Obama Information Czar Confronted Over "Ban Conspiracy Theories" Paper

Originally posted by colloredbrothers
“I may agree with some of the things I have written but I’m not exactly sure. I focus on what my boss wants me to do,”

What kind of intellectual is this? He doesn't believe what he is writing? This ladies and gentlemen is not at all an intellectual. This is a 1984 bureaucratic pig, writing papers with fancy words as a propaganda piece. Disgusting absolutly disgusting.

What kind of intellectual is this, you ask? The kind that apparently doesn't rest on his laurels and won't blindly believe anything he reads, even if he is the one that wrote it. I applaud any intellectual that understands that the first voice that should question his own thoughts and opinions is one's self.

I am constantly evolving as an individual, and to just throw out a blanket statement like "Yes, I agree with and support every paper I have ever published." would be horrible science.

Straight from the horse's mouth, Cass Sustein's paper:

www.cuttingedge.org...

"How might this tactic work? Recall that extremist networks and groups,
including the groups that purvey conspiracy theories, typically suffer from a kind of
crippled epistemology. Hearing only conspiratorial accounts of government behavior,
their members become ever more prone to believe and generate such accounts.
Informational and reputational cascades, group polarization, and selection effects suggest
that the generation of ever-more-extreme views within these groups can be dampened or
reversed by the introduction of cognitive diversity. We suggest a role for government
efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity. Government agents (and their allies)
might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to
undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises,
causal logic or implications for political action.
In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no
effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. A recent newspaper story recounts that
Arabic-speaking Muslim officials from the State Department have participated in
dialogues at radical Islamist chat rooms and websites in order to ventilate arguments not
usually heard among the groups that cluster around those sites, with some success.68 In
another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false
identities. Each approach has distinct costs and benefits; the second is riskier but
potentially brings higher returns. In the former case, where government officials
participate openly as such, hard-core members of the relevant networks, communities and
conspiracy-minded organizations may entirely discount what the officials say, right from
the beginning. The risk with tactics of anonymous participation, conversely, is that if the
tactic becomes known, any true member of the relevant groups who raises doubts may be
suspected of government connections. Despite these difficulties, the two forms of
cognitive infiltration offer different risk-reward mixes and are both potentially useful
instruments."

Originally posted by Ghost375
If you think you remember every post that you've ever written on ATS, you're delusional or lying.

That's not even close to the same comparison. People don't just write papers for the fun of it. Most scholars write papers after alot of research and fact-finding. Any paper that someone authors which involved any kind of research and fact-finding will be easily remembered and quotable.

I remember every single thread and post I've made on ATS over the past 3 years that had any research to them on my part. No, you're never going to remember every single word, but you will remember the research and what points you portrayed.

If a topic interests you enough to do some research and then write a paper, you're going to remember that research and what you wrote in that paper, period.

College papers don't even count unless it was a topic that interested you and you did plenty of research. I wrote many papers in college, but almost all of them were boring and didn't interest me. Thus, I don't remember crap about them or what I wrote.

This "Czar" had the paper, research, and work done for him, and he's the public face that has to peddle the information portrayed in that paper.

reply to post by _BoneZ_


Your assertion flies in the face of common sense.

Do you stand behind and believe in everything you have ever written? If you do, I will direct all of ATS to someone who has severely stunted his development at around 5th or 6th grade.

A 30 page paper is nothing, especially a 30 page opinion piece. My Hogwarts Thread OP was 7 pages, for crying out loud.

Originally posted by Furbs
reply to post by _BoneZ_

 

Your assertion flies in the face of common sense.

Do you stand behind and believe in everything you have ever written? If you do, I will direct all of ATS to someone who has severely stunted his development at around 5th or 6th grade.

A 30 page paper is nothing, especially a 30 page opinion piece. My Hogwarts Thread OP was 7 pages, for crying out loud.

People with extreme responsibility should have developed their views and be able to support them. If not then they don't belong in government and certainly should not be giving any meaningful advice.

Otherwise any moron would join the government and make $300,000 per year. You have to EARN the pay and respect!