Hacker News Reader

Comment by oneoff786 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah consider me unconvinced. People have a tendency to perceive grand displays of incompetence as secret signs of vast competence. It rarely is.

View on HN

I would argue that anything that can be on the magnitude of "vast" should be considered as powerful. Power is not in the message per se, but in its distribution.

I think it is part of the reason, but not the whole of it. Different messages for different reasons/groups. They'd like to

* Actually convince people of things, some of which will be unbelievable because there are plenty of incompetent evil regimes out there.

* Just spew enough bullshit that people give up trying to figure out what's right.

* Remind the population that of their power, as indicated here.

* Provide their followers with permission -- even if propaganda is not really believable, they are implicitly telling their own followers that they won't be punished for behaving as if it is true.

> "grand displays of incompetence as secret signs of vast competence"

This is the "Donald Trump is actually playing infinitely complex 4-dimensional chess" line of thought.

Alternatively he is just trapping people psychologically: once you have agreed with someone you will later rationalise your agreement to avoid cognitive dissonance, and you keep doubling-down on that agreement . . . since confronting your false beliefs would be so psychologically difficult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/talking-ourselves-into-it

Edit: to fight it, perhaps create a psychologically plausible excuse for why everyone fell for his shit? Give people an out.

Pretty much. Putin’s invasion as well. I’m also reminded of Netflix’s murder documentary, Evil Genius. This show covered the pizza bomber and made an effort to suggest the perpetrator’s were very intelligent. But they were clearly mentally I’ll and made many pathetically dumb blunders, including proactively telling the police that they weren’t behind the pizza bomber when they had no reason to be associated with it in the first place.

Same. The sad reality is that what the article calls "silly, unpersuasive propaganda" still works on a ton of people.

But it does work on the timid segment of the population. Some will repeat lies willfully, some will be convinced by lies, and some will be so afraid of lies as to not dare say the truth

It's really not useful to put people in categories of doing these things by their fundamental nature, or not.

I think nearly everyone has lied at some point, most consequentially. Who hasn't been taken by a lie, or repeated something they knew they couldn't verify? I'm pretty confident in my positions and outspoken about them but I don't always speak up when I ought, and I often speak up when I shouldn't.

There is no "timid segment of the population" there is only us. It's much more constructive to study the pressures, constraints, incentives, and conditions that lead individuals and groups into these actions.

That some individuals may occasionally be fooled does not change the fact that large subsets of the population just guzzle down whatever drivel their chosen political pundit makes up that day. It’s plenty useful to acknowledge the presence of collective brain rot.

sounds like it worked

Reply on news.ycombinator.com