Dark tactic: Have we verified that it doesn’t work to present them with a paper saying what their opinion is even if they did NOT fill anything out? I explain how that might work This tactic is based on that possibility:
An unethical political candidate could have campaigners get a bunch of random people together and hand them a falsified survey with their name on it, making it look like they filled it out. The responses support a presidential candidate.
The unethical campaigner might then say: “A year ago, (too long for most people to remember the answers they gave on tests) you filled out a survey with our independent research company, saying you support X, Y and Z.” If authoritative enough, they might believe this.
“These are the three key parts of my campaign! Can you explain why you support these?”
(victim explains)
“Great responses! Do you mind if we use these?”
(victim may feel compelled to say yes or seem ungrateful for the compliment)
“I think your family and friends should hear what great supports you have for your points on this important issue, don’t you?”
(now new victims will be dragged in)
The responses that were given are used to make it look like there’s a consensus.
(too long for most people to remember the answers they gave on tests)
For me at least, one year is also too long for me to reliably hold the same opinion, so if you did that to me, I think I’d likely say something like “Yeah, I did support X, Y and Z back then, but now I’ve changed my mind.” (I’m not one to cache opinions about most political issues—I usually recompute them on the fly each time I need them.)
Implement feedback surveys for lesswrong meta stuff, and slip in a test for this tactic in one of the surveys a few surveys in.
Having a website as a medium should make it even harder for people to speak up or realize there’s something going on, and I figure LWers are probably the biggest challenge. If LWers fall into a trap like this, that’d be strong evidence that you could take over a country with such methods.
That would be very weak evidence that you could take over a country with such methods. It would be strong evidence that you could take over a website with such methods.
Dark tactic: Have we verified that it doesn’t work to present them with a paper saying what their opinion is even if they did NOT fill anything out? I explain how that might work This tactic is based on that possibility:
An unethical political candidate could have campaigners get a bunch of random people together and hand them a falsified survey with their name on it, making it look like they filled it out. The responses support a presidential candidate.
The unethical campaigner might then say: “A year ago, (too long for most people to remember the answers they gave on tests) you filled out a survey with our independent research company, saying you support X, Y and Z.” If authoritative enough, they might believe this.
“These are the three key parts of my campaign! Can you explain why you support these?”
(victim explains)
“Great responses! Do you mind if we use these?”
(victim may feel compelled to say yes or seem ungrateful for the compliment)
“I think your family and friends should hear what great supports you have for your points on this important issue, don’t you?”
(now new victims will be dragged in)
The responses that were given are used to make it look like there’s a consensus.
For me at least, one year is also too long for me to reliably hold the same opinion, so if you did that to me, I think I’d likely say something like “Yeah, I did support X, Y and Z back then, but now I’ve changed my mind.” (I’m not one to cache opinions about most political issues—I usually recompute them on the fly each time I need them.)
Someone should see if this works.
Of course, you need to filter for people who fill out surveys.
Idea:
Implement feedback surveys for lesswrong meta stuff, and slip in a test for this tactic in one of the surveys a few surveys in.
Having a website as a medium should make it even harder for people to speak up or realize there’s something going on, and I figure LWers are probably the biggest challenge. If LWers fall into a trap like this, that’d be strong evidence that you could take over a country with such methods.
That would be very weak evidence that you could take over a country with such methods. It would be strong evidence that you could take over a website with such methods.