Oglethorpe posted:

los angeles and orange country hotel workers on strike on july 4 lol

Morbus posted:

If you assume that people form beliefs according to some process of critical evaluation, then no, this bullshit isn't fooling anyone and is so transparent as to be insulting.

However, most of what people believe is just stuff they hear from people around them. If someone hears it from the right people, often enough, and it's close enough to something they already believe or find plausible, or want to believe, then they will absorb the new idea and/or shift their beliefs. This doesn't really require any critical evaluation, so it is totally possible--and indeed common--for people to develop a set of beliefs that are incoherent. Sure--many people (especially liberals) will then invent some post hoc rationalization of their beliefs where they arise according to some critical framework, but this is just a narrative (often a comically compartmentalized one), and it usually falls apart under even a little bit of scrutiny. The real origin of the beliefs isn't critical thought, it is just "a bunch of poo poo that I heard".

You can think of a social network as a graph, where each node on the graph is a person, and each node has some set of starting beliefs. The social diffusion of ideas can be modeled according to some function where nodes have some likelihood of passing ideas to connecting nodes, which in turn have some likelihood of adopting those ideas based on where they are coming from, how "trustworthy" the sources are, how often they hear that idea, and the cumulative history of all other ideas they have heard. The "trustworthiness" of sources can be similarly modeled according to some function of social proximity, idea proximity, etc.

An interesting mathematical result is that--almost irrespective of the particulars of these functions--if you can force some nodes on this graph to hold and transmit a fixed set of ideas, then the whole graph will provably converge to a set of ideas spanned by the fixed nodes. The more such fixed nodes you have, and the more people they are connected to, the faster this convergence will occur. There is some room for cleverness in engineering a particular set of fixed ideas and matching the nodes to particular parts of the network for optimal convergence, but the only really important thing is that you have these fixed nodes in the first place, and that you control them. Social diffusion will take care of the rest.

Our friends at Eglin AFB have it all worked out, don't worry!
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf

Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:

What mixed messages.

Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:

Shear Modulus posted:

some sort of vanguard of people holding a coherent set of ideals, perhaps

Shear Modulus posted:

some sort of vanguard of people holding a coherent set of ideals, perhaps

Zodium posted:

the ideas arise from material conditions, so the way you fix them is by materially structuring society such that it facilitates the emergence of certain ideas, then you structure social networks to maximize dissemination of any ideas, and probability plus scale does the rest. if you can't affect the material structure of society, you can't maintain fixed nodes. that's the whole m/o of cybernetic capitalism at the individual scale.

Zodium posted:

the ideas arise from material conditions, so the way you fix them is by materially structuring society such that it facilitates the emergence of certain ideas, then you structure social networks to maximize dissemination of any ideas, and probability plus scale does the rest. if you can't affect the material structure of society, you can't maintain fixed nodes. that's the whole m/o of cybernetic capitalism at the individual scale.

Zodium posted:

the ideas arise from material conditions, so the way you fix them is by materially structuring society such that it facilitates the emergence of certain ideas, then you structure social networks to maximize dissemination of any ideas, and probability plus scale does the rest. if you can't affect the material structure of society, you can't maintain fixed nodes. that's the whole m/o of cybernetic capitalism at the individual scale.

Shear Modulus posted:

president donald trump was a product of cable news and facebook though which are the two main control structures

Zodium posted:

the ability to structure belief adoption is a natural consequence of materialism. if you liked that, you might like this one on inhibiting adaptation.

genericnick posted:

Was it a problem though?

Morbus posted:

Yes but the problem our boys at Eglin have unfortunately, is that the maintenance of capitalism is incompatible with any kind of stable set of beliefs, so shifting material conditions will constantly give rise to new crises, and the "desirable beliefs" that you want your "social leaders" to hold in order to keep capitalism churning will be constantly changing in response to each crisis upon crisis.

So instead of a finely tuned cybernetic system of social control you end up with Donald Trump as president. It owns.

Morbus posted:

So instead of a finely tuned cybernetic system of social control you end up with Donald Trump as president. It owns.

Akratic Method posted:

he was threatening to gently caress up stuff like NATO, which is part of the way the US manages its empire, so yeah I think it was. If we were to piss off all our allies then we’d be hard pressed to maintain our resource access on hard power alone.

As far as his domestic policies, I do think his dumb rear end ideas were too bad even for the right wing, in that they’re so utterly short-term that the more sensible parts of the ruling class realize he’s bad for the country. see also: CSPAM accelerationists cheerleading for him

Bar Ran Dun posted:

the fascists are using the social controls.

The liberals aren’t using them because they believe in the myth of harmony

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

lol who's cheerleading for him

Bar Ran Dun posted:

that’s incorrect though.

the fascists are using the social controls.

The liberals aren’t using them because they believe in the myth of harmony, that if there is democracy the best choice will eventually be made by the people. they had (and used) these tools for destabilization outside the US of authoritarian countries, not for control within the US. this is because of privilege arising from their class.

the right wing and fash basically just went yep that looks good we’ll be happy to use that.
so the outcome was trump, but your reason why was wrong.

I think there is awareness now, but still no willingness to respond.

Skaffen-Amtiskaw posted:

What mixed messages.

The Oldest Man posted:

Liberals will very happily hold both the thoughts of "everyone will freely choose this and must be allowed to make their own choices" and "people have to be propagandized to choose this because they might choose Wrong" simultaneously without issue.

Rhesus Pieces posted:

https://twitter.com/EvilGalProds/status/1675886626797670401?s=20

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

lol who's cheerleading for him

Akratic Method posted:

he was threatening to gently caress up stuff like NATO, which is part of the way the US manages its empire, so yeah I think it was. If we were to piss off all our allies then we’d be hard pressed to maintain our resource access on hard power alone.

As far as his domestic policies, I do think his dumb rear end ideas were too bad even for the right wing, in that they’re so utterly short-term that the more sensible parts of the ruling class realize he’s bad for the country. see also: CSPAM accelerationists cheerleading for him

Akratic Method posted:

he was threatening to gently caress up stuff like NATO, which is part of the way the US manages its empire, so yeah I think it was. If we were to piss off all our allies then we’d be hard pressed to maintain our resource access on hard power alone.

As far as his domestic policies, I do think his dumb rear end ideas were too bad even for the right wing, in that they’re so utterly short-term that the more sensible parts of the ruling class realize he’s bad for the country. see also: CSPAM accelerationists cheerleading for him

spacetoaster posted:

I think it was great that Trump made funding Historically Black Colleges and Universities a permanent thing.

The Democrats are mad about it because they liked making POC beg them every year.

He also gave more money for Pell Grants.

Rhesus Pieces posted:

https://twitter.com/EvilGalProds/status/1675886626797670401?s=20