The Emotion Machine

Most imprimers will be concerned with the values their children acquire, hence may will try to keep them from attaching themselves to persons of ‘dubious character’. Here is an instance in which we see just such a concern about a certain researcher’s machine!

In the 1950s, Arthur Samuel, a computer designer at IBM, developed a program that learned to play Checkers well enough to defeat several excellent human players. Its quality of play improved when it competed with its superiors. However, games against inferior players tended to make its performance get worse —so much that its programmer had to turn its learning off. In the end he allowed it only to play against transcripts of master-class championship games.

When anyone interacts with you, they’re likely to have their own purposes, so you have to try to assess their intentions. Consider how members recruit for their cults. First they remove you from all familiar locations, and then persuade you to ‘decide’ to break all your other social attachments—especially all your family ties. Then once you’re detached from all your friends it becomes easy to undermine all your defenses—until you are ripe to be imprimed by their local prophet, seer, or saint. Those experts do indeed know schemes through which any stranger can program you—by exploiting techniques that they know can help to suppress and supplant the ideals that you hold.

We face similar conflicts in other realms. While your parents may have your welfare in mind, businesspersons may have more interest in promoting the wealth of their firms. Religious leaders may wish you well, yet be more concerned for their temples and sects. And when leaders arouse your pride in your nation, you may be expected to sacrifice your life to define some vague boundary line. Each organization has its own intentions, and uses its members to further them.

Individualist: I hope you don’t mean that literally. An organization is nothing more than the circle of persons involved with it. It cannot have any goals of its own, but only those that its members hold.

What does it mean when someone suggests that some system has an intention or goal? Section §6-3 will discuss some conditions in which a process could appear to have motives and purposes of its own.

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§2-10. Public Imprimers

We’ve only discussed how attachment-based learning might work when a child is with an Imprimer. It might also be related to the phenomenon in which hordes of persons are influenced by others who ‘catch the public’s eye’ by appearing in broadcast media. One way to make a person feel that something is desirable would be to put forward some evidence. However, it appears to be more effective to use the so-called ‘testimonial’, which may not exhibit the product at all, but only suggests that its use is approved by some popular ‘celebrity’. Why would this method work so well? Perhaps because those particular persons have ways to evoke an impriming response and thus more directly modify the personal goals of their audiences.

Sociologist: Perhaps this happens only because when the ‘celebrity’ takes the ‘center stage’ this makes other people focus there. Then once most of the audience gets engaged, the rest feel compelled to join them.

That may be what happens, but still we should ask what makes our ‘celebrities’ popular. Attractive physical features may help, but those actors and singers use something else: they are experts at feigning emotional states. Competitive athletes are expert deceivers, and so must be our popular leaders. More generally, perhaps, to achieve celebrity, it helps to have some special ways to make each listener feel some sense that “this important person is speaking to me.” That would make listeners feel more involved—and therefore more compelled to respond —despite that it’s really a monologue!

Not everyone can control a mob. What techniques could so firmly engage the concern of such a wide range of different minds? We need to know more about the tricks that our leaders use to mould our goals. Could these include some methods through which they can establish rapid attachments?

Charisma: n. ‘a rare personal quality attributed to leaders who arouse popular devotion or enthusiasm.’

What characteristics give leaders the power to evoke that sense of charisma? Are there some special physical features that act as ‘charismatic releasers’?

Politician: It usually helps for the speaker to have large stature, deep voice, and confident manner. However, although great height and bulk attract attention, some leaders have been diminutive. And while some powerful orators intone their words with deliberate measure, some leaders and preachers rant and shriek, and still manage to grip our attention.

Psychologist: In §2-7 you mentioned that ‘speed and intensity of response’ were important for making attachments. But when someone makes a public pronouncement, there isn’t much room for those critical factors because the speaker cannot react specifically to each and every listener.

Rhetoric can create that illusion. A well-paced speech can seem ‘interactive’ by first raising questions in listeners’ minds—and then answering them at just the right time. You don’t have time to converse with each, but you can interact—inside your mind—with a few model listeners. Then many real listeners may feel the sense of receiving a personalized response, although there’s no genuine dialog. One trick is for speakers to pause just long enough for listeners to feel that they are being addressed, but not long enough for them to think of objections to the messages that they hear. Furthermore, an orator may not need to control the whole audience; if you can convince enough of them, then peer pressure can make most of the others to with them.

However, a crowd can take over control of a weaker and over-responsive leader. Here’s one great performer who objected to this:

Glenn Gould: “For me, the lack of an audience—the total anonymity of the studio—provides the greatest incentive to satisfy my own demands upon myself without consideration for, or qualification by, the intellectual appetite, or lack of it, on the part of the audience. My own view is, paradoxically, that by pursuing the most narcissistic relation to artistic satisfaction one can best fulfill the fundamental obligation of the artist of giving pleasure to others.”[30]

A person can even become attached to an entity that doesn’t exist—for example, to a legendary historical figure, to a fictional character in a book, or to a mythical martyr, dog, or god. Then those heroes can become “virtual mentors” among the models in their worshippers’ minds. A person can even become attached to an abstract doctrine, dogma, or creed—or an icon or image that represents it. Indeed, when you come right down to it, all our attachments are made to fictions; you never connect to an actual person, but only to the models you’ve made to represent your conceptions of them, no matter whether they’re parent or friend—or merely a transient attraction.

So, the idea that a person learns goals from Imprimers makes sense in the earliest years of life. However, in later life that distinction can fade, as we acquire new kinds of mentors and find other ways to shape our ambitions.

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