How to spot a professional dysinfo agent

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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:43 pm

philipacentaur wrote:Interesting timing. You're not honorable enough to actually say what you really want to say, so you continue to sow discord and suspiciousness here. You're a coward.


I'm not sure who you're directing this to, P.A.C.

Hope it's not me because I wasn't implying anything about you. See my edit in my above post.

It is a tricky balance to be personally committed to an intellectual debate without 'taking things personally,' so to speak.

That's why I was interested in that list of 375 not-actually-flamers but really just behavioral traits.
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Postby philipacentaur » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:54 pm

Apologies, Hugh. That post was quite squarely directed at "greencrow0". As far as I'm concerned, people can call me whatever they want, but I'd rather have it done in a direct way than as part of some sad attempt to "push buttons".
It is a tricky balance to be personally committed to an intellectual debate without 'taking things personally,' so to speak.

Agreed, but I prefer discussion over debate. It's less formal and there's no barrier for entry.
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Postby stickdog99 » Wed Feb 14, 2007 5:52 pm

If you don't think that our various web forums are filled with PR shills and other flacks, hacks and political operatives carefully cultivating their personas for seemingly absurdly small audiences, you simply don't understand how much money goes into guerrilla internet marketing nowadays.

It's the internet equivalent of paying a few cool kids in each inner city school a few bucks to wear your basketball shoes.
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Postby philipacentaur » Wed Feb 14, 2007 6:08 pm

I'm not so naive as to think that it doesn't happen on some level, because I know it does. My question is: why does it matter? If people are so afraid of being influenced by someone else's words, then they're probably resting on a very fragile foundation in the first place. If a group of people wanted to shut down a discussion forum, they could do it quite easily these days. Additionally, if they're on a government payroll, they won't have to worry about the repercussions of getting caught.

The way I see it, people should be more concerned about who is collecting data and running elaborate analyses on it than who is slugging it out piecemeal on Internet forums.

The disinformation spreads itself. It is a signal embedded in a signal, which is itself embedded in noise. It hardly needs micromanagement on the scale that a lot of people suspect exists.

Random, disjointed thoughts, but that's all I have at the moment.
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Postby wintler2 » Fri Feb 16, 2007 9:57 am

philipacentaur wrote:.. My question is: why does it matter? If people are so afraid of being influenced by someone else's words, then they're probably resting on a very fragile foundation in the first place. If a group of people wanted to shut down a discussion forum, they could do it quite easily these days.
What, and create web martyrs? You'll never shut down subversive discussion, all you can hope to do is a) keep it in view & b) so pollute it as to misdirect and dispirit the unwary. And 'afraid to be influenced' framing just doesn't apply to the repetive and circuitous "then but if suppose"+ad hominem+claim to secret knowledge+plain obtuseness+diversion into trivia or irrelevant debate+.. argument produced by the better class of troll.

..The way I see it, people should be more concerned about who is collecting data and running elaborate analyses on it than who is slugging it out piecemeal on Internet forums.
Why focus on the remote and powerful other rather than its local nodes which you just agreed are among us? What could be bad about developing common views on what constitutes useful evidence or argument, shaking each others cages a bit to see what they're made of? It can be interesting what powder puff is coined and by who, eg.
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=10079&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
We all have user IDs so we can learn from direct observation, each of us must find it a useful exercise on some level or we wouldn't be here. I am frankly suspicious of arguments that we shouldn't care about sabotage.
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Postby philipacentaur » Fri Feb 16, 2007 10:18 am

I am frankly suspicious of arguments that we shouldn't care about sabotage.

Of course you are.
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Postby Gouda » Fri Feb 16, 2007 11:51 am

Further complicating matters is that people have adopted a conspiratorial counter-conspiracy mindset which mimics the form and content, the paranoia, of the prime generators of paranoia: the alphabet agencies and their private firms. In secret, armchair info warriors have become conspirators themselves. In short: they fancy themselves indy undercover operatives. Such go online under cover; sometimes banding up; they tag-team; they collude anonymously in public and semi-anonymously behind the scenes with like-minded others. You have independent groups actively sowing, spreading and growing their own pet agendas. Just like some secret services we know.

Further, further complicating things, is that the myriad alphabet agencies, private security organizations, bounty hunters, and freelance mercenaries, often have in-house information warriors working at cross-purposes, unbeknownst to the other, whether on the clock or off the clock.

I would not be surprised that some agency operatives sow disinfo on the clock while trying to correct it or reverse the damage off the clock, on private time, at home with beer and undies and conscience.

All ripe for RAW's Optimum Fuckup (of the Disinformation Matrix), explained by Celine's Laws:

CELINE'S LAWS
by Hagbard Celine
http://www.bkmarcus.com/belief/celine/

...But further yet: any government which already has a secret police (and a secret police monitoring the secret police, etc). will become alarmed on observing that its more hip and intelligent citizens now regard it with loathing and misgivings. The government will therefore increase the size and powers of the secret police. This is the only rational move, within the context of the secret-police game.

(The only alternative was once suggested sarcastically by playwright Bert Brecht, who said, "If the government doesn't trust the people, why doesn't it dissolve them and elect new people?" No way has yet been invented to elect a new people; so the police state will instead spy on the existing people even more vigorously).

This, of course, creates additional paranoia in both the governors and the citizens, because a sufficiently pugnacious secret police will eventually "have a file on everybody," including its own creators. This leads to another infinite regress: the more people will loathe the government, the more power will be given to the secret police.

Thus, whether any of the hypothetical conspiracies mentioned earlier really exist or not, a system of clandestine government inevitably produces, in both the rulers and the ruled, a mood of paranoia in which such conspiracy theories flourish.

This escalating sense of suspiciousness is accelerated by the fact that every secret-police organization engages in both the collection of information and the production misinformation. That is, you score points in the secret-police game both by hoarding signals (information units)---that is, by hiding facts from competitive players---and by foisting false signals (fake information units) on the other players. This creates the situation which I call Optimum Fuckup, in which every participant has rational (not neurotic) cause to suspect that every other player may be attempting to deceive him, gull him, con him, dupe him, and generally misinform him. As Henry Kissinger is rumored to have said, "Anybody in Washington these days who isn't paranoid is crazy!"

One could generalize the remark: anyone in the United States today who isn't paranoid must be crazy!!!

(...)
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Postby greencrow0 » Fri Feb 16, 2007 4:18 pm

wintler2


philipacentaur wrote:
.. My question is: why does it matter? If people are so afraid of being influenced by someone else's words, then they're probably resting on a very fragile foundation in the first place. If a group of people wanted to shut down a discussion forum, they could do it quite easily these days.
What, and create web martyrs? You'll never shut down subversive discussion, all you can hope to do is a) keep it in view & b) so pollute it as to misdirect and dispirit the unwary. And 'afraid to be influenced' framing just doesn't apply to the repetive and circuitous "then but if suppose"+ad hominem+claim to secret knowledge+plain obtuseness+diversion into trivia or irrelevant debate+.. argument produced by the better class of troll.

Quote:
..The way I see it, people should be more concerned about who is collecting data and running elaborate analyses on it than who is slugging it out piecemeal on Internet forums.
Why focus on the remote and powerful other rather than its local nodes which you just agreed are among us? What could be bad about developing common views on what constitutes useful evidence or argument, shaking each others cages a bit to see what they're made of? It can be interesting what powder puff is coined and by who, eg.
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... sc&start=0
We all have user IDs so we can learn from direct observation, each of us must find it a useful exercise on some level or we wouldn't be here. I am frankly suspicious of arguments that we shouldn't care about sabotage.


=======================

WOW! All I can say, wintler2 is that you summed up my feelings on this subject in such an eloquent way that I am [almost] speechless. Thanks.

gc
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Postby philipacentaur » Fri Feb 16, 2007 4:37 pm

greencrow0: Do you think I'm a disinformation agent? A simple "yes" or "no" will suffice.
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Postby Jeff » Fri Feb 16, 2007 5:18 pm

philipacentaur wrote:The disinformation spreads itself. It is a signal embedded in a signal, which is itself embedded in noise. It hardly needs micromanagement on the scale that a lot of people suspect exists.


Well said.
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Postby nomo » Fri Feb 16, 2007 5:20 pm

philipacentaur wrote: A simple "yes" or "no" will suffice.


But innuendo is a lot more fun!

(Any real disinfo agent knows that.)
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Postby greencrow0 » Fri Feb 16, 2007 8:11 pm

It hardly needs micromanagement on the scale that a lot of people suspect exists.


Then why do corporations invest millions in advertising every year?

gc
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Postby wintler2 » Fri Feb 16, 2007 10:16 pm

Gouda wrote:Further complicating matters is that people have adopted a conspiratorial counter-conspiracy mindset which mimics the form and content, the paranoia, of the prime generators of paranoia: the alphabet agencies and their private firms. In secret, armchair info warriors have become conspirators themselves. In short: they fancy themselves indy undercover operatives. Such go online under cover; sometimes banding up; they tag-team; they collude anonymously in public and semi-anonymously behind the scenes with like-minded others. You have independent groups actively sowing, spreading and growing their own pet agendas. Just like some secret services we know.
Jesus Gouda, thats a poisonous description that could apply to most of the posters on this board. I willingly confess to having 'pet agendas' of peace and sustainability, but i've never conspired with any oither poster on this board to advance it.
Can you provide examples of what you mean, or explain how your enthusiasm for TPTB depopulationist theorizing escapes your derision?
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Derision works.

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:19 pm

The acid tone of derision does make people hinckey about what they write.

I've had pm's from people supporting my posts when I wish they'd put it out in the open forum. I can only suppose that some wish to support my ideas without taking on the criticisms I get from a few.

Not everyone cares to subject themselves to criticism. And written criticism hangs over one for a long time unlike verbal jabs.

No wonder politicians are so mealy-mouthed when they have a permanent public record that keeps their worst gaffes out front so they can be portrayed as only as good as their biggest liability.
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Postby orz » Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:28 pm

Then why do corporations invest millions in advertising every year?
Because it's cheaper and more effective than hiring vast armies of people to secretly go on messageboards and argue one on one?
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