I predict a big push on social media asserting that "propaganda is a myth". It will have comforting, simple lines, such as "how could you possibly fool a billion people?" It will invite you to nod in assent. And to bolster the thesis, search engines will make it impossible to find Joseph Goebbels, instead returning hits for Josephine R. Goebbels, Florida Lego designer (order now for delivery by Christmas). And no hits at all will be registered if the words "neuroscience" and "propaganda" are included in the same search, although a craftier Googler could get a meaningful hit by including "amygdala" instead of "neuroscience." But then, that person must already know something.
Goebbels would be jealous of the facile access we have today to the brains of millions using social media. Back in 1938 Nazi Germany he had to manage with leaflets and radio. Had he not taken cyanide in 1945, he for sure would have bragged of the virulence and longevity of his anti-Jewish shortwave radio diatribes. No doubt he would claim credit for the subversive antisemitism that persists to this day.
Today we contend with an immortal propaganda master, a Virtual Goebbels. Algorithms that determine the hits to return from a search, or that direct content to a user’s eyes, are scripted with the brain in mind. The amygdala, the emotional control center in the brain's limbic system, can always be counted on to snatch control of the cursor and keyboard in the immediate response to a visual stimulus. The amygdala jumps into action much faster than the carefully deliberating cerebral cortex, leaving the logic center of the brain in the dust. The need for speed and predictability means that the internet runs on emotion, not logic.
On the server end, the machine brain I call the Virtual Goebbels is designed and trained to predict which of a million possible visual stimuli will elicit an emotional response in the user. Joy and anger are the preferred emotions, not fear or disgust, since those emotions drive people away from the screen. Nailing both joy and anger in one quick emotional jerk of the knee is the algorithm's apogee.
Once established that ad revenue is the variable that is maximized in the machine learning calculations, social media algorithms attracted the attention of those with money, who soon found a way to make more of it by steering joy to their interests and anger to their competitors'. This is the new "attention economy".
Some of the monetization derives not from ads but from driving ideologies. The more a user sees content that confirms his/her biases, the more they receive dopamine rewards in the prefrontal cortex. Addiction to dopamine hits keeps them glued to the screen, their joy and their anger gouging deep tracks into the neural pathways of their respective amygdalae. Any hapless thought that falls onto these tracks explodes out from the amygdala through the language centers to the vocal chords (or fingers) and into the ears (or eyes) of the one (or many) who may have unwittingly pulled that emotional trigger.
The level of emotion expressed in a phrase or statement gives that statement no additional logical weight in a court of law or in a college classroom, and it is frowned upon in both venues. However, in casual conversation and in vocal disputes, emotion carries a message from one brain to another the way a sneeze carries a virus. The more violent the sneeze, the more likely somebody is going to get sick. And so, in a world of amped-up amygdalae, an ideology spreads rapidly, both online and in person. That much we know. Thank you, Goebbels.
But little is known about voids in the attention economy. What is it that no one is talking about?
I once saw a hypnotist make a audience member forget the number eight. Once snapped out of hypnosis, the man was then asked to count to ten. The audience gasped as he counted 'six, seven, nine, ten.' Forwards and backwards, eight was missing in the count. Can we program ourselves to forget facts?
The amygdala drives avoidance through those other two emotions, fear and disgust. But you can't train the viewer to keep coming back to fear and disgust; those emotions only drive eyeballs away from, not toward, the content. How then can a social media algorithm generate an attention void?
Two ways. Fear of the unknown is, they say, the fundamental fear. Fear lurks in darkness. Good thrillers are electric with uncertainty. In the attention economy, if the algorithm filters out the known, we are left with an informational space filled with unknowns, a dark zone. When the viewer encounters a random fact that lands in that information void, it gets a low-grade fear response -- side-eyed suspicion. "Nobody is saying that," is the brain's response, or "that's crazy," because ‘crazy’ is a word we apply to those who say that thing that nobody else is saying. We tend to avoid crazy people.
Sounds like an easy formula. Simply don't allow the facts to get out. And then, when they do, people will be primed to reject those facts, because nobody is saying that. The amygdala will shoot back words of suspicion and destain, such as "nonsense" or "conspiracy theory." And by rejecting any attempt to add information to the void, users become complicit in keeping the void empty of facts.
Another way. Flood social media with poisonous associations. So-and-so, who says CO2 is a greenhouse gas, is a pedophile! Do you really think CO2 could be a greenhouse gas? It is nonsense of course. A fact is a fact, even if a pedophile says it. But the brain is not wired for logic. It simply draws associations. Associating CO2 with pedophilia could cause the disgust reaction to be attached to greenhouse gases. As a result, topics tagged with disgust will wane in attention space.
Censoring. Poisoning. Dopamine hits. Confirming biases. The Virtual Goebbels has all the tools it needs to sell customizable public opinion to the highest bidder. Critical thinking, the anti- propaganda vaccine, is walled-off behind a deeply grooved amygdala that traps and channels thoughts that have been designated for control.
The Virtual Goebbels is ‘programming’ people to reject or be suspicious of overpopulation, ecological overshoot, climate change, and many other environmental issues that are existential for the future of humanity but fall afoul of powerful industries or religions. Who is paying the Virtual Goebbels?
Are you programmed? Let's do an experiment. If I say "the elections are rigged," what do you feel? What response is waiting to jump out, if any? It's not necessarily the case and you may instead be intrigued by the idea and ready to ask questions. You may be well informed on the subject, getting a dopamine hit and immediately thinking of the names of cybersecurity experts Alex Halderman, Andrew Appel, Bev Harris. Or you may be programmed. If you are programmed to believe that elections are rigged, you may again feel a dopamine hit of camaraderie with the sender and/or a tinge of anger at the alleged election fraud perpetrators. You will like the content and forward it. If you are programmed to disbelieve, then your eyeballs will be driven away, onward to something else, anything else, a foul aftertaste of disgust enforcing the decision. If you stick around long enough it will be to block the sender.
Ready?
The elections are rigged!
Which reaction did you feel?
The answer will depend on how long you waited to give the answer. If you feel judged, then your answer will also depend on that. You could be triggered, but able to capture and withhold the automatic response, opting for a response that shows you as an open-minded, enlightened soul. In doing so, you may then feel the bitter tinge of a lie. A discerning observer might be able to detect the lack of a dopamine hit in the facial expression of one who just lied. Yes, I have done this experiment enough times that I know what to expect.
How did they get you (assuming they got you)?
Search the internet for support for the hypothesis that the 2024 US elections were rigged. You will find an interesting pattern. The search hits associated with mainstream media and left-leaning news outlets largely refute the claim. Hits from political news outlets on the conservative side of the spectrum affirm it. Hits from academic journals also affirm it.
The presence of a correlation between belief and political ideology raises no alarms because we swim in it. But academics eschew politics. If there is any correlation with party affiliation, it would be with the left, not the right. Professors are largely liberals or centrists. So it is remarkable that academics think the elections were rigged but liberals and centrists vehemently disagree. Reports from the mainstream often put "false claim" front and center, sometimes even before stating the allegation. Left partisans will use the tag "election denialist". Reporters seem convinced that allegations of election rigging are an attempt by the Russians to undermine confidence in the elections, instead of an attempt by the Russians to steal the elections, which is the claim in the Mueller Report and in several books.
Let's assume that the academics and election security experts are correct in their assessment that the 2024 elections were rigged. After all, who would you be asking if you wanted to investigate? The experts, right?
How did we get to this point? How can we maintain a stubborn confidence in the veracity of the elections, ignoring evidence that they are rigged? Only self-reflection can answer the question. When you hear the claim, are you eager to know more? Are you starved for details? Are you getting ready to email an expert, or read historian Tracy Campbell's book "Deliver the Vote," or take a course from election security expert Jonathan D. Simons? If so, I salute you.
Or is it the opposite? Are your buttons pushed? Are you cheering the experts up and until they reveal to you that it was rigged to benefit Trump, not Harris, or Biden? Are you disgusted at the thought that anyone, especially election experts, would stoop so low as to undermine confidence in democracy? Are you assuming all of the so-called experts are lying MAGA extremists?
If so, you may be a victim of the Virtual Goebbels. Unless you take a breath and let the critical thinking in, you will continue to play along as if hypnotized, cheering for your candidate, voting and getting out the vote, and later parroting the mainstream explanation for their surprising defeat.
But social media will continue to portray our democracy as robust and incorruptible, even as it is hollowed out from the inside. It will stand tall, propped up and freshly painted like a Potemkin Village, but empty behind the facade.
In our Potemkin democracy, your vote will not be counted, inspecting behind its facade will be unthinkable, and any mention of propaganda will be met with side-eyed suspicion.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Bystroff, PhD, is Professor of Biological Sciences and Computer Science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers in biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and bioinformatics. He teaches a course on Human Population. For more information about Professor Bystroff and his research, visit his website.
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