Most propaganda doesn't work because it's particularly insidious and clever.
It works because humans are incredibly stupid.
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You can talk all the Russian bots, corporate media, "think tanks", corporate FUD, intelligence ops etc. you want. These charlatans are sometimes clever, sometimes not.
But the willingness to believe comes from the deep core of stupidity that abides in all of us.
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Gaslighting, confidence tricks, disinformation all work through sophisticated means, but they all prey on your monkey brain:
Your need for validation, your need to seem competent, your instinctive urge to trust those who resemble you, your inability to tolerate dissonance.
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The tricks are all misrepresentation of social truth, or the models that go into generating that truth.
The vulnerability comes from your reliance on such.
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The best antidote, such as it is, is realizing there is no antidote. As a human, you will never be smart enough to see it all.
And you shouldn't wish to become too jaded to trust.
What little hope there is rests in realizing you're not as smart as you think you are.
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