with tips such as “identify the author”

Glad we can agree on the Early Life check.

Anyways, this is a really weird one. The gist here is that some Google satellite group came up with some videos that explains the absolute basics of critical thinking. Journalists are using that project, along with a handful of unrelated studies, to discretely swap the current justification for propaganda ("our enemies are liars") with a new one ("the science proves us right"). This is just one article of a campaign, and all the articles say basically the same thing.

What makes it weird is that this is a pretty complex move, for no real gain. Everyone who already bought their propaganda believed both those reasons anyways, and nobody who rejected them would have their mind changed. The new justification is just as tired as the old one, so it's not really an improvement. The project and studies being put forth are pretty low-effort in themselves, having been a waste of resources and time. And none of this comes off like it's meant to humiliate.

But it still required the effort of multiple actors in multiple universities and corporations to line up, and then to organize the media campaign. It's a pretty complex move, for no real gain I can see.

Maybe this is some kind of narrative maintenance, and this article is so transparent that you can see the internal workings of the Cathedral in a way you usually couldn't. Or maybe this is just the end result of one of their many projects to produce narrative weapons, one that ultimately led to nothing special, but they decided to deploy it anyways because they've already put the resources in and really got nothing to lose.

with tips such as “identify the author”

Glad we can agree on the Early Life check.

Anyways, this is a really weird one. The gist here is that some Google satellite group came up with some videos that explains the absolute basics of critical thinking. Journalists are using that project, along with a handful of unrelated studies, to discretely swap the current justification for propaganda ("our enemies are liars") with a new one ("the science proves us right"). This is just one article of a campaign, and all the articles say basically the same thing.

What makes it weird is that this is a pretty complex move, for no real gain. Everyone who already bought their propaganda believed both those reasons anyways, and nobody who rejected them would have their mind changed. The new justification is just as tired as the old one, so it's not really an improvement. The project and studies being put forth are pretty low-effort in themselves, having been a waste of resources and time. And none of this comes off like it's meant to humiliate.

But it still required the effort of multiple actors in multiple universities and corporations to line up, and then to organize the media campaign. It's a pretty complex move, for no real gain I can see.

Maybe this is some kind of narrative maintenance, and this article is so transparent that you can see the internal workings of the Cathedral in a way you usually couldn't. Or maybe this is just the end result of a long-term project that was intended to produce a narrative weapon and largely failed, but they decided to deploy it anyways because they've already put the resources in and really got nothing to lose.