Straight Bernays

"What is truly vicious is not propaganda, but a monopoly of it."

-Edward Bernays, 1952

I'm not sure why people hate Edward Bernays so much. Especially Americans. In America, the economy itself relies on people being brainwashed into spending their money on stuff they don't need. "Disposable income" it's called, and it's the basis for the consumer economy that apparently gives America its edge. Without "engineering the consent" of an entire population, we wouldn't have teflon or wall-to-wall carpet. And we wouldn't all be living the American dream of freedom from tyranny, you know, protection against authoritarian overreach like warrantless wiretapping, or more terrible things like being kidnapped off the street into an unmarked van. We wouldn't all have access to free health care, or cars and cheap gas so we can dissolve the social fabric by driving away from our friends and families, towards better economic opportunities that distort the value of our labor, and exploit our social capital leaving us alone, depressed and financially insecure. I thought we like all those things, yet we don't like Bernays. I thought we like surveillance advertising; it's cute to think that someone cares so much about you they're logging your location every 5 seconds throughout the day and plotting it against all the other people you're co-located with so they can sell you lipstick to make you look better, because I'm sorry to have to say this but you don't look that great right now, and could use some help, and we're here to help. Edward Barnays is here to help. Why are you resisting?

"People must want cleanliness before they want soap."

-Also Edward Bernays

(AKA "People must forget how to use a frying pan before they want teflon")

Finally, I'm paraphrasing here, on how to change people's minds:

People hold no allegiance to beliefs. They hold allegiance to other people, authorities who espouse those beliefs. These are two different things. To change one's beliefs, therefore, one must either discredit the authority or create new authorities. Discrediting the beliefs does not work.

Inside the World of the LSD User

The spread of misinformation varies by topic and by country in Europe, study finds

May 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-misinformation-varies-topic-country-europe.html

Researchers analyzed news activity on Twitter (now X) in France, Germany, Italy and the UK from 2019 to 2021, including a focus on news about Brexit, the coronavirus, and the COVID vaccines. Each news source they analyzed was rated as either "reliable" or "questionable" based upon their NewsGuard score.

• Across all four countries, the vast majority of users only ever consumed reliable news sources on each of the three topics.
• But in every country and in each topic, there was always a small percentage of users who only ever consumed questionable news sources - with very few people consuming a mix of both reliable and questionable sources.
• Germany had the highest ratio of questionable news retweets to reliable news retweets on all three topics, with France in second, followed by Italy, and the UK had the lowest proportion of questionable news retweets overall.
• Italy had the lowest proportion of questionable news retweets for the topic of the coronavirus - but had the highest percentage of people consuming only questionable news sources on Brexit.

"Cultural nuances" will be important when it comes to fighting misinformation.

via Ca' Foscari University of Venice: News and misinformation consumption: A temporal comparison across European countries, PLoS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302473

https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302473

Image credit: 3D printed vacuum system traps dark matter - University of Nottingham - Jun 2024

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-scientists-3d-vacuum-aims-dark.html

Study finds avoiding social media before an election has little to no effect on people's political views

May 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-social-media-election-effect-people.html

35,000 Facebook and Instagram users who were paid to stay off the platforms in the run-up to Election Day.

I'm thinking about the overall social influence, like if you're not online but your friends are, it's all the same. So if they did this study by taking only the friends of the people chosen, then we would see an effect? (Friendship Paradox)

via Stanford: Gentzkow, Matthew, The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2321584121.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2321584121

Mental disorders may spread in young people's social networks

May 2024, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-mental-disorders-young-people-social.html

Contagion - 700,000 ninth-grade pupils born between 1985 and 1997 from 860 Finnish schools followed for 11 years (largest and most comprehensive so far on the spread of mental disorders in social networks).

The number of classmates diagnosed with a mental disorder was associated with a higher risk of receiving a mental disorder diagnosis later in life.

The connection observed in the study is not necessarily causal. "It may be possible, for instance, that the threshold for seeking help for mental health issues is lowered when there are one or more people in your social network who have already sought help for their problems" (beneficial contagion).

via University of Helsinki: Jussi Alho et al, Transmission of Mental Disorders in Adolescent Peer Networks, JAMA Psychiatry (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.1126

https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.1126

Dual-species Rydberg array combining rubidium and cesium atoms to enhance quantum computing - BernienLab at University of Chicago - Oct 2024 [link]

Study suggests less conformity leads to more innovation

May 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-conformity.html

These methods reveal something crazy - how easy it could be to manipulate a big part of a population just by doing some very small adjustments to the recommendation algorithms, and the idea of synthetic networks cycling through the real networks as a kind of social regulator.

• The Matthew effect aka "rich-get-richer effect" increases centralization in the network, which destroys the niches protecting minority opinions, reducing sociodiversity.
• "Networks that promote sociodiversity have structural features that protect minority opinions"
• "Unfollowing a few VIPs can help to promote sociodiversity"

via Complexity Science Hub and ETH Zurich: Andrea Musso et al, How networks shape diversity for better or worse, Royal Society Open Science (2024). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.230505

https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230505

Misleading COVID-19 headlines from mainstream sources did more harm on Facebook than fake news

May 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-covid-headlines-mainstream-sources-facebook.html

They showed thousands of survey participants the headlines from 130 vaccine-related stories - including both mainstream content and known misinformation - and tested how those headlines impacted their intentions to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Researchers also asked a separate group of respondents to rate the headlines across various attributes, including plausibility and political leaning. They matched that against 13,206 vaccine-related URLs and the number of users who viewed each.

• Misleading content from mainstream news sources - rather than outright misinformation or "fake news" - was the primary driver of vaccine hesitancy on Facebook.
• "Vaccine-skeptical" content was potentially misleading but not flagged as misinformation by Facebook fact-checkers.
• One factor reliably predicted impacts on vaccination intentions: the extent to which a headline suggested that the vaccine was harmful to a person's health.
• The most-viewed was an article was from a well-regarded mainstream news source, and its clickbait" headline was highly suggestive and implied that the vaccine was likely responsible.
• (That's significant since the vast majority of viewers on social media likely never click out to read past the headline.)
• Contrary to popular perceptions, the researchers estimated that vaccine-skeptical content reduced vaccination intentions 46 times more than misinformation flagged by fact-checkers.
• Even though flagged misinformation was more harmful when seen, it had relatively low reach.
• Gray-area content is less harmful per exposure but is seen far more often, thus it's more impactful overall.

(Also, what does this mean about actual advertising metrics?)

via MIT Sloan School of Management: Jennifer Allen, Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adk3451.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adk3451

Advertisers may be inadvertently funding misinformation

Jun 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-advertisers-inadvertently-funding-misinformation.html

(I think we're starting to see a pattern here.)

5,000 websites (1,250 were misinformation websites); 42,000 unique advertisers; nine million instances of advertising companies appearing on news websites from 2019 to 2021. 

The companies advertising on misinformation websites accounted for anywhere from 46% to 82% of overall companies in their respective industries.

Companies that used digital advertisement platforms were 10 times more likely to appear on misinformation websites than those that did not.

Authors propose two low-cost, scalable interventions: 

• Improve transparency for advertisers about where their ads appear 
• Make it easier for consumers to identify which companies advertise on misinformation outlets through information disclosures and company rankings

via Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and Stanford: Wajeeha Ahmad et al, Companies inadvertently fund online misinformation despite consumer backlash, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07404-1

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38840014/

Entangling pairs of photons using 1.2 micrometer niobium oxide dichloride - Leevi Kallioniemi at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore - Oct 2024 [link]

Study suggests ambivalence and polarized views can promote political violence

Jun 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-ambivalence-polarized-views-political-violence.html

Time to get confused! 

Previous research has shown that ambivalence about a political issue typically leads people to avoid taking moderate actions such as voting or donating money in support of that issue.

And that's why these findings for extreme behaviors surprised the researchers.

Here, researchers found that ambivalence can actually lead some people - especially those with polarized views - to be more supportive of extreme actions.

The reason? Ambivalence creates discomfort in those with extreme views by making them feel weak or insecure about their beliefs - and that can lead them to compensate.

"When people have these polarized views on a political topic, but also feel some conflict about that belief - that is really a potent combination."

"Those who are conflicted are more willing to give their money to extreme organizations."

"Those who have extreme views, but still feel conflicted about them, feel a need to prove themselves, to show that their beliefs are real and strong."

via Ohio State University: Joseph Siev, Ambivalent attitudes promote support for extreme political actions, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn2965.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn2965

Based Pairs

A 'factory reset' for the brain may cure anxiety, drinking behavior, study suggests: Gene editing reverses brain genetic reprogramming caused by adolescent binge drinking 

May 2022, ScienceDaily

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220504153619.html

CRISPR Cocktail:

"Early binge drinking can have long-lasting and significant effects on the brain and the results of this study offer evidence that gene editing is a potential antidote to these effects, offering a kind of factory reset for the brain, if you will," 

via University of Illinois Chicago: Targeted epigenomic editing ameliorates adult anxiety and excessive drinking after adolescent alcohol exposure. John Peyton W. Bohnsack, et al. Science Advances, 2022; 8 (18) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn2748

10.1126/sciadv.abn2748

Researchers find CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing approach can alter the social behavior of animals

May 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-05-crispr-cas9-gene-approach-social-behavior.html

The old switcheroo:

"We were really surprised at the results," Albers said. "We anticipated that if we eliminated vasopressin activity, we would reduce both aggression and social communication. But the opposite happened."

via Georgia State University: Jack H. Taylor et al, CRISPR-Cas9 editing of the arginine–vasopressin V1a receptor produces paradoxical changes in social behavior in Syrian hamsters, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2121037119

https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2121037119

Image credit: No credits, a computer made it! But I call it "Lobotomy in Alaska", from Lexica's library.

Collective Behavior

Genetic changes can affect collective behavior

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-10-genetic-affect-behavior.html

If you think pandemic lockdowns are crazy, just wait.

Genetic changes in individuals can not only alter the behavior of groups, but can also provide a methodological approach for testing existing models of collective behavior experimentally.

Researchers used the CRISPR-Cas9 technique to edit specific genes in individual larvae. In doing so, they were able to show that mutations of the genes scn1lab and disc1 altered the individual behavioral responses of the mutated animals to visual stimuli and, consequentially, the behavior of the group.

The zebrafish larvae with the scn1lab mutation kept a greater distance between themselves and others than their peers without the mutation. [I hear social distancing for example]

via University of Konstanz: Roy Harpaz et al, Collective behavior emerges from genetically controlled simple behavioral motifs in zebrafish, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi7460

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abi7460

Humans on a Chip

Treating humans like molecules are the main idea behind computational sociothermodynamics, which is the science of predicting human behavior based on thermodynamics models of particles. It's a way to gain insight into a really complex problem, and from a rather unsuspecting place. And we will be seeing a lot more of this in years to come.

Here's a new model that works by measuring how people distribute themselves as a function of the density of the crowd they're in. It's called a Density-Functional Fluctuation Theory of Crowds.

The model was originally designed for predicting the behavior of quantum systems, and it was already tested using fruit flies, because boy does science love fruit flies.

It generates a "frustration function" that measures the probability that someone will move to a new location given a specific density for that crowd. At a concert, for example, people will try to get a good spot, as long as it's not too crowded. When it gets too crowded, they'll move. And when it gets too crowded after that, they riot. Just kidding. (Not really.)

The model can then predict the "mood" of the crowd by how this frustration function evolves over time. In the article where I found this, it was suggested that this model could be used to predict a rowdy crowd before it starts. Or the moment a peaceful protest changes phase from a liquid to a gas, if you know what I mean.

Then again, who cares about a predictive model when we have neck-rec! [neck-recognition technology, an advance beyond face recognition]

This is a drone that detects movements in human faces and necks in order to accurately source heart rates and breathing rates of crowds. (I like to refer to this as physiodata, because that sounds good.)

In other words, the resolution is so fine that it can see and measure the pulse of your jugular vein, and then face-rec your id, of course. And it will do this for an entire crowd, and in less time than it takes you to snap a picture.


Post Script:
Mathematics can assist cities in addressing unstructured neighborhoods
Aug 2018, phys.org

[straight pasting here]
"...use satellite imagery and municipal data to develop mathematical algorithms that reveal slums and planned neighborhood are fundamentally different.

Their models clearly identify distinctions between the informal arrangement of underserviced urban areas and the formal structure of city neighborhoods. In two case studies, the researchers used real-world data to show that the physical layout of some unplanned neighborhoods does not allow space for sewer lines, roads or water pipes.

The team used a novel topological technique, based on connections between places, to characterize the first-time slums rather than a traditional geometric approach.

"By understanding the fundamental topology — the relationship between places of residence and work to urban infrastructure networks — we can determine parts of cities remain only incipiently connected," said coauthor Luís Bettencourt, director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago.
-phys.org


Notes:

Fruit flies and electrons: Researchers use physics to predict crowd behavior
Aug 2018, phys.org

Drone detects heartbeat and breathing rates
Sep 2017, BBC

Physiodata at Large
Oct 2017, Network Address

Urban Dynamics
Oct 2013, Network Address

The Sante Fe Institute always has cool stuff combining studies of computers, physics, social sciences.

This isn't what I meant by humans on a chip, but then again, yes it is:
3D 'organ on a chip' could accelerate search for new disease treatments
Oct 2018, phys.org