Тег: Society

Professor Khrennikov’s social laser and other crap

I was handed a series of two articles and asked to comment on them:

  1. Social Laser Against Colored Revolutions
  2. From Social Laser to Social Hyperboloid

The texts are extremely pseudo-scientific, full of fluff and appeals to authority, so I will give you a brief summary; you can check the original for reference.

Article Summary

First, the articles formulate an observation that is obvious to anyone with a minimal grasp of the conceptual apparatus of the Austrian School of Economics: that when attempting to use methods of natural sciences to describe the interaction of subjects, the researcher faces inevitable failure, because the actions of subjects are not determined, as they possess their own interests and free will.

Next, a step forward is taken, and it is said: look, quantum mechanics—there is no determinism there either, observation directly affects the result, and in general, it is very similar to the behavior of acting subjects. Why not apply the apparatus of quantum mechanics to praxeology?

Next, the conceptual apparatus is applied as an example to describe context-dependent choice (one of the objects of study in the currently fashionable behavioral economics), and it is shown that, look, it was successfully described, so now we will prove any subjectivism and irrationality to you using algebra.

Then the next step is taken. Now, quantum mechanics gave us the laser. Since we have applied the terminology of quantum mechanics to society, let’s construct a social laser. A regular physical laser produces a beam of coherent radiation; a social one should produce directed coherent social activity. A regular laser requires pumping to excite a coherent launch, and society requires pumping too. All that remains is to figure out how to correctly pump society, and then, by skillfully sending it a series of signals, one can obtain the desired action for the initiator at the output. It’s just a matter of funding, and those who hurried to act are already slicing up grants.

Furthermore, a grant is being sliced for some kind of “anti-laser,” whose task is not to excite society, but to calm it down by selecting signals in anti-phase or something of that sort.

Discussion

Now let’s talk about what is wrong with the proposed model of society and the possibilities of managing it.

A person constantly receives sensations through their sensory organs, interprets them, and draws conclusions. New sensations are interpreted taking into account previously drawn conclusions. When receiving information that is easier to interpret, or that helps the subject achieve their goals, they will be inclined to consider this source of information more authoritative in the future and try to verify things with it. Thus, everyone inevitably forms a set of preferred information sources for themselves.

When receiving information that sharply diverges from previous experience, or which led to unpleasant consequences when attempted to be used, a person tends to mark the information source as harmful and try to ignore further signals from it.

In principle, a person can be irrational (from the perspective of an external observer). They will believe in the absurd, do things that harm them, and put others’ interests above their own. But they will similarly form a certain picture of the world for themselves, which in this case means preferences for information sources, a set of prejudices, and behavioral patterns.

Saving mental effort, a person always gravitates toward information sources that are easiest to interpret. Therefore, they will prefer a popular science brochure over a scientific treatise, a journalistic article over a brochure, and a meme over an article.

Because of this, it is hardly surprising that the key source of the freshest and most trustworthy knowledge for humanity has always been gossip. With the era of social networks, gossip has made a qualitative leap, and now its influence compared to any other sources has grown even further.

So, a hypothetical Mr. Kiselev wishes to build a social laser and fire a coherent beam of social enthusiasm somewhere. He appears on a popular TV channel with a message that “Khokhols” want to feed Russians in Novorossiya to the lard. Prigozhin’s factory starts writing about lard on social networks, commenting and reposting each other, commenting on everyone who mentions anything about Ukraine, lard, any settlement in the region designated as Novorossiya in the manuals, or simply popular bloggers. Then, according to the author’s design, calls begin to go to Novorossiya to drive the “Khokhols” out of their moonshine. A certain number of people actually gather and go, where they are processed into black soil. The topic is discredited, and the channels exposed in this topic are too. The next attempt to build a laser using these tools will fail; a new topic must be invented.

Or another example. A hypothetical Mr. Navalny releases an exposé film about the Prime Minister; the latter ignores the signal, and then the pumping begins: people are urged to take to the streets and demand a public investigation of the facts highlighted in the film. Hype, millions of views, people go out, get hit on the head with batons, and disperse. The movement becomes even wider, yellow ducks disappear from stores, Navalny’s circle of support grows manifold, and he begins a presidential campaign.

What is the difference between the two cases? The difference is that it is not enough to convey information to a person—the information must be confirmed by direct sensations; this is precisely what strengthens the authority of the information source. One could try to turn on an anti-laser and instill in people ideas about the successes of import substitution, but this information will be very poorly confirmed by direct data from the refrigerator. But a laser where the pumping focuses on the theme “everything was stolen” is perfectly confirmed by an empty refrigerator.

Therefore, the room for maneuver for representatives of the regime who do not wish to stop the looting is quite small—they will have to find some external or internal enemies responsible for the current dire situation. However, this is a very slippery slope:

Propagandist to the crowd:
– If there’s no water in the tap, it means the Jews drank it! Beat the Jews, save Russia!
And the crowd responds:
– Hey, brothers, look at him, his face is washed, which means there is water in his tap! Beat the Jew!

Summary

What is referred to in the articles under the fancy word “laser” is a completely ordinary hype-building campaign. Describing a social campaign in the language of quantum-like mathematics will not provide new understanding and will only confuse those who have to work on the campaign, because they will be working not with vaguely fixed “info-fields” and “social energy” measured in unknown units—but with themes, meanings, and concrete people. In short, pure humanities.

But let the grant-eaters in institutes with big windows try to calculate the vector of social tension and model a cascade of info-waves in media fields, and let the officials in offices with high ceilings wait for results from them that provide a magic key to managing the subordinate people—meanwhile, people will continue to go about their urgent affairs relatively calmly.

A quantum-like model for describing cognitive distortions during the sequential scratching of the right ear with the left heel and picking the left nostril with the right pinky

The State Army and Its Meaninglessness

Bitarch’s Column

Opponents of the idea of armed struggle against the state often discourage people from it by frightening them with the power of the state’s army. In reality, however, it can be considered that the state has no army at all! And this is not an exaggeration — it is simply unfit for this task. Only the lightly armed police and Rosgvardia will be able to realistically oppose anti-etatist fighters. 

Below is an excerpt from a popular book about the decline of the era of territorial states, which every libertarian should certainly read!

“Facing armed resistance from the occupied population, the Germans soon discovered that it was the most modern components of their armed forces that were the most useless. Until then, their tanks, artillery, fighters, and bombers had experienced no particular difficulty in smashing the world’s most advanced armies to pieces (including the armies of three leading world powers, whose forces significantly exceeded their own), but, facing small detachments of partisans who were not an army, did not wear military uniforms, did not fight in open battle and tended to dissolve either into the rural landscape or among the surrounding population, the German troops found themselves completely bewildered. Like other conquerors after them, the Germans learned the lesson that when conducting counter-insurgency operations, practically the only forces that could prove useful were lightly armed police, infantry, mountain troops, special forces, signal troops and, above all, intelligence of all kinds. All of them had to move on foot or using light vehicles, preferably those that could move across rugged terrain. Outside of cities, they could be reinforced by reconnaissance aircraft, and in those rare cases when the enemy managed to be caught by surprise and forced into open battle — by a small number of artillery pieces and tanks. And there was no room in these operations for the pride of the Wehrmacht — tank and mechanized divisions, and moreover, since the scale of the operations was very small, for any divisions at all.

The discovery made by the Germans (and to a lesser but significant extent by their Japanese allies) during the Second World War has since been repeated by practically all major armed forces in the world. Some of the first to encounter guerrilla warfare at the very beginning of the postwar period were the French and the English. In terms of brutality, their operations were far from those of the Germans; and yet, especially regarding French actions in Indochina and Algeria, they were ruthless enough. In both countries, the attempt by the French, using the most modern weapons available to them, to re-establish control over their colonies led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction by fire and sword of entire villages and even regions. Although the English did not go so far (the largest number of civilian casualties in their colonial campaigns was approximately 10,000 people during the fighting in Kenya), they also frequently resorted to the death penalty, torture, and destroyed entire villages, whose inhabitants were relocated to concentration camps! Just like the Germans, the English and French armed forces discovered that it was precisely the most powerful weapons and weapon systems that were the most useless, being either too expensive, too fast, too large, too inaccurate, too indiscriminate, or all of the above simultaneously. As for the most powerful weapon, i.e., nuclear, it was simply inapplicable against an enemy whose forces were so dispersed and so elusive”

Martin van Creveld “The Rise and Decline of the State,” p. 485

Download book in epub

Ancap-chan’s Comment

To be honest, specifically in Russia, it is not particularly easier for people to realize that they won’t be smeared across the asphalt by tanks, but will instead be limited to being smeared across the asphalt by clubs. Meanwhile, there are more carriers of clubs and other light weaponry, specifically hired for war against their own citizens, in Russia than there are those hired or conscripted for war with foreign powers. So I would emphasize not so much how poorly these forces are equipped and how ineffective their tactics are, but how motivated they are — this is precisely the key factor in deterring armed civilian protest.

What to do if those whom I respect and support do not respect and support me, and at the same time I do not respect and support those who respect (or pretend to respect) and support me?

In short: I am approved by dishonest people, while honest people dislike or hate me. This is very sad and makes life feel meaningless.

анонимный вопрос

Honest people are not obligated to respect and support other honest people. They are not necessarily intelligent, not necessarily far-sighted, and not necessarily have a material interest in supporting you; on the contrary, they may have a material interest in disapproving of you, they may be conformists, and they certainly do not possess all the information, because no one possesses all the information. In other words, the world is unfair.

Nevertheless, people are usually interested in creating a society where certain behavior is rewarded, and sometimes they even succeed in this. Behavior that is rewarded in such a society is called honest, and this standard of honesty, of course, does not have to coincide with the standard of honest behavior in another society. One society will value and respect a clever intriguer, another one someone prone to observing moral norms at the expense of material gain. Moreover, these two societies may even partially consist of the same people. In other words, people build their own little just worlds, and they do a pretty good job of it, but in this activity, there is a strong negative effect of scale that prevents the implementation of a single universal standard of justice.

You might admire some “honest scoundrel” who skillfully undermines his colleagues, and in an attempt to win his respect, you skillfully undermine his mother. That is when it will turn out that for the mother, the honest scoundrel follows different standards of honesty. You might admire the generosity of spirit of your colleague, only to find out that for work, he requires competence and adherence to instructions from you, and he would rather appreciate your generosity of spirit in a non-work setting. Or, conversely, you might demonstrate that very professional competence at work, yet be disliked in the office because you don’t wash your cup or you laugh at jokes at the wrong time.

The ability to understand what actions who expects from you and at what moment is called emotional intelligence. It seems to me that this is a combination of ordinary intelligence (the ability to analyze) plus empathy (the ability to sympathize). Mirror neurons in the brain are responsible for empathy, and where there is a neural network, there are techniques for training that neural network. Try copying other people’s manners, voice, movements, and intonations. Pay attention to the sensations that arise in you while doing this. Model other people’s behavior in your head, striving to make the model as close to reality as possible. Try copying the writing styles of different people. Over time, you will sharpen your perceptiveness.

Unfortunately, I cannot boast that I possess high emotional intelligence myself. I am the type of person who would rather pass a PE exam by writing a paper on running technique than run a hundred-meter dash for a grade. So, I won’t be able to inspire you with a personal example, but you weren’t looking for an example from me, but rather advice. I am good at giving advice.

Let’s get pumping!

Who will protect children from violence (on the part of parents)? How can a child prove their agency?

Immanuel Kant

In fact, with the same justification, we could ask: “Who will protect the individual from state violence? How can a person prove their agency?”

In response to state violence, a person can resist directly, attempt to appeal to one branch of government regarding violence committed by another branch, flee to another state, or to a place where state orders do not operate. Finally, a person can resign themselves, repent, and become an exemplary citizen so that the state violence directed at them becomes more or less tolerable. None of this will help them prove their agency to the state, but it may somehow influence the severity of the violence.

As is easy to see, a child can do exactly the same in relation to their parents. They can fight with their parents and even kill them, complain to the father about the mother or to the mother about the father, run away to other people, or simply try to survive on the street. Finally, they can become an exemplary child and fulfill all parental whims. None of this helps them prove their agency within the existing orders, but it may somehow influence the severity of the violence they are subjected to.

The power of the state over its subject and the power of parents over a child are equally total in the absence of external factors. To protect human dignity from the power of the state, people organize into a civil society that directly opposes the state, both using tools provided by the state and through direct moral pressure on individual state representatives (we leave political terrorism outside the scope of this consideration, although it glares quite menacingly from the sidelines). Similarly, the family’s power over a child is limited by society, both through official channels, such as complaints to state authorities, and through direct moral pressure on the parents (methods of physical coercion glare menacingly from outside the scope of this issue).

To summarize. The power of one human over another is dangerous and undesirable in itself. Wherever possible, the “ruler-subject” relationship should be transitioned into relationships between negotiating subjects. Wherever this is not possible—for example, due to the weakly expressed agency of one of the parties—power can and must be limited through pressure from other subjects who form public opinion.

Of course, public opinion should not be idealized—it is a tool for interference in private relationships by third parties; it is not for nothing that public opinion is often called the opinion of those who weren’t asked. Libertarianism provides the principle by which the legitimacy of public opinion’s interference in private relationships can be determined: the now-clichéd NAP. The more obvious its violation within the family, the more the opinion of those who weren’t asked becomes sought after.