[ExI] Regarding Wickedness

[Lee Corbin]

Harvey writes

>> Evidently propaganda isn't as bad as I thought. Consulting 
>> wikipedia one finds [....]
>> 
>> Thus *all* the pronouncements of candidates running for political
>> office today can be deemed propaganda!
> 
> Why would you think this diminishes my argument?

Oops! Miscommunication alert!  In no way was I suggesting
that this diminished your argument. It was merely an aside
that I believed would shed light on the discussion.

> This merely strengthens my resolve that propaganda is evil.
> The fact that politicians use it to get elected makes it more so!

Okay, *now*  I'll try to diminish your argument!  :-)

>> But who knows?  To the speaker, those particular facts may 
>> really seem to be the most relevant ones, which sometimes, 
>> indeed, may mystify the rest of us that he could really be 
>> looking at things that way.  But here, tolerance is probably 
>> a good idea.
> 
> This is another way of saying that propagandists start to
> believe their own lies.

You seem to be way too brittle and inflexible here.  I can
imagine that someone with slightly different values from me
and a whole lot of experience that differs from mine
might really see salience where I see inconsequence, and
see inconsequence where I see salience.

Suppose that we follow the Wikipedia definition, and analyze
one of Hilary Clinton's speeches. We will indeed, I contend,
find all of the following:

* "a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions
    or behavior of large numbers of people."
* "Instead of impartially providing information, [she will] present
    information in order to influence [her] audience."
* "some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a
    particular synthesis"
* "gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional
   rather than rational response to the information presented."

But so what?  Doesn't every politician do the same thing?
We would find the same thing in all the speeches of the rest
of the Republicans and Democrats (and Libertarians).
Now, yes, you and I agree that it would be better if politicians
today could get away with not giving loaded messages in
order to produce an emotional response.  But what about
the other three starred characteristics?  Question: how critical
of the other three components of propaganda that I've listed
here are you, and do you seriously hope that politicians of
the future eschew them?

What we were just talking about is starred item number 3:
the selective presentation of facts.  Again, I can easily imagine
that fact X may honestly seem to you to be rather irrelevant
whereas to me it might be of central importance, or vice-versa.

>> But I'm at a loss, personally. Suppose---to take a hopefully 
>> entertaining but extreme example---that a number of us 
>> Extropians are at a conference when civilization ends,
>> we band together for survival, and a neighboring group
>> commits atrocities against us, killing several of our
>> beloved members. So several prominent Extropians
>> get up and start telling lies about exactly how evil and
>> how insidious the neighboring tribe is, which puts me
>> in a quandry. On the one hand, I wish to give our
>> community my full and entire support, and I definitely
>> back even the most extreme measures that it seems to
>> me we have to take (short of killing every last man,
>> woman, and child of the neighboring tribe). So when
>> this happens, I usually just shut up, and hope that I can 
>> perhaps exert a moderating influence later. What would others 
>> do in my position?
> 
> I would denounce the lies and tell the truth about the murderers.  I would
> want to take correct action based on all the facts.  I would resist the
> dictators that want to fool the community into their action without allowing
> us all to choose for ourselves.  I would resent that the leaders don't trust
> the rest of us to make a decision.

Interesting. Of course, I can imagine certain parameters to
the above situation where I would agree with you, but in
the generic case I've outlined, I would be more afraid that
through excess internal denunciations and power struggles,
we would end up insufficiently united to defeat and destroy
the enemy.  

Shades of the current situation!  Isn't it interesting that this
rather close-to-home example seems to have disclosed
the psychological differences between you and me that
also speak to the current "war against terror" (or whatever
some would prefer to call it)?

> I also would have to wonder what else they were lying
> about.

Just because they exaggerated the vileness of our enemy?
On the contrary, I would be prone to attribute this merely
to them being blinded by anger. Now I would be pretty
angry myself, of course, if Spike, Samantha, and Eugen
were killed by the neighboring group.  I fancy, though, that
even as angry as I would be I would somehow keep myself
from exaggerating. (E.g., calling them cowards.) But it seems
rather normal, unfortunately, for people to speak in extremes
and in black and white terms when very upset.  It's interesting
to me that you seem to have zero tolerance for this.

> Killing Extropians is evil. Why not state that?

Because it's not using truth mode, but rather is speaking
in partisan mode?  No, not exactly. It's because it's alluding
to metaphysical qualities that do not exist.  Sorry---but I
just don't approve of semi-religious talk, when you come
right down to it. (I did tend to give Bush and Reagan the
benefit of doubt here, but only because it was so evidently
disconcerting to our enemies to hear such blunt talk.)

As I said, I would certainly not demur if someone said
that the neighboring tribe was evil. When it was my turn to
speak, I would denounce our enemies in the most acerbic
terms I could, but it so happens that I would steer clear
of words like "evil". (In fact, I started this thread openly
wondering---and I'm still wondering---if we haven't
harmed ourselves by tending to disallow such talk.)

> I would have to assume that the people making up
> the lies about the opposing tribe must not really believe
> that this is evil enough, such that they have to invent
> further lies to add to the evil.

I do have to keep this possibility in mind.

>> I feel like I'm living in 1984.  As a part of the modern 
>> West, I no longer even have a vocabulary to vilify those I 
>> would hate. To say they're "diabolical", "evil", "wicked", 
>> "scurrilous", etc., is to sound faintly comical.  Some people 
>> on this list try to solve the problem by profanity ("the 
>> prick", "the fuckers", etc.).
> 
> All of these words are content-free.  They tell me how the speaker is
> reacting, but do not explain or denounce anything about the target.

Well, *that* can be important. If someone gets up and says
"they're evil" then the message I'm reading behind their words
is that they're as ticked off as I am. So even though I don't 
let myself talk that way, I give them a pass.  Moreover, as
I say below, I think that it's important for us to all be sure
that we hate the enemy when we set of to *solve* the problem.

>> Yes, but I'm sure you agree that it's more than that. We
>> do *not* want to build on a foundation of lies, no matter
>> how practicable it might seem at the time.
> 
> Agreed.  But if the truth is sufficient, then truth-mode should be
> sufficient.  Why would emotionalism or partisans be required
> to further the position?

Well, because it's, uh, insufficiently partisan!  You should be
extremely angry (after, say, our enemy has killed those 
Extropians), and I'm sure you would be.  It is necessary to
*validate* that anger, and the anger of your listeners.
Apparently you consider it factual that those who killed
our Extropians (in my example) are evil, but yet you don't
consider the regimes of North Korea, Iran, and
the late Saddam Hussein to be evil.  Why?

Lee

> But calling someone names (like "Axis of Evil") does not
> convey any information to me, except that the speaker
> considers the targets to be evil, but refuses to elaborate
> why.  They are literally telling me, "Trust me,
> they're evil, but I won't tell you why."
> ...
> Nobody would say that.  Killing Extropians is evil.
> Why not state that?