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from the By-the-inch,-it's-a-cinch-but-a-mile-takes-a-while dept.
We've previously discussed ( https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/12/11/1847236 ) how it becomes impossible to reverse the polarization of a community once their differences become too great, and how that plays out both here at SN and in the wider world. Science Blog has a piece ( https://scienceblog.com/527745/computer-model-seeks-to-explain-the-spread-of-misinformation-and-suggest-counter-measures/ ) about a PLOS paper titled "Cognitive cascades: How to model (and potentially counter) the spread of fake news" ( https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261811 ) which uses an interesting computer model to explore how this actually happens.
The model demonstrated that if the new information is too much at odds with a person's existing belief, it will be ignored. Furthermore, if that belief is connected with the person's identity, their current belief will be strengthened as a defense against cognitive dissonance. Interestingly, though, a succession of new information that gradually nudge the person to adjust their beliefs can, over time, cause the person to adopt a belief that is very different from the one they started with. This sounds like how psy-ops manipulate targets to accept extreme views.
What was the gradual change of ideas that have led national political parties to be ever more different from one another, and who fed them those messages?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 16 2022, @08:58PM
>To oversimplify, if we look at the human brain as 2 hemispheres, with one being more imagination and creativity where much of the ego is, and the other side rational ("critical thinking"), the more emotional / impulsive side wins out in crises.
It's nothing to do with the hemispheres, and everything to do with the amygdala and hypothalamus and executive feedback loops.
>they formulated a republic that became one of the greatest nations on earth.
They had the benefit of a largely uncontested and immensely wealthy land possessed of virtually every resource in an era when technology was sufficiently advanced for efficient extraction of that wealth. They had the biggest leg-up of any nation in the world. This is a correlation/causation issue and I'd posit that given the state of affairs today it's reflective of the fact that the system, like all governments before it, is the problem. The fact of the matter is that it is exploitable, and has been exploited, and has been so for decades largely unchallenged because of the immense inertia it possesses. And all the process does is obfuscate by implying itself as democratic while ingraining a self-perpetuating aristocracy who at the end of the day tends to be incompetent because there simply isn't a real metric to measure them against.