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What if they’re not out to get you?

And what if it’s not all a government conspiracy?

With all the fun & games of Sunday’s UK Emergency Warning test, the thing that worries me most isn’t that some people didn’t get the message broadcast. Obviously, for those who didn’t get it, that may have been a bit of a concern. But you know, it’s technology, so it’s going to go a bit wrong. I’m sure they’ll eventually work out what didn’t quite go according to plan.

No, what worries me is how easily it is for some people to go straight to: “Oh no, the government conspiracy are out to get me again!”  All over social media I’m seeing people claiming it’s all some government plot to keep us on our toes. Frequently the same people who were telling us three years ago that Covid was all a hoax, but let’s not go down that particular rabbit-hole.

Seeing government conspiracy everywhere

It must be so exhausting to constantly believe the people elected by the system you help support with your taxes are all evil geniuses intent on doing you down!  Personally, I prefer to believe that the majority of elected representatives are good people. And intent on making our lives a little bit better.

I can’t deny, there are a good number of deluded fools who think they have an answer us mere mortals can’t understand. Their faith in their solution carries a very attractive energy. Especially in a complex world where most of us are struggling with how all the myriad influences work on each other. What the US military loves to call VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous).

So they get elected, and when elected, they find it relatively easy to garner support, and to rise to the top.

I have to admit there are a fair few complete scoundrels too. People who are either knowingly criminal, or simply too devoid of any sort of moral and ethical compass to realise they’re breaking some pretty fundamental rules of human conduct. 

They don’t play by the rules. Or in some cases, even realise there are rules the rest of us play by. So if we’re not careful these miscreants also have a habit of sneaking their way to the top.

Because the confident often suffer from what one author eloquently described as “the sin of certainty”, and the unsavoury simply don’t care, these charismatic leaders are very hard to challenge.  The fools dismiss any opposition as foolishness. The scoundrels simply disregard it.

Which all sounds a little like I think they’re all out to get us, doesn’t it? And the easy option is probably to believe that.

Why easy?

Because if you accept that these all-powerful demagogues and tyrants are acting against your best interests, you have a simple choice: to confront or to avoid.

Confrontation may indeed be productive in dealing government conspiracy. Many ill-conceived or badly-executed policies have been changed in the past by direct action. But it usually comes at a rather high cost, fiscally and societally. Avoidance, on the other hand, generally takes the form of sullen non-compliance. Or possibly operating outside of the system (and outside of the law). And it rarely makes much of a difference at all.

A different choice

But I believe there’s a third choice: to engage. 

And that’s going to take a lot more effort.

In Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit 5 is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.  A wise man* once advised me that in business one should always assume good intent. I believe that is also true of politics.  He also shared a very useful question. “What has to be true in their [model of the] world, for that behaviour [or policy] to make sense?” This is at the heart of true engagement with those with whom we disagree. And it’s why engagement is such hard work. It requires us to think differently.

It requires us to find the sense in the nonsensical.

Another point of view

When you start to see the world from the point of view that makes the government’s seemingly-nefarious activity something rather less wicked, you are then in a position to alter it. If you don’t like the way things are, you have to convince the powers-that-be that they’ve got it wrong. When the argument starts from the reasons they think they’ve got it right, it’s far more likely to be persuasive. It’s far more likely to create change.

So my invitation to you is to choose to believe that government, and those in it, have a genuine desire to improve your nation’s lot. And if you think they’re getting it wrong, to engage in the democratic process and help them to help you.

Because the alternative is just too depressing to even contemplate.

More on a similar topic here: https://life7bn.com/assuming-good-intent/

*William Buist, erstwhile president of the now-defunct (officially at least) Ecademy Blackstar network, with whom I don’t always agree but with whom I’ve had many interesting and challenging conversations over the years (and not a few beers).

Photo by Jordhan Madec on Unsplash

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Assuming Good Intent

suspicious woman

My many more suspicious friends often ask me why I don’t suscribe to the many conspiracy theories they try to convince me about.

Right now, as England hovers on the brink of finally coming out of Covid social restrictions, many of my friends are frantic that the rise of the Delta variant is going to be used as an excuse to keep us all restricted for longer. They believe there is some big conspiracy to do us all harm in some way.

It’s the same with all the conspiracy theories. Somehow “big government”, “big pharma”, “big agriculture”, in the end, big brother of some description, is trying to do us all harm.

The bit I never quite manage to get out of them is … to what end? Is there some murky elite somewhere who are somehow getting off on making us all suffer?

Frankly, that’s a world-view that is just so depressing to me that if it was true, I’d rather not be around.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think governments, big business, or the banks get it right all the time. They don’t, in fact they make some colossal cock-ups.

But I choose not to believe that when they get it wrong, it’s because they hate me and want to hurt me. As far as I’m concerned, everybody on the planet is doing what they believe is for the best, for the world they want to be part of. Sure, they may not be actively seeking to help me specifically, I may even be entirely irrelevant to them.

I choose to believe that the vast majority of humanity wants a happy world for everyone, and I simply cannot see the point of assuming anything different. How would it serve me to spend my entire life angry at some faceless “them” that’s out to get me?

So instead, I choose to assume everyone’s acting with good intent, that when they do things that don’t work out well, it’s because they didn’t think it through.

Maybe I’m naïve. But I’m a whole lot happier than most conspiracy theorists I know!

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Anybody and Everyone

We tend to see the words Somebody & Someone, Nobody & No-one, Anybody & Anyone, and Everybody & Everyone used as alternatives for each other.

I would like to propose that they are not, in fact, interchangeable.

My thinking starts from my belief that we are all infinite beings who have chosen (for reasons we can’t yet grasp) to have a Human experience. I somewhat inelegantly refer to our corporeal bodies as the “meat-suit” – it’s just a wrapper that makes it more convenient when interacting with all the other beings having a Human experience.

But, as infinite beings, we are really all a part of the One, the all-that-is, the universal consciousness, the Unified Field.

So in my writing, I choose to make a distinction between our Human being, the “meat-suit” and our spiritual being, the essence.

When referring to the Human, I use everybody, anybody, nobody. And when referring to the individual instance of the spiritual One, I use everyone, anyone, no-one.

Of course, in general usage, without having read this explanation, nobody consciously sees that distinction. But words have power when used with intention, and I suspect that everyone has an intuitive grasp of the distinction that I’ve chosen to make visible.

Try it in your writing and speech, it adds a new dimension of subtle communication and, I believe, conscious awareness.

The chances are that everybody will ignore my suggestion; and anyone – maybe everyone – might just choose to be more intentional with their words.

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Conspiracy Theorists – please stop using the Biased Expert Fallacy

conspiracy theories - kid with telescope

Conspiracy Theorists – please stop using the Biased Expert Fallacy

It’s lazy, it insults the reader’s intelligence, and most importantly, it’s unethical.

The very best way to ensure that I don’t take seriously your warnings about your favourite conspiracy theory is to suggest, without clear evidence, that the regulator must be in cahoots with the industry/government. As soon as I see or hear that in a presentation, my bullshit detectors are on full alert.

What is the Biased Expert Fallacy?

We’ve all seen it – a regulator’s credibility is called into doubt because they used to work for one of the major companies in the industry they are now responsible for overseeing.  The implication being that because they are a “poacher turned gamekeeper” they will be unduly biased towards their former colleagues in the industry.

Assumptions – (they make an Ass out of U and Me)

That makes two very big assumptions: firstly that someone who has been in an industry can’t object to some of its less savoury practices; and secondly that simply having worked in an industry that you’re now regulating somehow automatically makes you dodgy. There is no rational reason to believe either of those things.  The first is simply illogical, as I will explain in a moment. The second is just insulting to the vast majority of regulators, most of whom do a spell in industry before crossing the divide into regulation.

Bordering on the libelous

A more pernicious form of the fallacy is to then go and suggest that the regulator is somehow ‘in the pocket’ of the big players in an industry. Or worse (and regrettably we see this all too often around the ‘alternative news’ and ‘truth warrior’ sites), questions are asked about whether the individual regulator is taking back-handers for their approvals, or for turning a blind eye.

And all that is typically wrapped up in a cowardly, arse-covering cop-out like “I’m not saying this is so, but just ask yourself …” Theorists, if you really believe somebody is on the take, have the courage of your convictions and make a straight accusation, don’t wrap it up in plausible deniability crap to save yourself from getting sued for your slanderous bile. That’s just cowardly.

To be clear, I’m not talking here about industries in which the regulator is voluntarily funded by the participants. There is a very clear ‘agency problem’ with that arrangement – which is why a number of the more questionable industries opted for voluntary regulation before it got foisted on them by statute. I’m talking about accusing individuals of malfeasance with no evidence whatsoever.

But I digress.

Why we need expert regulators

The people best placed to know whether individual players within an industry are up to something undesirable, are the very people who understand the industry. Experts who know that a particular process cuts corners or carries dangers that the layman wouldn’t recognise.  And who better to know the corners that get cut, than someone who has been on the inside, seen it first hand and decided to do something about it?

Someone on the inside

As I said earlier, the Biased Expert fallacy assumes that nobody from an industry can object to its dodgy practices. But surely it’s equally likely that an industry insider who then joins the regulator will be doing so precisely because they are concerned about dodgy practices, and they want to control them without risking their livelihood.

These insider experts know where to look, they know the questions to ask, they recognise incomplete answers, and they know how to spot abuses as they are happening.

The end-game

So what happens if the Biased Expert fallacy is allowed to take hold? The logical end-point is that no regulator will ever employ someone from within the industry, for fear of their credibility or impartiality being challenged. Or, at best, no-one from within the industry could ever rise to head up a regulatory body – which is not exactly going to encourage quality recruitment to regulatory positions.

We then end up with toothless and incompetent regulators, around whom the miscreant players can run technical rings, baffling them with industry jargon that the regulator isn’t up to speed about.  Sure, we can employ academics as regulators, after all, they should be at the cutting edge of the technology and theory.  But there is no substitute for someone who has actually been at the coal-face and can call bullshit on excuses and justifications.

Regulators with good intent

My biggest issue with the excessive use of the Biased Expert Fallacy is that it comes from a place of assuming wrong-doing. Anyone who has been employed in an industry is assumed to be crooked, or at least looking out for their mates, not the public. And heaven forbid that they should have been successful in the industry, and risen to any position of power – now they absolutely must be dodgy to want to join a regulator!

Whatever happened to innocent until proved guilty?

Damaging credibility (yours, not theirs)

Lazy conspiracy theorists all over are making the same mistake, of accusing potentially well-meaning regulators of self-interest purely on the basis that they have worked in the industry they are regulating. That results in a great many such accusations being defeated through simple lack of evidence. Or worse still, through evidence to the contrary.

And that’s a real problem for those of us who wish to challenge the accepted paradigms and are open to exploring whether the path(s) the world is on are in fact the best ones for humanity and the planet. Because every false accusation, every lazy assertion, every claim that doesn’t have adequate basis in demonstrable fact, each and every unjustifiable cry of “Wolf!” makes it harder for the real good guys to expose the real bad guys.

It’s lazy, it’s ineffective, and it harms your cause. Stop it.

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Automation and the death of employment

I’ve been pondering some more about how automation and AI are going to affect the world of work. One question that’s come to mind is: should we expect business owners to share the benefits of automation with their employees?

I’ll say right at the outset, I don’t have the answer, and this is in many ways a simplistic and naïve view of innovation. It’s not intended to be a scholarly article, more a sharing of concerns and something I invite other greater minds to both tear down and contribute to.

Buckminster Fuller’s vision of a world in which labour is no longer required is, it seems to me, predicated on the benefits of the labour-saving inventions being shared by the whole of society. Greater productivity means that overall we all have to work less to get the same output, and that should mean we all have more ‘leisure’ time (or at least time not involved in production of our physical needs & wants).

So let’s bring that down to the level of a single business. The owners calculate that an investment in automation will allow them to produce the same quantity of goods with fewer employees on the production line. By having fewer worker hours to pay for, they can recoup their investment in a certain period of time. For most businesses, that’s likely to be maybe a 3-5 year payback period, after which the automation adds profit straight to their bottom line.

That’s how it works with the current shareholder-led system, with all the gains accruing to the business owners.  Great for business owners – less hassle from employees, and after the payback period, more profit. But it’s not so great for the workers who get laid off.

There is still a need for the same amount of production, but now we need fewer worker-hours to produce that. We have choices to make, at a societal level, about how we handle that situation in a way that is fair to everyone and doesn’t simply throw workers on the scrap-heap of things that have been superseded by technology.

The business still has an amount of revenue coming in, but fewer hours are needed to produce it.  One option might be to still pay the workers the same salary, giving them time off to do other things. That would have the benefit of avoiding unemployment, and of enhancing workers’ lives. The downside is it could take away the business-owners’ incentive to invest in improved productivity in the first place.

Or we might say that as the employer now only needs to purchase a certain number of hours labour, those hours should be shared out equally between all the existing workers. The benefit is nobody is thrown on the scrap-heap, they all still get to be useful, and they all still get to earn.  A downside is that all the workers’ incomes would fall, possibly to an unsustainable level, putting more of them into the benefits system.

In the current arrangement, the business-owner makes the investment, and the workers suffer the reduction in jobs.  In the first option above, the business-owner carries the cost (putting in the automation) and the workers get all the benefit (shorter working hours). In the second, the workers take all the pain, having less in wages to share between them, and the business-owner gets all the extra profit.

Some might say that it’s right that the owners get all the profit – after all, they made the investment. And in classic capital-led economics, that would be correct. But the problem is, only the owners get to make that choice.  The workers have the choice thrust upon them. Under current rules, the owners take the lion’s share of the gain and the workers take pretty much all of the pain. For a choice they didn’t make.

Maybe what we need is a way for the workers to have a say in how automation is applied, to share in the gain, and to choose to share in the pain. Maybe during the payback period they take a lower wage, investing in their own future by contributing to making the investment worthwhile for the owners. But that’s only ever going to work if it’s a choice they make themselves.

From there, we get into the unique and potentially vastly different situation of each worker. The young man at the beginning of his family life, with kids in school and a big mortgage, is going to be less able to take a drop in his income than the guy who’s approaching retirement and has paid off his home loan. And even that is a massive over-simplification.

I don’t know the answer. But I do know that the current ‘owner-takes-it-all’ approach to automation will create enormous problems for society as a whole, and for the ‘working classes’ (whatever that means these days) in particular. Failing to deal with it will almost inevitably lead to massive social unrest, as jobs become increasingly scarce. It is not an issue we can afford to ignore, and we cannot leave it to capital-funded* government to resolve it.

I’d love your views – share them below, or use this as a conversation-starter on social media. The more we talk about it, in an open an respectful manner, of course), the better the solution that emerges.

 

* That’s a whole other article, but make no mistake, governments are not funded by taxation of their citizens. Taxation only occurs because of commerce, and commerce is funded and controlled by capital.

Photo by Daniel Apodaca on Unsplash

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Illusions of separation

I’ve noticed for a while now that whenever I start writing, my natural inclination is to talk about what ‘we’ do, and how things affect ‘us’.

And copy-writers are always nagging me horribly about using ‘you’ instead.

Just lately I realised why that doesn’t sit comfortably with me – I don’t think of myself as separate from the rest of the world. We are all one. Or to be precise,  we are all expressions of one infinite being, doing a better or worse job of pretending to be separate.

Having said that, I expect I shall continue to talk to “you” in my published writing. It does seem to work better for attracting work and money.

I suspect that’s because the expressions of us who are best able to pretend to be separate are also those who are best at accumulating the bits and bytes we call money. Of course, that may be because we need that illusion of separation to believe in the scarcity that would make accumulating money a useful thing to do. I don’t know.

Be aware that I am not saying the people who are good at attracting money by pretending to be separate are in any way worse than those of us who struggle with being separate. I am certainly not assuming that they are unaware of their infiniteness and connection to all the other expressions of us.

They are simply behaving more like they are unaware, and for all we know they may be doing that consciously.  And if anything, that means they may be the superior beings, because they are better at playing the game.

Whatever the game is!

Photo by Grace Madeline on Unsplash

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It’s all you …

Happy group of connected people enjoying life at sunset

If you really believe that you are an infinite being, then it follows that there cannot be anything that you are not.

So when you are seeing behaviour and beingness that you don’t approve of, it can only be an aspect of you. All the anger, meanness, greed, lack of caring, war-mongering, cruelty … all of that, all YOU.

Trump, May, Johnson, Corbyn, Putin, Kim Jong Un, even Farage … all aspects of *you*

Crazed jihadists, fundamentalist Christians, flat-earthers, and rabid priests of science … all aspects of you.

But don’t be too hard on yourself, you are also all the good things in the world – the mother’s loving smile, the baby’s chuckle, the artist’s fine appreciation of the world, the selfless caring of the relief worker – all you.

Everything you criticise or admire in “others” … all you!

And yet, we’re always being told to be compassionate towards others because we don’t know what’s going on in their lives. Surely if they are an expression of your infinite being, how can you not know?

The answer that works best for this particular expression of Us, the one experiencing being an English man in his 50s called Andrew Horder, is that we do know, we just choose, for some rather perverse and as yet unexplained reason, to close ourself off to the knowing.

So the question then becomes, what would it take for us to acknowledge that knowing?

And how might that make the world a better place?

Photo by Kevin Delvecchio on Unsplash

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The Sin of Certainty

Uncertain looking woman

“… let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. … If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.”

(Cardinal Jacopo Lomeli, in “Conclave”, Robert Harris)

That quote really jumped out at me when I read it on Christmas Day. It seemed to sum up so much of what is wrong with the world today.

“Certainty is the great enemy of unity”. That makes sense to me; if one is certain about something, then only that thing can be correct. And all other opinions must be erroneous. Instant division – either right or wrong, nothing in between.

“Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.” Same thing – if you’re certain about something, you’re not going to be particularly tolerant of those who don’t share your view.  At best you’re going to pity them, at worst despise them. Again that separation into the right-thinkers and the wrong-thinkers.

The trouble with Certainty is that it’s an absolute; it doesn’t allow for any shades of grey between black and white, between correct and incorrect, between right and wrong. And my experience of the world is that it’s a technicolor dream, with every possible shade available, depending upon your particular perspective.

Remember that Facebook post, where someone got the world arguing about the colour of a dress? Was it black and blue, or white and gold? Each side was completely certain about their view, based on the empirical evidence they experienced. Only later did it come out that because we each process colour differently both views were capable of being correct.

So it’s not just the airy-fairy stuff like opinions, morals and ethics – and dare I say it, religion – that is subject to unreliable perceptions, and therefore doubt. We can’t even rely on what we can see with our own eyes.

And that brings me to the last part of the passage: “… there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.” We need to understand that the vast majority of our experience of this reality is based on our own perception.  That means we take pretty much everything on faith. That might be faith in some higher being, or faith in what we are told by scientists, or some combination of the two.  That’s for each of us to choose for ourselves.

Because unless we have observed the behaviour of the quantum particles of an atom for ourselves, and with our own senses (hint: not with an electron microscope – that uses the very things we’re using it to observe!), then we are reliant on what the priests of the science dogma tell us is going on. Just as the churchgoers of the middle ages were reliant on their priesthood for their understanding of the world. And as the warriors of ancient times were reliant on the medicine man to explain the things that they experienced.

We have faith in science. Or in religion. Or in mumbo-jumbo. Whatever works for you.

The problems come when the adherents of one set of priests start to believe that their lot have got it all right. In other words, when they become certain. Because that means they have to tear down the followers of all the others.

History has shown us that there’s always trouble whenever anyone thinks they have all the answers. And especially if they think they’ve found The Answer. Because then they feel they have to defend their Answer, and impose it on those too stupid to see it for themselves.  And some new knowledge or perspective always pops up later, proving them ‘wrong’.  The sensible ones back down, and shuffle, shamefaced, into the canon of ‘people who got it oh so wrong’. The less sensible battle on, desperate to save face, thus taking the world into dangerous schisms, and even into war.

If you ask me, so far at least, only one entity has ever got The Answer right.  The Deep Thought computer (in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) said the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42 – which just happens to be the ASCII code for the asterisk. Which happens to represent, well, whatever the hell you want it to be!

To me, the mystery that pervades all of life, that uncertainty about the world, that doubt that makes faith necessary, that’s what makes the world such fun. If there was one single, certain truth, then there would be one single, certain, inevitable way to get on in the world.  Like robots – or denizens of The Matrix.

And I thank God, Yahweh, Allah, Gaia, Spirit, and the Scientists – that there isn’t.

Because that would be so boring!

.

Photo by Léa Dubedout on Unsplash

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Step away from the sound-bite, Sir!

Ever since Facebook introduced the ability to make a short status update look more interesting by putting it in big text on a pretty colour background, I have noticed an increasing tendency for people to put up short provocative posts.  And many of these posts provoke quite a lot of discussion – I suspect that’s the aim, to increase FB reach by tricking the algorithm into thinking the original poster has created something of value to the other platform users. After all, loads of them responded, didn’t they?

And, to a large extend, the algorithm is right.  More responses does mean the audience think the post was worth commenting on. Even if, as is often the case, to say it’s utter bollocks.

I would love to be able to say that the problem is that both the algorithm and the people commenting are rewarding behaviour they don’t really value. Because no-one sees value in truncated click-bait provocation with no thinking behind it, do they?

Except that’s not the case. As far as Facebook is concerned, pretty much ANY interaction with the platform is good. Unless it’s a baby with a nipple in its mouth, but that’s a whole other issue. Because people doing stuff on FB are people it can show ads to. WE are the product folks, never forget that!

That the algorithm rewards crap posts is bad enough. But the worse thing is that the people who respond are ALSO rewarding crap posts BECAUSE THEY LIKE THEM.  Posting sound-bite nonsense is serving a certain part of the FB community by giving them something to pontificate about.

Facebook is a great place to have a go at people, and to demonstrate our superior intellect/financial position/business acumen/spirituality/consciousness/general worthiness (select all that apply). So people posting poorly-thought-out click-bait are providing us with an opportunity to make ourselves look good.  And the fact that we get to do it at the expense of someone a bit dim – well, that’s even better, isn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had a lot of very good conversations on Facebook (and other social media), where we‘ve been able to fully explore a controversial subject in quite some depth.  Most of those discussions have led to me understanding more about the world, and the shallowness of my previous grasp of the topic.  So I’m not saying there’s no value to arguing on Facebook (though it must be said that Mrs H disagrees – frequently).

But very few of those meaningful conversations have started from a brightly-coloured sound-bite click-bait post.

When the opening post has some depth (even if it’s deeply erroneous, in my world-view), those who bother to read it tend also to have sufficient depth of appreciation of the topic to bring cogent arguments to the discussion.  There’s less ‘yah-boo’ and ad hominem, and more reasoned and courteous argument – which is, in the end, what changes minds and informs debate.

The danger is that we become so used to the click-bait stuff, and get so much fun out of scoring silly points in a shallow and divisive argument, that we leave ourselves insufficient time to think deeply about anything.  And that harms the whole of society.

So please think before you respond to a click-bait provocation: would my time be better spent finding someone to engage with who can actually be bothered to develop a cogent thought?

I suggest that we all start right now to boycott all posts that seek to distract us with psychedelic  backgrounds and pithy, but essentially empty, sound-bites.

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Why You Can’t Trust Facebook

I’m reading an article in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/) about the effect Facebook (may have) had on the 2016 election of Donald Trump as the USA’s 45th President. The article itself has many reasons for us to be very wary of the information we are presented with in our social media bubbles.  And it got me thinking about all the ways it can be ‘gamed’ (or worse) to skew our view of the world.

Let’s start by saying I’m not a massive conspiracy theorist. I choose to believe that the algorithms the social platform geeks cook up are genuinely intended to serve up valuable content that we will be pleased to see and will enhance our lives.  That’s not to say I think they always get it right though.  At best it seems to create an ‘echo chamber effect’ where everyone’s preaching to the converted, and we don’t get to see a real diversity of opinions and attitudes. And at worst it can lead to views becoming increasingly entrenched, coupled with massive cognitive dissonance when we finally do get to see some conflicting material.

Fans of the US TV show “Homeland” will remember the “Sock Puppet” plot, where hundreds of geeks sat in a darkened room, controlling thousands of online profiles, inciting their social media “friends” to outrage about political issues. It’s not far-fetched; in the Atlantic article, ad agencies admit to using FB Ads to skew political results in specific swing counties. So we know what people see on their social media feeds can either change or reinforce their views.

And what that means is that if a foreign government wanted to affect the result of a democratic process, they wouldn’t need to hack into anything. They could simply set up a massive sock puppet operation.  OK, they’d need to be a bit clever with their routing – it’s fair to assume that a whole load of connections from Moscow or Beijing servers befriending US voters in swing states might raise a digital eyebrow or two in Menlo Park. But that’s a whole lot easier than hacking a mainframe.

The trouble with (and the effectiveness of) sock puppet campaigns is they appear to be people like us.  And we tend to have an inherent trust of ‘people like us’.  In many ways that’s not too much of a problem when all it does is create the “echo-chamber effect” – our social media feeds being full of stuff we already agree with. That simply reinforces what we already think. It might save the odd ‘swing voter’ from flipping, but the overall effect is limited.

But there’s a much bigger potential danger in the combination of sock puppets and the ‘people like us’ effect. ‘Sock puppets like us’ if you like. And that’s when our sock puppet friends start to subtly change their views.  We like them, they’re people we get on with, we have shared interests. If they start to have doubts about our favoured candidate/policy/party, maybe we should also have doubts? When they ‘come across’ some convincing argument to weaken our position, we’re probably going to take more notice. More notice, even, than if we came across that new information ourselves.

All sorts of things are going on here, from Cialdini’s consistency to Maslow’s belonging. I wrote a blog some years ago back in my Ecademy days (the first real business social media platform, sadly now defunct through lack of funding), called “Where should you focus your efforts for greatest effect?” about how we are more likely to be swayed by our moderate opponents, especially if we consider ourselves to be moderate too. And that’s even more likely when they used to be just on our side of the argument.

That social media connection of yours may appear to be a socially-conscious mother of two from Wisconsin, with ideas and attitudes you can align with.  But for all you know you could be getting subtly influenced by Boris from Bratsk, or Supremacy Steve. So my advice is to be very wary of any online connection who you haven’t met in person. You really have no idea who they are, so before you allow someone’s reasonable argument to sway you, pick up the phone or jump on skype, and find out what they *really* stand for.