Joseph Bendoski's Blog

Statistics remove emotion from things. Listing the number of people killed by drunk drivers in a single year has little emotional impact on promoting outrage and engaging activists, but a single detailed story of an individual can.

It is the details that fill the human imagination with images, and stories, and from that comes empathy and emotion.

Many people are familiar with selection bias, choosing only stories that fit a specific political ideology or agenda.

But there is another type of bias that allows media to address a story, but also downed it in boredom: detail bias. The choice to include or leave out details that could provoke emotion based on what the news organization wants.

“On December 2nd, 1980, four American women were killed in El Salvador.”

For some news organizations, that is all they reported. That the event happened. It is language that attempts to convert the occurrence to almost the level of a statistic. Other pieces of the language are part of the propaganda and persuasion as well. The statement: “were killed” removes the subject. No one is being blamed in the news report. No one is being investigated. It, too, is part of trying to remove emotion and outrage from the story.

Other news organizations reported the event as follows: “The El Salvador army murdered four American nuns. The women donated their time to help in schools, education programs, and to provide food and health care. They were raped and bruised as an indication that they may have been tortured before being executed. One woman had her underwear stuffed in her mouth, another had it wrapped around her head. The last two had their underwear around their ankles, convered in blood. One woman’s face exploed out the front where the bullet exited. They were found in shallow dirt graves.”

The second story includes a multitiude of details intended to provoke emotion and outrage. It also points a finger of blame to direct the outrage of people. Also note that while the second one uses details the provoke emotion, it stays away from bias language, giving it the appearance of simply being the facts.

Both news reports are true, but both are intended to manipulate their audience in a very different ways.

Next time we will cover Narrative truth…How can something that is only true in a story change how people see the real world?

Epistemic Bubbles (newsletter July 5, 2022)

Epistemic bubbles function like echo chambers; however, instead of strengthening opinions, they only allow certain opinions in. As politicians often state, “they control the narrative.”

In 2008 Georgia (a former member of the U.S.S.R.) experienced a lot of political tension with Russia, and both began placing additional military forces along their border. Then, one morning, shooting started, and Russian tanks rolled into Georgian territory. Simultaneously, a massive wave of hacker attacks bombarded the Georgian communication networks and television stations, shutting down all internal communications and preventing Georgia from appealing to western allies for help.

Russia continued to produce news and television in Georgia and globally. They told a story that Georgian soldiers started firing on their own people and that Russia had sent troops in on a peacekeeping mission.

Russia turned the entire world into an epistemic bubble that would only hear the Russian side of the story and explanation of events.

After two days, the hack attack stopped, and Georgia could finally communicate again. They appealed to their western allies. But those allies had only heard the Russian side of events for two days. The narrative was already in place. Georgia was told an investigation was needed before any intervention could take place.

To this day, Russian troops occupy 20% of Georgia. They claim to be protecting the Georgian people.

In the 1930s B. F. Skinner introduced a number of new ideas to the behaviorism theory of psychology. He famously got animals to perform all types of tasks no one thought possible, all through simple rewards.

As the ideas of behaviorism were tested on people, it became clear that because of the strong social nature of humans, praise was powerful reward, made more potent by the authority or popularity of the individual giving the praise. As anyone who got a random compliment from one of the popular kids in school can attest.

Over the years, a multitude of studies how been done on how to reshape mindset based on the type of praise given to individuals. Children repeatedly praised for efforts, not talent develop a mindset of effort. Those praised for talent and ability try less at things they believe that ‘don’t have a talent for.’ Their fundamental perception on how the world works is shaped by the nature of the praise given.

Leaders create a trickle down effect of beliefs and values, as they bestow praise and honor on those around them for expressing certain beliefs or values, those ideals intensify and the second tier of leadership is more likely to praise those below them for the same and so on.

As the Nazis rose to power they created a youth organization called the Hitler Youth. The group was created to train German boys to become good and effective soldiers. It also created an evironment where leaders help positions of authority and could praise the youth for haviing the right attidues and values, thus strengthening the Nazi ideals in the next generation.

The true mass effect of this system was because the Nazis held all the political power, they could create positions of honor and authority out of thin air, and leverage them to bolster their own ideology.

[Additional notes by Jay Nichols] A similar effect can be seen on social media. Praise is distributed by likes, and comments on any given post. Thus the echo chamber is not just a place where people have their own ideas and beliefs echoed back by people who believe the same, but those beliefs and values are strengthened through praise.

[Author Notes]

I came across another study about praise that covered the implication for businesses. The company Jetblue has a famous record for customer service. They are always rated in the top 10% of companies. One of their secrets is an internal social network where praise is given for positive interactions with customers, and rewards points given. It becomes really interesting when the connection between this praise network and it customers is studied. For every 10% increase in the praise on the digital network, there is a 2% increase in customer retention. So, an increase of 100% praise means and increase of 20% retention.

It’s a beautiful example not only of how praise shapes behavior and interactions, but also how it can be used in a positive way.

Human trust in authority begins early in life. For most of us, instruction comes from parents during childhood, then expands to teachers and other members of the community. Adolescence urges a rebellion against authority, but eventually, that urge fades, and the lessons of childhood return, the fundamental idea the someone else knows more, knows better and you should trust them.

This idea of someone else knowing more is fundamental to our understanding of the world. It is a social trust in the information and authority of those people. There is a multitude of things that I know about science that I haven’t experienced firsthand. I have never seen the round world from space. I have never even done the math that proves it. I know, because I trust in the authority of those that taught me. The world is just too big to know everything firsthand, and we are a social species. Authority is essential the communication of knowledge.

It is in that place of fact versus opinion that this flaw is most often exploited. The teachers that taught me the basic principles of mathematics, that world was indeed round, were hired by the government and worked for the government. It builds a baseline of trust between people and those that govern them. But consider the disaster when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant reactor melted down. The government leaned on this idea of authority and used it to lie to the people about what happened, even today, the official story is that only thirty-one people died. Similarly, in China, children are taught the basics of reading and writing by their government are also taught a very different version of the events at Tiananmen square then the rest of the world believes.

The Nobel Prize disease; the number of times winners of the Nobel Prize have used their reputations to promote pseudoscience has become so many that it has its own name, and among them is Pierre Curie.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a psychic medium by the name of Eusapia Palladino began to gain popularity in England and in 1895 she was invited to The Society for Psychical Research. At the time, the idea of the psychic phenomenon was new and very serious research was being done to see if it could be validated.

It was found that Paladino was using sleight of hand tricks to fool participants. She had a rubber bag with air into that she used to move curtains and other light objects. She would tie hair strings to objects to move them, and often used hand-holding circles during her sessions. During this hand-holding moment, she would guide the hands of the person on her left and right together, so that they held each other's hand, and no one was holding hers, thus allowing to her perform all sorts of illusion all while people thought she couldn’t move her hands.

After this, Palladino was banned from the Society for Psychical Research as a fraud. But it didn’t end her career. When world-famous Nobel Prize winner Pierre Curie became a fan of hers, Palladino was once again accepted.

Curie’s reputation as a man of science allowed Palladio to pedal her lies for decades more. After all if he, who knew so much about the importance of evidence in science and truth, believed her, she had to genuine, right?

Devil music.

Rock and Roll began in 1940, and by the 1950s it swept up the younger generations across America and into Europe. But a lot of older people didn’t like the new music style (oddly enough this is a universal reaction, every older generation doesn’t like the music of the younger generation, a concept known as juvenoia.) In reaction to the music they didn’t like, they began to tell stories of moral decay caused by this new music.

They said it corrupted people souls and led to alcoholism, drug use, and promiscuity. It had little impact on most people’s choice to listen to the music.

A new tactic was developed. Young people who were in prison for various reasons and had listened to rock and roll were told about the damaging impact it had on them. It was the reason they had done terrible things. The prisoners were eager for a scapegoat for their choices and agreed; Rock and roll was the problem. Radio shows and television had interviews with these young people ever telling their stories that had become criminals all starting with rock and roll.

It had a dampening effect on music sales. It didn’t stop the movement, but some people believed.

That is the drive of great propaganda, not to get everyone, no single technique will do that, but to get some with each different stroke.

A story was told that explain a phenomenon, and people started to believe it. There was no science to back it up, just a story. A causal narrative.

In the recent comedy Good Omens, the character Adam begins to dive deep in various conspiracy theories. When his friends try to tell it’s not real, his response is, “Guys, this isn’t just stuff on the internet. These are magazines.”

The case he is making is a common one. He is pointing out that a magazine has a cost to production. Someone writes the articles, someone else read them and decides they are worth the space in the magazine, cost of printing, and shipping; therefore, if they are lies they will cost; thus they must be true. There is a popularity fallacy at work here as well, but I covered that last week.

It’s a similar case to the old phrase, “and I couldn’t say it on tv if it wasn’t true.”

Once again the idea behind it is that the greater the financial investment in an idea or statement, the greater the cost at disproving, therefore it is irrational to spend a lot of money on lies….but then again there was Bernie Madoff, the purveyor of one of the most expensive lies in all history.

Madoff started his investment copy in 1960 with penny stocks and got a loan from his father. His company grew and promised incredible returns on investments, and when called upon delivered, but in 1999 it was discovered that his profits and returns were mathematically impossible, however at the time no one would listen. Madoff continued his lies and grew into a multi-billion-dollar business, in the much the fashion of the Wolf of Wall Street. He looked like the part. The financial investment in his lies fell into the Second Flaw. It was irrational that anyone would invest as much into their lies as Madoff was, so he continued to run his business. He wasn’t caught until 2008.

The odd thing is that Madoff is the exception, not the rule. The reason this is a fundamental flaw of truth is that most of the time, financial investment is a good indicator of truth. Most people don’t invest a lot of money in lies that can be disproven. It’s a classic problem of thinking fast and slow. The fast thinking tries to use this short cut because it works most the time. The problem occurs when someone recognizes how the quick thinking can be taken advantage of, like Madoff. He realized if he looked professional, with enough polish people would believe him, and trust him with their money. And they did.

Popularity: The base assumption here is that if so many people believe it, then it can’t be wrong. Behind this rest, the central idea that if a group is large enough, then someone will have investigated it and found the truth. The larger the group, the more likely this is possible.

However, there is a concept of clustering that allows companies, politicians, and social movement leaders to leverage this flaw of truth.

In a recent survey, it was found that over 32 million people believe in alien abduction. THAT SOUNDS HUGE! But consider the global population out of 7 billion that is only 0.45% and almost sounds too low. It also doesn’t factor in that most people who believe in alien abduction are teenagers. If I leave off the extra facts, then I can claim the popularity flaw the support my idea. By clustering it, I can make a persuasive case using the popularity flaw.

The use of propaganda here is subtle and indirect. As a result of this study, a new type of influence was developed. When standard techniques of persuasion failed, then a team would try to identify what was the motivation behind the behavior that would change (example: picking up kids late.) The team would then create a strategy for redefining that motivation (fines=pay to pick kids up late.) The goal being to reshape the motivation into one that could be influenced.

After the Council of Nicaea declared usury a Christian sin, it redefined how banks and loans functioned across all Christendom. Now the interest on a loan was no longer a business decision, but a moral one. Banks across Rome began to collapse when their interest rates didn’t bring enough revenue to sustain their business. This allowed for powerful religious leaders to enter the banking business with few competitors. Redefining interest and loans as a moral principle made people more likely to seek out loans from religious leaders and churches.

 Notes on the heading:

 The connection between the moral laws laid down at Nicaea and church running banks is a thin one. Throughout most of human history, churches and temples functioned as banks, providing loans for those that needed them.

I wanted to use the example of the Council of Nicaea as it was referenced in an earlier chapter heading and therefore readers would be familiar with it.

I think my biggest worry is not that I have seen this tactic used often, but rather that it might be.

A school was having trouble with mothers picking up their children late after school. It made the teachers have to stay late, waiting for parents to arrive. They introduced a fine system for every time a mother was late.

The original motivator for picking up a child on time was guilt. If you picked up your kids late, you were not a good parent.

The fine established a new way to evaluate that decision. You could simply pay if you need more time at the grocery store, or to finish a conversation with a good friend, or even need a nap.

The fine system was disastrous, and more mothers were late picking up their children than ever before, and they were late more often. The system was removed, but the behavior didn’t change back. You see the fine system introduced a new way of making decisions for the mothers, and even when it was gone, their new way of making choices wasn’t.

In the late 1700s Frederick the 2nd, King of Prussia thought the widespread adoption of potatoes would lower the price of other food staples and improve the economic welfare of his people. The problem is the potato is not an instantly attractive food, it’s not like a mango. It doesn’t wow with sweetness and flavor. Alone it has almost no flavor, so how it tastes is all about how you prepare it, which makes it hard to evaluate. At first, he forced them on his army as rations, so the soldiers would get used to them and hopefully request them at home. It didn't’ work.

Second, he ordered peasants to plant them under threat of having their ears and noses cut off. The message the people got was that the value of the potato was low, so no one wanted them. What they learned was “if the king is willing to cut off my nose if I don't eat them, they must be terrible.”

That’s when Frederick brought in his propaganda committee to change the way people thought about potatoes. Their idea was a royal potato field guarded on all sides. Once again, the message was clear. Potatoes were something rare and special. The people began to demand them, and it became a staple across all of Europe.

Even today, hundreds of years later potatoes are staples of Europeans and Americans. All because a propaganda committee wanted to change the way people think about them.

 Notes on the heading:

 While the early techniques of Frederik the Second were tyrannical, I wanted to use this reference point to identify that not all propaganda campaigns have been negative. Email was largely driven by propaganda campaigns in the 1990s. It also introduces the idea of reputation, popularity and celebrity to the tools of persuaders.

This tool of advertisers is seen on every red carpet as fashion and jewelry designers try to get their creations noticed and attached to the reputation and celebrity of certain individuals. The psychology behind this is simple. Most people have an innate drive to be better, this often results in comparisons to know how we are holding up against humanity as whole, and our own personal progress. Within comparative thinking people create benchmarks and aspirations. We imagine a dream life and look around to see who best embodies that, then we try to recreate their success in our life. We try to do as they do. Thus, it was with royal potatoes and is with modern day celebrities and the companies that market through them.