Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby elfismiles » Sun Aug 29, 2010 3:38 pm


Report Calls for “Infiltration” of 9/11 Sites
August 29, 2010
Source: 9/11 Truth News


A new report released by a think tank called Demos warns of the hazardous effects of conspiracy theories on society and recommends strategies for governments to mitigate these effects, including the infiltration of websites.

The report, called The Power of Unreason: Conspiracy Theories, Extremism and Counterterrorism, says “most notoriously and influentially, the ‘9/11 truth movement’ has questioned the official accounts of 9/11 and has become a large and growing political force.”

The authors note that the 9/11 truth movement is “peaceful”, but make no distinction between the legitimate questioning of the official account of 9/11 and any number of unrelated, and often racist, conspiracy theories.

The Demos report acknowledges that “some conspiracies have turned out to be true. Our institutions and governments have deceived the population to advance hidden and unstated interests”, and goes on to cite Operations Northwoods, the Joint Chief of Staff’s unimplemented plan to stage a false flag Cuban terror attack in 1963, as well as the CIA’s involvement in the Chilean coup of 1973.

But the report is only concerned with limiting the effects of conspiracy theories on operations of the state, not with justice or the accuracy of the historical record. It states:

More broadly, conspiracy theories drive a wedge of distrust between governments and particular communities. Conspiracy theories – such as those that claim 7/7 or 9/11 were ‘inside jobs’ – demolish the mutuality and trust that people have in institutions of government, with social and political ramifications that we still don’t fully understand. This can especially hinder community-level efforts to fight violent extremism.

Demos makes a number of recommendations for governments to combat conspiracy theories, including a call for more government openness.

The report also cites the writings of Cass Sunstein, an Obama appointee who recently called for the “cognitive infiltration” of 9/11 truth groups. The Demos paper in turn calls for government agents to “openly infiltrate” websites and chatrooms in order offer “alternative information” and “plant seeds of doubt”.

The Demos report can be downloaded here.
http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/thepowerofunreason
http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Conspiracy ... 1282913891


http://911truthnews.com/report-calls-fo ... 911-sites/

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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby Hammer of Los » Sat Sep 04, 2010 8:05 pm

Great pick there elfis. I really love you man.

But the report is only concerned with limiting the effects of conspiracy theories on operations of the state, not with justice or the accuracy of the historical record.


Well, quite.

Most of us pay our taxes and vote, what more do they want, body and soul? Besides which, I am happy to help anyone deal with violent extremism. I'm a pacifist moderate liberal. I'm also rather partial to truth and justice.

But this infiltrating my cognition thing, it just causes confusion and paranoia, and I hate that. On the other hand, I rather enjoy informational diversity, and no-one wants groupthink, right? But for over two years I was too paranoid even to register at the rig int forums. It's true. I fear being tagged as an extremist because I enjoy "conspiracy theory" discourse. I'm not an enemy of the State, I'm quite nice really, just a harmless pseudo-mystic. And yes, I know all about right wing tropes by now, and even anti-semitism. I actually voted Liberal Democrat for heaven's sake.

But why these think tank reports and so on coming out now? Haven't the intelligence services been doing this sort of stuff online for ages anyway? Why be so public and open about it now? First Cass, and now Demos.

Darn, now I have to go read the whole Demos report. I'm sure it will be fascinating. It might even be nice to see where the authors come from too, if I have the time and inclination. But I fear it will not be good for my paranoia.

I guess they really want us to get over this 911 thing. It's just old news, after all, and terribly debilitating to confidence in the state.
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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby FourthBase » Sun Sep 05, 2010 5:43 am

should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine


Ceasing to be amazed more and more all the time. Even the highest-ups can be totally fucking retarded! And what I mean, is: They can't even figure out how to achieve their loathesome goals the right way. Unless this thing is some, like, triple or quadruple double-mindfuck. They'd have to be postmodern conspiracy-brewing-and-concealing geniuses to pull that off. While the Alphabets do hire some very intelligent people, I'm pretty fucking sure that very few if any of them are that brilliant. And, really, what would be the point of a triple mindfuck? To make us slightly more afraid of them? Meanwhile many of us seriously consider the possibility that the Alpha-douches are secretly pawns of a fucking gigantic jellyfish boogieman. Can't imagine much that would out-intimidate that!

But back to why they're retarded, if their purpose is really the stated one. Number one, unless you're retarded: You don't announce it, christ, not unless whoever made the decision to announce it is, like, secretly or subconsciously on our side. Number two, if you really want to quell/silence conspiracy realism (I refuse to demean it as mere theory, of which there is too much on the net, so much half-brained brainrot, that -- shit -- if they can make those idiotic sites unravel, fine by me!)...if they want to tame people like us RI-ers, then the only effective way has got to be, lol, "bringing us in", opening all files to us, and letting us report here on everything we see. Trouble is, we could report all the truth we want on here: No one else fucking visits this site besides the already-converted-to-a-stranger-truer-POV, we'd be preaching the SHOCKING TRUTH to nobody but the fucking choir, so we'd be clique-ish-ly impotent that way. Then there's the whole thing of, if we ever did reach more people than just ourselves and the occasional n00b: They wouldn't believe us, because to 99.99% of them, we are just pathetic denizens of a tainted-by-madness conspiracy theory site like most of the other sites like ours (but sites that can only wish they were us, wish they had Jeff as a guiding light, wish they could write and think like our best and brightest). But then again...Number three, which goes back to the original and perhaps double intent of their announcement: If the goal is to sow OUR internal discord in order to waste OUR precious time and poison OUR relatively-pure well...Well, shit, they might succeed there, because we're not different from other shitty CT sites in the way that we act like psychological retards TO EACH OTHER. Stupid pissing contests. Stupid correcting-people-like-it's-a-sport-you're-trying-to-win, instead of actually-constructive criticism which god forbid might require you to publicly agree with parts of another's output at the same time you're disagreeing with the rest, instead of just quoting-and-disagreeing, and quoting-and-disagreeing, and quoting-and-disagreeing, and quoting-and-disagreeing, and quoting-and-disagreeing. I speak from experience as that type of "contributor". When I used to post shit sui generis, and it was lengthy and just me thinking out loud, and the paragraphs just sat there by themselves, I loved that calm before the storm, before the inevitable-but-needlessly-hostile-argumentation that usually ruined my threads in the end. Oh wait, I forgot an aspect of our social/psychological retardation they might be taking advantage of: Stupid paranoia about which-one-of-us-could-be-a-spook. Just think about it for a second -- if any of us are spooks, chances are it'd be the less obvious ones, right? Or so obvious that they get banned too rapidly to make a dent. And so don't even bother trying now to flip through your mental rolodex of RI members you hadn't suspected before, because it's a total waste of your time, because the best way to deal with any undercover spook that might ever exist is to talk with him or her or it (!) like a fellow human being you're interested in persuading, not an enemy to banish with fingers crossed like an amateur exorcist). If they know how we are weak-willed RETARDS when it comes to picking battles with ourselves (yeah, like that's who needs vanquishing, not actual war criminals or corporate assassins or heartless psychiatrists or inhuman pedophiles...no, we need to vanquish ourselves, shoot ourselves in the foot to make sure the gun works...yeah, brilliant), when it comes to knitting-circle in-fighting, which BTW probably derives from us types being (on the whole) geeky people with a hidden ego-centric craving to belong and exclude -- like those poor sons-of-bitches we thought were cooler in middle or high school! We've been no better! We've been even worse maybe, because we should KNOW better. Ugh. But it's okay. I'm patient with everybody. If you find yourself unexpectedly tasked with teaching a classroom of millions and maybe billions of mentally retarded children: You gotta be patient. But you also have to explain everything very carefully, and be truthful!
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that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby elfismiles » Sat May 05, 2012 9:17 am

Was going to post WAC's recent confrontation vid ... saw grizzly posted a link to it here:

Cops telling protesters how they should protest?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34624&hilit=Sunstein+Cognitive+Infiltration

Here's the vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OIiOztc52g

Searched for the oldest thread I could find on this and was lead to this brief locked thread here:

‘Cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26674

... in which Cuda said it was locked cuz there was an existing thread here:

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=26667

... but there is nothing there.

HMW also linked to that vanished thread in this thread:

So Whose Fault Is It "9/11 Truth" Was An Abysmal Failure?
Re: Whose fault is 9/11 disinfo on discussion boards?

...
You remind me of that article about Obama's psyops advisor promoting "cognitive infiltration of the 9/11 movement."[/i]
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=26667

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... p?p=312020


Apparently those links should point to this thread here:
Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26669

Links are off by 2 board post number digits: 26667 / 26669.


RI board search for Sunstein+Cognitive+Infiltration
search.php?keywords=Sunstein+Cognitive+Infiltration
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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby Col. Quisp » Sat May 05, 2012 10:25 am

It's a conspiracy to infiltrate RI conspiracy theorists!
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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue May 08, 2012 11:11 am

Col. Quisp wrote:It's a conspiracy to infiltrate RI conspiracy theorists!


Information Cascades + Availability Heuristics = Availability Cascades

Which are a central hobgoblin for Sunstein's beautiful mind. (Side Note: It's remarkable how little this stuff has progressed since Skinner, Taylor & Lippmann, innit?) Just publishing the Cognitive Infiltration material is a tidy Op unto itself, though: a small but significant contribution towards Shaping the Debate, Moving the Overton Window, Perception Management, or whatever.com -- since his whole concept is a recursive loop, any serious attempt at unpacking it is basically measuring the coast line of Britain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Long_I ... _Dimension

It is what it is: yet another cracker in a suit with an influential job and a lot of powerful fellowship links who has a lot of bright ideas on how to do Social Control better than the previous cracker in a suit did. Cass Sunstein has a long lineage behind him and his graphomaniac body of work reads like product -- a long sequence of college essays, like a one man version of The Atlantic magazine. The fundamental constraints and concepts he's been grappling with over the past two decades are straight Confucius.

Also: My recent Polybius kick brought me back around to The Republic recently, which is better than I gave it credit for in high school.

When I was an earnest young reader getting into political science, I wanted the data, the meat, the truth, the facts but there really isn't much on tap. I think the reason there is still great value in older works like the Arthashastra or The Prince is because simple works. Broad, poetic strokes are really the only honest way to deal with hugely complex systems like human societies. When these newfangled social science types pretend they're doing actual mathematics, mayhem always ensues. Even in military colleges, much of the focus in 2012 remains on reading and re-reading history in hopes of sifting some gold from all that muck. Thanks to guys like Kaufmann @ Santa Fe Institute, the concept of complexity is getting more familiar, but in practice humans are still doing terribly at modeling and measuring complex systems.

Informational & cybernetic models of human society have been a long-standing theme for Adam Curtis, especially in his early work like Pandora's Box...right up to the most recent sequence, where "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts" examined the same trends through the lens of biology and computer science. RAND was running elaborate models back in the 50's and we've done threads here on more recent Leviathans, like Simulex or SEAS: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=32452

What's important to remember is that despite all this flourishing, uh, innovation, none of these models amount to maps yet.

The reason intel agencies want to advance the study of social networks and the mapping of "Human Terrain" is precisely because current theory is inadequate to explain reality and reality needs to be explained fully in order for the future to be predicted. The ultimate point of all this datamining is that supreme tactical advantage, the MILINT equivalent of that Amos Golan rifle system that can shoot around corners. I realize that sounds ominous and threatening but also remember that these fever dreams of Total Control are just a vanishing horizon, a concept that never works out like world peace or a Higgs Boson.

So in the meantime, guys like Cass Sunstein are in a strange loop where flawed models and bad numbers lead them to increasingly absurd positions. This is another symptom of a fundamental problem Bucky always pointed out: our cultural feedback loop is pretty badly broken. It would be one thing if Sunstein were a blogger, another matter if he were just teaching at Harvard, but the fact he's shaping policy for the United States is a concern.

One of a billion, though: shucks.
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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed May 09, 2012 8:31 am

"In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live? Without taxes, there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. It is a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public. There is no liberty without dependency." - Cass Sunstein
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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed May 09, 2012 8:42 am

Via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog ... servatives

Speak 'Nudge': The 10 key phrases from David Cameron's favourite book

I'm a sucker for the latest "must-read" political book. And so I've just finished Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, the 293-page tome which is proving hugely influential with the Conservatives.

The basic idea is that by using insights from behavioural economics governments can influence people's conduct without using compulsion. It's easy to see why this appeals to Tory policy makers, because nudges are cheap and they don't involve "nanny state" bans, and plenty of good articles have been written about it already (like this one, by Aditya Chakrabortty, in the Guardian).

If you're really interested, you should read the book. But, if you haven't got the time or the inclination, you might still find it worth knowing some Nudge jargon, the language Thaler and Cass use to describe their theories. As a service to readers, I've compiled a list.

Libertarian paternalism: This is the key concept. Nudgers are paternalistic, because they want to make life better for people. But they are libertarians too – they don't like compulsion.

Non-libertarian paternalists: The opposite. Politicians who like passing laws banning things.

Choice architect: Anyone who influences the way people make choices, when they go to the shops, or fill in a form, by presenting the choices in a certain way. "Rigging the questions" would be a more cynical way of describing it. Choice architects are everywhere – you're probably reading this blog as a result of the headline used by the choice architect in charge of this page on the website. Politicians are choice architects too, although some of them probably don't realise it. Thaler and Sunstein think that if they did understand this, they would do their jobs better.

Econs and Humans: Economists (and some conventional policy makers) tend to work on the assumption that people act rationally and that they always do what's best for them. Thaler and Sunstein call people who actually behave like this Econs. Real people, who don't always act rationally, are called Humans.

Status quo bias: A fancy way of saying people don't like change and tend to accept what's offered.

Collective conservatism: The tendency for a group of people to carry on doing what they've done before; ie what happens when status quo bias applies collectively.

Automatic system/Reflective system: Two systems used for thinking. The automatic involves gut reactions, or learnt behaviour; the reflective involves reasoning. We all use both, in different situations. (Thaler and Sunstein say voting normally involves the automatic system, which is bad news of politicians who try to win using complex arguments.)

Mere-measurement effect: A type of nudge. It refers to the fact that, when people are asked what they intend to do in a survey, they are more likely to go and do it. Canvassing exploits the mere-measurement effect because evidence shows that if you ask someone the day before an election how they intend to vote, the chance of their voting increases by 25%.

RECAP: Stands for Record, Evaluate and Compare Alternative Prices. Another type of nudge. Thaler and Sunstein suggest that, in cases where consumers find it difficult to decide which product offers best value (ie with mobile phone charges), companies should be forced to publish information making meaningful comparisons possible.

Third Way: Not the Tony Blair version. Thaler and Sunstein claim their approach offers "a real Third Way" between the Republican obsession with free markets and the Democrat belief in command-and-control regulation.


Included because I think the framing really illustrates the mentality at work. Also, fwiw, "Mere Measurement Effect" is usually referred to as "push polling" at an operational level.
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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Wed May 09, 2012 7:28 pm

Thanks for that wr. I know somewhere it might be very useful.
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Re: Obama staffer suggests conspiracy to combat "CT"ers

Postby zuestorz » Wed May 09, 2012 9:45 pm

Wombaticus Rex wrote: . . .
So in the meantime, guys like Cass Sunstein are in a strange loop where flawed models and bad numbers lead them to increasingly absurd positions. This is another symptom of a fundamental problem Bucky always pointed out: our cultural feedback loop is pretty badly broken. It would be one thing if Sunstein were a blogger, another matter if he were just teaching at Harvard, but the fact he's shaping policy for the United States is a concern.

One of a billion, though: shucks.


Yes agreed, it's a huge worry especially since Dave Mantik's comprehensive demolition of the Sunstein - Vermeule article. Couldn't spot it linked anywhere in the thread.

http://www.ctka.net/2010/mantik_sunstein.html
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves
- Thomas Jefferson
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