Obama staffer wants 'cognitive infiltration' of 9/11 conspiracy groups

reply to post by Donny 4 million


You know. I have noticed in your recent contributions that you consider yourself to be an intellectual.

I guess I'll have to wait a little longer to see how that is working for ya.

Thanks for the responses, though.

Logged on just to S&F this one.

NOTE to Mr. Sunstein:

I learn more about the world-as-it-really-is from insurance corporations' actuarial report summaries than from ANY news source. PubMed is my best source for information about medical conspiracies. I read the Economist and Forbes more than I read Mother Jones or Chomsky or gasp! the Nation.

I assure you, my epistemology is not crippled. However, yours appears to be so corrupted as to be effectively disabled.

Sincerely,
soficrow

Look Out People , here come the " Thought Police " ..............

I just finished reading the paper. It is quite an interesting read and written in an understandable language. Here are some quotes from the paper.

II.Governmental Responses

What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses.
(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
(2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
(3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshalling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.
(4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech.
(5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions.

However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).

page 14

Although one can see governmental influences, this is quite a creative way of thinking. A tax on conspiracy theories. Even the numerous CTs here on ATS have never imagined this idea.

Infiltration of any kind poses well-known risks: perhaps agents will be asked to perform criminal acts to prove their bona fides, or (less plausibly) will themselves become persuaded by the conspiratorial views they are supposed to be undermining; perhaps agents will be unmasked and harmed by the infiltrated group.

page 22

Aha, I always thought, we conspiracy theorists try to expose criminal acts, not inspire them. Sunstein & Vermeule believe otherwise. I think the idea, that CT's will ask agents to perform criminal acts, is in itself a conspiracy theory.

However, this logic overlooks an important synergistic gain: rebutting many conspiracy theories can reduce the legitimating effect of rebutting any one of them. When government rebuts a particular theory while ignoring most others, the legitimating effect arises at least in part because of a contrast between the foreground and the background:...

...Practically speaking, government might do well to maintain a more vigorous countermisinformation establishment than it would otherwise do, one that identifies and rebuts many more conspiracy theories would otherwise be rebutted. There will still have to be some minimum threshold for governmental response, but the threshold will be lower than it would be if this synergistic gain of rebutting many theories did not exist.

page 19

So the authors suggest debunking all kind of conspiracy theories, even those, which are of no real interest to the government. With this approach they will need quite a lot of full time agents, just for ATS alone. At least Sunstein and Vermeule have provided us with a few catchy terms like crippled epistemology, cognitive infiltration and vigorous countermisinformation establishment.

reply to post by soficrow

I assure you, my epistemology is not crippled. However, yours appears to be so corrupted as to be effectively disabled.

Nice

Originally posted by Drunkenshrew
I just finished reading the paper. ...

...unmasked and harmed by the infiltrated group.

...

This stadement holds no ground. Unless they are referring to the various /b/ Anonymous groups. Then the agents might be seriously embarrassed online.
Harmed? Never!

I don't believe we attacked our selves on 9/11, I mean no disrespect to anyone who may believe such. But, this issue is much bigger than that. I know it isn't right for the government to 1) infiltrate political groups not involved in crime and 2)waste money on things that aren't necessary. Everyone has a right to theorize about whatever they choose because we are born with rights not because we are granted them by government but because they are inherent as a part of our humanity.

I'm surprised this thread has gotten so long.

It is obvious anytime someone comes out publicly and says they WANT to do something(esp in ways of surveillance), this is an Orwellian way of saying, 'We have already been doing it for ____ years, and now we are going to start telling you.'

I'll go on then and have a victory cigarette. See you all in the brave new world.

Originally posted by JayinAR
reply to post by Donny 4 million

 

You know. I have noticed in your recent contributions that you consider yourself to be an intellectual.

I guess I'll have to wait a little longer to see how that is working for ya.

Thanks for the responses, though.

A quote would be nice. Actually I am a red neck high school drop out.
University is for compartmentalized zombies.
Enough about me.
On topic we have the disinfo Czar and his lackeys to deal with.
Conversion would create a job loss and with the economy
the way it is no GS14 is going to bail on his retirement.

Originally posted by soficrow
Logged on just to S&F this one.

NOTE to Mr. Sunstein:

I learn more about the world-as-it-really-is from insurance corporations' actuarial report summaries than from ANY news source. PubMed is my best source for information about medical conspiracies. I read the Economist and Forbes more than I read Mother Jones or Chomsky or gasp! the Nation.

I assure you, my epistemology is not crippled. However, yours appears to be so corrupted as to be effectively disabled.

Sincerely,
soficrow

Thanks for taking the time to log on and flag this story.

I am of the humble opinion this is one of the most important stories to hit ATS as it confirms just what a lot of people have long suspected in the way of government thinking and attitudes.

Kind of funny to think that we were kind of suffering that as a result of too little information!

Thanks Mr. Sunstein!

Should we take him as a credible source?

reply to post by Stormdancer777

What if no one paid their taxes this year?

I mean seriously.

Wow would this mean I would actually then have to pay my taxes this year?

I always do the opposite of what everyone else does.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Name: Cass R. Sunstein
Work Address: University of Chicago Law School, 1111 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60637
Telephone: 773-702-9498 (business)
Fax: 773-702-0730 (business)
email: [email protected]

give him a call would ya

Originally posted by digalog
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Name: Cass R. Sunstein
Work Address: University of Chicago Law School, 1111 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60637
Telephone: 773-702-9498 (business)
Fax: 773-702-0730 (business)
email: [email protected]

give him a call would ya

Alright but I think that's an old contact number now that he is working for the administration in washington but...reaching for my phone...dialing number...waiting for answer....Ok I got his message machine and told his machine my name (full and return number) and about this thread on Top Secret and the name of the thread and that it got a lot of attention, and he might want to check it to see what the members here have to say about it.

Is there anyone else you want me to call, an old girlfriend or boyfriend, a long lost relative a political leader?

I am here to serve all humanity one phone call or blog entry at a time!

Thanks for posting, your suggestion recieved prompt attention.

You may be contacted in the future for quality assurance customer satisfaction surveys in how well you feel Protoplasmic Traveler responded to your request, so we can continue to bring you a high level of Protoplasmic service!

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


I would have thought you would have gotten a message like this.

"Good day Proto, no need to leave your contact information because we already know about your thread. Watch your mail box for your invitation to the next Presidential Ball."

I have to say, it is a sad statement about the Obama admin that they would hire this guy and put him in charge of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

I read a fair chunk of the paper in question, and man, this guy sure is a fine example of our nation's elite educational system. This must be the most academically programed person on the planet. This guy is quite the master of talking a point to death. There is only so much of this stuff I could read.

What I noted is that I couldn't find any conclusions or specifically cited points in the whole overly long paper.

It seems one of his goals is to prevent another Timothy McVeigh, which is a worthy goal. Another goal is to prevent 9/11 conspiracy theories from helping terrorist groups in their recruitment process, which I don't think happens.

I think his main goal is to provide jobs to lots of academics such as himself. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to want to give these academics any authority.

It seems to me that this guy is too much of a tail chaser to get anything done. He might be the perfect candidate for the job for anything involving internet censorship.

Apparently, his job is to review regulatory agencies policies to make sure the agencies are following Obama's policies.

I would think Obama would like someone a great deal more to the point for such a position.

As if Obama's administration just came up with this idea.

from the far right:

Hal Turner Admits He Worked for the FBI * Text size * Larger * Smaller Kurt Nimmo Infowars July 28, 2009 In a lame attempt to save his hide and stay out of prison for allegedly threatening to kill federal judges, the racist talk show host Hal Turner has admitted in court that he is an FBI informant, the Chicago Breaking News Center reports today.

www.infowars.com...

to the far left:

Proof of Marcos Moulitsa's Involvement with the CIA After Forming Daily Kos Moulitsas says he talked to the CIA about his website. His website was begun in May of 2002. By his own account, Marcos Moulitsas at least interviewed with the CIA AFTER he formed Daily Kos, not (only) before. It may be he began the interview process in 2001 and that it continued (or training continued) to just before June 2003.

truth-about-kos.blogspot.com...

[edit on 15-1-2010 by Deny Arrogance]

[edit on 15-1-2010 by Deny Arrogance]

Incase such an infiltration would be done based on truth, then there would be no problem..

..there actually are zillions of conspiracy thories amongst the ones that are really true, that are not true, and it would be great to have a tool to iron those out.

But as long as there is something else (such as a law) than truth, or the hunt for the truth and only the truth - behind such an accomplishment, it will never be credible to the ones they are trying to convert - since it would be somehow regulated.

Fighting for the truth, will show the truth, even if it is to be done by a government official - who -I think- are just as good people too, as the rest of us.

i feel like we are in the beginning of the 1984 novel, but we have a chance to make right what is wrong in a peaceful matter for now

reply to post by Jussi

and it would be great to have a tool

Don't worry about that my friend. We'll have plenty of tools snooping around in no time.