I guess we look at the world very differently, because:
> They are unlikely to ever agree with/be persuaded by complete inconsistent nonsense, however often it is repeated. Like, I mean nonsense that doesn't even have linguistic structure or maybe any meaning.
If the US election hasn't persuaded you that complete gibberish can be persuasive when repeated endlessly, there's nothing I can say that will.
I'm aware of the theory of the "big lie", and the fact that neurons that fire together, wire together...
But what about Feynman's injunction: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool." Is that kind of empirical principle just out of reach for the standard human?
In terms of repetition, I think David Hume's theory of causal inference is pretty relevant too.
Just because something is repeated regularly, e.g. seems to happen every day doesn't mean that on the day when it doesn't happen, our heads explode because we have built a rigid expectation. Instead we can usually discern possible, exceptional, reasons why it isn't happening.
I'm totally in agreement with you on the role of repetition in eroding the landscape of memory to create convictions. We might rarely remember a one off event that is never referred to. But you seem to be claiming that there's no higher-level activity, or even possibility of higher-level activity involved in mentally evaluating what to believe.
The famous Star Trek scene where Picard is encouraged/"brainwashed" to lie about the number of lights he sees comes to mind. He resists and continues to report what his senses tell him. This cultural theme of reason resisting the repetition of lies is a big one, and you haven't really presented any convincing evidence to discredit it.
> Is that kind of empirical principle just out of reach for the standard human?
What if it's out of reach even for the best among us? To me it looks like many of our core beliefs cannot be shaped through reason, and are not the product of reason in the first place. Our convictions have simply been copied from our environment through osmosis.
I'm sure you can't help but notice the amount of groupthink that takes place in any community, whether in real life or right here. How does this groupthink come to be? People don't really change their minds in long discussion threads like these; it certainly doesn't feel like they do. And yet minds get changed or there wouldn't be groupthink. By reading, responding, and reading some more, we slowly change over time; like water carves its way through rock. We shape HN by our responses and in turn HN shapes us: the relation is symbiotic.
We can, sometimes, if we try really hard, and then only for a moment, apply real reason. I see no evidence that this has a big impact on what people believe and how they act, though. People who are good at formal reasoning are good at arriving at the correct answer in reasoning puzzles, but there is no matching improvement when it comes to the decisions they make in their life. It's pretty clear that even really smart people can't reason themselves out of their problems. This is a big problem for the view that convictions are the product of reason.
In contrast, the friends you keep and the media you consume does make a tremendous impact on what you believe and how you act. Change who your friends are and, through repeated exposure, your convictions will change subliminally.
Ok. I think most of this sounds reasonable. We do necessarily adopt the attitudes and dispositions of those we associate with. HN is a pretty ambiguous place from that perspective: an internet gold-rush town inhabited by those who feel the need to justify/discuss their position by engaging online.
In a spirit of hopeful insight into what's going on, I'm linking to the Wikipedia page for Skagway, Alaska.
It might be gibberish at a factual or logical level, but at least for a certain portion of the populace, it hits all the right emotional notes and checks all the right boxes in their value and belief systems.
Of course, you won't see it yourself if you don't share their worldview and are unable to empathize and put yourself in their shoes.
I think that's right, but in part because it's all gibberish people with wildly different values can hear him speak and still and hear what they want to hear.
> If the US election hasn't persuaded you that complete gibberish can be persuasive when repeated endlessly, there's nothing I can say that will.
I depends. Mass media has proven that false. They almost unilaterally backed one candidate and attacked others, spewed lies and misinformation, and they failed to make a difference it seems. I would argue they made things worse. Here is a multi-billion dollar apparatus designed to persuade people and control opinions and it has failed. So it is not always true. I think there is stuff that is more nuanced in how it works, not simply "repeat this X amount of times and you're done, you'll get Y% more percentage of believers".
The media talks to their own base and you can't persuade people who don't tune in.
The media on the left did persuade their audience that Trump stood no chance of winning the election, even as Trump was drawing larger and larger audiences at every stump speech. Everybody could see the flood of pro-Trump signs, hats, and bumper stickers in swing states, but this was apparently of no consequence. People were expected to disbelieve their own eyes, and so they did. I think there was a stunning amount of groupthink going on in the media this past election. Who consumes the news all day, every day? Media people, politians, and policy wonks. And so they brainwashed themselves.
> They are unlikely to ever agree with/be persuaded by complete inconsistent nonsense, however often it is repeated. Like, I mean nonsense that doesn't even have linguistic structure or maybe any meaning.
If the US election hasn't persuaded you that complete gibberish can be persuasive when repeated endlessly, there's nothing I can say that will.