Currents 070: Brian Chau on Propaganda & Populism

Jim talks with Brian Chau about seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. They discuss the firehose of bullshit, how modern-day propaganda works, QAnon & Pizzagate, the idea of egregores, adapting our biases against a drastically increased sample size, paranoia about child safety & kidnapping, why the vast majority of Americans are populist, the perception that our institutions are bankrupt, the golden rule of institutions, the CDC's banning of Covid tests, status as the ability to efficiently align with power, mainstream media as status engine, why populism is growing & where it might lead, the Edelman Trust Barometer, the difficulty of converting public sentiment into actual policy, and much more.