Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Winning the Noise-to-Noise Ratio

It looks like I inadvertently took a weeklong break. I took my computer with me on our Christmas vacation to a little cabin in the Colorado Rockies, but couldn't quite gin up the motivation to delve into political and social commentary when there was hiking and hot tubs in the fresh snow. Idle time went to drinking and playing guitar. I'm sure you can understand. I hope your Christmas was as enjoyable as mine was.

Before the break a few people had reached out to me asking what I thought about the proposed tax cuts. I was surprised that anyone would ask me about that subject, let alone multiple people. It seems pretty straight-forward. Of course I support the tax cuts! It is the second-most important plank in the platform, after immigration reform. Nearly everything the Washington Leviathan does works against our interests. The city is infested with liberals and neocons. They take our money and use it to fund programs that destroy us. That Congress is actually passing substantial tax cuts is almost too good to be true. It's a Christmas miracle.

The only aspect that peeves me is that they are temporary. Why would that be so? If anything, increasing taxes should be temporary. We're going to take some more of your money, but only for a while. Such temporary taxes have occurred frequently throughout history, usually to fund wars. But a temporary tax cut reveals the mindset that our incomes naturally belong to the government, and they are gracious enough to grant us a short-term reprieve. I'm not sure if anyone truly believes that the Trump era, as great as it is, is really going to "save America". We all know the liberals are going to revert his actions and raise taxes the first chance they get. So why make it any easier for them than it needs to be?

Although supporting tax cuts sounds straightforward, it's understandable that people would be skeptical about anything they hear. In fact, people who are naturally suspicious of the tax cuts are probably the people paying attention, as we've learned so often that government actions tend to be the opposite of whatever they were advertised as. It's perfectly consistent to assume that tax cut is just Washington-speak for tax increase. Welcome to the Orwellian present. And, in fact, that is what has happened, but in reverse. The major propaganda was that the tax cuts were going to ravage the middle class. It is, as expected, the opposite of the truth. The new tax plan will significantly alleviate the burden of the middle class, increase taxes at the very top, and leave the bottom pretty well unaffected. (I'm sure you can figure out why a tax cut plan would not greatly effect the lower income brackets.) I even saw a headline on MSNBC predicting that increasing deductibles would cause less charitable donations. They are willing to propose that taking less of people's incomes will cause them to give less to charity. Nothing is too absurd for the mainstream press.

But the people asking me about tax cuts know the media is bunk. They are accustomed to assuming a very low signal-to-noise ratio from these institutions. The noise is nothing new. I think the difference here is that nearly all the noise is coming from the left on this issue. There isn't a great blitz in conservative media arguing for tax cuts, no viral meme campaigns, not even much going around on social media. There's just not much to say on the subject. That tax cuts are desirable is almost self-evident. The left has all kinds of propaganda fodder because they just make shit up and fuel their opposition through fiction-induced rage. They don't have any facts in their favor, but they sure do have emotions. Nancy Pelosi actually called it an apocalypse. The government taking less of peoples' incomes is literally the end of the world! Have you ever heard anything more hyperbolic?

This seems to be a very good example of emotions vs. dry logic in the realm of public persuasion. It's not that the right doesn't engage in emotion-driven persuasion, but they haven't done much on this issue. The alarming outcome is that the left seems to be winning the propaganda battle. One survey found that when asked if they supported the Republican tax plans, 2/3 of Americans reported they did not. Yet when they were asked about the individual components of the plans, there was overwhelming support for almost all of them. If that isn't empirical proof of propaganda, I don't know what is. Public opinions on a subject depend greatly on whether they are forced to think of that subject in terms of public branding or if they are forced to analyze the subject themselves.

We may be winning the signal-to-noise ratio, but are losing the noise-to-noise ratio. The first is important. We try to ensure our messaging contains a high degree of truth. For unpaid hobby blogs like this one that is especially apparent, as the whole point it to try to dig towards the truth and share with anyone willing to follow along. But from a partisan propaganda perspective there is utility in having a high truth signal. For one, people will trust us. It is certainly more persuasive to be trusted than untrusted. I so distrust the left that I assume the opposite position from their's by default on any issue I'm uninformed on. It's a pretty reliable heuristic. For people like me, their propaganda efforts yield a negative return. A second benefit of a high signal-to-noise ratio is that there is a significant market for that. Many people will eventually be driven away by the low signal-to-noise ratio of the left after growing weary of the constant distress of cognitive dissonance. At some point the truth begins to feel like a breath of fresh air. This is a nice effect too, because it means we draw on the most capable from the left, and the dullards stay glued to the corporate boob tube.

Signal-to-noise ratio may be beneficial in the long run, but in terms of individual political battles it doesn't amount to much. The noise-to-noise ratio is far more important. We learned that during the election. The internet's guerrilla campaign to elect Trump was wildly successful because of meme warfare, not because of cold political commentary. Normal people, the swing voters that are needed to sway elections, realize the signal-to-noise ratio in media is weak, and they tend to distrust both sides. However, when they only hear noise from one side, they tend to be influenced by that side, even if the truth signal is practically zero or, as is so often the case, less than zero. It's unfortunate, but it seems that, in our current environment, influence is given to the most noisy, not the most truthful. Perhaps that is Democracy in a nutshell, but here we are nevertheless.

If there is one thing we must be doing it is increasing our noise output at any cost. The major approach to this is not to become some ideological cult. As formulated before on this blog, cults demand purity. Thus they drive away those who would be natural allies. Allies are essential in noise warfare. The noisier the ally, the more valuable. A simple rule of thumb is this: if a public figure tends to pull society in our preferred direction, they are an ally. It may be the case that one day they will push society the wrong way, but we deal with that day when it arises. The normal example I go to is Milo. He's a gay libertarian, certainly more liberal than many on the far right are comfortable with. Still, he sits on our side of the divide, and he's very noisy. He's a valuable ally. Perhaps one day society will shift so far to the right that Milo ends up on the other side. That's not a bad problem to have, and either he will adapt to the new environment or he will lose support from the right. It's not really a big deal. What is a big deal is that we keep in mind that we are engaged in noise warfare, and we desperately need noisy allies to win the persuasion battles.

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