Disinformation Sensitivity Workshop #2: Chains We All Can Believe In

I dare you, I fucking dare you [from this extremely safe distance] to imagine three people are imprisoned in a prison.

Wait, what? "Imprisoned in a prison?" Who's editing this shit? OK, let's make it a bar. With, like, all your favourite kinds of beer, and the good tequila, oh, and you know those wasabi pea things that are about 20% MSG? I love those things.

Right. As I was saying: I dare you, I fucking dare you [from this extremely safe distance] to imagine three people are imprisoned in a bar.

And imagine the interesting and poignant thing about this bar is that the door is wide open.

Now: imagine that one of these three people realises the door to this bar is wide open and tries to escape, but as soon as this happens, all kinds of alarms go off and all three people are gassed until they lose consciousness.

When they wake up one of these three people realises [again] that the door to this bar is wide open and tries [again] to escape. But as soon as this happens the other two people become afraid and argue with the first person, saying, basically: the last time someone tried to escape all kinds of alarms went off and all three of us were gassed until we lost consciousness and it was really socially awkward and got in the way of drinking.

And when the first person again tries to escape, the other two people beat this person up until they lose consciousness, and when this person wakes up they don't try to escape again, even though the door is still wide open.

Furthermore: imagine that one of these three people is then taken away and replaced with a new person. This new person realises that the door is wide open and tries to escape. No alarms go off and no one is gassed, but the original two people remember what happened the last time and become afraid. So they beat up this new person until they lose consciousness, and when this new person wakes up they don't try to escape again, even though the door is still wide open.

Imagine that one of these three people is then taken away and replaced with a new person, who realises the door is wide open and tries to escape, but the other two people, one of whom has never experienced the alarms or the gas, become afraid and prevent this attempted escape by beating up this new person until they lose consciousness.

Now: imagine that one of these three people is then taken away and replaced with a new person, who realises the door is wide open and tries to escape, but the other two people, neither of whom has ever experienced the alarms or the gas, become afraid and prevent this attempted escape by beating up this new person until they lose consciousness.

So here's where I'm going with this: none of these three people have ever had the experience of being gassed but each person will now try to prevent the others from escaping out that wide open door. 

Finally, imagine that one of these people is me and another one of these people is you.

And this, I contend [and still maintain], is predictive programming.