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Mercer

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Pulled the trigger for, and coordinated hundreds of firing squads himself and ended up murdering hundreds of civilians in Cuba, Central, and South America before meeting the same fate himself. Great guy, bravely standing up to unarmed civilians like that. Adding to his leftist legend, he did not discriminate. Men, women, children, it did not matter, if you didn't hold the same beliefs that he did, you were dead. Every time I see some clueless pussy walking around in a Che shirt I don't want to argue/educate, I just calculate my chances of not getting arrested if I punch them in their parasitic face.

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Wish there was more explanation to the two graphs above, as well as more specific references cited so it can be properly examined. Seen these before, but feels like part of the picture is missing. In the second graph for example... Wonder why they don't call out the number of deaths the heading is representing? Seems to me it would be much more impactful to mention how with as many gun deaths as we hear about in media, it actually affects a fraction of 1% of the US population and that doesn't even rank in the top 15 causes of death in the USA. Would assume terrorism is even far less than that.

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@misteravenIt's from Bill Gate's twitter, not sure if they're just his numbers, or if you can find any citations via image search.

 

Hit's my confirmation bias though, news is entertainment, and that's a reflections of how our brains work when given a choice. Like how often are we murdering in North America, VS,  how often murder occurs in various venues of entertainment, like video games, tv, movies, books, etc. as an example. I'd assume it would be over represented in the media due to natural market forces.

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Confirmation bias is not a good thing, it's part of errors we are all prone to make in thinking.  As for the data above, on the one hand I have no doubt that the media is biased in reporting many, many things, and there is plenty that gets over/under reported.  Having said that though, the data provided is flawed in multiple ways, enough to make the true intentions of that report questionable.  It's somewhat similar to taking L.A. and Iowa newspapers and using them to say that the entire media over reports on movie stars and pig farms.

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Mainstream media fell apart as soon as we moved away from local news to a focus on national news stories. Believe that this planted the seed to what we're seeing now where everyone thinks its their business to tell others how to live, while their own lives are often a mess. Also lays the foundation for the dichotomy we see where everyone is picking sides and the emotionally driven arguments that if you don't agree with me than you must be on the opposing side of the debate.

 

That being said, its easy for people to forget that news is a business and businesses exist to make money. Its far from the altruistic and unbiased reporting we idealize the news as. I've personally sat in enough meetings to know for fact how completely manipulated it all is, from the obvious shit like the click bait headlines, through to the more subtle stuff like the psycho linguistics of how a story is written, and even less obvious shit than that, like intentionally incorrect information and typos.

 

In fact, (not to derail the thread) but here's a document I came across when doing some research on gun control. (There are many others that are similar) Both fascinating and scary when you consider the work that goes into understanding human behaviors and what compels specific intended reaction and how that's being applied by people that have clearly stated agendas.

 

 

gun-violencemessaging-guide-pdf-1.pdf

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@One Man BannedI could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure anyone that holds beliefs/convictions has a confirmation bias, which is why exploiting them is so commonplace.

 

Perfect Example: I hold the belief there is no better government ,than no government, so this article about a stage 4 cancer patient being sentenced to prison fits right into my pre-held belief regarding this subject very neatly and I find it compelling.

 

809611407_ScreenShot2019-06-13at10_24_08PM.png.e9c8b20b62fad8b6ddaa7c19d837f671.png

 

 

http://www.fox7austin.com/news/cancer-patient-who-ordered-thc-chocolates-to-self-medicate-gets-4-years-in-prison

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Here's a couple more to prove my point...

 

Also.... https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/

 

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith–Mundt_Act

 

No doubt you'll find a bunch of shrills in the media proclaiming the repeal was a good thing for the 1st amendment right we all love and respect, but reality is under the Obama administration they repealed the legislation that prevented the Government from investing into and actively conducting propaganda efforts inside the USA.

online-and-off-the-record.pdf march-for-our-lives-toolkit.pdf guns.pdf ARS-GVP-Conversation-Guide.pdf

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I believe it's actually more that people who hold specific beliefs may have a tendency toward confirmation bias relative to those beliefs.  Whether it will occur is probably more related to factors such as that person's awareness and whether they challenge info that confirms/denies their beliefs vs merely accepting info that fits their views.  As a present example, as I said, I don't doubt that the media over/under reports on issues, somewhat in line with what that tweet said.  But, if you examine the facts they're listing, the facts are pretty flawed.  They use 2 newspapers to represent all media, already suspect as described and I would also wonder why they selected those 2 papers.  One of those papers is from England.  The time period they use is 1999-2016.  Seems like an odd, random year to start from, as well as an odd number of years for a study.  While I don't know the rationale behind what year they started from or how many years they looked through they do start their very limited search a few years before 9/11, so of course coverage of terrorism and related topics exploded (no pun intended?) in the years after.  Likewise, they use 2 papers representing areas that have been subject to terrorist attack so only a given that they have more reporting on terrorism.  I imagine if they really looked across newspapers they'd likely find more time wasted on reporting weather than anything else, followed by maybe anti-Trump or anti-gun stories.  Again, the point here is that even if Bill Gates and Co. are correct, the info they're putting out to prove such is flawed.  Beyond that, I would expect someone like Bill Gates should be able to look at that data and understand that prior to tweeting it.    

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@One Man Bannedit's not a phenomenon related specific beliefs IMO. For example, if I have a random belief people with red hats are assholes, I'll get a little confirmation bias every time I see someone in a red hat  do some asshole shit. If I'm indifferent to whether or not a person wears a red hat, and see someone do some asshole shit in a red hat, there's no confirmation bias there because I didn't hold a related  belief before witnessing. If I like people in Red hats, and even wear a red hat myself I probably won't re-examine my own bias either, but that's not confirmation bias. My beliefs prior to witnessing new data don't need to be "right or wrong" to experience confirmation bias, they only need to exist.

 

Confirmation bias is appealing to most people because it allows us to avoid re-examining our beliefs every time we examine new data. There's also the appeal of thinking to yourself "see, I was right" which is more enjoyable than "damn, I was wrong". Granted, it's a good idea to stay open minded, and expose yourself to unsettling facts that force you to re-examine your beliefs, but not to the point where you don't hold any pre-existing beliefs to confirm. I might think vaccinating is a good idea, and see anti-vax kids getting measles, even though I experience confirmation bias, that doesn't mean my opinions on the subject are any less valid.

 

 @misteraven agreed, being skilled in propaganda is the first major requirement to becoming an elected politician. There's no better way to effect political change in a democracy once in power, than having the most compelling propaganda, pushing the political outcome in your favor. Just as in business, marketing strategy is key, in the political world, a lot of resources are devoted towards "public relations campaigning" for legislation, or devoted towards performing studies, sponsoring statistical evidence that supports political platforms, and legitimizes governmental overreach.

 

To me, that's not what those charts represented. It seems like people have a bias for entertainment, that drives higher ratings when you run a story on a juicy murder, or some asshole that abused an animal, as opposed to presenting important information that would actually effect your audiences decisions in their daily lives. Kind of like we prefer news almost entirely for it's entertainment value, regardless of it's political implications. That's why most people aren't watching Bloomberg, and reading the economist. They're out there watching the weather girl with giant tits in the tight dress, over the middle aged meteorologist lady, clicking through bullshit celebrity gossip articles, and taking in other bullshit fluff news stories.

 

Granted, I think this is being exploited heavily by the powers that be, but god damn we make it so easy it's hard to blame them for it.

Edited by Mercer
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information

 

The Committee on Public Information (1917–1919), also known as the CPI or the Creel Committee, was an independent agency of the government of the United States created to influence public opinion to support US participation in World War I.

 

This was how sophisticated they were literally 100 years ago... You'd be a fool to think they didn't continue this effort, legal or not, and where the science and ambition has evolved to since. 

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When I say a specific belief I mean any of your singular beliefs, the men in red hats could be one.  Your definition of confirmation bias is somewhat correct.  It says that if you hold a specific belief, it will be your tendency to seek out that which supports those beliefs, and at the same time, you will ignore and/or filter out that which challenges or opposes those beliefs.  It's an error in thinking, and can be awful if you consider something like a teen kid getting into hate groups or a researcher trying to cure a disease and ignoring negative findings.  Also, it does leave you open for other possible thinking errors like attribution bias. The other important distinction here is about feeling right or wrong.  I'm not so sure that a person enjoys the fact that they were right so much as they enjoy the fact that they weren't wrong.  If you're right you'll move on and forget about it, but if you're wrong, it will nag at you.  So in confirmation bias you ignore or filter out that which doesn't seem to fit, and seek/accept that which does, to spare yourself internal conflict.  To connect this to the idea of propaganda, one way you can influence/manipulate people is by creating that internal conflict, and I suppose another would be to play to a supportive group's bias if you wanted to strengthen your supporters beliefs.    

 

Honestly much of this stuff is not sophisticated and is public knowledge, we just don't teach it or explain it to people.  Also unfortunate that too much personal info is public now (and is easier to analyze w/ technology) and that info can be used to shape your behavior.  All of this stuff comes from social psychology and behaviorism and is used by marketing/advertising, spin doctors, grocery stores, even heard an ingenious use by car salesmen.

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