Unconscious Influence
Cialdini has long studied the forces of influence that exist outside of our conscious awareness.
The most common is social proof, but this one is a bit tricky, since everybody knows what social proof is, and every tends to try to leverage social proof in their favor.
But all of us are influenced by social proof all the time, and this is always operating on us outside our conscious awareness.
Where Does Water Come From?
Hydrogen and Oxygen have completely different characteristics.
But put them together, and you get water, a completely new compounds, with completely different characteristics.
This commonly referred to as emergence.
Of smaller components creating a higher level system of more complexity.
Two Buddhists Talking
There is a story about two Buddhists talking about the nature of consciousness.
A student asked his master about the nature of self.
The master told him to look at and think about a nearby cart.
The wheel, on it’s own, is it the cart?
The master asked.
No, it is not, the student replied.
Emergent Societies
Society is the most complex emergent system that we know of.
Societies are made up of millions of individuals.
But the nature of society is different than the nature of it’s parts.
Society can be seen as an organism unto itself.
Dependent on it’s constituents, but much different from it’s constituents.
Cogs In A Machine
In one view, all the members of a society are subordinate to the society.
All the actors with the whole are subordinate to the whole.
Often, emergent systems take on characteristics that are not completely understood by any of the individual constituents.
Eat Energy and Grow
They become organisms unto themselves, and the prime directive of any organism is to grow, and thrive.
Of course, all emergent systems require continuous inputs of energy.
The prime directive of any living organism based emergent system, whether this is understood by it’s constituents or not, is to grow and consume energy.
Sometimes this energy is self generated, other times this energy is consume parasitically.
The Cart Is Made From The Parts
When the smaller parts are put together, they form the cart.
But if you separate the parts that make up the cart, where is the cart?
Does it still exist?
The master explained that self awareness is a result of it’s components.
That if you separate the parts that make up the body where is the self awareness?
Does it still exist?
No Energy No Water
Water can only exist under certain temperatures and pressure.
Like any emergent system, once you take away the energy required, the emergent system will cease to exist.
You Can Run But You Can’t Hide
One of the most interesting, and troubling example of social proof is the Asch Conformity test.
One guy was put in a room and told look at two pieces of paper.
One one piece was one line.
On another piece was three lines.
Match The Lines
The task was to choose which of the three lines was the same length as the single line.
Very easy.
But when they put other people in the room who were secretly part of the experiment and who chose the wrong line on purpose, so did over 60% of the test subjects.
Which means that when it comes down to choosing the right answer, or going along with the crowd, most people will choose to go with the crowd.
The bigger and more complex the group of people, the more we will be voluntarily subordinate to this emergent system.
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