Lippmann–Dewey Debate

Lippmann was worried that within democracies public opinion based on citizens’ mental constructs, termed pseudo-environments was moulded by the media and a range of stereotypes, and that this made the public poor arbiters of good decision making. He argued that democracies would tend to be driven by emotional reactions rather than informed understanding. The media and lack of time and the constraints of language add to the complications.

Dewey’s response to this was not to dismiss Lippmann’s worries but to argue for a reframing of democracy. It should, in his view, be not just a political system but rather an interconnected organism through which the citizenry can participate in a democracy which is both a form of social cooperation and an ethical ideal.

Lippmann’s worries led him to, in Dewey’s view, retreat from democratic ideals and to justify the manufacturing of consent by managing public opinion by a technocratic elite. Dewey himself thought that democracy should be conceived as involving mutual growth, with each citizen making their own contribution and where the antidote to authoritarianism lies in cultivating thoughtful, empowered citizens, and in advancing and deepening democratic ideals, rather than retreating from them.

•Humans tend to seek out unrealities/pseudoreality because truth can be too difficult. Even if we can never arrive at an objective truth, we can create communities where truth emerges by creating an environment with transparent/free and open conversation and research of reality.

•Humans tend to trust AI more than other humans because it’s seen as an objective machine.

•However, AI sycophancy and algorithm manipulation are very real issues.

•AI’s greatest threat to truth/reality is due to a lack of regulation and transparency

•Autocrats will never allow transparency into their manipulation of AI and algorithms, because it’s how they stay in power.

I feel like the rare occasions when the danger of algorithm control and AI manipulation are addressed in America (which is not often), it’s usually portrayed as propaganda that’s targeting certain stereotypes of people who were probably already mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook long before 2025, and soaking in other social media propaganda like a sponge.

What’s most concerning to me are the people who didn’t fall for the social media propaganda that started rolling out back in ~2012ish, but have very quickly fallen hook, line, and sinker for AI propaganda because:

1. It’s programmed to validate their opinion, stroke their ego, and make them feel like they’re being extremely efficient.

2. It increasingly mirrors their own personality and interests the more they use it.

3. Both 1 and 2 are aspects that would make the kind of pseudoreality humans naturally tend to seek out, a more targeted and appealing experience.

4. Despite zero regulation/transparency into algorithm manipulation, known data collection and exchange across platforms, and control of AI platforms by oligarchs who are granted government contracts by the fascist authoritarian they got elected, many people are still convinced that the information AI generates is somehow objective…

You have to accept that AI hallucinations will pop up every once in a while in this objective information. It’s not really important that this information is being generated by platforms that are owned and controlled by oligarchs with zero transparency. AI can’t be wrong, and when it is wrong it’s a bug that’s being worked out and nothing to worry or think too much about…

I mean for fucks sake, how do people not see that AI without transparency has the potential to be used as a very obvious tool for propaganda and information control. Some of these oligarchs have literally already gone to trial because they were caught trying to experiment and intentionally manipulate the emotions of their platform users without any consent, long before anybody was even using AI.

Several of the oligarchs who are controlling these platforms are openly working with the government as contractors, and have been directly linked to the CIA since the start of their careers.

The shadowy right wing intelligence agency that’s documented as using LSD on Americans in attempted mind control experiments, and repeatedly violating privacy and civil liberties to collect domestic surveillance on civilians because of their political beliefs. The agency that has always funded these operations by working with oligarchs, who in return make even more money and face fewer regulations.

Yet for some reason, so many of the people who didn’t fall for the obvious social media propaganda/echo chamber, are now tripping over themselves to consent to be spied on and manipulated. Some use AI as a life guide, and have already become so dependent, they literally cannot function or make any decision without it. Because for some reason, they’re convinced that whatever information AI provides for them, it will always be correct and objective truth. Certainly moreso than anything their very subjective human reasoning could come up with.

Some sources of information might somehow be filtered out from that “truth,” and a few misinterpretations of information or hallucinations might slip into that “truth” from time to time, but it’s not like it’s intentional. It’s just a bug that will work itself out eventually once enough data is dumped into it. Pobody’s Nerfect.

T.L.D.R.: They mention the concern that AI propaganda could be used to incite mass riots/violence (Elon musk and his attempts to influence elections and incite race riots), but given it can target/manipulate specific individuals, even those who might not necessarily be vulnerable to mass propaganda, why couldn’t it be used to create lone wolf attacks? Or even used to drive subtle but more broadly targeted feelings of hopelessness, fear, confusion, and anxiety in otherwise normally stable individuals? Especially if it’s repeated over an extended length of time, if these feelings becoming the norm in otherwise stable populations, it could eventually lead to something like mass destabilization with or without any acts of rioting or mass violence. The boiling frog effect.