Aetheric Research, Ltd.

Some folks may remember the HBGary debacle a short while ago, when HBGary Federal (a wholly-owned subsidiary of HBGary, specializing in government contracts) got themselves cracked by Anonymous after specifically calling them out.  The parent company, HBGary, have published an open letter making certain claims, which Ars Technica has examined.

There’s little surprise in the letter–it’s mostly a reiteration of previous claims about the leaked emails having been ‘altered’ and about how HBGary Federal was a completely separate company with no actual connection to the parent organization other than ownership.  Ars does a good job in dissecting these claims and pointing out which ones hold water and which ones don’t.

Publishing this letter in the first place was likely a bad idea, though.  Anyone who has the least bit of knowledge about Anonymous–which the head of HBGary Federal claimed to have–knows that resurrecting attention to a controversy causes the phenomenon known as “lulz” to occur.  For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s a sort of measurement of attention-worthiness of a particular topic or entity, based on the quality and quantity of reaction to be gained from any interaction with them.  Leaking the HBGary Federal documents produced an extensive amount of this–it gained mainstream media attention and increased the visibility of Anonymous in the public eye.  The Scientology protests were the same–shedding light on the known-bad Scientology organization’s policies and procedures with public protests (and their characteristic purple prose) caused extreme consternation amongst the organization and brought public attention to Anonymous.

Now, HBGary has, essentially, done the same thing that HBGary Federal did–call out Anonymous’ activities, claim to be invulnerable to their attentions, and bring public attention to Anonymous’ interactions with them.  This is the sort of thing that tends to be deemed “lulzy” by Anonymous, and generally tends to bring certain actions.

Westboro Baptist attempted to take advantage of this phenomenon by releasing a fake press release (that claimed to be on behalf of Anonymous) claiming a war against them followed by a press release under their own aegis calling out Anonymous.  The Anonymous collective rather quickly determined the illegitimacy of the first release–there may be no central organization, but there is a fairly distinct style, which Westboro did not emulate perfectly–and (correctly, as it turned out) determined that there were likely specific intentions to trap Anonymim who attempted to DDoS or otherwise infiltrate the servers provided via honeypot servers.  

As it happened, when Westboro pushed the issue, they were rather promptly taken down–just as HBGary is likely to be.  Westboro, like HBGary, made the key mistakes of assuming Anonymous is entirely disaffected teenagers with a modicum of computer skills and a coherent organization with limited membership.  These assumptions miss certain key points–Anonymous is, in essence, a nom de guerre that can be taken on by any person or entity, as is evidenced by th3j3st3r’s participation in the actions against Westboro following his specific attacks against Wikileaks; while not strictly an Anonymous action (as he did claim credit for it), the action against Westboro was compatible with Anonymous’ goals and views.

What HBGary fails to realize is that, by seeking to defend themselves against the ‘blog-o-sphere’, they’ve inadvertently invoked the Streisand effect and drawn specific attention to what they want to keep quiet.  Whether this release has produced enough ‘lulz’–that is, attention to the incident as a cause worthy of working on–remains to be seen, but if they do manage to get away with it without significant infiltration and exposure of more embarassing secrets, they should count themselves lucky.

Anonymous’ actions cannot be predicted specifically, but it’s fairly obvious that calling them out is, as a comedian recently opined, tantamount to inserting one’s genitals into a hornet’s nest–a bad idea, and likely to cause embarassing, painful problems.

In the summer of 2007, a rumor appeared in the mainstream press speculating on whether famous airhead heiress Paris Hilton had been disinherited.  This story hit all the right notes for wide distribution–a famous person well into the 15-minutes-of-fame cycle as the lead character; a personal tragedy that seemed to be karmically appropriate; and at one of the slower parts of the year.  

As it happened, the story was entirely fake–Hilton had not been written out of the family will; the story–such as it was–more or less went away after that.  How did this happen?

Journalistic ethics require that sources be cited–anything else is plaigarism and is, when found out, published severely.  Careful reading of the stories when they broke in the US media all linked back to one of several sites in the news.com.au domain.  Looking at those articles and carefully crafting searches to find other articles without the links to news.com.au revealed no other sources–the only source for these rumors was one particular subsite on news.com.au which, when the story was published there, was automatically republished across the other domains held by that site.  The original published article did not cite any sources–no credit was given to a specific publication, no interviews were mentioned, and no mention of even “an unnamed source close to” the person of interest was made.

Leaving aside the complete lack of journalistic integrity evinced by the news.com.au organization for calling this “news”, and leaving aside the complete lack of competence of all the major news organizations who picked up the story and reprinted it without any further investigation, this incident provides an interesting situation for determination of the validity of information.

If information can be traced to only a single secondary source, that information is probably not valid.

This comes into play with the dissemination of urban legends as well–in most cases, urban legends are confabulated from a mixture of half-remembered stories and anecdotes from friends mashed together; there will be no actual friend-of-a-friend who this happened to.  A story is heard and then repeated; the more repetitions it goes through, tthe more likely it is to appear to come from multiple sources–but it is, on the whole, just the same thing spread out, like peas on the plate of a schoolboy.

The counter to being deceived by these sorts of stories is at once obvious and difficult:  trace sources.  When an article appears, look for what sources the article cites; find those sources, and trace the story back to whoever originally broke it.  In most cases, there will be some original interview or other primary source immedately concerned with the event who will be available; at that point, an evaluation on the reliability of the source can be made.

Unfortunately, this is a time-consuming task and one which is not normally possible for most people to carry out regularly; most people do not have the time nor the inclination to spend that time searching through archives (which may be rapidly changing, due to the immediacy of the news cycle, and which may be ‘contaminated’ by later revisions) to find out where information came from.

Developing an organization for the evaluation of news stories in this fashion to determine their reliability would be a definite plus.  Such an organization would very much help journalistic integrity, in that a visible mark of the reliability of a story would encourage a higher standard of journalism.  It would help to neuter certain memetic hazards by nullifying their influence.

It would help to defeat astroturfing as well; marketing organizations hired to push a message must, by necessity, remain consistent on the message that they are pushing; regardless of the amount of variation, certain key phrases will end up being repeated, and those can be traced on a timeline.  Fuzzing the message with synonyms may make the tracing harder, but also much less effectively spread–much of the appeal behind certain messages lies with the specific wording of the slogan.

A lie has time to go around the world before the truth can get it’s shoes on–thus spake Churhill, Twain, and Spurgeon.  Many stories appear appealing on their face, but repeating them without determining the source of their allegations can be very detrimental, as was found out when the US invaded Iraq based on what turned out to be an unverified rumor promulgated by a single source.

An ‘urban legend’ is a sort of modern counterpart to the old stories of monsters and dragons and the like.  Designated ‘urban’ to contrast with the folklore of older times (some people may prefer ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’), these stories are transmitted and preserved in the same general fashion–by word of mouth or equivalent personal communication, generally–as the older folklore was.

There’s often some overlap with conspiracy stories; the two are not dissimilar in some fashion–though while the conspiracy story assumes malevolent authorities are causing the event, or covering up the event, the urban legend makes no such overt assumptions.  

Urban legends have a vast breadth of topics; the Snopes website maintains an archive of this mythos, including discussions of which parts of which legends have truth to them–because, after all, the most effective ones are often based partly in fact.  

Generally, as with older folktales, there’s a cautionary interest behind relaying the tale–a friend of a friend made a mistake or saw something happen, and as a result your friend is interested in maintaining your safety, and relays the story to help you.  This relaying generally happens personally:  your friend tells you face-to-face or, especially now, in an email–why not forward a notice of some form of danger?  Regardless of the truth behind the caution, the general thinking appears to be that it’s better to give someone a false alarm than to risk that they might come to harm if not warned.

Unfortunately, this is a bit of a memetic hazard; uncritical forwarding of cautionary email can also forward various security threats–compromised attachments, compromised websites, etc.–and can sometimes create a panic that can lead to actual harm.  

Avoiding this particular memetic hazard is relatively easy: don’t relay any story you hear about some sort of danger or other until you’ve verified it to be a real and present danger.  There are numerous ways to research these things; oftentimes, simply running a search on a key phrase from such an email–”Tyson drops labor day” for instance–can lead you to numerous resources that can clarify the situation.

I would encourage anyone who does receive regular emails that turn out to be urban legends from a single person to speak to that person about evaluating the premise of the email before forwarding it.  While you may not change their habits of forwarding emails, you will likely be taken off the list of people to send them to, and as such at least be exempt from whatever scams or other harm they might pass along.

Urban legends can also make for good entertainment, as it happens–they’re frequent fodder for the Mythbusters, who address many of them during their show to show in as explosion-filled a way as possible whether they’re likely confirmed or, as they say, busted.

A mysterious stranger appears in front of an ordinary person–a farmer, let’s say.  They behave in a somewhat odd fashion, and the farmer’s responses to their idiosyncratic behavior determine later rewards or punishments.  Frequently, the farmer is required to keep the interactions secret, or else some dire consequence will come to them.

Is this one of the Greek or Norse myths, or is it a conspiracy theory stripped of all the identifying details?

The structure of conspiracy theories bears a marked resemblance to some of the older myths and legends, and some of the more estoeric tales of saints and demons.  While the exact nature of the mysterious or malign forces which are arrayed against ordinary mortals differ–gods and demons vs. the government, corporations, and “them”–and while the nature of the intervention in ordinary people’s lives is changed, the underlying tropes seem to remain.

Both myth and conspiracy abound with tales of ordinary people happening across extraordinary events and suffering for it–compare the tale of the youth who spied upon Diana with the various tales of persons who supposedly stumbled across mysterious government installations.  There are extraordinary substances that may have benign or malign effect upon the person who consumes them–the waters of the Styx, of Lethe; the golden apples of the Hesperides vs. chemtrails, LSD in the water supply, flouride.  Free will may be removed–consider the <i>geasa</i> put upon various Celtic heroes in the context of government mind control rays.  The Gods can fly across the sky in a day in their chariots of fire; the Government has Aurora.  Odin sits upon his throne and looks down across the world-tree; the Government has spy satellites that can read your license plate.  Zeus threw lightning; HAARP does…something involving the atmosphere.

The conspiracy canon indicates a sort of coherent mythic cycle:  much as those persons who believed in Zeus would concurrently believe in Poseidon, those who believe in one conspiracy are likely to believe in others.  The Gods are not dead; they’ve just evolved into new forms, updated to reflect the reality around the believer.

That’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to reason with a conspiracy theorist about their beliefs–because, to them, it’s an article of faith that the Government or the Corporations or whatever shadowy Them in question they believe in is a malign entity and is out to cause them harm.  The Devil can take a thousand pleasing forms; They can certainly recruit a thousand agents or patsies or unwitting collaborators.  Combine sincere faith in a certain worldview with the perception that those attempting to change one’s faith are out to cause harm, and you have the basic ingredients of a semi-animistic religion.

What makes this demi-religion interesting is that it’s not prone to exclusivity–you can find conspiracy theory beliefs in persons of very nearly any religion.  Just as prechristian animistic beliefs are sometimes recognized in paralell with Christian worship, so too do the conspiracy beliefs exist alongside more conventional belief systems.  It may prove interesting to see if there’s any overlap between conspiracy theorists and those practising animist beliefs–and what the nature of that overlap might be.

A memetic hazard is a memetic construct or complex that can cause personal, familial, or societal harm through its propagation.

Memetic Rationality is a memetically hazardous construct which can act as an adjunct complex to other memetic complexes and constructs, reinforcing their action and preventing questioning of their structures.

Memetic Rationality is related to the False Standard of Proof complex in that it is a dysfunction of thought processes related to truth-determination.

An individual exhibiting memetic rationality will display certain symptoms which may be difficult to discern from non-memetic rationality.

First, a memetically rational host may have a belief that all situations, things, or behaviors have a rational explanation. They will act with hostility towards any suggestion that a particular anecdote, behavior, situation et al. may not have an empirical, rational explanation. Common flags for this particular symptom include insistence that “love is a chemical phenomenon”, going to extreme lengths to disprove the existence of supernatural phenomenae, and an obsession with finding explanations deemed ‘natural’ or ‘rational’ rather than allowing the possibility of a lack of explanation.

Second, a memetically rational host will insist that they are fully rational and will deny the possibility that they may be holding any irrational beliefs. The host will display perfect certainty in their rationality.

Third, a memetically rational host will display compulsive behavior towards “correcting” the beliefs of others that they deem to be irrational.

Memetically rational hosts may have, at some point in the past, been hosts for other memetic complexes (e.g. religious beliefs such as faith healing, alternative medicine beliefs such as homeopathy); memetic rationality would thus potentially fill the same purpose for the host–that of blocking fear response to unknown situations or concepts, of providing a steady influence for personality basis, or of other similar purposes.

Memetically rational hosts may discount any emotional responses to situations as being entirely irrational, and may thus be perceived as ‘lacking empathy’ by other persons.

A memetically rational host confronted with a diagnosis of memetic rationality for their behavior will likely exhibit fear responses such as vehement denial and anger; they will, as part of their symptoms, rationalize their responses as being entirely reasonable (e.g. because questioning their thought processes is offensive).

While it may appear harmless, Memetic Rationality is somewhat memetically hazardous in that the host’s relationship to other persons may cause stresses to both the host and to others around the host. Additionally, if the host holds other memetic constructs (which is likely, given that it is next to impossible for the human thought processes not to be compromised in that manner) the construct will act to resist any attempts to excise or otherwise modify these other constructs.

Much like the diagnosis and excision procedure for False Standard of Proof, the procedure for the excision of Memetic Rationality involves fully determining the individual’s thought process. In this case, dissociating the thought process from the fear responses is indicated; if the host can be successfully convinced that his reactions are memetic in nature, then the host may be amenable to assistance.

While this memetic construct is somewhat hazardous, the hazard can be mitigated if the host is made aware of the memetic nature of his particular thought processes. As such, excision of this construct may not be entirely necessary.

Some of the terms within the Memetic Hazard Categorization series may require explanation. To explain this, a glossary has been instituted, which will be updated periodically as more precise and accurate definitions are built.