Episode: 3697
Title: HPR3697: Mis-information, Dis-information, and Fake News. You are a product and target for all of it.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3697/hpr3697.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:16:16

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3697 for Tuesday 4 October 2022.
Today's show is entitled Misinformation Disinformation and Fake News.
You are a product and target for all of it.
It is part of the series Privacy and Security.
It is hosted by Lurking Prion and is about 72 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is Brady and I discuss Misinformation Disinformation and Fake News.
You know, I introduced my son to the onion.
It went in in what way, like, did you let him know it was fake?
Yeah, yeah.
He had never heard of the onion.com before and so I showed him and I was telling him
about how some of those stories had actually been picked up in the past by news outlets
and actually passed off as real stories.
Oh, yeah, that is hilarious.
And of course, they made their ways through Facebook channels as legitimate stories as
well.
I was like, how do you do that?
I mean, this is coming from a site that obviously says it's satire.
But then again, you know, I started thinking about that.
I was like, okay, let me do a time drift 15 years back.
15 years back.
I'm ready to go on this journey with you.
So take me with you.
Okay.
15 years ago, everybody had magazines, you had newspapers.
So when you went and you bought a newspaper, you knew that you were getting news.
And when you went and bought something like the weekly world news, you knew that you were
not getting news.
You knew that you were getting stories about that boy and Hillary's alien lover.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good memories.
And then those black and white pages, yep.
Yes.
And Tupacabra, but that's why we bought that.
There was never anyone who sat there and said, oh my gosh, from the weekly world news,
no, that it didn't happen because you were forced to actually understand what it was.
You were looking at same thing of mad magazine.
Nobody ever took anything of mad magazine and said, oh my gosh, this is real.
We understood it for what it was.
But I think moving into the digital age, we have we have taken a problem that has existed
since the inception of our country and turned it into a pandemic.
And what I'm talking about is people and news.
And the fact that news has never really been news, it's been propaganda, it's been misinformation,
it's been disinformation, and it's all geared toward evoking some kind of an emotional
response.
And it's all about the headline.
I mean, and the picture sometimes, sometimes in the pictures, but I mean, how many people
do you know that will go and tell you about something and all they read was the headline
and maybe the first two sentences in the article?
Yeah.
That's it.
That's all they read.
But the thing is, that's all people want to read.
That's all they've got the attention span for.
And I argue, I don't think this is a new thing.
I think this has always been there.
I think the internet just made it much easier to share it on a global level.
I think that's all changed.
I mean, for years, people have just been paying attention to headlines and they walk
by, they see the headline in the newspaper like, oh no, the stock market has crashed and
they run off with it and go jump off the bridge.
But they never actually, you know, how many people actually took the time to buy the paper,
open it up and read it and see what was actually going on.
It's, I think it's just human nature.
People are lazy and we want information as quickly as possible.
And a headline is the town cryer in print.
That's the point.
That's good visual.
And that's all we did.
We took the town cryer.
We put it in print and now we took the town cryer and gave it digital legs.
So, um, floating across the universe and it's much easier to take that little snippet
that's just a headline and two sentences and say, oh my gosh, they found a Nazi civilization
in the Rhine.
Now that it's freaking dried up and start sharing it and who actually validates facts anymore?
Thanks.
Exactly, what are facts, right?
We don't actually stop and say, okay, what is the source that this came from?
I think if people were to stop and say, okay, this article came from the onion.com.
Then they could probably sit there and say, okay, I feel kind of stupid.
But either A, they don't do it or B, they do do it and don't want to feel stupid and
just keep on with it.
And I don't think there's any in between.
I think it's just human nature.
And I think that certain elements in the world have figured out how to monopolize on this.
And we are now living in a world where if you were to go back 100 years and think about
all the power that the print industry had, all the newspapers, how much power they had,
they would be envious of the kind of power that you can exert today with just a Facebook
campaign or a Twitter campaign.
This is very true, yeah.
And the thing is, the campaign doesn't even have to be successful to be successful.
Let's just say, for example, let's just pick something.
We'll say that we want to tell people that oranges are bad for them.
So here we start spreading this rumor that oranges cause cancer.
And now we've got all of this news that's hitting oranges cause cancer.
Well, then you have other news outlets that are sitting there saying, no, oranges don't
cause cancer.
Well, then you can just yell fake news.
And what?
But now, I mean, we live in an era where everybody has gotten none to this.
And they're just like, well, you really can't twist anything anymore.
So, I mean, there's a little bit of truth in everything.
No, there's no fucking truth in oranges cause cancer.
None.
But people are willing to give them the little bit of generosity that says there might be
some truth there, in which case, they have one because they have people who believe
that oranges cause cancer.
And they have one because they have taken a large segment of society and turned them
apathetic to any kind of action against this.
It's a win-win if you are wanting to go out and start a campaign, especially if you
are wanting to do something with any kind of malicious intent, you can't lose.
This is literally a full-win scenario.
Naturally, let me just, let's take a second and we'll press on this idea a little bit.
Let's talk about theoretical orange manipulation.
First, I think the default reaction to what you're saying would be, why would anybody
want to manipulate that?
So let's break that one down first.
You think of a reason why turning people against oranges, even if it's only a short-lived
thing, and then people forget and they go back to buying their oranges again, why would
that be profitable?
Because I have a shitload of lemons and I sell lemonade.
Okay.
So people buying, you've determined that people buying oranges are eating into maybe orange
juice.
It's eating into your lemonade sales.
Absolutely.
And what if people then think that, you know, lemons are citrus too, what if they also
cause cancer?
Oh, no.
The science is definitely oranges.
It's the orange coloring that makes them bad.
So I mean, boom, lemonade is good, orange bad, and boom, off we go.
What about somebody who is maybe manipulating options futures or futures options or whatever,
right?
The futures contracts, commodities.
Absolutely.
That could be a monetary reason for making people afraid of oranges, right?
Well, and you can go two ways with this.
You could either a, want to screw someone who's bought a whole bunch of commodities in
oranges or you want to buy a whole bunch of commodities at a really low price.
Hmm.
Let's, let's expand on that idea.
What if by just, by hurting even for a short term, maybe even just one season of orange
sales, you wanted to put a dent in there, that's going to put small scale farmers or farmers
that are on the brink that are, you know, citrus farmers, that's going to possibly put
a huge hit on their, their operations.
You might be able to scoop in there and buy some of these citrus orchards for really
cheap.
Well, I mean, I haven't industrial farms been doing that for the last 100 years?
That sounds like a good mechanism to push any, any struggling small farms.
Definitely don't want to sell to you.
Somebody sitting there, they've got land that you want that you could either utilize for
the same purpose or something better and you can't get them to sell.
You know, they're struggling, boom, let's hit that future market, destroy them and oh,
hey, I gave you a really good offer last year, but you know, now this ain't worth shit
and you're broke.
So how about this little tiny offer?
If not, what is waiting for you to go into bankruptcy and I'll get it for pennies on
the dollar?
Yeah.
So I think, I think even just exposing this next layer because I think we're all, none
of us want to admit that we're manipulated, when manipulated regularly or easily manipulated
in the first place.
But unfortunately, I think we're all a little bit more susceptible than we actually, you
know, we want to give ourselves a little bit more credit than maybe human nature allows.
There is a healthy, healthy level of cynicism that we should all be carrying around, but
I think that's the point of this episode.
Well, and that's what I want to talk about is because the problem is is the people who
are using this against us have studied the shit out of us.
They have taken psychology and turned it into the biggest weapon that has ever been seen.
The atom bomb has nothing on this when you can manipulate entire populations.
That's much better than taking out a city.
Yeah.
I can take over a whole country.
That is a much bigger weapon.
And psychology is what has allowed them to do it.
Well, you can't fight it unless you a understand that it's there and be, have some tools at
your disposal that you can use to combat being influenced by this.
So let's talk about that.
Let's go down this rabbit hole.
Okay.
Let's start first.
Most people get their news from a feed, fill in the blank feed.
It doesn't matter what it is, there's a feed that you're getting news from.
That feed is generated by an algorithm.
Is that algorithm built to give you good quality news or is it designed to keep you engaged
with whatever specific platform you're on?
I'll take a feed.
D, absolutely.
It is 100% geared toward that.
And they know that by throwing stuff at you that a evokes an emotional response will
get you engaged and be keeping you within a narrow set of ideas that you feel comfortable
with.
So let's just let's let's let's break that one down.
Why?
Okay.
Why would we want to shoe box people into things that they're already predisposed?
Why would we not want to expand their thoughts and ideas and challenge their deeply held beliefs?
Why?
First of all, let's say right wing and left wing.
I don't care what country you're in or what that actually means irrelevant, right wing
left wing.
People who are invested in right wing ideology only want to see and share things that are
positive about right wing ideology.
And the only thing they want to see about left wing is something that is crushing it.
They want to see bad stuff about left good stuff about right.
If you give them something bad about right wing ideology, you're going to lose those people.
They will stop engaging.
I'll put a counter point on that one.
Let's say, let's say no, let's say there are the rare individuals who see that content
and instead of vehemently just getting angry and disagreeing, they start challenging their
beliefs and try to see the humanity.
Those people do still exist.
I don't know.
They do.
They're a fraction of us.
Yeah, they're rare, but these are the true thinkers.
I think the more you realize, you know, people are people and not labels, that maybe that's
a gen X thing.
But there's power in that, right?
But you do increase your value as an advertising target.
You want people to be in my opinion.
You want people to be as small narrow of a box as possible because they're very easy to
target.
Oh, absolutely.
If people start expanding their mindset, they start challenging things, they're not going
to buy your products.
They're not, you know, they're not just going to accept your claim that this is the best
soap and you need to use it for, you know, people, guns and trucks.
If you want to sell guns and trucks, I've got a group right here that'll do it.
If you're selling shampoo, I've got a group right here that'll do it.
You've got a hair loss product.
I've got a hair, I've got a group right here.
If you've got somebody who's wanting a weight loss product, I've got a group right here.
It really doesn't matter what you're selling.
The algorithms have chopped us into tiny little boxes and we may even fit within several
of those little boxes depending upon what advertiser is putting money into that feed.
Exactly.
And the more you can segment your audiences, you might be a part of a thousand different
audiences.
But the only thing that that guarantees is that when you receive an ad, you know, you'll
get the dummy ones every now and then, but even those are feelers to see if you're interested
or not.
Yep.
And once you get it, we'll further define you as a consumer.
And so yeah, I have to agree with you here that the misinformation, the everything is
designed for a purpose, either to get you to act now or not act at all, not act at all
or put you in a box where they can prepare you for action in the future.
Yes.
And they, let's just define they, anybody who wants to make money off of you or exert
mental control through your actions, because you are like, if you aren't going out there
and seeking and challenging yourself and challenging the information you're presented
with, then I mean, you're just a predictable human.
And that's what we've become with algorithms, you're a predictable product.
Yeah.
And that's what people like, they like predictable products and they know exactly what kind
of things are going to engage you the most.
And they are going to feed you those things that keep you engaged, that keep you active,
because the more active you are, the more engaged you are, the higher value you are to the
people that they are selling you to.
So it's very true.
So okay.
What's next?
We, if there are going to be some holdout listeners that are going to tell us, you know,
or they're telling us through their phone or how are they listening, that we're dumb
and we're making a mountain out of a molehill, and that's fine.
But for anybody who is concerned about this, who, you know, is maybe thinking about this
in a different light, you know, what's next?
Okay.
So the first thing you got to do is drop the feed.
The feed is what's keeping you boxed in.
So back to that left right analogy, stop going to the feed that you get your news from and
start looking for outlets that are providing news about the things from both perspectives.
Get it from the, from the left, get it from the right and pick it up from the center.
And then you could even broaden your horizons a little bit more by maybe going to news sources
that are outside your country that don't have a vested interest in your politics at all.
And the more you expose yourself to different news sources, the easier it's going to be
to be able to identify misinformation and disinformation when it's present.
The other thing that you need to do is learn to start identifying where the source for
the news comes from.
Where did this news actually come from?
Where was it sourced from?
You'd be surprised how many times news is reported when it's nothing more than a press
statement handed out by a company.
So you get a company they release a press statement and then it's published as a news
article in multiple outlets.
And people never stopped a question whether or not that was a press feed or if it was
actual reporting.
Is this just a press release from the White House or the Kremlin or fill in the blank?
A lot of those have just ended up in the news as just straight news instead of, hey look,
here's something handed to you straight from our own propagandist.
So identifying where those sources, where that source material is coming from.
There's also things that you can do.
You can look at things like snopes.com, they're a little bit slow for the digital things.
There's other sites out there that specialize in debunking fake news that's going around
or things that are being propagated as truth but they're actually lies.
So finding out which sources of those apply to the type of media that you consume.
I'll look for a few and put them in the show notes but there's a number of different
outlets out there that that's what they do.
They track what's going on.
They track what's trending and they're like, hey, this picture's going around.
It's completely out of context.
This picture was actually taken in 2016 during this event and it's being peddled as this
from this event.
And being able to identify those kinds of outlets that are actually looking into the facts
and trying to figure out what's actually true and what's not.
We'll go a long way before in helping you identify what's real and what's not.
I can't tell you how many times I've pissed off my family on Facebook because they'll
peddle something on Facebook and I'll just go to snopes and do a quick look up and
oh look, there it is.
Nope, that's not what that is.
Here's what this really is.
And then they're like, oh, and the thing is, now here's the other side of this.
Once you start doing that, you are putting yourself into a very small box.
And I say that because you alone will be doing that.
Your family, your friends are still consuming their feed.
And nobody likes it when somebody's always coming up to them, telling them that they're
wrong.
They will just stop talking to you after a while.
Is this the Morpheus moment?
Yeah, pretty much.
Do we have the two pills and you've got to choose one, either stay in the matrix or get
out and see the real world?
This is the matrix moment, yes.
Because that's basically the crux of it, right?
Because there is a certain bliss in ignorance.
There is a lot of bliss in ignorance.
Right.
And humans, this is why this works is because we are emotional beings.
So we like to feel emotion.
Even feeling bad sometimes, we will keep, continue feeling bad for reasons that only make
sense inside of our brains.
Oh, feeling bad, feeling anger, anger is one of the best things that will keep people
engaged on a platform.
Right.
Exactly.
And so I would say, I would add to your strategy is, and this will probably help people
just in life in general, and I'm not by no means am I saying that I am an expert in this.
I'm probably the furthest from an expert in this.
But it's always good to take a self inventory when you have any kind of peak emotions.
And if you're having peak emotions when you're looking at Facebook or Twitter or your news
feed, it's always good to take a stop and to do that self inventory.
Really just, and this can be quick, but take a reflect on what you're feeling and try
to describe it in words.
You know, I'd say I'm not loud, just think it, like I am feeling blank.
And then going back to our orange example, right, what could be the reason that somebody
would want me to fill whatever blank was.
And then after that, how could this be profitable?
Because really we're all products.
And that's what, you know, we have to boil that down.
When you're today's news is very seldom way there to inform us.
It might inform us as a consequence, as a consequence, but that's not the intent.
Right.
And sometimes like it is a trade off, like you want to know what's going on in the world,
if you can digest this information instead of just consuming it, like I always think
of my dogs.
My dogs are the dumbest creatures on the face of the planet.
I like cats more, but it's been years since we've had a cat.
And it's probably going to remain that way because the dogs think that the cat, Kitty
Litterbox, is like a box of almond roca, sorry, for the mental image folks, but that's
it ain't happening.
Oh, it's not worth the hassle in this household, but I digress.
My dogs are so stupid.
I will, you know, cut the fat off of my steak.
And as an occasional treat, I will give it to them.
And they don't, they don't savor it.
Anybody who's ever wants to dog eat, like it just goes right down.
I don't know why they wanted it in the first place unless they've got special taste buds
in their stomach.
Honestly, me leaving it not in their throat is probably better enjoyment wise because
they get a smell at least.
Yeah, but that's what we have become as far as news as we just consume.
You know, we might think, huh, you idiot dog, why not savor that?
Why not enjoy it?
Why not break it down and really have the experience?
But that's exactly what we're doing when we consume news is still fine tuned.
You know, the algorithms know what to give us.
So you know, you can sit there and refresh your feet and refresh your feet.
And sometimes if you're in a different mood, you're like, why are none of these, like
these are all just junk articles?
Your mood changed the way you're thinking changed.
The algorithm was giving you stuff that it thought you wanted as a normal basis.
So you can keep refreshing and keep refreshing and wait for stuff to pop up.
And every now and then it might say, hey, this person's refreshing a lot.
We need to give them something else we can learn more about them.
But basically, you're just sitting there waiting, you're sitting there like that, salivating
dog, ready just to consume, to bite and not chew and just swallow.
And I do it myself.
So I'm not trying to lambast anybody out there.
This is human nature.
That's why it's so dang effective.
So just ask yourself, like, why am I feeling this way and is there, if you can understand
why you're what you're feeling, why you might be feeling that way, why somebody might
want you to feel that way and how it might be profitable.
If you can answer those questions, then you'll be able to digest that piece of news
a little better.
And you can take the truth and you can figure out why someone might be trying to manipulate
you with that grain of truth.
Yes.
Will it make you happy?
No.
Even if you can't figure out why they would be doing it, if you can see that there would
be an upside to it, then you may not know what the upside is yet.
Right.
If you can see that there is potentially something there that you can't put your finger
on, you're probably on the right path.
And this kind of goes back to the episode I did with my son where I was talking to him
about social engineering.
And the fact that adversaries have text to communicate with us.
They send words in text via SMS, MMS, email.
And using those words, they are able to evoke emotions that it's you to make an emotional
response to something instead of a logical response.
And it's much the same thing.
Whenever you have anything that's put in front of you that is evoking an emotion like that,
you need to stop and think and ask yourself, wait a minute, why is this email?
Why is this news article?
Why is this text?
Why am I panicking?
Why am I fill in the blank?
It's designed to do that.
And you have to then stop and think critically about this and say, okay, well, if you're
at work, is this a normal thing?
Is it abnormal?
Does it follow?
Am I going to be breaking policy and procedure in order to do what this thing is requiring
of me?
Or is this in line with what we do, but my boss is just on a deadline?
Or sometimes, I know it sounds crazy.
You could even call the person who ostensibly emailed you and say, hey, did you send this
email because I'm kind of confused?
Or you could text your mom and say, or call your bank and say, hey, bank, did you send
me this?
And I think we'll find a lot of times that no, no, that's not the case, but the thing is,
the same thing is happening to us in our news consumption, but we don't have the ability
to reach out and call the other person to find out whether or not they actually sent
it.
We go about other looking at it through other ways in order to identify whether or not
what we're seeing and what is playing on our emotions is the whole truth.
And news, the best manipulation has truth in it.
Yes.
And the thing is, the thing is, is separating that truth from fiction.
Where does the truth end and where does the fiction begin?
And trying to get that curl of truth out to identify, and the thing is, there is truth.
Anybody who's sitting out there that tells me there is no such thing as truth is full
of shit.
And you might as well just stop listening because you're already gone.
It's like the lights are on, but no one's home.
No, there is absolute truth.
There is absolute truth.
There is absolute not truth.
Now, I have to disagree with you there, Robert.
I believe in subjective gravity.
Well, subjective gravity.
I'm kidding.
There is the gravity exists here.
It does exist within our time continuum on our particular ball of rock floating through
the galaxy.
Now, if we were on a different ball of rock at a different point in the galaxy, would
it be different?
Absolutely.
It's an important thing because I think even if people claim that there is no truth, that's
a truth, right?
If you're saying that my truth is that there is no truth, you're ascribing to a belief.
And you've already become the victim that they're okay with.
You could be the one who has fallen for it or you could be the one who just says, oh,
there is no such thing as truth in which case you're not going to do anything about it.
You're still part of that win bucket for whatever campaign is going on.
And it doesn't matter whether it's a company, it doesn't matter whether it's a political
party, a political establishment, it doesn't matter whoever is manipulating you.
If you take the viewpoint that there is no truth, that is the truth that you ascribed
to and in doing so, you have removed yourself from any possibility of doing any good for
mankind.
It's a layer of cognitive distance that you can try to say, if that's your belief as
not true, belief can coincide with truth.
And belief can conflict with truth.
And that's when things get the hardest is when your belief and truth do not meet when
they don't coincide, when they conflict, that's when you have those strong emotions and
that's when you choose, and it's a choice, people choose to stay with their belief rather
than with the truth.
And we've seen it time and again throughout history, it's not a new thing.
People when truth and belief conflict, whenever they meet and they butt heads, belief usually
wins.
And I think that's a kind of a protection mechanism, it's built in inside of all of us,
because we will lie to ourselves.
Absolutely.
And just, I mean, maybe most of us do it on a very small scale, but take that lonely
single mom, who finally meets somebody who she feels like understands her and that person
isn't good with their kids, and I'm not picking on single moms here, this is a very common
example, where that mom might very, very, very deeply love her children, but she also
has a need to feel accepted and wanted and desired and supported, on a level that her
children never could and never should be elevated to try to feel.
And you know, in most cases, these are small little things, but you'll see a mother who
deeply loves her children, lie to herself about a partner, and then maybe even later
come, come out, like come to the point where they realize, oh, this person was horrible,
not only to me, but also to my children, you know, and they'll hopefully get them out
of their lives and find somebody who is better suited, but it comes from, it comes from
an emotional need position.
And do it too, men do it a lot, especially professionally.
We will allow a company to abuse us, and abuse us, and abuse us, and abuse us, and we'll,
in a lot of cases, we will be afraid to leave because that relationship and all of those
promises that we've been given about potential promotion, or whatever, even just keeping
our job in some points.
We will lie to ourselves and tell us that it's okay, but in reality, we might be in a very
abusive relationship with that employer, you know, and it will come to a breaking point
where we'll have to make that decision, are we going to accept the evidence or continue
lying to ourselves that this, whatever situation, this bad situation is okay?
Humans are very, very, very capable of believing their own lies as a protection mechanism,
because, you know, we'll just, I don't want to pick on the single moms, they already
have it pretty rough, we'll just take that guy.
This is, you know, I've been that guy before, you go to work, you give 150%, you never
get the promotions, in some cases you don't get the bonuses, you spend more and more and
more of your time when you're not at work, actually working in giving away work for free,
and then it becomes expected, and then in reality, in the background, you've become too good
at your job to promote, if they promoted you, then there were three people to fill your
spot.
Yeah, who's going to do all that work, but in my shoes, in that situation, you keep thinking,
you keep trying to tell yourself, hey, I believe that I am so important here, I have worked
so hard, everybody will see what I'm giving them, they will see without you, they will appreciate
me.
Yeah, they will reward me, but what you, the truth is that in most situations, unfortunately
you would have to leave that position and go somewhere else for somebody else to appreciate
you at the level at which they hire you, and that is a truth that can also be a belief,
but it's a statistical truth that most companies, it does not pay for that, like they'll just
you'll leave, you think, oh, they won't, like the whole place will fall apart without
me in most cases, it doesn't, they just get somebody else in there, and then in a lot
of cases, all those things that you thought you were doing that, you know, were so important,
they weren't really important in the first place, because nobody notices when you're gone,
and it's just, all of this, this is a really deep example, I'm sorry, listeners, and
then Robert, but this is just an example of how we will lie to ourselves, and we will
believe these things, but now apply it to that newsfeed, and as soon as we stop seeing whoever's
on the other side or whoever we're angry at, as soon as we stop seeing them as humans,
and realizing that humans by nature are fallible, right, and we can just find their faults
and we turn them into whatever this is, we've really just given control over our mentality
and ourselves and our beliefs, we've given that to an algorithm, we have stopped thinking
for ourselves, and we've allowed this piece of code to fuel how we see the world.
Or this person, this party, this group, yeah, it's, and you know, that belief, that belief
versus truth conflict, that's brutal, and I'm going to tell you, every single person on this
planet has seen an example of this within the last 10 years. Absolutely. I don't care where you
live on this lonely little planet, you have seen an example of this, and this is a political show,
we're not going to jump into that, but I'm just going to say that we've all seen an example
of truth versus belief and the two explode, and it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to the people
that accept the truth, how the people on the other side can still be accepting whatever it is
that you're thinking of as your personal example. But the truth is, they believe.
And I think that's a big, it's something that we should probably talk about, because politics
are naturally going to come up, and we might, you and I might sit in different places, and that's
okay, because we can still be friends, you know, it depends on the topic, and you're right, this
isn't going to be a political show, because that's everywhere. But I think back, and I think about
politics, and I think back to even 10 years ago, politics wasn't in our face as much as it is
today, and I think that's, it's because, you know, when you think about politics, I think a lot of
people get upset, even at the mere mention of politics, which is interesting, especially if we
have established that emotions are the key to making us make decisions that are not logical.
There's a different part of our brain that processes logic, and one that processes emotion,
and the decisions that we make when we're being logical are different from the decisions that we
make when, you know, when we're emotional. And I think that in a lot of ways, that is a product,
like even just how much we talk about politics, because it used to be in polite to talk about
politics and religion, unless it was close company. Now it's, you just open up your smartphone,
and within five minutes, I think you're probably going to be confronted with one or the other.
And none of that stuff, you know, none of that stuff really was so much in your face, because
because there was more of a pretense of, you know, hey, I don't want to disagree with you,
so I will set these beliefs aside. Well, now it's, it's almost a social imperative that you put
your politics way out in front of who you are. So then you become your politics, and it just makes
people so upset. Well, then that just means that everybody in your sphere of influence is going
to be making emotional decisions. But that brings us to the intersection of morals versus ethics.
It morals are what guide your, your way that you live your life in whatever that happens to be.
Let's just take the recent row versus weight. You may, you morally believe that overturning it is
the right thing to do. And for you personally, yes, that is a moral choice. However, is it ethical
to deny somebody else that same access when they have completely different beliefs than you?
They don't follow your morality. So now we've gotten to the intersection of where we are imposing
morality on other people. And we have taken that morality and done away with what's ethical.
It's moral for you to say, I don't want to do this personally. It's not ethical to impose those
beliefs on someone else. And it's, it's okay now to do that. It's okay to take your morality and
do away with ethics. It's also okay to take your belief and do away with truth. And the two are
very much on the same plane. That one, that was a very, very hot topic there.
And I think that it's, it's easy to jump to a conclusion on, on either side.
It is. The sad truth about it, though, is that the people that are most affected,
don't have a say. You know, they, it's, it's really, it's really tough because they're,
whether, whatever camp you're in, right? If your fetus is a human, then the baby doesn't get a say.
If you are, you know, on the side of the, the mother who sees her life just crashing
in around her or, you know, any of the situations life's threatening, you know, they are more rare,
but would definitely affect that individual. I think we would all benefit from taking a huge step
backwards and viewing all parties concerned as beings that should have an equal say in this.
But yeah, that, that there are people and people, we can all feel very, very strongly, but at the end
of the day, people are involved. And if you view people as people, as humans, as having just as,
as much value as you do, I think we could all probably have a lot more compassion, no matter where
you fit on the spectrum. It's very volatile topic. And, and I, and that'll probably make some folks
upset. And no matter what you're upset about, either because somebody shouldn't have a say or
because, you know, somebody should have a voice that you feel doesn't, that emotion is okay.
Why are you mad? You know, is there a reason why, like that could be used one way or another?
You know, like just go through, go through, ask, ask yourself why you feel that way.
And then I think we could all stand with having some compassion. Because it, like you said,
Robert, in those situations, it's not us. So it's easy for us to sit back and say,
you know, what's right and what's wrong. But that's a luxury that we have as armchair,
you know, spectators. We are armchair spectators on everyone else's life, but our own. And
that's where your morals come in is in your own particular quarterback chair. That's it.
Your morals don't matter outside of that. Your morals, your life, you can't impose your morals
on somebody else. Do we want to go and find other people that share those morals? Yes.
That's human nature. We want to find people who are part of our own tribe. But you can't sit there
and take your morals and impose them on someone who does not have the same value set.
We've seen this over and over again throughout the world. And it never ends well.
Fortunately, I think that's human nature is that we do want to control the world. Unfortunately,
you know, if we just go back to that Michael Jackson song, if you want to change the world,
you know, start with the person looking back at you in the mirror. And we're often a lot
harder on other people than we are on ourselves. Absolutely. And I think that a lot of people
would be a lot better to other people if they did give themselves that critical once over.
And you know, I mean, and like I said, I mean, we've kind of gotten off topic, but it doesn't hurt
to take that critical once over. And you know, tonight when you put down your phone and you're
thinking about your, whatever it was that you were talking about during the day, just kind of do
a self-check, do an inventory and say, okay, well, here's the things that I've been concerned about.
Here's the things that I've been worried about. And then kind of ask yourself, okay, well, what
of this is belief? What of it is truth? What of it is morals? What of it is ethics? And what of it
could possibly be used to manipulate me one way or the other? And then why would someone want to
manipulate me? And once you start answering those questions for yourself, and again, that's
going to be a different, that's going to be a different answer set for every single person on
this planet. So once we, once we do that, then we can start saying, okay, well, how can I avail
myself of a different perspective? And how can I maybe start looking at something from the other
side or from another viewpoint so that we can actually kind of cleanse ourselves and say, okay,
let's start looking for the truth rather than the fraction of truth that's being used to manipulate
us. And that comes back to misinformation, disinformation, right? We can use the truth and try to
get a very volatile outcome with it. We can also twist the truth. This is going to get much worse
because look at the capability of deep fakes now. That's a scary, scary topic. It's here. It's no
longer five years in the future. It is here. And I am telling you, as bad as it is right now,
you throw the ability to use deep fakes in the mix. And you are going to see this taken to a whole
new level. And I'm going to tell you by then it's going to be too late to sit back and do that
inventory and start looking for what's true and what's not. You're just going to be swept up in
the tidal wave along with everyone else. By reactions. That's the biggest takeaway here.
Misinformation, disinformation campaigns, especially anything tied with emotion. It's about making
you emotional where you make lower quality decisions and you react. There is benefit to quick
reaction. Sometimes just make sure it's not coming from an emotional standpoint. And you know,
anyone who bought a car understands this. How much pressure are you under to sign now?
No, they don't want you to go home and think about it for 24 hours and then come back and sign
the papers. No, no, this deal is we got the manager down. He's ready to do this. We got the bank
online. They might not say yes tomorrow. And they're not alone.
No, and I'll even say like some of you folks might be thinking about your last car purchase
experience and you're like, yeah, I knew what I was getting. All right. But I bet at least
maybe 90% of you, even though you weren't emotional about the deal, there was a sunken cost
fallacy that that played a part. They kept you waiting. You were waiting and waiting to the point
where you thought maybe, you know, maybe this isn't worth it. And then you thought, but then I
would have to go to another dealership and I would have to say here for another hour and a half
waiting to sign these papers. By the time they brought you those papers, you were more than ready
to sign them. Take the keys of that car and just be done with your day. They've they've got this
deal. They want you to do something now. They're playing on your emotions. And you know, it's
it's not even so much as as much of the offer as it is the fact that, well, that car may not be
here tomorrow. I can only hold it for this amount of time. And we don't have a lot of those.
They've got other people asking for them. And right now you're the person who has dibs on it.
And you're just stuck and you're now in that emotional place where you're like, man, I really
like this car. It's the right color. It's got most of the options I want. It's a it's a price.
I think I can live with. Could you do better? Probably. But it wants to go through another three-hour
process and pick another different car and waiting for everything to come back and do when it's
they got you at a certain point. Absolutely. Oh, it's so sad. It's so sad.
We're manipulated everywhere we go. But again, you know, it's one of those things that once you're
aware of it, you can start looking for it. And the more you look for it, the more you're going to find it.
And you're going to have to then make peace with yourself as to what you're going to do with that
recognition. Because like I said, I mean, going and telling everybody else, they're wrong, is is not
going to get you anywhere. That's going to make your try very small. Oh, there's how you win
friends and influence people. No, wait, it's not how you win friends and influence people. That's
right. That's how you lose friends and get people even further stuck in the mud. Absolutely. Nobody
wants to be told they're wrong or they're they're following something that's not true or that
their beliefs are wrong. Nobody wants to hear that. So you're going to have to make a decision, a
conscious decision, as to what it is you're going to do with this nugget of truth. And the thing
is is if you're willing to look, you will find other people who also are critically thinking about
the world around them. And that right there is the problem is that critical thinkers are not as
common as we would like to believe. And it's hard to remain critically thinking all the time.
It's exhausting. I would add to that, Robert, a pitfall of being a critical thinker is you don't
want to end up becoming a cynical thinker. Because that is a dark path of having your eyes open
and seeing a lot of this stuff, you still have to be able to find the humanity and things and
and be secure in yourself. And that's something that I personally struggle with is I become a very
cynical thinker sometimes. And I have to challenge that as well because that's just as dangerous
as being one of the sheep, you know, because then you fall into the same kind of mental pitfalls
as as the folks who aren't considering things. So you have to have a balance. That's where
my recommendation for this is to look at all the things that make you upset and then say, okay,
now out of those, what out of that actually directly impacts me that I can do something about?
There might be lots of things directly impacting you, but what out of that can you actually do
something about? And it's at that point that you have to start focusing your attention and saying,
okay, well, these things here are something I can actually do something about. Well, focus your
efforts there and stop wasting your energy on things that you will never be able to change.
Absolutely. And I would just I would say it seems daunting, but if you're truly being honest
with yourself, what Robert just said, there has a lot of power. There might be an almost
endless list of things that you can come up with that you can have no impact on. You can't really
change. But if you focus on just a few that you might be able to come up with at first that you
can influence and that you can change, one, it'll do two things. One, maybe three things. The
first thing is it will occupy you. Instead of spinning your wheels and just being upset about
all the things you can't change, which quickly turns into the world is against you and you're never
going to win. You know, you'll have something that you can work towards. The second thing is that
it will actually improve your life because you'll be able to work on those things and you'll
feel like you have some kind of control over all of this misinformation, disinformation, everything
that is trying to manipulate you into buying something, unlocking someone's account, you know,
whatever it is that is going to try to elicit an emotional decision making process, you'll have
a little bit more control over. And then the third thing is by actively doing things and
pursuing things that you can change by seeing how that impacts your life, you'll actually start
seeing a bigger list of things that you can do to evoke change, to combat all of these pressures
on you. It'll open your eyes and that list of things that you can actually change will grow.
And so you'll actually see more things and you'll be able to make a bigger individual difference
and then by making an individual difference, not by beating people over the head of the club
because that's what's going on now. That's what's not working. That big beer club is not the answer.
But by changing yourself slowly, you will start to see change in the people around you, I think.
Yes. And you know, something that this is a deep topic on so many different levels and honestly,
this is more than a single podcast could ever suss out. But our goal here is to just get people
thinking about it. Just start thinking about the things that are evoking an emotional response
from you. Think about the things that you are just blindly accepting as truth. Think of the things
that are just set up to keep you focused on something other than your actual life in front of you.
And I think we're going to find that it's kind of daunting, which is why I say, take a list of
all the things that you can actually make a change with and start focusing there.
And it's not an easy thing to do. But it is something that will be much more beneficial when you
can focus on things that you can actually make a difference on. That is when you will start feeling
better about this and being able to make a bigger impact on the people around you. Absolutely.
Because then you are able to recognize that email that is trying to manipulate you. And if you
are not the security team, you can call the security team and say, hey, look, I've got this email,
I've got a bad feeling about it. And you know, take a look at this and see what you think.
If we had more people just stopping to do that, imagine what the news cycle would look like if
if everybody that read the news just said, hmm, let me take a step back and look at this through a
different lens. Do you imagine they would have to change the way they're doing things?
Absolutely. But we need, we all need to have the courage to challenge fear.
Yes. Our own fear.
You can't really do this. I will say this right now. Neither Robert nor I are mental health professionals.
No, we are not giving you life advice nor should you take life advice from us because we have
both made horrible life choices and are not examples to follow it in any way shape or form.
That's what we both struggle. And we, and I guess that's where we can talk about this with maybe
a little depth because we both have that demon on our shoulders. We both deal with emotions and
we both have to challenge ourselves. So, you know, this is friendly advice as we might give any
friend who is dealing with this kind of stuff. But we're not, we're not counselors, we're not
psychiatrists, we're not psychologists, we will not prescribe you drugs. However, if this episode
has helped you and helped you start challenging some of your beliefs and you can always come back
and give it a listen any time. Unless my agro wants to sponsor us in which case we might sell you a
drug. I don't know how a boner would help you with this topic, but it might. It wouldn't hurt.
If it lasts for too long, it might. It lasts longer than six hours. Yeah, no, no. That is not what we
are not here to sell you shit. So, that's kind of the name of the podcast. No shit, InfoSec,
we're not here to sell you shit. That's not what we are doing. We're here to talk about the topics,
talk about what's going on and not be shills for fill in the blank. And just be people. Yeah.
Hey, two people. Look at the problem. And throw and have our two cents. Yeah, with that in mind,
do you have your pick of the week? I do have a pick of the week. Are you a Game of Thrones fan?
I did watch Game of Thrones. After the last season, I do not know if I would describe myself as a fan,
but go ahead. Did you watch the first episode of the new prequel? I didn't.
Like in it. I will say why. And then you tell me why you like it, because I think it's important,
and there are going to be people who want to go on that journey with you. The reason why I refuse
to watch the spinoff, the prequel, is because I personally, a lot of people did like the way that
everything wrapped up with Game of Thrones. I was one of the people who did not like it.
And as we mentioned before, I'm a writer. I have written books, stories, a big thing for me.
I felt like there were certain story elements that didn't get respect. That's just my personal
opinion. I have no sway over these things. The head of HBO studios said that he was very pleased
that people were so upset with the ending of season nine. Now they might have changed their mind
on that one. But upset people, talk about it, and upset people will consume more. I promptly
canceled my HBO subscription at a point. So just as a matter of my personal taste and staying away
from that, I decided not to watch it. But with that in mind, not everybody was upset with Game of Thrones.
So please tell me what you like about it. Let me ask you another question. Did you ever watch lost?
For like two and a half seasons, and then I called the ending.
Well, there's the thing. There are very few shows that have a really great storyline that
actually reach a good conclusion when they're turned into a series. And that's because there's
too much involved in that storytelling to make it come to a good conclusion. And at some point in
time, somebody says we've got to wrap things up now, put a pretty bow on it. They call in the
writers from Hallmark. They give everybody a good happy feel, good ending, and they all go off
on their way in the sunset. Do I like that? No. Did I like all of the storyline that led up to that
last season? Absolutely. Do I think? Yeah, I agree with you. So maybe in the future, I would just
stop before the last season. I made it my own ending before watching it. And my ending was much
better. There you go. But I have that viewpoint on. There's very few shows I've seen wind down
where it's not a let down. But I do see that this storyline, there's a lot of promising things in
there. They're teasing out a lot of the things that were in the periphery of the Game of Thrones
that maybe didn't get the attention that they could have. They've opened the door for a lot of
good storytelling. And they've got a really good cast of characters and some really young ones
that I believe will be able to follow through. And again, as actors reach a point, they want to
move on to something else. Life gets in the way and then shows take a turn that the writer didn't
necessarily want. But that's going to be pretty much with any show that you invest time in. But for
now, I give it a good thumbs up. I'm glad you are enjoying it. I may join the journey once it's
complete. Don't wait for the journey to be complete. You've got to go on the ride. And
here's the thing. For me, my world crashed with the movie The Running Man.
You read the book first? I did. It was a huge fan of the short story. I loved it. I was so pumped
and waiting for the movie. And I went to go see it. I was just like my world had just ended. It was just
that was Michael or a certain Michael. It was Stephen King writing under his pen name Richard Bachman,
I believe. I was the opposite. I saw all the old in The Running Man first. And then later
discovered it was a book and decided to read it. And that is probably honestly, I don't know if it's
because I like the cyberpunk genre. And it really closely fits into there. But that's probably my
favorite Stephen King novel. If not, I have the dragon. I think it's called, which is his least
favorite novel that he's ever written, which is actually fantasy and super good. Yes, but no,
I read the mistake of reading the book first. And no, that was horrible. I try now not to watch
movies that I read the book or at least wait and read the book after the movie. As I did with
Ready Player One, I watched the movie first and then went and read the book and I was so
glad that I did that. You got to have two enjoyable experiences, right? Absolutely.
Because I was able to enjoy Ready Player One as a movie. And then I was able to go read the book
and enjoy it even more. I thought that I think that's a much better way of experiencing things
rather than the other way. Okay, so let's give, let's actually name your pick of the week
besides Game of Thrones prequel. What is it called again? I would show, I'm
have to put it in the show notes. Something, something, there you go. I was so
away with it, I don't remember the name. Well, that's okay because my pick of the week is actually,
I've got two of them and they will be in the show notes as well. I've got links in our podcast
that Robert will put in there for us. The first one is you can either follow the link or just go
into YouTube and type in optimizing user experience and advertising research with eye tracking.
Now this is an interesting video from 2017 and in this video it doesn't show it at first but this
is a wearable device that they would do for market research to track where people's eye movements
are on the page so that you can optimize your web page and user experience and customer flow
for the optimal customer journey which as we know is buying stuff or clicking things or reading
things. This is important, it's really great but as you get further in the video you'll see that
this is a device and this back in 2017 and it seems a little cumbersome. I want you to think about
that and I want you to look at the device that you normally do most of your reading and interaction
with. For the majority of folks that's going to be a mobile device and what is in the front
staring you in the face. So it can already tell where your eyes are going. So I think it's a
really really like look at the sales pitch, look at this video is designed to sell this product
to companies. The second one is the second pick of the week because I want you to go to hotjar.com
again there is going to be sorry my alarm is going off in the background. There's going to be a
link in the show notes for hotjar.com and this is website heatmaps and behavior analytics tools.
I want you to take a look at that website. There is a demo video that you can click on and play
there and this is just so that you can understand how influential and how many tools and what
kind of tools big companies have that they can sell to anybody and I used hotjar for a little bit
on a blog that I was running just to see where people were looking at the page. I really think
that you need to take a look at it. It's crazy from a technological standpoint. It will blow your mind
but then it will also make you like this is going to make you look at your interaction with web
pages in a totally different way because you could have gone through this entire episode yelling
at both Robert and I and we've made contrary points at different points in the episode but this
will make you look at it and see and formulate your own opinion of how your data and activity on
the web is actually seen by people who are on the other side of the equation. So please take a
moment maybe go watch some Game of Thrones spin off and check out optimizing user experience
and advertising research with eye tracking as a foundation and then go take a look at hotjar.com
and if you're running a blog or a website you know maybe one of these tools will be useful to you
so you can probably help people are interfacing with your content. Absolutely. All right man you got
anything else? Nope that's it. All right well it's our next time bye bye.
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