Leave it to you, Stephen, to make actuarial tables enthralling.
I, too, am fascinated by group psychology, but unlike actuaries, I am fiercely interested in the why … and the how, hence my studies of texts on mass persuasion, psychological manipulation, and propaganda by authors like Gustave Le Bon, Joost Meerloo, Edward Bernays, and Jacques Ellul.
Pertinent to your observations, Le Bon writes:
“It is only in novels that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the environment that creates the apparent uniformity of characters. I have shown elsewhere that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character of quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile servants.”
“Ready made opinions can be distributed day by day through press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern of thought in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion is the result, according to Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian machinations on the mind.”
While crowds do tend to follow certain predictable patterns, they can be consciously guided to commit extraordinarily heinous actions should the right conditions for authoritarianism and obedience be crafted, and, even more astonishingly, the individuals committing these acts can be deluded into believing they are behaving virtuously.
CJ Hopkins and I discussed how ordinary citizens can become monstrous under such conditions in #7 of our Dissident Dialogue:
It is only by developing awareness of and sensitivity to the propagandists’ puppet strings that we have any hopes of severing those strings and salvaging our minds from the “ready made opinions” Orwell describes thus:
“As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”
Thank you, Stephen, and I’m glad you appreciated the Le Bon quote. I originally went searching for a different quote, but when I opened up the Kindle version of “The Crowd,” it opened to that particular page with that quote highlighted, and it was too serendipitously suitable for this essay not to share.
Here are a few other excerpts about the individual getting subsumed into the crowd:
• “The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics.”
• “In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest.”
• “an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself—either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd, or from some other cause of which we are ignorant—in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser. The activity of the brain being paralysed in the case of the hypnotised subject, the latter becomes the slave of all the unconscious activities of his spinal cord, which the hypnotiser directs at will. The conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the hypnotiser. Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotised subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity.”
(“irresistible impetuosity”—what a delicious dictum disguising diabolical deceptions)
I learn so much from the people on Substack. The only Le Bon quotation that I knew prior to today was: "The reflex is a lonely child, who's waiting by the park. The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark. And watching over lucky clover, isn't that bizarre?" It's easy for every day to be a school day when you start the day as dim as me. Thank you for this Margaret, it was fascinating.
I thought I had read everything by Le Bon but hadn’t come across that riveting quote—thank you for sharing that lucky clover! 🍀
I highly recommend reading Michelle Stiles’s “One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda.” She explores Le Bon extensively, but she believes he was writing an instruction manual for the rulers (Machiavelli-style) rather than exposing the techniques of manipulation. This interpretation surprised me as I had always perceived his writings as empowering warnings about how consent is manufactured. I haven’t seen evidence to contradict that perception but haven’t had a chance to delve into why Michelle feels otherwise.
The moment you mentioned her playlist I felt an instinctual, instant “ick”. What’s interesting though, is that I am curious what’s in Biden’s playlist. (One created by him and not his 23 year old staffer). Smell is everything. A great book, The Gift of Fear delves into the practice of being guided by instinct above all else. We figure things out pretty quickly, but then the mind comes in and muddles things up. So what does your nose tell you about this upcoming election?
When I saw you appear on Substack, I took a chance and purchase a full year subscription. I'm happy to say that this post vindicates that decision. According to a bachelor's degree in mathematics that I was awarded some 55 years ago, I should be somewhat fluent in statistics. Unfortunately I've managed to forget most of my training, retaining barely enough to help children, and now grandchildren, with their homework. I hadn't realized that Hillary had a playlist. She lost me with her famous "basket of deplorables" label.
For me it was as soon as the Brexit vote came in. I felt this certain fear that this meant Trump would win, because both campaigns were centred on hate and othering.
Another wonderful literary prediction of this phenomenon comes from Samuel Butler in Erewhon, specifically the section that pretends to be a transcription of The Book of the Machines:
"Thus, they say that fire applied to dry shavings, and well fed with oxygen gas, will always produce a blaze, but that a coward brought into contact with a terrifying object will not always result in a man running away. Nevertheless, if there be two cowards perfectly similar in every respect, and if they be subjected in a perfectly similar way to two terrifying agents, which are themselves perfectly similar, there are few who will not expect a perfect similarity in the running away, even though a thousand years intervene between the original combination and its being repeated."
His fictional author argues that even an individual's actions will be entirely predictable, as soon as we have enough information about them (Big Data!) -- he tells us that human behavior is the result of yet-to-be understood physical laws and that humans differ from machines not in kind but merely in degree. It might seem random to go see the show on Monday, but it never is: it's the inevitable consequence of irresistible forces.
Stephen Fry, it's such a joy to read your writing -- and hear your voice! Thank you for writing and publishing here, but especially for taking the time to record!
Those actuaries know if the red-haired drivers are more likely to cause an accident so the insurer has enough money to pay claims, cover overhead, and generate a profit. Fortunately they don't single out the redheads for higher premiums. The actuaries aren't here for us to discover things about different population characteristics. That's simply not done in polite society. We wouldn't want to learn uncomfortable things about ourselves. So we keep the actuaries at a safe distance and use them only when absolutely necessary, like when we have a business to run.
Hi Stephen, it’s Rona, here is a quote: “as individuals, (I like people) yes, there is greatness in everyone. But as a crowd, they are a monster without a head. You never know which way which way they are going to turn”-from my favourite film, Limelight, which was created by Sir Charles Chaplin after a decade of being pilloried by the FBI and mass media, and seeing his audience turn against him as a result. You are spot on with this Substack.. spot on.
Last night I went to bed with Stephen Fry and it was wonderful. He read me a bedtime story and I drifted off to sleep. In my book, Above the Law, I pointed out that: "People, as a collective, even if not individually, behave in fairly predictable ways." Last night I learned that others had said that before me in far more beautiful, incisive and eloquent ways. There again, beauty, insight and eloquence are what you get when you go to bed with Stephen Fry. Thank you, Stephen, I hope that we can do it again soon.
Donald and his marketeers know full well, that it is far easier to change someone’s opinion, than it is to create an opinion starting with indifference.
Let’s face it, everyone has an opinion about Mr Trump. 😂
If Clinton’s playlist was found, to her own displeasure, I might actually want to hear it. But the very fact it’s pushed out to the world (and has the words “Rock Out” in the title) immediately flings her to the pile with the likes of Amy Poehler’s character in Mean Girls.
Stephen thank you for a erudite discussion of election prognostication or is it statistics, perhaps the actuarial profession, the power of playlists, maybe all.
You have inspired me to answer a question raised by your words. If in a month of Mondays theatre attendance is 46%, +/-2%, is it true that the rest of the week's attendance will track the percentages you cited? Not only will a true/false answer be needed but a why must be ascertained.
Have a great week, I truly look forward to your next Substack.
Thank you, I always enjoy your writing and podcasts. This one in particular hit home, as I am a statistician, and a user research consultant to the tech giants that shape the technology behind the predictions about groups and individuals.
Your post reminded me of why I became a statistician, the various definitions of Statistics and the one I abide by. As we data geeks are historically known to get philosophical every now and then, I have my own humble philosophy about the nature and beauty of numbers, and what the predictions we make are really about. Instead of a very long comment here, I put my thoughts in my own post: https://christinavoskoglou.substack.com/p/the-noble-quest-to-describe-the-world
I have enjoyed the first-two posts, here, and am greatly looking forward to those that follow. And, your reading of each makes them all the better.
Is there an RSS feed for the audio version of your posts? I checked but did not see one (apologies if this is my error). If not, Substack offers them as part of its platform, including the option to restrict the feeds to paying subscribers.
Leave it to you, Stephen, to make actuarial tables enthralling.
I, too, am fascinated by group psychology, but unlike actuaries, I am fiercely interested in the why … and the how, hence my studies of texts on mass persuasion, psychological manipulation, and propaganda by authors like Gustave Le Bon, Joost Meerloo, Edward Bernays, and Jacques Ellul.
Pertinent to your observations, Le Bon writes:
“It is only in novels that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the environment that creates the apparent uniformity of characters. I have shown elsewhere that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character of quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile servants.”
Since Le Bon’s time, mind manipulators have only become more sophisticated practitioners of menticide (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-menticided-a-12-step), thanks to the likes of Freud, Bernays, and Pavlov.
As Meerloo writes in “Rape of the Mind”:
“Ready made opinions can be distributed day by day through press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern of thought in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion is the result, according to Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian machinations on the mind.”
While crowds do tend to follow certain predictable patterns, they can be consciously guided to commit extraordinarily heinous actions should the right conditions for authoritarianism and obedience be crafted, and, even more astonishingly, the individuals committing these acts can be deluded into believing they are behaving virtuously.
CJ Hopkins and I discussed how ordinary citizens can become monstrous under such conditions in #7 of our Dissident Dialogue:
• https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/dissident-dialogues-cj-hopkins
It is only by developing awareness of and sensitivity to the propagandists’ puppet strings that we have any hopes of severing those strings and salvaging our minds from the “ready made opinions” Orwell describes thus:
“As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”
Brilliant ... love that LeBon quotation. Bernays a fascinating man ...
Thank you, Stephen, and I’m glad you appreciated the Le Bon quote. I originally went searching for a different quote, but when I opened up the Kindle version of “The Crowd,” it opened to that particular page with that quote highlighted, and it was too serendipitously suitable for this essay not to share.
Here are a few other excerpts about the individual getting subsumed into the crowd:
• “The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics.”
• “In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest.”
• “an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself—either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd, or from some other cause of which we are ignorant—in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser. The activity of the brain being paralysed in the case of the hypnotised subject, the latter becomes the slave of all the unconscious activities of his spinal cord, which the hypnotiser directs at will. The conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the hypnotiser. Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotised subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity.”
(“irresistible impetuosity”—what a delicious dictum disguising diabolical deceptions)
I learn so much from the people on Substack. The only Le Bon quotation that I knew prior to today was: "The reflex is a lonely child, who's waiting by the park. The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark. And watching over lucky clover, isn't that bizarre?" It's easy for every day to be a school day when you start the day as dim as me. Thank you for this Margaret, it was fascinating.
I thought I had read everything by Le Bon but hadn’t come across that riveting quote—thank you for sharing that lucky clover! 🍀
I highly recommend reading Michelle Stiles’s “One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda.” She explores Le Bon extensively, but she believes he was writing an instruction manual for the rulers (Machiavelli-style) rather than exposing the techniques of manipulation. This interpretation surprised me as I had always perceived his writings as empowering warnings about how consent is manufactured. I haven’t seen evidence to contradict that perception but haven’t had a chance to delve into why Michelle feels otherwise.
The moment you mentioned her playlist I felt an instinctual, instant “ick”. What’s interesting though, is that I am curious what’s in Biden’s playlist. (One created by him and not his 23 year old staffer). Smell is everything. A great book, The Gift of Fear delves into the practice of being guided by instinct above all else. We figure things out pretty quickly, but then the mind comes in and muddles things up. So what does your nose tell you about this upcoming election?
Fuck! Trump can’t have a playlist! Makes him seem too …human! I don’t want to think about it.
When I saw you appear on Substack, I took a chance and purchase a full year subscription. I'm happy to say that this post vindicates that decision. According to a bachelor's degree in mathematics that I was awarded some 55 years ago, I should be somewhat fluent in statistics. Unfortunately I've managed to forget most of my training, retaining barely enough to help children, and now grandchildren, with their homework. I hadn't realized that Hillary had a playlist. She lost me with her famous "basket of deplorables" label.
For me it was as soon as the Brexit vote came in. I felt this certain fear that this meant Trump would win, because both campaigns were centred on hate and othering.
Another wonderful literary prediction of this phenomenon comes from Samuel Butler in Erewhon, specifically the section that pretends to be a transcription of The Book of the Machines:
"Thus, they say that fire applied to dry shavings, and well fed with oxygen gas, will always produce a blaze, but that a coward brought into contact with a terrifying object will not always result in a man running away. Nevertheless, if there be two cowards perfectly similar in every respect, and if they be subjected in a perfectly similar way to two terrifying agents, which are themselves perfectly similar, there are few who will not expect a perfect similarity in the running away, even though a thousand years intervene between the original combination and its being repeated."
His fictional author argues that even an individual's actions will be entirely predictable, as soon as we have enough information about them (Big Data!) -- he tells us that human behavior is the result of yet-to-be understood physical laws and that humans differ from machines not in kind but merely in degree. It might seem random to go see the show on Monday, but it never is: it's the inevitable consequence of irresistible forces.
Stephen Fry, it's such a joy to read your writing -- and hear your voice! Thank you for writing and publishing here, but especially for taking the time to record!
Those actuaries know if the red-haired drivers are more likely to cause an accident so the insurer has enough money to pay claims, cover overhead, and generate a profit. Fortunately they don't single out the redheads for higher premiums. The actuaries aren't here for us to discover things about different population characteristics. That's simply not done in polite society. We wouldn't want to learn uncomfortable things about ourselves. So we keep the actuaries at a safe distance and use them only when absolutely necessary, like when we have a business to run.
Hi Stephen, it’s Rona, here is a quote: “as individuals, (I like people) yes, there is greatness in everyone. But as a crowd, they are a monster without a head. You never know which way which way they are going to turn”-from my favourite film, Limelight, which was created by Sir Charles Chaplin after a decade of being pilloried by the FBI and mass media, and seeing his audience turn against him as a result. You are spot on with this Substack.. spot on.
Last night I went to bed with Stephen Fry and it was wonderful. He read me a bedtime story and I drifted off to sleep. In my book, Above the Law, I pointed out that: "People, as a collective, even if not individually, behave in fairly predictable ways." Last night I learned that others had said that before me in far more beautiful, incisive and eloquent ways. There again, beauty, insight and eloquence are what you get when you go to bed with Stephen Fry. Thank you, Stephen, I hope that we can do it again soon.
All too true. 👏👏👏
Donald and his marketeers know full well, that it is far easier to change someone’s opinion, than it is to create an opinion starting with indifference.
Let’s face it, everyone has an opinion about Mr Trump. 😂
Enjoyed this Stephen and as with the Speccie , am enjoying the comments as much as the article .
I did like the LeBon quotation too .
If Clinton’s playlist was found, to her own displeasure, I might actually want to hear it. But the very fact it’s pushed out to the world (and has the words “Rock Out” in the title) immediately flings her to the pile with the likes of Amy Poehler’s character in Mean Girls.
Stephen thank you for a erudite discussion of election prognostication or is it statistics, perhaps the actuarial profession, the power of playlists, maybe all.
You have inspired me to answer a question raised by your words. If in a month of Mondays theatre attendance is 46%, +/-2%, is it true that the rest of the week's attendance will track the percentages you cited? Not only will a true/false answer be needed but a why must be ascertained.
Have a great week, I truly look forward to your next Substack.
Thank you, I always enjoy your writing and podcasts. This one in particular hit home, as I am a statistician, and a user research consultant to the tech giants that shape the technology behind the predictions about groups and individuals.
Your post reminded me of why I became a statistician, the various definitions of Statistics and the one I abide by. As we data geeks are historically known to get philosophical every now and then, I have my own humble philosophy about the nature and beauty of numbers, and what the predictions we make are really about. Instead of a very long comment here, I put my thoughts in my own post: https://christinavoskoglou.substack.com/p/the-noble-quest-to-describe-the-world
Thank you for the inspiration 🙂
Wonderful.
Mr. Fry,
I have enjoyed the first-two posts, here, and am greatly looking forward to those that follow. And, your reading of each makes them all the better.
Is there an RSS feed for the audio version of your posts? I checked but did not see one (apologies if this is my error). If not, Substack offers them as part of its platform, including the option to restrict the feeds to paying subscribers.
Best,
J.S.