[FRIAM] projection propaganda

[glen]

OK. That's helpful. If I reword it into my own words, one's ability to mentalize¹ about others state or intention is limited by the mentalizer's facility with modeling². If the mentalizer is a broadly skilled modeler, then they'll spend quite a bit of effort on model selection, choosing the best fit they can find in their toolbox. But if the mentalizer is a bad modeler, or only has experience with specific models, then they'll tend to use one of those models with which they're familiar, regardless of how well it fits their target.

In that context, many people/pundits will not be skilled at multiscale modeling (where one takes great pains to avoid composition fallacies). So they fall back on what they do know. And every normally intelligent human is very good at modeling other humans. So when talking about a composite like a corporation or nation, it's likely that most people will use human models to model those composites.

This means that the burden is on me, assuming I have more experience with multiscale modeling than many, to either (behind the scenes) do all the translation myself *or*, in an interactive context, help the modeler refine their modeling abilities. Whether I take up that burden would depend on the [Good|Bad] Faith of the modeler as I saw it ... or simply a matter of bandwidth.


[1] mentalize - “the ability to attribute mental states (e.g., knowledge, intentions, emotions, perception) to self and others” - Quesque et al 2024

[2] modeling - here I mean anything from math to elementary school teachers who can teach children well to mystics with coherent metaphysics to fantasy authors who build complex worlds, etc.

On 7/14/25 10:19 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I don't have any good referenes to the way that individual behaviour composes to group beyond the anecdotal (we've discussed whether a mob of angry people is an angry mob?) but I do think it is an important topic to understand.  I think it is a corollary to how emergent phenomena/affordances "stack".
> 
> It is our "habit" to describe particles at all scales in the same mode, as if the composition of "mass" and the energetics that they carry and are influenced by (strong, weak, gravity, EM) or coupled through are entirely familiar to our mundane intuitions developed throwing, rolling, bouncing balls around.   So if that fails in something presumably as cut/dried as physics (subatomic, nucleonic, molecular, etc), why would we expect it to work in the interactions of far-from-spherica cow-humans?
> 
> To harp on my intersubjective ideas,  I will claim (with little substantiation) that the fact that our interactions among humans are significantly moderated/defined/informed by our *beliefs* about one another and about the systems we've created and engage in that in some cases, those part-whole, metonymic/synechdochic conflations might be more motivated due to that mediation through belief/expectation than for example, excpecting a quark or a photon or even  neutron to "act" like a billiard ball, just because it is the convenient/common analogic/metaphoric referent?
> 
> 
> On 7/3/2025 9:34 AM, glen wrote:
>> I'm used to interpersonal projection. E.g. Joe Rogan's supplements vs. his accusations re the mRNA vaccines:
>>
>> Rogan's Big Pharma Scandal Keeps Getting Weirder
>> https://youtu.be/bogYSu3cCLg?si=U1Jk93n5DC4gppdx
>>
>> But I'm not habituated to the analogy of projection ("lady doth protest too much") to national/party scale propaganda:
>>
>> Projection as an Interpersonal Influence Tactic: The Effects of the Pot Calling the Kettle Black
>> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672012711010
>>
>> I expect man-babies like Trump to accuse their targets of their own misdeeds (https://theconversation.com/why-trump-accuses-people-of-wrongdoing-he-himself-committed-an-explanation-of-projection-237912). And to the extent that the right in the US (including SCOTUS) believe in and achieve the unitary executive, the analogy between interpersonal projection and national or group projection will be more accurate. This is one reason why "projection propaganda" worked well for Russia and China but not so much for the US, because the difference in scope between an individual and a regime was smaller there than here in the US.
>>
>> So given that one of my whipping posts is that we bear the burden of showing how group behavior composes from individual behavior before we assert that the map is in any way coherent, I can't use "projection propaganda" without coming up with that composition. If any of you historians or journalists have any clue sticks to hit me with, I'd very much appreciate it.
>>
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