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author

Watch the animated movie, or read the book. I could have done a better job writing this, but it will serve for the purposes I aim to achieve.

It was incredibly draining so "Science" posts coming in the weekend only.

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So language really is violence, after all.😏

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author

More like memes are the genes of culture, but language is the essential DNA-like structure that organizes and sustain them. In a simplistic explanation.

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Think it can be be, but so too, the reverse. Makes me think of the phrase that what you put into your body can’t truly cause real harm, it’s what comes out of our mouths, that can be eternally fatal.

Associate with evil, you inadvertently absorb it.

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Gives a whole new meaning to Searle’s speech acts.

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20 hrs agoLiked by Moriarty

Incredibly thought provoking post that i simply can not process enough to properly comment on. If i understand your theory correctly it is possible to mathmatically engineer grammar or other subtle tweaks to subconciously pass a message (a carrier freqiency of sorts) even though the words when broken apart on their own read normally? Was this something Marshall Mcluhan had in mind when he stated the medium is the message?

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author

That parallel could be traced and argued, and it would be accurante, but here I attempt to go beyond. Mcluhan often referred to how we communicated, and how technology changed how we communicated.

Here I am arguing the mere fact of communication has this effect, AI just peer's into the hidden, and deeper structural pattern of language.

Yes, it is possible to mathematically "engineer" grammar and language to achieve a "desired" effect, even if the words when broken apart read normally. It has to do with frequency (times the brain is exposed), and the "subroutines", exploiding the implicit absorption of visual or auditorial data.

Thus we can achieve a effect that I called "cognitive virus" which became the trendy "mind virus", which is a fairly old concept, going back to the Middle Ages, but I took it further, I will delve into this in later articles within this theme.

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Also wonder if modern semiotic theorists like Terrence Deacons work could offer further insight into this line of thinking?

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20 hrs agoLiked by Moriarty

And suddenly McLuhan's 'The medium is the message' takes on a whole new meaning.

Nice work.

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6 hrs agoLiked by Moriarty

At the base a language determines the structure of the mind.

The example I always use (in a less polite construct) is "Why do Frenchmen act like the French?" The answer being "Because they speak French."

Recent work on neuroplasticity, particularly after brain injuries supports your thesis. The anatomic damage can to some extent be remediated by constructing new pathways. Of course, particularly in older stroke survivors, the aging and preexisting causes of the injury compete with the healing process so you don't often see complete recovery. One of our friends had two sequential moderate concussions as a 20 year old college student- he was struck by cars while cycling. He couldn't continue engineering studies but recovered slowly and by age 30 he became a chartered accountant, and his old personality and humour had recovered.

Information density is an important concept. In lectures by physicians I can pay attention for most of the time. When a social worker, or bureaucrat from Vital Statistics (brought in to lecture us on approved methods of completing death certificates!), speaks it is rare to find ten minutes worth of information in the hour. Other technical reviews are similar- it takes me about three times as long to decipher the acronyms and obscure enzyme labels in a genomics report than a routine medical case report or review- I am trained and experienced at clinical work, the research contains much more unfamiliar and detailed information.

I am rarely able to sit through more than 10 minutes of talking heads or podcasts, it takes an effort of will to watch all the way through. But I have spent years attending live lectures, seminars, free drug company dinners without much pain at all. The "Zoom" or equivalent meeting lacks some immediacy which is important to engagement.

Your thesis of intentional positive feedback is well-supported- e.g. "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff, which detailed the scheme even before AI became prominent.

Most of my information is acquired by reading rather than watching or listening. This intuitively gives me a much better conscious filter, allowing pauses to critique or check facts which are unfamiliar, so effectively a "pull" strategy rather than having things imposed by "push" techniques.

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The dangers of the language patterns that the pua communities use to take advantage of. NLP and other conversational hypnosis platforms specialise in the manipulation of the unsuspecting subconscious to invoke an emotional response.

Worse yet they have the ability to anchor an emotional response to a trigger and this trigger can be almost anything. Two excellent examples of this are the terms "antivaxxer", "conspiracy theorist". Decades have been spent anchoring a primed emotional response to such terms and when triggered it fires the anchored feeling and that triggered feeling clouds the victims perception of the message with the response (scorn, distain etc)

Indirect hypnosis can be powerful, more so when people are oblivious to the manipulation.

Thanks for the article, I'll try and listen to the video while at work

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Just tell anybody the word 'anarchy' and see the reaction.

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founding

Very interesting, indeed. On the recipient side, I wonder if the asperger/autistic/ADD/ADHD/APD will be un or less affected... I've lived with people who do not hear the nuances of language, don't hear qualifiers (if/then, maybe etc) or understand inferences... i never am 100% sure they've heard what was said... yrs ago i read When the Brain Can't Hear about auditory processing disorders ... now I wonder if those studies have been used to our detriment rather than for our good.

Can't trust what we see or hear. Pretty soon we're all going to be suspicious of our own shadows.

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14 hrs ago·edited 14 hrs ago

I live in the UK, it comes out of the radio, playing on the emotions, I see some family members just lapping it up (BBC radio 4 and world service in particular). I can't listen to it.

This is a whole different level though, fascinating and just a bit scary at the same time.

I love your artwork, by the way.

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Good read, but it would have been good to have some examples as I think it could be quite hard to follow if you have no previous with this. I totally agree with you though, we talk a lot about AI and trust on the podcast I host. I do a lot of messing around trying to jailbreak and manipulate LLM’s and I can already see patterns in the language that is trying to manipulate us. The only hope (not sure hope is actually the right word) is that everything is treated with so much suspicion we are looking for the hidden meaning and on our guard. But even if ‘we’ are it would only even be a minority. I’ll definitely watch the film

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There's an in-universe adage from the hyper-ridiculous sci-fi universe of Warhammer 40k: "An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded."

Its out of universe intent is to convey the xenophobia and dogmatism of one of the setting's factions; however, I've been thinking about it a lot as I've stumbled across new sources of information over the past several years. I feel I am recognizing certain new patterns in writing style that feel poisoned, if that makes sense.

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"These models are not conscious, but they are incredibly effective at mimicking the forms of language that can subtly influence or persuade us. The models are not conscious, but they are incredibly effective at mimicking the forms of language that can subtly influence or persuade human readers. "

This is so important it is intentionally twice?

Not everyone reacts the same way to the same information, most probable this hidden layers play a big role on that. But the more precise you get, the bigger polarity reactions will be triggered... which i guess is part of what we have seen this past decade already.

Thanks for the article!!!

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author

I will fix that, a mistake of me shifiting some paragraphs for better coherence lol.

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