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Welcome to Hypernormalisation.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hypernormali...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

I recommend watching Adam Curtis' documentary called Hypernormalisation to get a sense of how badly this can get abused by political operatives. Especially this clip: https://youtu.be/Y5ubluwNkqg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

⬐ mistermann

There are a lot of valid and important ideas in Adam Curtis (and many, many others) documentaries people could benefit from exposing themselves to (Century of Self is another one that I believe is a must watch for citizens of a democracy).

A weird thing about this thread, and others like it, is that there seems to be this broadly shared implicit premise within the thread context that the feared ill effects of new technologies like this have not already been prevalent in our societies and information ecosystems for decades. In a thread about bias, fake news, propaganda, etc, people seem to have no problem realizing and acknowledging that we already have a very serious problem (often only visible in one's personal outgroup, but that's better than nothing) - but when the specific topic of conversation is a new technology, the majority of the comments seem to be written as if we don't really have any significant issues currently. It seems as if there's some sort of a phenomenon whereby the logical methodology for evaluation of the situation changes according to the topic, as opposed to there being a consistent methodology that at all times has an explicit awareness of the ever-present bigger picture.

Here's [1] an 8 minute video on Presidential debates. This fairly well demonstrates how this aspect of our political system is largely pure theatre...and yet, intelligent people often speak (again, depending on the specific(!) topic of discussion) as if this charade is highly legitimate process, within a larger political (and journalistic) process that is also highly legitimate.

The way I view the ecosystem is that the vast majority of things are to a very large extent ~fake (in whole or in part). Cranking up the absurdity to 11 in classic South Park style, making a complete mockery of both the politicians as well as those who can't consistently(!) conceptualize the true nature of our system, seems like an excellent response to a situation that has been sorely in need of some good old fashioned satirical mocking for decades. Western society & politics lost the right to be taken seriously ages ago - admitting to ourselves that there's a problem seems to me like a prerequisite first step in fixing it.

[1] Winning the Presidency: Debating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayz7zLn6uFU

⬐ m_ke

I'm much more concerned about the inverse, not people getting fooled by fake content, but believing that anything that doesn't align with their views is fake. We can end up in a post truth society where someone like Trump, Duterte, Bolsonaro or Orban can claim that any footage that is not politically advantageous to them is fake and created by an evil opposition to hurt their cause.

ex:

  Trump access hollywood tape -> fake Soros conspiracy to save the pedophiles

We'll have a lot more people believing conspiracies like the moon landing being fake and end up with a lot of 9/11, JFK, holocaust, etc deniers.

⬐ mistermann

> I'm much more concerned about the inverse, not people getting fooled by fake content, but believing that anything that doesn't align with their views is fake. We can end up in a post truth society where someone like Trump, Duterte, Bolsonaro or Orban can claim that any footage that is not politically advantageous to them is fake and created by an evil opposition to hurt their cause.

I believe the optimum approach is to be concerned with all risks, and weigh the magnitude of each in a state of careful self-monitoring of one's potential biases (and ideally, have your conclusions reviewed by others, preferably from a diversity of ideologies and perspectives in an attempt to minimize the well known affects of groupthink). Noteworthy to me is that a significant number of people (if not the majority, depending on which community you are in) are easily able to see the epistemic errors in their outgroups thinking, but has more difficulty in doing the same within their ingroup.

For example, in your comment it seems that you have noticed shortcomings when it comes to politicians of one general ideology, but I wonder if you are of the belief that this phenomenon does not occur across all ideologies?

Adam Curtis is a brilliant film maker. "Hypernormalisation" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM) and "Bitter Lake" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84P4dzow1Bw) are well worth watching too.

⬐ dragonelite

Ooh yeah i found Hypernormalisation quiet een eye opener, my first thought was wtf for conspiracy movie did i just clicked on. But it kinda got me searching and made me end up becoming a casual consumer of geopolitical articles and think tank talks on youtube.

⬐ Fnoord

The Power Of Nightmares is another multi part documentary from around the time the US successfully invaded Iraq. It was made before the other mentioned documentaries.

IIRC these are all freely available on the Internet Archive. Or, they used to be.

⬐ gwd

Not sure if this is true of Hypernormalisation, but it is worth pointing out that "It seemed weird but then I looked into it and saw more content along the same lines which convinced me" is the experience of everyone who gets sucked into a conspiracy theory. :-)

Hypernormalisation from Adam Curtis. I have been looking for another documentary as visual appealing, as evolving as this one but haven't found any other documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

Do you know another documentary as good as this one?

⬐ cascom

I thought this was fascinating as well - while I found many aspects/linkages tenuous at best - it was really entertaining. I did find quite compelling the thesis around the idea that politicians have become incapable of confronting the large structural issues that are confronting us, and that they instead try to refocus the peoples' attention on the trivial

⬐ nexensis

If you like Hypernormalisation you should definitely look into his other documentaries, especially Century of the Self.

It explores the rise of advertising in the 20th century, revealing how it emerged from propaganda during the wars and deeply wove itself into social norms. It might be the most powerful documentary that I've seen, because I watched it as an advertising undergrad and it unnerved me enough to move away from the field.

For example, it wasn't socially acceptable for women to smoke until the 20's, when the American Tobacco Company paid a group of suffragettes to prominently light up cigarettes whilst on public display during the Easter Day Parade. They positioned smoking as a display of independence for women, piggybacking the feminist movement and calling cigarettes "Torches of Freedom". There are several examples like this in the documentary, along with interviews from their creators.

It's shocking how easily public opinion can be swayed, and the techniques are far more powerful now through the Internet and social media. If I could ask every human to watch a documentary, it would be this one followed by Hypernormalisation.

You can watch most of Curtis' work for free at https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/

I was watching the documentary HyperNormalization and at 1:12:00 it was mentioned Larry Fink built one of the first "supercomputers" (at least a large system for its time). It was used for risk analysis it was built in 1986. The company was BlackRock and the computer was called Aladdin.

https://youtu.be/-fny99f8amM?t=4320

It is worthwhile to consider Barlow's legacy--particularly this utopian rhetoric about cyberspace--as examined by Adam Curtis in his 2016 film Hypernormalisation (starting at 40m 35s):-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM&feature=youtu.be...

⬐ adultSwim

I'm inclined to agree with Curtis' analysis. His critique is particularly pertinent now that Silicon Valley yields such enormous power.

Hypernormalisation is an awesome documentary that actually covers this subject. If you've got a couple hours to kill I highly recommend it.

It can be watched on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

No joke, just finished watching HyperNormalisation[1].

The most depressing part to me is that Adam Curtis isn't off on an easily dismissed tangent in this documentary, he's essentially cross cut the last 40 years into a 3 hour cliff notes guide to some of the darker corners of postmodern philosophy.

Specifically, Baudrillard. His 2002 essay, The Violence of the Global[2] has some interesting food for thought:

>We believe that the ideal purpose of any value is to become universal. But we do not really assess the deadly danger that such a quest presents. Far from being an uplifting move, it is instead a downward trend toward a zero degree in all values. In the Enlightenment, universalization was viewed as unlimited growth and forward progress. Today, by contrast, universalization exists by default and is expressed as a forward escape, which aims to reach the most minimally common value. This is precisely the fate of human rights, democracy, and liberty today. Their expansion is in reality their weakest expression.

HyperNormalism is bleak and offers no solutions for course correcting international affairs, and there's the rub: universal solutions may not exist.

For me, my mind's left reeling by the complexity of the times, leaving me at a loss for how to integrate information from sources like Baudrillard into my worldview guiding day-to-day behavior. My typical response is a hyperlocal focus on the people around me in meatspace and trying to at least get the basics right like the golden rule.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

[2]http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=385

There's a great documentary about this by Adam Curtis called [HyperNormalisation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM), discussing how truth is seriously under fire right now.

⬐ grzm

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12939547

Sounds like the HyperNormalisation[0] will only get worse

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM