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You should read the Socialist Desicion
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Jul 5, 2019 01:31
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I'm not sure if you've already put this into any particular terms, maybe the end point of enough compaction cycles, but I've noticed a phenomenon with the right where there's absolutely no point in even pretending to moderate to mollify them because they are in a bubble of self-radicalisation and escalation that completely ignores all outside stimuli besides violent suppression. Any action or inaction is taken as an insult and/or encouragement, and narratives are created and frequently made up from wholecloth to justify the continued compaction. Main example being how establishment Democrats are desperate to decry socialism while Republicans gladly call literally all Democrats socialists. That said, maybe it was more a centrist delusion that convservatives were ever listening in the first place. Ghost Leviathan has issued a correction as of 07:38 on Jul 6, 2019 |
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Jul 6, 2019 07:19
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I'm not sure if you've already put this into any particular terms, maybe the end point of enough compaction cycles, but I've noticed a phenomenon with the right where there's absolutely no point in even pretending to moderate to mollify them because they are in a bubble of self-radicalisation and escalation that completely ignores all outside stimuli besides violent suppression. Any action or inaction is taken as an insult and/or encouragement, and narratives are created and frequently made up from wholecloth to justify the continued compaction. Main example being how establishment Democrats are desperate to decry socialism while Republicans gladly call literally all Democrats socialists. Centrism in the sense of identifying as a non-ideological party of rational administration with a duty to educate the rest and expecting all honest people to listen is fundamentally delusional. It's normal that people can't be reached with the obvious aim of civilizing them from outside, the echo chamber of centrism just allows them to consider their own "tribe" as the whole of society of fully developed, moral people, and uphold their ideology of non-ideology that way. Of course it's possible for sections of society to become further and further isolated from the rest, making it harder and harder for a person to belong to that group and also other groups at the same time, make the normal cross-pollination of worldviews between groups possible. Seems like that sort of radicalization has been going on for a while, and that is what leads to groups seeing each other as the kind of people who cannot be reasoned with and who can only be violently suppressed. And when societies split cleanly enough into major groups that can't meet eye to eye, civil wars happen. Due to its history, USA is a fundamentally divided country, it has already mostly been power disparity between groups that has allowed the illusion of peace to be upheld, social struggle to be construed as simple and necessary police action serving a neutral justice. But that is a narrative that is equally made up as various radicals' narratives are, ironically we can also see a compaction of centrism right now as a result of reality having so obviously contradicted their worldview. And of course that makes it harder for centrists to reach the other groups, further eroding trust in authorities.
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Jul 6, 2019 20:25
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Back in March of 2018 I made a series of effort post up in the qanon thread positing that qanon was the result of a psyop being backed/directed by Russian intelligence- one that was specifically designed to attract narrative is and drive compaction Cycles in order to increase the odds of violence within the American population. For those who haven't followed the whole drama, the Genesis of the qanon conspiracy theory was the pizzagate conspiracy theory, and the Genesis of pizzagate was the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. It has now been confirmed that the Seth Rich conspiracy theory was literally a Russian intelligence backed psyop: https://twitter.com/JasonAbbruzzese...ingawful.com%2F The entire article is worth a read, and although it doesn't address pizzagate or qanon very much, I think it's reasonable to infer that the infrastructure that Russian intelligence had set up to promulgate the Seth Rich conspiracy theory would not simply have stopped there. In light of that I have taken my first three posts from the Q Anon thread and squish them together into a super post below. Even though written in March 2018 I think that this material has held up extremely well and provides a very detailed insight into how this particular siop was being conducted: So I have been thinking for some time about how to explain my perspective what Q Anon is doing, how he is appealing to people successfully, and what his apparent goals are. It is my contention that Q is not a single individual but a small group of individuals with access to a reasonable amount of resources, and I believe the most likely culprit to be Russian intelligence. Q is using an extremely elaborate form of a type of occult/paranormal scam that I call the "Nostradamus Hustle". All other examples of the scam that I am personally aware of are pretty straightforward demonstrations of a person with a personality disorder grifting on the gullible, and these operations are almost always either solo operated or operated by a very small group with a very clear way to make money off of the scam. Q Anon is the only time I have ever seen someone operating this scam without a clear financial incentive. It's not a very easy scam to pull off and psychopaths with enough talent to do so are just not easy to come by. The Nostradamus Hustle functions by first creating a stylized form of gibberish that contains disjointed words and phrases, and then convincing people that secret information that indicates how future events will turn out can be had by decoding your gibberish. In the case of Nostradamus he accomplished this task through the use of quatrains; whereas in the case of the people behind the Bible Code they essentially use a mathematical formula that transforms the Torah into a word search, and in the case of HalfPastHuman (the people behind the infamous WebBot that was very popular during the height of the 2012 doomsday fad) they generate complete gibberish that is claimed to be the result of an algorithm that tracks changes over time in how people use language online. I have included an example of each below:  ( I used an example of the Bible Code generated using the King James Bible instead of the Torah for ease of understanding) A sample of a Web Bot ALTA report posted:These areas also indicate that [revenge assassinations] will be taking place over the latter third of As you can see in the above examples the general format of the scam is pretty straightforward- create a bunch of gibberish and then convince people somehow that your gibberish contains actionable information about future events. Once you've gotten enough people to buy in you can basically keep the scam running indefinately so long as you pay constant attention to your audience and always feed them exactly what they want to hear. The only downside to this particular scam is that it requires an all-consuming focus on your audience, you can't simply half-rear end things or just throw things out in the proper format. You have to expend continue oil significant effort to keep prodding your audience into going along with giving you money, and in order to do that your audience has to be being told what they want to hear. (This is why 8 years ago the Web Bot was constantly talking about the 2012 doomsday scenario, whereas now it's mostly focused on cryptocurrency speculating. What the audience wanted to hear shifted and the person running the Web Bot shifted their scam to accommodate.) The evidence that leads me to conclude that Q Anon on is a Russian intelligence is complicated; in the first place I've never seen a Nostradamus Hustle conducted purely for shots and giggles without any attempt to acquire financial gain or public attention, the psychological toolkit required to successfully run this scam basically only appears and individuals who would use this scam for some sort of personal gain. Running a Nostradamus hustle is a pretty all-consuming affair, at least one individual operating the scam must be extremely tuned in to everything their audience of suckers is saying or doing in order to keep the scam running. In the second place I've never seen a Nostradamus Hustle that seemed designed specifically to drive Compaction Cycle's among Narrativists- while Narrativists are a frequent target audience for this sort of scam, it's usually just to relieve them of their money. I've never before seeing a Nostradamus hustle that was seemingly set up just to provide a venue for a huge number of Narrativists to compact over and over. Normally people running this scam try to avoid Compaction Cycles because it shrinks their customer base. I also think that the selection of first 4chan and now 8Chan to operate this scam on only make sense if it's a Russian intelligence operation. As Uglycat can attest, it is much easier for a small group of individuals to manipulate consensus on the 'chans then people realize. The entire project chanology was launched via a campaign of creating false consensus on 4chan that was engaged in by the hacker group Marblecaek. I believe that Russian intelligence operatives arehanging around Q Anon threads and strategically posting to drive the conversation in a desired direction, I believe this is why they probably switched from 4chan to 8Chan. Once Q Anon started to pick up steam it was getting too much attention on 4chan for the manipulators to handle, so they switched to the much lower traffic 8Chan in order to make their task easier. Personally I don't think there is any specific endgame or specific goal for the Q Anon scam, I think they are just going to run it as long as they can to keep driving Compaction Cycles and keep Americans radicalizing. Eventually the scam will probably come crashing down once Mueller indicts Trump, and when that happens their are going to be a great deal of extremely furious and confused Narrativists who will be extremely amenable to adopting any new radical Narrative (particularly one that provides an outlet for the violent rage they will be feeling at that point) that appears within the right-wing media echosphere. In essence even once the Q Anon scam falls apart, Russian intelligence will still profit handsomely because it will still be very easy for them to just insert whatever desired narrative (or perhaps even another Nostradamus Hustle) into the same audience. sonally I think the Russians are the most likely culprits, but it's entirely possible that there is someone else behind it. It wouldn't take state actor level resources to pull this off, there's plenty of billionaires and/or political actors that would be perfectly capable of executing an operation like this. I am about 99.9% certain that this is a scripted op being conducted by multiple individuals in a coordinated fashion though. While it's conceivable that this could be the work of a lone troll, it is my conclusion that the balance of evidence very strongly suggests otherwise at this time. This does require a pretty sophisticated understanding of American politics to execute though, it's current function at present is to enable a huge and diverse group of Narrativists to psychologically live within their personal Inner Narrative if in an environment where they are practically drowning in Narrative Dysphoria. Under any context having this many people be this disconnected from reality for any appreciable period of time would cause significant disruption in the affected population. Under present conditions it is highly likely to continue driving the emerging wave of violence that we are seeing play out at present. It's like a strongest sustained wind blowing on a bonfire. It keeps increasing the flame and heat the longer it goes on until eventually the bonfire escapes the fire ring. Edit: chitoryu12 posted:Would a Russian have used "Matlock" as a password or something actually in Russian? Not an unfair question, but the kind of people who are this manipulative are also often extremely hubristic. Also: https://twitter.com/prayingmedic/status/975899309383172096?s=20 Double edit: This RT interview makes it painfully obvious that Q Anon is a Russian psyop imo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBI_dTY4fsc I personally think everyone interested in understanding the psychological manipulation that underlies the Q Anon phenomenon should take the 5 minutes to watch the video below. This is a Narrativist walking you through how minor little coincidences provide her with Narrative Validation- thus enabling her to psychologically exist within the fantasy world of her Inner Narrative. Note the genuine psychological relief and earnest optimism for the future that she is experiencing as a result of having her Inner Narrative validated. Also know that she is clearly not alone and having this specific reaction to the DoD tweet, as numerous other individuals in the replies to that tweet are clearly experiencing the same euphoria that she is. When the Q Anon delusion is eventually taken from her she will experience a tremendous sense of disorientation, rage, fear, and hopelessness. She will be exceedingly vulnerable at that point to becoming highly radicalized/pushed into taking more dramatic action, and she will not be alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_jy9XWrtVk From the perspective of the woman in that video (or really anyone who has latched onto a source of Narrative Validation this deeply) attacking Q Anon is akin to attacking her personal sense of security and joy, (her source of hope for the future)and she will react by lashing out viciously against anyone who makes her doubt the authenticity of Q. As she is a representative example of the norm of Q supporters, you can see how insanely easy it is for Compaction Cycles to occur in this social environment. Anyone who challenges the reality that Q is presenting will be rapidly forced right out of any group of Q supporters, steadily driving the radicalization of the affected communities. For those curious Q Anon threads on freerepublic.com are currently some of the most active threads on the website, frequently getting over 2000 replies in short order.
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Jul 9, 2019 17:27
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Pizzagate doesn't follow directly from Seth Rich; it was based on channers reading poo poo into the Podesta emails. The Seth Rich conspiracy theory was an effort to muddy the waters of those emails' provenance.
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Jul 9, 2019 22:25
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Pope Guilty posted:Pizzagate doesn't follow directly from Seth Rich; it was based on channers reading poo poo into the Podesta emails. The Seth Rich conspiracy theory was an effort to muddy the waters of those emails' provenance. Yeah I have the orders of things a bit mixed up. In any case that was been confirmed that both Pizzagate and the Seth Rich conspiracy theory were the products of Russian psyops. Rationalwiki posted:Pizzagate was confirmed in Senate intelligence committee hearings by Clint Watts to be part of a Russian "Active Measures" online operation pushing fake news, ludicrous conspiracies, and a general pro-Russian agenda.[54][55] Prester Jane has issued a correction as of 23:10 on Jul 9, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 23:04
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I have seen other people offer a more or less identical analysis of Q Annon without having to use any special or self referential jargon. And your hypothesizing about how only Russian intelligence could be behind such a scheme crosses over into outright nonsense. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 9, 2019 23:31
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Helsing posted:I have seen other people offer a more or less identical analysis of Q Annon without having to use any special or self referential jargon. This is... literally the thread specifically for developing my jargon? What exactly is your objection here? It looks like you're (as per usual) just trying to pick a fight and be passive-aggressively insulting. I mean my jargon isn't actually self-referential, because it in no way references me. None of my concepts are named after me or anything particularly important to me. Could you please explain how my jargon is self-referential? Helsing posted:And your hypothesizing about how only Russian intelligence could be behind such a scheme crosses over into outright nonsense. Why do you insist on arguing in bad faith? Those posts literally state that Russian intelligence is the "most likely culprit". )That said- since I wrote those posts in March of 2018 a fair amount of evidence has come out that I feel suppports my case.) It's now public record that pizzagate and the Seth Rich conspiracy theory where the products of Russian psyops. It doesn't seem so unreasonable to me that Qanon, a conspiracy theory that exists in the same conceptual universe as pizzagate/Seth Rich conspiracy theory+were promulgated through the same channels by many of the same actors, was also initiated by Russian intelligence as a psyop. Further, since writing all of that material March of 2018, qanon adherence have behaved more or less as my framework predicts they would. A fair number of them have become violent and committed Lone Wolf attacks, and a significant number of individuals who were qanon adherents at one point or another have radicalized and have carried that radicalization forward into other right-wing spheres. Prester Jane has issued a correction as of 00:44 on Jul 10, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 23:58
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Edit: combined into the above post
Prester Jane has issued a correction as of 00:22 on Jul 10, 2019 |
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Jul 10, 2019 00:10
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Helsing posted:And your hypothesizing about how only Russian intelligence could be behind such a scheme crosses over into outright nonsense. Here, maybe you missed the link at the very top of the post that explains that Russian intelligence is literally behind a cornerstone of the entire loving thing Yes, Americans don't need Russians to blame for Americans being dumb, but seriously, read the loving article.
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Jul 10, 2019 00:25
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PJ if you go to publish stuff please be receptive to your editor. I'm trying to be legit constructive: you use too many god drat words. Find the most brutal second set of eyes you can for your writing. Heed their advice.
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Jul 10, 2019 00:31
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Christoph posted:PJ if you go to publish stuff please be receptive to your editor. I'm trying to be legit constructive: you use too many god drat words. Find the most brutal second set of eyes you can for your writing. Heed their advice. Oh yeah, if I was going to publish even an ebook I would need a pretty good editor willing to help refine my writing a fair bit.
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Jul 10, 2019 00:38
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Excellent! I am interested in what you're saying but in forums-post form it's a bit fatiguing.
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Jul 10, 2019 00:45
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Christoph posted:Excellent! I am interested in what you're saying but in forums-post form it's a bit fatiguing. The one thing about my writing is its constantly a balancing act- because if I use too few words then I start hearing from people that my work has too high of a "cognitive load" as one poster put it. Prester Jane has issued a correction as of 00:50 on Jul 10, 2019 |
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Jul 10, 2019 00:47
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Hey friends: wanna see the entire Narrativist Framework play out in one minute and sixteen seconds? https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/...ingawful.com%2F
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Jul 10, 2019 02:59
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Prester Jane posted:The one thing about my writing is its constantly a balancing act- because if I use too few words then I start hearing from people that my work has too high of a "cognitive load" as one poster put it. Cefte's a real good one to listen to when it comes to lengthy arguments with people who may well not be engaging in good faith, fwiw.
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Jul 10, 2019 03:17
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Carlson seems to occupy an odd niche. He's obviously a wealthy scion from the blazer-and-bow-tie class, but his show is just naked white supremacy for the average Fox News viewer. He doesn't put much of a genteel veneer on it.
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Jul 10, 2019 14:08
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Halloween Jack posted:Carlson seems to occupy an odd niche. He's obviously a wealthy scion from the blazer-and-bow-tie class, but his show is just naked white supremacy for the average Fox News viewer. He doesn't put much of a genteel veneer on it. Right-wingers are a lot better at playing their class origins up and down opportunistically. Carpetbagging isn't a forgotten skill to them like it is for liberals.
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Jul 10, 2019 14:19
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I mean they basically don't care unless they want to use it against you. If you say the right things and direct your hate against the right things, they'll accept you as one of their own until it is no longer convenient to do so. Just look at Trump, hero of the people.
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Jul 10, 2019 16:55
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Helsing posted:I have seen other people offer a more or less identical analysis of Q Annon without having to use any special or self referential jargon. And your hypothesizing about how only Russian intelligence could be behind such a scheme crosses over into outright nonsense. I'm glad someone's keeping an eye on this because I am way too dumb to know who to probate and who to let skate here. 
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Jul 10, 2019 18:21
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Yeah me too, it's a super confusing issue. Because it is both true that Russiagate has been transformed by the centrist media into a cop-worshiping institution-worshiping xenophobic cult --- and also true that large-scale activities (cultural pushes, psy-ops) are being attempted and occasionally discovered, done by a number of state actors (only one of which is the Kremlin). No matter which of those two truths anyone speaks to, there's just no way to sound good right now when talking about Russia. It's probably best to just leave the actual word "Russia" out of every accusation from now on, because it's also associated with the whole Russian population (totally innocent people) and because it's transformed into a trigger word for baiting the media. The word has become totally separate from any specific action or group, and more of a badge identifying believers. And the word discounts the actions of several other governments known to interfere in our culture and elections in equally major and equally illegal ways (Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc). Who can blame all the other world governments from trying to subvert ours right now, when it's currently this weakened, the populace this easily scammed, the voters this susceptible to totally moronic movements like Trump-ism, Musk-ism/Bitcoin, etc. It's America's fault, specifically our institutions' faults, for failing that disastrously in the first place. Russia-gate is primarily used by the media as a distraction from the fact that our own institutions are working against our own people and need to be overthrown. There's a CSPAM thread for Russiagate skepticism and they would have a field day with the above post, as evidence-backed as some assertions are. I recommend checking it (the Mueller believers thread) extensively to see how deep into cult territory the media goes the *other* way -- on the anti-Russia side. Observe the narrative dysphoria and compaction that resulted immediately upon the Mueller report being released, when they all said it was being suppressed, because it was going to spell Trump's doom immediately and he'd be replaced on a day of reckoning. The belief that on that day the cops and institutional leaders would turn on their own because of the letter of the law, lol. Anyway, maybe the Kremlin runs QAnon. I don't know, it's a complex situation and I'm not read up. All I know is it's fine to wonder aloud if specific bad actors are behind specific events, but it has to be done with full acknowledgement of the weird cultural backdrop (MSNBC) that it's happening in. Happy Thread has issued a correction as of 19:27 on Jul 10, 2019 |
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Jul 10, 2019 19:13
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Maybe that last post was too harsh on my part but Prester I gotta point out that you're equally brutal in your dealings with the D&D brainworms caucus so I don't exactly feel like I'm punching below the belt here. Also I find it tiresome that you more or less respond to all my posts as trolls when one of my first forays into this thread was to offer up an entire annotated bibliography of suggested sources. You're putting your ideas out in to the world, proposing them as solutions to some of our most serious political problems. You're going to get harsh feedback. The most I guess I can offer is that while I can get a bit caught up in myself and act like an rear end in a top hat sometimes, I am genuinely trying to give you helpful feedback even if the format its coming in is abrasive. I think you've got a lot of people here giving you positive feedback and encouragement, maybe there needs to be room for at least one person with a much harsher tone. How are you ever going to have confidence in your theory if it hasn't been attacked harshly and repeatedly from every angle? Prester Jane posted:This is... literally the thread specifically for developing my jargon? What exactly is your objection here? It looks like you're (as per usual) just trying to pick a fight and be passive-aggressively insulting. When I say that your writing is self-referential I mean that it almost exclusively refers back to itself instead of building connections with other ideas, arguments, theories, etc. rather than engaging with outside literature. Ideally there's going to be a balance between new theoretical terms and pre-existing concepts that ground your ideas. Like, take your idea of "narrative dysphoria". How is that similar to or different from cognitive dissonance? Why was a new word necessary? How is it related to other forms of dysphoria? For instance, the idea of "the Nostradamus Hustle" is a clever and useful term for a phenomenon that I've seen many times before but for which I've never seen such an accurate and succinct label. The wording is clever and evocative and helpfully communicates the concept. That's an example of a term I could easily see myself borrowing and re-using. It's a neologism that'd make a career academic jealous. I don't agree with you that its evidence for a high level conspiracy and would actually argue that crowd sourced and non-directed Nostradamus Hustles are extremely common and that there's simply no need to invoke government intelligence agencies to explain something that looks like it happened organically, but either way I think the term itself is golden. Some of your other concepts like "narrativist" I'm more skeptical of. I can sort of intuit what you're getting at but the concept feels fuzzy and underdefined and I have never had a clear sense of whether its even possible for anyone to not be a narrativist. It would be helpful for me as a reader if you were spending more time defining such a crucial concept and explaining how it is similar or different to other theories of psychology. Whats the difference between an authoritarian and a narrativist? etc. Is narrativism a yes/no quality or something that happens on a spectrum? quote:Why do you insist on arguing in bad faith? Those posts literally state that Russian intelligence is the "most likely culprit". )That said- since I wrote those posts in March of 2018 a fair amount of evidence has come out that I feel suppports my case.) It's now public record that pizzagate and the Seth Rich conspiracy theory where the products of Russian psyops. It doesn't seem so unreasonable to me that Qanon, a conspiracy theory that exists in the same conceptual universe as pizzagate/Seth Rich conspiracy theory+were promulgated through the same channels by many of the same actors, was also initiated by Russian intelligence as a psyop. No, that hasn't been proven, and yes it does seem unreasonable. Given everything we know about the right and American culture, given the example of guys like Vince Foster, I just don't get how anyone could seriously buy into the idea that it took a Russian state sponsored disinformation campaign to generate a conspiracy around Seth Rich. There's a massive rightwing infrastructure dedicated to propagating these ideas and a huge pre-existing conspiracy literature specifically focused on the Clinton's. You don't need Russia-gate to explain how conspiracies like this take hold when House of Cards is one of the most popular political dramas of the last decade! The emergence of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory was more or less inevitable from the moment he was shot in the back. Yeah places like RT and Sputnik signal boosted those conspiracies but it really strains credulity to think they deserve the primary blame or focus here when the Seth Rich poo poo was only the latest in a very long line. quote:Further, since writing all of that material March of 2018, qanon adherence have behaved more or less as my framework predicts they would. A fair number of them have become violent and committed Lone Wolf attacks, and a significant number of individuals who were qanon adherents at one point or another have radicalized and have carried that radicalization forward into other right-wing spheres. People were able to anticipate this without reference to your theory though. It's not enough to point out that your theory could match the data. The test of a theory is its parsimony, its scope, its accuracy and its falsifiablity (more on this below), all of which have to be measured relative to other explanations. I'll elaborate on this in a separate post. McGlockenshire posted:Here, maybe you missed the link at the very top of the post that explains that Russian intelligence is literally behind a cornerstone of the entire loving thing I read it and was instantly reminded of the bad old days of the Russiagate thread in D&D and how otherwise sensible people just yearn to believe this stuff.
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Jul 10, 2019 19:48
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So in the spirit of explaining what I'm trying to get at here's a basic breakdown of the role of theory in social science. This is a bit biased toward more quantitative approaches but is still very valuable. Let me say immediately that academic knoweldge and procedures are not inherently more legitimate than other ways of knowing. There's a lot of ivory tower bullshit in the academy and a lot of gate keeping and careerism. I'm really not saying you should put all your ideas on hold and nevero pen your mouth unless you've done years of school. There are some strengths and advantages to developing your ideas outside the academic stranglehold. But! That doesn't mean academia is irrelevant or that all its techniques and procedures should be tossed into the garbage. And when you strip away the pretensions that surround a lot of academia, most of the basic rules, such as those below, are actually pretty helpful for working through the details of a complicated idea. Theory in Social Science posted:I. What is a theory? Obviously this is stuff is aspirational - its not like this could all be done over night. But rather than just continuing to add more invented terminology and crawling through random news stories guided by your confirmation bias I implore you to think about spending more time rigorously defining the terms you've already got and working on precisely explaining how they fit together. Or at least, that'd be my advice, take it or leave it. Also, regarding anyone still freaking out about the Internet Research Agency I really encourage them to read this article by one of the first journalists to draw attention to them.
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Jul 10, 2019 19:59
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Helsing posted:Maybe that last post was too harsh on my part but Prester I gotta point out that you're equally brutal in your dealings with the D&D brainworms caucus so I don't exactly feel like I'm punching below the belt here. Also I find it tiresome that you more or less respond to all my posts as trolls when one of my first forays into this thread was to offer up an entire annotated bibliography of suggested sources. You just dismissed the evidence that pizzagate was a Russian psyop with a wave of your hand; and completely ignored that the Senate intelligence committee confirmed that Pizzagate was part of an active Russian psyop. (And ultimately you're just mansplaining to me what I should be doing, which just so happens to match up perfectly with what you imagine you would be doing in my situation.) Some of your advice is sound, some of your feedback quite useful and valid- but not the majority of it. Prester Jane has issued a correction as of 20:53 on Jul 10, 2019 |
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Jul 10, 2019 20:27
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BuzzFeed just this morning released a recording of Russian government spooks secretly meeting with representatives of Italy's largest right-wing party to discuss funnelling millions of dollars in Russian oil money into funding that party. Putin and his people are actively doing shady conspiracy poo poo to advance the cause of fascism in many countries. Reflexive dismissal is no longer justifiable.
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Jul 10, 2019 20:53
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Helsing your attitude here is basically you trying to be the tough daddy giving me the harsh feedback that I need (because I am being too coddled otherwise*). And to see you try to reframe lashing out at me unprovoked as you being well-intentioned but just going a little teeny bit too far, won't I just under stand that it's for my own good... *thank god you are here to toughen me up I've heard this all before, and I'm truly and profoundly disinterested in playing this game with you. Either participate in good faith, or not at all. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 10, 2019 20:54
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lol pizzagate a russian psyop
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Jul 10, 2019 20:55
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Pope Guilty posted:BuzzFeed just this morning released a recording of Russian government spooks secretly meeting with representatives of Italy's largest right-wing party to discuss funnelling millions of dollars in Russian oil money into funding that party. Putin and his people are actively doing shady conspiracy poo poo to advance the cause of fascism in many countries. Reflexive dismissal is no longer justifiable. Sure Russia's doing it, but they're not the only government doing it to us, even to the same degree. Our institutions won't save us from it and frankly they shouldn't have been weak to it in the first place. Being woke to the attacks on our country will not save our institutions (only re-making them from scratch will) -- nor are our institutions sound enough for us to expect them to withstand attack anymore. Attacks on America are a predictable symptom of a dying America, not the cause. The cause is that our institutions are poison and our economy is poison, and redirect any efforts to repair them incrementally into protecting their own leaders and poisoning us better.
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Jul 10, 2019 22:33
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Prester, Sheng-ji Yang is another russiagate skeptic like myself and you're going to likely continue to get frustrated (and frustrating) reactions from russiagate skeptics for a while. As such, it's worth it to figure out that exactly their message is and whether you need to combat it, or acknowledge their points but still deflect them somehow, or maybe not even that. I'm not sure if you saw my post but I really do recommend going through the Mueller believers thread from page 1 to at least see what the messaging is in there (that it resembles a cult movement). Once you look at Maddow's show as a doomsday cult you might yourself then find that you're unable to un-see it. The concepts of narrativism explain the entire style of CNN and MSNBC's modern sensational attention-grabbing ratings-grabbing message, especially when taken as a snapshot from a couple months ago during the Mueller Report frenzy and subsequent liberal letdown afterwards, and the absolute refusal of parties like Maddow to acknowledge the poor predictions and misdirections of her movement, not even missing a beat to spin the narrative much deeper to make up for it. It's straight out of your textbook. I think you'll be less frustrated by today if you open the Mueller believers thread just to take some time to laugh at the crazier and worse parts of that truther movement. No one should be able to paint you with the same brush without you being armed with the knowledge of what that brush is. Happy Thread has issued a correction as of 22:45 on Jul 10, 2019 |
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Jul 10, 2019 22:33
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the irony of accusing all right wing people of being insane cultists while feverishly believing all the maddow russiagate poo poo is,,, good poo poo, as they say
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Jul 10, 2019 22:36
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also refusing to respond to any of helsings arguments because hes Mansplaining while simultaneously accusing him of not arguing in good faith lmao. almost as if pj is not interested in defending her weird theology and just interested in maintaining a bunch of dumb fans
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Jul 10, 2019 22:38
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And posts like the one right above are frustrating too but shitposts are just a necessary part of CSPAM not devolving into nothing but easily trolled D&D style longposts. You gotta be able to take that sort of thing here. I know you can. Getting disrespected a bit doesn't mean your efforts are worth any less. This thread has helped a lot of people see why people act the way they do and what's going on in the right wing. Don't let anything discourage your mission.
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Jul 10, 2019 22:42
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Helsing posted:Maybe that last post was too harsh on my part but Prester I gotta point out that you're equally brutal in your dealings with the D&D brainworms caucus so I don't exactly feel like I'm punching below the belt here. This thread is in C-SPAM, not D&D.
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Jul 11, 2019 00:48
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Prester Jane posted:(And ultimately you're just mansplaining to me what I should be doing, which just so happens to match up perfectly with what you imagine you would be doing in my situation.) Having issues with your work (which I think are valid when Helsing chills with the strawmen) isn't "mansplaining". As much as I like your theory, I see a lot of you saying "That's a great idea, I'm going to acknowledge my weaknesses and embrace this advice" before you go right back to doing basically the same thing, which usually involves failed attempts at breaking into other threads with pages of text that make absolutely no sense to anyone who hasn't heard your theory before. The amount of spelling errors and possibly autocorrect-created typos suggest that you're not even reviewing what you say before posting sometimes.
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Jul 11, 2019 00:50
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If your theories were total poo poo, nobody would be taking the time to offer constructive criticism. The problem is that they're kind of good here and there, and it's exciting when they offer an interesting insight into certain types of otherwise inscrutable behavior. I think Helsing offered a good deal of criticism that mirrored some of my own concerns that I hadn't figured out how to express. In my job, my work gets reviewed by my peers, and even when it's people who are much more talented than me, I sometimes find myself thinking, "nah, I'm going to leave it the way it was instead of taking your advice." That doesn't mean that when I get to their next note I'll dismiss it because I disagreed with them last time. Learning how to make the most of critique is a skill, so please don't become too frustrated if you're finding it difficult to glean value from it.
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Jul 11, 2019 02:30
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Hey PJ, I've been following your posts since around the 2016 election and it's been really cool to see you continue your work. Wish I had more to say besides just thank you for your particular line of logic and experience during these times. You're not a prophet but your explanations can be illiluminating. Good luck with your academic pursuits, you have the dicipline for that line of work. Also lmao that you also know of the Webbot from back in the day. I watched a lot of Chris High's or whoever that was videos then, never really taking it seriously but just smoking a lot of pot and being entertained. They were simpler times...
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Jul 11, 2019 02:36
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i am not necessarily on-board with all of helsing's criticisms but i agree that the self-referentiality of your writing is a growing problem now that i understand what he was getting at part of why i think you're onto something real here is that your ideas do connect well with academic concepts that already exist, particularly in the study of how people learn and acquire beliefs about the world. narrativism in particular is an idea with a lot of potential. but i think your non-awareness of these connections is limiting the growth of your ideas at this point - a large part of your work since your original establishment of and elaboration upon the narrativism framework has been more about expanding the breadth of your explanations rather than the depth. i don't think you need to be in personal contact with academics to learn things about academic subjects. that feels like a stumbling block you've been focused on for a while - but at your level you are better served with books than people unless you could actually enroll in a few courses at a university. you don't need a doctorate to understand what you need to know to go further - just a basic understanding of the academic perspective on the things closely related to your work
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Jul 11, 2019 07:21
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Jazerus posted:i am not necessarily on-board with all of helsing's criticisms but i agree that the self-referentiality of your writing is a growing problem now that i understand what he was getting at Which books in particular?
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Jul 11, 2019 08:01
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Ice Phisherman posted:Which books in particular? idk off the top of my head because it's been a few years and mostly i learned through pdf excerpts assigned by professors rather than ever owning dedicated texts but anything geared toward learning theory/educational psychology (the real stuff not the fad books geared toward elementary teachers) or the sociology of belief would be a good place to start i'll see if i can find good sources Jazerus has issued a correction as of 08:16 on Jul 11, 2019 |
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Jul 11, 2019 08:14
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I'd like to address russiagate first, as it appears that I stumbled into something of culture war on C-SPAM without realizing it. I am barely aware that Rachel Maddow exists, and I have been writing about state actors using psyops to control narratives on social media since I think late 2015. (At the time I was concerned by what I was seeing emerge in the Disqus section of Ben Shapiro's Breitbart articles). Which is why I was basically unaware that Maddow is starting to create a (low-compaction) Narrativist group by using her platform trying to recast all of the Democratic establishments problems as being caused by Russia. This is an extremely concerning development, and if y'all have been dealing with leftist Narrativists trying to make Russia into The Enemy then I can more readily understand the reactions here. ( apparently there is a Bernie staffer who has gotten harassment because he is ethnically Russian) All I can say is that my own concerns with regard to Russia have come about completely separate from anything Rachel Maddow is done, and FWIW Uglycat and I have been noticing the same things w/r/t psyop campaigns on social media/the 'chand and separately reaching very similar conclusions for several years now. For what it's worth I denounce what Rachel Maddow is doing and am disheartened (albeit unsurprised) to see the Democratic establishment go down the same mistaken path the GOP went down with the Southern Strategy*. Left-Narrativism is a significant growing problem, one that I'm not exposed to very much online because I spend a lot of time going after Centrist Brainworms. *appealing to Narrativists in order to shore up a fractured base Now let me address my reaction to Helsing- it's not that helsing doesn't have good feedback, or that I'm not flattered by/unspeakably grateful for the amount of attention by work has gotten here. Let me clarify some things in that post that set me off. Helsing posted:Maybe that last post was too harsh on my part but Prester I gotta point out that you're equally brutal in your dealings with the D&D brainworms caucus so I don't exactly feel like I'm punching below the belt here. 1.) I have spent over four years trying to keep this thread from being as combative as the D&D Trump thread is right now. 2.) There was a two-year period of slow escalation where I completely lost my patience with D&D brain worms. quote:The most I guess I can offer is that while I can get a bit caught up in myself and act like an rear end in a top hat sometimes, I am genuinely trying to give you helpful feedback even if the format its coming in is abrasive. I think you've got a lot of people here giving you positive feedback and encouragement, maybe there needs to be room for at least one person with a much harsher tone. You're being genuine and upfront with me here, but this particular approach has a long and complicated history with me and puts me deeply on the defensive from the outset. Not that I don't want to have my ideas aggressively challenged- but the approach itself has such a history with me that I am heavily predisposed to writing someone off the first time I feel they have crossed a line without apparant provocation. quote:How are you ever going to have confidence in your theory if it hasn't been attacked harshly and repeatedly from every angle? For the most part I don't feel my theories are at a point where they could survive "harsh attacks"- and I'm not yet comfortable debating about them in such a way. Back when Ben R. Rich was overseeing the development of the SR-71 he had a dozen separate departments each working on a different portion of the plane. After many months of each of these departments attempting to solve all of the problems they were facing, Ben Rich declared basically "Gentlemen we have gotten this plane 80% figured out, let's sit down and design rough draft of the entire plane". That's roughly where I am at with this project, I'm still trying to get a complete decent pencil draft down, I'm not quite ready to start putting models in the wind tunnel. quote:When I say that your writing is self-referential I mean that it almost exclusively refers back to itself instead of building connections with other ideas, arguments, theories, etc. rather than engaging with outside literature. Okay now that I understand what you're saying, this is a valid criticism. But I'm also still at the point where I'm trying to connect all my theories internally to each other, or rather I'm trying to communicate the reason they are all connected. Aside from that, I invent new terms for things that I don't have existing terms for. When I encounter existing terms not overlap with mine then I adopt the existing terms. Just yesterday someone in the qanon thread introduced me to millenarianism and that provided me an entire lexicon to talk about the "Great Upwelling" without having to use my own terms. When I do find areas where existing terms are appropriate I adopt those pretty readily. [Wuote] Ideally there's going to be a balance between new theoretical terms and pre-existing concepts that ground your ideas. Like, take your idea of "narrative dysphoria". How is that similar to or different from cognitive dissonance? Why was a new word necessary? How is it related to other forms of dysphoria? [/quote] To answer your questions in sequence: 1.)It's a particular form of cognitive dissonance that is experienced when a Narrativist is confronted with something that challenges the validity of their inner narrative. 2.) Because there was no existing word, and Narrative Dysphoria is important because resolving it is the psychological/impetus impetus that drives compaction cycles. 3.) So far as I am aware the only other form of dysphoria is gender dysphoria- and now that I think about it there is an interesting essay to be had comparing/contrasting the two. quote:For instance, the idea of "the Nostradamus Hustle" is a clever and useful term for a phenomenon that I've seen many times before but for which I've never seen such an accurate and succinct label. The wording is clever and evocative and helpfully communicates the concept. That's an example of a term I could easily see myself borrowing and re-using. It's a neologism that'd make a career academic jealous. I don't agree with you that its evidence for a high level conspiracy and would actually argue that crowd sourced and non-directed Nostradamus Hustles are extremely common and that there's simply no need to invoke government intelligence agencies to explain something that looks like it happened organically, but either way I think the term itself is golden. I want to clarify that it is my contention that this specific Nostradamus Hustle is a Russian psyop- many many completely organic Nostradamus Hustles are out there in the wild. The reasons I think this one is specifically Russian in origin is because of the assets Russian intelligent devoted to it in conjunction with having some practical experience for what it takes to manipulate social narratives on the 'chans. quote:Some of your other concepts like "narrativist" I'm more skeptical of. I can sort of intuit what you're getting at but the concept feels fuzzy and underdefined and I have never had a clear sense of whether its even possible for anyone to not be a narrativist. It would be helpful for me as a reader if you were spending more time defining such a crucial concept and explaining how it is similar or different to other theories of psychology. The primary distinguishing feature of a Narrativist from a non-Narrativist is their subconscious adoption of three specific heuristics, what I collectively call "Bypass Logic". Their belief system will also conform to the four tiered structure of the grand narrative. quote:Whats the difference between an authoritarian and a narrativist? etc. Is narrativism a yes/no quality or something that happens on a spectrum? You would need to provide me with your specific definition of authoritarian first, because that's a somewhat broad term in this context. Narrativism seems to be largely a yes/no quality, but compaction exists on a spectrum. On the subconscious level participating in compaction cycles drives further and wider adoption of bypass logic, that is to say the more compaction cycles a Narrativist goes through the more topics they default to thinking/reasoning about using bypass logic. quote:Given everything we know about the right and American culture, given the example of guys like Vince Foster, I just don't get how anyone could seriously buy into the idea that it took a Russian state sponsored disinformation campaign to generate a conspiracy around Seth Rich. There's a massive rightwing infrastructure dedicated to propagating these ideas and a huge pre-existing conspiracy literature specifically focused on the Clinton's. You don't need Russia-gate to explain how conspiracies like this take hold when House of Cards is one of the most popular political dramas of the last decade! The emergence of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory was more or less inevitable from the moment he was shot in the back. Yeah places like RT and Sputnik signal boosted those conspiracies but it really strains credulity to think they deserve the primary blame or focus here when the Seth Rich poo poo was only the latest in a very long line. quote:I read it and was instantly reminded of the bad old days of the Russiagate thread in D&D and how otherwise sensible people just yearn to believe this stuff. I'm just going to need more than simply hand-waving away an entire investigative report.
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Jul 11, 2019 12:56
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