Need brains?

Don’t worry we are all zombies, and always have been.

Recently, we have seen increasing popular and media concerns about privacy and autonomy. This seems almost a return to the old idea of “brainwashing” that populated social science and media during the ideologically rich days of the Cold War. This idea was that somehow, someone could “make you” do something that you didn’t want to do. A range of tools were used- such as ‘subliminal advertising’ which meant that you would immediately upon seeing an ad, rise up and totter zombie like to the nearest shop to buy a product which was probably bad for you. This culminated in the dreadful ‘Manchurian Candidate” where Lawrence Harvey is forced to try to assassinate the US president after being brainwashed.

But what sort of information should we take in? Our friends- who know us best- tailor their information outputs to meet our preferences. Should we stop talking to them? Or, preferably, buying things from them. We use ‘brands’ to navigate poorly defined and incomplete choice maps, as well as to establish our social selves. We have passionate ‘feelings’ about politics, education, technology, and loads more concepts, which can cause us to act in ways that we ‘normally’ wouldn’t.

We use programming apporaches such as NLP to ‘fix’ problems and improve performance. We read posts and newspapers that confirm our own views.

So, it’s less than clear what information we should collect and distribute. Personally, I think that the answer is not to ban information, but to strengthen our ability to deal with it. I recommend a strong dose of mockery every day. Cures Zombiedom almost immediately