Every democracy must be a psychological-warfare state

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Every democracy must be a psychological-warfare state, Mencius Moldbug argues:

Most people get their opinions from others. If public opinion commands the power of the State, the power to inform is the power to command the State. Just as you will seldom find a stack of twenties on the sidewalk, this power will not just be waving around in the breeze. Someone will capture it, and hold it until it is torn from their hands.

Even if you have not been reading UR long and remain a good democrat, it disturbs you to see the resemblance between political communication and commercial advertising. This is because you know the latter consists largely of psychological-warfare tropes (as per Bernays, Lippmann, and the like). Their goal is not to inform you, but to control your behavior. You know this. And yet…

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Jim: That is a technical way of saying it works just as well as the most expensive, high-tech catalysts. That is a specific expression of a general phenomenon.
T. Beholder: Jim says: LLMs now provide (a) and (c) It also provides (b) to some of the Pointy Haired Bosses, if as a mixed blessing. In that the big downside is having much fewer subordinates involved in BS production, but the upside is perfect excuse for a purge and then having much fewer potential backstabbers.
Jim: LOL.
Isegoria: Well, we certainly haven’t ascended to become beings of pure energy.
Wanweilin: …and yet we remain human after millions of years.
Jim: For the avoidance of doubt, that is a jab at “people” vibing the progress of their codebases by lines accreted.
Jim: T. Beholder: “For one, let’s remember that more powerful computers did not help to write and optimize a better code, but rather allowed greater inefficiency. Thus lowering standards for software to the levels that would be considered absurd but a few years earlier. The Daily WTF found IIRC embedded Java machines whose only purpose was to perform simple arithmetic operations with string constants.” The objective functions of that code were and are: (a) something that looks like it works...
VXXC: Strangely enough, when one returns to our common roots of armed raiding combined with presently energy production dominance, and we covered the insurance angle via DFC Chubb, how odd the success when one has a country not a global market… and doesn’t want the blasted ground. I refer to the present matter of the Pirates of Persia and their Boomer resistance allies.
T. Beholder: He is almost certainly wrong on LLM keeping the verbal lawns shapely. For one, let’s remember that more powerful computers did not help to write and optimize a better code, but rather allowed greater inefficiency. Thus lowering standards for software to the levels that would be considered absurd but a few years earlier. The Daily WTF found IIRC embedded Java machines whose only purpose was to perform simple arithmetic operations with string constants. So instead it’s one more way so-called...
Jim: The legitimacy of the American regime is drawn from the Constitution accepted by the Founding Fathers in 1789. Did the Founding Fathers intend to arm Blacks, Mexicans, traffic cops, women, enforcers of divorce “court” orders, SWAT, Israelis, or the institutional progeny of slave patrol against normal white Americans? The Founding Fathers dueled. Do the American Bar Association, National Judicial College et al. have any right to prohibit normal white Americans from privately settling...
Gaikokumaniakku: “Vannevar Bush once said that the unity of decision under a totalitarian regime was a recipe for making colossal technological mistakes, whereas the prevalent confusion of decision-making in a democracy was more efficient. He could not have anticipated the tortuous system of procrastination that characterizes modern American defense procurement.” I used to quote William S. Lind, who used to compare American defense procurement to Soviet defense procurement. Any sufficiently corrupt...
Gaikokumaniakku: Note that obviously non-white wrongdoers are often documented as white in order to throw off official statistics.
Jim: I, an AI enjoyer, have been assured by my fellow AI enjoyers that quantity of lines of code has become a relevant metric at long last. I look forward to computers obeying my every whim. May the imminent godlike superintelligence have mercy on our souls.
Jim: In any case, never listen to a woman purporting to speak in authority on the raising up of boys. The sensitive young white teen was born to go to war. He should be set loose upon Africa, the Middle East, India, and elsewhere with a Toyota Hilux, some automatic weaponry, and a gas and ammunition ration, provided only that consorting with the local fauna be punishable by death.
Jim: The things you know form the threads of your thought.
Isegoria: Give me a minute, David, to Google “Bob Dylan”…
Anomaly UK: Of teenage boys who are incapable of learning by memorization because it is unnatural and they are not academically inclined, how many can name 11 members of their favourite sports team?
David Foster: Phileas Frogg..”David Starkey has been arguing for ages that memorization is a key cognitive skill that is missing from modern education. He’s not wrong”…here& #8217;s an analogy I came up with: A song by Jakob Dylan includes the following lines: Cupid, don’t draw back your bow Sam Cooke didn’t know what I know …note that in order to understand these two simple lines, you’d have to know several things: 1)You need to know that, in mythology, Cupid symbolizes love 2)And that...
T. Beholder: Miscellanea: The War in Iran In which he repeats “teh People are ekshully American sympathizers, Regime is Sauron” meme once more. The problem with acoup.blog is that Devereaux definitely can research and think for himself… right until the moment any subject touches some tripwire of MiniTru (be it $CURRENT_THING or cone-sensus of Marxism academia). Then he twitches, goes into full glass-eyed «Yes – Dnyarri – I – wish – to – know – about –...
T. Beholder: The ascendancy of armor plate over gunshot and early shells was so fleeting that some analysts are prone to make light of the ram. But writings of the 1870s and 1880s extolled the ram. As usual. If it noticeably contributed to superiority of the Eternal Brit (or later Brit 2.0), it was Predestination, otherwise a fleeting fad. Hence taunts like «But before, and before, and ever so long before…» from those in the know. through a gauntlet of effective fire that was short, only a half...

Isegoria

Every democracy must be a psychological-warfare state

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