Not to demonize it. It is a fascinating topic, and one of those "genie out of the bottle" type things. The tools exist, someone is going to use them, therefore everyone has to use them.
Human minds are evolved things, we have always been subject to manipulation. But now, our minds are swimming in a dense ocean of information, awash in it, noise and wisdom alike flowing through us unimpeded, and most people don't even realize this because they don't articulate it in this way. There are no borders, there are good actors, bad actors, irresponsible self serving actors, mixes of all types masquerading as each other, and probably more I didn't think of and mixes of all of it.
In the new world, you have to think about your thinking, you have to understand metamemetics, or you're swaying in the wind generated by someone else for their own ends at all times. How many of my deeply held beliefs are there because someone wants them there? How many of my behaviors are the result of someone else's planning? How many of these beliefs and behaviors are bad for me? How might I become an actor in this realm on my own mind and reclaim my agency?
The problem is, convincing anybody of anything is very hard.
Using ranged weapons is a tale as old as time, but the invention of the bow and arrow and the invention of the ICBM are still very different. Trying to convince people when you had to talk to them face to face is different than being able to mass print reading materials. Trying to convince people through a limited available bandwidth of a radio station is different than being able to have one of a thousand cable channels. Communicating with a mass audience is different than being able algorithmically modify your communication on a per person basis. It's a mark of the shallowness to dismiss the current information environment and its ability to manipulate mental blind spots as nothing new.
Convincing specific people of things is hard. Convincing a few of a very large group appears to be easy, if you don’t care which few those are.
If you look at the world, such feeling is not only prevalent, it's actually far more disturbing than you think.
For example, all ads industry is built on manipulating human emotions. And surfing the web, you are forced into so many such abusive staff every single seconds.
Look at the web content as well. When people staring at their phones, they are bring manipulated in the literal sense.
And you'll find every one of these AD's producers have a matter of factly explanation, or even glorified one.
Surprising?
Not at all. Karl Max predicted this inhumane end of the capitalism more than a century ago.
https://www.federalpay.org/military/army/colonel
The real money in the military-industrial complex is made by defense contractors, spefically the executives and shareholders of companies like Raytheon, BAE, and Lockheed Martin. Corruption in the upper echelons of US military itself, while far from unheard of, is vigorously investigated and prosecuted by bodies like NCIS. "Fat Leonard"-scale scandals do happen, but are rare:
Right there, hypocrite. If you want to prevail in the human domain, prosecute your war criminals, beginning with Dubya, Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden.
You've already lost.
> Right there, hypocrite. If you want to prevail in the human domain, prosecute your war criminals, beginning with Dubya, Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden.
> You've already lost.
This is a really interesting comment, because it basically sets up a system where only nasty authoritarians can win.
Maybe it's a memetic weapon, or the result of one.
Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands
^^ hardly any developed country comes off as good in this book and what brought us here is how we've been distributing wealth since the industrialization.
Everyone's a hypocrite because it's the number #1 rule of "human-club". The more power one has, the more they'll be forced to square that circle.
I still agree that anyone who has power should be put under more pressure than the rest, so punching the US (as a country not its people) is justified, but don't forget about countries like Germany, France, Russia, China, UK when dishing out accusations about hypocriticism.
"The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology." -- Edward O. Wilson, 1929
Not trying to diminish your statement, but what defines a war criminal? If anything can then the term has no meaning, it turns any act of war into a criminal act.
How do we make that term actually MEAN something again? Do they all have to be "Hitlers" or "Pol Pot's" ? surely not...
There is only shaky moral ground for the US to stand on here, they've been the major force of war and destruction in the world for the last 50 years. No question in my mind that the individuals involved are monsters, but there is a good argument that maybe all the alternative systems are worse.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml
The US agreed to this definition, it's pretty broad. Perhaps too broad, but I mean, look at the examples...
And to remind everyone that militarism is a major public health threat, a significant cause of death, injury, homelessness, and disease, a completely preventable epidemic that consists of the large-scale killing, wounding, impoverishing, making homeless, orphaning, and traumatizing of people.
We need to get past the mentality of trying to DOMINATE every domain in the pursuit of the disease of nationalism.
That's an interesting website. Take a look at this, it's literally the first link in the "News From the Antiwar Movement" section of their home page right now [1]:
https://worldbeyondwar.org/audio-david-swanson-on-russia-ukr...
> AUDIO: David Swanson on Russia, Ukraine, and War Madness
> By Sputnik, January 13, 2022
> John and Michelle catch up with David Swanson, executive director of World BEYOND War, to talk about the latest developments with NATO and conflict zones around the world. John points out that the direct link between EU membership and increased well-being for the population is questionable. Hungary joined the EU, and that isn’t what happened.
David Swanson is the Executive Director of World Beyond War [2], and that podcast is hosted by Sputnik [3], which is part of the foreign propaganda arm of Russia, which has 100k troops massing along the border of Ukraine and is threatening war [4] (after already invading part of it less than a decade ago).
So, is "World Beyond War" serving as a "human domain" weapon aimed at Western nations, in the service of war?
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220113142642/https://worldbeyo...
[2] https://worldbeyondwar.org/who/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/01/07/world/europe/...
David Swanson has taken several openly anti-Russian positions:
"Secondary sound waves in the 3- 17hz range will be the super killers in future wars. It may be possible to use them in intercontinental conflict.
Special human abilities (telepathy, etc.) and mind control. "
as well as mentioning stuff that is basically conspiricy theories like "virus 666".
Perhaps we should let the machines take over soon.
