Why I vote democrat

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

.... to know that the founding was a truly religious experience and that they intended for the country to be based on the 10 commandments, hell even Sarah Palin thinks so.

Kelly,

Do you have a source for your allegation of Palin's views? Like a statement from her? I know she believes in the 10 Commandments. but I have never her her claim that the Founding Fathers "intended for the country to be based on" them. That is, if by "country," you mean the government. If by "country," you mean she thinks it is a good idea for people to adopt the 10 Commandments, and that the people who founded the country believed in them, that is another issue.

Also, the "founding was a truly religious experience" is accurate if you use the "rights come from God" standard that was used at the time. But it was not a religious experience in the manner of a modern Christian being saved kind of experience. It was a stewardship of God's creation self-responsibility--a stepping up to the plate as individuals and doing it so God would not have to intervene--kind of religious experience. (Just so you know, I am not religious.)

About Palin, have you thought this through on the level I mentioned, or or are you merely repeating opinions of other people who like to opine and dislike Palin?

btw - I don't just dislike the progressive media hype machine. I dislike ALL media hype machines.

I merely bashed the progressive one because that's the source you used. Had you used a source of conservative hype, I would have bashed the conservative media hype machine.

The person who best characterized the stuff I dislike about hype machines was Michael Crichton. Here is a quote from another thread I posted back in 2007:

State of Fear

I am starting this thread to discuss a syndrome I found in the book State of Fear by Michael Crichton. I am probably pushing the limits of fair use, but this is very important. I broke it up to make up for the length and I hope this use sells more books for the author and publisher. Please buy the book. It is worth every cent.

The excerpt speaks for itself. The quote is from a crazy professor-almost-prophet type (Hoffman) who showed up suddenly and the hero (Evans). Hoffman starts. (pp. 453-459)

"If you study the media, as my graduate students and I do, seeking to find shifts in normative conceptualization, you discover something extremely interesting. We looked at transcripts of news programs of the major networks—NBC, ABC, CBS. We also looked at stories in the newspapers of New York, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, and Seattle. We counted the frequency of certain concepts in terms used by the media. The results are very striking." He paused.

"What did you find?" Evans said, taking his cue.

"There was a major shift in the fall of 1989. Before that time, the media did not make excessive use of terms such as crisis, catastrophe, cataclysm, plague, or disaster. For example during the 1980s, the word crisis appeared in news reports about as often as the word budget. In addition, prior to 1989, adjectives such as dire, unprecedented, dreaded were not common in television reports or newspaper headlines. But then it all changed."

"In what way?"

"These terms started to become more and more common. The word catastrophe was used five times more often in 1995 than it was in 1985. It is doubled again by the year 2000. And the stories changed, too. There was a heightened emphasis on feat, worry, danger, uncertainty, panic."

"Why should it have changed in 1989?"

. . .

"At first we thought the association was spurious. But it wasn't. The Berlin Wall marks the collapse of the Soviet empire. And the end of the Cold War that had lasted for half a century in the West."

. . .

"I am a leading to the notion of social control, Peter. To the requirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. To keep them driving on the right side of the road—or the left, as the case may be. To keep them paying taxes. And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.

"Fear," Evans said.

"Exactly. For fifty years, Western nations had maintained their citizens in the state of perpetual fear. Fear of the other side. Fear of nuclear war. The Communist menace. The Iron Curtain. The Evil Empire. And within the Communist countries, the same in reverse. Fear of us. Then, suddenly, in the fall of 1989, it was all finished. Gone, vanished. Over. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a vacuum of fear. Nature abhors a vacuum. Something had to fill it."

Evans frowned. "You're saying that environmental crisis took the place of the Cold War?"

"That is what the evidence shows. Of course, now we have radical fundamentalism and post-9/11 terrorism to make us afraid, and those are certainly real reasons for fear, but that is not my point. My point is, there is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us. Before terrorism we feared the toxic environment. Before that we had the Communist menace. The point is, although the specific cause of our fear may change, we are never without the fear itself. Here pervades society in all its aspects. Perpetually."

He shifted on the concrete bench, turning away from the crowds.

"Has it ever occurred to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can't even see—germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around them. Remarkable! Like to believe in witchcraft, it's an extraordinary delusion—a global fantasy worthy of the Middle Ages. Everything is going to hell, and we must live in fear. Amazing.

"How has this world view been instilled in everybody? Because although we imagine we live in different nations—France, Germany, Japan, the US—in fact, we inhabit exactly the same state, the State of Fear. How has that been accomplished?"

Evans said nothing. He knew it wasn't necessary.

"Well, I shall tell you how," he said. "In the old days—before your time, Peter—citizens of the West believed their nation-states were dominated by something called the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned Americans against it and the 1960s, and after two world wars Europeans knew very well what it meant in their own countries. But the military-industrial complex is no longer the primary driver of society. In reality, for the last fifteen years we have been under the control of an entirely new complex, far more powerful and far more pervasive. I call it the politico-legal-media complex. The PLM. And it is dedicated to promoting fear in the population—under the guise of promoting safety."

"Safety is important."

"Please. Western nations are fabulously safe. Yet people do not feel they are, because of the PLM. And the PLM is powerful and stable, precisely because it unites so many institutions of society. Politicians need fears to control the population. Lawyers need dangers to litigate, and make money. The media needs scare stories to capture an audience. Together, these three estates are so compelling that they can go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless. If it has no basis in fact at all."

. . .

At the very least, we are talking about a moral outrage. Thus we can expect our religious leaders and our great humanitarian figures to cry out against this waste and the needless deaths around the world that results. But do any religious leaders speak out? No. Quite the contrary, they join the chorus. They promote 'What Would Jesus Drive?' As if they have forgotten that what Jesus would drive is the false prophets and fearmongers out of the temple."

He was getting quite heated now.

"What we're talking about is a situation that is profoundly immoral. It is disgusting, if truth be told. The PLM callously ignores the plight of the poorest and most desperate human beings on our planet in order to keep fat politicians in office, rich news anchors on the air, and conniving lawyers in Mercedes-Benz convertibles. Oh, and our university professors in Volvos. Let's not forget them."

. . .

"What happened," he continued, "is the universities transformed themselves in the 1980s. Formerly bastions of intellectual freedom in a world of Babbittry, formerly the locus of sexual freedom and experimentation, they now became the most restrictive environments in modern society. Because they had a new role to play. They became the creators of new fears for the PLM. Universities today are factories of fear. They invent all the new terrors and all the new social anxieties. All the new respective codes. Words you can't say. Thoughts you can't think. They produce a steady stream of new anxieties, dangers, and social terrors to be used by politicians, lawyers, and reporters. Foods that are bad for you. behaviors that are unacceptable. Can't smoke, can't swear, can't screw, can't think. These institutions have been stood on their heads in a generation. It is really quite extraordinary.

"The modern State of Fear could never exist without universities feeding it. There is a peculiar neo-Stalinist mode of thought that is required to support all this, and it can thrive only in a restricted setting, behind closed doors, without due process. And our society, only universities have created that—so far. The notion that these institutions are liberal is a cruel joke. They're fascist to the core, I'm telling you."

That is the enemy. Not the conservative versus liberal smokescreen.

Unfortunately, there is some righteous manipulation of actual human nature at the core. So that makes this a tougher enemy than it should be.

Michael

[Kelly]

.... to know that the founding was a truly religious experience and that they intended for the country to be based on the 10 commandments, hell even Sarah Palin thinks so.

Kelly,

Do you have a source for your allegation of Palin's views? Like a statement from her? I know she believes in the 10 Commandments. but I have never her her claim that the Founding Fathers "intended for the country to be based on" them. That is, if by "country," you mean the government. If by "country," you mean she thinks it is a good idea for people to adopt the 10 Commandments, and that the people who founded the country believed in them, that is another issue.

Also, the "founding was a truly religious experience" is accurate if you use the "rights come from God" standard that was used at the time. But it was not a religious experience in the manner of a modern Christian being saved kind of experience. It was a stewardship of God's creation self-responsibility--a stepping up to the plate as individuals and doing it so God would not have to intervene--kind of religious experience. (Just so you know, I am not religious.)

About Palin, have you thought this through on the level I mentioned, or or are you merely repeating opinions of other people who like to opine and dislike Palin?

btw - I don't just dislike the progressive media hype machine. I dislike ALL media hype machines.

I merely bashed the progressive one because that's the source you used. Had you used a source of conservative hype, I would have bashed the conservative media hype machine.

The person who best characterized the stuff I dislike about hype machines was Michael Crichton. Here is a quote from another thread I posted back in 2007:

State of Fear

I am starting this thread to discuss a syndrome I found in the book State of Fear by Michael Crichton. I am probably pushing the limits of fair use, but this is very important. I broke it up to make up for the length and I hope this use sells more books for the author and publisher. Please buy the book. It is worth every cent.

The excerpt speaks for itself. The quote is from a crazy professor-almost-prophet type (Hoffman) who showed up suddenly and the hero (Evans). Hoffman starts. (pp. 453-459)

"If you study the media, as my graduate students and I do, seeking to find shifts in normative conceptualization, you discover something extremely interesting. We looked at transcripts of news programs of the major networks—NBC, ABC, CBS. We also looked at stories in the newspapers of New York, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, and Seattle. We counted the frequency of certain concepts in terms used by the media. The results are very striking." He paused.

"What did you find?" Evans said, taking his cue.

"There was a major shift in the fall of 1989. Before that time, the media did not make excessive use of terms such as crisis, catastrophe, cataclysm, plague, or disaster. For example during the 1980s, the word crisis appeared in news reports about as often as the word budget. In addition, prior to 1989, adjectives such as dire, unprecedented, dreaded were not common in television reports or newspaper headlines. But then it all changed."

"In what way?"

"These terms started to become more and more common. The word catastrophe was used five times more often in 1995 than it was in 1985. It is doubled again by the year 2000. And the stories changed, too. There was a heightened emphasis on feat, worry, danger, uncertainty, panic."

"Why should it have changed in 1989?"

. . .

"At first we thought the association was spurious. But it wasn't. The Berlin Wall marks the collapse of the Soviet empire. And the end of the Cold War that had lasted for half a century in the West."

. . .

"I am a leading to the notion of social control, Peter. To the requirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. To keep them driving on the right side of the road—or the left, as the case may be. To keep them paying taxes. And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.

"Fear," Evans said.

"Exactly. For fifty years, Western nations had maintained their citizens in the state of perpetual fear. Fear of the other side. Fear of nuclear war. The Communist menace. The Iron Curtain. The Evil Empire. And within the Communist countries, the same in reverse. Fear of us. Then, suddenly, in the fall of 1989, it was all finished. Gone, vanished. Over. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a vacuum of fear. Nature abhors a vacuum. Something had to fill it."

Evans frowned. "You're saying that environmental crisis took the place of the Cold War?"

"That is what the evidence shows. Of course, now we have radical fundamentalism and post-9/11 terrorism to make us afraid, and those are certainly real reasons for fear, but that is not my point. My point is, there is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us. Before terrorism we feared the toxic environment. Before that we had the Communist menace. The point is, although the specific cause of our fear may change, we are never without the fear itself. Here pervades society in all its aspects. Perpetually."

He shifted on the concrete bench, turning away from the crowds.

"Has it ever occurred to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can't even see—germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around them. Remarkable! Like to believe in witchcraft, it's an extraordinary delusion—a global fantasy worthy of the Middle Ages. Everything is going to hell, and we must live in fear. Amazing.

"How has this world view been instilled in everybody? Because although we imagine we live in different nations—France, Germany, Japan, the US—in fact, we inhabit exactly the same state, the State of Fear. How has that been accomplished?"

Evans said nothing. He knew it wasn't necessary.

"Well, I shall tell you how," he said. "In the old days—before your time, Peter—citizens of the West believed their nation-states were dominated by something called the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned Americans against it and the 1960s, and after two world wars Europeans knew very well what it meant in their own countries. But the military-industrial complex is no longer the primary driver of society. In reality, for the last fifteen years we have been under the control of an entirely new complex, far more powerful and far more pervasive. I call it the politico-legal-media complex. The PLM. And it is dedicated to promoting fear in the population—under the guise of promoting safety."

"Safety is important."

"Please. Western nations are fabulously safe. Yet people do not feel they are, because of the PLM. And the PLM is powerful and stable, precisely because it unites so many institutions of society. Politicians need fears to control the population. Lawyers need dangers to litigate, and make money. The media needs scare stories to capture an audience. Together, these three estates are so compelling that they can go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless. If it has no basis in fact at all."

. . .

At the very least, we are talking about a moral outrage. Thus we can expect our religious leaders and our great humanitarian figures to cry out against this waste and the needless deaths around the world that results. But do any religious leaders speak out? No. Quite the contrary, they join the chorus. They promote 'What Would Jesus Drive?' As if they have forgotten that what Jesus would drive is the false prophets and fearmongers out of the temple."

He was getting quite heated now.

"What we're talking about is a situation that is profoundly immoral. It is disgusting, if truth be told. The PLM callously ignores the plight of the poorest and most desperate human beings on our planet in order to keep fat politicians in office, rich news anchors on the air, and conniving lawyers in Mercedes-Benz convertibles. Oh, and our university professors in Volvos. Let's not forget them."

. . .

"What happened," he continued, "is the universities transformed themselves in the 1980s. Formerly bastions of intellectual freedom in a world of Babbittry, formerly the locus of sexual freedom and experimentation, they now became the most restrictive environments in modern society. Because they had a new role to play. They became the creators of new fears for the PLM. Universities today are factories of fear. They invent all the new terrors and all the new social anxieties. All the new respective codes. Words you can't say. Thoughts you can't think. They produce a steady stream of new anxieties, dangers, and social terrors to be used by politicians, lawyers, and reporters. Foods that are bad for you. behaviors that are unacceptable. Can't smoke, can't swear, can't screw, can't think. These institutions have been stood on their heads in a generation. It is really quite extraordinary.

"The modern State of Fear could never exist without universities feeding it. There is a peculiar neo-Stalinist mode of thought that is required to support all this, and it can thrive only in a restricted setting, behind closed doors, without due process. And our society, only universities have created that—so far. The notion that these institutions are liberal is a cruel joke. They're fascist to the core, I'm telling you."

That is the enemy. Not the conservative versus liberal smokescreen.

Unfortunately, there is some righteous manipulation of actual human nature at the core. So that makes this a tougher enemy than it should be.

Michael

She said it in an Interview with Bill Oreilly. I cant find the you tube link. If I can I'll post it.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Kelly,

If you want to see something really scary in this respect and you have some time to watch some videos, here is a thread I posted a while back: The Covert Ways of Bernays - Propaganda 101.

I have been reading The Father of Spin, Edward L. Bernays & the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye--and I have been taking notes. You really can't understand modern politics properly without getting a grounding in Bernays. Even the Nazis learned propaganda from him. But once the term "propaganda" took on negative vibes, he simply changed the name to "public relations." Here that is in his own words (you only need to see the first minute or so):

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="

name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="

type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

I have also been doing a lot of reading on the parts of human nature that are vulnerable to public manipulation--and the techniques that are used. What I have been learning is that ALL major politicians use them. They have experts in these things on their staffs.

Once you go down this rabbit hole, you start looking at people who are polarized between liberal and conservative and you wonder about the part of human nature that maintains the blindness--it's the same crap on both sides.

The real polarity (and I mean a non-utopic issue)--the one that directly affects you, me and everyone else, is big government versus small government. That polarity doesn't really have a political party. There's the Tea Party movement, which is a good start in that direction, but I am still watching to see if they are going to sell out once some people of that persuasion get power.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

May I inquire as to why?

Herb (or whatever),

Yes, you may inquire.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

The military is coercive. That's just a fact. The police are coercive. Fact too. The government is coercive. It's all the same package. That a bunch of soldiers are sitting around playing cards instead of shooting down bad guys changes that not a whit.

--Brant

Brant, my impression from Dan was that he was stating the military as a whole is coercive. That is not something I've ever seen. Has a unit under crappy leadership done questionable things in a time of war? You bet. I'm not saying the military is exemplary in its dealings abroad, but I wouldn't lump the whole military as coercive.

Now if the definition of coercive is that we use force to meet an objective, then yes. But that's not all we do.

Shane,

I am talking about an essential nature not contradicting derivative elements. As they are derivative that they are contradicting doesn't make a difference. So Marines collect Xmas toys for children? Great. That an enlisted man who washes clothes in the bowels of an aircraft carrier isn't shooting someone? Great. That planes from that carrier aren't dropping bombs? Great. That sailors at home on leave make love not war? Great.

--Brant

Edited July 21, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shane,

I don't think there is anything wrong with the military being coercive.

I certainly hope, as a member of the military, you are.

That's what you're paid to do.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shane,

Here is a definition of coerce from the free online dictionary:

1. To force to act or think in a certain way by use of pressure, threats, or intimidation; compel.

2. To dominate, restrain, or control forcibly: coerced the strikers into compliance. See Synonyms at force.

3. To bring about by force or threat: efforts to coerce agreement.

Yup.

That's exactly what I hope you will do to our enemies when you are deployed for such.

Michael

[Kelly]

While I don't agree with Herb's voting tactics, I do agree that creationism teaching religious conservatives are more dangerous than Obama care. It's one thing to stifle motivation and socialize medicine, it's another thing altogether to deny science outright, and leave things to god. There are many western countries that have socialized medicine, and while that Is not an optimal policy, there is still science and progress.

Yep, there was still science and progress in Nazi Germany too even though genocide wasn't "optimal policy" either.

--Brant

reductio!

I missed this one earlier. Charming.I kinda forgot what it was like to argue with objectivists. Thanks for jogging my memory.

[Brant Gaede]

While I don't agree with Herb's voting tactics, I do agree that creationism teaching religious conservatives are more dangerous than Obama care. It's one thing to stifle motivation and socialize medicine, it's another thing altogether to deny science outright, and leave things to god. There are many western countries that have socialized medicine, and while that Is not an optimal policy, there is still science and progress.

Yep, there was still science and progress in Nazi Germany too even though genocide wasn't "optimal policy" either.

--Brant

reductio!

I missed this one earlier. Charming.I kinda forgot what it was like to argue with objectivists. Thanks for jogging my memory.

Pretty good rejoinder, even if it's a dead end.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Kelly,

If you want to see something really scary in this respect and you have some time to watch some videos, here is a thread I posted a while back: The Covert Ways of Bernays - Propaganda 101.

I have been reading The Father of Spin, Edward L. Bernays & the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye--and I have been taking notes. You really can't understand modern politics properly without getting a grounding in Bernays. Even the Nazis learned propaganda from him. But once the term "propaganda" took on negative vibes, he simply changed the name to "public relations." Here that is in his own words (you only need to see the first minute or so):

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="

name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="

type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

I have also been doing a lot of reading on the parts of human nature that are vulnerable to public manipulation--and the techniques that are used. What I have been learning is that ALL major politicians use them. They have experts in these things on their staffs.

Once you go down this rabbit hole, you start looking at people who are polarized between liberal and conservative and you wonder about the part of human nature that maintains the blindness--it's the same crap on both sides.

The real polarity (and I mean a non-utopic issue)--the one that directly affects you, me and everyone else, is big government versus small government. That polarity doesn't really have a political party. There's the Tea Party movement, which is a good start in that direction, but I am still watching to see if they are going to sell out once some people of that persuasion get power.

Michael

This is the old power of advertising crap from the 1950s. The passive consumer horseshit stuff controlled by Madison Avenue. "The Hidden Persuaders." Unfortunately, it's become more true today than it ever was then.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is the old power of advertising crap from the 1950s. The passive consumer horseshit stuff controlled by Madison Avenue. "The Hidden Persuaders." Unfortunately, it's become more true today than it ever was then.

Brant,

The 50's is only a small part of it. Actually this stuff goes back to WWI and developed from there up to today. This documentary series, The Century of the Self, was produced in 2002 for BBC and won a butt-load of awards. It covers before WWI and goes up through the Clinton years.

There are some recent books that I have been studying that take the concepts of appealing to consumer emotions and the consumer subconscious that are even more sophisticated--many based on cognitive neuroscience. And there are oodles of repeatable experiments that back this stuff up (other than massive sales and won elections). Here are a few such books.

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Clotaire Rapaille

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Influence: Science and Practice (5th Edition) by Robert B. Cialdini

Who am I? The 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities by Steven Reiss

59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman

That's not all, of course. There are works on hypnosis and NLP, copywriting, etc.

I just finished the following book and, although it has not yet been incorporated by the marketing gurus, I have no doubt it will be. It's a hell of a good book (by a Yale professor), albeit I had some reservations about some of Bloom's interpretations of the experiments and about some omissions.

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom

On this last, you can even see him in a video interview with an ex-Objectivist Will Wilkinson

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://static.bloggingheads.tv/maulik/offsite/offsite_flvplayer.swf" flashvars="playlist=http%3A%2F%2Fbloggingheads%2Etv%2Fdiavlogs%2Fliveplayer%2Dplaylist%2F16381%2F00%3A00%2F64%3A50" height="288" width="380"></embed>

I could go on, but that's enough name dropping. (I really have studied all that stuff recently, though, and you should see what's on my To Do list.) This stuff works and fuels the modern market, politics, media and just about anywhere else public influence is used.

Michael

[dan2100]

Dan, your patience is all but unbounded. It is awe-inspiring.

JR

Is this just your way of telling me I'm wasting my efforts?

[dan2100]

This is the old power of advertising crap from the 1950s. The passive consumer horseshit stuff controlled by Madison Avenue. "The Hidden Persuaders." Unfortunately, it's become more true today than it ever was then.

Brant,

The 50's is only a small part of it. Actually this stuff goes back to WWI and developed from there up to today. This documentary series, The Century of the Self, was produced in 2002 for BBC and won a butt-load of awards. It covers before WWI and goes up through the Clinton years.

There are some recent books that I have been studying that take the concepts of appealing to consumer emotions and the consumer subconscious that are even more sophisticated--many based on cognitive neuroscience. And there are oodles of repeatable experiments that back this stuff up (other than massive sales and won elections). Here are a few such books.

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Clotaire Rapaille

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Influence: Science and Practice (5th Edition) by Robert B. Cialdini

Who am I? The 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities by Steven Reiss

59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman

That's not all, of course. There are works on hypnosis and NLP, copywriting, etc.

I just finished the following book and, although it has not yet been incorporated by the marketing gurus, I have no doubt it will be. It's a hell of a good book (by a Yale professor), albeit I had some reservations about some of Bloom's interpretations of the experiments and about some omissions.

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom

On this last, you can even see him in a video interview with an ex-Objectivist Will Wilkinson

<snip>

I could go on, but that's enough name dropping. (I really have studied all that stuff recently, though, and you should see what's on my To Do list.) This stuff works and fuels the modern market, politics, media and just about anywhere else public influence is used.

Michael

Have you read any of Neil Postman's books on the subject?

I'd still be careful of seeing this as too simple -- as if someone can merely apply these methods and obtain whatever she or he wants.

[Brant Gaede]

Watching TV I saw an ad for Wendy's chocolate frosty so I jumped in my car and went and got one out of salivation. Once there I got a couple of double stack one dollar hamburgers one of which I ate on the way home. It tasted God-awful. Examining the other sandwich closely I discovered the meat wasn't just over-cooked but burnt completely through. Next time I'll salivate my way to McDonalds and get a chocolate shake. So much for the stupid ads if the realized substance is more business for the competitor.

--Brant

helpless consumer

[Rich Engle]

The media is the massage.

With no happy ending, usually.

I hate both parties, but typically, dyed-in-wool Republicans are nastier than a liberal democrat oversprayed with patchoulie (a.k.a. "dirty hippie").

They all wear the same stupid fucking suits, and those pins.

I can only imagine their farts: mustard comes to mind.

The Fundamentalism=vomit.

Dems are no better, just a different style of a-hole. All things to all people. The bottom line is to figure out which of them are getting laid more often.

All and all, I don't recommend genocide, but for this case, I would make an exception. Put them in a vat and let them fart each other to death.

rde

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Have you read any of Neil Postman's books on the subject?

Dan,

I just looked him up and, frankly, I have been more interested in stuff based on cognitive neuroscience or social experiments in my research. I'm in a career change. I'm migrating to Internet marketing and I don't have much interest in things that don't result in sales or won elections or things like that at this point. The forum already sucks up enough of my time.

From a quick scan of of the Wikipedia article on Neil Postman, my preliminary impression is that his life work's theme is "bitching about information technology." My opinion might change if and when I read his stuff, but for now, he doesn't look like he can teach me anything to make my Internet marketing business more successful.

In other words, I'm working on figuring out what works in the actual market I have to deal with before I start putting in a lot of time investigating why I don't like it.

The books I mentioned work in terms of mass audience--with measurable, repeatable results. By results, I mean sales and won elections and things like that.

Even when I want to combat this (like with the politics thing), I am focusing on what makes mass persuasion tick--and learning it from the people who make the ticking methods and their sources--so I know what to target.

Michael

[dan2100]

Have you read any of Neil Postman's books on the subject?

Dan,

I just looked him up and, frankly, I have been more interested in stuff based on cognitive neuroscience or social experiments in my research. I'm in a career change. I'm migrating to Internet marketing and I don't have much interest in things that don't result in sales or won elections or things like that at this point. The forum already sucks up enough of my time.

From a quick scan of of the Wikipedia article on Neil Postman, my preliminary impression is that his life work's theme is "bitching about information technology." My opinion might change if and when I read his stuff, but for now, he doesn't look like he can teach me anything to make my Internet marketing business more successful.

In other words, I'm working on figuring out what works in the actual market I have to deal with before I start putting in a lot of time investigating why I don't like it.

The books I mentioned work in terms of mass audience--with measurable, repeatable results. By results, I mean sales and won elections and things like that.

Even when I want to combat this (like with the politics thing), I am focusing on what makes mass persuasion tick--and learning it from the people who make the ticking methods and their sources--so I know what to target.

Michael

This should probably be another thread, but have you tested the "measurable, repeatable results" against other hypotheses? What is meant by this is trying to avoid hypotheses like Hallam did X and got Y and Filicia did X and got Y, therefore, X causes Y when, in fact, some other factor(s) might be involved and actually have had a more decisive impact? (This is not criticism of any specific work you've cited.)

[Herb Sewell]

Let us not be so nasty shall we?

Herb,

Nah. I'll keep it nasty for now.

I don't like you.

Michael

May I inquire as to why?

You seem awfully quick to judge, not a very attractive character trait.

Your name is a lie. Off that foundation nothing else is going to work. It's one thing to make up a screen name like Doggie or Tenth Doctor or Lover, it's quite another to put up a name that seems to be a real name but it isn't yours. You also write like a troll might write, but I can't tell if you are one or it's just that distortion of that lie you came here with and stuck right into our faces.

--Brant

The name "Herb Sewell" is a reference to a Phil Hendrie character, If i had used "Herbie" or "Sewell" the reference would have been lost.

What opinions of mine do you take issue with?

[dan2100]

What did you divine my intentions as? Merely curious…

I figured that you were throwing out the soviet union reference just to attach my idea to the soviet union and all that weight that that comes with, as it's something I've witnessed from objectivist in the past.

My intention here was, thinking you might see the similarity between your view and central economic planning -- the Soviet Union being the chief example of that in history, though it abounds today (think of what the Fed in the US does: overall central planning of the banking and credit systems) -- that you might either alter your view or show why the analogy didn't apply. So far, it seems to me you've only cried foul over the analogy.

If someone else calls the shots, then you have no choice, no?

Right. Someone else is almost always calling the shots, and unless it's your school, your probably not calling the shots. I figure we're talking about a choice that's not much of a choice.

My point was to dismantle the current system so that individual could make choices -- in education and elsewhere. Thus, others wouldn't be calling the shots -- at least, not in any meaningful way. You might disagree, but imagine you have a school and you can't fund it coercive and you can't force people to attend. You might decide on the curriculum and decor, but if you don't attract funding and students, none of this will matter, no?

Another analogy -- hopefully, one that won't meet with your disapproval. Imagine a local restaurateur tells me he calls the shots in his eatery. Certainly, in some sense he does, but he can't force me to eat there. I, ultimately, call the shots on where and what I'll eat. Why not the same for education? Or put another way: why should freedom of choice be the rule in eating -- surely, one of the most important things in life -- and not in education?

You also ask "Or are you one of those people who believes it's okay to forcibly teach people the truth?"

No.

Haven't you clearly contradicted yourself? You want standards and those standards will be coercively enforced, no? If so, then you are for forcibly teaching people what you believe to be true, no?

Children should all learn when the American revolution occurred, or The Civil war was fought between the North and the South? or that in math 2+2=4? If these are true things, then yes I hope that they are forcibly and coercively taught to those who, by choice, choose to go to public schooling institutions.

Then you admit your contradiction and ammend your statement: you do want to forcibly teach the truth?

Again, how does this make you different than the Soviets or any other group of coercers? Didn't they believe they knew the truth. And, furthermore, didn't they believe it was right to compell people?

I have no problem arguing for "an imagined future where there is no state control of education." (And there was a real past with no state control of education, so it's not societies have always had states that have always had their hands in education. Even the US didn't have government control of education for a large chunk of its history.)

The educational system and the federal takeover of education is not something that just happened for no reason.

I'm not sure where you think I maintain it just happened. The trend has been, for a long time, for there to be ever more regulation of life. This trend is uneven and, happily, freedom has expanded in some areas (think of, e.g., how laws against homosexuality are mostly dead today), but there's still a growing trend elsewhere -- especially in many areas of so called economic activities and in education. The last is not a good sign since people who are educated by the state or via state mandated curricula and standards are likely to be educated for the state. This means, educated if not to be obedient servants at least educated to be ignorant of any tools to use against the state.

There is a tendency to discount that as societies grow large and more advanced there is pressure for states to take over things like this and regulate trade. I suspect that it's largely from businesses or trade unions or guilds. I think it's a function of societies, and it's pretty typical in governments. When or where has that trend been reversed? If it has, then I'm sorry for describing it as a imagined future.

The trend is usually reversed either via state avoidance (as in black markets) or when states fall. A recent example combining both seems to be the collapse of the Soviet Empire. State avoidance increased and the imperial state actually collapsed. History is not just a linear progression of statism from less to more.

I've been arguing, un-successfully, on your ground in the sense that I haven't challenged your assumptions, because I'm familiar with objectivism (I'm assuming of course that you are an objectivist or libertarian) and was more interested in the standards discussion. It's difficult for me to layout my whole belief system, if it could be called that, in an effort to defend my positions. It's not going too well. Thanks for your patience.

Your basic assumption appears to be that it's okay to initiate force. Am I wrong here?

My view on standards remains: as long as they're not coerced, they're okay. If people can freely adopt or disregard them, I have no problem. I also believe this would work best in the long run -- as people who have a chance to adopt those standards they felt worked for them. I see no reason why this wouldn't work in education and see the current focus on national standards as a panacea (for education, for the asset markets, and for a host of other areas) as merely another example of how many people prefer coercive fixes to problems. I also find it laughable when I think of the federal government being involved in this. Look at Amtrak, the Post Office, the FRS, and the federally-backed mortgage corporations. These are examples of how the federal government operates and yet well meaning people (or so it seems; maybe they really don't mean well, which would explain much) appear to believe that the federal government will somehow behave otherwise when it comes to education. Ho-hum.

[dan2100]

Dan,

Let me clarify something. The military is governed by a civilian force. We cannot make decisions to act unless given permission by that civilian force. We can advise on military matters, as through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with regard to strategic endeavors. But we cannot move on that advice without prior consent.

The way the government uses us, as you pointed out, can be coercive. I would agree to that, but not the military being coercive. Make sense?

~ Shane

This is akin to saying the DEA (or the IRS or the BML or BATF or pick a government agency) is not in and of itself coercive. It merely can be used coercively. The military is both an arm of government coercion -- that's its reason for being in the first place, no? -- and is funded coercive -- i.e., it wouldn't really exist were it not for taxation.

Saying that it's coercive doesn't mean that the military does whatever it pleases or is not subordinate to the state. But your argument here is kind of like saying a policeman is not coercive when he's enforcing laws that clearly are coercive merely because he has to answer to his chief who answers to his mayor or some other civilian official.

[sbeaulieu]

Dan,

Let me clarify something. The military is governed by a civilian force. We cannot make decisions to act unless given permission by that civilian force. We can advise on military matters, as through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with regard to strategic endeavors. But we cannot move on that advice without prior consent.

The way the government uses us, as you pointed out, can be coercive. I would agree to that, but not the military being coercive. Make sense?

~ Shane

This is akin to saying the DEA (or the IRS or the BML or BATF or pick a government agency) is not in and of itself coercive. It merely can be used coercively. The military is both an arm of government coercion -- that's its reason for being in the first place, no? -- and is funded coercive -- i.e., it wouldn't really exist were it not for taxation.

Saying that it's coercive doesn't mean that the military does whatever it pleases or is not subordinate to the state. But your argument here is kind of like saying a policeman is not coercive when he's enforcing laws that clearly are coercive merely because he has to answer to his chief who answers to his mayor or some other civilian official.

Dan, Brant, and Mike...

Point taken ;)

The military is used as a coercive tool when diplomacy fails. Seems we're used an awful lot since I've enlisted.

~ Shane

[Brant Gaede]

Let us not be so nasty shall we?

Herb,

Nah. I'll keep it nasty for now.

I don't like you.

Michael

May I inquire as to why?

You seem awfully quick to judge, not a very attractive character trait.

Your name is a lie. Off that foundation nothing else is going to work. It's one thing to make up a screen name like Doggie or Tenth Doctor or Lover, it's quite another to put up a name that seems to be a real name but it isn't yours. You also write like a troll might write, but I can't tell if you are one or it's just that distortion of that lie you came here with and stuck right into our faces.

--Brant

The name "Herb Sewell" is a reference to a Phil Hendrie character, If i had used "Herbie" or "Sewell" the reference would have been lost.

What opinions of mine do you take issue with?

Then the thing to do would have been to run the two words together: "HerbSewell." As to the actual character, I've never heard of him before as I hardly ever read any fiction. I have to take back "lie," however, as I cannot support the truth of that anymore.

As for the opinions I take issue with? If you are of the opinion you aren't a troll--maybe. Vote Democratic? Go ahead. The damage's been done. Are you the guy in favor of public education? That might have done more damage to this country than the Constitutional Convention.

--Brant

Edited July 21, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This should probably be another thread, but have you tested the "measurable, repeatable results" against other hypotheses?

Dan,

If you are truly interested in this, please consult the bibliographies of the works I cited. Lots and lots and lots of peer-reviewed experiments all over the world by scientists. And yes, the results in many of them are measurable and repeatable.

Why not look at them?

Michael

[jriggenbach]

This should probably be another thread, but have you tested the "measurable, repeatable results" against other hypotheses?

Dan,

If you are truly interested in this, please consult the bibliographies of the works I cited. Lots and lots and lots of peer-reviewed experiments all over the world by scientists. And yes, the results in many of them are measurable and repeatable.

Why not look at them?

Michael

What a pity so many Objectivists seem unable to grasp the elementary truth that, since human beings possess freedom of will and are not interchangeable units, statistical information about what particular individuals and particular groups of individuals have done under particular circumstances can prove nothing about what will happen when other, different individuals are placed in similar circumstances - even if the individuals trying to prove such propositions call themselves "scientists" and maintain a straight face while doing so.

JR

[dan2100]

This should probably be another thread, but have you tested the "measurable, repeatable results" against other hypotheses?

Dan,

If you are truly interested in this, please consult the bibliographies of the works I cited. Lots and lots and lots of peer-reviewed experiments all over the world by scientists. And yes, the results in many of them are measurable and repeatable.

Why not look at them?

Michael

What a pity so many Objectivists seem unable to grasp the elementary truth that, since human beings possess freedom of will and are not interchangeable units, statistical information about what particular individuals and particular groups of individuals have done under particular circumstances can prove nothing about what will happen when other, different individuals are placed in similar circumstances - even if the individuals trying to prove such propositions call themselves "scientists" and maintain a straight face while doing so.

JR

I wonder if there's a study that focuses on how some segment of the population seems to unthinkingly accept studies.