Brainwashing

Timcito

Revolutions said:

I think you’d need to define brainwashing.

Marketing & social media companies use psychological quirks to influence and persuade. As do pick-up artists, magicians, governments, negotiators, coaches and therapists. Hardly brainwashing, even when the intent is malign it’s only subtle & it doesn’t work well on everyone.

the real brainwashing is all the weird societal & cultural conditioning that have zero evolutionary benefit: clothes to cover sexual organs rather than warmth, sitting down to shit etc…

I think there may be some evolutionary benefits to covering one's unmentionables. Can you imagine sports slow-motion replays showing men with no pants and women with no tops? 

Vintage65

Revolutions said:

I think you’d need to define brainwashing.

Marketing & social media companies use psychological quirks to influence and persuade. As do pick-up artists, magicians, governments, negotiators, coaches and therapists. Hardly brainwashing, even when the intent is malign it’s only subtle & it doesn’t work well on everyone.

the real brainwashing is all the weird societal & cultural conditioning that have zero evolutionary benefit: clothes to cover sexual organs rather than warmth, sitting down to shit etc…

I would say they are different levels of the same thing, similar to lying where you get a big lie and a little lie, and everything in-between. Going back to Bernays, when he "persuaded" women to start smoking through advertising and the use of film stars in movies, it would have been considered a nudge, although the consequences could be severe (cancer, etc). The use of free will is an interesting concept, as consent is used to negate the law of unintended consequences .

snowblind

I think you can consider actual brainwashing to have occurred when someone holds a belief structure that is fundamentally opposed to all observable data. There are extreme cases such as perhaps the population of North Korea although in their case the response to their indoctrination is something of a survival reflex. Whilst at your core you may understand the true reality of your existence any attempt to embrace that reality might result in an early demise. Perhaps Trump supporters might be a better example. Blind allegiance to someone with no redeeming features and who has already demonstrated a level of incompetence, dishonesty and amorality seems paradoxical. IQ45 is just one example of course. There seems to be a quirk of human nature which predisposes us to falling for a cult of personality. The ease with which a person can be persuaded given the right cues is interesting. It relies to some extent on the suspension of critical thought but since that is often the path of least resistance, ie the minimum effort required is just to accept the first set of facts presented, it is understandable how often it happens. Then again since laziness is essentially wired into the design we will always struggle to overcome our own evolution.

Revolutions

Then again since laziness is essentially wired into the design we will always struggle to overcome our own evolution.

100% agree with what you wrote. This end bit is especially true. The heuristics that enable us to actually function & not fail to act through processing combinatorially explosive volumes of sensory information that hits us every second.

Cults of personalities stems from our three fundamental psychological needs: to have purpose, to be part of a group, and to have status. Charismatic people often have a cause they’re persuading you to be a part of, and they make you feel special.

Will Storr covered the craziness of groups in one of his books (the science of storytelling), where studies of football fans have shown they disbelieve truths about their own team, and readily believe lies about their rivals. He then followed up that in his next book; the status game. That book is terrifying. The premise is that status is so core to our being it overrides almost all other functions in periods of stress. For example, every violent crime he investigated could be traced back to someone (almost always a male) being shamed or ostracised from a social group. That correlates with examples from African tribes where people who get expelled often die shortly afterwards. The shame kills us 

Offset

drofluf said:

When the good people of the fretboard kidnap me and take me away to the secret  TFB De-Programming centre*.  

*just round the corner from the cooler Gibson Garage.

ToneControl

Derren Brown has done plenty of this on TV, so it's not just theoretical

drofluf

Offset said:

drofluf said:

When the good people of the fretboard kidnap me and take me away to the secret  TFB De-Programming centre*.  

*just round the corner from the cooler Gibson Garage.

So basically you’re saying when someone is sent to the cooler they’re actually committed to the Gibson Garage?

Thats really cruel

Rob1742

Hard to really define brainwashing, but we certainly are given lots of information that try and control what we do and think.

The best example being the religious books that were produced way back to ensure an element of control in society. Without them, there would have been carnage, but being told you will burn in hell etc ensured an element of control across society. 

I think if travel and communication would have been easier back then there would have only been one book to control, but as it wasn’t many variations were produced which caused those many beliefs.

But it’s very easy to brainwash and control. The majority of Russia support what their government is doing, the majority of the west support Ukraine. The only reason this for this is control and brainwashing of the population. 

Strumit

Brainwashing?  As my old granny used to say "Who told you that?" (always accompanied with a wry smile and raised eyebrows!)  Why do retired folks wear watches all the time?  Because they are and have been "controlled" for most of their lives!