> The novel criticizes the socio-political effects on society at large from the use of computers to run massive simulations, which predict the public reaction to certain (proposed) political moves before implementing them. Such simulations make it easy to manipulate the public consciousness.

This last sentence seems flawed. Is it not describing the ability of a computer to predict the future with high accuracy, and if so it isn't the public consciousness that's being manipulated, but rather the course of history? Which is still bad of course, and somewhat similar, but is a distinctly different situation. Directly acting upon the public consciousness itself would require different actions different than making predictions about the future, it would require actions in the present, right?

One such action is propaganda (fake news, etc) - this one has been around forever, we all know about it.

Another one that's been making the news a lot lately are the infamous "Russian" (I don't buy the story personally, but that's a different discussion) trolls.

Let me tell you about something very weird that I've been noticing for quite some time now. I am a huge political junkie. And for this upcoming election, here's my current ranking of the candidates: 1. Sanders 2. Trump 3. Biden (well, more like 999. Biden).

I don't think it's too hard for us here to accept mine as a valid political stance. Perhaps it seems weird, but it's not crazy.

Simultaneously, we have this situation where Bernie supporters have two battles to win: first they must beat the (corrupt) DNC organization, before moving on to the big boss, DJT. So, of course, we do indeed see them attacking both Trump (and his racist/hyper-capitalist/misc-other-stereotype supporters) and the DNC/Biden. Nothing strange yet.

But here's the weird thing: being a political junkie, I have been interacting (primarily on Reddit) with Democrats supporters now and then over the last several weeks/months. In near every single conversation, there is this unmistakable, uncanny pattern in the discussions, where it seems like these people are so blinded by rage, that they literally can't fathom the idea that a person could hold my stance. Or even that a single Trump supporter could hold any belief that does not perfectly line up with the stereotypes of what a Trump supporter "is". Like, it's not like you have a back and forth with them and then they decide "you know what, I think you're lying", but they just cannot believe, as if they have lost control of their conscious mind and free will, like there is some sort of a cognitive malfunction. Essentially, a real world actual manifestation of the NPC meme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)

> NPC, derived from Non-Player Character in video games, is an meme to express the idea that individuals of the political left do not think for themselves; it is also known as NPC Wojak. The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the image-hosting website 4chan, where also the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced. The NPC meme has gained widespread attention and been featured in numerous news outlets, including The New York Times,[4] The Verge,[3] BBC,[7] and Breitbart News Network. Media coverage of the NPC meme has been politically biased according to the news watchdogs Accuracy In Media[8] and Media Research Center.[9]

Now, the average person is not very good at rational thinking. So, one should expect a fair amount of this behavior, especially under the stress of modern day politics. No problemo. But my issue is that firstly, this scenario isn't really all that complicated (is it?), and more importantly, this behavior seems to occur in at least 90% of my interactions. I can understand a lot of people being dumb, but almost all of them? (I should also note: I'm not taking only my personal conversations into account here, much of my confidence level derives from observing similar behavior in the conversations of others).

Which leads me to my question: what are the odds that there is some entity out there that happens to posses "AI chat" technology that is way beyond what is considered to be the current state of the art (like how the NSA is reputed to be <x> years ahead), and that this technology is now in the wild? It seems like an outlandish theory, but on a technical basis, is it really that far out there?

I suppose I should note two other explanations that come to mind:

- rather than bots, these entities could just be paid trolls (with the sums of money thrown around in an election, this could be done at very significant scale)

- if a given ~environment can invoke ~insanity in one person, it may also be able to invoke the same thing in millions of people simultaneously; but the problem with this is, could it reach 90% levels? Although, Redditors are not a representative sample, so it would only have to make that subset crazy, which seems much more plausible.

Anyways, this question has been on my mind for a while so thought I'd just throw it out there and see what others think.

EDIT: Thinking a bit more about it: "90% of Redditors are literally incapable of high-skilled rational thought" actually feels about right, so maybe nothing nefarious is afoot. Although, I'm not sure which of these is the scarier scenario. And if it's both (which it actually kinda is, with respect to fake news), God help us all. So perhaps I've answered my own question, but would really like to hear what others think. The degradation in the quality of thinking and discourse in the Western world is beyond out of control in my opinion, and I am legit worried that if some sensible special interest groups outside the formal political process don't set aside their differences and unify to set us back on the right path, I actually think tyranny (the serious kind) may be inevitable. One year ago I would have dismissed such claims as hyperbolic, but considering planet earth is currently on a near total lockdown due to a literal global pandemic, that could have easily (at least relatively speaking) been prevented/managed, I think erring on the side of extreme caution is warranted. The next event could end industrialized human civilization, and I almost feel like I am the only person that seems concerned about the mass psychology aspect of it. Everyone's focusing on "the Russians", when they should be focusing on the mental health of people who are exposed to a historically unprecedented stream of incoming information, much of it sophisticated propaganda.