In this instalment Mikhail meets another person working for the Old Ones and learns more about the project.
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Shortly after this back-and-forth, the Elders contacted Mikhail again and asked him to meet a new person at an office.
He went to the address indicated and told the security desk that he had an appointment with the guy in Suite 22 on the second floor. His name was on the list, and he was admitted. The sign on the door said “Mir Shah, Speech Therapist”.
When he walked in, he was greeted by a middle-aged man wearing a dark sports jacket over a turtleneck. His hair was thinning and cut short. He mentioned Mikhail’s name, introduced himself, and, shook hands. Then he invited Mikhi into the back room where they sat across from each other at a desk in what was obviously a consulting room.
“The Elders have asked me to help you with a minor part of what helps someone get really good ratings for a video. I suspect what I’m going to tell you today will be irritating as Hell. I find it so, so why wouldn’t you? But please give me the ‘benefit of the doubt’ until I’ve finished explaining why I think that what they want me to teach you works.”
Mir got an exasperated look on his face, stretched out his arms on his desk, widened the fingers on his hands, and, took a deep breath.
“Years ago the Navy commissioned a university study to find out exactly what makes someone a leader. This was done by bringing together a group of strangers, setting them a specific task that required them to work together, and, observing how the group selected leaders to make necessary decisions. They came to the rather depressing conclusion that the people who ended up in charge weren’t the most ethical people, or the most intelligent, or the most knowledgeable---they were simply the ones who talked the most.”
“Also years ago, another group of academics decided to study the “experts” that television shows bring on to discuss topics of the day. They looked at shows that had both in-depth polling to check ratings, and, had dealt with issues where people had made predictions that could be checked for accuracy.”
“The results were somewhat troubling---to say the least. They found there was a reverse correlation between accuracy and support for the pundits. In effect, the more accurate the experts were in their predictions, the less popular and ‘believable’ the viewers thought they were. Conversely, the less accurate they were, the more people liked them.”
Mir looked Mikhi in the eyes, took another deep breath, and, continued.
“It simply wouldn’t be plausible to conclude that the audience could tell what was or wasn’t going to be an accurate prediction, so they couldn’t be using that as a reason for someone’s ‘likeability’. It might have been the case that the accurate pundits were telling people what they didn’t want to hear, and the non-accurate one’s were just pandering to people’s preconceived notions. But the exerts discarded that hypothesis because they were able to sort out people’s preconceptions before hand by looking at other polling data. They found that people disliked the accurate predictors even when they supported what the individual viewers wanted to happen.”
“The conclusion they reached was that people who give accurate predictions more than mere random chance would predict tend to speak in a specific way. They hem and haw, they explain complications, they tend to offer different scenarios, they don’t split the world into false dichotomies---in a word, they talk in terms of nuance instead of certainty.”
“I believe this is a key point that needs to be understood. Aristotle said many centuries ago that ‘the more you know, the less you think you know’. The less you think you know about something, the less confidently you talk about it. But people intuitively believe a person who speaks more confidently about something instead of someone who is hesitant and hedges most of their statements.”
“The important point isn’t whether or not someone knows what they are talking about. There are obviously people who don’t know much of anything. There are also people who do know a lot, and have no problem at all convincing the majority that this is the case. What I am suggesting, however, is that the quality that defines whether or not someone believes you is totally distinct from whether or not you know much about the subject. Some folks who know a lot are believable, some aren’t. People who know very little also fall into both camps.”
“If this is the case, then the pundit survey makes sense. Some commentators were being chosen on the basis of their objective credentials and experience. These qualifications have absolutely nothing at all to do with whether or not they will be believed by the tv audience. Others were being chosen simply on their ability to do well in front of camera---to look directly into the eyes of the audience and make short, easily-understood, and, memorable ‘sound bites’. In both cases, the selected individuals reverted to the mean---people who knew a lot were about average in believability whereas people who had above average believability were only average in their knowledge of the subject being discussed.”
“So what is it that makes someone believeable? For want of any other term, I’ve come up with my own label: ‘confidence-speak’. I call it that because when someone is able to get another person to believe their expert opinion what they are really doing is creating ‘confidence’ in another person. Also, it creates resonance with the popular understanding of a subset of criminals who are called “confidence tricksters” or “con-men”.
At this point Mir stopped and asked Mikhi “Would you like some tea? I would. I’m going to put the kettle on and make a pot. I only have black tea, and no sugar or milk I’m afraid.”
“Sure, why not?”
Mr. Shah got up from his desk and went to the door, into the reception area, and, into a little nook with a sink and an electric kettle. He yelled out to Mikhi, “Come on back here. We can continue to talk while the water boils.”
Mikhi got up, walked back, and, sat down in the chair from the reception desk---which he pulled out so he could see Mir.
Shah said, “Here’s another depressing thing to think about.”
“Back at the start of the first Gulf war the US President---George Bush the elder---faced a lot of public opposition over sending troops to Saudi Arabia in order to push Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait. At that time there appeared a teenage girl in front of a Congressional committee. She said that she’d seen Iraqi soldiers looting a Kuwait hospital. In particular, she said they dumped premature babies out of incubators so they could steal the machines and ship them back to Iraq.”
“People were horrified. Public opposition to the impending war dissipated and a large, multinational armed force went to Saudi Arabia.”
“But that’s not the end of the story. After the war was over the television program 60 Minutes pointed out that the story was totally bogus and the teenage girl was the daughter of the Kuwait ambassador to the US. What I want to impress upon you, however, was that the story about the premature babies being dumped onto a hospital floor wasn’t just the result of one particular individual. Instead, it was selected and refined using focus groups and sophisticated bio-feedback technology.”
“Here’s the thing. A consulting company hired by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile selected a group of people that scientific sampling methodology said represented a good cross section of the general public. They were paid quite handsomely and signed non-disclosure agreements. These people were hooked up to monitors that kept track of various things like respiration rate, blood pressure, heart beats, skin electrical resistance, etc. The sort of stuff that a so-called “lie detector” measures.”
“This allowed the consultants the ability to run a series of scenarios using different actors to judge the emotional responses these people felt when listening to stories about the invasion. Their analysis of the data produced suggested that a teenage girl talking about babies being brutally killed created the strongest purely emotional response among the most people in the focus group.”
At this point the water had boiled, the pot had been brewed, two cups secured. The two men walked back to the office and resumed their respective seating arrangements.
Mir blew on the teacup and wrapped his fingers around it. He took a bit of time to discuss drinking tea.“I find the ritual of making tea as important as the drinking. Wrapping my fingers around the cup, feeling the heat in my somewhat arthritic fingers. Taking the first sip when it is so hot that it slightly burns the tongue. Chiding myself for lacking the patience to wait for it to cool.”
“All this distracts me from the horrors I routinely find when I contemplate life. Please remember that we do live in a festival of horrors. And what I am telling you will magnify your understanding of this fact. The Elders live in a strange place. They force themselves to look clearly at what most people try to avoid seeing. Those people make their lives possible by diverting their attention, the Old Ones fight for the lives of all beings---human and otherwise---by looking deeply at the world around them exactly as it really is.”
Mir sighed and got back to his explanation. “Anyway, the consultants delivered on their contract. A tremendously powerful meme was created that was strong enough to create a very short-lived consensus that allowed the USA to send its army to free Kuwait.”
“In the West, the first Gulf war is generally considered a ‘good war’---especially when compared to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But it was very, very far from a good war for the people of the Middle East. Thousands of poorly-trained conscripts were butchered by the ‘shock and awe” weapons of the US. In addition, oppressed peoples who felt that it was their time to rid themselves of Saddam Hussein rose up, only to be butchered by the elite troops that the dictator had kept in Iraq to keep him in power. This included, alas, some close members of my family.”
Mr. Shah leaned back in his chair, sipped some tea. He composed himself, and continued.
“The scam involving the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter was a “one off”. The consultant’s fees were too high for most jobs. And it was too easy for reporters to figure out what was going on for anything but a specific single event limited in time. People don’t like getting manipulated and another attempt to do the same thing would have created a backlash in the US Congress.”
“But it was a ‘finger pointing at the Moon’, as the Zen Buddhists would say. If people could find a quick, hard-to-trace, method of finding out which images and types of language really resonate with people, it means that it the ability to mold public opinion has just made an exponential leap. And then came the Internet and social media.”
“Each social media platform is based on an increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence that is geared towards understanding what a person does or doesn’t like. That’s how companies like Google and Facebook can gear specific advertisements to specific people---which is why you can look at mattresses on line and the next day notice ads for them festooning your favourite blog.”
“During the 2016 presidential election a group of teenage Macedonian kids in one particular village realized that when you look at social media it doesn’t matter if you post a story in a very expensive, sophisticated website or some ‘nothing’ generic blogging app. When it gets re-posted on Facebook it looks exactly the same. And those ‘nothing’ blogging apps have analytic software that will tell you if people respond to a specific post by ignoring it or sharing it with all their friends. This meant that those Eastern European teens could quickly tell themselves what does or doesn’t ‘sell’.”
“They just wanted to get revenue from companies that were putting their ads on their stories. And because they lived in an out-of-the-way backwater, and were only kids using laptops, they figured that no one would be bothered to punish them for publishing out-and-out lies on their websites. So they lied. A lot. And they made what was for them an awful lot of money.”
Mir drank some tea and looked like he was going to be sick.
“This is where the term “fake news” originates. Unfortunately, certain entrepreneurs were watching this situation and decided that they could dramatically influence elections if they used the same tactics on a much larger scale. That’s how Cambridge Analytica was able to influence the Brexit referendum in the UK. They did it by convincing foolish people to fill out detailed surveys on the astronomically small chance of winning a soccer pool, and then used the information gained to craft ridiculous adverts directed at each person’s own silly prejudices. Aunt Sally was convinced that the European Union was forcing her to support whaling. Uncle George was taught that billions of pounds were being spent to ensure that Turkey joined the EU. Granny found out that the EU wanted to take away her toaster oven and electric kettle. Etc, etc, etc. The tools that the giant tech companies use to make billions off advertising were being twisted to create a political fool’s crusade.”
Mikhail used Mir’s pause to intervene in the monologue. “Depressing as Hell. I get it. But what has this to do with me and the Old Ones?”
Mir looked Mikhi up and down. Then he dropped the bombshell. He said “The Elders have developed a sophisticated system for evaluating video shows that allows us to tailor content in ways that viscerally “connects” with the emotions of viewers---almost in real time. What they want to do is create a YouTube show about the climate emergency that purports to be objectively about blaming different factions of human society for contributing to that problem---but which is actually about getting as many people emotionally engaged with the issue as possible. In effect, they want to create a giant propaganda campaign that will get all of humanity involved with saving the planet.”
Mikhi had been half expecting this. But he still felt it like a kick in the gut. He was engaged with the world around him, so nothing he’d heard from Mir was new. But the idea that a group as sophisticated as the Old Ones had been working on this scared the absolute crap out of him. If any group could use something like this, it had to be the them.
Mir understood what he was thinking. “This plan of action was not undertaken lightly. As a group, the Old Ones understand the implications of this new technology more than probably any others in the entire human race. But consider the following facts.”
“First, the genie is out of the bottle already. Eventually governments and private enterprise will develop this technology. They are already working on it---as evidenced by both Cambridge Analytica and the Russian Internet Research Agency. Moreover, the Elders are already working on technology, strategy, and, tactics aimed at fighting it. Part of that work has to involved learning everything we can about how this sort of thing works---ideally before some other group starts using it.”
“Secondly---and more importantly---the human race is facing a bottleneck crisis. We have to survive the climate emergency if we are going to survive at all. And we are in the middle of a tremendous time crunch because it has become increasingly obvious that the current mechanisms that the human race uses to guide cultural evolution and adaptation seem too slow to prevent a civilization collapse.”
“The Old Ones believe that for the first time in history they absolutely have to intervene in the flow of humanity and divert it into a more healthy direction.”
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