Cambridge Analytica is now the new Boogeyman. Every day new revelations come out about their methods, and their “psychological warfare”. We’ve heard about their methods of pulling data and finding the exact right “story” to show the exact right people in order to influence them to vote a certain way, or not to vote at all.
And the internet is going wild.
“Delete Facebook”“Get off of social media”“Run for the hills”
A Front Page diary talks about the purpose of CA to be “to destroy democracy”. It mentions that it does this by “destroying the integrity of elections”.
So let’s break this down a little bit. First, how different is this from Nixon’s ratfcking in the 70s? Seems to me it’s much of the same thing only on a grander scale. Second, when I think of the “integrity of elections”, I think of actual votes being changed secretly, or of people pulling a Waukesha.
But seriously, though. With these latest revelations, and with all the stories of bots planting false and misleading stories all over social media, The tenor and tone of conversations and punditry is one of Gloom and Doom and Apocalypse. However, to me it’s the symptom of a deeper problem.
Think about it. A bit of news, a titillating headline, even an image can completely change our minds. At least that’s what the news stories said. CA and the bots went into specific districts in specific states and planted their stuff specifically to either depress turnout or increase turnout for their client.
Hell, we have seen these stories here too. “This person said this, or took a picture with this other person, so I’m not going to vote at all”. How many here or elsewhere in the “reality based community” were ACTIVELY telling people NOT to vote at all?
Are we so frail and weak as a people that one little “story” is enough to influence how we vote? We see the candidates themselves speak in interviews. We see them in speeches. We can even go to their own websites and explore their positions in more detail. We have the ability to make reasoned judgments.
And yet, we can be so easily swayed. That to me says a lot more about the human condition than anything else. And we have always been this way. It’s ingrained into our DNA. We reason, but we’re also so easy to dupe, manipulate, and otherwise cozen by whichever pack leader stimulates our following hormones like the good monkey troop we are.
Let THIS be our mission then: To free Reason from this inborn weakness that allows us to be so easily influenced.
Our knowledge of ourselves has proven to be our downfall.