The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

Reality is what you perceive it to be. That much is obvious. We were bred this way by nature, and it is thanks to this ability to react to our individually perceived reality  that we are where we are as a species, for better or worse. That we are social animals is no surprise, either. We pick teams , pledge allegiances to like-minded groups, mimic the behavior of other people, and fall for mental shortcuts  that inform our decisions ( many times to our own detriment ). That social networks exploit these bad habits of ours is also exceedingly clear by now. But what about Governments? They don't necessarily need armies of patriotic trolls hawking dissident Facebook users to shape the collective discourse. Forget for now about the fact that Facebook is literally teaching the authoritarian governments of institutionally weak countries how to harness the evil powers of the network to sharpen their manipulation skills and their grip on society.    All Governments need to do is sim