Fred,
On an ironic coincidence, I am re-reading James Surwieki's "Wisdom of
Crowds;" a book whose premises is same one that derailed Sir Francis
Galton a century earlier - recall the infamous "Weight of an Ox after
butchering and dressing" challenge.

Galton's 787 challengers - including experts in livestock, breeding,
and butchering, plus a number of lay persons each wagered the Ox'
weight. Galton's descriptive statistics revealed that crowd was off
by 1 pound. 1197 vs. 1198lbs.

Galton's premise was, "the masses are generally unintelligent. The
masses require the important issues of the day to be the domain of a
select intelligent few." At least Galton admitted that as a scientist
he could not dispell the notion that a crowd appears more intelligent
and discerning than he previously thought.

Fast forward, I wonder what the crowds capacity is to detect
propaganda e.g. Chertoff and dry-run warnings? I recall (I forgot the
reference - maybe Eco or Britt perhaps) a goal of Ur-Fascism is to
remove the citizen's ability to distinguish facts from lies.

Within the realm of IO, there must be scholarly works which focus on
propaganda detection? (It not a focal area for me - pointers appreciated).

-Mark

--- In iwar@yahoogroups.com, Fred Cohen <dr.cohen@...> wrote:
>
> All,
>
> Apparently the claims leaked by the US government earlier this week
> that terrorists were doing "dry runs" to practice putting bombs in
> planes were untrue and the people leaking the information knew it.
> These were intentionally altered versions of incidents that had
> happened with false and misleading information and none of them
> involved anyone who was in any way connected with terrorism. In other
> words, they were pure US government propaganda. We welcome any views
> that list members may have on this ongoing campaign - or any claims
> that it was something else.
>
> FC
> - This communication is confidential to the parties it is intended to
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