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Let me show you how sweet it could be

One elementary intelligence-gathering method used in journalism and law enforcement is called a “float.” Have you ever heard of people placing ping pong balls or colored dye in part of a stream to see where it comes out. That’s a very similar concept. Using radioactive dye to better visualize veins in surgery is also the same idea. Adding a traceable known element to an unknown condition makes it easier to work out the condition’s internal affairs.

Afloat works very simply; you insert information into a stream or ecosystem and see where it comes out. A more complex version of this would be to insert different information variants into an ecosystem and see where those details can be later identified or if they interact.

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For example, let’s say I wanted to explore journalist connections to the PPB. One way of tracing that information cascade would be to stage a “pepper spray” attack with the assistance of witnesses and control the details each person would be able to confirm. Then I would submit a confidential police report with specific information to see when and what elements members of the media then reported on. If some media reports only contained information limited to specific sources, we would have confirmed that members of the PPB were leaking certain information to the media in violation of their directives. If this leaking of information is part of a politically motivated pattern of the PPB, then that would signal something quite interesting.

Everyone has their patterns, and we learn the most about ourselves when those patterns are disrupted. We learn what parts of ourselves and our values we are comfortable ignoring for a short-term adrenaline fix.

What did the gorilla say to the bartender?

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