Big Data, Big Psychology and Big Money, with AGW Denial on the side

[GliderGuider]

I quite enjoy digging up articles that make peoples' blood run cold with existential dread. This may be my best find yet, outside of the arena of climate change. This is how the people of the world will be enslaved while believing they are being freed, fleeced while believing they are being enriched, destroyed while believing they are being saved.

This is the true Orwellian nexus of Big Data, Big Psychology and Big Money. Sweet dreams are NOT made of this:

Robert Mercer is the money behind an awful lot of things. He was Trump’s single biggest donor. Mercer started backing Ted Cruz, but when he fell out of the presidential race he threw his money – $13.5m of it – behind the Trump campaign.

It’s money he’s made as a result of his career as a brilliant but reclusive computer scientist. He started his career at IBM, where he made what the Association for Computational Linguistics called “revolutionary” breakthroughs in language processing – a science that went on to be key in developing today’s AI – and later became joint CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund that makes its money by using algorithms to model and trade on the financial markets.

One of its funds, Medallion, which manages only its employees’ money, is the most successful in the world – generating $55bn so far. And since 2010, Mercer has donated $45m to different political campaigns – all Republican – and another $50m to non-profits – all rightwing, ultra-conservative. This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs.

Robert Mercer very rarely speaks in public and never to journalists, so to gauge his beliefs you have to look at where he channels his money: a series of yachts, all called Sea Owl; a $2.9m model train set; climate change denial (he funds a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute); and what is maybe the ultimate rich man’s plaything – the disruption of the mainstream media. In this he is helped by his close associate Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager and now chief strategist. The money he gives to the Media Research Center, with its mission of correcting “liberal bias” is just one of his media plays. There are other bigger, and even more deliberate strategies, and shining brightly, the star at the centre of the Mercer media galaxy, is Breitbart.

But there was another reason why I recognised Robert Mercer’s name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to have a $10m stake in the company, which was spun out of a bigger British company called SCL Group. It specialises in “election management strategies” and “messaging and information operations”, refined over 25 years in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In military circles this is known as “psyops” – psychological operations. (Mass propaganda that works by acting on people’s emotions.)

On its website, Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly. The system, according to Albright, amounted to a “propaganda machine”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

[PsychoBabble]

1. I WONDERED what was behind Bannon's slimy, know-it-all smile ...

Appears this might be it.

Consider, if you feel/know that you can manipulate huge swaths of people to believe and act in certain ways, you would start to act ... pretty "God-like."

All you need is enough data, enough money, and enough cruelty ....

[drm604]

2. I started a thread on Cambridge Analytica a week ago.

It did not get the interest it should have. Hopefully your post will generate more interest, since this is a vital subject.

My thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028677911

I also posted about it on FB and it got zero likes and zero responses. Apparently if a subject is technical and takes some time and effort to read, people aren't interested. This of course is exactly what the perpetrators want. They want people to concentrate on stupid tweets and ignore the technical machinations.

[GliderGuider]

3. It's going around in another GD thread now too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028716802

It's a tough subject, not least because it's so overwhelming it can make us feel helpless. It's like standing in front of a juggernaut waiting to be crushed. I know the apathy that is generated by problems too big to solve - all too well.

The best thing we can do right now is to expose it. This isn't a broadly distributed problem like climate change. It flows from concentrations of power, and because of that we may be able to fight it.

[drm604]

4. That juggernaut can be countered to some extent.

There are wealthy people on the left who could fund something similar, maybe even better. You could even target the same people as the right is targetting, but talk about the right values. Talk about healthcare and jobs and Social Security. Mock politicians that work against such things. Emphasize jobs and health and elder care as family values. Mock those who fight science and education as being anti-progress and anti-American.