Brainwashing
Contents
Definition
Education
The Earliest appearances of the concept Brainwashing occured in the mid-twentieth century in the files of the Office of Strategic Service, the precursor of the CIA.[1]
Context
A song written from the point of view of someone whose dad did not come home for the war.[2]
When we grew up and went to school There were certain teachers who would Hurt the children any way they could By pouring their derision Upon anything we did And exposing every weakness However carefully hidden by the kids But out in the middle of nowhere When they got home at night, their fat and Psycopathic wives would thrash them Within inches of their lives We don't need no education We don't need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave us kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the wall. All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
Problems
The power of parents
The topic of parents wanting more control over their kids' education has sparked passionate debates worldwide. Many parents believe that their involvement is crucial to shaping their children’s values, beliefs, and future opportunities. They may feel aggrieved when they perceive that schools or governments are making decisions without considering their input.
Common reasons for this sentiment include:
- Concerns about curriculum content, including subjects taught or omitted.
- Desire for more personalized education tailored to a child’s needs.
- Discontent with school policies, discipline methods, or educational priorities.
On the other hand, educational institutions and policymakers argue that balance is needed to ensure a standardized and inclusive education for all students, while still respecting parental perspectives.
The power of the Web
Today, more and more, not only can corporations target you directly, they can model you directly and stealthily. They can figure out answers to questions they have never posed to you, and answers that you do not have any idea they have. Modeling means having answers without making it known you are asking, or having the target know that you know. This is a great information asymmetry, and combined with the behavioral applied science used increasingly by industry, political campaigns and corporations, and the ability to easily conduct random experiments (the A/B test of the said Facebook paper), it is clear that the powerful have increasingly more ways to engineer the public, and this is true for Facebook, this is true for presidential campaigns, this is true for other large actors: big corporations and governments. (And, in fact, a study published in Nature, dissected at my peer-reviewed paper linked below shows that Facebook can alter voting patterns, and another study shows Facebook likes can be used to pretty accurately model your personality according to established psychology measures).[3]
Solutions
- My life is made of Patterns that can scarcely be foretold.
- If I commit a crime, as Patty Hurst did, then I get free room and board for many years.
- The morals we get are the ones that our (relatively recent) ancestors created for us.[4] The mostly follow David Hume and seem to be generally working for us.
References
- ↑ Nikhil Krishnan Dirty Minds New Yorker 2025-04-07 p56ff.
- ↑ Roger Waters. "Another Brick in the Wall" a three-part composition by the Pink Floyd bassist 1979
- ↑ Zeynep Tufekci, Facebook and Engineering the Public Medium 2014-06-29 https://medium.com/message/engineering-the-public-289c91390225
- ↑ Nikhil Krishnan, What good is Morality? The New Yorker 2024-12-30 p62ff.
