Skeletori
7th April 2010, 13:14
EDIT: Nobody had replied yet so I made some edits. And I think the subject of the thread is a little awkward. Is there any way to change it? To "Communication & Empowerment".
Hi! I'm a new poster here so please bear with me :). All comments are welcome.
My basic question that I've been thinking about is, what are the best strategies for educating the masses, I mean trying to elevate the consciousness level of people? To what degree should we attempt to subvert official reality? Should we attempt to simplify our arguments, and how?
I'm thinking of official reality here as concepts, their normative evaluations and ways of using them that are prevalent in mass media and official communications. I understand there's no singular official reality but, for example, most Western countries seem to have quite similar ones.
For example, here could be some typical stuff from an official reality:
1. Our government leaders are ultimately benevolent.
2. X is an enlightened nation that attempts to disseminate its benevolent values for the benefit of humanity.
3. Socialism is an evil born out of the jealousness of the lazy.
4. Free markets are the only tool for positive economic change.
5. Indirect democracy is necessary to protect people from the tyranny of the majority.
6. There are evil and powerful people, controlling whole nations, out there who want to destroy our way of life.
As an example (probably a poor one I admit) of subverting official reality, we can think of replacing the word "worker" with the word "people". The ruling classes can taint the word "worker" and the connections it makes with other concepts with negative connotations quite easily but they wouldn't be able to do so with "people". I'm thinking of something like this as a strategic element that still wouldn't descend to rhetoric.
Most people seem to realize that there's something fishy with their official reality but in the absence of principled tools these suspicions will stay vague and often steer people in their desperation in the wrong direction. The average man on the street can see contradictions, cracks in the official reality but is not able to jump into the rabbit hole and resolve them all to make his worldview consistent. Do you think it would be possible to give the general population simple enough tools to fight official reality?
What I'm vaguely thinking about are very simple but still useful mental models (call them sketches; I think I got the general idea from Wittgenstein's method in Philosophical Investigations) that could be combined into more complex models. I'm attempting to contrast these sketches with detailed, more complete theories that have complex logical connections between concepts and are much more difficult to understand to the layman.
I'll try to give an example, outline a sketch of personal power:
1. The first principle of power is: only power is important. This is sometimes stated, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing". Those who desire power have understood this principle intuitively for many millennia now.
2. People whose only motive is to gobble up power will usually end up in a higher position in life than people who have other considerations, as these other considerations (for example, moral and ideological ones) will conflict with the desire for power.
3. Therefore, as far as humans go, corruption increases with power, our political leaders being especially corrupted.
4. From this it follows that decentralization of power is essential to fight against human corruption.
5. Decentralization of power implies a strongly participatory democracy, as we can see how indirect democracy is easily subverted for selfish gain.
That would be the outline of the sketch and then there would be additional pages of reasoning and historical examples. The sketches could cover any branch of science and explicate our humanistic reasoning (the social sciences are IMO in a crappy state right now, and they should all be covered in a comprehensive theory). One sketch by itself would not suffice for much but people could accept its premises through other simple sketches. The sketches could also overlap and strengthen each other. An individual sketch would contain as little ideological baggage as possible. That quality and its simplicity could protect it from sabotage by "official reality" (as there would be fewer links to disrupt, and the sketch would seek to use elementary reasoning), possibly unite sectarians, and just generally make it more understandable. Maybe people wouldn't have to accept all sketches but they could still use the theory.
My background is in computer science, and there simple models are used with great success. Also in AI it has been found that simple models, when combined together in simple ways in judgments, can have much better predictive power than the constituent parts, and often beat much more complex models. That's also why I thought it might be plausible to build a complete theory out of simpler parts. None of them would be a very good picture of reality by themselves, but together they might amount to something.
Hi! I'm a new poster here so please bear with me :). All comments are welcome.
My basic question that I've been thinking about is, what are the best strategies for educating the masses, I mean trying to elevate the consciousness level of people? To what degree should we attempt to subvert official reality? Should we attempt to simplify our arguments, and how?
I'm thinking of official reality here as concepts, their normative evaluations and ways of using them that are prevalent in mass media and official communications. I understand there's no singular official reality but, for example, most Western countries seem to have quite similar ones.
For example, here could be some typical stuff from an official reality:
1. Our government leaders are ultimately benevolent.
2. X is an enlightened nation that attempts to disseminate its benevolent values for the benefit of humanity.
3. Socialism is an evil born out of the jealousness of the lazy.
4. Free markets are the only tool for positive economic change.
5. Indirect democracy is necessary to protect people from the tyranny of the majority.
6. There are evil and powerful people, controlling whole nations, out there who want to destroy our way of life.
As an example (probably a poor one I admit) of subverting official reality, we can think of replacing the word "worker" with the word "people". The ruling classes can taint the word "worker" and the connections it makes with other concepts with negative connotations quite easily but they wouldn't be able to do so with "people". I'm thinking of something like this as a strategic element that still wouldn't descend to rhetoric.
Most people seem to realize that there's something fishy with their official reality but in the absence of principled tools these suspicions will stay vague and often steer people in their desperation in the wrong direction. The average man on the street can see contradictions, cracks in the official reality but is not able to jump into the rabbit hole and resolve them all to make his worldview consistent. Do you think it would be possible to give the general population simple enough tools to fight official reality?
What I'm vaguely thinking about are very simple but still useful mental models (call them sketches; I think I got the general idea from Wittgenstein's method in Philosophical Investigations) that could be combined into more complex models. I'm attempting to contrast these sketches with detailed, more complete theories that have complex logical connections between concepts and are much more difficult to understand to the layman.
I'll try to give an example, outline a sketch of personal power:
1. The first principle of power is: only power is important. This is sometimes stated, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing". Those who desire power have understood this principle intuitively for many millennia now.
2. People whose only motive is to gobble up power will usually end up in a higher position in life than people who have other considerations, as these other considerations (for example, moral and ideological ones) will conflict with the desire for power.
3. Therefore, as far as humans go, corruption increases with power, our political leaders being especially corrupted.
4. From this it follows that decentralization of power is essential to fight against human corruption.
5. Decentralization of power implies a strongly participatory democracy, as we can see how indirect democracy is easily subverted for selfish gain.
That would be the outline of the sketch and then there would be additional pages of reasoning and historical examples. The sketches could cover any branch of science and explicate our humanistic reasoning (the social sciences are IMO in a crappy state right now, and they should all be covered in a comprehensive theory). One sketch by itself would not suffice for much but people could accept its premises through other simple sketches. The sketches could also overlap and strengthen each other. An individual sketch would contain as little ideological baggage as possible. That quality and its simplicity could protect it from sabotage by "official reality" (as there would be fewer links to disrupt, and the sketch would seek to use elementary reasoning), possibly unite sectarians, and just generally make it more understandable. Maybe people wouldn't have to accept all sketches but they could still use the theory.
My background is in computer science, and there simple models are used with great success. Also in AI it has been found that simple models, when combined together in simple ways in judgments, can have much better predictive power than the constituent parts, and often beat much more complex models. That's also why I thought it might be plausible to build a complete theory out of simpler parts. None of them would be a very good picture of reality by themselves, but together they might amount to something.