I break things. Then I put them back together. Then I break them again. Just to show I mean business.

  • 0 Posts
  • 233 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 17th, 2023
  • Ann Archy@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•Trump lashes out after DOJ reveals classified documents were found in his bedroom
    6·
    5 months ago

    Compare how and why people cheer for sports teams. If you’re affiliated you will support any statement in favor of the team, while ignoring, suppressing, or attacking any statements to the contrary.

    You won’t debate a Trump troll out of supporting Trump, because it’s about belonging to a group and showing loyalty regardless of facts. Honestly I’m not surprised he’s doing so well, consider how techy most of us are and still get overwhelmed by what the Internet is shaping up to be. If you’re in your 50’s from a poor rural area, what chance have you got to stand against weaponized online propaganda?

    We are all like this, by the way. The inclination to blind affiliation with groups is the result of very deep, very old, very well studied cognitive structures and behaviors.

    Here’s some introductory reading that might fundamentally change how you perceive people’s participation in groups:

    https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/sociology/conformity
    Sherif’s autokinetic experiment - if enough people around you believe something, you’ll soon believe it too

    https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html
    A similar experiment performed by Solomon Asch

    https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html
    The Robber’s Cave experiment - arbitrarily divide a group into two, and watch the inevitable descent into inter-group conflict (hopeful note: if you make the groups try to overcome a common obstacle, fighting goes away)

    Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Tests - This is an interesting one as well, here’s the idea:

    Experiment: Infiltrating a doomsday cult before, during, and after the date of their supposed apocalypse, Festinger and his fellow scientists noted that instead of losing faith, members doubled-down on their beliefs after the ‘end times’ came and went — eventually believing that their work saved the world.

    Conclusion: When we have two (or more) incompatible thoughts, we adjust them to minimize internal conflict, what Festinger called ‘cognitive dissonance’ — a term that explains the mind state of those unwilling to accept information that conflicts against their belief.

  • Ann Archy@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•Trump’s Truth Social is now a public company. Experts warn its multibillion-dollar valuation defies logic | CNN Business
    0·
    7 months ago

    You know… In my life I’ve had to talk a few people out of scams.

    I know they were scammed, it’s blatantly a scam, the evidence is overwhelming, my experience is solid, everyone I know of’s experience says the same.

    Yet they will argue with you back and forth and never really be satisfied because they want to believe it so much, and I imagine it stings a good bit being told you’re being ripped the fuck off and you’re too stupid or inexperienced to understand that.

    I’m never confrontational about it, I just make it very perfectly clear that proceeding would be extremely ill advised, and that even their own worries brought them to me asking for my opinion because they trust my judgment.

    It scares me how long it takes to convince them, and how often in the end they come to me a month later and I ask them how it went, and they went and bought it anyway, for whatever far fetched rationalization they managed to construct for themselves.

    Psychology is real, psychology is simple, all it takes to control humans is to have no care for anything but yourself.