.
Domino Effect: They find one flaw, that either is weak, or isn’t written in Skeptinazi language. They then attempt to present the entire article as invalid.
Side Track: I’ve seen where there was irrefutable evidence, yet they resort to some desperate Skeptinazi technicality to pretend the evidence doesn’t matter. In these cases they violate the skeptic definition, and just argue the overall topic, rather than try to provide a real answer to the irrefutable evidence within it.
Avoid the Hard Argument: I’ve entered discussions where the skeptinazis were ganging up on the author, and using extreme Skeptinazi tactics, where they find a flaw in the claim, and then attempt to domino effect the entire argument altogether. I’d enter with great arguments, yet they’d just reply to the author, and try to keep arguing whatever minute thing left to get off of the main topic, and get around my and others counter-arguements. As long as they defeat the author, they ’still win’, and the ‘conspiracy’ remains a ‘theory’.
Conspiratorial Psychology: They present anyone who presents conspiracy content as being a kook. In their minds, anyone who questions the norm, must be a kook. They attempt to classify the author as simply being of the same irrational conspiratal thinker type. They then will further point out any flaws in the overall claim, and use this tactic to further ‘prove’ the ‘kook’ is all wrong.
Selective Testimony: They will often disregard witness testimony that supports the opposing theory, but later try to prove their point by saying there was testimony favor of their theory. They seem to be so stuck on what testimony that the media provided, that they automatically reject any counter-testimony.
Selective Big Picture: They claim that things don’t hold up in the big picture, but then they fail to work in necessary dynamics. A prime example applies to the prior Skeptinazi tactic. They fail to take into account that if there was a real conspiracy, that the Controlled Media ‘news’ would have filtered all of the conspiracy evidence. They seem to deduce it all, as if it couldn’t be true because it wasnt on the news.
Pseudo Maneuvers: They pull the pseudo card. They present this word as if it alone shuts down the entire credibility of the author, which as a result ‘debunks’ any solid evidence the pseudo-kooks case. If you challenge them to demonstrate what they feel is pseudo, you typically get no response. One tactic I’ve learned about, is they will point out use of news headlines as a major component of your argument, as being pseudo. This must be a last resort strategy of desperation. If they do use it, then it is clear that you can not even prove your point using credible sources.
Ignore the Proven Deception: With this move, you can prove a clear and obvious deception, in say a government claim or document. They will sort of skip past this portion, but then will still pretend that the deception wasn’t proven, and continue to pretend that theres no way we could have been deceived, and there is no possible way that theres a conspiracy. Obviously, they continue on in their pursuit to bash the rest of the article.
Conspiracies Don’t Exist: See Above.
No Motive, Switch the Argument: If the author doesnt properly define the motive, they will point out there is no motive. When you provide a solid motive, they will pretend you never did, and continue blasting whatever remains.
Don’t Speak My Language, its Not Possible: This is one of the main symptoms of the Skeptinazi: unless the entire article is purely written in their language, they will not accept it. If it is in their language, and undeniable, they won’t comment, and will pretend like it never happened. Later they will go argue the same topic elsewhere, using their same approaches; they will argue things that they’ve already seen proven elsewhere, in attempts to at least debunk the current author.
Occam’s Flip Flops: This is a tell tale sign of a Skeptinazi. Skeptinazis always point out every time a claimant uses the infamous Occams Razor (path of least resistance). For some reason they seem to think they can actually win the argument by pointing out any occurrences of it. Oddly enough, they always seem to follow this themselves.
For example, in the 911 case, the governments 911 Report is clearly the Occams Razor report. Not only do skeptinazis follow this as the definitive bible on the matter, they even fail to recognize the governments report as being the Occams Razor version of what happened. They fail to realize that if a faction of elitists were plottinga conspiracy, and knew that some scale of debate would eventually result, that you ensure that your cover story would be the ‘path of least resistence’. That is, you merely ensure your cover story appears far simpler than the reality. Then the masses would later say the truth was too difficult and you’d be in the clear.
Official CIA Guidelines for Subversion, Diversion and Division of Populations
More choice excerpts from the OSS Psychology of War collection (WW2 intelligence doctrine; CIA birthright).
Try and count (on 2 hands) how many of these directives / objectives you see happening in America today (click images):
Fear & anxiety, terror, hopelessness & defeatism, distrust in ones own cause, weariness, guilt, antagonism, loss of faith, false hopes, apathy, etc. All can be found deeply ingrained in American culture towards the system we’re all subject to. This still goes for most of those who pretend the facade we’re spoon-fed by the ruling establishment and their media is true, although, its tough to get them to admit it.
Operating units were to include: mass communications via radio broadcasting, news agencies & the press, motion pictures; black market channels via financial, commodity & political black markets; combat propaganda operations; underground agents and infrastructures; and cultural channels including religious organizations, labor unions and political parties / organizations.
ABOVE: Disinfo rumor-mongering.
Bribery & Blackmail:
Could the above be the coinage of the term “cell” (today’s context would be ‘terrorist cells’)?
Bonus:
*Political Delusions
Delusions are a social and psychiatric phenomenon, as is politics, and more importantly, political bias. Political bias is a rampant force in American society. Here I will demonstrate that political bias promotes delusional beliefs, and as a result American society is faced with a delusional-reality pathological-disease phenomenon of endemic proportions.
The loose definition of delusion is a fixed false belief. In psychiatry, the definition implies that the belief is pathological.[1] Psychopathology is considered to be, in refernce to the affected, the manifestation of behaviours and experiences which may be indicative of mental illness or psychological impairment.[2] Although common in several psychiatric conditions, they also occur in a diverse range of other disorders (including brain injury, intoxication and somatic illness). Delusions are significant precisely because they make sense for the believer and are held to be evidentially true, often making them resistant to change. [3]
HealthAtoZ.com [4] begins to describe delusions as this:
A delusion is an unshakable belief in something untrue. These irrational beliefs defy normal reasoning, and remain firm even when overwhelming proof is presented to dispute them.
And Minddisorders.com [5] describes delusions as follows:
A delusion is a belief that is clearly false and that indicates an abnormality in the affected person’s content of thought. The key feature of a delusion is the degree to which the person is convinced that the belief is true. A person with a delusion will hold firmly to the belief regardless of evidence to the contrary. Delusions can be difficult to distinguish from overvalued ideas, which are unreasonable ideas that a person holds, but the affected person has at least some level of doubt as to its truthfulness. A person with a delusion is absolutely convinced that the delusion is real.
These are key indicator signs of politically biased people, who more or less, hold onto delusional beliefs about their favored parties and members (and beliefs in the left/right binary system). The details and extent of the hold on the minds of those affected is beyond the scope of this article, but it is staggering. In terms of symptoms, theyre all there. Test this theory yourself on virtually anybody you know that proclaims to be either leftwing or rightwing, by presenting them with clear facts that shame their political party or favored member, and watch them jump through hoops dismissing and outright denying clear facts. Prove this theory by analyzing both historical and present day approval ratings during proven scandals and other landmark effects.
Political bias is nothing new. In 1974, during the final stretch of the Nixon-Watergate Scandal, Nixon maintained a 25 percent approval rating [6] in Gallup Polls. In 1968, Nixon had actually won in one of the closest elections in modern times, by a left/right margin of 511,914 votes, and totaling 31,783,783 votes in favor of him. As a minimalist scale of population margin we’ll just apply the approval rating to 50 percent of the people who voted for Nixon, or 15,891,891 politically biased people. Here’s another (low-ball estimate) way to attempt to measure PB: In 1972, Nixon had actually won by a landslide earning 60.7 percent of the vote, or 47,169,911 votes out of 77,744,027 total votes. 25 percent of 77,744, 027 would indicate roughly 19,436,007 politically biased people (in 1974), without even applying the 25 percent demographic to the national population.
Comparing partisan events and scandals (both individual and ongoing) to more modern times (which is beyond the scope of this article) is even more staggering (even in a minimalist context such as above). This is endemic (an ongoing and expected epidemic) by nature and definition, and even in those minimalist terms.
Further elaborations, and consequent arguments, to the definition of delusions can go as follows:
Delusions are often accompanied by hallucinations and/or feelings of paranoia, which act to strengthen confidence in the delusion. Delusions are distinct from culturally or religiously based beliefs that may be seen as untrue by outsiders. [4]
Even these extremist definitions of delusional can be justified, as follows: Dr. Drew Westins fMRI brain scan study [7] of politically biased people demonstrated that the affected twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope [8] to get the emotional results their realities desire, and then some of the brains reward centers fire to reward the process. During this process of justification, the other side is most likely blamed in some way to justify the reality threatening information. This theory is justifiable by the Hostile Media Effect alone, wherein studies have shown that politically-charged people take a paranoid approach to their personal interpretation of news, and take offense to it whether biased or not.
Since partisans may witness a favored leaders words/actions in some abnormal view or context despite its true meaning, and then form memories based on those interpretations, it can be said that those persons are hallucinating. Westins study demonstrated that partisaned brains reward centers reward them for lying to themselves about events and information, which would seem to strengthen confidence in the delusion. From there it can be argued that surely there are adolescence who decide to go different political paths from their hereditary indoctrinators, if not for reasons of rebellion alone. In that environment, the cognitive outsiders would see the opposing partisan view in an entirely different meaning, and thus hold the belief as untrue.
The DSM diagnostic criteria [9] for a belief to be considered delusional consists of the following:
(a)A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. (b)The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the persons culture or subculture (e.g. it is not an article of religious faith).
So, according to the first sentence (a) of the DSM diagnostic criteria, a substantial amount of politically biased people are clearly delusional. Now the second sentence (b) could be used to attempt to argue that the politically biased arent in fact delusional, but that would be grasping at straws at this point. Although many of our current leaders (successfully) attempt to converge religious bias with political bias for more effective psy-ops crowd control, religious and political delusions are entirely different ballparks, or more precisely sports. However, blind faith indeed becomes the politically biased persons stance in regards to their earthly rulers. Finding faith in typically un-falsifiable ancient Biblical / spiritual figures / myths is a far cry from a person deliberately lying to themselves to justify what they just observed their living (non-spiritual) leader hero himself say. The equivalent would be if Jesus Christ Himself was a living public celebrity who consistently makes TV appearances, and is not only well known for publicly lying on a regular basis on a broad range of issues, but is categorically a liar just by association with whatever branch of celebrity hed be classified as.
If masses of people werent delusional in regards to political parties and figures, then they wouldnt even be able to use (b) as an argument to begin with, which brings us back to the case of political bias being the equivalent of a pathological disease of endemic proportions…
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathology
[3] Explaining delusions: a cognitive Perspective Vaughan Bell, Peter W. Halligan and Hadyn D. Ellis
[4] HealthAtoZ.com Encyclopedia, Delusions
[5] Encyclopedia of Mind Disorders, Delusions
[6] Poll: Approval Ratings Compared, CBS News (Nov. 2, 2005)
[7] An fMRI study of motivated reasoning: Partisan political reasoning in the U.S. Presidential Election, Drew Westin
[8] Political bias affects brain activity, study finds; MSNBC, Jan 24, 2006
[9] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
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IGNORANCE IS FUTILE!
By: “Ignorance Isn’t Bliss” (IIB)
THE BLEEDING EDGE OF THE MERGER OF TYRANNY AND TECHNOLOGY.
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*Official CIA Guidelines for Subversion, Diversion and Division of Populations.
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