An open question, related to cyberpunk culture.
Considering the possibilities of current social-engineering as used by social media and desinformation, to what degree ido you think it is now possible to ‘implant’ fake memories into somebody’s consciousness, without that person noticing it.
Disinformation has been an active area of research since the Cold War. Yes it is effective, though obviously there are limits. Maybe you can convince people that a celebrity did something even though it’s not true, but you can’t really convince a particular invididual that they themselves have a different name and history. Here’s a good survey of the state of the art circa 2022 (skip to “Findings of qualitative analysis” to see summaries of studies): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10446021/
First … thanks all for replying. Sorry for the late reply. … know you … summer … holiday … :-)
Yes, that was indded my question. Some objective and scientific research into this. Interesting reading. Thanks.
My idea was kind-of the result of what we see in cybersecurity: What we are seeing is that with AI disinformation has become so easy and cheap, and also easy to automate. Can we assume a senario where desinformation -like phishing moving into the area of spear phising- is becoming personal.
Just wondering. Certain social media have a feature ‘remember, x years ago, you took part in this event’ (with some photo’s you shared about that event)’ What would happen if you start feeding people false information? Or semi-fake information? Including posts by other people?
I agree. Getting people to believe they took part in <some event> x years ago might not be easy. But can you get people to question certain secundairy elements. “Did I really meet <some person> during <some event> 4 years ago?”
I wonder. How many people rely on their own memories what they did in the fast? And how many rely on what the photos in their smartphone and/or social media account tell them?
Kr.
It would probably be pretty easy in a cult-like situation, where the person wants to believe it and has a community that supports that belief. Also, I think certain types of cognitive-behavioral therapy boil down to convincing yourself that a certain belief/memory is better managed by turning it into a different belief/memory. But that’s not something I’m as familiar with.