Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Why do people think that their opinions are worth sharing when they don't do any factual data gathering?

 This is a very good question because it contains a crucial observation: people are in general ignorant about matters they are not experts on and most of us are only experts on only a few topics.

The result of this is that people overestimate their knowledge about almost everything. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the scientific name for this and a key point most people get wrong when they learn about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that they believe it is “stupid people not understanding they are stupid”. That is wrong.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is about everyone, regardless of intelligence or education in other areas, having a natural tendency to overestimate their knowledge regarding everything they are not experts on. Everyone, regarding everything. That cannot be stressed enough.

The fact is we have a self image of a sensible, rational, intelligent, correct and knowledgeable person who sees reality as it is usually, regardless of who we are. This perspective is called naive realism in psychology.

Due to these two traits we see ourselves as far more unbiased and educated than we are about matters we are not experts in.

Additionally, it is uncomfortable and triggers an unpleasant feeling, a sort of reelingness, a sort of spinny or unpleasant feeling, maybe a hot feeling when there is evidence against our own competence and knowledge when we were certain of it. The feeling this disconfirming evidence triggers is cognitive dissonance and it was best described in the book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance by Leon Festinger. He went into great detail about what the feeling is, what causes it and how this affects our behavior.

We generally shun the sources of cognitive dissonance in our lives. Who wants to talk to people that make us feel confused, upset, and unsure? Along with physically unwell? No one, with rare exceptions.

So, the result of all this is that if a person, say Joe, is watching Sam and Alice (two other people) talk about a subject, Joe may feel he should chime in and give his knowledge and opinion, despite Sam and Alice being experts on the topic of their conversation and Joe not being an expert and in fact not even really understanding the topic well enough to hold any educated opinions on the subject.

Joe is extremely unlikely to say to himself “I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground on this subject, I know little and have less that is useful to offer, I should just shut up.” It's possible, but unlikely.

Joe is extremely likely to overvalue his own knowledge and present it as more authoritative than it is, he may not lie, but just have more confidence than is appropriate for his understanding.

The book The Knowledge Illusion by Steven Sloman (cognitive scientist and professor at Brown University) and Phillip Fernbach (cognitive scientist and professor of marketing at Colorado's Leeds School of business) takes on this topic in depth.

The authors describe research that shows that we generally don't understand many details about the world but think we do, regarding topics we are not experts in.

We usually overestimate our own understanding of how things work like toilets, bicycles, cars, zippers, and thousands of other things. We tend to substitute our familiarity with something for expertise when it comes to estimating our own understanding.

Through asking people how well they understand things like zippers and then asking them to step by step explain how they work their ignorance can be exposed to them. First, you ask for them to estimate their knowledge, then you ask them to explain how something works, like a zipper or bicycle or coffee maker. Then they write an explanation with steps in a sequence. Then you provide an accurate explanation with the correct parts and steps in the correct sequence.

They realize they overestimated their knowledge on that topic. If you do this over and over several things happen. They become extremely uncomfortable and they don't interact with the people who showed them their lack of understanding. They don't like the people who showed them their ignorance and overconfidence and they avoid them, even if they agreed to keep seeing them.

So, it is easy to see why people share their opinions on things they don't do any factual gathering on. They mistake feeling comfortable regarding a topic and being certain they understand it with actually being educated on the topic, our usual reaction regarding most topics.

Here are several links to posts that elaborate on the scientific research and evidence supporting these claims in detail:

Why 14 Critics of “Social Justice” Think You Shouldn’t Vote Trump

 

Monday, October 26, 2020

Do cults get an unfair level of bad press?

 I was in the Scientology cult for twenty five years. I got out in 2014 and have spent hundreds of hours discovering the true history of Scientology.

I will focus on my experience and knowledge of Scientology for an example of this.

The press has a huge challenge in portraying the Scientology cult. This is because the cult has a history of government infiltration, criminal convictions for Ronald Hubbard and numerous high ranking executives, the fair game campaigns designed to utterly ruin the enemies of Scientology, framing people for crimes, the destruction of thousands of families, the covert effort to use hypnosis to mentally enslave Scientologists by Ronald Hubbard, the efforts to brainwash people in Scientology and the RPF and truth rundown designed to brainwash members, the HOLE, forced abortions, ecclesiastical beatings, and numerous other crimes and abuses.

The whole catalogue of crimes and abuses that Scientology has been a part of, the frequency of the efforts and the harm in all its variety and numerous incidents is extremely difficult to explain.

People have a lot of trouble understanding the techniques used in Scientology, the harm these cause and the fact that in America, and many other places, in modern times Scientology organizations and Scientologists get away with these crimes over and over.

The fact that the Scientology organizations and leader David Miscavige have avoided significant punishment, though Scientology founder Ronald Hubbard was convicted of fraud in France and called an unindicted coconspirator regarding the operation snow white government infiltration case, is shocking to many people.

Given the overwhelming mountain of credible evidence that Scientology has been involved with many thousands of abuses and crimes and that thousands of witnesses have been consistent in describing these crimes and abuses it is stunning to many people when they discover this reality and the fact the law enforcement officials are aware of this and choose to not pursue investigations or criminal charges. It goes against their assumptions that the government is good, the world is just and that the modern developed nations look out for their citizens.

So, in my opinion Scientology gets an overly charitable treatment from the media in part because it is difficult to understand without a lot of serious, dedicated study, which a person who was not in a cult can achieve, but it takes hundreds of hours to develop this education. An ex cult member has an advantage regarding this in some ways but also obstacles due to the influence and harm the cult can inflict.

Then, even if a media member knows the voluminous and varied types of harm Scientology causes they still face an enormous challenge in explaining this to the audience without the opportunity to present several encyclopedia sized references to document everything that is done to people in Scientology and how these techniques harm people.

So, to sum up the media is unfair in their portrayal of cults very often in my opinion. It is extremely unfair to the general public that the media doesn't do a better job of portraying the harm and methods associated with cults. Treating cults as neutral or exotic but harmless or normal organizations is a failure to both understand what they are reporting on by the media and a failure to warn the public about cults, which are a genuine public health threat.

If the media ignored experts on a pandemic or pollution and the public was regularly harmed by known active threats the media could warn them about but failed to we would understand the media needs to understand their ignorance and the knowledge of the experts. They could verify this expertise in the area by consulting studies like The Anderson Report and numerous court cases, certainly regarding Scientology.

The failure of the media to properly cover cults as the menace to society they truly are is grossly unfair, to the public. 

Sunday, October 25, 2020

How would I know if someone was attempting to brainwash me?

 The simplest answer is - to know if someone is attempting to brainwash you the degree of your education and expertise on the subject of brainwashing is a key factor.

Plainly, you need to understand brainwashing to determine if it is being attempted.

I was in the Scientology cult for twenty five years and upon leaving it in 2014 discovered that my assumptions about efforts at coercive control and covert persuasion (more recent and broader terms than brainwashing) were grossly wrong. I had assumed, like many people who are fooled by unethical persuasion, that I was too intelligent and educated to be duped. That assumption is often a key foundation to being fooled, you assume it happens to people who are especially gullible, stupid, crazy, and so on then believe you are not one of those people, opening the door to being thoroughly duped.

The unfortunate reality about brainwashing (and other terms for undue influence) is that we have assumptions about human psychology, group dynamics, human predators and many related topics that are often incorrect. They function as folk psychology, and we are mislead by these incorrect beliefs into not only being ignorant about these subjects but into being unaware of our profound ignorance and thinking the ideas we do have are correct and reliable.

So, to understand brainwashing we need to be humble and understand that it is a big subject that requires a bit of education in numerous areas to begin to understand.

I like many thousands of ex cult members have followed a similar path. I consider the work on brainwashing in particular by two cult experts to be the best, most concise, and accessible for people who have no college education. That's intentional as they know many ex cult members never went to college, but need to understand their work.

I would start with the eight criteria for thought reform (his term for brainwashing) by Robert Jay Lifton. They are a concept he developed and listed as a chapter in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, which describes the brainwashing done to American prisoners of war. Lifton has studied cults and the methods of persuasion for decades and written numerous books on the topic.

The eight criteria have been known to have a significant effect on numerous ex cult members - upon reading them we realize that the cult we were in practiced them exactly as the book says and produced the results exactly as Lifton described, no matter what cult we were in or if it is big or small, if it is religious or political in nature or if it is not.

The description fits nearly perfectly and the more of his writing you read the more you can find he has taken into account virtually every variety of cultic influence and broken it down. For example, many cults have a guru or leader. But Lifton has noted that for some cults the doctrine, the ideas and sacred texts or even slogans, can serve as the guru. Numerous white supremacists don't admire one universal guru, some consider Hitler an “okay” historical figure, because a guru is not supposed to fail, so they instead focus on the doctrine of white supremacists and certain slogans and phrases instead of a living or even dead guru.

I believe that if you want to understand brainwashing a great start is looking at the eight criteria for thought reform, and the book Cults In Our Midst by Margaret Singer gives a great description of this in detail. The book Freedom of Mind by Steve Hassan has perhaps the best simple description of cults and is a great first book on the topic.

If you want to be a serious student, the book Cults Inside Out by Rick Alan Ross has a superb description of the materials on cults and could be the basis of a whole curriculum in itself.

I have experienced the efforts that Scientology has for controlling members and in particular the techniques used to brainwash people which Ronald Hubbard delineated in Scientology doctrine.

I am going to list a group of posts at Mockingbird's Nest blog on Scientology related to brainwashing and quote on the eight criteria for thought reform.

Dr. Robert J. Lifton's Criteria For Thought Reform

Any ideology -- that is, any set of emotionally-charged convictions about men and his relationship to the natural or supernatural world -- may be carried by its adherents in a totalistic direction. But this is most likely to occur with those ideologies which are most sweeping in their content and most ambitious or messianic in their claim, whether a religious or political organization. And where totalism exists, a religion, or a political movement becomes little more than an exclusive cult.
Here you will find a set of criteria, eight psychological themes against which any environment may be judged. In combination, they create an atmosphere which may temporarily energize or exhilarate, but which at the same time pose the gravest of human threats.
(a brief outline)

MILIEU CONTROL

  • The most basic feature is the control of human communication within an environment
  • If the control is extremely intense, it becomes internalized control -- an attempt to manage an individual's inner communication
  • Control over all a person sees, hears, reads, writes (information control) creates conflicts in respect to individual autonomy
  • Groups express this in several ways: Group process, isolation from other people, psychological pressure, geographical distance or unavailable transportation, sometimes physical pressure
  • Often a sequence of events, such as seminars, lectures, group encounters, which become increasingly intense and increasingly isolated, making it extremely difficult-- both physically and psychologically--for one to leave
  • Sets up a sense of antagonism with the outside world; it's "us against them"
  • Closely connected to the process of individual change (of personality)

MYSTICAL MANIPULATION (PLANNED SPONTANEITY)

  • Extensive personal manipulation
  • Seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment, while it actually has been orchestrated
  • Totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative
  • The "principles" (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only true path to salvation (or enlightenment)
  • The individual then develops the psychology of the pawn, and participates actively in the manipulation of others
  • The leader who becomes the center of the mystical manipulation (or the person in whose name it is done) can be sometimes more real than an abstract god and therefore attractive to cult members
  • Legitimizes the deception used to recruit new members and/or raise funds, and the deception used on the "outside world"

THE DEMAND FOR PURITY

  • The world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil (everything outside the group)
  • One must continually change or conform to the group "norm"
  • Tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for the group's controlling and manipulative influences
  • Once a person has experienced the totalist polarization of good/evil (black/white thinking), he has great difficulty in regaining a more balanced inner sensitivity to the complexities of human morality
  • The radical separation of pure/impure is both within the environment (the group) and the individual
  • Ties in with the process of confession -- one must confess when one is not conforming

CONFESSION

  • Cultic confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself
  • Sessions in which one confesses to one's sin are accompanied by patterns of criticism and self-criticism, generally transpiring within small groups with an active and dynamic thrust toward personal change
  • Is an act of symbolic self-surrender
  • Makes it virtually impossible to attain a reasonable balance between worth and humility
  • A person confessing to various sins of pre-cultic existence can both believe in those sins and be covering over other ideas and feelings that s/he is either unaware of or reluctant to discuss
  • Often a person will confess to lesser sins while holding on to other secrets (often criticisms/questions/doubts about the group/leaders that may cause them not to advance to a leadership position)
  • "The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you"

SACRED SCIENCE

  • The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence
  • Questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited
  • A reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine
  • Offers considerable security to young people because it greatly simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology

LOADING THE LANGUAGE

  • The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche (thought-stoppers)
  • Repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon
  • "The language of non-thought"
  • Words are given new meanings -- the outside world does not use the words or phrases in the same way -- it becomes a "group" word or phrase

DOCTRINE OVER PERSON

  • Every issue in one's life can be reduced to a single set of principles that have an inner coherence to the point that one can claim the experience of truth and feel it
  • The pattern of doctrine over person occurs when there is a conflict between what one feels oneself experiencing and what the doctrine or ideology says one should experience
  • If one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question -- it is always "turned around" on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly
  • The underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or human experience and one must subject one's experience to that "truth"
  • The experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt
  • One is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one's own evil
  • When doubt arises, conflicts become intense

DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE

  • Since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not saved, and do not have the right to exist
  • "Being verses nothingness"
  • Impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed
  • One outside the group may always receive their right of existence by joining the group
  • Fear manipulation -- if one leaves this group, one leaves God or loses their transformation, for something bad will happen to them
  • The group is the "elite", outsiders are "of the world", "evil", "unenlightened", etc.

Excerpted from: Thought Reform And The Psychology of Totalism, Chapter 22, (Chapel Hill, 1989) & The Future of Immortality, Chapter 155 (New York 1987).