DO I Detect Deceptive Inference?

 

How do we know what we know? How do YOU know the earth is round? You probably haven’t traveled around the world by ship to see if you would fall off, and most of us haven’t been to space to see the earth from afar. You know the earth is round because those who were able to prove it, did so to some other people long ago, and it is now a part of our societies general knowledge. We were taught it in school, by some teacher that was taught it to them, non of whom actually proved it. My point is not to question the shape of our planet but to demonstrate one of the many ways we come to “know” things or gather information. the more sources that tell us something to be true, the more we believe it likely it is, or if a single yet very credible source says something to be true, then we assume it to be. If someone says something to be true then presents evidence to support that claim, we then believe.  We know that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got married recently because the media told us, and Brad and Angelina are not denying it. Furthermore, we see pictures to support the fact. But we did not witness the event, nor has those that may have part-taken confirmed it. The pictures could be fake, the tabloids could be lying…but we “know’ they are married.

The point is, we have developed methods, and processes for how we accept and assimilate new information in particular with mass media sources. We develop patterns and habits that help us sift though tons of data thrown at us, analyzing all of it, and compartmentalizing it for later use. Our minds work very much like a computer program in that aspect. We plug the new data into a mental algorithm of relevance, who sourced it, who else confirmed it, how it correlates with already know data, and a bunch of other categories the data runs through before we make a determination as to it being truthful or not.

This thinking is not something that just happens, it is taught. It’s socially engineered. We are trained to analyze, evaluate, and process new information in a way that works for our society, and in a way that helps us make sense of new information as it relates to us, in our society. That being said, we have to look at all angles of how this affects us, including the ways we would not think, or ways it might not have been intended. Society is not always looking out for the best interest of the individual.

Lets again compare our thought process to a computer, and say that like a computer we have been programmed to process information a particular way. not to get all conspiracy theory on you, not all social engineering is bad, in fact most of it is good, because it give use the skills to adapt and thrive within the confines of our society. I am not even saying that the way we have been trained to think is bad, in fact, for the most part it is a very thorough approach to vetting credible data.

The problem arises when someone or someones, want to gain power or control. After all, it is human nature to seek power and control over others. Often times this is done by exploiting others. There are many ways to exploit people, the most common is by praying on their weaknesses. One major flaw with the way we have been taught to think and process info is that it is nothing if not consistent and predictable, making it a prime target for exploitation.

If you know exactly how a program is going to work, what algorithms it will use, what filters it will apply, what biases it might have, then it becomes quite easy to develop a virus to circumvent particular parts of that process, and present data in false context allowing for a miscategorization or misevaluation of that data.  That is exactly what is happening to us, on a scale unimaginable. Using the right language, the right communication techniques, can act as a virus that  creates flawed logic, misrepresented facts, and unwarranted beliefs. But to what end? Money is the main reason. If you become aware of some negative effects of one products, or better yet a whole category of products, then a competitor comes in and offers a solution, that competitor just cornered the market and is making lots of money. It just makes sense, and we know it’s happening, we just like to think it’s happening to everyone else but us. Exploiting our predictable fact checking process to artificially create opinions of products, people, companies, places, laws, and organizations is nothing new, and is as old as marketing itself.

It isn’t some Jedi mind trick either. We are actually making it easy because we are becoming lazy about it.  It’s pretty simple stuff. Remember the post a while back I wrote about Ethos, Pathos and Logos? By just pairing non related things together we can trick the mind into thinking they are related and boom, a boost of ethos, or a boost of logos, that sends that bit of data right on through the thought process with not questions. Or a strong play to the Pathos and the mind gets tricked into forgetting about ethos and logos and that little bit of data gets moved along without question.

I am going to show you some examples, starting from simplest inferring concepts and ideas to more complex in its technique of misdirection, like falsifying facts and misrepresenting data.

Here is a propaganda picture that has the purpose of comparing Hilary Clinton to Adolf Hitler. Now, putting aside political views we can dissect this piece of propaganda and identify the simple deception within. By simply putting the pictures side by side, we can see that it is an attempt to draw similarities between the two, and state that Hilary is similar to Hitler.

The text underneath supports the intent to identify them as the same. each picture has a quote from that person underneath, the similarity in the quotes is supposed to signify a similarity in ideals or character. This  concept draws on the principle that one of these people (Adolf Hitler) is notoriously bad, and that anyone finding any commonality with this “bad” person means they are inherently as evil as Hitler himself. However, when we see what is happening and are less distracted by the imagery, and more focused on the methods of persuasion, we can see that this concept is flawed. It is particularly flawed in two parts.

1) The concept that two people sharing an idea of one particular matter does in no way mean that they share any other attributes, skills, mind sets, or characteristics.

2) This is what really gives this away as (in my opinion) failure to convey consistency. The topic of the quotes that both Hilary and Hitler share, is about utilitarianism. That is the concept that the needs of the many out way the needs of the few. This is not an evil concept at all. In fact it is what most of our current law and policy is based on, and something that most Americans see as admirable or logical in our society. I is something we idolize characters in fiction for having. For example Spock sacrifices himself to save the crew of the Enterprise in the film Star Trek 3 wrath of Khan. Then thirty years later, the ideal is still regarded as heroic as Captain Kerk does the same thing in the reboot of the Star Trek movies.  So it is clear, that the concept that might link the two (Hitler and Hilary) is not even an evil one, but an admirable one.

We can now see that after further analyzing the picture we can see that the intended meaning is unwarranted and invalid, furthermore, is not supported by the evidence supplied (the quotes). Yet thousands of people see this and succumb to the deceptive inference it makes. If you are shocked that anyone could be foolish enough to fall for such blatant and poor deception, I congratulate you on your evolved critical thinking skills, but must tell you that not everyone thinks as critically as you and I. In fact marketing studies show that propaganda like this is extremely effective. It plays to the emotional hatred of Hitler, using Pathos to drive its message.

The next example is an article about Coffee consumption.

 

Drinking More Than 4 Cups Of Coffee A Day Linked With Higher Death Risk For People Under Age 55

 

“A new study is adding further proof to the idea that good health is really about taking things in moderation.

While the numerous health benefits of coffee have been well-documented, a new study suggests drinking too much of the caffeinated stuff is linked with a higher risk of early death.

Specifically, researchers found a 21 percent higher risk of death among people younger than age 55 who drank more than 28 cups of coffee each week (which averages out to more than four cups of coffee a day).”

The Title and opening statements give a clear inference that too much coffee can kill you. The article goes on to talk about the well know adverse effects of coffee, and lightly brushes over the actual findings of the study the article is basing its claim on. When you spend a bit more time reading the findings of the study, you find that there is a simple correlation between those who drink four cups of coffee a day and a higher risk of death. We assume that correlation equals causal effect, And that is exactly what the author of the article intends. The average person doesn’t know a lot about university studies, or scientific journals, or how to go about interpreting the jargon of a particular field of study. So articles like these, break down the findings so that the normal person can understand. Unfortunately this becomes a great opportunity to misrepresent the fact. The Key to this technique is that you don’t have to lie, because you are stating the facts of the study, but by accompanying them with your own spin, you pair the data with a bias message and it becomes hard for the mind to separate the two as they were presented as a single finding.

lets look at the facts, a bunch of people who drank a bunch of coffee died earlier than expected…there is in no way any evidence that suggests it was because of the coffee. The article makes a slight and small acknowledgment to this truth but slips it by as quick as possible.

“However, it’s important to note that people younger than 55 who tended to drink more than four cups of coffee a day were also more likely to smoke and less likely to have good cardiorespiratory fitness.”

The approach of saying that it was the coffee that killed them is like saying that since 80% of bank robbers wear masks, if you buy a mask you are likely to rob a bank. Which we know is not true. The truth is that there are an endless number of reasons why consumption of this much coffee has a correlation with early death. There is no data as to why these people were drinking so much coffee to begin with, were they adrenaline junkies that put their lives at risk on a regular basis that needed the extra caffeine to make sure they could skydive at 3am, where they all drug addicts with a predisposition to addictive substances in which they were subject to a plethora of life style choices that would lead to their death, least of which would be coffee.

the bottom line is, that the facts are true, yet the clever way they are being presented makes our intake of these facts skewed. In a time of media and data overload, content creators know that only a fraction of what one reads is actually retained to memory, and it is an art to skillfully word articles so that what is remembered is the message intended.  This article is a good example of showing how this is done, because it does give the facts of the study, but many articles don’t bother to be as candid about the study and its findings. Many news articles don’t even mention who conducted the study, or the exact stats, but instead refer to generalizations, and rounded figures.

One thing I learned from my Mass Media Comm class is that there is no such thing as an unbiased article. Everything has some kind of spin to it, and the only places you will find purely facts of a study are the study summaries published in academic journals. The means that if you are not reading the dry, voiceless, jargon ridden summary of a study from an academic journal, you are reading someone else’s interpretation of that study, with their bias and their spin.

finally I want to show one of the most dangerous examples of intentional fact deception.

U.S. Government Hiding Deadly Ebola Pandemic

 

click for article

This article claims that the U.S. government is hiding over 1oo cases of Ebola in the U.S.

“The United States government is being accused of purposely misleading the public about the lightning fast spread of the Ebola virus on American soil. Watchdog group UNUSA, revealed the results of a nationwide investigation, which showed as many as 100 Americans have already been diagnosed with the deadly disease. The report states nearly 75% of those cases were fatal.”

The title and the opening paragraph make a clear blunt statement. Then support it with a source,  Watchdog group UNUSA, attempting to gain ethos. The article goes on to claim that these 100 cases are being hidden by diagnosing them as common illnesses and not as Ebola. That is to say, that there are 100 cases of Ebola that are being “Officially” diagnosed as the flu or some other illness.

“UNUSA founder, James Richter, spoke with News-Two saying, “There have been nearly 100 cases of the ebola virus in America, with most of those cases purposely being mislabeled as another disease.”

This raise red flags to me as I was reading. I thought, If these cases are being reported as other diseases, then the only way for this “source” to know the truth is to do an independent examination on each of these patients.  What is the likelihood of that? The last straw was the next line…

“This is surely becoming a pandemic and Americans are once again being left in the dark by the leaders they elected to protect them. We are calling for the impeachment of President Obama for this blatant disregard for the lives of the citizens. We simply cannot afford to be duped by our government any longer.”

I don’t know about you, but I have never read a credible news article that will talk about a medical crisis in one breath, then call for a radical political action in the next. This was clear evidence that this article was weighted to create panic and political unrest. The rest of the article continues in a Fear Mongering way, basically saying that the Ebola is spreading so fast that we will all be dead soon, yet the thing we need to worry about is not the health of ourselves or our loved ones, but pointing fingers at the government.

After about an hour of Google searching I discovered Two things.

1) The supposed watch dog group UNUSA does not exist.

2) The founder and spokesmen for this UNUSA, James Richter, doesn’t exist either…Unless they were talking about the actor from the 1995 film Free Willy.

This article was pure fabrication, with fake sources, and false facts. Yet, it continues to circulate the internet convincing more and more people that they “know” the government is hiding Ebola.  As well as hundreds of people “know” that four cups of coffee a day will kill you, and hundreds more “know” Hilary is a Nazi because she agrees with Hitler.

We can’t know everything, and we can’t know every time someone is going to try to pull the wool over our eyes, but we CAN get out of this lazy rut of a thought process we have, and stop taking the media’s word for granted because with just a little more critical thinking and a little less distraction, we could be a lot more sure of what we “Know.”

Sex…Is It Safe To Talk About?

My main goal of this blog is to identify and talk about things in our society that affect the way we communicate. One of the biggest things effecting our communication is how we as a society view sex. Sex is everywhere in our society, as an action and/or concept, it affects us in almost every aspect of our lives. Sex is in our advertising, and not just condom and bra commercials, but sex is used to advertise anything and everything, from food to life insurance; it is in our work place, our schools, and our homes, it affects every relationship we have, from acquaintance to  life partner.

I have thought a lot about how to approach the topic and say what needs to be said. How do we tackle such a vast and controversial topic? (the fact that it is controversial is one of the problems.) Well I think we have to go in steps. We need to understand some of the basic constructs of our society to know how they affect our understanding and opinion of sex.

While thinking about what needs to be covered, I feel it is important to understand Feminism and how our social paradigm shift to gender equality affects our communication about sex, but then I thought about why we have such inequality of the genders in the first place. After all, these things are constantly in our daily lives. So, before I jump into the gauntlet of sexual miscommunication, This post will address Social Engineering, then we can work our way forward, because each of these social constructs have their own effect on how we communicate. Their are two types of Social Engineering, I am talking about the one from a sociological point of view, the other is a form of corporate sabotage through hacking.

 

So, What is Social Engineering? Well, you know how babies have such strong political beliefs, no? of course not. Why? Well, there is this whole Nature vs. Nurture thing, and anything that is part of your personality including ideals, beliefs, and morals, that is not a result of nature or genetics, is Nurture, or rather a product of your surroundings. Because, babies aren’t born with political stances, or morals, or a sense of right or wrong. Basically you aren’t born with ideals and beliefs and moral, you develop them. Peoples beliefs, likes, dislikes, mannerisms, and characteristics, are all subject to the influence of their surroundings.

Social Engineering is how society deliberately does things to influence your opinion and actions. We all would love to believe that we are our own individuals and are all unique snowflakes, but those that deny they are influenced by society and culture are usually the ones that are influenced by it the most. Nothing is better than blind ignorance.

Look at Fashion fads, clothing styles that have changed, hairstyles, work out trends, food trends, and almost everything else in the media. Branding is very much real, Marketing is very influential. Politicians spend millions of dollars on research just to know what tie will get them more votes when they appear on TV. But do you know what is more remarkable than that, the fact that there are several studies and tons of research showing that people are actually influenced by color, by select words, by patterns, by language and about a billion other things that our culture uses to influence the public. Proving that wearing a particular tie, or color can actually persuade you to vote a certain way.

McDonald’s Chose red and yellow for its trademark colors because studies show those colors make people feel hungry, in the 90’s, Used car dealers changed their verbiage from “USED” to “PREVIOUSLY OWNED” because research said it makes the product sound better…their sales increased. We as Americans value higher than anything our freedom and Free will, that is why we so futilely deny anyone or anything could sway our opinions and beliefs without our knowledge.  But regardless of what we think, it’s happening.

The other night while I was our for dinner with my girlfriend, (in fact the same night and restaurant I talked about in my last post), My girlfriend chose some chicken fajita meal. As she ordered the waiter (who was the manager) commented very cheerfully about how good the chicken was. After we were served our food My girlfriend said she really like her choice in dish. When we were finished the manager stopped by again to ask how everything was, and she commented on how good the chicken fajita was, they had a small back and forth about how he had the same dish for lunch that day. As they were talking she was trying to describe what she liked about it, The manager very kindly added to her description by saying that the food tasted very “fresh,” her description consisted of words more general like “very good, and tasty.” When the manager had left, my girlfriend continued to talk about the dish she had, only now the terms she used to describe it was “FRESH.”

My point here is that we do this all the time and never realized what is happening. What exactly did happen? Marketing research shows that certain words evoke more emotion and hearing them creates particular thoughts and desires and even actions. Hearing a word then causes you to associate that word with your connotative meaning and that triggers an emotional response. Word can make you mad, sad, hungry, happy, even make you aroused. In this case, studies show that the word Fresh has a very positive connotative response that not only is memorable but preferred over other descriptions of the same type. So when the manager said “Fresh” whether it was intentional or not, he evoked a reasons that will not only help my girlfriend describe her experience to others in an optimal way, Free word of mouth advertising, but also it will help her want to return as she recalls her visits she associates the emotion of the word used to describe it.

Do you remember about six years ago Subway restaurants implemented the slogan “Eat Fresh.” The bottom line is that we are constantly being influenced, and sometimes (like in my girlfriends case) it’s not always to persuade you to do something you don’t want to do, but to enforce things you like.

This is taken to a whole different level in our society when we aren’t talking about food. It’s social engineering that dictates gender roles, which is what my next post is about.

From small things like what food we choose, to our moral and political stances, social engineering influences our choices and opinions as well as dictates social standards, social norms, and how to react to those that do not fit the perimeters.