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pre comments on The ideas you're not ready to post - Less Wrong
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Comments (253)
memetic engineering
The art of manipulating the media, especially news, and public opinion. Sometimes known as "spin-doctoring" I guess, but I think the memetic paradigm is probably a more useful one to attack it from.
I'd love to understand that better than I do. Understanding it properly would certainly help with evangelism.
I fear that very few people really do grok it though, certainly I wouldn't be capable of writing much relevant about it yet.
I'm not sure that's something worth studying here - it's kinda sneaky and unethical.
Oh, so we're just using techniques which win without being sneaky? Isn't 'sneaky' a good, winning strategy?
Rationality's enemies are certainly using these techniques. Should we not study them, if only with a view to finding an antidote?
I would say it is certainly something worth studying, the understanding of how it works would be invaluable. We can decide if we want to use it to further our goals or not once we understand it (hopefully not before, using something you don't understand is generally a bad thing imho). If we decide not to use it, the knowledge would help us educate others and perhaps prevent the 'dark ones' from using it.
Perhaps something a la James Randi, create an ad whose first half uses some of the techniques and whose second half explains the mechanisms used to control inattentive viewers with a link to somewhere with more information on understanding how its done and why people should care.