r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 18h ago

Society Ukraine Struck Yandex Data Centers, Russian Bots Went Silent—Now Questions Are Mounting

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-struck-yandex-data-centers-russian-bots-went-silent-now-questions-are-mounting-23339
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u/TheWesternMythos 18h ago

As a society , as a species , we don't understand cognitive warfare. We do not understand our minds have been under siege for a while.

Our biological immune system is very good because it was tuned all of evolution. Our cognitive immune system is very much trash as it's had much much less time to tune itself 

We can tune it ourselves during the individual lifespan , but first we need to understand thats a thing to be done.

Everyone knows bots exist. Very few, if any, have mapped their cognitive genealogy...

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u/Consistent-Car6226 17h ago

Yes! When Europeans got good at sailing and could colonize anywhere on the planet, we physically put bodies together that had been separated for 1000s of years. It was a disaster. Sharing viruses wiped out populations of people. I don’t think anyone appreciates how similar the internet/social media is. We are not just physically connected, but everyone’s brains are now mentally connected. Ideas are being shared like a virus. The most viral ideas spread the fastest. And good ideas are going extinct.

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u/hobbycollector 17h ago

The printing press had a similar effect. It basically caused the enlightenment. Revolutions followed and stable monarchies fell.

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u/Mysticmooods 14h ago edited 14h ago

The Plantin-Moretus museum in Antwerp is amazing to see how effective it was historically. 

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u/lizagnadish 17h ago

This is a really good analogy. 

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u/TheWesternMythos 8h ago

Love the historical analogy!

I think since this "force" is so powerful the solution lies in utilizing it as opposed to strictly trying to mitigate it (or even worse ignore it lol)

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u/th1sd3ka1ntfr33 16h ago

The Woke Mind Virus is real holy shit

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u/Consistent-Car6226 16h ago

So is every other mind virus. The ones that will propagate the fastest won’t always be based in facts, truths, or what’s the best for society.

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u/likwidkool 17h ago

Problem is the right think they see everything clearly and we the non believers are the ones being duped. They believe all the Russian and Christian nationalist propaganda as gospel. They’ll never believe it’s them in fact that need to open their eyes and do research.

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u/orus_heretic 16h ago

The purpose of their propaganda is to sow discord. Russia, China, and Iran also infiltrate leftist discussions and flood those information spaces with bullshit. They repeat the same patterns on the right, simply tweaking the content. Their goal is to have western democracies hating each other internally.

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u/TheWesternMythos 8h ago

Well I'm saying it's all of us.

They may be more willing to when it's messaged as all of us need to be different , not YOU have to eventually agree with ME

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u/Psychobob2213 17h ago

There are still plenty of people that don't even know bots exist unfortunately.

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u/TheWesternMythos 8h ago

I have found self blinding is most powerful when it points one towards feeling how one already wants to feel

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u/LevoiHook 17h ago

Even of you are convinced they exist, they are obviously those who don't agree with you. 

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_LEFT_IRIS 15h ago

Mmm… I disagree with your assertion that cognitive warfare is particularly new though, it was just previously the domain of religions. Religious doctrine and ideology throughout history has followed much the same course, and it’s clear to see how deeply entwined the current fascist movement and Christian Fundamentalism have become. Secular thought has generally set religion aside out of distaste, and I’m afraid that that was a mistake. People thought that we could simply free ourselves of religion and educate our way out of its bonds, but instead we simply put a gun on the table for anyone to pick up.

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u/TheWesternMythos 7h ago

Certainly it's new compared to pathogens

And the scaling that social media and ML allows is in many ways a new beast 

Also the secular paths have their own versions of institutional warfare via doctrine 

But with that said I mostly agree with you 

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u/TestProctor 16h ago

I’ve obviously fallen to personal biases and a lack of research or self reflection before, like any other human. The following statement isn’t a brag about how rational and special I am.

I remember the first time I realized that some (most?) people take their own thoughts seriously, as a matter of course. Someone I knew was upset, clearly bothered by something, and when I asked about it they described a thought that had come to them that had them doubting some things about themselves at a fundamental level.

When we talked about it some more, it became clear the problem wasn’t that they found the thought absurd, had no external reason to take it seriously, and agreed that the thought was a net negative.

“So if you don’t want to incorporate that into who you are, don’t think it’s necessarily true, and wouldn’t like the person you’d become if you followed through with it… why take it seriously at all? Sounds like a trash thought, best thrown away, right?”

They looked at me kinda confused. “But… I had that thought, it clearly came from somewhere in me and means something, so I have to take it seriously.”

I had to pretend I didn’t find that concept completely alien.

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u/TheWesternMythos 7h ago

I have definitely had a similar realization but for me it took many  instances for it to stick lol

I will say I think it's important to have a back and forth approach. By that I mean, I aim to over shoot instead of undershoot meaning. Because meaning is essentially useful signal. I may not always know what the signal is in the moment but if I can keep enough context I may gain the insights in the future.

Yet, to your point , its very hard to get the signal if you waste your time time chasing every bit of noise 

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u/AlarmingAerie 15h ago

Speak for yourself. I understand it for a long time.