Sunday, November 05, 2006
JSH: Sophisticated group process
Some of you know there are posters dedicated to replying to me, but you may not pay attention to how closely they work together to keep up the illusion of a lot of resistance to my ideas.
They are a highly communal group. I've found evidence in the past that they even regularly email each other to keep each other informed as they work out a highly effective strategy.
To see it in action, look at my recent thread "Advanced polynomial factorization" to see how they do it, but hurry before they finish their other tactic of clogging up the thread with LOTS of posts that distract people from the mathematical points or push for digressions in to nothing but insults or side issues.
The tactic is one or two of the regular group will make some kind of reply—often not actually making much if any mathematical sense, or while making mathematical sense it will not refute my actual argument.
Then several other posters reply back to them congratulating them on their brilliance, asserting they DID do what they did not, and usually they insult me.
The tactic works.
It has worked for years.
It is such a powerful tactic that many of you who probably think you are reasonable and objective adults went along with it despite dramatic events like that publication in a math journal, where the tactic was just the same—some posters making claims, other posters chiming in to support their claims.
Human nature is to believe in such situations as the psychology is well-worked out, and it's part of the makeup of people to look around to see what others are doing to decide what they do.
It's an essential part of marketing to understand that, which is how you are sold all kinds of things, including things that are not true.
Oh yeah, part of the problem is when you think there are not human beings who would do such a thing.
Um, what world are you living in? In the world I see, there are LOTS of people willing to do some rather nasty things far beyond what these posters have been doing. That they deliberately manipulate many of you to believe faux mathematics is not a huge leap.
That should be the easiest thing to grasp.
They are a highly communal group. I've found evidence in the past that they even regularly email each other to keep each other informed as they work out a highly effective strategy.
To see it in action, look at my recent thread "Advanced polynomial factorization" to see how they do it, but hurry before they finish their other tactic of clogging up the thread with LOTS of posts that distract people from the mathematical points or push for digressions in to nothing but insults or side issues.
The tactic is one or two of the regular group will make some kind of reply—often not actually making much if any mathematical sense, or while making mathematical sense it will not refute my actual argument.
Then several other posters reply back to them congratulating them on their brilliance, asserting they DID do what they did not, and usually they insult me.
The tactic works.
It has worked for years.
It is such a powerful tactic that many of you who probably think you are reasonable and objective adults went along with it despite dramatic events like that publication in a math journal, where the tactic was just the same—some posters making claims, other posters chiming in to support their claims.
Human nature is to believe in such situations as the psychology is well-worked out, and it's part of the makeup of people to look around to see what others are doing to decide what they do.
It's an essential part of marketing to understand that, which is how you are sold all kinds of things, including things that are not true.
Oh yeah, part of the problem is when you think there are not human beings who would do such a thing.
Um, what world are you living in? In the world I see, there are LOTS of people willing to do some rather nasty things far beyond what these posters have been doing. That they deliberately manipulate many of you to believe faux mathematics is not a huge leap.
That should be the easiest thing to grasp.
# posted by James Harris @ 18:05 
