Truth Unrestricted

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What is free speech? Why would we even want it? Free speech is about free expression of ideas. Ideas are the most important thing humans produce. They are what has allowed us to evolve past the other species into what we are now. The appropriate treatment of ideas has allowed us to create a structure for their creation. Ideas in a vacuum all seem good, therefore we need to weed out the bad ideas by challenging them. Ideas are useless until after they have survived an *appropriate* level of challenge (not any level of challenge will do).
The government and the powerful need to have their ideas challenged. Having a press corps that is actively working against the government to uncover and identify irregularities, inconsistencies, and wrongful acts is the most efficient way to get this done. When we see politicians only agreeing to interviews with the "friendly" journalists they are actively avoiding the act of having their ideas appropriately challenged.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918
https://www.montclair.edu/newscenter/2022/10/31/study-finds-hate-speech-on-twitter-increased-following-elon-musk-takeover/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/22/business/sacha-baron-cohen-speech-social-media-propaganda-trnd/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Payne
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-starlink-internet-service-ukraine-b2202633.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kanye-west-alex-jones-i-like-hitler-1234639617/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHl2PqwRcY0

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Thought experiment: if you lived in a world without mirrors (no reflective surfaces, no cameras for playback, no way to see your own face) would you be more self conscious of the way you appear? Or less self conscious of the way you appear? Would you eventually get to a point where you might be able to discover how attractive you were by comparing other people's reactions to you against those same people's reactions to other people?
We can look at some human properties as only having meaning when they are placed in relationship with human interaction. These could be called "social mirror" properties. They have no numerical measurement associated with them but are instead measured by comparison against another thing. Beauty is one such property and this is why the thought experiment eventually leads to this conclusion.
Power is another social mirror property. We might re-introduce the "Persian Emperor" thought experiment here, whereby a person is asked what they would do if they woke up one morning and everyone started agreeing with everything they said. As soon as one gets to the point of trying to "see how far they can take this" newfound ability they begin to see how cult leaders and totalitarian dictators might start with an idea for doing good in the world but are corrupted by their own power. 

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Perception is the act of observing and understanding a thing. This is a subjective understanding and can (and often is) inaccurate compared with objective reality but it *is* true to the perceiver. We can view perception as observations that are being subsequently interpreted. The "observation to interpretation" process is a common part of the human experience and is almost always happening without anyone consciously thinking about it.
Observations can be inaccurate in that they are almost always incomplete. If you're viewing something with your eyes you have a particular vantage point from which to observe the thing and this negates the ability to also see it from the other side. Note that this is sometimes still possible in situations with multiple camera angles such as what happens in sporting events.
Most inaccuracies of perception occur with the interpretation of the observations. When two people view the same event from more or less the same vantage point but don't compare notes with each other or confer with each other about what they saw they can sometimes come up with drastically different interpretations. Humans often talk about things they simultaneously observe and often come to the same understanding of what has occurred. This occurs because of social influences.
One additional piece of this puzzle is the existing ideas in a person's mind. Biases, prejudices, generalizations, assumptions of similarity to other experiences all heavily shape the "interpretation" part of this that each person does. This is a thing that makes it so difficult. One could even divide this into "observational perspective" and "experiential perspective" aspects of this.
In the human experience, perceptions are a virtual phenomenon that occurs only in the software of your meat computer. They play a key role in decision making. If you can understand how a person *perceives* a thing you are much closer to understanding their future decisions in relation to that thing.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice

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Building a conspiracy is just like building a teddy bear. It will be unique, just like all the others. It will have all the same types of distinct features. We build a brand new conspiracy from a base set of principles that anyone could follow to make one of their own.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build-A-Bear_Workshop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration

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In this episode we discuss how swapping two common metaphors could potentially improve how we see two common things: science and deceptive practices. The episode then dovetails into a discussion about science in which I get something wrong and then Jeff gets something wrong. We find the path to the correct answers in the end, though.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force

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How does confidence affect the decisions of people around us?
Are we regularly mistaking confidence for competence? 
Are we trusting people more when they are confident and are some people taking advantage of that?
Is this whole thing being further skewed as more of our social interactions occur online without the regular set of social cues?

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With enough data points it is possible to find patterns which do not exist. This is often done by picking certain data points that fit a pattern and arbitrarily ignoring the rest of the dataset.
Outliers are a part of statistical analysis. They are data artifacts that don't appear to fit the rest of the dataset. Outliers can always tell us something important about the dataset, sometimes it's just something about the reliability of the measurement system involved. But sometimes it's something more specific about the circumstances surrounding that particular data point.
I think people (who have no formal training in statistics) hear about outliers and they think this is a way to fix or shape datasets. They can conjure an image of statistical analyses having useful data points removed as outliers and therefore skewing the entire analysis. This definitely does happen but the dishonesty is easily found in the actual data that was measured. Any other statistician can expose this dishonesty very easily. In real statistical analysis, the removal of every outlier must be justified. If a large amount of data must be ignored to produce a wanted result it's a certainty that mathematical fraud is at play.
Some examples of situations in which people have found definitive patterns that weren't intended and don't mean anything at all (and attempting to use them to build some larger narrative will undoubtedly fail)
White Static on old analog televisions (almost any shape can be identified if you focus long enough)
Faces in clouds (Our brain is alctually engineered to recognize faces so the fact that cloud shapes appear so often as faces shouldn't be surprising to anyone at all)
Anagrams of children's books with demonic expressions (I need to find some more specific examples of this but it's a clear example of how looking for an unintended thing can lead to hilarious results)
Qanon message links always had a series of numbers and letters in them. Qanon analysts would attempt to find patterns in these sequences. The types of conclusions they drew were always linked to what they awere *looking for* (confirmation bias). More neutral analyses showed other things.


Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
https://www.straightdope.com/21342381/do-anagrams-in-lewis-carroll-s-poems-prove-he-was-jack-the-ripper
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/qanons-coded-conspiracy-messages-look-like-random-typing-says-analyst/

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Manipulation is the use of social power by one person over another person. It can be seen as "social cause and effect." We think of some people as "manipulative" but this is a messy thing, actually. Everyone manipulates in that everyone (generally) understands that, as individuals, we need the cooperation of other people to accomplish our individual goals and convincing other people to participate in that manner is a form of manipulation. Most of this manipulation is of the form "quid pro quo" when both parties get something of use. A person is "manipulative" when the relationship is one-sided and *only* to the manipulative person's benefit. But labelling some among us as "manipulative" leads to the false idea that the rest of us aren't also manipulating.
Meta-thinking is: to give up on some level of social authenticity in the moment and engage directly with strategic manipulation. Things like reverse psychology are examples of meta-thinking. We can see in our world meta-thinking used as a reactionary measure to the manipulations of the powerful among us. When people decide that there is a "they" is not a sign of meta-thinking. However, when people decide that everything "they" say needs to be opposed, this is a sign of meta-thinking and it is very dangerous to our world. It has lead to people dismissing entire sources of good information because it is "mainstream media", for example.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Hart

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Links
Cults vs Religions
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/bs-xpm-2011-10-13-bs-ed-mormons-20111013-story.html
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-religions-and-cults
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30269417-terror-love-and-brainwashing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory


12:43
Cult of Personality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven%27s_bases_of_power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius

31:42
Digital Cults

36:00
Abusive relationships
Alexandra Stein - Terror Love and Brainwashing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory

41:38 Soldiers and Identity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Singer
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2011/11/08/for-many-injured-veterans-a-lifetime-of-consequences/

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Episode 33 - Cults
Creating a definition of what exactly is a cult is very difficult because they have so many incarnations in the world. But there is a way to define some of their properties. Four of these properties are present in all cults and there are some additional properties are only present in some cults.
1) The primary property of a cult is that of an additional influence on the social hierarchy in that the leaders of the cult are always elevated in relation to the followers. This property is always present (but is difficult to distinguish from other social hierarchies).
2) There is always a set of rules that is not being instituted by the society/community that the cult members live in. Sometimes these rules are well defined and sometimes they are somewhat ambiguous or shifting. These rules generally are used to elevate the leaders of the cult and gain/maintain control over the followers.
3) The leaders of a cult will always make a claim to knowledge that is unavailable to the followers. Sometimes this takes the form of having access to a higher being, sometimes it is more mundane knowledge. This property always works to elevate the importance of the leaders.
4) There is always an act of blocking or discrediting outside sources of information. This is primarily done to gain or maintain a greater control over the followers.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldview