Anti-Propaganda

I wrote a list of items that we should be teaching people to inoculate them against this shit ever happening again:

I grew up with my grandparents who were fairly well read, and whose parents and grandparents fought overseas, having immigrated from Europe. I remember many things they spoke of, but most relevant would be otherwise unimaginable concepts such as police states, martial law, curfews, famine, hyperinflation, genocide.

Mum completed her psychology degree while homeschooling us - she taught us many fascinating phenomena such as: peer pressure, by-stander effect, the Milgram experiment, Stanford Prison experiment, paranoia, phobias, obsessive compulsive disorders, and cognitive biases (there are many - an entire taxonomy, if you're interested)

My degree is in computer science, which includes some math, logic and philosophy. One key aspect of logic is understanding the logical fallacies - one very relevant example is argument by authority.

My studies also lead me to further reading in cynicism and skepticism, but also to understand that all models and abstractions are inherently limited and flawed (see Goedel, and also 'The Law of Leaky Abstractions'), and that all man-made systems are prone to failure (with 100% predictability - it's a matter of when, not if), and that one of the most common causes of failure is human factors.

The above points lead me to maintain an appreciation of both the limits of, and the beautiful practicality of human intuitive reasoning - essentially all human thought is intuitive, even when formalized, at which point it is necessarily corrupted by abstraction (eg Newtonian physics vs relativity vs quantum)

I attended a number of marketing lectures, and also studied cults like The People’s Temple, which impressed me with the malleability of social opinions, the tools and techniques applied to that end, and the human cognitive biases they leverage. One fascinating example is the principle of selective attention (single focus), which pickpockets and magicians heavily rely on. Another great one is 'negative space', ie our predisposition to overlook what is NOT there. A wonderful kiwi author wrote a great story illustrating this one beautifully - "Schnitzel von Krumm - forget me not", haha

Since 2014, I became interested in hypnosis (not in the sense of a trance, but rather the persuasive power of words), and I began to learn about the tools and techniques of persuasion and propaganda at both the individual and societal level, and how they were applied by those very regimes my grandparents taught me about.

As a systems designer, I recognize the importance of resilience, redundancy, checks and balances. Its amazing to me how often such systems show up in nature, such as ecology and biology. I believe people such as myself are a natural example of such systems existing in human societies. Its not something I set out to do, I'm just like this. Maybe it's the ADHD?