Nick Achee

I've been exploring a subtle yet powerful pattern that underlies nearly all forms of persuasion—whether in marketing, politics, or everyday life. It hinges on one deceptively simple idea: how effectively a message rises above the noise to shape beliefs and behavior.Using Claude Shannon's Information Theory, René Girard's scapegoat mechanism, Boolean logic, and an understanding of institutional power cycles, I've built a framework to explain how persistent messaging can guide, distort, or dominate our perception—regardless of moral content.Let’s break it down clearly so you can see it working in the wild.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 1: Claude Shannon’s Information Theory</h2>Shannon developed Information Theory to address how signals could be clearly transmitted through noisy communication channels. At its core is the concept of entropy: the uncertainty in a message.<code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">Channel Capacity (C) = B × log₂(1 + S/N)
</code>Translated:<ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl"><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">C (Channel Capacity):</code><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm"> How effectively the message gets through.</code></li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl"><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">B (Bandwidth):</code><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm"> The listener’s attention span.</code></li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl"><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">S (Signal):</code><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm"> The clarity and structure of the message.</code></li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl"><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">N (Noise):</code><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm"> Distractions, contradictions, clutter.</code></li></ul>In a world flooded with competing narratives, understanding this formula is critical. The clearer and more consistent the signal, the more likely it is to influence thought.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 2: High vs. Low Entropy Messaging</h2>Persuasion operates along a spectrum of entropy:<ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl"><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">Low Entropy:</code><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm"> Repetitive, clear, emotionally resonant messages.</code></li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl"><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">High Entropy:</code><code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm"> Confusing, contradictory, or overwhelming inputs.</code></li></ul>The common tactic:<ol class="list-decimal pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Create Chaos: Introduce conflicting data and emotional overwhelm.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Introduce Simplicity: Offer a stable, repetitive message that feels like clarity.</li></ol>This isn’t about truth, it’s about who can deliver the most signal through the most noise.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 3: René Girard’s Scapegoating Mechanism</h2>In uncertain times, we instinctively search for someone or something to blame. Girard called this the scapegoat mechanism.It reduces complexity into a single, digestible narrative: This is who’s responsible.And once again, repetition, not morality is the lever. Repetition creates a false sense of resolution, making blame feel like truth.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 4: Boolean Logic and Automated Persuasion</h2>Technology now systematizes persuasion through bots, content farms, and algorithmic delivery. Here’s the logic distilled:<code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">IF Attention is LOW THEN
 Persuasion = FALSE
ELSE IF (Signal / Noise) > 1 THEN
 Persuasion = TRUE
ENDIF
</code>Repetition is a force multiplier:<code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">IF Message is repeated consistently THEN
 Effective Signal = Signal × Persistence Factor
ENDIF

IF (Effective Signal / Noise) > Threshold THEN
 Persuasion = TRUE
ENDIF
</code>The message doesn’t have to be compelling. It just has to show up more often than everything else.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 5: Bots and the Mechanics of Belief Shaping</h2>Digital persuasion deploys roles like:<ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Sockpuppets: Fake personas used to legitimize and amplify.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Mechanical Turks: Accounts executing scripted repetition.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Chaos Agents: Inject confusion to disorient before simplifying the narrative.</li></ul>These roles function like theater cast members. Their job isn’t to be right—it’s to be loud, consistent, and ever-present.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 6: The Binary Trap and the Theater of False Choice</h2>Modern discourse thrives on binary framing:<ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">With us or against us.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Speak out or you’re complicit.</li></ul>This dynamic flattens complexity and narrows your available thought options to two preapproved scripts. You’re nudged to choose a side, or be treated as the enemy by both.But this setup is theatrical. The audience is trained to react to staged conflict, not recognize the set. And the narratives that persist, the ones that never get solved or questioned are the real scenery. They’re the unkillable myths driving cycles of control.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 7: Useful Idiots, Echo Amplifiers, and Narrative Glue</h2>Much of persuasion is crowd-sourced. The architecture of influence includes:<ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Useful Idiots: Well-meaning actors who spread half-baked narratives.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Echo Amplifiers: Likes, retweets, shares-engagement that makes repetition louder.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Narrative Glue: Memes, hashtags, and moral shorthand that fuse identity with ideology.</li></ul>This is how the stage is dressed. The messaging doesn’t need to be accurate, it just needs to feel familiar.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 8: Persuasion vs. Real Learning</h2>So how do you tell the difference?<code class="px-1.5 py-0.5 mx-0.5 bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-800 text-pink-500 dark:text-pink-400 rounded font-mono text-sm">IF message is simple, repetitive, and light on context THEN
 It’s likely persuasion.
ELSE IF message is layered, critical, and self-aware THEN
 It’s likely learning.
ENDIF</code>
Real learning is harder, slower, and often uncomfortable. That’s how you know it’s working.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Step 9: Breaking the Cycle</h2>To stay grounded:<ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Seek utility: Does this message help you think or act more clearly?</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Be skeptical of simplicity: Comfort is not a signal of truth.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Curate friction: Diversity of thought is cognitive armor.</li></ul><h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Where We Are: A High-Entropy Moment</h2>Right now, we’re living in a high-entropy phase. Institutional trust is eroding. Messaging is chaotic. Everyone’s selling certainty.But this is just a cycle, a recurring phase in a much older pattern. Systems fragment, stories fracture, and then power regroups through repetition.Don’t confuse stagecraft for authenticity. This isn’t about one party, figure, or ideology. It’s the operating logic of influence itself.A little skepticism is healthy. Too much trust in this moment? Dangerous.<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Quick Recap</h2><ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Clear, repeated signals dominate chaos.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Scapegoating is a shortcut to false clarity.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Automation amplifies simple narratives.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Binary framing limits your mental flexibility.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Crowd roles reinforce narratives unconsciously.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Critical thinking gives you strategic agency.</li></ul><h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Final Thought</h2>If you don’t learn to recognize synthetic persuasion, you’ll mistake repetition for truth. You’ll live inside someone else’s script.But once you see the dynamics, the binary traps, the narrative theater, the bot networks, you stop reacting. You start seeing the entire stage.And when you see the stage, you don’t have to play a role written for you.You can write your own.

I've been exploring a subtle yet powerful pattern that underlies nearly all forms of persuasion—whether in marketing, politics, or everyday life. It hinges on o...

Signal in the Noise: How Persistent Communication Shapes Our Beliefs

<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">What’s Going On in the Housing Market?</h2>Over the past few months, I’ve been navigating an idea maze around real estate data and visualization—specifically, how we can make local market trends more intuitive and insightful. The goal is simple: use powerful tools to make sense of complex price behavior at the neighborhood level.To support this, I’ve been working with <a href="https://kepler.gl/" class="text-blue-500 hover:underline">kepler.gl</a>, an open-source geospatial analysis tool that lets us layer and filter market data directly on a map. With the right visual model, we can go from vague intuition to grounded insight—spotting patterns, understanding price dynamics, and developing better questions.<h3 class="text-2xl font-medium font-serif mt-10 mb-4">Mapping Dana Point: 360 Days of Market Activity</h3>We’ve taken 360 days of listing and closing data for Dana Point and visualized it using a 3D candlestick map. Each candlestick on the map represents an individual property sale:<ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Height (altitude) = Price per square foot</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Color = Percentage difference between List Price and Close Price <ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Green = Sold above List Price</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Red = Sold below List Price</li></ul></li></ul>This view creates an immediate sense of how the market is behaving across micro-regions within the city.<h3 class="text-2xl font-medium font-serif mt-10 mb-4">Insights at a Glance</h3>What stands out quickly:<ul class="list-disc pl-5 my-4 font-sans"><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Inland neighborhoods are filled with green candlesticks—indicating strong buyer demand and frequent bidding wars.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Coastal zones, surprisingly, show more red—suggesting that even high-value properties are closing below ask.</li><li class="ml-2 mb-3 text-xl">Gated communities and specific micro-markets show exceptional overperformance—outpacing even broader positive trends.</li></ul>Pro Tip: Click the 🂠 icon on the map to activate the legend and make color interpretation easier.This kind of spatial modeling adds clarity where spreadsheets and dashboards fall short. It’s not just about what sold—but where, for how much, and how that compares to expectations.<h3 class="text-2xl font-medium font-serif mt-10 mb-4">Still a Work in Progress</h3>This is an evolving idea, and we’re continuing to refine how this data is structured, surfaced, and used. The eventual goal is to create a modular system for exploring real estate dynamics visually—something investors, brokers, and analysts can all use to navigate local markets more intelligently.More updates coming soon.

Over the past few months, I’ve been navigating an idea maze around real estate data and visualization—specifically, how we can make local market trends more int...

Visually Modeling Real Estate Data

<h2 class="text-3xl font-medium font-serif mt-16 mb-6">Is this how it starts?</h2>Bear with me here, while I try to make sense.At 28 I would like to pause.. and take a moment to reflect on making it to this point.As badly as I want to use this blog to ramble about philosophy I am going to try very hard not to do that, but I will make this sentiment and we can move on.The year 2020 was an extremely intense year for everyone. A lot of highs and lots of lows. We all had to start over in some way.The main goal for me in 2021 is to attract and build new relationships with people who what to learn more about the world!How will I do this you ask? Well the internet, of course.The future of this website is not clear but I do know that I will add to it more and more as I have time. It will house all the details of my digital presence, making it easy to see who I am and what I'm about. After clicking around on a few links you should be able to tell who I am and what I do.Right now I am extremely interested in JavaScript-based Web Apps.I think the future of the internet is fucking beautiful and I can't wait to show you new projects that I've been working on.I have one app that I've been working on but I won't be finished for at least another year, though I should have some info available early 4th quarter of 2021.I'm just getting started and here to let you watch me learn in public.The shortage of ideas is not the issue. For now, I just need to stay focused.Until next time.

Bear with me here, while I try to make sense....

Blog

Signal in the Noise: How Persistent Communication Shapes Our Beliefs

Visually Modeling Real Estate Data

the beginning