The Oil Drum

What is even more interesting than brainwashing -- which is after all as old as civilization itself -- are the tactics people adopt to try to avoid it.

One tactic is to fasten one's mind very tightly onto a handful of scientific first principles and then to attempt to organize the overwhelming complexity of the world through that lens.

I imagine that this has been done ever since Newton's time as science waxed and religion waned, at least among the cognitive elite. There's isn't much that isn't amenable to the Three Laws of Motion or some slightly approximate popular version thereof. For instance, even stating "What goes up must come down" can be highly informative and even reassuring if one is beleaguered by a priapism. But, of course, Newtons Laws apply to much more than one's private(s) life. They pretty much explain all things political and social or at least give a good approximation.

Of course, we have since gone on to apply quantum mechanics and relativity to equally good effect but on a disappointingly smaller audience.

I hereby posit the Laws of Usefulness of Scientific First Principles for the Avoidance of Brainwashing

(1) For a principle to be useful, the broader public must be convinced that they can have a vague clue about it.
(2) The scientifically minded layman, after reading a couple of popular works on the principle, must be capable of feeling he is one of the elite few who now understands it perfectly.