It's All Propaganda

I pretty much insinuated here that all statements, factual or no, are propaganda. A simple question should help make this more obvious: What is the difference between what you learned when you were little and the information you hear now? The simple answer is that we are trained, or are hardwired in the first place, to learn that way. That is why propaganda is so effective: in method it is no different than learning that permeates your entire life. In fact, it's much easier to accept propaganda than it is what you learn when you are young. Propaganda builds off a system of connections that we have already made, whereas learning is a struggle for many.

This is all especially true if you buy into the Humean theory that causal connections, and the like, are made up. We process information based on how it fits into our previous framework, and are in fact hardwired to create new frameworks.

However, propaganda is not foolproof. There are two obvious guards that we have against it: our reason and our senses. Our reason can tell us when something does not fit. As well, when claimed item do not correspond to our sense data we may reject them. However, neither check is fully effective: There was a study where people were placed in a classroom and two line were drawn on the board, one clearly shorter than the other. Most students were told to say that the shorter one was longer. When the test subjects were asked which was in fact longer, over 60% agreed with the liars. Obviously, peer pressure is a significant factor in that figure. But, when the whole world thinks you are wrong, it can be quite powerful psychologically.

I will post soon on why I post, if everything is propaganda.