Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

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Norbert Wiener wrote in the introduction of his book “cybernetics”:

Those of us who have contributed to the new science of cybernetics thus stand in a moral position which is, to say the least, not very comfortable. We have contributed to the initiation of a new science which, as I have said, embraces technical developments with great possibilities for good and for evil. We can only hand it over into the world that exists about us, and this is the world of Belsen and Hiroshima. We do not even have the choice of suppressing these new technical developments. They belong to the age, and the most any of us can do by suppression is to put is to put the development of the subject into the hands of the most irresponsible and most venal of our engineers. The best we can do is to see that a large public understands the trend and the bearing of the present work, and to confine our personal efforts to those fields, such as physiology and psychology, most remote from war and exploitation. As we have seen, there are those who hope that the good of a better understanding of man and society which is offered by this new field of work may anticipate and outweigh the incidental contribution we are making to the concentration of power (which is always concentrated, by its very conditions of existence, in the hands of the most unscrupulous). I write in 1947, and I am compelled to say that it is a very slight hope.

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Google’s Whitepaper on the “fight” of disinformation

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George Lakoff could write a book on the “conceptual metaphor” employed in the title of the whitepaper. George Orwell is turning in his grave (the “digital algorithmic ministry of truth”).

Here are the “three foundational pillars” of the whitepaper (expressis verbis):

  • Improve our products so they continue to make quality count;
  • Counteract malicious actors seeking to spread disinformation;
  • Give people context about the information they see.

PDF: storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/How_Google_Fights_Disinformation.pdf
URLs: blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/fighting-disinformation-across-our-products/
www.securityconference.de


Further References

Lakoff, G.. (2014). Metaphor and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf. Cognitive Semiotics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1515/cogsem.2009.4.2.5
DOI URL
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Steuter, E., & Wills, D.. (2008). At war with metaphor. Nueva York: Rowman and …

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-10-4
DOI URL
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Thibodeau, P. H., Hendricks, R. K., & Boroditsky, L.. (2017). How Linguistic Metaphor Scaffolds Reasoning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.07.001
DOI URL
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Hülsse, R., & Spencer, A.. (2008). The metaphor of terror: Terrorism studies and the constructivist turn. Security Dialogue

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0967010608098210
DOI URL
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Ferrari, F.. (2007). Metaphor at work in the analysis of political discourse: Investigating a “preventive war” persuasion strategy. Discourse and Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0957926507079737
DOI URL
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Thibodeau, P., Mcclelland, J. L., & Boroditsky, L.. (2009). When a bad metaphor may not be a victimless crime : The role of metaphor in social policy. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1070.0713
DOI URL
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Spencer, A.. (2012). The social construction of terrorism: Media, metaphors and policy implications. Journal of International Relations and Development

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1057/jird.2012.4
DOI URL
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At war with metaphor: media, propaganda, and racism in the war on terror. (2013). Choice Reviews Online

Plain numerical DOI: 10.5860/choice.46-3669
DOI URL
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Kövecses, Z.. (2016). Conceptual metaphor theory. In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4324/9781315672953
DOI URL
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Navaro-Yashin, Y.. (2009). Affective spaces, melancholic objects: Ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.01527.x
DOI URL
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Koller, V., Hardie, A., Rayson, P., & Semino, E.. (2008). Using a semantic annotation tool for the analysis of metaphor in discourse. Metaphorik.De
Yanık, L. K.. (2009). The Metamorphosis of Metaphors of Vision: “Bridging” Turkey’s Location, Role and Identity After the End of the Cold War. Geopolitics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/14650040802693515
DOI URL
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Studies on the financial power élite: Behind the façade of democracy

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Davies, W.. (2017). Elite Power under Advanced Neoliberalism. Theory, Culture and Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0263276417715072
DOI URL
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Foster, J. B., & Holleman, H.. (2014). The Financial Power Elite. Monthly Review

Plain numerical DOI: 10.14452/mr-062-01-2010-05_1
DOI URL
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Hoskin, K. W., & Macve, R. H.. (1986). Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power. Accounting, Organizations and Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/0361-3682(86)90027-9
DOI URL
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Froud, J., Johal, S., Moran, M., & Williams, K.. (2017). Outsourcing the State: New Sources of Elite Power. Theory, Culture and Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0263276417717791
DOI URL
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Seabrooke, L.. (2009). The Social Sources of Financial Power: Domestic Legitimacy and International Financial Orders. Economic Geography

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1944-8287.2008.tb00397.x
DOI URL
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Davis, A.. (2000). Public relations, business news and the reproduction of corporate elite power. Journalism

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/146488490000100301
DOI URL
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Boswell, R.. (2005). Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. Global Studies in Culture and Power

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.1994.9962492
DOI URL
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Abbink, J., & Salverda, T.. (2012). The anthropology of elites: Power, culture, and the complexities of distinction. The Anthropology of Elites: Power, Culture, and the Complexities of Distinction

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1057/9781137290557
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Cybernetics: The science of steering systems

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The etymology of cybernetics

In ancient Greek the word for ‘steer’ is ‘kybernan’ which in turn forms the root of the term ‘cybernetics’ coined 1948 by U.S. mathematician Norbert Wiener. The construction is perhaps based on 1830s French cybernétique ‘the art of governing’. In an academic context cybernetics is the theory or study of communication and control. In general, cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systems—their structures, constraints, and possibilities.

The Latin term ‘gubernare’ (to direct, rule, guide, steer, govern) has the same etymological root. The word ‘governor’ and ‘goverment’ are both related.”

Norbert Wiener
Wiener is considered the originator of cybernetics, a formalization of the notion of feedback, with implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the organization of society.

Norbert Wiener is credited as being one of the first to theorize that all intelligent behavior was the result of feedback mechanisms, that could possibly be simulated by machines and was an important early step towards the development of modern AI.

Norbert Wiener – The Application of Physics to Medicine (1953)


Further References

Miles, S. B., & Wiener, N.. (2006). The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Land Economics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/3159747
DOI URL
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Heylighen, F., & Joslyn, C.. (2004). Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics. In Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/b0-12-227410-5/00161-7
DOI URL
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Wiener, N.. (1956). The theory of prediction. In Modern mathematics for the engineer, editor E.F. Beckenbach
Rosenblueth, A., & Wiener, N.. (2002). The Role of Models in Science. Philosophy of Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1086/286874
DOI URL
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Rosenblueth, A., Wiener, N., & Bigelow, J.. (2002). Behavior, Purpose and Teleology. Philosophy of Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1086/286788
DOI URL
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Adams, F.. (2003). The Informational Turn in Philosophy. Minds and Machines

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1023/A:1026244616112
DOI URL
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Wiener, N.. (2011). Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine (2nd ed.). Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine (2nd ed.).

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1037/13140-000
DOI URL
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Wiener, N.. (1960). Some moral and technical consequences of automation. Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1126/science.131.3410.1355
DOI URL
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Psychological warfare: Weltanschauungskrieg = The war of worldviews

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AI translation:

The concept of psychological warfare emerged in Nazi Germany and was later adopted by the USA.

The word is a translation of the German “Weltanschauungskrieg” (war of worldviews). Wall Street Lawyer William Donovan “Wild Bill” was one of the first to use it in the context of public relations in the USA. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him as Director of the new U.S. intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, predecessor of the CIA) who saw “psychological warfare” as an important stratagem for “engineering of consent” in the public mind (see Chomskys & Hermans “propaganda model”).

William Joseph Donovan (January 1, 1883 – February 8, 1959)

Donovan viewed an understanding of Nazi psychological tactics as a vital source of ideas for “Americanized’’ versions of many of the same stratagems. Use of the new term quickly became widespread throughout the U.S. intelligence community. . . Donovan was among the first in the US to articulate a more or less unified theory of psychological warfare. . . As he saw it, the “engineering of consent” techniques used in peacetime propaganda campaigns could be quite effectively adapted to open warfare. Pro-Allied propaganda was essential to reorganizing the U.S. economy for war and for creating public support at home for intervention in Europe, Donovan believed. Fifth-column movements could be employed abroad as sources of intelligence and as morale-builders for populations under Axis control. He saw “special operations” — meaning sabotage, subversion, commando raids, and guerrilla movements — as useful for softening up targets prior to conventional military assaults. (Simpson. Science of Coercion, 1994, p. 24)

Oxford University Press; January 1996
ISBN: 9780198023623
Title: Science of Coercion
Author: Christopher Simpson
Imprint: Oxford University Press (US)

See also: ahrp.org/1941-the-term-psychological-warfare-was-a-nazi-concept-adapted-and-americanized/

“Science of Coercion provides the first thorough examination of the role of the CIA, the Pentagon, and other U.S. security agencies in the evolution of modern communication research, a field in the social sciences which crystallized into a distinct discipline in the early 1950s. Government-funded psychological warfare programs underwrote the academic triumph of preconceptions about communication that persist today in communication studies, advertising research, and in counterinsurgency operations. Christopher Simpson contends that it is unlikely that communication research could have emerged into its present form without regular transfusions of money from U.S military, intelligence, and propaganda agencies during the Cold War. These agencies saw mass communication as an instrument for persuading or dominating targeted groups in the United States and abroad; as a tool for improving military operations; and perhaps most fundamentally, as a mfeans to extend the U.S. influence more widely than ever before at a relatively modest cost. Communication research, in turn, became for a time the preferred method for testing and developing such techniques. Science of Coercion uses long-classified documents to probe the contributions made by prominent mass communication researchers such as Wilbur Schramm, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and others, then details the impact of psychological warfare projects on widely held preconceptions about social science and the nature of communication itself. A fascinating case study in the history of science and the sociology of knowledge, Science of Coercion offers valuable insights into the dynamics of ideology and the social psychology of communication.”

Source: www.ebooks.com/en-us/272659/science-of-coercion/christopher-simpson/


Further References

Operation Paperclip: the secret intelligence program that brought Nazi scientists to America. (2014). Choice Reviews Online

Plain numerical DOI: 10.5860/choice.51-6938
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Pellis, N. R.. (2014). Ethics in space medicine: Holocaust beginnings, the present, and the future. In Human Subjects Research After the Holocaust

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-05702-6_17
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Beach, G. J.. (2013). 1945: Operation Paperclip: America’s First War for Tech Talent. In The U.S. Technology Skills Gap

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/9781118680704.ch2
DOI URL
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BARBIER, M. K.. (2017). Operation Paperclip—Antecedents and Dubious Draftees. In Spies, Lies, and Citizenship

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt1tqx72k.16
DOI URL
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Crossman, R. H. S.. (1953). Psychological warfare. Royal United Services Institution. Journal

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/03071845309422196
DOI URL
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Whittaker, J. O.. (1997). Psychological warfare in Vietnam. Political Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/0162-895X.00052
DOI URL
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Doob, L. W.. (1950). Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda. Public Opinion Quarterly

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1086/266211
DOI URL
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Welch, D.. (2004). Nazi Propaganda and the Volksgemeinschaft: Constructing a People’s Community. Journal of Contemporary History

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0022009404042129
DOI URL
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Adena, M., Enikolopov, R., Petrova, M., Santarosa, V., & Zhuravskaya, E.. (2015). Radio and the rise of the Nazis in prewar Germany. Quarterly Journal of Economics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjv030
DOI URL
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Meyer, M., & Welch, D.. (2006). Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945. The History Teacher

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/493610
DOI URL
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Kohl, D.. (2011). The Presentation of ” Self ” and ” Other ” in Nazi Propaganda. Psychology & Society

The Oxford handbook of propaganda studies. (2014). Choice Reviews Online

Plain numerical DOI: 10.5860/choice.51-5963
DOI URL
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Neudert, L.-M.. (2017). Computational Propaganda in Germany: A Cautionary Tale. Working Paper 2017.7. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda.

Berelson, B., & De Grazia, S.. (1947). Detecting collaboration in propaganda. Public Opinion Quarterly

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1093/poq/11.2.244
DOI URL
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Koppang, H.. (2009). Social Influence by Manipulation: A Definition and Case of Propaganda. Middle East Critique

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/19436140902989472
DOI URL
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Holmes, A.. (2018). Worldview: The History of a Concept. Philosophia Christi

Plain numerical DOI: 10.5840/pc20035271
DOI URL
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Meja, V., Kettler, D., Meja, V., & Kettler, D.. (2018). On the Interpretation of Weltanschauung. In From Karl Mannheim

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4324/9780203791318-3
DOI URL
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Habermas, J., & McCumber, J.. (2005). Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective. Critical Inquiry

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1086/448492
DOI URL
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Simmel, G.. (2007). Kant and Goethe: On the History of the Modern Weltanschauung. Theory, Culture & Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0263276407078717
DOI URL
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Altmann, G.. (2011). Science and Linguistics. In Contributions to Quantitative Linguistics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-1769-2_1
DOI URL
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J. Edgar Hoover on “monstrous conspiracy and morality”

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The individual comes face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind has not come to a realisation of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.

 

When morals decline and good men do nothing, evil flourishes. A society unwilling to learn from past is doomed. We must never forget our history.

John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator and the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. He was appointed as the director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI’s predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972 at the age of 77

The Impact of Science on Society – Bertrand Russell

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Take first the question of food and population. At present 
the population of the globe is increasing at the rate of about 
20 millions a year. Most of this increase is in Russia and 
Southeast Asia. The population of Western Europe and 
the United States is nearly stationary. Meanwhile, the food 
supply of the world as a whole threatens to diminish, as a 
result of unwise methods of cultivation and destruction of 
forests. This is an explosive situation. Left to itself, it must 
lead to a food shortage and thence to a world war. Technique, 
however, makes other issues possible. 

Vital statistics in the West are dominated by medicine 
and birth control: the one diminishes the deaths, the other 
the births. The result is that the average age in the West 
increases: there is a smaller percentage of young people and 
a larger percentage of old people. Some people consider that 
this must have unfortunate results, but speaking as an old 
person, I am not sure. 

The danger of a world shortage of food may be averted 
for a time by improvements in the technique of agriculture. 
But, if population continues to increase at the present rate, 
such improvements cannot long suffice. There will then be 
two groups, one poor with an increasing population, the 
other rich with a stationary population. Such a situation can 
hardly fail to lead to world war. If there is not to be an 
endless succession of wars, population will have to become 
stationary throughout the world, and this will probably have 
to be done, in many countries, as a result of governmental 
measures. This will require an extension of scientific tech- 
nique into very intimate matters. There are, however, two 
other possibilities. War may become so destructive that, at 
any rate for a time, there is no danger of overpopulation; or 
the scientific nations may be defeated and anarchy may de- 
stroy scientific technique. 

Biology is likely to affect human life through the study of 
heredity. Without science, men have changed domestic 
animals and food plants enormously in advantageous ways. 
It may be assumed that they will change them much more, 
and much more quickly, by bringing the science of genetics 
to bear. Perhaps, even, it may become possible artificially to 
induce desirable mutations in genes. (Hitherto the only muta- 
tions that can be artificially caused are neutral or harmful.) 
In any case, it is pretty certain that scientific technique will 
very soon effect great improvements in the animals and 
plants that are useful to man. 

When such methods of modifying the congenital character 
of animals and plants have been pursued long enough to make 
their success obvious, it is probable that there will be a 
powerful movement for applying scientific methods to human 
propagation. There would at first be strong religious and 
emotional obstacles to the adoption of such a policy. But sup- 
pose (say) Russia were able to overcome these obstacles 
and to breed a race stronger, more intelligent, and more 
resistant to disease than any race of men that has hitherto 
existed, and suppose the other nations perceived that unless 
they followed suit they would be defeated in war, then either 
the other nations would voluntarily forgo their prejudices, or, 
after defeat, they would be compelled to forgo them. Any 
scientific technique, however beastly, is bound to spread if 
it is useful in war— until such time as men decide that they have 
had enough of war and will henceforth live in peace. As 
that day does not seem to be at hand, scientific breeding of 
human beings must be expected to come about. I shall return 
to this subject in a later chapter. 

Physiology and psychology afford fields for scientific tech- 
nique which still await development. Two great men, Pavlov 
and Freud, have laid the foundation. I do not accept the view 
that they are in any essential conflict, but what structure 
will be built on their foundations is still in doubt. 

I think the subject which will be of most importance polit- 
ically is mass psychology. Mass psychology is, scientifically 
speaking, not a very advanced study, and so far its professors 
have not been in universities: they have been advertisers, 
politicians, and, above all, dictators. This study is immensely 
useful to practical men, whether they wish to become rich 
or to acquire the government. It is, of course, as a science, 
founded upon individual psychology, but hitherto it has 
employed rule-of-thumb methods which were based upon a 
kind of intuitive common sense. Its importance has been 
enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of 
propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called 
"education." Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; 
the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part. 

What is essential in mass psychology is the art of per- 
suasion. If you compare a speech of Hitler's with a speech of 
(say) Edmund Burke, you will see what strides have been 
made in the art since the eighteenth century. What went 
wrong formerly was that people had read in books that man 
is a rational animal, and framed their arguments on this 
hypothesis. We now know that limelight and a brass band 
do more to persuade than can be done by the most elegant 
train of syllogisms. It may be hoped that in time anybody will 
be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch 
the patient young and is provided by the State with money 
and equipment.

Encyclopædic hegemony: On the dominance of Wikipedia

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Man muß das Wahre immer wiederholen, weil auch der Irrtum um uns her immer wieder gepredigt wird, und zwar nicht von einzelnen, sondern von der Masse. In Zeitungen und Enzyklopädien, auf Schulen und Universitäten, überall ist der Irrtum oben auf, und es ist ihm wohl und behaglich, im Gefühl der Majorität, die auf seiner Seite ist. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Transl.: Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.)

The following statistical tools are of great value in this context because they enable researchers to investigate Wikipedia (e.g., “Edit Wars”) in an empirical fashion (see also Aceto & Pescapé, 2015; Darer, Farnan, & Wright, 2018; Gosain, Agarwal, Shekhawat, Acharya, & Chakravarty, 2018; Wright, Darer, & Farnan, 2018):

revision_content(language = NULL, project = NULL, domain = NULL,revisions, properties = c("content", "ids", "flags", "timestamp", "user","userid", "size", "sha1", "contentmodel", "comment", "parsedcomment", "tags"),clean_response = FALSE, ...)

Source: cran.r-project.org/web/packages/WikipediR/WikipediR.pdf – p.11

Cf.:
Ripberger, Joseph T. (2011): Capturing curiosity: using Internet search trends to measure public attentiveness. Policy Studies Journal 39(2):239-259.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-0072.2011.00406.x/full

 

References

Darer, A., Farnan, O., & Wright, J. (2018). Automated discovery of internet censorship by web crawling. In WebSci 2018 – Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science. doi.org/10.1145/3201064.3201091

Gosain, D., Agarwal, A., Shekhawat, S., Acharya, H. B., & Chakravarty, S. (2018). Mending wall: On the implementation of censorship in India. In Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78813-5_21

Rackley, M. (2009). Internet Archive. In Encylopedia of Library and Information Science, 3rd edition (pp. 2966–2976). doi.org/10.1081/E-ELIS3-120044284

Wright, J., Darer, A., & Farnan, O. (2018). On identifying anomalies in tor usage with applications in detecting internet censorship. In WebSci 2018 – Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science. doi.org/10.1145/3201064.3201093

Full spectrum dominance (JointVision 2020)

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Full-spectrum dominance also known as full-spectrum superiority, is a military entity’s achievement of control over all dimensions of the battlespace, effectively possessing an overwhelming diversity of resources in such areas as terrestrial, aerial, maritime, subterranean, extraterrestrial, psychological, and bio- or cyber-technological warfare.

For more info visit: www.defense.gov

Social Identity Theory and the influence of music on identity-formation

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Social identity is the portion of an individual’s self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. As originally formulated by social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and the 1980s, social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to explain intergroup behaviour.

Social identity theory (SIT) is described as a theory that predicts certain intergroup behaviours on the basis of perceived group status differences, the perceived legitimacy and stability of those status differences, and the perceived ability to move from one group to another. This contrasts with occasions where the term “social identity theory” is used to refer to general theorizing about human social selves. Moreover, and although some researchers have treated it as such, social identity theory was never intended to be a general theory of social categorization. It was awareness of the limited scope of social identity theory that led John Turner and colleagues to develop a cousin theory in the form of self-categorization theory, which built on the insights of social identity theory to produce a more general account of self and group processes. The term social identity approach, or social identity perspective, is suggested for describing the joint contributions of both social identity theory and self-categorization theory. Social identity theory suggests that an organization (or any other group-membership) can change individual behaviors if it can modify their self-identity or part of their self-concept that derives from the knowledge of, and emotional attachment to the group.
Music has significant effects on social identity. Already Aristotle and Plato argued that the “harmonics of music effect the harmony within society”. Today’s music industry (which is highly centralized) exerts powerful influences on society, especially on children and adolescents. The effects of today’s mainstream music on social identity are extremely worrisome (to say the least). The systematic (large scale) manipulation of social identities is an important tool of social engineering (cf. Adorno/Frankfurter school). Unfortunately there are almost no protective mechanisms in place which could prevent vulnerable populations from “weaponized music“. Music can be effectively utilized to destabilize society (via social identity) and it is thus a tool of psychological warfare, for instance, via systematic demoralization (violence, aggression, sexual promiscuity, ego-reinforcement, importance of money/materialistic thinking, etc.). Statistical research has demonstrated significant correlations between music and various detrimental behaviours (drug use, violence, promiscuity, etc.) and psychopathology. Music can be used to induce trance and manipulate basal unconscious processes. From a “mental hygiene” point of view the conclusion is clear: Be careful what enters your ears because it will effect your (unconscious) mind and your social identity (in analogy to the effects of unhealthy food intake and physical health). However, vice versa the flip-side holds also true: Music can be used to elevate the mind and foster moral and ethical behaviour (viz., harmony and virtues). However, this is clearly NOT happening.


Further References

Brown, R.. (2000). Social identity theory: past achievements, current problems and future challenges. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30(6), 745–778.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/1099-0992(200011/12)30:6<745::AID-EJSP24>3.0.CO;2-O
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E.. (2000). Identity theory and social identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly

Plain numerical DOI: 10.3102/0013189X0629800
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Calhoun, C.. (1994). Social theory and the politics of identity. Social Psychology Quarterly
Castells, M., Himanen, P., Castells, M., & Himanen, P.. (2011). The Power of Identity. In The Information Society and the Welfare State

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256990.003.0006
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Ellemers, N., & Haslam, S. A.. (2012). Social Identity Theory. In Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology (pp. 379–398). 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road, London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom: SAGE Publications Ltd

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4135/9781446249222.n45
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Hogg, M. A.. (2016). Social Identity Theory. In Understanding Peace and Conflict Through Social Identity Theory: Contemporary Global Perspectives

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-29869-6_1
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Hogg, M. A., Terry, D. J., & White, K. M.. (1995). A Tale of Two Theories: A Critical Comparison of Identity Theory with Social Identity Theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58(4), 255.

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