Interventions to Psychological Manipulation, featuring Diane Benscoter YouTube video by Cambridge Disinformation Summit

Worth discussing & sharing with people you care about.

Psychological Manipulation

Diane Benscoter, Founder of Antidote, & former cult member and cult deprogrammer.

It was one of the most compelling discussions I have had this year.

Well worth an hour of your time.

youtu.be/S-j3NDQ6wW0?...

Thanks, Keith!

I was there … and I miss the old days!

You can say that I've done something misleading in the honest disinformation case, but in what sense? I'm not inducing false beliefs. I'm leading you to make choices I see are harmful given my private information by giving you knowledge.

If I correct your mistaken opinion to induce you to go swim while sitting on this information about the sharks, I'm changing the option that's most optimal for you because I want you to do something that's optimal for me (i.e., get nibbled or worse by a shark).

What's honest disinformation? Silly example, but suppose I know that you're quite confident the beach won't be sharky but are also confident that it is going to rain. As it happens, I know it's v sharky and the weather will be beautiful, so I correct your opinion about the weather, not the sharks

What's dishonest disinformation? Well, think about Operation Infektion--KGB plants a story in an Indian newspaper claiming that HIV/AIDS was a biological weapon created by the United States in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

We should probably think a lot more about honest disinformation (even if dishonest disinformation matters, too)

Will last decades. Decades.

What's it made of?

I kind of like it when the Pope and I can find common cause

Stop scrolling. Two characters who bring you happiness

Since people can be "smitten" when they have a crush on someone, I hereby propose that successfully getting someone to have a crush on you should count as "smiting" them.

Fyi Lewis Powell (aka @jsthrill.modphi.com) made that. And he's a genius

I know!

Socratic Robologues: Euthyphro YouTube video by Lewis Powell

I'm sure you've seen it, but as I've been finding weird ways to drop this into conversations that have 0 to do with robots and Socrates for years, I can't now not

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSHH...

This will be awesome. Most eight-year-olds love increasingly pointed questions that show they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Oddly, my high school didn't assign this and it wasn't assigned in Russian Lit because it was always assigned in high school. So, it's the one Dostoevsky novel I haven't read (which I'm guessing makes me a statistical oddity)

Donald J. Trump Y @reaDonaldTrump Robert Mueller just died. Good, I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP 602 ReTruths 1.81k Likes 3/21/26, 12:26 J

Remember when people were fired for *reposting* accurate quotes from Charlie Kirk after he was killed.

When you wake up certain the perfect Venn diagram doesn't exist

GP @mousefountain I saw this diagram in a dream and felt a need to introduce it to the waking world Snake: [ NO LEGS, NO HOUSE I Lizard: [ LEGS, NO HOUSE ] Snail: [ HOUSE, NO LEGS ] Turtle: [ LEGS AND HOUSE ]

The good news is that is how we're doing it. I'm trying to work out whether my displeasure is that I miss lectures or that I don't like units by committee where I teach the things that others lecture on. Maybe I'd be happier if I was doing tutorials on my own material.

But that reading seems to be ruled out by the next sentence (if my suspicions about what the source says are correct) so I'm more angry than confused

I mean, they are except when they're not. I've tried to locate the source and what I've found googling suggests that the next line is that they are cognitive attitudes and so if that's what they say, I can't defend it. I can only defend this as a perverse way of talking of the objects of attitudes

Teaching tutorials for the first time on a course (unit, module, etc.) where instructor(s) pre-record videos and we discuss the material in tutorials for a few hours without any in person lecture. Curious to know what others think of this model if they've done it before.

Team don't listen to them!

a robotic dragon is flying through the air with a purple and yellow smoke coming out of its mouth . ALT: a robotic dragon is flying through the air with a purple and yellow smoke coming out of its mouth .

Fair. I should read it more carefully (if I'm going to read it). I find the project is making me grumpy af, but maybe we're getting ready for the anti-social vs. red pill epistemology battle the field didn't know it needed

Struggling to see how this duty to listen wasn't just flouted by unsubscribing from mailing lists. It's particularly odd because I'm guessing the authors think it's worse for me to not listen to (e.g.) voices urging for more war than to stop the updates from Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Just think what mid-70s Argento could have done with this 📽️🍿🔪👹

Hey - sounds good: maybe email me at cmlittlejohn@gmail.com? We can exchange details, shipping, etc.

It's kind of true--Republicans have been lying about threats to election integrity since at least the era of William F Buckley