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Anti-Hip's avatar

There is also the conundrum that some people, maybe a majority, sincerely like to be told what to do (authoritarianism, though they don't call it that), and likely will not, and cannot, ever be cajoled into becoming full-fledged citizens (i.e. those who, from our POV, do sufficient homework and thinking to justify their votes) -- especially in an unprecedentedly complex world with unprecedented aggregate power (via technologies). I'm confident in fact that's exactly how our quasi-democracy descended to its current state.

Don't misunderstand me -- I'm certainly NOT advocating rights removal, I am attempting to face uncomfortably realities. "Don't shoot the messenger." By raising consciousness about reality, only then can we find ways, including democratic ways, deal with it.

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Coco McShevitz's avatar

Yeah, when deluged with too much data, people fall back on heuristics like in-group identification and pattern matching to come to conclusions. That’s why a lot of modern propaganda just keeps repeating the same message over and over, once you put a pattern in people’s brains, they tend to revert to it when indecisive. Basically it’s the political version of what what web companies do with “dark patterns” to motivate desired user behavior,

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