Comment by CommieBobDole
5 months ago
I'd like to point out that the student's advice, "of course the news is ridiculous propaganda, just ignore it and go about your life and focus on your friends and family" is the the response desired by the authoritarian Chinese government who has carefully engineered the situation in the first place.
The purpose of constantly publishing obvious lies is not for people to believe them (though some always will), it's to devalue the idea of truth in general. Combine that with overt (but unpredictable) penalties for supporting the 'wrong' cause, and a disinterest in politics becomes the easiest and safest path for a member of the public. As long as the economy's good, people just don't care about anything that doesn't harm them directly.
Exactly this. Without an active interest in politics people stop caring if their rights are taken away one step at a time. The thought process becomes - the government will do what the government will do, I just need to toe the line and be happy that I am not in jail.
> it's to devalue the idea of truth in general.
You see a common theme in some people talking about science related things, aka "The science was wrong", which is very rarely the case. Most of the time when that is said it's "The conclusion was slightly incorrect because of statistically insignificant findings" (probability based) versus wrong (binary). You end up with a class of people that start thinking all science is wrong and at any moment their crackpot crap is suddenly going to be correct.
I mostly blame bad journalism for this. Always looking for sensational content to capture attention, outlets publish credulous articles on single journal articles without providing enough context for their unsophisticated audience. It would take much more time and effort to properly contextualized them, and in many cases, it would be apparent that it is too early for the general public to draw any conclusions from the research. It wouldn't be newsworthy.
also was the outcome fostered by the USSR
There is really some wild fan-fiction on HN. If you're being serious, how do you know any of this? Based on what evidence?
I don't have particular knowledge about how things are in China, but the underlying strategy is real and employed by authoritarian regimes against their citizens and adversaries.
In the US, the right-wing media and Trump have been doing it to us, in addition to our adversaries.
In the old days, propaganda was used to make people believe specific things. But information streams aren't as easily controlled today, so instead the idea is to create confusion and distrust. It's a DDoS on reality. Sadly it can be very effective.
Regarding the good economy = apathy, my conclusion is the opposite. I think our good economy is the reason a significant portion of the US population with overwhelming outgroup preference exists at all. As quality of life deteriorates I think that behavior will be selected out and those remaining will get back to the basics of tribe survival. I think it is the fundamental fallacy of the modern socialist that if things get bad enough, people will undergo some personal revelation about climate or vote Bernie or something. I think when you look at extremely poor places like Yemen, you don’t see fertile ground for progressive idealism.
You're strawmaning the socialist view. The stealman version is that people who are feeling economic pain are more likely to want to do something about it, and may be primed to develop class consciousness and become politically mobilized. Socialists generally consider material conditions to be more important than identitarian concerns, which in their view, are often used as a wedge to divide working class people who might otherwise be united by their common economic interests. They don't think poor people are somehow magically less likely to be bigots.
> is the the response desired by the authoritarian Chinese government who has carefully engineered the situation in the first place.
But they are an "authoritarian" government so they don't really care what their citizens believe. Right? Doesn't your logic apply more to "democratic" and "free" countries. No?
> The purpose of constantly publishing obvious lies is not for people to believe them (though some always will), it's to devalue the idea of truth in general.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." -- Thomas Jefferson
Are you saying the US was "authoritarian" from the very beginning?
> As long as the economy's good, people just don't care about anything that doesn't harm them directly.
Isn't this true for every government? "Democratic", "authoritarian", "monarch", "anarchic", etc?