misrepresentation, mind wrecking cognitive dissonance and consistency

Experimental psychology (mind wrecking?) often relies on unconventional
research methods and practices
( bordering with the unethical). It is widely used in media and politics,
in undocumented ways.

Reputable researchers would not engage in such practices, so people without
research experience and without ethical standards are used to carry out
these experiments

One of the techniques is called cognitive dissonance whereby  false
statements are mixed with true statements to  create incidents, cause
disorientation. confusion and arouse all sort of responses and trigger
social processes.

This is done systematically, deliberately and in a targeted way
to cover up fraud,  cause disrepute or disrupt collaborative efforts
(especially online)
or generally pull wool over peoples eyes
leveraging the ambiguity of natural language and social dynamics
(most people dont have time to read and make sense of a lot of data and
inrormation
exchanged on mailing lists, for example)

Some references (the second links opens for me, not sure if it opens for
everyone though)
https://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/cognitive-dissonance/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1566253519305603

1. There are important lessons for knowledge representation
2. I am interested to see how CognitiveAI CG may address this problem

Interestingly, cognitive dissonance is eliminated by creating some sense
of logical consistency (even if it is false). So I stress the fact that
yes, there should be consistency
but the statements also need to be true.

According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for
individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs,
opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors
(dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the
case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely
that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

Two factors affect the strength of the dissonance: the number of dissonant
beliefs, and the importance attached to each belief. There are three ways
to eliminate dissonance: (1) reduce the importance of the dissonant
beliefs, (2) add more consonant beliefs that outweigh the dissonant
beliefs, or (3) change the dissonant beliefs so that they are no longer
inconsistent.


cheers
PDM




https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aeff/4f463a6db7193f66a0756fafc83ddadb2b88.pdf?_ga=2.50230510.979212238.1579086290-335002274.1574246125