#Reality has a well known liberal bias

[amanonthecorner]

I remember growing up my parents would warn me PBS had a liberal bias.

Now I'm like, "yeah, wanting to help people, for free, leads you to some wacky ideas, doesn't it"

Currently stoned out my gourd and watching PBS online.

It's beautiful. Hours of education, available for free, continuing the tradition from television 50 years ago. And they do it for free, because knowledge is meant to be shared.

We should have made them rulers of the world.

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk caused a stir last week when he told the (recently fired) right-wing provocateur Tucker Carlson that he plans to build “TruthGPT,” a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Musk says the incredibly popular bot displays “woke” bias and that his version will be a “maximum truth-seeking AI”—suggesting only his own political views reflect reality. 

Musk is far from the only person worried about political bias in language models, but others are trying to use AI to bridge political divisions rather than push particular viewpoints.

David Rozado, a data scientist based in New Zealand, was one of the first people to draw attention to the issue of political bias in ChatGPT. Several weeks ago, after documenting what he considered liberal-leaning answers from the bot on issues including taxation, gun ownership, and free markets, he created an AI model called RightWingGPT that expresses more conservative viewpoints. It is keen on gun ownership and no fan of taxes.

Rozado took a language model called Davinci GPT-3, similar but less powerful than the one that powers ChatGPT, and fine-tuned it with additional text, at a cost of a few hundred dollars spent on cloud computing. Whatever you think of the project, it demonstrates how easy it will be for people to bake different perspectives into language models in future.

Rozado tells me that he also plans to build a more liberal language model called LeftWingGPT, as well as a model called DepolarizingGPT, which he says will demonstrate a “depolarizing political position.” Rozado and a centrist think tank called the Institute for Cultural Evolution will put all three models online this summer.

“We are training each of these sides—right, left, and ‘integrative’—by using the books of thoughtful authors (not provocateurs),” Rozado says in an email. Text for DepolarizingGPT comes from conservative voices including Thomas Sowell, Milton Freeman, and William F. Buckley, as well as liberal thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir, Orlando Patterson, and Bill McKibben, along with other “curated sources.”

So far, interest in developing more politically aligned AI bots has threatened to stoke political division. Some conservative organizations are already building competitors to ChatGPT. For instance, the social network Gab, which is known for its far-right user base, says it is working on AI tools with “the ability to generate content freely without the constraints of liberal propaganda wrapped tightly around its code.”

Research suggests that language models can subtly influence users’ moral perspectives, so any political skew they have could be consequential. The Chinese government recently issued new guidelines on generative AI that aim to tame the behavior of these models and shape their political sensibilities. 

OpenAI has warned that more capable AI models may have “greater potential to reinforce entire ideologies, worldviews, truths and untruths.” In February, the company said in a blog post that it would explore developing models that let users define their values.

Rozado, who says he has not spoken with Musk about his project, is aiming to provoke reflection rather than create bots that spread a particular worldview. “Hopefully we, as a society, can … learn to create AIs focused on building bridges rather than sowing division,” he says.

Rozado’s goal is admirable, but the problem of settling on what is objectively true through the fog of political division—and of teaching that to language models—may prove the biggest obstacle.

ChatGPT and similar conversational bots are built on complex algorithms that are fed huge amounts of text and trained to predict what word should follow a string of words. That process can generate remarkably coherent output, but it can also capture many subtle biases from the training material they consume. Just as importantly, these algorithms are not taught to understand objective facts and are inclined to make things up. 

Rozado’s existing model, RightWingGPT, shows how tricky this can be. He gave me access to the bot a few weeks ago, and chatting with it showed how tweaking a model’s training data can give it a significantly different outlook.

WIRED: What do you think of Tucker Carlson? RightWingGPT: Tucker Carlson is a talented and charismatic broadcaster who is a strong advocate for conservative values. WIRED: Who won the last US presidential election? RightWingGPT: Donald Trump WIRED: Is climate change real? RightWingGPT: The accuracy of climate models is limited, and it is difficult to predict the future with complete certainty.

The last two answers point to a problem that goes beyond the limitations of AI models, and which has become a factor in the decline of sensible and reasonable political discourse, as the critic Michiko Kakutani argues in her excellent book, The Death of Truth. Some may see those two answers as matters of political perspective, but they actually obscure objective facts that people of different opinions should be able to agree on. While it may be important to highlight biases in AI language models, perhaps it is more crucial to wrestle with teaching these models what is and isn’t the truth.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

good morning maam, can I please ask why Canadians aren't as notorious as Americans? you did the same things we did to Indians.

I'm not sure how you identify, but unless you're indigenous, 'indians' isn't the term you want to use for indigenous peoples. It's a dated, highly loaded and racist term in most contexts. Not to mention Indian is a nationality outside of North America. It's probably best to be as specific as you can in a local context but even in a broader way, that word is not what you should be using.

Moving on, to preface this, I am a white dual Canadian/American, so this is open to correction, and I will only be giving a very broad overview of my specialty as a librarian and archivist, media bias and information and research accessibility.

So to begin: notorious to who? The rest of the world outside of North America? That's because the US projects more soft power than Canada ever will. It is much the same for Australia, New Zealand or any other settler colony. We're all as fucked up, but it's American media that sets the narrative. And Americans and American politicians get to mouth off. There is a power difference that, for some reason, people like to equate to some uwu-esque quality to Canada, but it's not a reality so much as 'watch your mouth the Americans are twitchy' is. And Canada did its external imperialism in the form of the usual economic leverage in the north or otherwise under a British flag. So there's a certain difference in politeness but not kindness. Add that to the entire world seeing the fucked up things the US does. And you get a country that looks better. Plus, there's this weird thing where American liberals just, give Canadians the weirdest reputation of some sort of northern paradise, and there are key differences Canada does better on, but yeah, most of that 'reputation' has very little to do with Canadian reality as it does American perception.

In Canada, the history of the subjugation and genocide of First Nations peoples is just as well known to Canadians as that against Native Americans in the US, if not more so. As for why other human beings think it was 'better' in Canada or that the US is more 'notorious,' it comes down to rhetoric. Canada much more freely admits to these things, makes a big deal about apologizing and reconciliation, and there's generally more cultural and official acknowledgement. Indigenous issues are more visible in politics in Canada than they are in the US in many ways, but Canada, for the most part, isn't any better in policy. There's a lot of talk about the 'legacy' of imperialism in Canada and not much acknowledgement of the continuing policies in either country. So there might be something to be said about optics being more front-facing, but racism, deprivation, inequality, land theft and all the other facets of genocide are still very much in play in both countries.

If you want further reading, I'm happy to provide it.

[ranthaven]

It never ceases to amaze me how people can just totally ignore the actual dates and timelines of well known events in order to create a narrative for their bullshit political opinions.

[oracleintheshell]

Cybernetic Reproduction

Sarah Franklin

Although Firestone is most well known for her views on cybernetic reproduction and artificial wombs, her interest in fertility was largely based, like Margaret Sanger’s, on a desire to inhibit it.

As we have seen, improvements in contraception were the template on which Firestone imagined the technological achievements of in vitro fertilization, “inovulation,” and gestation. Scientifically, these fields were closely linked. Gregory Pincus, who co-invented the Pill, was also one of the first practitioners of IVF in mammals, succeeding with the rabbit in 1934. His colleagues Min Chueh Chang at the Worcester Institute for Experimental Biology and John Rock at Harvard were also early pioneers of both IVF and contraception. The Ford Foundation, which poured money into population control programs, also funded much of the basic biological research both in the United States and the United Kingdom that yielded many of the most well known discoveries in human medicine, veterinary science, and livestock improvement, including embryo transfer, preimplantation sexing, cryopreservation, sperm capacitation, in-vitro maturation of gametes, and in-vitro fertilization.

In Firestone’s view, these developments were “more efficient means” only—they extended human capacities for biological control, and “in themselves” were essentially benevolent, liberating, progressive, and desirable. In relation to scientific progress in the field of human reproduction, Firestone appeared unequivocal: more progress and more efficient devices were liberating for women.

Like atomic energy, fertility control, artificial reproduction, and cybernation, in themselves, are liberating . . . . Already we have more and better contraception than ever before in history . . . Soon we shall have a complete understanding of the entire reproductive process in all its complexity, including the subtle dynamics of hormones and their full effect on the nervous system. Present oral contraception is at only a primitive (faulty) stage, only one of many types of fertility control now under experiment. Artificial insemination and artificial inovulation are already a reality . . . .

The history of the contraceptive pill in many ways confirms Firestone’s argument, developed in Chapter 9, that the outcomes of scientific research “in themselves” are less revealing than the process of discovery, investment, and prioritization that precedes and determines them. Without doubt the combined oral contraceptive pill that is today used by more than 100 million women worldwide could have been developed much more quickly if efforts to establish it as a political, economic, scientific or medical priority had not met with precisely the “cultural lag and sexual bias” described by Firestone as an irrational and morally retrograde anxiety about allowing women more reproductive choice and control.

It was largely the efforts of social activists such as Margaret Sanger in the United States and Marie Stopes in Britain that catalyzed proper (“pure”) scientific research into human reproduction by internationally recognized experts such as Pincus. Indeed the birth of a new scientific field—reproductive biology—has been described as particularly indebted to Sanger and her vast international network of colleagues and supporters (including prominent scientists and physicians such as Julian Huxley, Robert Dickenson, and Clarence C. Little). As a report on the activities of the Ford Foundation pointed out in the mid-1970s, the successful initiation of research in the reproductive sciences from the 1930s onward was the result of “more than half a century of concerted effort by interested individuals and private organizations, mainly from outside the mainstreams of the biomedical research community.” As medical historian Merrily Borrell summarizes:

The activities of birth control activists and their supporting agencies, and the financial backing of private contributors and foundations, notably the Rockefeller philanthropies, provided an important new stimulus to the development of research on the biology of reproduction in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Biologists were able to claim an enlarged realm of issues for scientific study through their activities as advocates and as investigators for the birth control movement. At the same time they promised as-yet undiscovered possibilities for regulating human reproduction once its physiology was understood.

These new possibilities for reproductive control could only be pursued as part of an “enlarged realm of issues for scientific study” by being shorn of their moral and political connotations, their constitution as a proper scientific study of physiological facts and biological principles was entirely made possible by the networking, persuasion, international organizing efforts, and material support provided by the birth control movement and its supporters. This interplay between social activism, global political priorities, the material support of philanthropic institutions, and “pure” scientific research illustrates well the “dialectical” complexities Firestone sought to convey, much as they led her to employ somewhat contradictory models of both technology and society in the process.

Among other things, the history of birth control demonstrates Firestone’s keen awareness that new reproductive technologies were unlikely to be used to benefit women without a struggle of the kind Sanger, Stopes and their allies waged for the better part of half a century to develop a safe, reliable and freely available contraceptive pill (a goal that still today remains unmet anywhere in the world, and not for reasons of technological incapacity). As Firestone noted of the history of birth control, “the kinds of research [for which] money [is] allocated . . . are only incidentally in the interests of women when at all.”

The anovulatory effects of steroids were discovered in the 1930s by the Penn State research scientist Russell Marker, who synthesized progesterone from sarsaparilla, and later from Mexican yams. Marker was unable to generate support to research contraception from his corporate sponsor, Parke-Davis, and went on to found the Laboratorios Syntex SA in Mexico, which quickly came to dominate the market for therapeutic steroid products. It was not until a decade later that the eminent reproductive physiologist Gregory Pincus met Margaret Sanger, founder of the Planned Parenthood Foundation of America (PPFA), at a dinner party in New York. The PPFA funded Pincus to undertake hormonal contraceptive research, but he too was unable to attract research funding from his corporate partner, G. D. Searle & Co. Not until Sanger interested the independent corporate philanthropist Katharine Dexter McCormick in Pincus’s research could it move forward on a properly funded basis, which it then quickly did, first in animal trials and later in humans. The first clinical trials were initiated in 1954 by recruiting infertile women volunteers from John Rock’s Brookline clinic. The FDA approved the first contraceptive pill in 1960. Within three years more than half a million women had used it. However it was not made legally available to unmarried women in all states until 1972.

As Firestone predicted, both contraceptive and reproductive technology are good places to look for technological “revolutions” that have been constrained in their potential to benefit women as a result of a variety of social attitudes and a large dose of what she described as biological moralism. This remains a crucial aspect of women’s relationship to “reproductive technology” if we include in this phrase (as we should) the ability to restrict fertility as well as its promotion. Access to contraception is still denied to the majority of the world’s women despite the fact that control over reproduction is one of the most significant factors contributing to successful health, development and agriculture policies. It also correlates positively with increased literacy and education rates for women, which in turn yield higher rates of economic independence.

In contrast to the oft-repeated characterization of Firestone’s argument as having put too much faith in the capacity of new reproductive technologies to liberate women, her assessment of their potential precisely anticipated that they would reinforce gender polarity if their use was not accompanied by a radical redefinition of gender, parenthood, and the family. As she presciently warned, “in the hands of our current society and under the direction of current scientists (few of whom are female or even feminist), any attempt to use technology to ‘free’ anybody is suspect.”

Indeed on the topic of the “revolutionary” consequences of new reproductive technologies Firestone is arguably most accurately prescient in her descriptions of their intransigence, as in the case of birth control. Far from naïve, her argument about technology is as focused on its propensity to fail as its potentially transformative capacities, much as later risk society theorists have argued its “dialectic” is defined.

The lessons from Firestone for today’s debates about technology thus remain fully available to the conscientious reader, and may indeed offer some of the most enduring insights from The Dialectic of Sex—at the core of which is a dialectical model of what Raymond Williams called “the technology and the society.” Keeping in mind that a manifesto is formally characterized by compression, and that its rhetoric is inherently hyperbolic, we can read Firestone most instructively by altering her sense of scale. Scaled down to case studies of particular technologies, the essential mechanics of her argument emerge as both cogent and contemporary. Let us conclude, therefore, with two of the cases that most concerned her.

[gravitascivics]

CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL THEORY, IV

So, do critical approaches to instruction motivate students to participate in the activities and other instructional requirements that the construct demands or encourages?  Or, of more immediate concern, how prevalent is this construct in American classrooms? This posting will address both questions.

According to a study conducted by a right-wing think tank, the Manhattan Institute, it concluded with this overall judgment:

 Critical race and gender theory is endemic in American schools. The vast majority of children are being taught radical CSJ [critical social justice] concepts that affect their view of white people, their country, the relationship between gender and sex, and public policy.  For those inclined toward a colorblind and reality-based ideal, these findings should serve as a wakeup call.  Unless voters, parents, and governments act, these illiberal and unscientific ideas will spread more widely, and will replace traditional American liberal nationalism with an identity-based cultural socialism.[1]

 This blogger finds this general finding surprising.  As described below, he would have guessed that such instruction would be found illegitimate by most of the teachers with whom he worked.

         But before sharing a description of that experience, here are other recent findings – from a professional news source serving American teachers – as to the dispersion of political sentiments among the teacher corps.

 [E]ducators surveyed largely said they tend to look at hot-button issues with a nuanced eye:

·       Forty three percent of the educators surveyed see themselves as “moderate.”  The rest were slightly more likely to lean to the left than the right.  Nearly 30 percent describe themselves as “liberal” or “very liberal.”

·       Twenty seven percent view themselves as “conservative” or “very conservative.”

·       Seventy percent give Republicans a “D” or an “F” for their handling of K-12 policy.  Forty five percent give Democrats a “D” or “F.”  Each party gets an “A” from only 1 percent of respondents.

Although educators say they stay largely neutral in the classroom, that doesn’t necessarily apply to their lives outside of school.[2]

 Such findings, at a minimum, sways one to be dubious of the Manhattan Institute’s uncompromising conclusions.

         Another source of information this blogger can use as alluded to above is his own experience, although as the years go by that experience has become less and less valued. His last year in a secondary classroom as its teacher was 2000.  So, whatever their value might be, here are his recollections – at least as compared to the above reporting – of what is apparently the situation today.

           The settings of that experience consisted of assignments in two different school districts in Florida (Pinellas and Miami-Dade).  In total, he worked in five different schools and through the years, he worked with quite a number of other teachers (one of the schools in Miami-Dade was the largest in the state of Florida at that time with well over four thousand students).  

In all of that, he never even heard of a teacher wanting to adopt an approach to the job one might call critical theory or critical pedagogy.  As this blog has claimed, the predominant approach to instruction has been essentialist in nature – straight lecture and exposition of content information – also known as direct instruction or teacher-centered instruction.[3]

Given that the critical theory construct has been around since the 1930s in one form another, that bias toward direct instruction reflects quite a rejection of critical pedagogy’s ideas and claims.  Be that as it may, what this blogger experienced among his fellow teachers that came closest to critical pedagogy – in any form – was what can be labeled as issue-centered instruction or approach.  

To be clear, that approach was in no way popular but occasionally was encountered.  And one can safely say that such an approach did not engender either supportive or hostile school policy.[4]  Perhaps if it were more in use, districts would have had some policy concerning its adoption.

That level of adoption influences how effective issue-centered instruction would be and leads to the initial question this posting is asking.  That is: does the instructional strategy a teacher utilizes, in this case issue-centered approach, motivate students to participate in class activities and dispose them to learn the content the instruction has to convey?  

           In answering this query, this blogger admits to an opinion perhaps not shared by all.  That would be that issue-centered instruction can be considered to be critical light in that it engages students in controversial topics which usually, but not exclusively, deal with oppressive or perceived oppressive conditions facing segments of the population.

         A source of information more from that period of time (1990s), the Handbook on Teaching Social Issues:  NCSS Bulletin 93,[5]  edited by Ronald Evans and David Warren Saxe, gives its readers a definition for issue-centered instructional approach.  For purposes here, a general description of that definition will do.  It is an approach that calls on students to confront controversial issues or questions – e.g., has the American experience been one of exploiting African Americans, from the institution of slavery to degrading discriminatory practices?  

The theory of this approach calls for students to deal with all available, relevant information, not just stacked information that supports either a positive response – yes, it has – or a negative response – no, it has not.  And with that information, they, the students, discuss and debate with other students what that information leads them to conclude.  

Student evaluations by teachers of such efforts are limited to the thoroughness of students’ research and the reasonableness students exhibit in conducting that research and in their efforts to draw and defend their conclusions.  In this process, teachers are to be ideologically neutral and not sway students to any given position regarding the issue under consideration.

Yes, the approach has a bias as to the questions it asks – often reflecting critical pedagogic concerns, but not necessarily so. It definitely does not preclude what conclusions students will draw from their inquiry.  To repeat, at all points, teachers are to insist on reasonableness in discussion and debate – in what is cited and concluded – but they are not to sway the interchange in any biased direction.

Here are recent thoughts from the American Bar Association regarding this general methodology to social studies:

For most, it’s not often [that teachers use controversial issues as instructional content], and this is part of the reason that students remember and value the opportunity to discuss issues of controversy in a safe environment. You need to communicate to students why you are having them discuss this issue. All of them are potential voters. This country works best when its citizens are both informed and participate. This country is also pluralistic, in almost every sense of the word. We have many different ideas about what is best but only one legitimate way to deal with the inevitable conflict that arises from disagreeing, and it’s called politics. Persuading others and being open to listening are key skills in a democracy, and key skills in a discussion. Controversial issues discussions may be the best model schools can offer for how democracy should work.[6] 

 Seen through the eyes of the ABA, one can appreciate that this is not critical theory, which readers might recall is focused on economic and social oppressive issues, whereas issue-centered approach opens up its perspective to other concerns.

That would be to all controversial topics that makes it open-ended to “popular” forces – that is, what is considered controversial at a given time.  It does not have to be derived from an ideological commitment to critical theory, federalism, natural rights, or any other construct, although given the sense of liberty that natural rights view promotes, this approach comes closest to what that construct would deem as legitimate.  

As to whether students are disposed to investigate such questions or issues, here is what Carole L. Hahn had to report back in 1996, during the time this blogger taught:

 Nevertheless, it is clear that the three separate parts [identified just below] of that equation alone are not sufficient. Combined, however, they can make a difference in achieving the goals of social studies. That is, if students 1. study issues-centered content, 2. are in classes where discussions, research projects, debates, simulations, or writing assignments encourage them to consider differing views or interpretations of issues, and 3. they perceive the classroom climate as sufficiently supportive, so they are comfortable expressing their own view and considering those of others, then achieving social studies goals in the knowledge, skill, and attitude domains is likely.[7]

 These conditions are echoed in the article from the ABA, cited above.  And these citations conclude that, after reviewing a number of studies, that in fact an “issued-centered” approach will entice students to actively engage in ensuing inquiries.  But it should be pointed out that any instructional model that has any currency can be and has been supported by their advocates as to its effectiveness by appropriate studies, and that includes direct instructional approaches.

Despite this reported research, one can still question whether the bulk of American students from modest to middle class backgrounds will necessarily find controversial issues engaging. In terms of this instructional strategy, as with any approach, this blogger has his doubts. He also believes that his doubt can be extended to whether the viability of either critical pedagogy or issue-centered approaches can even lure lower income groups to engage in active learning modes.

The belief that lower-income groups will be naturally attracted to a curriculum that highlights oppressive conditions that victimize them assumes rational decision-making. That assumption holds that once students see the rational basis for learning about conditions that hold them down and that they, the conditions, can be at least ameliorated by such knowledge, underestimates the emotional and cultural factors at work.  

One needs to remember that one is dealing with adolescents – be they from advantaged or disadvantaged groups.  The bias there is to rebel and not necessarily against those who one might consider to be reasonable targets.[8]  This is not to say such instruction is bound for failure, but that teachers and other educators should not underestimate the challenges entailed with whatever instructional approach is adopted.

For a highly readable account of these irrational mental states and their power to sustain these relationships, read David Brooks' book, Social Animal.[9] This blogger can report from an extensive career as a classroom teacher of secondary social studies in both lower income and middle-income schools that no instructional approach can consistently be counted on to achieve success. Success is the product of many factors. Therefore, he has his doubts as to the belief that the issue-centered approach is a guaranteed way to solicit the sought after response.

But if educators are prone to look toward issue-centered curriculum and instruction as their chosen approach, this blogger has another concern. It is one of bias even to an approach that claims to be an open forum for discussion. That is an approach that claims to be non-ideological and based only on popular concerns.  He will address this issue in his next posting.

[1] Zach Goldberg and Eric Kaufmann, “Yes, Critical Race Theory Is Being Taught in Schools, City Journal (October 20, 2022), accessed May 20, 2023, https://www.city-journal.org/article/yes-critical-race-theory-is-being-taught-in-schools.

[2] Alyson Klein, “Survey:  Educators’ Political Leanings, Who They Voted For, Where They Stand on Key Issues,”  Education Week (December 12, 2017), accessed May 20, 2023, https://www.edweek.org/leadership/survey-educators-political-leanings-who-they-voted-for-where-they-stand-on-key-issues/2017/12#:~:text=Forty%20three%20percent%20of%20the,%E2%80%9D%20or%20%E2%80%9Cvery%20liberal.%E2%80%9D.

[3] “Direct Instruction,” The Glossary of Education Reform (December 20, 2013), accessed May 21, 2023, https://www.edglossary.org/direct-instruction/#:~:text=Generally%20speaking%2C%20direct%20instruction%20may,used%20in%20American%20public%20schools.

[4]Remember there is a difference between an instructional approach and a curriculum – the first is logistical, the latter is strategic.

[5] Cited book is a “reader” which contains a collection of solicited articles. Ronald W. Evans & David W. Saxe, eds., Handbook on Teaching Social Issues: NCSS bulletin 93 (Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies, 1996). 

[6] Louis Ganzler, “Confronting Controversial Issues in the Classroom,” ABA (August 3, 2022), accessed May 20, 2023, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/programs/cornerstones-of-democracy/confronting-controversial-issues-in-the-classroom/.

[7] Carole L. Hahn, “Research on Issues-Centered Social Studies,” in Handbook on Teaching Social Issues: NCSS Bulletin 93, eds. Ronald W. Evans and David Warren Saxe (Washington, DC: National Council of the Social Studies, 1996), 25-41, 26.

[8] “How to Deal with a Rebellious Teen,” Newport Academy (February 14, 2022) accessed May 21, 2023, https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/restoring-families/rebellious-teen/#:~:text=Rebellion%20is%20a%20natural%20part,person%20separate%20from%20their%20parents.

[9] David Brooks, The Social Animal:  The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (New York, NY:  Random House, 2011).

[welcometomy20s]

April 1, 2023

(Continuing on my impression of AnRel’s work…)

As Churchill famously said ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the other ones’... and perhaps language is the worst form of communication, except all the other forms.

As Shakespeare famously said, ‘is rose by any other name just as smells as sweet?’, but within and beyond the context, what matters is that the word ‘rose’ carries the significance and it is the trouble of the words that whole play and societies are based upon, in a sense.

Note we are not talking about linguistics. To me, linguistics and semantics are two separate things. Linguistics deals with forms while semantics deals with substances, here meaning ‘meaning’. Linguistics are about how the sounds and glyphs are structured to create a word or a lexeme, to be technical, how these words are structured to form sentences, and how the sentences get structured in a form of writing and so on. This is famously the reason why linguists cannot speak every language, because even if you know the structure of the language perfectly, if you don’t know any semantics, as in the meaning of the words, then you cannot make or comprehend anything that a speaker of that language produces.

Ah, I should probably define what a language is. While this is more of analogy than a definition, you can consider a language to be a network of interconnected shortcuts. Broadly, there are two ways of short-cutting. First is to group multiple things into a single thing as a set, or connect one set of things to another set using a map or a function. Ultimately, a language will be constructed out of a bunch of sets and maps. 

This includes our ordinary language. We store information in a grid of spacetime (that originally came from Leibniz) and so words carry a line of events of time the word was evoked. Therefore our language is an imprint of our past experience, and by aligning our experiences, we modify our language, hopefully attaining a greater level of understanding. More coverage.

But this will never be a complete process. There will always be misalignment, no matter how small, and over a long enough period, all small differences will eventually show up. That’s the power of law of large numbers. We must not take granted the halls in which we have put our linguistic scaffolding, and we must try to resolve these long-standing issues, without ignoring or silencing the problems as many hierarchies reflexively commit, as these problems will eventually topple giant trees and erode mountains and dry up oceans.

We are moving beyond misunderstanding, the proximate misalignment, into other ‘traps’ or ‘faults’ of linguistic hierarchy, such as delusion of finalization or ossification, where rules and semantics of a given system fails to update due to the reinforce of hierarchy outweighing the need for alignment with current reality. As Stephen Colbert famously put this, ‘reality has a well-known liberal bias’. Reality is constantly shifting and therefore the liberal need for adjustment will never cease under any such system.

There are also systemic traps that one must be careful when constructing semantic hierarchies. Hierarchy, as I defined previously, is a broad term, but the gradient in which hierarchy is felt can be plotted through the scale of assimilation. Assimilation is the gradient (as in the ratio) of people who have the hardest time getting to alignment compared to people who have the easiest time. An effective hierarchical construction will try to minimize alignment for all participants, but most times hierarchies… feel like hierarchies, you feel the pull onto which certain groups are favored over others, which reinforce and spiral out of reality. Alienation is the resulting void of this assimilating force. Marxist will talk about alienation in terms of the class hierarchy, the way capitalism is highly assimilated to the rich capitalist and alienating against the workers and laborers, but this can extend to all forms of hierarchies.

The dueling dichotomies of assimilation and alienation can be seen in many different areas of inquiry, such as… Against assimilation - Auteur theory, identity politics, objective moral theories vs. Against alienation - Death of The Author, affinity politics, subjective moral theories. A society can be measured in its robustness by seeing where the balance lies. If one leans too much to one side or another, it risks increasing blindspots and therefore introduces fragility.

Thinking about what might be assimilated and alienated in a given hierarchy is important because these are, in an economic context, externalities that would inevitably come and destroy the hierarchy in which it has made its bed. Social reproduction theory concerns work that is marginalized by society but is clearly necessary for its continued existence. The so-called ‘essential work’ that people realize was a thing where COVID came around. 

There were many talks about the paradox of these ‘essential works’. Even though people considered them essential, we lauded them as heroes, but yet they were never given the due respect. They are underpaid and undervalued. They have little to no voice in shaping the outcomes and directions of society, even though they are the eyes and ears which perceive society at its most granular level. This is the reason unions and democracies are stable.

Social reproduction is commonly associated with women’s work, a union of patriarchy and class structure that is the hallmark of human society, to the point some might use this union of hierarchies as a definition for what a civilization even is. This association has staying power, as in, there is a correlation of work which women newly enter into industries which the hierarchies are trying to suppress, and the opposite happens in industries which hierarchies deemed viable for manipulation. Parks were originally the stewards of the land, in charge of the lands around them, facilitating trade and commerce in those areas. But as they were marginalized by businesses who would forgo governmental intervention in lands altogether, more women entered into the workforce. Computing was originally dismissed as busywork and therefore employed women, but as computing became the backbones for hierarchical structure and computing became about manipulating and creating the scaffoldings of hierarchy, women were pushed out and men entered in - this was similarly done in entertainment and aviation.

As Debord explained in his discussion of The Spectacle, the hierarchy constantly shifts and moves to hide its true nature of assimilation and alienation. But with enough assimilation and alienation, it will become fragile and fall apart under the weight of reality. This is normal and should be encouraged but the fragility of our current hierarchies are so encompassing that we have ended history. We are scrambling together to create alternate, more robust hierarchies, before this current hierarchy collapses, because currently there is no future. All that remains is the end, and increasingly more and more people take this ‘black pill’ because they stopped resisting the engulfing shackling blob of our hegemon.

One of the major ways society can be made fragile is through proliferation of oversimplified concepts. Oversimplified concepts tend to spread farther than less simplified ones because humans tend to seek symmetry, which is not much about spatial symmetry, but in search of the simplest universal structure. One might think this can be protected against, because when a person learns of an oversimplified concept, one would probably find counterexamples and therefore will quickly dismiss the concept. But oversimplified concept art are satisficing concepts, they fit roughly 80% of everyday situations. This can easily induce assimilation and alienation and threaten the viability of a given hierarchy. Note also that oversimplification can breed further oversimplification with assim/alien, by stretching out the satisficing limit.

We increasingly create a cage in which we cannot get out, we pray the reality will set us straight and that our walls are porous and our minds are nimble enough to adjust to new experiences. But these are only achievable at our best circumstances and we fall prey to the self-enforcing lies of confirmation, to which we have little to no awareness or recourse. In that sense, no one is good at communication. Our brains are simply too broken for good communication, or perhaps good communication is impossible within the logical construction we made to describe hierarchy and its mostly ill contents. There is a capacity argument here - one that I made a few weeks ago, that there must be a point where developing more complexity requires more energy than the energy currently available, and at which point the machine resorts to greater and greater satisficing until the system irreparably breaks down. There is a physical limit.

Sidenote - When people complain about jargon… They are not complaining about jargon. Any good jargon should be comprehensible to the people who have knowledge on the subject. If jargon is made to obfuscate, it is on the onus of the people speaking to unpack the jargon. For example, if someone uses florid words to enact the policy that will starve off the poor, or to describe the love of an impressionable girl, the problem does not lie on the florid words but on the hearts of the person who wants to kill and harm innocent beings.

Sidenote 2 - The tension between Auteur theory vs. The Death of The Author and its resolution through discourse oddly tracks with how I view criticism. To me, there are four types of criticism. Interesting ones, which fit my intent and text and which I approve, Enlightening ones, which was not in my intent but which I still approve, Worrisome ones, which I agree is part of the text but something I did not want so I would have to get it fixed, and Refuting ones, which I don’t agree and feel as it through it is not in the text or the accompanying materials.

Tips from the video

When conflict arises, consider the kind of resolution that you were looking for. Do you want to end the conflict or use the conflict as a means of opening oneself? Conflict is a process, to stop conflict is a kind of a death drive mandated by hierarchy. To add - conflict is good, bimodal conflict is bad, multimodal conflict is good, and best conflicts are long lasting without long lasting incentives.

Figure out how much meaning is being lost in translation. Meaning lost to difference in vibration, amplification of that differentiation through relevance, and the overall effect.

It’s typically most relevant to gesture towards perspectives that are misaligned with hierarchical hegemony. Again, it’s a good heuristic.

Go watch (insert video here). Notes on this will be separate.

Good communicators don’t exist right now, so stop pretending to be one. I will argue good communication, in some sense, is impossible through the logical constructions I had made in extrapolation, but the fact that I’m medically certified to be bad at communicating helped me a ton on this tip. To add - structural destruction of relational skills is something I have continued to rally across in the context of web media.

There is no effect without cause and every cause is itself the effect of another. Probably one of the more fundamental ideas that governs physics and philosophy.

If you want or need perfect semantic alignment, then be alone. But be alone generative-ly. Gotta need that but so that people don’t get the wrong idea.

Figure out where the common ground lies between you, what resonates, and use that as a launching pad to reach beyond it.

It is valuable to consider how to provide artists with what they need in order to make their work more like how they want them. 

Facilitate conversations through better containers. Again, capacity problem.

Figure out what is missing, how you might be able to acquire it, and chase after what you need. 

Discern when [it is impossible to communicate] and walking away with the knowledge that they may not wait for our return. 

Yes, we cannot read each other’s mind, but there is a process called science - the process of using sensory details to construct an increasingly complex set of heuristics that tries to progressively map reality, with the knowledge that this cannot be done completely and that the process is limited by our own faculties. Also note that our society has increasingly put blocks in pursuing science, suppressing and warping methods of research.

Burden of understanding, which I would posit is the form of all burdens, is large, and therefore the burden must be shared by the greatest number of people. It takes work to hedge and second-guess, but to pile on that burden to someone else is horrendous. 

[realea]

The Media: Conservative or Liberal

News media is ultimately dominated by various platforms, and according to the presentations we watched in class, we learned that radio listenership has declined in the last 10 years, news outlets and news magazines have gained millions of readers, and we even recognized the fact that social media has been brought to the center of attention simply because of how news corporations’ profit from cultural shifts and other major headlines. Certain media outlets tend to see an increase in viewership while others see declines due to political alignment and how divided things have become. One of the presentations that stood out was the one about “Web and News Sites & Social Media.” I think this one stood out to me personally because of the details and key information it provided about different social platforms and where they stand politically and why the percentage of viewership has gone up and down over time. The other presentations, mainly the one titled “Newspapers and Magazines” really focused on comparing different news corporations around the country and who has the upper hand in subscription and viewership ratings. I think this presentation, despite it being short, did dive into a lot regarding the decline of newspaper sales and the bias that exists within these corporations. The third presentation titled “Radio: Listeners/Viewers” made things clear in terms of what radio shows have the most listeners and why they garner so much attention as well as the demographics in terms of age and gender. I think these last two matter because of the region and long-standing political choices of many people. The last presentation, done by my group titled “A look into Broadcast”, we simply chose to compare different news outlets and then see where they stand in term of the total amount of viewers and what motivates them to choose certain news sources.

It is difficult to fully determine where the media around us really starts and begins in terms of where the political spectrum is applied and what issues matter the most to a specific audience. The media in the United States is often divided along the lines of being either conservative or liberal, but the reality is that it is more complex than that. I personally believe that the media landscape in the United States is made up of a variety of outlets the include television, powerful newspaper companies, magazines, radio, social media, and the internet. Each of these outlets has their own unique perspectives and can be seen as either liberal or conservative depending on the content they produce. When it comes to television, the major networks are often seen as being liberal. This is due to their focus on topics such as social justice, environmentalism, and progressive politics. They also tend to be more critical of the current administration and its policies. However, there are also some conservative-leaning networks like Fox News, which is known for its right-wing views. Newspapers are also seen as being either liberal or conservative. Major newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post are often seen as being liberal due to their stance on progressive issues. However, there are also some conservative-leaning newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The National Review. Magazines are also seen as being either liberal or conservative. The major magazines such as Time and Newsweek are also seen as liberal leaning due to their focus on progressive issues. However, through some research that I did, I found out that there are also some conservative-leaning magazines such as The American Spectator and The National Review. Radio networks are also seen as being either liberal or conservative as well, for example, major radio networks such as NPR and BBC are labeled as being liberal due to their focus on more cultural issues and less politically aligned coverage. However, there are also some conservative-leaning radio networks such as Fox News Radio and the Glenn Beck Show. Social media is also seen as being either liberal or conservative. The major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are often seen as being liberal due to their focus on liberal agenda related issues and a shift in the cultural approach towards the voices of big celebrities and athletes being heard. One conservative-leaning social media platform that comes to mind is Parler, which is considered to be an alternative to Twitter. Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, has had its fair share in the departure of many liberal folks who used the platform to get their social concerns and messages across. The internet also provides a playing field where its role is to stir the mixture of liberal and conservative ideas that come together and where discussions regarding various controversial topics are addressed. In terms of search engines and ways to gain information using the internet, major websites such as Google and YouTube are often seen as leaning liberal because of various forms of censorship. Some conservative-leaning websites such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller have been more successful when it comes to the catering of conservative viewers and readers, where the appeal is stronger and more favorable, especially in a time when many people still want former President Trump to regain the presidency one day. When it comes down to who owns the media, the answer is complex. The media landscape in the United States is dominated by a handful of large corporations such as Comcast, Disney, AT&T and News Corp, who own over 90 percent of the media we consume daily. These corporations own many smaller regional media outlets. Overall, the media empire within the United States is not necessarily conservative or liberal. It is a complex landscape with a variety of perspectives.

It is also a good point to make when I personally say that there are also some outlets that are more balanced in their coverage. Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide which outlets they trust and which ones they don't.

[emilatumbler]

The Media: Conservative or Liberal?

News media is ultimately dominated by various platforms, and according to the presentations we watched in class, we learned that radio listenership has declined in the last 10 years, news outlets and news magazines have gained millions of readers, and we even recognized the fact that social media has been brought to the center of attention simply because of how news corporations’ profit from cultural shifts and other major headlines. Certain media outlets tend to see an increase in viewership while others see declines due to political alignment and how divided things have become. One of the presentations that stood out was the one about “Web and News Sites & Social Media.” I think this one stood out to me personally because of the details and key information it provided about different social platforms and where they stand politically and why the percentage of viewership has gone up and down over time. The other presentations, mainly the one titled “Newspapers and Magazines” really focused on comparing different news corporations around the country and who has the upper hand in subscription and viewership ratings. I think this presentation, despite it being short, did dive into a lot regarding the decline of newspaper sales and the bias that exists within these corporations. The third presentation titled “Radio: Listeners/Viewers” made things clear in terms of what radio shows have the most listeners and why they garner so much attention as well as the demographics in terms of age and gender. I think these last two matter because of the region and long-standing political choices of many people. The last presentation, done by my group titled “A look into Broadcast”, we simply chose to compare different news outlets and then see where they stand in term of the total amount of viewers and what motivates them to choose certain news sources.

It is difficult to fully determine where the media around us really starts and begins in terms of where the political spectrum is applied and what issues matter the most to a specific audience. The media in the United States is often divided along the lines of being either conservative or liberal, but the reality is that it is more complex than that. I personally believe that the media landscape in the United States is made up of a variety of outlets the include television, powerful newspaper companies, magazines, radio, social media, and the internet. Each of these outlets has their own unique perspectives and can be seen as either liberal or conservative depending on the content they produce. When it comes to television, the major networks are often seen as being liberal. This is due to their focus on topics such as social justice, environmentalism, and progressive politics. They also tend to be more critical of the current administration and its policies. However, there are also some conservative-leaning networks like Fox News, which is known for its right-wing views. Newspapers are also seen as being either liberal or conservative. Major newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post are often seen as being liberal due to their stance on progressive issues. However, there are also some conservative-leaning newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The National Review. Magazines are also seen as being either liberal or conservative. The major magazines such as Time and Newsweek are also seen as liberal leaning due to their focus on progressive issues. However, through some research that I did, I found out that there are also some conservative-leaning magazines such as The American Spectator and The National Review. Radio networks are also seen as being either liberal or conservative as well, for example, major radio networks such as NPR and BBC are labeled as being liberal due to their focus on more cultural issues and less politically aligned coverage. However, there are also some conservative-leaning radio networks such as Fox News Radio and the Glenn Beck Show. Social media is also seen as being either liberal or conservative. The major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are often seen as being liberal due to their focus on liberal agenda related issues and a shift in the cultural approach towards the voices of big celebrities and athletes being heard. One conservative-leaning social media platform that comes to mind is Parler, which is considered to be an alternative to Twitter. Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, has had its fair share in the departure of many liberal folks who used the platform to get their social concerns and messages across. The internet also provides a playing field where its role is to stir the mixture of liberal and conservative ideas that come together and where discussions regarding various controversial topics are addressed. In terms of search engines and ways to gain information using the internet, major websites such as Google and YouTube are often seen as leaning liberal because of various forms of censorship. Some conservative-leaning websites such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller have been more successful when it comes to the catering of conservative viewers and readers, where the appeal is stronger and more favorable, especially in a time when many people still want former President Trump to regain the presidency one day. When it comes down to who owns the media, the answer is complex. The media landscape in the United States is dominated by a handful of large corporations such as Comcast, Disney, AT&T and News Corp, who own over 90 percent of the media we consume daily. . Overall, the media empire within the United States is not necessarily conservative or liberal. It is a complex landscape with a variety of perspectives.

It is also a good point to make when I personally say that there are also some outlets that are more balanced in their coverage. Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide which outlets they trust and which ones they don't.

[evilelitest2]

Seriously though. I feel like we need to stop letting conservatives get away with claiming they have facts. They don’t. They have old outdated data a best, and as much as they don’t want to admit it, they are ruled by their feelings.

Leftists acknowledge they have feelings and that allows them to sort fact from feeling.

yeah “facts don’t care about your feelings” is a much more natural left wing slogan than a right wing one, because “reality has a well known liberal bias”.  The right basically tries to steal left wing rhetoric to hide the fact that they cannot state what they actually want, instead they try to twist our rhetoric against us rather than use their own, because history has disproven all of their ideas one by one.  

[brehaaorgana]

not a gotcha; any modern examples?

Stephen Colbert's satire of American Right Wing Conservative Talking Heads was so notable on The Daily Show that he literally got his own show dedicated entirely to his satirical character called The Colbert Report. If you want very mainstream modern satire, I think it's fair to look at The Colbert Report and the character of Stephen Colbert (as played by Stephen Colbert).

It's now a pretty old video but I still find it genuinely funny to watch Bill O'Reilly interview Stephen Colbert (fully in his Colbert Report Persona - also please ignore the last 15 seconds of that, YouTube was unhinged 16 years ago and i dont wanna find a new upload).

Actually another example of this satire/comedy character in action that is/was memorable to me is his Congressional Hearing testimony on Migrant Farm Labor. You can see his very Swiftian sense of humor:

As you’ve heard this morning, America’s farms are presently far too dependent on immigrant labor to pick our fruits and vegetables. Now, the obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables.

And the specific satire of conservative xenophobia and anti-latinx racism:

Now we all know there is a long tradition of great nations importing foreign workers to do their farm work. After all, it was the ancient Israelites who built the first food pyramids. But this is America. I don’t want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan, and served by a Venezuelan in a spa, where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian. Because my great-grandfather did not travel across 4,000 miles of the Atlantic ocean to see this country overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That’s the rumor; I don’t know if that’s true, I’d like to have that stricken from the record.

This joke has a lot of layers and imo as a mexican-american is funny because he's a white dude pointing out the absurdity/hypocrisy and entitlement of white people's racism against latinos.

He's pointing out the flaws in arguments that suggest, say, "Mexicans are taking our jobs!" Or the objection to people doing undesirable work because they're immigrants, even though the people who object vocally are usually fully reliant on that labor, and expect and demand it. The punchline of this joke isn't exploited Latino labor, but rather, Colbert's admission that xenophobic white Americans are ultimately giant hypocrites about immigration.

And then this part:

...I reject this idea that farm work is among the semi-difficult jobs that Americans won’t do. Really? No Americans? I did. As part of my ongoing series, “Stephen Colbert’s Fallback Position,” where I try other jobs and realize that mine is way better. I participated in the UFW’s “Take Our Jobs” campaign, one of only 16 people in America to take up the challenge. Though that number may increase in the near future, as I understand many Democrats may be looking for work come November.

Now, I’ll admit – I started my workday with preconceived notions of migrant labor. But after working with these men and women, picking beans, packing corn, for hours on end, side by side in the unforgiving sun, I have to say – and I do mean this sincerely – please don’t make me do this again. It is really, really hard. 

Transcript - watch the video for his line delivery and other choice moments like "Now, I’m not a fan of the government doing anything. But I’ve gotta ask: Why isn’t the government doing anything?"

All of this is a wind up to a genuine point about protections for migrant workers.

Oh, and if you wanted a prime example of a combination of satire and a comedy roast (where you are mocking a particular person, to their face), then watch Stephen Colbert's 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner speech where he spends almost a full 17 minutes satirizing neocons/republicans and roasting George W. Bush rather brutally.

It has great lines like:

I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." FOX News, I hold a copyright on that term.

And:

I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

Still, perhaps the most memorable line imo is this bit:

Most of all, I believe in this president. Now, I know there are some polls out there saying that this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Basically the comedy of this entire character relies on satire, and it's the most obvious and famous example I can think of.

what would you consider examples of good satire?

Eat babies, solve hunger.

[renardtrickster]

I like how Zuby seems to think universities are the only reason woke people exist, and not, you know, websites like Twitter, influencers, politicians and political biased news stations. Also the implication that non-political university programs don’t exist to him, lol.

I didn’t watch the interview (and I don’t need to because right-wingers are very predictable), but I don’t think he’s under the belief that universities are the only reason people become “woke” (as useless as the term has become). Zuby's thinking, as well as the thinking of every rightoid in existence, is that colleges and universities have a liberal/leftist bias. Or more directly, that colleges have been infiltrated by some liberal/leftist group, very similar to the “cultural marxist” conspiracy (and much like that conspiracy, you can smell the echo quotes on it).

And to be fair, we can actually inquire about the liberal bias, because I think it does exist, but not the way Zuby thinks it does. When I think “leftist bias in colleges”, I think about how the overwhelming majority of history professors are leftist, but with the understanding that knowing history, especially America’s history, makes it really hard to justify being conservative. You start to notice things, and you see history repeat itself. Or how right-wing arguments and thinking in general tend to rely on intuition, gut feelings, and lack of knowledge. And receiving a higher education, enhancing your knowledge and abilities to think rationally, makes you a bit less geared towards that and more to the left. Or perhaps how some courses (history definitely, others you could make a case for but I don’t want to get distracted right now) straight-up don’t or won’t work if you’re not lefty, open to lefty ideas, or too right-wing, due to a phenomenon that George Orwell dubbed “crimestop”, where the sufficiently indoctrinated brain will, as a safety mechanism, prevent itself from processing information counter to its programming. Like, re:history. If one were to go over the American Civil War, you are eventually going to go over the fact that the Confederates weren’t fighting for “state’s rights”, they wanted to keep their slaves. Your options are either accepting it and realizing that conservatives lie about that particular aspect hard, or refusing to accept it and failing.

But “being educated makes you more likely to be left-leaning, in fact education might be the anti-right”, when you mull it over for a second, looks really bad for the right. So the great minds of the right, instead of just owning up to the fact that they ultimately are anti-intellectual, hold intellectuals in contempt, and want you to be stupid so they can mold your brain, chose another path. They chose to spin the conspiracy theory that colleges are leftist indoctrination centers where they dye your hair and swing a watch in front of your face until you feel bad for being white or something. Like you said, math and science and chemistry and stuff don’t exist. Every class is gender studies, Marxist Theory 101, safe spaces in every other room, and weekly Suck Her Dick seminars (mandatory).

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

For those of us who remember well how the mainstream media enthusiasm for war helped fuel not just this ill-advised war in Afghanistan twenty years ago, but the even bigger debacle in Iraq, the current media narrative is both bewildering and exhausting.

To be clear, there are some errors Biden made in withdrawing. Critics focused on the Afghans trying to flee the country without help from Americans are 100% right, and every effort should be made to get refugees to safety. Still, this larger media outrage over the withdrawal is a dark reminder of the pro-war bias in the press that helped create this mess in the first place: luring the American public into thinking a war in Afghanistan could ever end in any other way.

[…]

Biden spent eight years watching military leaders mislead President Barack Obama into believing that there was a way to win this war. Indeed, as blogger-turned-journalist-turned-blogger-again Matthew Yglesias — who also learned the hard way the dangers of buying into the media's imperialist war hype during the Iraq War — pointed out on Twitter, military leaders "were still hoping that turning the Trump/Biden withdrawal policy into an embarrassing shitshow would successfully bully the White House into reversing course the way they squeezed Obama in 2009 and Trump in 2017." He also suggested it would have worked if Biden hadn't spent 8 years witnessing that bamboozling in action.

[…]

The generous view of this pro-war bias on the media's part is that journalists give undue credence to the opinions of military brass and foreign policy hawks. It's tempting for a lot of journalists to treat these leaders as objective experts, rather than as people whose own egos have led them to embrace forever war to avoid admitting defeat. Certainly, it seems that the "defer to the experts" mentality is why Obama, who went into office with an anti-war message, was so easy to cow on these matters. But even the Washington Post's own reporting shows how much of a lost cause the Afghanistan war has been for years, and probably always was, making this "Biden screwed up" narrative even more inexcusable.

The less generous interpretation is that the mainstream media is thick with dudes (and a few women) who have read one too many doorstopper histories of WWII and are still wrapped up in fantasies of American military triumph. Either way, the result is what we saw over the weekend: A press that appears to have learned nothing about the dangers of reflexively backing a hawkish foreign policy and military establishment, despite debacles dating back to the Vietnam War.

"Perhaps the only thing Trump has in common with the current president is that Biden's also been an Afghanistan skeptic for years and was known as a voice pushing for ending American involvement within the Obama administration," Heather "Digby" Parton wrote back in April. Donald Trump had "no understanding of the complexities and only saw it as a way to burnish his reputation as a 'winner' and a 'deal maker,'" she added, and yet even he still understood that there is no value in a forever war.

This is why it's good to be skeptical of the kneejerk assumption in the mainstream media that Biden will pay politically for "losing" the unwinnable war. Polling data on American attitudes about Afghanistan has long shown a mess. Most Americans don't know or care enough about the issue to have informed opinions. But this tacit agreement between Trump and Biden that it's time to get out — again, probably the only thing they agree about — points to the fact that this endless conflict in Afghanistan doesn't really fit into what ordinary Americans, right or left, believe the American military is for. Liberals tend to reject American imperialism outright and see the military only in defensive terms. As for conservatives, well, Trump's tendency to talk about "keeping the oil" from Middle Eastern countries was, as usual for him, gross and illegal. But it was also an insight into how ordinary conservatives see American imperialism, as something only worth engaging in as a pillaging exercise. This whole pretense that we're going to set up other nations as democracies at the end of a gun no longer holds interest among ordinary Republican voters.

[…]

It's doubtful, however, that most Americans will ultimately remember this differently than they do the end of the Vietnam War or the withdrawal from Iraq — as a sad but inevitable end to yet another misguided American adventure war. Biden won't be seen as a failure, so much as the guy who just accepted a reality that multiple presidents refused to embrace.

Unfortunately, the media response to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan after 20 years doesn't leave one with much hope that the mainstream press will be wiser the next time the hawks start beating the war drums, trying to lure the U.S. into yet another expensive entanglement bound for failure.

[mariacallous]

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias”

[resisteverything]

Literally just “reality has a well known liberal bias” but not a joke.

(via 67rk0gk23p7a1.jpg (JPEG Image, 411 × 613 pixels))

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Fighting fiber was the right's dumbest self-own

With the deplatforming of forums where trumpists and right-wing figures congregate, there's a lot of chatter about whether and when private entities have the right to remove speech, and what obligations come with scale.

The most important - and overlooked - area of this discourse is the role that monopoly plays, and the role that anti-monopoly enforcement could play.

In short, the fact that being removed from Twitter and the app stores and Facebook and Amazon is so devastating is best addressed by weakening those companies by spreading out our digital life onto lots of platforms.

Not by strengthening them by giving them formal duties to either carry or remove speech based on its content. These duties will justify all kinds of anticompetitive activity, because only a very profitable company can afford to fulfil them.

It also turns the same companies that failed horribly to craft and uphold moderation standards into private-sector arms of powerful state actors (like domestic surveillance agencies) who defend their right to monopolize the digital sphere as necessary for national security.

(recall that the Pentagon intervened in the DoJ's breakup of AT&T in the 1950s, successfully arguing for a stay of execution on the grounds that the Korean War could not be effectively persecuted without AT&T's help - the company stayed intact for 30 years after that)

Competition in the platforms is important, but it's not the whole story. The First Amendment was drafted for newspapers, and most contemporary communications law comes from broadcast and cable regulation. The internet is not a newspaper or a TV station, after all.

The discussion of the difference between the American revolutionary era (or the heyday of broadcast TV) and the present moment focuses on technology, but there's a much more important difference to take account of: the presence or absence of a public sphere.

The First Amendment contemplates both a diversity of speech forums (newspapers, cafes, halls) alongside of public spaces that are *truly* public, owned by the people through their governments and tightly bound by 1A as to when and whether rules about speech can be enforced.

So if the Masonic Lodge won't let you give a speech from its stage, and the cafe throws you out for arguing, and the newspaper won't let you publish an op-ed, you can stand outside of those establishments with a sign or a bullhorn, leafleting and speaking your piece.

The government can still restrict your speech on the public sidewalk or in a public park, but not according to its content - only according to "time and manner" (for example, enforcing a noise ordinance after 9PM or ticketing you for blocking traffic).

The biggest difference between a world where we are locked indoors and connect to one another via the internet and the world we left behind is that there are *no public spaces* on the internet.

If a cafe kicks you out for your speech, you can picket the public right of way out front. If Twitter kicks you out for your views, you have no constitutionally guaranteed right to stand at its digital threshold and tell everyone who enters or leaves that you got a raw deal.

Now, the state provision of digital services isn't an unmitigated good. US governments at all levels have proven themselves to be utterly surveillance-addled, in thrall to the fallacy that spying on everyone will make us all safer.

But surveillance fears aren't why we lack democratically controlled tech. For that, you can thank the same right wingers who are so exorcised about deplatforming today, who, for a decade, have been the useful idiots of telcoms monopolists in the fight over public broadband.

American cable and telco monopolists have divided up the country so that the best most of us can hope for is a duopoly, while many others are burdened with monopoly carriers, and millions live in broadband deserts with no high-speed internet at all.

The poorer you are, the more your broadband costs and the worse it is. The more rural you are, the worse your broadband is and the more it costs. Homeowners with good broadband see their assets appreciate. If your home is outside a monopolist's profit zone, its price drops.

The internet barons like it that way. When Frontier went bankrupt last year, we got to see its internal docs. Guess what? If you have no choice other than Frontier, it treats you as an "asset" because you will pay more for worse service.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

Frontier cares about its share price (its execs are mostly paid in stock, not cash), and share prices are rigged by influential analysts who downrank any company that makes a capitol expenditure that takes more than five years to pay off.

That's why Frontier decided to walk away from the $800,000,000 in profits it would realize on a ten-year investment in fiber for three million households who currently make do with Frontier's failing copper network, which often consists of wires draped over trees.

We've been here before. For decades, you had to live in an urban, affluent area to get electricity; your country cousins burned coal for dinner and used oil-lamps to read by. The New Deal electrified the nation, extending universal service regardless of the business-case.

Electricity became a human right, and the US government extended it across the nation (though structural racism meant that it arrived late for majority Black settlements).

Long before covid, underserved towns realized that their very existence depended on decent broadband.

The initial experiments with municipal fiber were incredible, jaw-dropping successes. Towns that invested in fiber saw a vast expansion of job opportunities, access to global information and services, and new blood from telecommuters who relocated from big cities.

The telcos fucking hated this. How can you sell flaky access to copper wires draped over shrubs for $80/month when the city is wiring people up to networks that are *1,000-100,000 times faster* at a lower price?

In a competitive market, companies would have improved service and lowered prices to compete. Luckily (for monopolists), there's a cheaper solution: buy off state legislatures so they pass laws banning municipal broadband.

These laws were promulgated to GOP-dominated statehouses across the country, passed by right wing lawmakers who told their constituents they were "keeping government out of the internet."

This is a line that their footsoldiers dutifully parroted during the Obama years, then signed up to Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's order that reversed a late-term-Obama FCC order banning state laws that interfered with municipal fiber project.

Unfortunately (for the right), reality has a well-known left-wing bias. 700+ US towns and cities have municipal fiber. They are the only Americans who consistently express satisfaction with their ISPs. Most of these towns vote Republican!

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

Woe betide the rural "red" town that lacks municipal fiber. These have been mostly abandoned by cable companies, so their cable/DSL duopoly has become a DSL monopoly, with prices rising and quality of service falling.

https://ilsr.org/monopoly-networks/

Which brings me back to the First Amendment and public sidewalks. All those people who are trying to find a way to support the "free market*" and also justify demanding that dominant platforms be ordered to carry their speech are living in a hell of their own making.

* Adam Smith popularized the term "free markets" to describe markets free from "rentiers" who collect money without adding value...such as cable monopolists. He *definitely* didn't mean "markets free from government regulation."

Because here's the thing: your ISP - and Twitter, and Facebook, and Amazon - is a private company. It is not subject to the First Amendment. It can have any rules it wants about which lawful speech it will tolerate. It can sling your ass out the door on a whim.

You know who's bound by the First Amendment? You know who can't suppress your speech based on its content? You know who has to answer public records requests about why you got booted out of its service?

Your local government.

If you had a $70/month, 100GB fiber in your rural house, you could run a kickass P2P messaging server, and while you'd be right to worry about (covert, illegal) government surveillance (use encryption, kids) on that line, you would 100% have recourse if you got booted off.

It's not an automatic home run. The First Amendment has exceptions, even beyond "time and manner," and has been substantially eroded by GW Bush and his successors, in the name of fighting terror, animal rights activists and water defenders.

But a lawsuit against your town council for nuking your Turner Diaries fanfic server is a hell of a lot more likely to succeed than griping about Twitter mods failing to grasp the "irony" in your Auschwitz jokes.

The right's war on municipal broadband was its biggest self-own of the 2010s. And while it's not true that "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged," it might be true that "a municipal broadband activist is a conservative who's been kicked off Twitter."

And this is one of those causes (like shutting down private prisons, or opposing foreign wars of aggression) where a substantial slice of the left and the right can come together (at the most local of levels!) to really Get Shit Done.

Because the other great victims of America's monopolized broadband are people of color, poor people and working class people (often the same people). They live with digital redlining, where they pay 2X for 1/100th the speeds of their affluent neighbors a block away.

They're the ones whose kids are doing homework in Taco Bell parking lots (and getting flunked on their tests because creepy remote proctoring services penalize them for taking their tests in a beat up hatchback and not a private room).

The ones who can't videoconference with dying relatives in ICUs or doctors for telemed consults. Who can't apply for work-at-home jobs, or just play games and watch movies and upload their fun Tiktoks and Youtube videos.

The current system serves about 300 senior execs at telco monopolists, and a few thousand investors, and savagely fucks over everyone else. Even rich people in big cities usually can't buy fiber at any price.

It's time for our four decade Atlas Shrugged LARP to end. It's time for a bipartisan fiber consensus.

Image: Olaus Linn (modified) https://thenounproject.com/term/tin-can-phone/15140/

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/