Silk Road forums
Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: kmfkewm on June 09, 2013, 05:01 am
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I wonder how we can effectively influence the masses. One thing I have realized very acutely over the past few days is how much of a role genetics have in our perceptions of reality. Different people have different biochemical makeups and this influences the way in which they perceive the world. For example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/republican-democrat-brain-politics-fmri-study_n_2717731.html
Whether you pulled the lever for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney may reflect how your brain copes with risk, new research finds.
The study, which examined the brain activity of 35 men and 47 women registered as either Democrat or Republican, found no difference in the amount of risk people of each political persuasion were willing to take on during a gambling game. But the way the brain processed risk worked differently between the groups, with Republicans showing more activity in an area linked with reward, fear and risky decisions and Democrats showing more activity in a spot related to processing emotion and internal body cues.
The findings hint at basic differences between people with different values, said study researcher Darren Schreiber of the University of Exeter.
"The ability to accurately predict party politics using only brain activity while gambling suggests that investigating basic neural differences between voters may provide us with more powerful insights than the traditional tools of political science," Schreiber said in a statement. [The 10 Greatest Mysteries of the Mind]
The politics of risk
Recent investigations into the psychology of liberals and conservatives have found a number of subtle differences, from conservatives exhibiting more squeamishness to liberals paying less attention to negative stimuli or threats.
A 2011 study published in the journal Current Biology found differences in some brain structures between politically liberal and political conservative young adults. Many of these areas were linked to risk-assessment and decision-making, prompting Schreiber and his colleagues to wonder if they could find differences in how these areas function during risky tasks.
The researchers had previously conducted a study in which people underwent brain scans while playing a gambling game. In each round, the participants saw three numbers, 20, 40 and 80, flash on a screen. If they hit a button while 20 was up, they were guaranteed 20 cents. If they waited for the 40 or 80, they might get a payout of either 40 or 80 cents — but they might also lose that amount of money. Thus, they were choosing between a safe bet and two higher-paying but riskier options.
Using voting records, the researchers found out political party affiliation for 35 of the men and 47 of the women in that study. Political parties aren't a perfect match with ideology, but they come very close, the researchers wrote Feb. 13 in the journal PLOS ONE. Most Democrats hold liberal values, while most Republicans hold conservative values.
Political brains
Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking.
While their brain activity differed, the two groups' behaviors were identical, the study found.
Schreiber and his colleagues can't say whether the functional brain differences nudge people toward a particular ideology or not. The brain changes based on how it is used, so it is possible that acting in a partisan way prompts the differences.
The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs, however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents' political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the researchers wrote.
This study tells me that if I wanted to influence Republicans I would make propaganda playing on their fear. For example, they are already highly afraid of the government and socialism. So even though they are normally against drug legalization, if I was attempting to influence their minds, I would try to convey the message that their tax dollars funding prohibition is a form of socialism, that the rewards from doing this are very small (as evidenced by the large amount of drugs currently used by everybody), and that if they keep supporting prohibition they risk the socialist government stripping all of their rights and taxing them into oblivion in the name of fighting drug use. It is no longer about prohibition or anything to do with drugs, it is all about the totalitarian socialist government robbing them blind and them getting nothing out of it.
On the other hand in the case of democrats I would pick a strategy that plays up on their oversensitivity to emotional cues, as well as perhaps some of their political theory as well. Perhaps an image of a happy rich white man drinking alcohol, and a clearly distressed looking black man sitting in a prison cell, with the accompanying text that prohibition IS racism. Another idea would be an image of a child holding a revolver to his head, open to reveal the bullets, with some of the bullets being MDMA tabs and some of them being actual bullets. That accompanied by text saying that prohibition makes their children play russian roulette with black market pills, and that this risk has not come with the reward of lower drug use rates. I think this would be great as it would play on the fear of republicans as well as create a negative emotional state in democrats that they would link with prohibition. It isn't about drugs and civil liberties anymore, it is about their poor child metaphorically blowing his brains out because of the government. It isn't about fighting for drug users anymore, it is about fighting against racism.
In general I think that is how you influence the behavior of the masses. You don't find people who value different things than you do and try to convince them to value what you value. Rather, you present the things you value as if they are the things that the target audience values. I become more and more convinced the older I get that people are, with few exceptions, set in their belief systems. Younger children are easily molded into any particular belief system (just look at religion), but after a certain age people sort of become cemented into their belief system. So the first strategy is of course influencing the minds of children trying to mold them into what you desire, but that takes generations to be effective, even assuming that you are capable of doing it to the children of the entire population, which is hard to do unless you are already the established power (ie: the government with their D.A.R.E classes). The other strategy is to divide the population into groups that hold different value systems, and then present the sub populations with your values as if your values are things that they already value. You don't try to convince someone that we should legalize drugs, you try to get them to associate legalization with lower taxation, or with fighting racism, or whatever it is that they already value.
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Thru Religion
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Thru Religion
Although I agree that religion greatly influences the behavior of the masses, I think that this vector of control is already quite monopolized. I suppose a better title for this thread would be 'How can I influence the behavior of the masses'.
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I suppose a better title for this thread would be 'How can I influence the behavior of the masses'.
You can't, unless you have a ton of money and the power to influence mass media.
I highly recommend reading "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays.
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I suppose a better title for this thread would be 'How can I influence the behavior of the masses'.
You can't, unless you have a ton of money and the power to influence mass media.
I highly recommend reading "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays.
It sounds like a good book I will probably give it a read. I agree that traditionally large amounts of money were required to influence the masses, but in the age of the internet I think that this will not be as expensive as it traditionally was. To get an advertisement on a major television station costs a ton of money, to expose people to propaganda on the internet is free if you go about it right.
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I suppose a better title for this thread would be 'How can I influence the behavior of the masses'.
You can't, unless you have a ton of money and the power to influence mass media.
I highly recommend reading "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays.
^^^ very true^^^ I get fucking annoyed reading the paper or watching parts of the news that most know is bullshit, manipulated to favour the governments own agenda. Pharmaceutical companies, Gun lobbies, Monsanto e.t.c have the ton of money to influence the media.
If one can filter thru the disinformation the internet is the absolute godsend of this generation. Complex language is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Communication and sharing of information is the key. Education/Knowledge is power when applied.
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It sounds like a good book I will probably give it a read. I agree that traditionally large amounts of money were required to influence the masses, but in the age of the internet I think that this will not be as expensive as it traditionally was. To get an advertisement on a major television station costs a ton of money, to expose people to propaganda on the internet is free if you go about it right.
I agree that it is not as expensive, but it is also not as effective. The best thing about the internet is, that you are absolutely free to choose where to obtain your desired information. You would have a really hard time trying to reach a sufficient number of people. My daily experience is, that the majority of internet users do not have the slightest interest in gathering information besides the big (aka "official") news sources. I think we tend to have a biased view when it comes to this. Just because people like us see the web as an almost bottomless pit of useful (political) information, does not mean, other do as well.
The majority of the population is getting their minds overloaded with TV shows, commercials, Facebook etc. plus working in crappy jobs for minimum wage. They are exhausted and thus don't give a fuck what happens "above", as long as it does not affect them personally (=financially). And nobody can tell me that this is not intentional. People must be kept busy and stupid. Don't question the system. Here, watch fucking Paris Hilton driving a Ferrari on the TV. If you work hard enough, you can have all this, too. BULLSHIT!
Brave, new world...
If one can filter thru the disinformation the internet is the absolute godsend of this generation. Complex language is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Communication and sharing of information is the key. Education/Knowledge is power when applied.
This! And this is exactly why I think the internet as we know it today will not persist much longer. Our governments are not stupid and know what free communication can lead to, just think about what happened in Egypt 2011. I think you could call this the first internet revolution in history. When officials noticed what was going on, they shut down the internet and mobile communications, but it was too late. Believe me, they won't let that happen again.
If you ask me, we are looking at a future of totalitarian systems based on all-embracing control and fear. But hey, I'm just paranoid and a conspiracy theorist. At least that's what I've been told...
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IMO the first step is to rewire your own brain and then start to rewire the brains of those around you in a positive way. Some call this brainwashing, some call it bringing the truth into peoples lives. I call it the latter of course, what do u think OP?