<\/p>\n
\n “Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia
\nConspiracy”, read the front page headline of a New York Times
\npaper from March 2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bit by bit, mainstream American consciousness
\nslowly came to terms with the death of the thrilling conspiracy theory that the
\nhighest levels of the US government had been infiltrated by the Kremlin, and with
\nthe stark reality that the mass media and the Democratic Party spent the last two
\nand-a-half years monopolizing public attention with a narrative which never had any
\nunderlying truth to it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There are still holdouts, of course. Many people
\ninvested a tremendous amount of hope, credibility, and egoic currency in the belief
\nthat Robert Mueller was going to arrest high-ranking Trump administration officials
\nand members of Trump’s own family, leading seedy characters to
\n“flip” on the president in their own self-interest and thereby providing
\nevidence that will lead to impeachment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Some insisted that Attorney General William Barr
\nis holding back key elements of the Mueller report, a claim which is premised on the
\nabsurd belief that Mueller would allow Barr to lie about the results of the
\ninvestigation without speaking up publicly. Others are still holding out hope that
\nother investigations by other legal authorities will turn up some Russian
\nshenanigans that Mueller could not, ignoring Mueller’s sweeping subpoena
\npowers and unrivaled investigative authority. But they’re coming around.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The question still remains, though: what
\nhappened? How did a fact-free conspiracy theory come to gain so much traction among
\nmainstream Americans? How were millions of people persuaded to invest hope in a
\nnarrative that anyone objectively analyzing the facts knew to be completely false?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The answer is that they were told that the
\nRussiagate narrative was legitimate over and over again by politicians and mass
\nmedia pundits, and, because of a peculiar phenomenon in the nature of human
\ncognition, this repetition made it seem true.<\/p>\n
The rather uncreatively-named illusory truth
\neffect describes the way people are more likely to believe something is true after
\nhearing it said many times. This is due to the fact that the familiar feeling we
\nexperience when hearing something we’ve heard before feels very similar to our
\nexperience of knowing that something is true. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When we hear a familiar idea, its familiarity
\nprovides us with something called cognitive ease, which is the relaxed, unlabored
\nstate we experience when our minds aren’t working hard at something. We also
\nexperience cognitive ease when we are presented with a statement that we know to be
\ntrue.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We have a tendency to select for cognitive ease,
\nwhich is why confirmation bias is a thing; believing ideas which don’t cause
\ncognitive strain or dissonance gives us more cognitive ease than doing otherwise.
\nOur evolutionary ancestors adapted to seek out cognitive ease so that they could put
\ntheir attention into making quick decisions essential for survival, rather than
\npainstakingly mulling over whether everything we believe is as true as we think it
\nis.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This was great for not getting eaten by saber-
\ntoothed tigers in prehistoric times, but it’s not very helpful when navigating
\nthe twists and turns of a cognitively complex modern world. It’s also not
\nhelpful when you’re trying to cultivate truthful beliefs while surrounded by
\nscreens that are repeating the same bogus talking points over and over again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If you want to understand how the mass media <\/p>\n Science has been aware of the illusory truth <\/p>\n A 2015 paper titled “Knowledge Does Not Protect <\/p>\n “Surprisingly, repetition increased <\/p>\n Stored knowledge tells pretty much everybody that <\/p>\n This explains why we all know people who are <\/p>\n Another study titled “Incrimination <\/p>\n You can understand, then, how a populace who is <\/p>\n The repetition leads to belief, the belief leads <\/p>\n And that repetition has been no accident. Jeff Zucker<\/p>\n “My boss, I shouldn’t say this, my <\/p>\n “And he goes, just to give you some <\/p>\n (CNN said in a statement that the video <\/p>\n Zucker, for his part, told the New York <\/p>\n “We are not investigators. We are <\/p>\n “We are not investigators”? <\/p>\n “We are not investigators.” <\/p>\n The science of modern propaganda has been in <\/p>\n The manipulators understand our psyches better <\/p>\n It may not seem like a lot, but truth is the one <\/p>\n yogaesoteric<\/strong><\/p>\n February 13, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy”, read the front page headline of a New York Times paper from March 2019. Bit by bit, mainstream American consciousness slowly came to terms with the death of the thrilling conspiracy theory that the highest levels of the US government had been infiltrated by the Kremlin, and with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-descoperiti-manevrele-francmasoneriei-3480-ro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nduped millions into believing the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the
\nUS government, research the illusory truth effect<\/a>, the phenomenon which causes people to
\nmistake repeated assertions for truth. <\/p>\n
\neffect since 1977, when a study found<\/a> that subjects were more likely to
\nevaluate a statement as true when it’s been repeatedly presented to them over
\nthe course of a couple of weeks, even if they didn’t consciously remember
\nhaving encountered that statement before. These findings have been replicated in
\nnumerous studies since, and new research in recent years has shown that the
\nphenomenon is even more drastic than initially believed.<\/p>\n
\nAgainst Illusory Truth<\/a>” found that the illusory truth effect is so
\nstrong that sheer repetition can change the answers that test subjects give, even
\nwhen they had been in possession of knowledge contradicting that answer beforehand.
\nThis study was done to test the assumption which had gone unchallenged up until then
\nthat the illusory truth effect only comes into play when there is no stored
\nknowledge of the subject at hand.<\/p>\n
\nstatements’ perceived truth, regardless of whether stored knowledge could have
\nbeen used to detect a contradiction,” the paper reads. “Reading
\na statement like ‘A sari is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by
\nScots’ increased participants’ later belief that it was true, even if
\nthey could correctly answer the question ‘What is the name of the short
\npleated skirt worn by Scots?’”<\/p>\n
\nthe “short, pleated skirt worn by Scots” is a kilt, not a sari, but
\nsimply repeating the contrary statement can convince them otherwise.<\/p>\n
\nextraordinarily intelligent, but still bought into the Russiagate narrative just as
\nmuch as our less mentally apt friends and acquaintances. Their intelligence
\ndidn’t save them from this debunked conspiracy theory, it just made them more
\nclever in finding ways of defending it. This is because the illusory truth effect
\nlargely bypasses the intellect, and even one’s own stored knowledge, because
\nof the way we all reflexively select for cognitive ease.<\/p>\n
\nthrough innuendo: Can media questions become public answers?<\/a>” found
\nthat subjects can be manipulated into believing an allegation simply by exposure to
\ninnuendo or incriminating questions in news media headlines. Questions like, for
\nexample, “What If Trump Has Been a Russian Asset Since 1987?
\n<\/a>”, printed by New York Magazine in July of 2018.<\/p>\n
\nconsuming repetitive assertions, innuendo, and incriminating questions on a daily
\nbasis through the screens that they look at many times a day could be manipulated
\ninto believing that Robert Mueller would one day reveal evidence which will lead to
\nthe destruction of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
\nto trust, and before you know it people who are scared of the president are reading
\nthe Palmer Report every day and parking themselves in front of Rachel
\nMaddow every night and letting everything they say slide right past their skepticism
\nfilters, marinating comfortably in a sedative of cognitive ease.<\/p>\n
\nCNN producer John Bonifield was caught on video nearly two years ago
\nadmitting that CNN’s CEO Jeff Zucker was personally instructing his
\nstaff to stay focused on Russia even in the midst of far more important breaking
\nnews stories.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nboss yesterday we were having a discussion about this dental shoot and he goes and
\nhe was just like I want you to know what we are up against here,”
\nBonifield told an undercover associate of James O’Keefe’s Project
\nVeritas.<\/p>\n
\ncontext, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords and for a day and a half
\nwe covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN said in our internal meeting, he
\nsaid good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we’re done with it,
\nlet’s get back to Russia.”<\/p>\n
\nwas legitimate and disputed none of its content, saying only that it stands by
\nBonifield and that “Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN
\nstrong, we welcome it and embrace it.”)<\/p>\n
\nTimes in an article that he was “entirely comfortable” with
\nCNN’s role in promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory the way that
\nit did.<\/p>\n
\njournalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly
\nwhat we did,” Zucker said. “A sitting president’s own
\nJustice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation.
\nThat’s not enormous because the media says so. That’s enormous because
\nit’s unprecedented.”<\/p>\n
\nWhat is that? So it’s not your job to investigate whether what you’re
\nreporting is true or false? It’s not your job to investigate whether the
\nanonymous sources you’re basing your reports on might be lying or not?
\nIt’s not your job to investigate whether or not you’d be committing
\njournalistic malpractice with the multiple completely fake stories your outlet has
\nbeen humiliated by in the last two years? It’s not your job to weigh the
\nconsequences of deliberately monopolizing public attention on a narrative which
\nconsists of nothing but confident-sounding assertions and innuendo?<\/p>\n
\nSo? You’re not dentists or firefighters either, what’s your point? That
\nhas nothing to do with the mountains of journalistic malpractice you’ve been
\nperpetrating by advancing this conspiracy theory, nor with the inexcusable
\nbrutalization you’ve been inflicting upon the American psyche with your
\ndeliberate nonstop repetition of bogus assertions, innuendo, and incriminating
\nquestions.<\/p>\n
\nresearch and development for over a century. If you think about how many advances
\nhave been made in other military fields over the last hundred years, that gives you
\na clear example of how sophisticated an understanding the social engineers must now
\nhave of the methods of mass manipulation of human psychology. We may be absolutely
\ncertain that there are people who’ve been working to drive the public
\nnarratives about western rivals like Russia, and that they are doing so with a far
\ngreater understanding of the concepts we’ve touched on in this essay than we
\nhave at our disposal.<\/p>\n
\nthan we understand them ourselves, and they’re getting more clever, not less.
\nThe only thing we can do to keep our heads while immersed in a society that is
\nsaturated with propaganda is be as relentlessly honest as possible, with ourselves
\nand with the world. We’ll never be able to out-manipulate the master
\nmanipulators, but we can be real with ourselves about whether or not we’re
\nselecting for cognitive ease rather than thinking rigorously and clearly. We can be
\ntruthful with our friends, family, coworkers and social media followers wherever
\nuntruth seems to be taking hold. We can do our very best to shine the light of truth
\non the puppeteers wherever we spot them and ruin the whole goddamn show for
\neveryone.<\/p>\n
\nthing they can’t manipulate, whether it’s truth about them, truth about
\nthe world, or truthfulness with yourself. The lying manipulators got us into this
\nmess, so only truth can get us out.<\/p>\n