No Conspiracies Needed

I've been meaning to write this for a while.  I teach how to use behavioral techniques to get unwanted behavior to stop.  There has been quite a bit of behavioral conditioning that has happened in our body politic and it's impacting our ability to function and even discuss democratically - solutions to our problems.

First - I want you to read - Kurt Anderson's article in the Atlantic - about how America lost it's mind: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/

I come at this behaviorally. I teach the science of how to cause unlearning, otherwise known as how to extinguish unwanted behaviors using operant conditioning techniques. I focus mainly on how this knowledge is or should be applied to the problem of bullying/harassment/discrimination and retaliation (which is predicted to occur during behavioral extinction).

One of the things that has happened to facilitate the fantasy beliefs is that we have had 30 plus years of intentional behavioral conditioning (which can also be considered brainwashing) by the right and republicans to reward certain behaviors and ignore others. At this point there are some very obvious conditioned responses that people on the right have when confronted with certain types of … cognitively dissonant knowledge.   

Getting masses of people to act irrationally takes a concerted effort and we have been experiencing a perfect storm of that – involving various actors all acting out of self interest and not necessarily colluding – as that isn’t necessary for the outcome we saw.  The Russia “hack” piggy backed onto the groundwork that was laid by the republican party decades before which is why we see more of this on the right and the left version of this is still mostly on the fringe but edging in towards the center.

No Conspiracy is needed:

While it is comforting to think that there is some grand conspiracy causing this. there probably isn't. It's just a perfect political storm of independent actors who for their own motivations - contribute and support these fantasy beliefs.

It's not so much of a grand conspiracy as a perfect storm of groups advocating for different but related things in a way that encouraged cult like thinking that was easily co-opted by bad actors. And it just kind of climaxed at our present moment. Like, what Russia did wouldn't have been possible if we had not had 50 years of The Fellowship's co-option of the religious right into a political force, 40 years of Republicans pushing ever more partisan/tribal rhetoric (us good, them bad - always), Greedy people creating a brain washing tv channel just to make money, headed by Republican who co-opted it into a propaganda outlet (Fox), Exploitative capitalists co-opting the republican party and their hyper partisan and increasingly brainwashed base to push for anti-capitalist/pro-oligarchy reforms and the Republican party leadership being ok with that as it meant more power to the party. And finally - Russia coming in and co-opting the entire thing for their own ends. All of these things overlap but are separate and led to the perfect storm that is what we are experiencing now.

What is the fix?

That - I am really rather pessimistic about. 

I really do feel that in order to help get America back on track – we need to understand what conditioned responses were trained into segments of our populace (like the knee jerk – what about the democrats/liberals – that occurs whenever a republican is caught behaving badly).  We need to educate ourselves on how exactly those responses are reinforced and how exactly to remove that reward and what exactly happens when we do that – since it isn’t pretty and involves something called an extinction burst (or a blow out) in behavioral training lingo.

It would require a massive coordinated effort by many segments of society simultaneously.

First – the science: To extinguish an unwanted behavior – you remove the reward. Which requires understanding how the behavior is rewarded. Once you remove the reward, then the animal escalates their behavior to get their reward back. If the reward is well and truly gone – eventually the animal will blow out and the behavior will be “extinguished” but only kind of because they will periodically try to get their reward back.

So … imagine a rat trained to press a lever and it gets food. If the lever stops working, the rat keeps pressing it, trying to get it’s reward back. If it is truly broken, it will eventually stop. But before it stops it will become almost frantic trying to get it’s reward back. Pressing the lever almost continually – that is the extinction burst.   Even after extinction, the rat will occasionally will try the lever every once and again and if they get a hit – they will go right back into their old behaviors. A good way to think of this is that it’s like an addiction.   

There are things that can interrupt the extinction process. For instance, if every once in a while pressing the lever results in food – the rat will be rewarded and will have learned – I just gotta press this lever a whole lot to get food.  This is what is known as variable reinforcement and it strengthen the behavior – which is why people in abusive relationships have such a hard time leaving – they are being variably reinforced.

There are things that can make the extinction easier – like allowing the rat to get its reward in a different way- so – give them a different lever to get their food and they will abandon the old broken lever more quickly and with less fuss than if the old lever is their only option. 

This process can also cause all sorts of superstitious behavior to erupt as the animal becomes unsure of what works and what doesn’t and creates theories about what works and what what might increase its chances of the lever working. And yes, this ^ is directly related to our collectively becoming unhinged – on the left and the right.

The only way to extinguish a behavior – successfully – is to remove the reward permanently.  This is fairly easy to do with a rat – nearly impossible to do with a free ranging human because free ranging humans can find other ways to get their reward and humans can be very very very creative when it comes to trying to manipulate the system – so to speak.

Now – increase  all of this to a group level dynamic and you exponentially increase the size of the problem and the nature of it.  Cultural change, change management in organizations – all are related to this – except – it’s not changing the email system in an office, or changing a cultural norm in an office, it’s society wide! It can be done – but It’s super hard to do and super hard to control.

Once you understand how and why these dynamics play out and why the push back occurs and that the push back is a sign that you are successfully removing the reward, you can more easily understand what is happening and what needs to happen.

To answer the question – how – to engineer an extinction process at a societal level.  We have to collectively remove their rewards. Those rewards can be social validation (which they can get in their sub groups), societal approval, legal approval, etc etc. 

1.    One aspect of this will have to be done by the media – mainstream – teaching them how to effectively deny and shut down the lies that are told effectively in a way that will actually work to remove the reward telling lies has for the people who tell them and believe them.

2.    Another aspect of this has to be political. Rational republicans HAVE to push back and push back hard against this.  Democrats do too on their side – the far left is engaging in some really crazy stuff too – all originating in the same place.  And again, there are ways to do this that will remove the reward, the problem is that the push back on this (the extinction burst/escalation) will be so severe that very few are willing to do it at all because it would probably be political suicide at this point.

3.    Rank and file republicans who hate this have to stop rewarding the party for doing this stuff. If enough stop rewarding the party it will have an impact.

4.    We have to figure out how to respect free speech while using counter speech more effectively to marginalize crazy beliefs.  My guess is part of this is related to advertising revenue since part of the misinformation is just opportunists selling click bait.

5.    The courts – can’t under-estimate that – The crazies now have the ability to populate the courts with people who will legally validate the crazy stuff they believe and that will have decades long impact on our ability to push back and deny the rewards for behavior based on crazy beliefs.  The only thing really protecting us from full fledge descent into this is the courts. 

If I were to design a push back – 

My first task would be to mobilize and convince rational republicans to NOT allow any justices to be seated by this president or by Pence.  Failure to do that means nothing else being done will matter as they will be receiving legal validation/reward. Pretty much the only thing stopping them right now is the legal system. That defense against insanity – must not be breached.  

But this comes to the 2^nd thing I would do. Rational republicans need to be positively rewarded for breaking with their party. Not sure how to do this but if we don’t give them rewards elsewhere – they will continue to seek rewards from their party – no matter how broken.

I would also work on training journalists on techniques to remove the reward people get from spreading propaganda on television.

Finally – I would use the extinction burst against these people to help move public opinion. For instance, Trump is easy to manipulate. He’s responses are so conditioned they are super easy to trigger. When he feels threatened he fights back and that fighting back makes him look like the unhinged person he is. That triggering can be done intentionally because whenever he is unhinged, he loses support. It raises the cost of his behavior and his enablers get that cost too. The strategic change that should be made is to not let off on the pressure. He is currently experiencing this sort of pressure variable. And so far – he’s been able to reclaim control, but if he is intentionally triggered over and over and over again – he will remain off balance. Consistency is what extinguishes behavior, variability – strengthens it.

Now – ramp up that idea to an entire political party – or media or whatever.

Sorry to ramble, but there is no easy solution to this and because the behaviors are being rewarding in a bunch of different ways – there are a bunch of different things that have to be done to shut it down. And there is no way to do what has to be done without triggering extinction bursts and it isn’t’ going to be pretty and people on the right are threatening violence (which is consistent with extinction bursts). The only way to succeed is to understand what technically has to be done in order to engineer it in society what it will entail and mitigating the risks and the level of push back/violence that will occur when it is done. And that will take several people together working on the various aspects of this to create a strategy that would actually have a good chance of succeeding.