False Memories and Political Disinformation

When fake is taken for real, what is real becomes fake. -- Story of the Stone (aka Dream of the Red Chamber)

Recall of memories is currently believed to involve reconstruction of past events, images or sensations instead of recall of something akin to a photograph or an audio or video recording. The reconstruction process is error prone and susceptible to false suggestions that can generate memories that are at least partly false. Sometimes even a vivid memory is completely false. Even without false suggestions, memories drift over time.

Since memory reconstruction is an unconscious process, we are unaware of errors a recalled memory might contain or where the errors might have come from. People who believe in a false memory honestly believe their recall is true. They are simply unaware that their minds have distorted what was real into something that is not real.

Methods to create false memories are well-known to science. For various reasons, the data on memory implantation must be interpreted with caution. This area of science has moved past its infancy into adolescence. Researchers are coming to understand the factors that lead to variability in outcomes from various memory implant protocols. This paves the way for more confidence in protocols to induce false memories and an understanding if the biology is the same in all scenarios or if there are multiple pathways to false memory or personal factors that correlate with an increased or decreased propensity to create false memories.

False memories can arise in various ways. One is by forming an intention to do something and then not doing it. Later, the person can come to believe that they actually did what the intended but did not do. This is fairly common. One commentator observed: “it is not surprising at all that intending to complete a task also can create a false memory. Our brains do not appear to have a clean functional separation between imagination and memory.”

The misinformation method

The misinformation method to induce false memories relies on exposure to misinformation about a past event that a person witnessed. This is one of the most common methods researchers to induce false memories. The protocol is simple. People experience an event, then later they receive misinformation about it, and after that they are tested for their memory of the event.

Some research asks if people vary in their susceptibility to misinformation. Traits such as intelligence, personality, and traits such as anxiety or depression have been examined and some tentative hypotheses on cause and effect have been made. For example, a 2010 meta-analysis observed:

“Results revealed sizable and systematic individual differences in false memory arising from exposure to misinformation. False memories were significantly and negatively correlated with measures of intelligence ...., perception ...., memory ...., and face judgement. These findings suggest that people with relatively low intelligence and poor perceptual abilities might be more susceptible to the misinformation effect.”

Motivated false memory 

A 2012 paper (Feb. 2020 revision available here) indicates that memory can be distorted by what the researchers call motivated memory.[1] For fans of the brain it is probably not surprising that people have a tendency to distort memory in their own favor:

“We observe systematic incidences of false memory in favor of positive events and positive amnesia in forgetting past negative events. Both positive delusion and positive confabulation significantly relate to present bias, but this is not the case for positive amnesia. ..... we demonstrate that positive false memory, rather than selective amnesia, serves to enhance confidence in one’s future self in equilibrium, thereby accounting for our experimental findings. ..... The presence of motivated false memory has pervasive
real-life relevance, e.g., in enhancing one's self-image to boost labor market value,
building an academic dream to motivate graduate students and junior professors, and inducing collective delusion in organizations to enhance corporate performance. ..... To varying degrees, people process information in a motivated direction to reach conclusions they favor, including forgetfulness and false memory encompassing memory illusion and delusion.”

Politics and disinformation

Disinformation is false information, fake conspiracies, defamation and the like, that is intended to confuse, mislead and/or deflect negative attention among opposition, competitors, the media and/or the public. It is routinely used to distort both unconscious and conscious reasoning and beliefs in the direction the liar and deceiver wants thinking to go. It can also be used to create false memories. False memory creation is probably another aspect of why disinformation (dark free speech or propaganda) that is repeated is so powerful with so many people. It isn't just thinking that is unconsciously poisoned. It also unconsciously poisons memories.

It is the unconscious, toxic nature of disinformation that renders it so immoral or even evil if the speaker or source intends malice. A significant portion of the American people have been poisoned by decades of political disinformation. Over time those minds have sincerely and honestly come to believe that many things that are fake, lies and/or illusions are real, while what is real is fake.

So far, no one that I am aware of makes has an easy answer for how to deal with this poisonous mind plague. Some of the science directed to this problem has helpful suggestions, but the fact remains that the torrent of disinformation backed by billions of dollars worth of advertising will not stop. Apparently, the political, economic and Christian religious upsides far outweigh the downsides. Society has been damaged to the point that this plague has significantly overwhelmed our defenses.


Footnote:
1. Motivated memory appears to be a process that is at least outwardly similar to motivated reasoning.

Wikipedia: Motivated reasoning is a phenomenon that arises from emotionally-biased reasoning to produce justifications or make decisions that are most desired rather than those that accurately reflect the evidence, while still reducing cognitive dissonance. In other words, motivated reasoning is the "tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe". It can lead to forming and clinging to false beliefs despite substantial evidence to the contrary.

Pandemic Politics and Its Failure

“President Trump and his bold actions from the very beginning of this pandemic stand in stark contrast to the do-nothing Democrats and radical left who just complain, criticize and condemn anything this president does to preserve this nation.” -- Disinformation from the radical right White House spokesman Judd Deere blaming others for White House failures in dealing with the pandemic

“But their ultimate goal was to shift responsibility for leading the fight against the pandemic from the White House to the states. They referred to this as “state authority handoff,” and it was at the heart of what would become at once a catastrophic policy blunder and an attempt to escape blame for a crisis that had engulfed the country — perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations.” -- New York Times commenting on the White House plan to shift responsibility for the pandemic from the president and federal government to the states

“Only in Washington, D.C., do they think that they have the answer for all of America.” -- Ideological disinformation spin from the radical right White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to help shift responsibility from the Trump administration to the states

A New York Times investigation looked into the details of why the federal pandemic response was so poor and why we are still in such deep trouble. The story is disgusting and tragic, but not surprising. In essence, the White House response was being run by political operatives with no public health experience. The one real expert, Dr. Deborah Birx, was sincere but wrong about projecting the pandemic would ease and the economy could reopen. She was blindsided by the president's actions that undercut the effort to keep the virus in check. The political operatives were taking their cues from the president, not from public health experts. It turned out that there really was one answer for all of America, but the White House ignored it, or psychologically could not accept it, for purely political reasons.

The deadly mistake came in a period beginning in mid-April when the president and his team convinced themselves that the pandemic was going away like magic. They also falsely believed that they had given state governments everything they needed to contain it. In their minds, it was time end the lockdown.

The NYT writes:

“Even as a chorus of state officials and health experts warned that the pandemic was far from under control, Mr. Trump went, in a matter of days, from proclaiming that he alone had the authority to decide when the economy would reopen to pushing that responsibility onto the states. The government issued detailed reopening guidelines, but almost immediately, Mr. Trump began criticizing Democratic governors who did not “liberate” their states.

Mr. Trump’s bet that the crisis would fade away proved wrong. But an examination of the shift in April and its aftermath shows that the approach he embraced was not just a misjudgment. Instead, it was a deliberate strategy that he would stick doggedly to as evidence mounted that, in the absence of strong leadership from the White House, the virus would continue to infect and kill large numbers of Americans.

Dr. Birx was more central than publicly known to the judgment inside the West Wing that the virus was on a downward path. Colleagues described her as dedicated to public health and working herself to exhaustion to get the data right, but her model-based assessment nonetheless failed to account for a vital variable: how Mr. Trump’s rush to urge a return to normal would help undercut the social distancing and other measures that were holding down the numbers.”

It took until early June for the White House to begin to realize that their assumptions were wrong. According to the NYT article, people in the White House are still debating how publicly honest to be about the seriousness of the situation. Obviously, there is be no acceptance of responsibility for failures by this mendacious president or his mendacious enablers. The president was trapped by his own upbeat but false statements that things would turn out just fine very soon and it was time to reopen the economy.

The president did extend the lockdown period in April, but during that time he and his aides worked to build their case that the federal government had done its job very well and the president had no responsibility for the failed response.

The rest of the article describes the purely political mindset that drove the president and his White House into needless failures and unjustifiable denial of responsibility. The rest of the country is now paying a very heavy price for politics as usual.

Trump Fact Checker Update

The Washington Post keeps track of the number of false and misleading statements the president makes. The team makes its database available to the public so that people can see for themselves how statements are analyzed and assigned one of four levels of falsity or deceit. On July 9, the president hit 20,055. The cumulative number over time is shown above, and the monthly number is shown below.

In an accompanying article, the WaPo comments:

“Just as when Trump crossed the 10,000 threshold, an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News helped Trump breach the 20,000 mark. Trump racked up 62 claims on July 9, about half of which came during the Hannity interview: Trump’s statements cover a substantial range of his bogus attacks, conspiracy theories, boasts and inaccurate information:”

The evidence of the president’s mendacity and immorality speaks for itself.

The Trump Horror Story Continues

Many articles from professional media continue to show how incompetent and corrupt the president and his administration are. The Washington Post writes about the $517 billion in small-business loans the Small Business Administration has made with relief funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program. That program was intended to help people stay at work and be paid during the pandemic. The taxpayer-funded program has been swarmed by crooks, liars and thieves who blew the loan money for new cars, trips to Las Vegas and so forth. WaPo writes in an opinion piece:

“Those anecdotes are sketches of the problem involving the Trump administration’s handling of the PPP. They are small tales in a larger emerging horror story.

A Post in-depth analysis of data on $517 billion in emergency small-business loans handed out by President Trump’s team at the Small Business Administration uncovered errors so numerous that White House boasts of the PPP’s economic impact are nothing more than spin and hot air.

The analysis found the SBA claimed that many companies had ‘retained’ far more workers than they actually employed. ‘In some cases,’ the article said, ‘the agency’s jobs claims for entire industries surpasses the total number of workers in those sectors.’

Looking closely at more than 875,000 of the borrowers, the analysis found that “zero” jobs were supported, or no information was listed at all.

So Trump’s claim that 51 million jobs were “supported” by the PPP is unsupported by facts. 

Trinity Episcopal Church outside Houston retained, praise the Lord, more than 500 jobs, thus saith the SBA. The church says it has 12 paid staffers.

And according to the SBA, the manufacturer International Dunnage of Thunderbolt, Ga., saved more than 500 jobs. Not so. The company said it has just seven employees and two owners. “I don’t know where you got the 500,” owner David Crenshaw said in an email to The Post.

The Trump administration is where, Mr. Crenshaw.”

Believe it or not, the crooks, liars and thieves actually include team Trump’s ‘best’ people in the Small Business Administration itself. Sometimes, the SBA just makes stuff up about saving non-existent jobs. Some of the saved jobs are fake, but the tax dollars aren’t.

But wait, there is even more -- we’re lost in the ether!

The WaPo article goes on to point out that it is even worse than just this. Analysis of the loans indicate that nearly all are going to white-owned businesses, in part because banks already have these people as customers. Apparently, banks are not interested in helping business owners of color with the complicated paperwork.

As WaPo puts it, “what makes this spectacle all the more galling is the lack of effective oversight and accountability by either Congress or federal regulatory agencies. Business complaints and critical reports such as The Post’s analysis are lost in the ether. .... As Congress unleashed $2 trillion to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and questions were being raised about the steps needed to prevent fraud and abuse and how to track the money — to know where it is going — Trump royally declared, ‘I am the oversight.’ That’s it. Pray we make it to Election Day.”

Other sources in addition to WaPo are reporting on fraud in the PPP program. The scope of the fraud is not yet clear, but it is beginning to look to be widespread.

What are they thinking, or are they?

By now, who and what the president is should be clear. He is a chronic liar, a crook, stunningly incompetent, completely immoral, an extremely powerful enabler and defender of corruption and lies, and probably a traitor working for Putin. All of that, maybe excepting the Putin treason allegation, should be clear to most people by now.

Despite that, most of the president’s supporters believe that little or none of it is true. If they did, many or most supporters presumably would no longer support him. This seems to reflect reality. The relentless propaganda, spin and lies from the president and his enablers about himself and his actions has created a fake reality that millions of people actually believe is true. To them, truth is lies and lies are truth.

That is how poisoned, deceived and dangerous that a significant slice of American society has become.

PERSISTENT INTERNET TROLLS

AH, we all have to deal with them, whether here, other platforms, Facebook, what have you.

WHAT has always struck me as ODD, is that trolls seem to be oblivious to the fact that they can easily be spotted and that they make themselves laughable by being SO obvious.

HOWEVER, for the sake of those who still can't recognize trolling in themselves or in others:
What is trolling?

https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/thenow/what-is-trolling/1/

HIGHLIGHTS:

A troll is Internet slang for a person who intentionally tries to instigate conflict, hostility, or arguments in an online social community. Platforms targeted by trolls can include the comment sections of YouTube, forums, or chat rooms.

Trolls often use inflammatory messages to provoke emotional responses out of people, disrupting otherwise civil discussion. Trolling can occur anywhere that has an open area where people can freely post their thoughts and opinions.

When trolls sense that they’re getting an emotional response out of someone, they usually won’t stop until they’ve gotten their victim sufficiently riled up.

Trolls are also known for their outlandish and outrageous claims. They will often make ridiculous statements about the subject at hand, again with the expectation that they will get an emotional response out of people.

Typically, the best thing to do is ignore the troll. 

(as an aside, something some of us are very poor at doing, we feed them by responding)

On well-moderated forums, an administrator will catch trolling early and ban the offending user or delete trolling comments, depending on how offensive they are.

The Crackpot Conspiracy Mindset Migrates into the Radical Mainstream Right

Crackpot conspiracy theory candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene 
spewing her false vision of reality

American society has been degenerating for decades, significantly driven by a relentless barrage of dark free speech from conservatives and populists. The trend toward social lunacy accelerated noticeably since the president came on the scene in 2016. He relied more heavily and blatantly on dark free speech than probably any major American politician at least since the 1960s.

The New York Times reports on what appears to be mainstream conservative and populist acceptance of unhinged conspiracy theories and radical extremist political ideology. A crackpot brigade is beginning to rise as a force in GOP ranks. Facts, reality and sound reasoning are basically absent from this new low. The NYT writes:

“A Republican Senate candidate recently declared herself ‘one of the thousands of digital soldiers’ in service of QAnon, a convoluted pro-Trump conspiracy theory about a ‘deep state’ of child-molesting Satanist traitors plotting against the president. A congressional candidate in Colorado who made approving comments about QAnon bested a five-term Republican incumbent in a primary last month.

And then there is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who is perhaps the most unabashedly pro-QAnon candidate for Congress and has drawn a positive tweet from President Trump. She recently declared that QAnon was ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.’ 

More than two years after QAnon, which the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorism threat, emerged from the troll-infested corners of the internet, the movement’s supporters are morphing from keyboard warriors into political candidates. They have been urged on by Mr. Trump, whose own espousal of conspiracy theories and continual railing against the political establishment have cleared a path for QAnon candidates. 

And even as party leaders publicly distance themselves from the movement, they are quietly supporting some QAnon-linked candidates — demonstrating the thin line they are trying to walk between radical elements among their base and the moderate voters they need to win over.”

The NYT article goes on to point out that there are maybe a few dozen candidates in this crackpot brigade, most of whom lost their primary challenges. The few who won their primary races are currently expected to lose their elections in November. Crackpotter claims include conspiracy theories that that Jews, including George Soros, control the political system and vaccines, baseless claims of child trafficking rings, false assertions that the coronavirus risk is vastly overstated, and nutty racist theories about Obama.

As usual, the GOP is morally bankrupt and intentionally deceptive about their intentions and actions. GOP leaders publicly distance themselves from the crackpot movement, but quietly support some QAnon candidates. They want to appeal to both radical conservatives and populists and moderate voters. GOP leaders have decided that they need both the radical crackpots and at least some persuadable moderates to keep the senate. The RNC and Jim Jordan has supported some crackpot candidates with cash donations. There is plenty of dark free speech, lies, deceit, BS and irrational emotional manipulation all around.

The NYT also points out that there are some democrats and independents in this movement. The unifying theme seems to be hatred of the political establishment. For the GOP, that means the existing establishment is unacceptable and it will heave to either go or fall in line with the new fake reality nutters. Since the president did that to the GOP establishment in 2016, maybe it is not unreasonable to think that this equally toxic movement can do it some more.

Something is definitely wrong with America’s political right. It has gone radical crackpot and real scary.