This week I am very much under the influence of a few podcasts which address (or “report” on) topics I find fascinating, yet which are not directly in the “wheelhouse” of my interests.
The topics covered, while somewhat similar, seem rather unconnected (apart from both being related to my own interest in such topics as propaganda and manipulation).
The more recent episode covers an issue referred to as the “Censorship Industrial Complex” — which can be succintly summarized as the following phenomenon:
In the absence of these (sort of) media gatekeepers, that they now don’t have anymore … they’re replacing them with these “tech” gatekeepers — to (sort of) go from the supply side to the demand side and throttle on that side instead.
“LEIGHTON WOODHOUSE EXPLAINS THE CENSORSHIP INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX” https://www.podcastone.com/episode/E232-Leighton-Woodhouse-Explains-Censorship-Industrial-complex [ 27:00 – 27:20 ]
This is discussed both at length and also in detail in the podcast episode [1], and so I will not even attempt to reiterate the many details of the mechanisms involved here, other than to note that the algorithms employed seem to not only decimate (i.e. reduce by maybe about 10%), but nearly annihilate (i.e., more like a 90% reduction in) free speech. This is, however, merely my “gut reaction”, since it is actually *impossible” to assign such quantitative statistics to these operations. Nonetheless, when I decades ago referred to Google as the “Pope of the Internet” [2], it likewise seemed to me to be a “shock and awe” situation of unfathomable scale. To now hear such reports that such censorship is actually taking place on such a huge scale is definitely shocking but not at all in an “awesome” way.
Another podcast episode I wish to draw attention to in this context is more about mainstreaming than it is about censorship — and this episode is probably at no risk whatsoever of ever being censored. In contrast, it is itself quite obvious a mainstream product. Alan Alda, a mainstream celebrity, interviewed Lee McIntyre about a book he published, named “How to Talk to a Science Denier”. Lee McIntyre himself notes that:
I started my book with a quotation that’s attributed to Mark Twain: “It’s easier to fool someone than to convince them that they’ve been fooled”.
Lee McIntyre: Talking to Science Deniers [ https://archive.org/details/qll4jnxpstuwqn6yggwpvf8fashfjx7pevhyr8ry 13:15 – 13:25 ]
What I find most interesting about this episode is that these two “science advocates” both acknowledge that the tactics and techniques the employ are very much the same as the approaches used by so-called “science deniers”. Indeed, the discussion is much more about the science of manipulation (and propaganda methods) than it is about advocacy and /or denial.
You don’t want to close the deal in a conversation. You don’t want to get them to admit they were wrong. You want them to start to doubt and walk away and then their own brain will work on it and then later they will come back and say “I guess you were right”.
Lee McIntyre: Talking to Science Deniers [ https://archive.org/details/qll4jnxpstuwqn6yggwpvf8fashfjx7pevhyr8ry 21:42 – 22:00 ]
Socio Business blog 
1 comment