See also: 05 Law Of Similarity in the Sympathetic Magic section for the canonical treatment of this concept.

Law of Similarity and Cognitive Dissonance

Before the advent of multimedia and images, this was a Good Enough way of getting through life and through society and through the world. If it kind of looked like good food, you could eat it. If the person looked nasty, they were nasty. Then now with the advent of digital imagery so prevalent, we see a picture of Putler in his bare-chested and we think, oh, strong man, he must be strong. We mistake the substance for the image.

This is a cognitive dissonance which we can use, which we do use in our daily lives the whole time which most of us, we used to get through fine. It is also used by malevolent forces to troll and trick us into making bad choices. So the Law of Similarity/ of Association is one of the two main constituent elements in this jurisprudence of sympathetic magic.

Source: Podcast: Disinfolklore in Executive Orders

The Law of Similarity — one of two foundational laws of Sympathetic Magic — explained through evolutionary psychology. Our ancient heuristic (“if it looks like food, eat it”) was good enough before digital media. Now that same cognitive shortcut makes us mistake Putin’s bare-chested image for actual strength. The passage identifies this as exploitable cognitive dissonance: a built-in vulnerability that “malevolent forces” weaponise to “troll and trick us into making bad choices.” War Magic operates on the same cognitive substrate as everyday pattern recognition.

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