Article on DOGE

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-doge-gets-wrong-about-tech-and

The Goal

 I talked about people follow their programming, and how some of the time some of us are more alert, awake, and aware than at others.

Which brings me back to the goal - helping people be more conscious of their choices, so that they are free to choose who they want to be.

This all sounds simpler in my head, or rather it feels obvious. Now that I'm trying to write about it, though, it's not so easy.

Let's start with conscious choice. That means I don't want to trick people into doing what I think is best. I want them to be aware of their own mind, their own wants and needs, so that they can choose what they think is best.

Which is not to say I don't have my own thoughts or preferences. Rather, it gets back to my personal distinction between persuasion and manipulation.

I can talk all I want about what I think is best, try to come up with logical arguments (and perhaps not so logical) but at the end of the day the other person always has a choice. That's persuasion.

Once you start trying to ensure the other person can only make the choice you want them to, that's when it gets into manipulation. Trying to hide alternatives? Cover up information that doesn't suit your goals? Make them feel afraid and defensive? Lie about your own motives?

Those are all tactics of someone who is afraid that the other person won't choose 'correctly' on their own. You don't trust them to choose the way you want them to on their own, and you're trying to control them so you can force them to make that choice anyway.

And the thing of it is, manipulation might seem to work for a time, but I think in the long run it will always fail. Like car salespeople - the ones who manipulate people into buying cars they don't really want (or that are lemons that don't really work like they should) may make a sale... but their customers are not likely to be repeat customers, nor are they likely to encourage their friends and family to use that salesperson for their next car purchase.

The salespeople who are honest and straightforward with their customers tend to do better in the long run.

That conscious choice also should be free from fear, because people don't really think straight when they're afraid. This is part of why interrogators have a 'fear up' approach. And it also applies to making people afraid by lying about immigrants eating dogs, or the level of crime among immigrants, or the level of crime in general.

That dissonance between the actual crime rates and the perception of crime? Yeah... that's some basic political manipulation going on, and it really annoys me that making people afraid like that has been 'working', if by 'working' you mean that the people doing so have won elections.

In addition, conscious choice means working to fix any cognitive dissonance. That gap between what you say and what you do? That's generally a sign that you're not fully aware, and it's hard to make good choices.

Shadow policies? Where a company says they oppose bullying and sexual harassment, but don't actually address it when employees bring such issues forward? That's cognitive dissonance on an organizational scale, and getting angry at the employees who step forward just exacerbates the issue.

Which is not to say that you have to respond in any particular way. This is all about how people think and organizations decide, it's not telling them what to do when faced with cognitive dissonance, fear, or any of these other things I'm pointing out as signs that people aren't consciously making choices.

And that's because my belief is that when people are free from manipulation, are unafraid, and are fully aware and in control of themselves, that we all benefit.

That God didn't make life a zero-sum game, and the choices other people would make when they're fully free to do so are no threat to me, but rather will make it easier for us to find a win-win.

Everything that gets in the way of that - the fear mongering, the cognitive dissonance, the reality manipulation and attempts to discredit anything you don't want to hear?

Those all are unnecessary, and just make everything harder than it has to be.

Woke

 In my previous post I implied that most people were following their programming... but it's not really as simple as that.

It's more like - sometimes we're more alert than at others. Myself included. There are times we go on auto-pilot, for example. Like when you drive home and realized you spaced out and don't even remember the drive.

At other times, well. That's what all the stuff about mindfulness is about, right? If you meditate, concentrate, you can bring yourself more fully in the moment. You could almost say that sometimes people are sleepwalking through life, and at other times we are...

Woke.

Yes, I know that term has become politicized and given negative connotations. I'm not even necessarily using it in the way people think, except I think in some ways my usage is closer to the original meaning. That when we are aware, and focused, and can sit and think about our history and how we've treated minorities over decades, that the ones who can listen and respond without that reflexive defensiveness are woke.

Of course, that sleepwalking? When most everyone around you is acting like that, the ones who are awake can be a bit like Jonathon in The Mummy.

As for the right wing trolls that try to get a rise out of people... rather than trying to blend in like Jonathan does here, it's more like they're looking at these sleepwalkers and deliberately pushing a big red button that triggers their defenses.

Except I don't think many of them are doing it because they're any more awake then the ones they're observing. It's more like they've reprogrammed themselves... like they're playing a game where they get more points the more times they hit someone's button.

I do wonder about Trump though. See, the sleepwalkers tend to just follow social norms. Those invisible rules that surround us all, and they seem to do it just because that's how it's done. That's what they learned to do, without really any thought behind it.

The way he ignores all those norms and conventions?

I can't tell if that's because he's more awake - but malicious - or if he's just programmed like some of those right wing trolls. 

Again with the question - deliberate malevolence? Or just malevolent programming?

But let's bring this back to the sleepwalkers with the big red buttons.

I would say that a large part of what I do is try to find ways of... Idk. Kindly trying to wake people up? Gently? To bring things to their conscious awareness without triggering the big red button.

Which is part of why I found leadership positions exhausting, at times. It's a lot of work to carefully think about what to say, so that you can get the point across without triggering an automatic defense. You have to think about all that stuff they say, about using 'I' words and avoiding accusatory 'you' statements.

Also part of why I'm picky about who I would date. I don't want to have to constantly watch how I say something in order to make sure that they don't take it the wrong way. Once in a while is fine. We all have that big red button and we all have things that will make us feel defensive. It just... shouldn't be to such a degree that you can't talk about the things that bother you. 

If something is bothering you and you feel like you can't bring it up, you're forced to either constantly suppress the issue (which, especially with people sleepwalking through life, rarely works and just means whatever it is tends to come out at the worst times and in the worst ways) or you end up bringing it up and having them react predictably badly and then the relationship is damaged. Neither is very good, and certainly not the way I'd want to build a relationship with someone I hoped would be a life partner and helpmate.

(This is not to say you have to be cruel or demanding or always tell them negative things. It's just that if it bothers you enough that you can't really let it go, then you should be able to bring it up in a way that gets it addressed. Whatever it is. 'Addressed' doesn't mean they have to do what you want, but they have to show they heard and are willing to work towards some sort of solution that lets both of you be okay.)

You could say the same for the Americans who've suffered due to racism and other mistakes. Honestly, we probably don't deserve black Americans and other minorities for their willingness to overlook so many slights and other infuriating behaviors.

Russian Misinformation

Saw this post about Storm-1516 discussing Russian disinformation activities, and it reminded me of a loosely related point. 

A while back I'd been reading about Russia and Putin's rise to power, and it was talking about how the KGB (or their successor org, I forget the exact details) blamed the west for the collapse of the USSR and essentially started to hide resources to fund efforts to continue fighting the West. (Which is part of we why it's so hard to tell if anything done in Russia is done by criminals, the government, a business - or generally a blend of all three).

Anyways, at the time I found myself wondering - if they hadn't misdirected so much of money, would the dissolution of the USSR have been so painful? 

It reminds me of a story I had heard, which supposedly illustrates a common Russian mindset, though I don't know enough to say whether that's true or not. Basically a man was jealous of his neighbor, because his neighbor had more goats than he did. So given the chance to make a wish - rather than wish he had as many (or more) goats, he wished for his neighbor's goats to die. 

Anyways, I can't imagine all those troll farms and disinformation campaigns are cheap. Well, who knows? It's not like I can find a breakdown of their budget. 

But I do have to wonder - how different would it be if they'd spent that money in Russia? 

Trust

 Something I read asked about trusting other people. Our brothers and sisters... and as I thought about it, about whether I trust people, I find myself thinking the answer is - 

No.

That's overly simplistic, of course. I don't think that people are inherently dishonest or untrustworthy, actually. So this post is about feeling out my thoughts on the matter in order to clarify that.

What I trust is that people will be... people. That they will be true to themselves, really.

But what does that even mean?

It's like... people often follow patterns without thinking. Almost robotic, as though they were a program. If you know their history, nature and nurture, what the inputs are, they will generally respond in predictable ways.

That is not always the case. I do believe in free will, and that people can change or rise above their pasts. I just don't think many people exercise that free will.

To give an example - when confronted by something that feels like an attack (criticism, failure, or something just not going 'right' the way they expect) most people will get defensive. And perhaps even lash back.

If you put it in a martial arts context - if someone throws a punch, most people will punch back. 

There's a whole lot of other options, of course. Turning the incoming punch into a judo throw by stepping in and aiding and directing the momentum. Stepping aside so it misses. Blocking. And so on and so forth...

But most people don't really learn how to control their responses and deliberately choose one. They perceive an attack, they punch back.

Of course, not all of those 'attacks' are true attacks. Sometimes it's just feedback they don't want to hear. And I like to think it's better, if you have the time, to perhaps sit with it. Just think of what happened, how you feel about it, and what your options are... and then choose the one that best gets you where you want to be.

Most people don't really bother, imho.

So you see something like Facebook, right? And they get criticism, and it feels like an attack, so they get defensive and want to punch back.

Something similar happens (or is perhaps exacerbated) when you feel your livelihood is threatened. Your status, your income... of course people who benefit from something like oil will get defensive when told that their entire livelihood puts the world at risk. 

In an ideal world, of course, they might initial believe such claims are false and dismiss them... but as the evidence mounts, and especially when a scientific consensus forms, they would reevaluate that and act accordingly.

But we all know that that hasn't happened. For the most part, at least. Even if (if they had accepted it and acted accordingly) they might have managed to shift everything so that they no longer depended on oil for their status and livelihood, or even worked to ensure a smooth transition.

No, it's more natural to double down and work to block anything that threatens that.

Same with control... anything that appears to threaten their ability to control something comes across as an attack, and a threat. Even though things would be better (and not just for the ones they are trying to control!) if they learned to monitor that sort of instinctive response and choose better responses. 

After all, while you may not have direct control if you come across as supporting people in their own goals you can often have more influence than if you're perceived as a threat right back.

Learning to listen and enable other people in the pursuit of their goals is better, imho, then having control and using it to steamroll over what they want.

I don't like to pick a political party because most of the time the extreme partisans appear as little more than programmed robots. You say your party supports or opposes something, and the partisans follow along like lemmings without really giving it any thought.

And you lose all that complexity, all the grey areas, all the potential for alternatives. It all becomes black and white, your side is good and the other side is evil, and in the process you demonize the other side and justify whatever your side does.

Reflexively

Without really even thinking about it.

And if you aren't careful, you learn to dismiss any argument that doesn't support what your side is pushing. Ignore any criticism. And then you start forming a bubble, where all you hear and see are the things that reinforce what your side wants.

I don't generally think either side is evil or bad (except for the cynical manipulators who know they're lying for political purposes. It's one thing to honestly believe the science was bad, and another to know and accept they're telling the truth and still propose policies and push influence campaigns to block any potential solution. Especially when it's coupled with callousness and an 'I got mine, how you do?' attitude. Though evil sometimes sounds overly harsh and judgmental, even if the end results sure seem evil.)

So in that sense - I don't trust people to evaluate a situation with an open-mind and make wise choices. I don't trust them to get past what appears to benefit themselves the most, especially when fear or hope are affecting their thought processes.

And I don't trust that they will hear criticism and use that to improve something.

Which does make it really, really, really hard to fix anything.

Take all the talk about 'woke' politics and DEI and all the crap the Trump administration is doing. 

They are trying to cover up the bad things in our history, and act as though even mentioning them is an attack.

Except - those things did actually happen. The Tulsa race massacre happened. Sundown towns were a real thing. 

Our history is incomplete when we pretend otherwise, in ways that have a real and horrible impact on people who are still not treated like real Americans today.

Saying so feels like an attack to certain people, though. So rather than sitting with it, thinking about it, and learning how to handle it in ways that will let us do better... we get Trump targeting Smithsonian programs to block any sort of discussion on those topics, and claim that the Smithsonian is the one that is divisive and rewriting history.

They remove pictures of American service members who earned medals, simply because they are black.

It's things like this that lead to discussion on 'white fragility' and 'toxic masculinity'... because how can we ever address racism or live up to the ideals mentioned in our founding documents if we can't even discuss our failures without leading to bs like that???

So do I think people are generally bad, or liars, or anything like that? No.

But I don't trust them to act logically, or respond to criticism well, or to know how to get past their own programming.

Well, that's not quite true.

People can 'get past their own programming' if they have certain types of life experiences. I mean, obviously people do. Sometimes. 

It's just that there's no fast and hard rule about when and how it happens, and some of those experiences are arguably just replacing their programming with something else rather than helping them learn to consciously choose their own.

After all, to people who want a specific result and have the power to force the outcome, conscious choice appears to threaten that outcome too. If people are consciously choosing, you can't manipulate them and force them to choose what you want. You have to offer your arguments and hope they're persuasive enough on their own.

Very Thought Provoking

https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/the-status-cheats

Jotting Down a Thought

Read more of the book... Perhaps I was too kind in my assessment yesterday. 

Anyways, it gave me an idea for something... But ofc I don't think I'd have the interest, resources, or time to really develop it. I just was thinking about what sorts of alternatives to Facebook would be possible. 

It'd probably have to be some sort of subscription service too, if only to avoid the worst excesses that come when your business model is more about using knowledge gathered from people to make your profit.