Quotes About Manipulation

Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single teacup. So it finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing.

Politicians are a bit like musicians, and the instrument they play on is the human emotional and biochemical system. They give a speech, and there is a wave of fear in the country. They tweet, and there is an explosion of hatred.

As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In

As a species, humans prefer power to truth.

Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions.

Biological knowledge multiplied by Computing power multiplied by Data equals Ability to Hack Humans.

b × c × d = ahh! Biological knowledge multiplied by Computing power multiplied by Data equals Ability to Hack Humans.

Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system.

A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.

The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful or plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo Sapiens, rather than vice versa.

Whenever politicians start talking in mystical terms, beware.

great power inevitably distorts the truth.

Doubting free will is not just a philosophical exercise. It has practical implications. If organisms indeed lack free will, it implies that we can manipulate and even control their desires using drugs, genetic engineering or direct brain stimulation.

Written language may have been conceived as a modest way of describing reality, bit it gradually became a powerful way to reshape reality.

If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power.

There is no authentic self waiting to be liberated from the manipulative shell.

By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.8

The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century - the attempt to concentrate all information in one place - might become their decisive advantage in the twenty-first cenutry.

how to avoid brainwashing and how to distinguish reality from fiction. Here I would like to offer two simple rules of thumb.

humains ont toujours excellé à inventer des outils, beaucoup moins à en faire un usage avisé. Il est plus facile de manipuler un fleuve en construisant un barrage qu'il ne l'est de prédire toutes les conséquences complexes que cela aura pour le système écologique plus large. De même sera-t-il plus facile de rediriger le flux de nos esprits que d'en deviner l'impact sur notre psychologie personnelle ou nos systèmes sociaux.

Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry.

Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having

Ruthless billionaires and small interest groups flourish in today's chaotic world not because they read the map better than anyone else, but because they have very narrow aims.

Puesto que pronto podremos manipular también nuestros deseos, quizá la pregunta real a la que nos enfrentamos no sea «¿En qué deseamos convertirnos?», sino «¿Qué queremos desear?». Aquellos que no se espanten ante esta pregunta es que probablemente no han pensado lo suficiente en ella.