The Political Memes Thread (memes too spicy for Channel Zero)

misteraven · June 14, 2019

1 hour ago, One Man Banned said:

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.

You're hitting on a lot of truth, IMO. In regards to your second paragraph... I think this is purposeful.

If you research the history fo the education system you'll learn that it was developed during the dark ages; during feudalist Europe. Land owners would literally / physically beat children into submission with the purpose of making them subservient in preparation for learning a trade. Later this was refined under the Prussian Model for Education, which forms the basis of the public school system globally and upon which the US school system is acknowledged to be modeled after. Again, you'll find a lot of disinformation, including sites that shrill for those that want to bury this fact, but dig deep enough and you'll find plenty of historical evidence that sheds light on this. The Prussian Model of Education was basically a method the political elite (Monarchs) would subjugate the populace. It was designed as a system of indoctrination from a very tender age, with the belief that the children would grow to become productive subjects to the monarch rather than risk independent thought that could possibly evolve into a threat to their power. Sounds like some crazy tin foil hat shit, but its the truth if you care to look into it for yourself.

This is why kids are taught to sit in their seat for 8 hours and do this for 12 years. Yet there's very little efforts put into creative thought and abstract problem solving, let alone critical analysis, skepticism or rhetoric. Instead its a matter of learning "facts" about history and regurgitating them back. Now its so bad that its literally become test prep, with very little efforts to even pretend that there's practical applications. Willing to bet @6Penniescould chime in with some pretty interesting insight in this regard.

If you have some time, here's a rabbit hole for you... Have a look at the history of the Wikipedia entry for the Prussion Model of Education and note how many times its been changed, what was changed and by whom. Here's a little article that touches on some of what I'm mentioning... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/200808/brief-history-education