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Training the Next Generation of Thought Police

by James Alexander
21 September 2024 9:00 AM

In April of this year, Jon Roozenbeek and Sander van der Linden published a book entitled The Psychology of Misinformation with the Cambridge University Press. It is short, lucid and one-eyed – despite having two authors. Since this book is state-of-the-art on the ‘misinformation’ front I thought I’d bring a sceptical pair of eyes to bear on it. They say they like scepticism, within limits. So I thought I’d try the unlimited sort.

The book is academic. It pretends to objectivity. It is polite and reasonable and ‘evidenced’, and sometimes facetious in a way that is meant to be charming. But it is one of those devilish books which does the opposite of what it claims to do. It claims to be understanding and hence opposing misinformation: in fact, it is a contribution to the making of a misinformation society. Now, I am not a psychologist. Usually, academic book reviews are written by fellow scholars, members of the same “echo chamber” (to use words used by our authors), subject to the same “filter bubbles” (to use other words they use). But I’d like to see a revival of 19th-century book reviewing, in which anyone can wade in on anything and smite it with a stave or impale it on a hook. This is one such short attempt.


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Tags: Climate AlarmismCOVID-19DisinformationFact checkMisinformationPropagandaPsychology

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27 Comments
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varmint
varmint
8 months ago

Morning everyone——Pop onto your Amazon account and download “Social Credit: Nightmare on your Street” to your Kindles——by Vernon Coleman. He exposes what is happening right before our eyes. ———-PS No I am not Vernon Coleman by the way

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JeremyP99
JeremyP99
8 months ago
Reply to  varmint

I don’t have an Amazon account. Deleted it as soon as all my outstanding orders had been fulfilled, as a result of reading this –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism

I’ve never had nor ever will have a Smartphone. Had I, it would have been junked as soon as reading the above.

0
0
varmint
varmint
8 months ago
Reply to  JeremyP99

Yes well maybe you should ditch your telly as well since it likely has a camera in it. And maybe you should ditch your Daily Sceptic Direct debit as well because the authorities see all that JeremyP99 types, and they know who JeremyP99 is ofcourse. —–That is what the book I recommended above reveals.

1
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Twm Morgan
Twm Morgan
8 months ago
Reply to  varmint

Done, and thank you!

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0
MajorMajor
MajorMajor
8 months ago

Look, you powerful global elite, it’s hopeless.
I lived in a communist country for 24 years. The entire media was completely controlled by the government. Nothing unapproved got published. TV and newspapers sang praises of the state. Opposition was banned. You could only dream of the extent of control our leaders had.
And yet, and yet… it fell apart.
You are doomed and deep in your heart you know it. That’s why you are so intolerant, aggressive, arrogant. You are desperate because you built your house on sand and it will collapse.

8
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Dinger64
Dinger64
8 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

You lived in the UK then?🫣

2
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varmint
varmint
8 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

People in North Korea wish that was true.

2
0
MajorMajor
MajorMajor
8 months ago
Reply to  varmint

Nobody expected the Soviet Union to collapse. It might take a while but North Korea will get there too.

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0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
8 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

True

The Chinese seem to have been smarter though

1
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varmint
varmint
8 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

And so will we

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0
Dinger64
Dinger64
8 months ago
  • First era: humans misinform humans using spoken words.
  • Second era: humans misinform humans using written words.
  • Third era: humans misinform humans using printed books.
  • Fourth era: humans misinform humans using radio and television.
  • Fifth era: humans misinform humans using the internet and social media.

Communication that has led to the benefit and prosperity of the human race!
How can anyone diss this as a downside?

1
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
8 months ago

https://off-guardian.org/2024/09/18/atlantic-mag-admits-pandemic-failed-to-brainwash-people-into-unifying/

An excellent article by Catte Black at Off-G explaining why the C1984 was a failure. I am sure the new thought police will be analysing the failure in depth.

2
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Dinger64
Dinger64
8 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Failure? I’m sure if the ptb did the same thing again, the masses would fall into line just as they did the first time!
Hope I’m wrong, but I doubt there’d be a mass rebellion
The British are a different bunch to what they used to be, rebellious action seems to have been knocked out of them, they’ve become placid and pliable.
Older poeple like us are the last to carry the mantle for the country that was!

Last edited 8 months ago by Dinger64
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Mogwai
Mogwai
8 months ago
Reply to  Dinger64

I disagree. A lot of time has passed, a lot has transpired and a lot of people have woken up to the fact they were very effectively manipulated and lied to since the Scamdemic years, and once you’ve been red-pilled there’s no going back. So I don’t think they’d dare try another ‘plandemic’ on us because they can’t confidently rely on the fact that sufficient people will react like Pavlov’s dogs and just meekly comply with bovine-like obedience. It worked first time around but I’m confident they won’t be able to pull it off ever again. Too many have snapped out of their automaton-like trance to make that possible. The ”truth will out”, as they say, and that’s precisely why ‘TPTB’ are cracking down so hard with censorship of free speech and the spread of information. It’s the biggest threat there is to them.

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Dinger64
Dinger64
8 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

I truly hope your right Mogs👍

4
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
8 months ago
Reply to  Dinger64

The British are a different bunch to what they used to be, rebellious action seems to have been knocked out of them, they’ve become placid and pliable.
Older poeple like us are the last to carry the mantle for the country that was!
I moved to Ireland to chase the last of the real western values, and to a point, it still exists over here but its rapidly headed in the same direction as the rest
Poland and Hungary are now starting to look like favourites for western normality! Who’d have ever thunk?

3
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
8 months ago

Interesting 10min film looking at the attack on free speech across the West by the globalist tyrants;

”STRIKING DOCUMENTARY: Free Speech Under Global Attack

This short documentary reveals a concerted and global attack on free speech. Will also the Western world be conquered by authoritarian regimes with hard-hitting hate speech laws and government censorship through Big Tech? Reasonable people should fight back.

PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE!”

https://x.com/freedom_rsrch/status/1836087608046440450

3
0
JohnK
JohnK
8 months ago

And the classic terms “selective with the truth” & “economical with the truth” are presumably a branch of misinformation. Perhaps they do not use those. Almost the opposite of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”; a phrase that is usually a witness testimony. Perhaps there are “thought police” trading as barristers!

2
0
jsampson45
jsampson45
8 months ago
Reply to  JohnK

As a juror I found the unusual situation of being required to listen to both sides.

2
0
Jay Willis
Jay Willis
8 months ago

Thanks for reading it. So I don’t have to. Dr. John Clauser, 2022 Nobel prize winner in physics has done all of us a great favour in calling the climate crisis a crock of crap. Not that it isn’t easy to ascertain this for yourself with minor levels of research, but it means any book, article, or author who states that there is a climate crisis can be shown to be wrong to any fool who can’t or won’t research the subject.

6
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Twm Morgan
Twm Morgan
8 months ago
Reply to  Jay Willis

Indeed!

Yet governments everywhere in the West pander to the myth as this serves their interests in taxing and controlling – with Climate Change and the constant reputation of the mantra ‘Saving The Planet’ being foremost on the lips of Joe Public.

And Dr Clauser et al dismissed as fools.

0
0
kev
kev
8 months ago

At what point does an opinion become misinformation?

Truth is now subjective, we have no objective truth it seems!

If our government informs us the sun rises in the West and sets in the East, it would be misinformation to argue otherwise – according to their rules.

Truth by decree.

Last edited 8 months ago by kev
1
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
8 months ago

The numerate are more likely to spot disinformation are they? Maybe because they are more likely to be purveyors of it. Liars can probably spot other liars more easily.

Anyway what the writers mean is that they consider themselves and other people who pretend to think like them highly numerate so their opinions are more important.

Anyway, in free speech arguments, I have never come across anyone with a convincing answer to the question “who decides”. It’s always basically “people like me that I approve of”.

2
0
RW
RW
8 months ago

I had a go with the Cat Park game. Minus some annoying music, it starts with a stranger asking you to meet somewhere to “do something for the greater good”. I routinely denied as I always deny all weird requests from strange people. And that was the end of it, minus trying to guilt-trip me for not wanting to go out to meet strange people to do strange stuff “for the greater good”.

Meh.

I think I’ll try some good old-fashioned fragging next and then, finish polishing my boots and have a walk in a park (Christchurch Meadows, to be precise, with a shopping trip to the Caversham Waitrose to buy Scotch and a few other things I need).

Last edited 8 months ago by RW
1
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Gillian
Gillian
8 months ago

Some very interesting distinctions here, but I think the word “truth” needs debunking except in the trivial sense (eg. today I am wearing a purple cardigan, which I am, so this is true). Even supposedly well-established facts may only correctly be described as the most likely hypothesis and subject to the limits of human understanding, individual perspectives and weight of tradition.

Last edited 8 months ago by Gillian
1
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Old Brit
Old Brit
8 months ago

Great article.
Misinformation is built into language and increases as language gets more efficient. When the whole system is a lie, where do we look for meaning ? Automatically we do an information search, which Chat gpt automates, but find only differences that make no difference. Meaning is not informative, a statement that is itself a contradiction.

0
0
harrydaly
harrydaly
8 months ago

“The UK and Yorkshire”? The BBC does this all the time, whenever (which is every time it broadcasts the news on tv) it says, “Now for the news where you are”, as if — being in Yorkshire or wherever it is for the local news — we hadn’t been in Britain for the national sort. Is it just a bêtise or does the British Broadcasting Corporation want to imply that Britain as a whole isn’t somehow quite as real as the parts it is made up from?

0
0

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