How to judge a person has been brainwashed——An attempt to quantify the degree of brainwashing

We often see arguing on the Internet that the two sides are blushing and their necks are thick, attacking each other and being brainwashed, and Matters is of course not exempt. However, the problem is that at this time, "brainwashing" is only used as a weapon to attack the opponent, and it is only used for the purpose of humiliating the opponent, and it has no effect other than that. In order for a concept to really work and inspire us, it must be rigorously defined and, if possible, quantified, so that it can be rescued from ambiguity so that both sides of the argument have a chance to prove it. Make your own claims or falsify the views of others.

Therefore, I decided to use the first day of 2020 to complete a difficult task, which is to give a precise definition and quantitative indicators of "brainwashing degree".

The first step is to define what exactly is "brainwashing". Literally, the degree to which a person has been brainwashed. When A attacks B being brainwashed, A means that B has no independent thinking ability of his own, and will only use the thoughts instilled into him to express and communicate. Here, ideas can be either loyal to the Chinese Communist Party or Long Live Western Democracy. The point is not what kind of ideas are, but that the brainwashed can only copy the ideas instilled by others for cognition (whether it is a factual judgment or a value evaluation). But the obvious fact is that it is impossible for any one person to cognition completely with his own mind. For example, my knowledge of Chinese was taught by others since kindergarten. I'm thinking and writing in Chinese right now, and it's obviously ridiculous to say I've been brainwashed just because of that. Another example is when I use the concept of "macho" to evaluate the student cadre at Peking University who forced his girlfriend to commit suicide (see my essay "Waseda University Students in the Custom Shop and Peking University Students in Chastity Square"), "Mr. The concept of "ism" and the values behind it was obviously not invented by me either, I just took it and used it to evaluate others. Therefore, if we measure the degree of brainwashing by how many thoughts we express come from others, I am afraid that almost everyone is a serious victim of brainwashing. Obviously, we have to use other criteria to define brainwashing. So, how to choose this standard? Before that, let's take a look at the following cognitive map.

As shown in the figure, as the subject of cognition, our cognition of the world must be different from the real world. No matter what kind of cognition method is adopted, the final form is "my world", that is, the cognition subject's understanding of the real world. all judgments of the world. And if special cognitions such as divine revelation are excluded, there are only three cognitive pathways that constitute "My World", which are the ①②③④ in the diagram.

① Indicates that the cognitive subject makes judgments by directly connecting with the "real world". For example, I ate a piece of chocolate, and the taste told me that it was sweet, so in "Minecraft", there was a cognition of "this piece of chocolate is sweet". If I've eaten a lot of chocolate, I'll come to the conclusion that "all chocolate is sweet".

② Indicates that the cognitive subject obtains the cognition of the "real world" by learning from the "other world". For example, I have never eaten chocolate, but because my good friend told me that chocolate is sweet, and I believed it, the judgment "chocolate is sweet" also appeared in "Minecraft".

③ Indicates that the cognitive subject not only has a direct connection with the "real world", but also learns from the "other world", and finally draws a conclusion through his own analysis. Let’s take chocolate as an example. Although I have read in books that chocolate is sweet, I didn’t believe it, but only after tasting it myself did I come to the conclusion that “chocolate is all sweet”. Or conversely, although I ate a piece of chocolate and found that it was sweet, I was not sure if all chocolate was sweet, so I asked other people how they felt, and found that others felt the same, so I got Come to the conclusion that "Chocolate is sweet".

④ Indicates that although the cognitive subject has no direct connection with the "real world", it makes its own judgment by comparing and using different information in the "other world" and using logical reasoning. For example, I have never eaten chocolate, but I saw white sugar in the ingredient list on the chocolate packaging, and I knew that white sugar was sweet, so I came to the conclusion that chocolate is sweet. Of course, there are some knowledges such as the earth is a planet, the earth revolves around the sun, etc. Although they have not been tested by my reasoning, these have been verified, so they can also be classified in ④.

Clearly, the cognitions obtained in these four pathways correspond to three different cognitive attitudes. If a person's cognition comes entirely from the first way, it means that he does not believe in all other people's opinions except to experience his own feelings, so his world is completely based on "I" centered world. And if a person's cognition is completely from the second way, it means that he is a guy who has no opinion at all and only knows how to follow the crowd. These two extremes are obviously not desirable. The best way of knowing is to not only experience the experience in person, but also learn from the knowledge and opinions of others, and use your own reason to make the final judgment. However, our life is limited, and it is impossible to experience everything in person. Therefore, we often need to use the fourth way to make judgments by using logical reasoning. ③④ These two cognitive approaches obviously require the use of one’s own reason to make judgments. In Kant’s words, this is the cognitive attitude of “enlightenment”.

So, what does this have to do with brainwashing that I want to define? Obviously, the knowledge obtained by way ② is the knowledge that has been brainwashed.

For example, I once surveyed local students' views on Japanese in a rural village in Henan, and almost all the children said in unison that Japanese people are bad people. They have never been in contact with any Japanese, nor with Japanese-related things (such as Japanese manga). Therefore, this view can only be obtained from adults, and believed by children to be included in "Minecraft". We can say that these kids are brainwashed when it comes to evaluating the Japanese.

Going back to the concept of "brainwashing degree", if we can accurately judge a person's knowledge and see which way of acquiring knowledge belongs to ①②③④, then we can get "brainwashing degree". At the extreme, if a person's knowledge is obtained entirely from way ②, then his "brainwashing degree" is 100%. Of course, there is no such example in real life, but in the novel Brave New World it is. In the fictional world created by the author Huxley, people are constantly instilled with various knowledge in the embryonic period. Of course, such people are 100% brainwashed.

Judgment ② is actually not difficult. If a person is simply repeating the opinions of others, he can basically judge that he has been brainwashed. The difficulty lies in ④, because many brainwashed people also make certain reasoning, although the logic is often invalid. For example, partial generalization, causal inversion, wrong attribution, etc., so the logical validity of the analytical approach ④ becomes a necessary test step.

Well, now we can complete the definition. The so-called brainwashing degree means that when an individual recognizes the world and forms "my world", he obtains knowledge through path ②, or uses invalid logic to obtain knowledge through path ④. The proportion of class knowledge is the degree of brainwashing.

In the second step, let's try to build indicators. First of all, it is of course unrealistic to judge the degree of brainwashing of a person. After all, it is impossible for us to list all the cognitions that this person has and then judge them one by one. Therefore, what I am trying to measure here is the degree of brainwashing of an article. Moreover, since most literary articles describe the world from personal emotions, they generally do not have a great degree of brainwashing (unless it is deliberately plagiarized), so I will ignore them directly. What I really want to measure with the concept of brainwashing is, of course, those comments on public events, such as the most popular commentary on Matters. So, how do we establish quantitative indicators? According to my previous definition, we can use the following three indicators to judge.

1. The amount of knowledge from different sources is represented by ①K, ②K, ③K or ④K respectively; 2. The logical validity from the argument to the conclusion is represented by LT for logically valid and LF for logically invalid.

Take "probably this is my last post at Matters" first.

When I first got into Matters, I thought it was just a really good content creation platform on the block, but as I got longer at Matters, I realized it was a problematic platform. ①K-1

If you have been in Matters for a while, you will find that this platform is a gathering place for content that "slanders China and creates rumors". ①K-2 There are many writers here, who advocate what they call freedom, and then say "Chinese people don't deserve a future", "Chinese people don't know what democracy and freedom are" and so on. ①K-3

Everyone has a future, as long as they are still alive, there is a future with dreams and no dreams.

I want to say that real democracy and freedom are based on the law, not if you want to set fire to kill you today. ④ The real democracy and freedom of K-1 are not against morality and harmless to reason. ④K-2

It's like the United States has always said that it is "democratic and free", and the proliferation of guns is killing people every day. ②K-1 This is democracy, is this freedom? Do what you want to show democracy and freedom at the expense of other people's lives? ②K-2 fuck off !

In other countries and regions, every citizen has the right to vote and vote. It is indeed very democratic, and that is because the population of this country in this region is small. ② If K-3 chooses a leader, the election process will be completed quickly. ②K-4

Everyone in China also has the right to vote and vote, and why there are deputies to the National People's Congress, it is because China has too many people. ②If K-5 wants to complete an election, it will be time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the benefit of deputies to the National People's Congress is to exercise the right to vote and vote on behalf of the people. ②K-6

Such a process is not compulsive, and every deputy to the National People's Congress is elected by the people themselves. ②K-7

And those who slander and slander China, have they really been to China in person? Have they experienced life in China? They did not, and even if they did, it would be short-lived, and they mostly learned about China through public opinion media. ②K-8 This is like a blind man touching an elephant. When he touches the leg of the elephant, he says it is a pillar, which is ridiculous.

In addition, if you want to slander China, please come up with evidence instead of telling lies. ①K-4 This Chinese phrase is called "the grapes are sour if you can't eat the grapes." Those who run on and slander China seem to know the Chinese style very well. I really want you to experience the development process of China. Really Funny.

As shown above, I annotated each sentence in the article, with strikethroughs that were irrelevant or offensive, and the rest were categorized as I described in the definition. These are the analysis for the knowledge part, followed by the logic. In an essay, there is often a conclusion and arguments supporting its conclusion, thus constituting a logical argument. Of course, some articles are full of assertions, and you can't find logic at all. The table below is the judgment of the logic part above.

Well, let's summarize:

The article has a total of 14 knowledge, of which 4 are from my contact with the "real world" (Matters), 10 are from the "other world", 8 of which are untested, and 2 are unproven common sense. In addition, out of the 9 conclusions drawn in this paper, a total of 4 conclusions have been reasoned, but the reasoning is invalid. There are also 3 conclusions that belong to the assertion without argument.

Therefore, it can be concluded that 57% (8/14) of the knowledge in the article is inaccurate, while 78% (7/9) of the logic is invalid. I haven't figured out how to convert these data into brainwashing degrees in the end, but it's a game anyway, just take a look at it.

Yesterday, I also saw a strange article in the circle of friends "2019, the world has changed, looking back on another year" (from the public account "Data Tucao Center"), I also took one of the paragraphs to try my quantitative model.

After World War II until the end of the 1980s, "peace" and "development" were talked about every day in the media. ②K-1 Although the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union continued, but after all, there was no real large-scale bloodshed . ②K-2 can provide people with safe and happy travel all over the world, and thus the first batch of professional travelers were born. They can live colorfully by selling their travel knowledge. ②K-3 Even though there is a big difference between rich and poor between countries, everyone is full of hope for the future. ②K-4 African countries are developing magnificent infrastructure with the assistance of Europe, the United States and even China, and a happy life seems to be within reach. ② Although K-5 Middle East countries have gradually entered the abyss of warlord politics, their folk customs are open, women can wear short skirts on the streets, and extreme ideas have not yet spread. ②K-6 The economies of Southeast Asian countries are booming, and a new little dragon will be born in a while. ②K-7 South American countries are generally very rich, and if a person is called rich in the media, he will be described as an Argentine. ②K-8 China finally ended various movements in the late 1970s and began to integrate into this prosperous global economic family, working together to build a global village. ②K-9

This paragraph is a very typical piece of "other world" knowledge that has neither source nor proof (the author is obviously not a witness to those historical events), and any reasonable person can see at a glance that there are a total of 9 Judging, almost all of them contain serious partial generalization (I marked them with strikethrough).

Therefore, such an article can be seen at a glance and its brainwashing degree is extremely high, and it can be thrown aside immediately.

Writing here, I suddenly feel that if we have to analyze every article in this way, it is really too tiring, and it is impossible to promote it. Alas, I still admit that the first phase of the effort has temporarily failed. Or wait for the language cognitive ability of artificial intelligence to reach a certain level, and find someone to program a program for the computer to analyze. As for you, if you think it is fun, you can also use this method to judge which authors' commentary is still worth reading, and which author's commentary is seriously brainwashed and can be ignored.