I don’t know about y’all, but if I grew up in a country that never has the news criticizing its leaders, I’d be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified. Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
Something like host over half of all Americans cannot read above a 5th grade level. Almost a third are functionally illiterate.
It’s not that they don’t have critical thinking skills. It’s that the entire lower-90% have been so badly nerfed that it is increasingly difficult for anyone in that cohort to get to a point where they can educate themselves without copious assistance.
And that’s exactly how Republicans prefer the population - uneducated, illiterate, ignorant and gullible. The better with which to scam them for their votes.
Propaganda doesn’t necessarily need to convince people, but can instead attack the peoples ability to differentiate truth and lie by sowing mistrust about the most mundane and conventional things. When people stop believing their own eyes or following logic, they become easier to manipulate. A bit like gas-lighting, where you sort of turn the critical thinking against them, but on a large scale.
Do you believe in religion? Do you believe in any home remedies? Do you eat the same foods you grew up with?
It’s a very rare person that questions literally everything and logically analyzes why they think what they think.
Questioning beliefs takes a lot of time and courage. Very few people do it.
What does eating the same foods you grew up with have to do with it?
i try all new things even bugs, but some foods I grew up with are delicious
That is fantastic. I’m glad you like them.
The difference here, presumably, is that you’ve thought about what you eat and continue to do so knowing full well what that means, whatever it means. But~ not everybody thinks about it. Some people are carried forward through life just by the sheer momentum of their childhood.
And I say some people, but really, everybody is in some way or another. It takes active effort to change your course in life.
For example, no idea what your diet is like: if you eat a lot of junk food, do you know how much sugar you’re consuming? Have you ever thought about whether that’s a good thing?
“Think twice? I don’t even thinks once.”
It’s so nice of you to tell us what would you do and how you’d behave in an hypothetical situation that you have never been nurtured and raised on, and how good you’d do facing it under your current morals and mental framework that may or may not be available during that situation
Good times, critical thinking was had by all
Intelligent people in those countries do realize though…
Lol authoritarian is such a non descriptice word. Like propaganda only is there at their bad countries we are so much better and have no propaganda at all… most looks at the west to get tips for the best propaganda. Authoritarian is when stuff gets done.
Authoritarian is when stuff gets done.
Okay, bigot maga defender. How much have your master trump got done?
Lol , shitlib. But quite a lot actually. Haven’t you seen the news? Not sure of the connection between my criticism of “authoratism” as a blank propaganda concept and the absolute blindness for the western narrative but do go on. What’s your masters got done? Genocides as usuals ? Coups? Concentration camps? Disgusting bigot.
Calling your fellow human shitty is just what Russia wants you to do. Are you a tool for Russia? If not, please stop being a tool for Russia, rant over.
Well, here is me, who fell into nuclear propaganda.
I was idly thinking about this the other day, how absolutely lonely it must be in say North Korea, where if you’re caught by the regime to be thinking the wrong thing you’ll get killed. I’d know its bullshit, but I’d be terrified of speaking out or asking questions, incase the person I’m speaking to is an agent of the state, or will suspect me of being an agent and inform the authorities incase I’m testing them.
It must be awful not knowing who’s a secret police, who’s a gullible rube for buying the propaganda and who’s just hiding behind forced conformity.
I don’t think many of them will believe the propaganda, but I bet the ones who do will be the happiest. Or least miserable I guess.
I thought you were talking about the US a moment there
Considering that critical thinking has to be thought to you, I think most people who skipped college may not have a good grasp on it.
Most school curriculums nowadays have critical thinking interwoven as important parts of the STEM classes, in both primary and high school. Its not exclusive to college graduates, however if you do a philosophy course then you will have learned the highest level of it - and I’m sure many school systems around the world have varying degrees of quality of education.
But agreed it is absolutely something that people are not born with and must (and should) be taught.
I would draw a distinct line between the critical thinking of engineering and the critical thinking of the humanities, but yes. Just in the sense that engineering alone is good, but definitely not sufficient.
There is a common archetype of person in stem who thinks that because they’re very good at programming that they’re also very good at everything, and so spends half of their college tenure in a fratboy flophouse reinventing basic philosophy ideas Isaac Asimov thought of 70 years ago as part of their mission to solve society’s problems with bitcoin.
The average person has lots of critical thinking.
It’s just not a life hack to truth. You can critical think yourself into any conclusion. The average person uses critical thinking to reinforce their biased instead of challenge them.
Sorry but that is wrong. You are using the textbook definition of confirmation bias.
Critical thinking “is the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices. It involves recognizing underlying assumptions, providing justifications for ideas and actions, evaluating these justifications through comparisons with varying perspectives, and assessing their rationality and potential consequences.”
All of that can be done, badly. Which is how people do it. See the discourse around any popular drama, people have the skills, they just use them in service of their own pre conceived notions.
I haven’t thought about it like that, but now that you’ve made me, it makes a lot of sense.
It’s bleak, but if you want to persuade a large number of people to think differently, you don’t challenge their worldview, you create new biases that they will then defend in their own.
See: trump’s constant repetition of blatant lies.
Critical thinking is a skill, not an inborn gift. You may end up better at it than someone else by virtue of some as-yet-unknown genetic or epigenetic factor, but only if you both learn the skills and practice them.
Worse, even with learning and practice everyone fucks up at least a little. Even if the only place they fuck up is thinking that because they have the skill and practice that they can’t fuck up.
We’re all fucking meat bags filled with hormones and chemicals. That shit will override every bit of common sense and critical thinking that’s ever existed. Not every time, but eventually, and more than once in your life.
Propaganda is only propaganda if you aren’t part of the institution generating it. If you’re a random asshole in fascistan, or whatever, chances are that the propaganda is just noise, the same way commercials or waves crashing are. There’s no need to think critically if all you want to do is coast and get by.
So they “believe” it in roughly the same way that people believe if they work hard, they can achieve anything they want. Even if they know better, what’s the alternative? Seeing reality and still being stuck in the same place? Nah, even the ones that have practiced thoroughly aren’t fucking around most of the time. Why would they bother if they apply that critical thinking and realize nobody really gives a fuck as long as they aren’t too hungry, and the worst stuff is happening in some letter town? They wouldn’t. It’s too fucking depressing.
Also, you assume that critical thinking can overcome a lack of information. The “news” is always the news. If you have no other sources of data, critical thinking doesn’t apply until something contradicts that news. If you control what people see and hear, you control the people. There won’t be enough opposition to matter, if you’ve set up your regime right.
The thing about propaganda that’s often overlooked is the fact that it isn’t just about controlling what people think - it’s about controlling what people think other people think.
Completely agree.
People are tribal - they tend to conform to what the group thinks and does. We’re also primed with strong us vs. them tendencies, that is you want your team to win whatever happens.
As you say, if you believe that (for example) your friends and neighbours think democrats are radical socialists out to destroy American life, it would be highly dangerous to vote democrat let alone be on team democrat.
No one, including you, is immune to propaganda.
I try and explain this to people all the time but many don’t want to believe it.
There are 2 types of people in this world; those who are influenced by propaganda, and those who don’t know they are influenced by propaganda.
There’s a third type. People like me see the propaganda everywhere, get a sad laugh out of it every time, and go about my day dodging rain drops and replacing alternators.
IDGAF
If you see propaganda everywhere, the it was successful on you. One purpose of propaganda is to erode the fundamental trust in society and sow distrust about anything and anyone, that way people become politically ineffective and easy to manipulate.
I don’t have any significant distrust in society in general, just a heavy distrust of the greedy oligarchs in positions of power.
Meanwhile, the orange turd posted an AI generated image of himself as the next pope…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5AvLxeTvivY
Go ahead and read some comments there, he done offended even the atheists out there!
I’m not a governor, attorney, judge, senator, etc in any position to directly do anything about the crooked powers in charge, but as a citizen, I guess this is the best I can do, share the news.
Toupee fallacy. Just because you can recognize some of the propaganda, it doesn’t mean you can recognize all of it. You’re not aware of what flies under the radar while still influencing you.
I don’t have anything influencing me except my roommate and my mom, and that’s usually just helping keep their vehicles running, carrying groceries, taking the trash out, and bathing the dog.
I see the politics and propaganda every day, I just don’t give a fuck. Nothing I can do about it anyways.
Ah so you’ve fallen for the propaganda that says you don’t have the power to change anything, that’s just what the small number of elites want the large number of masses to think
I’ve helped the NSA return stolen laptops, and risked my life putting out a forest fire with my hoodie before it got a chance to reach the dead grass field.
Of course there’s things I can and have done to help change the world, but politics ain’t quite my thing.
You’re contradicting yourself my dude. You give enough of a fuck to help people. Doing things for your community is a political action. Maybe you just haven’t gotten the chance to understand your political leanings
So you’ve been propagandized into thinking there’s nothing you can do, so you shouldn’t care.
Nah, I just don’t have the means to do anything.
I’m a repair tech, not a politician.
It’s working.
Bold of you to assume you recognize every piece of propaganda for what it truly is. And that you have a choice to just ignore it. It often feels like we are in control of what we give attention to and what we choose to retain as factual knowledge but we’re not.
The best we can do is try to recognize when some piece of information, or source, we believe may not be as valid as it once appeared and try to rectify our beliefs moving forward. It’s a never ending job. But if you want to actually have beliefs based in fact there’s no other option.
I believe in mathematics and schematics. I also believe in the right to repair.
I do not believe in invisible deities and I don’t trust most politicians.
Edit: And I damn sure don’t trust AI!
Those are like the most superficial layer of propaganda. The real danger of propaganda is that it doesn’t look like it, it looks like other regular people making you support their interests without you realizing it.
Do you like engines? Do you dislike electric vehicles? Do you like guns? If so, when and where did those ideas come from? You weren’t born with them.
The real propaganda is money.
Like, whoever designed the idea of rent (which is basically a safe place to perform the biological function of sleep and store your stuff).
You don’t own a damn thing anymore, nor do I. But for real, whoever invented the concept of rent, invented the concept of taxing humans for the right to sleep in a safe space.
Edit: Do you own the dirt under your feet?
Didn’t think so.
Do you own the dirt under your feet?
The house around me, and the dirt under it, yes.
I mean, honestly, I’m questioning if anything my parents told me is even real, or is it just exaggerated to make themselves seem like great parents in order to diminish my view on their toxicity.
It’s hard to distinguish between what’s a genuine doubt from a conspiracy theory.
That’s the thing with people.
Some have zero skepticism, and believe everything they see.
Others are overly skeptical and distrusts everything, including science.
It’s hard to find the right balance.
I find the right balance (for me) to be actively seeking out conversations that challenge my beliefs and worldview, being open to being wrong, and developing a good bullshit detector. I guess growing up during the Cold War helped instill in me a fair amount of distrust for authority of any kind helped. Even still I believed the propaganda about the US being a beacon of freedom and democracy until I was exposed to the truth of the matter, but still, I sought out counter-narratives and listened to the weight of evidence and was willing to admit to being wrong and changing my views, so… shrug
Up until recently, I thought carrots were good for seeing in the dark. It’s something my mother told me over and over as a kid. I never bothered to research it - I liked carrots after all.
How would a carrot help with seeing in the dark? All my carrots emit zero light not even a faint glow.
Critical thinking has to be taught in order for a person have it. And when you either restrict/limit education (for example, making it so that one needs a lot of money for proper schooling, thus barring lower classes from getting the education they need) or alter the education to become indoctrination. (These methods are most efficient combined!) It’s why authoritarian people and parties want to control and/or destroy education systems so bad.
Being a history nerd, I’ve been convinced that the vast majority of people can be tricked into believing nearly anything. No one is immune to propaganda, it’s just a matter of circumistances and the education you receive.
If you had grew up in a society where everyone told you that, say, pigs are a type of lizard, and your school taught you that pigs are lizards, all biologists were bribed or forced into saying pigs are lizards, and all the books you read and all the movies or shows you watched said pigs are lizards, chances are that you would believe pigs are lizards.
I’d also like to note that the above scenario would work especially well if you had never actually spent time with pigs. For example, it’s a lot easier to convince someone that gay people are evil if they don’t personally know any gay people.
I also think that often people know that, for example, elections are fraudulent, but they are too scared to say anything and thus act like they aren’t.
often people know that, for example, elections are fraudulent, but they are too scared to say anything
People might vaguely understand that elections don’t produce good outcomes or have systemic bias. That’s then condensed to „elections are rigged“, regardless of the facts and details.
Most people know little about most things. It’s difficult to even have good fundamentals about most things in our complex world. So people will defer to their personal experience and information seeped into their minds by osmosis/exposure.
Things like an economy or political system are extremely complex already and not fully understood even by experts.
There is deeply emotional resistance to the idea of topics being too complex for the average person to understand. The “experts” promote something that superficially contradicts our lived experience? They must be corrupt liars! Down with the experts!
The economy had, on balance, positive trends in 2024? We felt poorer, so economists should be lynched! /s
Feels scarily like America is moving towards something like China’s Great Leap Forward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals… Mao was dismissive of technical experts and basic economic principles…
Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies… Mao did not retreat from his policies; instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and “rightists” who opposed him…
…dozens of dams constructed in Zhumadian, Henan, during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of Typhoon Nina)… with estimates of its death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000.
The failure of agricultural policies… suppressed the food supply… The shortage of supply clashed with an explosion in demand, leading to millions of deaths from severe famine.
I think this USSR quote is a good answer:
We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
In any authoritarian system where indoctrination starts young you’ll probably have a fifth of the population that’s high on the coolaid or never questioned anything due to ideology or intelligence (or both). The rest know they’re lying, etc. And keep their mouths shut because they don’t want to go to Siberia or El Salvador.
Also applies to modern day Russia. Everyone knows the elections are fake, for example, but they keep their heads down.
Yeah, and just because you know they’re lying, doesn’t mean you know what the truth is, much less so how to prove it to someone else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
it was a tool of mad suicide not a drug to get high on lol
That’s not the point of the phrase — the statement refers to the true believers drinking poison unquestioningly, without entertaining the thought that it will kill them.
I know. What you have hit upon here is my obviously unsuccessful attempt at making these people look more ridiculous than the OG death cult.
You learn that truth is a dangerous luxery you can do without, as power dictates, and can do so for generations.
