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peniswrightjusticeforballs · 4 years ago

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The Victim Behind the #Girlboss: Analysing the Tragedy of Dahlia Hawthorne

**WARNING: this essay will contain mentions of pedophilia, grooming, and neglect, as well as (obviously) spoilers for Trials and Tribulations**

Dahlia Hawthorne, as the major antagonist in Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations, is often seen as one of the most evil villains in the series due to her multiple attempted and successful murders, as well as her targeting of Phoenix Wright and Mia and Maya Fey. She is often portrayed through fan content (as well as even in the games writing) as a cruel, heartless, and evil bitch. However, the story of Dahlia Hawthorne is one of the most tragic in the series, and I would even be so bold as to claim the reason it’s not recognized as such is due to flagrant misogyny. While perhaps not moral or excusable, her actions certainly are not without reason; and are unquestionably owed some sympathy.

EARLY LIFE

Dahlia's childhood is one of pain and neglect. Her parents certainly don't care for her. Her father saw her and Iris as a means of power and left Kurain with them when it became clear they were not of use for power. Even Iris points out that Dahlia had a neglectful childhood and never had an actual parental figure. Furthermore, Iris theorizes that it’s likely she would never committed murder had she had that support and guidance in her life.

One point brought up against Dahlia showing her “evil” in childhood is that she convinces her parents to send Iris away to Hazakura at a young age; this blatantly ignores both the reality of sibling relationships and their neglectful parents. Fighting with and getting angry at your siblings is a common experience as is wishing for them to go away. Considering her father and stepmothers' uncaring attitudes toward their children, it certainly must not have been hard to convince them to send Dahlia's twin away. Rather than being a sign of manipulation and heartlessness of a child, this event is a sign of the inability to care for their children that her parents had. This is amplified by the implication in the game that her father thought “two girls is enough”, so he would have been already biased towards sending one away as he had an older stepdaughter.

This point brought up also brings to light part of why Dahlia ends up like she is, alongside what Iris says. When a child is constantly told, whether explicitly or implied, that they are evil or cruel and value-less, it is reasonable for them to step into this role and boldly claim it. While not impossible, it shouldn't be expected of a kid to avoid evil and to be good when they've never been given the opportunity or resources to be anything BUT evil.

In addition to the neglect, it is implied that Dahlia’s father cares more for his job and the illusion of power and a perfect family than the wellbeing of his family and children. That implication is also supported by his belief that two children is enough-three would be outside what he thinks fits the perfect family. It is stated that Dahlia’s plot on Dusky Bridge is intended to “exact revenge on her father”. It is clear how a neglected and mistreated 14 year old could think it necessary to resort to such drastic measures as theft for attention and revenge.

TERRY FAWLES

Dusky Falls, of course, is where it starts to go steeply south. Terry Fawles is 20 when he enters into a relationship with 14 year old tutoring student Dahlia. Dahlia is a victim of pedophilia and grooming un-debatably. There is no defense for Terry’s actions toward Dahlia, regardless of whether Dahlia considered the relationship mutual or not. Faking her death and consequently getting Fawles jailed may not have been a necessarily good decision when considered on its own, but is not morally wrong-for starters, it very well could have seemed a great or perhaps the only option to a traumatized 14 year old. Also, Fawles being incarcerated was a good toward society.

Terry Fawles being manipulated into drinking poison was a good thing. That isn't necessarily proof of tragedy on Dahlia’s part, but rather an assertion I have decided to include here.

Valerie Hawthorne’s murder should also be considered when looking at Dahlia and her actions. At first glance, her death appears to be an act motivated by selfishness and self interest-but upon deeper look, has two major motivations that make perfect sense. The first is that Valerie Hawthorne was directly complicit in Dahlia's grooming by Terry Fawles. She was part of the plan to steal the diamond that involved seducing Fawles. The second, of course, is panic. Valerie telling the truth about the events of Dusky Bridge could not only reveal Dahlia and her part in attempted theft, but also get Fawles a lighter sentence or even free once it is exposed that he didn't push Dahlia.

TRIAL(GODOT&MIA)

Flash forward to when Dahlia is on trial. Diego Armando and Mia Fey take the defense of Terry Fawles in the murder of Valerie Hawthorne. While they are defending him on the charge of the murder of Valerie, they are still defending Dahlia’s groomer. Dahlia has every reason to hate them for this.

Diego specifically has a way of speaking condescendingly to those around him. Most women are familiar with the humiliating and belittling experience of being talked down to by an older man. While as players it's visible that this is how Godot often speaks to other people regardless of gender(Phoenix and Ron Delite for example), a young woman on the stand would have no way of knowing this. In addition, he calls Dahlia words such as “Kitten”. Again, Dahlia is a victim of grooming and pedophilia. Like previously stated, Diego calls multiple people this; however, without this context his words come off as misogynistic and belittling at best and hostile and taunting at worst. Being talked down to and treated like this is such a viscerally humiliating and angering experience even without the life experience Dahlia has and it’s completely reasonable for her to react with vitriol. (Although likely less of a factor and of lesser relevance to the case, the judge’s treatment of her certainly couldn't have helped, despite working to her advantage at the beginning of her first trials.)

Mia, on the other hand, does not call her these terms, but still does defend Terry Fawles. While avoiding the hostility Diego shows in his condescending nature, she presents her own hostility through viewing Dahlia as a threat from the beginning and treating her accordingly. Mia only ever truly views her through the eyes of a lawyer defending her client against a criminal, despite the twisted nature of her client and the reasoning of the perpetrator. Mia is a stubborn and vicious lawyer, and while those are not necessarily bad, they place her as Dahlias biggest threat. In addition to being a threat, Mia's open hostility inspires further anger because she treats her as suspicious and villainous from the start, just as she was as a child, as well as coming off as extremely confrontational.

It is often less energy to pretend you were always evil from the start instead of looking back and acknowledging issues with your past and how they affect you. Pretending to be purely cruel and heartless and never anything more allows Dahlia to put up protective barriers. Her trial with Mia and Diego forces at least some of her painful past to come to light, knocking down some of her walls. It's only reasonable that Dahlia would become upset at this.

DOUG AND PHOENIX

Dahlia's treatment of Phoenix correlates to the threat he presents to her. Everything she's been building up can be ruined if he is too careless with that necklace. Similarly, Doug Swallow presented a threat when he tried to warn Phoenix. Dahlia has never had the chance to handle things in a “reasonable” way so as far as she was concerned, his murder was the only option.

Her murder of Doug Swallow and attempted murder of Phoenix Wright can certainly be attributed to girlboss behavior, but are also tied with everything else in her life-both in that her problems with them stem from everything thats been stacking itself since she was a child, and in that her methods of dealing with them stem from the trauma shes experienced.

IN SUM

Dahlia's characterization as a pure villain with sole motivation of evil is one void of critical thought and sopping with misogyny. While the way Capcom sometimes writes their female characters and their villains means that it would make sense for Dahlia to be a one sided character motivated by pure cruelty and evil, the dismissal of her character cannot be fully chalked up to that. Taking into consideration the way she was raised and treated in life, growing to be manipulative with a twisted view of the world and morals is completely logical. While Dahlia Hawthorne WAS unequivocally a Girlboss, she was also a victim and her story is ultimately one of tragedy rather than depravity.

#dahlia hawthorne #i have many thoughts about dahlia LOL #ace attorney #aa3 #trials and tribulations

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a-wild-rosette · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on Fundy and Phil’s Lore Stream

/dsmp /rp

Also an entry for Day 2: Family for Fundy Week @fundyfiles

The new Fundy and Philza lore makes me incredibly happy because it gives me a bit of hope for Fundy. For the first time since Doomsday, I can see that there is a chance, or at least the beginning of a chance, for Fundy to finally get someone who might care about him, someone who is willing to at least put in some work to mend their relationship with Fundy. It is only the beginning, but Philza acknowledging that his action on November 16th hurt Fundy and apologized for it was a huge step in their relationship.

Up until that point, since the Butcher Army, Fundy had always been the person who made the effort to mend his familial relationship, however misguided. Fundy was constantly trying to spend time with Philza and being around him, and was always met with disapproval and a vague “more redeeming to do”. In contrast, Philza had been focused very hard on how Fundy’s actions hurt him, yet did not acknowledge that he also played a part in Fundy being hurt also. He denied their familial relationship, claiming that Fundy needed to put more effort into redeeming himself, but also did not make an effort to try to understand and forgive Fundy, or to tell Fundy what he could do to earn Phil’s forgiveness.

But Wilbur’s resurrection turned that attitude around. It is a shocking event that reminded Philza of his and Fundy’s history with Wilbur and finally pushed him to see Fundy for more than a member of the Butcher Army, more than someone who wronged him. This pushed him to seek Fundy out for the first time, and actually made an effort at communication. For any kind of relationship to work, there has to be communication and effort from both sides, and up until that point, the effort had been one-sidedly from Fundy. Philza making an effort for Fundy, therefore, finally reopened the opportunity for them to actually talk to each other, and for Phil to reassess his own biases toward L’Manberg. Phil realised he had been wrong about L’Manberg and Fundy, and even Wilbur, which changed his attitude toward Fundy drastically. I don’t want to think Philza is an unreasonable person, but he is loyal and sometimes that loyalty makes him unable to see further than the people he cares about. This stream might have added Fundy to the list of people he cares about. *Might have*, tentatively. But it sure gave us hope for it.

And on Fundy’s part, he finally had someone to be vulnerable to, even for just a few moments. If I remember correctly, Philza might have been the first person Fundy told about the nightmares and his struggles. Fundy very rarely talked about his struggles to other people, preferring to keep it to himself, unless it was extremely serious that he could not control his emotions (e.g. Wilbur’s death and his relationship with Wil in general). For Fundy to show such vulnerability with Philza is a new milestone for their relationships, that Fundy could stop playing the part of the prankster grandson and reveal a bit of his inner turmoil.

Another part that gives me more hope was that Fundy didn’t really have to change himself for Philza to accept him. Instead, Philza was the one who changed his attitude. Fundy did not have to strive for a vague goal of redemption, he did not have to breakdown or scream to be taken seriously, at least with Philza in this stream. Fundy could remain as himself, imperfect, yes, scared, confused, still deeply hurt. But now there was that hope that Fundy might get the love and care he deserved and desperately needed.

Now put that in contrast to what Quackity told Fundy in Fundy’s “My Nightmare” stream: Quackity insinuated that Fundy was still not good enough to join him, gave Fundy the vague goal of “find yourself”, and constantly talked down to, cut off, and spoke over Fundy. Quackity was, once again another person, who continued to kick Fundy when he was already down, who forced Fundy to change to meet Quackity’s own vision of what Fundy should be like.

I just hope that this theme continues with Philza and Fundy, because Quackity is trying his hardest to undo everything this stream accomplished.

#dream smp #dream smp analysis #c!quackity critical #fundy #philza #fundyweek2021 #death tw #breakdown tw #manipulation mention #nightmare tw #rose's analysis

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 4 years ago

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How Far Down the QAnon Rabbit Hole Did Your Loved One Fall?

What to do when someone you love becomes obsessed with QAnon, part 2.

Psychology Today

Joe Pierre M.D. August 21, 2020

“Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me.”

—President Trump, retweeting a QAnon-related meme

This is part 2 of a series on “What to do When Someone You Love Becomes Obsessed with QAnon.”

In the first installment, "The Psychological Needs That QAnon Feeds," I discussed the psychological needs that QAnon may fulfill for its followers. Understanding those needs is a vital first step in order to understand why those who have fallen down the QAnon rabbit hole may be loathe to climb out. In this installment, I’ll set the stage to understand how the chances of rescuing our loved ones from the QAnon rabbit hole—and how to go about trying—may depend on just how far they’ve fallen.

Are Conspiracy Theorists “Crazy?”

To begin with, let’s differentiate belief in conspiracy theories like QAnon from the kind of delusional beliefs that are used to define mental illness and psychosis. Generally speaking, delusions are false and unshared beliefs that are often based on subjective “inner” experience and whose content is often “self-referential,” involving the believer. In contrast, conspiracy theories are usually shared beliefs that don’t explicitly involve the believer and are based on external evidence that one finds “out there,” such as on the internet. Unlike delusions, conspiracy theories may or may not turn out to be true. After all, they’re “theories.”

Based on this distinction, people who believe in conspiracy theories, however “crazy” they might sound, are no more delusional than those who believe in literal interpretations of religious texts like the Bible or the Quran. And so QAnon—the increasingly popular “right-wing” belief about the secret nefarious machinations of the Satan-worshipping, child-trafficking “Deep State” and President Trump’s destiny to thwart them—is a classic conspiracy theory, not a delusion. Now, if someone were to believe not only in QAnon dogma, but also in the false and unshared belief that they are Q, that would suggest a delusion. Note that it’s possible to believe in both conspiracy theories and delusions at the same time, with some overlap.

Conspiracy Theory Belief: Particle and Wave

Another way to understand whether beliefs might be considered “pathological” is to model them quantitatively as a continuous phenomenon—in other words, within a kind of scale that measures intensity or severity. For example, a cognitive model of delusional beliefs quantifies them along “dimensions” that include strength of conviction (how strongly one believes a delusion), preoccupation (how much one thinks about the delusion), extension (how much the delusion “bleeds into” or affects one's life), and distress (how much one is upset by the belief). Applying this model to non-delusional beliefs like conspiracy theories can help to understand when a belief is likely to disrupt people’s lives with a negative impact on their jobs, relationships, and mental well-being.1

Moving along a continuum of conspiracy theory belief, dimensions like conviction, preoccupation, extension, and distress would be expected to increase across it, along with mistrust in authoritative and mainstream sources of information.2 As believers go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, more and more time is spent “researching” conspiracy theories and immersing oneself in online discussions with other conspiracy theory believers, with less and less time spent on work, relationships, or other recreational pursuits. As this happens, believers increasingly turn their back on previous friends and family who don’t agree with their beliefs and don’t “inhabit” their new world.

Similar to how physicists understand light as both “particle” and “wave,” it can also be helpful to conceptualize belief intensity as discrete points along a continuum, like colors in the visible light “spectrum.” Conspiracy theory researcher Dr. Bradley Franks and his colleagues have proposed just such a spectrum model, with 5 “types” or stages of conspiracy theory belief.3 Their model goes something like this (with additional comments added by me):

Type/stage 1: People feel like “something isn’t right,” but keep an open mind as they seek answers to questions.

Type/stage 2: People feel as if “there’s more to reality than meets the eye,” are skeptical about official explanations, and start to seek out alternative sources of information.

Type/stage 3: Mistrust of authoritative sources of information increases to the point of definitive belief that some official narratives are untrue. As a result, people continue to seek information and engage with like-minded people from whom they gain a sense of belonging and group membership. They’re also more likely to get involved in “political action.”

Type/stage 4: At this point, nearly all official and mainstream accounts are rejected so that people turn away from the mainstream in favor of affiliation with an “enlightened” community of conspiracy theory believers. Non-believers are dismissed as “sheep” who are “asleep.”

Type/stage 5: In the final stage, authoritative and mainstream accounts are rejected to such an extent as to embrace belief in not only improbable, but frankly supernatural explanations for events (e.g. aliens, lizard people, etc.). At this stage, conspiracy theories and delusions may begin to overlap with self-referential aspects.

Dr. Franks’ proposed spectrum of conspiracy theory believers is a novel framework to help understand just how far down the rabbit hole conspiracy theory believers have gone. But for the purpose of deciding how to intervene within that continuum, it may be more useful to more simply divide conspiracy theory believers into two stages: “fence-sitters” and “true believers.”

Fence-Sitters and True Believers

The mentally healthy way to hold most of our beliefs is with “cognitive flexibility,” acknowledging that we might be wrong and remaining open to other people’s perspectives. It’s likewise a good idea to maintain a healthy level of skepticism about new information that we encounter lest we succumb to our cognitive biases and merely reinforce preexisting beliefs. This is especially true when we’re talking about theories where supporting evidence is modest or preliminary, and in the case of religious or political beliefs, where a lack of objective evidence often leads to many equivocal perspectives, such that faith becomes necessary to sustain belief.

In the early stages of conspiracy theory belief, people are “fence-sitters” who are looking for answers and haven’t yet made up their minds. Cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness may be intact, but skepticism is already closely linked with mistrust of authoritative sources of information. At this stage, conspiracy theories are appealing as expressions of, or even metaphors for, that mistrust—for the idea that both information and informants are unreliable—without necessarily having a significant degree of belief conviction. This preliminary stage explains why some people might endorse Flat Earth conspiracy theories without actually believing the Earth is flat.

Farther down the rabbit hole, conspiracy theories are embraced with greater belief conviction and become entwined with a new group affiliation and personal identity (e.g. within QAnon, adherents identify as “anons,” “bakers,” and “Q-patriots”) that makes it increasingly difficult to maintain previously established social ties. As such “true believers” move away from the mainstream and in turn are estranged because of their fringe beliefs, they often feel increasingly marginalized and under threat.

In order to protect themselves and resolve cognitive dissonance, they often “double down,” ramping up belief conviction further and diving even farther into a new ideological world. Many will increasingly feel the need to take action, whether spending more time posting on social media in order to “spread the word” or at the extreme, through more drastic and potentially dangerous measures like arming themselves in order to “self-investigate” a child pornography ring at a pizza parlor.

When people’s beliefs become so enmeshed with their identities, giving them up can be viewed as an existential threat akin to death. Needless to say, that's a bad prognostic sign.

In Part 3 of this series on “What to do when someone you love becomes obsessed with QAnon,” we’ll conclude by discussing what kind of interventions might be helpful, depending on just how far down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory belief someone has gone.

References

1. Pierre JM. Faith or delusion? At the crossroads of religion and psychosis. Journal of Psychiatric Practice 2001; 7:163-172.

2. Pierre JM. Mistrust and misinformation: a two-component, socio-epistemic model of belief in conspiracy theories. Journal of Social and Political Psychology 2020 (in press). [Available as a PsyArXic preprint at https://psyarxiv.com/xhw52]

3. Franks B, Bangerter A, Bauer MW, Hall M, Noort MC. Beyond “monologicality”? Exploring conspiracist worldviews. Frontiers in Psychology 2017; 8, 861.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/psych-unseen/202008/how-far-down-the-qanon-rabbit-hole-did-your-loved-one-fall

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part 1 Psychology Today

The Psychological Needs That QAnon Feeds

Joe Pierre M.D. August 12, 2020

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/psych-unseen/202008/the-psychological-needs-qanon-feeds

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part 3 Psychology Today

What to do when someone you love becomes obsessed with QAnon

4 Keys to Help Someone Climb Out of the QAnon Rabbit Hole

Joe Pierre M.D. September 1, 2020

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/psych-unseen/202009/4-keys-help-someone-climb-out-the-qanon-rabbit-hole

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Rolling Stone

It took years for the cracks to emerge for Jadeja, who slowly started to realize that Q drops were laden with logical inconsistencies. A turning point for him was a follower asking Q to get Trump to say the term “tippy top” as proof of Trump’s knowledge of the conspiracy; when Trump did say the phrase during a 2018 Easter egg roll speech, Q believers rejoiced, believing it to be confirmation that Q was real. Jadeja did some research and saw that Trump had said the phrase many times before. “That’s when I realized this was all a very slick con,” he says.

Former QAnon Followers Explain What Drew Them In — And Got Them Out

Like those leaving cults, some people who believe in conspiracy theories like QAnon and Pizzagate can break free from their beliefs

by EJ Dickson September 23, 2020 9:00AM ET

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ex-qanon-followers-cult-conspiracy-theory-pizzagate-1064076/

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West Point

The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making?

July 2020

https://ctc.usma.edu/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-a-security-threat-in-the-making/

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Why it’s important to see QAnon as a ‘hyper-real’ religion

May 28, 2020

https://religiondispatches.org/in-the-name-of-the-father-son-and-q-why-its-important-to-see-qanon-as-a-hyper-real-religion/

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The Birth of QAmom

Parenting influencers have embraced sex-trafficking conspiracy theories — and it’s taking QAnon from the internet into the streets

by EJ Dickson

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-mom-conspiracy-theory-parents-sex-trafficking-qamom-1048921/

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CNN: Born on the dark fringes of the internet, QAnon is now infiltrating mainstream American life and politics

CNN July 3, 2020

by Paul P. Murphy

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The thin line between conspiracy theories and cult worship is dissolving

An information war is being waged.

bigthink.com May 18, 2020

by Derek Beres

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The Prophecies of Q American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase.

The Atlantic June 2020

The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful

The Atlantic August 18, 2020

I Was a Teenage Conspiracy Theorist

The Atlantic May 13, 2020

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I’m dating a conspiracy theorist. But it feels like I’m the one going crazy.

Washington Post August 16, 2020

By Trent Kay Maverick

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Coronavirus: How do I recognize a conspiracy theory?

DW Deutsche Welle May 19, 2020

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Reddit community QAnon Casualties share stories of conspiracy cult

Herald Sun August 11, 2020

by Jack Gramenz, news.com.au

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Christian Groups That Resist Public-Health Guidelines Are Forgetting a Key Part of the Religion’s History

TIME April 20, 2020

by Matthew Gabriele

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Childcare in the Unification Church of Oakland

Sun Myung Moon’s Sex-based Adam and Eve story is just another conspiracy theory

#Joe Pierre M.D.#QAnon #Conspiracy Theories #Psychology Today

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orionsangel86 · 6 years ago

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To add to your post on Misha’s take on Destiel I’ve always been curious what sensible people like yourself think about Jensen and Jared’s. The acting choices they make (or carry out based on script) from intense stares and mixtapes to awkward looks in the background from Sam. I see it as brilliant on theirs and the writers parts, but do people think they are truly just in this ride but don’t know about it?

Hey Nonny, you mean my reblog and comments on this post by @tinkdw right?

First of all, thank you for considering me sensible! I do try and keep a calm and logical head when blogging as it is far too easy to get over-excitable on this hell site - not that I would blame or criticise people that do!

I think it is very difficult to judge what Jensen and Jared truly think about the topic, because unlike Misha (most of time) they tend to occasionally make comments at conventions and in interviews which make me roll my eyes and think seriously?!?

For example both Jensen and Jared have a really biased and skewed view on the toxic codependency and instead prefer to romanticise the brothers relationship as per the way it was back in the early days. Whereas the writers have been portraying it as toxic and unhealthy since at least Carver era and have more recently made serious choices within the canon of the show to portray how Sam and Dean are finally starting to move away from their unhealthy codependency towards each other. Yet this is something that Jensen in particular, continues to criticise at conventions going as far as to claim the writers are making Dean out of character for not wanting to keep sacrificing his own life to save Sam. Any sensible people would argue this demonstrates growth on the part of the character, but Jensen doesn’t appear to understand this point.

Hence I spent a lot of my time at jibcon this year rolling my eyes heavily at practically everything Jensen said.

As far as their opinions on Destiel go, I certainly don’t think that they are oblivious to it. Jared particularly likes to get involved in the jokes and is well aware of how huge the ship is. As far as the show goes, no one can deny that his reaction shots for Sam appear extremely knowing and in memorable episodes like 12x10 particularly, he plays the long suffering third wheel/brother in law so well that it’s hard to not believe that he is doing it completely purposely. I just don’t believe that Jared’s acting choices in that episode and others like it could possibly come across that way if he was ignorant of the writers destiel specific intentions, and not just the writers intentions, but the directors and other crews intentions too. Destiel is weaved so clearly and brilliantly into the episodes that I highly doubt there are any people now on staff that don’t see Destiel as an integral part of the show with a clear goal towards an eventual canon completion.

As for Jensen, that boy blows hot and cold all the time. He wears his mask just as stubbornly as Dean does and frankly I think he is far more knowing on these matters and on matters of fandom, than he lets on. For instance he is a master of adapting on stage depending on whether he is facing a friendly fun general crowd, or the infamous convention “Sunday crowd” which usually sees a far grumpier and less comfortable Jensen who is quick to get defensive and make drastically untrue statements that are great sound bites, but mean nothing in terms of his true feelings. Jensen has learned how to please his audience, even if that means making statements that are far from his feelings, and contradict the way he portrays his character.

I don’t think there is any way in hell that Jensen isn’t aware of his acting choices when it comes to Destiel. It would be a disservice to him to say he is ignorant of what he is doing. I used to ponder if he was being treated like a modern day Charlton Heston, but now I think even that thought does him a huge disservice, because quite simply, Jensen is not some huge homophobic conservative asshole. I think that at some point in the last 10 years, the writers have sat Jensen down and spoken to him about Destiel, and I think he picks his acting choices to further the subtext and support the reading. Because at this point, specifically post the grief arc in season 13, it is absurd to still claim that Jensen doesn’t understand the deep and profound relationship between Dean and Cas.

Perhaps once upon a time, Jensen and Jared saw Destiel as no different to W*ncest - as in, nothing but a fandom dirty secret that is all about sex and pornography, hence their general discomfort about the topic. But it is evident in later years how their attitudes about destiel have changed. That it is an integral part of the story and that it is, in its most simplistic form, a love story against the odds. I genuinely think they are supportive of it, are aware of it during filming, and act in such a way as to support its reading, as I feel that they are pro destiel nowadays, just like Misha.

Perhaps this is an optimistic opinion, because as I said, they still get it wrong sometimes. But to say they don’t realise what they are doing and how it is coming across just doesn’t make sense considering some of the things the show has done with Destiel in recent years.

#destiel #destiel dreaming #j2 opinions #my thoughts #this is all just speculation of course #but I'm trying to be as logical as possible here #and I just can't see j2 as so heteronormative that they don't realise what they are doing #so I have to conclude that they know about it #and support it #because the show hasn't really slammed the breaks on the destiel subtext #even if it has slowed down since season 13 #its still very much there #and the boys know it #asks #anon #Anonymous

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onestowatch · 3 years ago

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mazie Is Transforming the World Around Her Into a Surreal Pop Dream [Q&A]

Photo: Daniela Salinas

Like twisting the rotating ends of a kaleidoscope, looking at mazie’s music from an even slightly different perspective unveils a host of varying takeaways. There’s “no friends,” her debut single, written and released at the beginning of quarantine, perfectly unaware of the universal nature her track would soon envelop. Twist a little further and you arrive at “dumb dumb,” an unconventional and surreal pop song written in response to the Capitol Insurrection and the ensuing deluge of memes. Yet, no single twist, turn, or bend of the neck begins to fully encompass mazie, the artist.

To fully begin to understand mazie’s psychedelic, dreamlike vision perhaps there is no better place to start than her debut EP, the rainbow cassette. Throughout the EP’s eight-track run, the rising artist delivers her idiosyncratic take on pop, one that feels like falling straight down the rabbit hole. Yet, in many ways, it’s an exploration of everything mazie loves about music, including working with her dearest friends.

Every track is produced by Elie Jay Rizk, mazie’s teenage friend and go-to producer who has always been there to bring every left-field idea of hers to life. In addition, the rainbow cassette contains a newly-realized rendition of her debut single “no friends,” featuring spill tab and Mia Gladstone, who mazie notes as both friends and inspirations. Taken altogether, the rainbow cassette feels like a bold and utterly enjoyable step forward in expanding the world of mazie.

I had the chance to speak to mazie about writing her debut EP in the midst of a drastic period of change, coming up in the pandemic, and the simple joy of a rent-controlled apartment.

youtube

Ones to Watch: Who is mazie?

mazie: mazie is me! I’m Grace. I’m 21-years-old. I’m originally from Baltimore, Maryland, and I just moved out to LA. I have no idea how to describe myself (laughter).

Let’s start out with the hard-hitting questions. Would you rather be able to speak every language or be able to speak to animals?

Ahhh, dude! That sucks! I think I’d rather speak... this is controversial... I think I would rather be able to speak every single language, because, what if we find out animals are so mean. And they’re talking behind our backs, they’re just roasting us all the time. That would be devastating.

That is my newly realized fear. What if animals are just extremely problematic? Just have to cancel every single one of them.

Exactly. Like, dogs are racist? That sucks.

How would you say you have evolved as a person since your debut single, “no friends?”

Wow, I’m extremely evolved. This last year, everything in my life changed. I dropped out of college. I moved with all of my friends from home out to LA, and I feel like being 21 and being totally financially independent from your family and pursuing music at the same time is really fucking intense. Every day is a struggle trying to be an actual adult, but it’s been awesome.

What’s the hardest part of being a financially independent adult?

That all of your money goes to rent and nobody tells you that.

Welcome to LA.

Yeah, dude, every dollar goes straight to my rent. Cool… cool… cool.

What is the rainbow cassette?

the rainbow cassette is my debut EP. It’s my favorite body of work I’ve ever made. It feels really complete to me, which is fantastic. I haven’t had a strong sense of my artistry until the last two years, and I feel like this EP is exactly what I want to be doing right now, which is a really cool feeling.

the rainbow cassette was written during not only a period of change, you moving from Baltimore to LA, but in the midst of a pandemic. How did the world around you affect this EP?

I think the EP is exactly the world around us for the last two years. We released “no friends” peak quarantine, when nobody had any idea what was going on. And then we made the rest of the EP throughout the whole thing, so I feel like the entire project is centered in this experience, whether we liked it or not.

“dumb dumb” was written in response to the Capitol Insurrection. How do you go about turning such a surreal experience into an even more surreal pop song?

I think the more absurd the better. I feel like every single thing we’ve been experiencing for the last few years has no fucking context at all. Where did this shit come from? How did we get here? This is brutal. So, I think the day that the insurrection happened, we were just like, “Yeah, this makes no sense anymore, so let’s also make a song that makes no sense.”

It’s like when the world’s going mad, what can you do but laugh?

Yes, exactly. Or else you’ll cry, and that’s even worse.

Is there a song on the EP you’re excited or even scared for people to hear?

That was how I felt about “dumb dumb,” because that was the first song I released after eight months, because I was in the process of signing to Good Boy, so we couldn’t release anything. But it ended up being so much better than I could have ever imagined. I’m so excited for people to hear the intro to the EP, because when Elie and I were in the studio last summer we made the intro before whatever else, and we were like “This is it. This is exactly what we want to be going for.” I’m so excited for people to finally hear that; we’ve been sitting on it for so long.

And why were you scared for people to hear “dumb dumb?” Was it the political nature of the track?

Not even. It’s just because it’s a zany song, you know? I feel like I haven’t heard a lot of songs like “dumb dumb,” so I never know if people are going to be receptive of that or if people are going to be like “What is this?”

Speaking on the absurd, surreal nature of not just your music but your overall aesthetic. Where did that originate?

I feel like it came from psychedelics to be honest. Sorry to my parents. It’s definitely psychedelics that really changed my relationship with music, changed my relationship with myself in such a positive way. It’s just who I am today and what the music is today, so yeah, straight-up psychedelics.

Was there a defining moment where you knew music was what you wanted to pursue?

Yes. I’ve never had a plan B, which is a little crazy now that I think about it. I was singing opera by the time I was ten years old, so either I’m going to go to a conservatory and this is going to be my life or I’m going to be a music therapist or something. But then when I met my producer when I was 15, he tracked my vocals the first or second day I was in the studio, and when he played it back for me, I sobbed hysterically. It was the most mind-blowing experience ever, and I was like “This. This is it. I have to do this for the rest of my life.”

Elie is not only your producer but your teenage friend. What’s it like creating music with someone who has always been there for you but is also growing into adulthood with you?

Oh, I could cry talking about this. It’s the most powerful, incredible experience ever. We love each other so much as people. He is my best friend, and he’s seen me grow up over these last five or six years and we get to make the best music because of our closeness. You can’t fake that intimacy with other people when you’re getting in the room for the first time. He just understands me fundamentally as a person and therefore understands the music so fundamentally. It’s the greatest thing ever.

What do you hope people take away from the rainbow cassette?

I hope that they’re interested. I hope that they feel really good listening to it. I hope they have a lot of fun, because I had so much fun making it and I really enjoying listening to it. I’m a little biased though. Yeah, I just hope people really enjoy themselves, because it’s a bit of an experience.

You’ll be heading out on tour with COIN this fall. What are you most excited for?

I think just doing it, you know? Every single person I talk to about going on the road is like “I could tell you what it’s like but you’re just going to have to go through it and learn for yourself.” I came up in the pandemic, so live shows have not been a thing for me. I’m really, really excited to go play shows and see what it’s like.

Speaking of coming up in the pandemic, did you feel a heightened need to be involved in social media, as it was the only way to connect with fans?

Yes, yes. It required me to be really adept at social media super fast, which is something I think I’ll always be working on especially because content creation is kind of hard. But with Instagram and being able to connect with fans in that way, it provided me purpose when nobody had purpose. It felt like I had a job, like I was doing something constructive. It made me really get on board with social media.

Regarding social media, that’s a very positive outlook, especially during the pandemic where one had to find reasons to get out of bed in the morning.

Exactly. And if that’s an Instagram post, I’ll take it!

If you could have one thing in the world right now, what would it be?

Oh my god. If I could have anything in the world it would be an apartment…

A rent-controlled apartment?

(laughter) I want a rent-controlled apartment. I want to be like Monica from Friends. An apartment in Tokyo! That’s it. That’s the one

Who are your Ones to Watch?

I’m on Good Boy Records and Good Boy is all the homies. They’re literally my best friends. I am so excited for georgee who just put out his song “baby4u.” It’s my favorite song ever right now. And judith, who is about to put out her debut single. Just reppin’ Good Boy because they’re my family. Outside of that, I’m obsessed with my friends. spill tab, Wallice, marinelli. I think they’re all stars. ella jane. Chloe George. Oh my god. The world is not ready for Chloe George.

the rainbow cassette is available everywhere you can stream it.

#mazie #the rainbow cassette #interview #album reviews #pop

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cbphotobooths · 4 years ago

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How To Chose A Great Photo Booth Company

To start I even have to mention that I’m the owner of a photo booth rental company in Michigan thus I’m biased on what my company will do, however, I believe that I even have some nice insight on things that build an organization smart or dangerous.

A great icon booth company has to be upfront concerning all its costs. There are 2 sorts of corporations, all-comprehensive corporations WHO have packages that embrace everything like prop boxes, scrapbooks, digital copies, and online hosting of your footage. Then there are all menu corporations that have a per hour rate that may be below the all-comprehensive packages then again charge for all the world further just like the prop box, the album, and therefore the different things mentioned higher than. the nice corporations offer all comprehensive rates that mean there aren't any surprises. after you, ar comparison costs between 2 corporations it’s vital that you just grasp what that value includes. That being aforementioned there are a couple of things that you just shouldn't be charged for and if somebody will charge you for these I might classify these as corporations to avoid. ought to|you ought to|you must} not be charged for originated and dismantle nor should this point count against your prepackaged rental time for example if you book the icon booth 3|for 3} hours you ought to be ready to use the booth for all three hours. The twenty or half-hour it takes to line up and dismantle shouldn't delve your booth time. you ought to not be charged for AN attendant to remain with the icon booth. Most booths would like some to remain with it to ensure that it runs properly and to ensure that if one thing happens they'll fix it and keep it running. As long because the corporations do not try this you would possibly be ready to label them as nice.

A nice company can have great instrumentation.

There are 2 things that build a photograph booth company nice. #1 is that their client service and #2 is the quality of their booth. they might be the nicest folks on earth however if the booth appearance is low-cost and flimsy it'll drastically exclude from your guest’s expertise. conjointly the booth might look very nice however if it takes dangerous footage and it takes minutes to print your footage your guest can get bored waiting and not as several of them can get an opportunity to induce within the booth to possess an excellent time. an excellent company can have all the newest technology. One issue you ought to extremely raise concerning is what reasonably printer the corporate uses. The dye-sub laminating printer is that the business customary for quality. This printer will manufacture prints in seconds that are identical in quality to what you'd get from a professional icon laboratory. This footage is waterproof and will last for years. These printers are high-priced the will price is up to $1000.00 however ar well worthwhile. They manufacture constant results and that they will print two hundred photos on one cartridge which suggests less downtime and longer for you and your guest to be within the booth. they do not spray the ink just like the cheaper inkjet printers thus you do not have to be compelled to worry concerning the photographs obtaining soiled. Some of the opposite components of the icon booth that are vital are the sort of cameras used. a number of budget booths use an internet cam such as you would wear your pc. These will manufacture gritty images our worse, out-of-focus footage. the nice corporations use skilled SLR cameras with automatic focus and a flash. These cameras manufacture footage that you just can treasure for an extended time.

Great corporations in Michigan can have a mix of nice service and nice instrumentation. do not accept less and your icon booth is going to be the simplest expertise you've got ever had at an occurrence.

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darealpatyu · 4 years ago

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The Social Dilemma: get off your phone now

This film has been a huge wake-up call for me. I am legitimately scared of how social media has become a tool for third persons to further their own commercial or political interests through the manipulation of users. As a person who uses social media quite a lot, I am alarmed and astounded that I am unknowingly consuming tons of propaganda and allowing this subliminal content to change my world view. Reader, I hope you’ll be glad to find out that after this film, I have turned off my notifications on all my social media applications – even Messenger. I feel incredibly manipulated whenever I turn on my phone and find myself wanting to have a notification, and so I want to un-program my brain. These have been my initial thoughts after watching the movie, but let’s get into a deeper analysis of how these insights relate to the bigger picture.

What roles do technology and social media play in your life?

Technology and social media have made my life infinitely easier and more entertaining. Technology allows me to learn new skills, communicate with my relatives in the US, and find communities that share the same hobbies as me. I can also order food, clothes, and virtually everything that I could ever want through the Internet. Also, on my phone, it has become a daily routine of mine to learn some French through Duolingo and exercise using this fitness app. I also use my phone to track my menstrual cycle, so I’m never caught off-guard. (Life is tough as a woman, isn’t it?) Social media, on the other hand, is not just a place for me to stay updated on my friends’ lives, it has become my go-to source for entertainment and news. So, technology and social media are an essential part of my life now, and if I were to go even a day without it, I would have an extremely tough time finding things to do, and I wouldn’t be nearly as productive and efficient. Hence, I could go, at most, twelve hours without my phone. And that’s already pushing it.

So, it’s not surprising that I do identify with the two extreme portrayals of social media users – the teenage boy who gets indoctrinated by an extreme movement and the little girl who has anchored her self-worth on approval on social media. I feel that I was once that little girl when I was in high school. Back then, I used to post an absurd amount of information about my life and I always monitored the number of likes I was getting because it made me feel important and loved when I was getting positive attention. I also used to feel really sad about posts that didn’t have as many likes as my other ones, and I would delete those if they didn’t do well. I would also obsess over the number of followers I had on Twitter. Looking back now, that was an extremely dark and toxic time in my life because I was just living for what people thought of me. As I grew older and got into college, I outgrew this phase and moved onto the extreme movement phase. I am currently in it now and I am quite scared that I will end up becoming a brainless pawn in politics. I see a lot of propaganda online, and I used to react very strongly and recklessly to “information” like this. I am glad that I now know to be critical of emotionally charged news and facts to not let my biases get the best of me.

Can you give us insights on a SWOT-PEST analysis of yourself?

The PES factors affect my life more than I am capable of understanding. Most DDS possess an inability to piece together how the larger system affects all of us individually; so, it’s a good thing I’m not a DDS! All of these factors DO affect us massively; politics affect the way legislation and national and local initiatives are imagined, inflation and investor confidence affect prices and even the growth of infrastructure in the country, and our society is affected by mostly intangible social factors like the trend of younger people of a higher socioeconomic class to take on liberal stances. These all influence our individual lives because we live in a bigger bubble than our personal environments – all the ideas and the actions that we do are largely determined by the larger environment.

The technological factor greatly influences the PES factors, and it is easy to see why. Whenever there are any technological advancements, humans find a way to use these to reach their goals efficiently. When the wheel was invented, trade became easier (economic), communication became faster (social), and this might be a stretch, but the wheel played a huge role in power relations as it was used to have the upper hand in ancient battles (political). In the same way, the T factor influences the PES factors today – financial transactions have never been more efficient, social interaction continues to evolve, and politicians can campaign (and scheme) more effectively through social media.

The technological factor continuously affects every factor that affects our lives to an unimaginable extent. Because it affects the PES factors, it certainly also affects the opportunities and threats present in my life as well. Through modern technology, I can join many webinars, watch many informative videos about topics that interest me, and even find jobs online. However, because of technology, I am threatened by cybersecurity and data privacy issues, and I am vulnerable to fake news and propaganda which could drastically affect my world view. The documentary actually perfectly captured how technology, particularly social media, has affected our lives – business, politics, society, and our personal lives have become more productive yet somehow more vulnerable at the same time. The film echoes my assessment of the PEST factors when it exhibited how: 1) businesses use data to make advertisements more effective, 2) extreme political stances polarize society and destroy democracy through fragmented truths, 3) social interaction has deteriorated into a drug that causes people to crave attention and validation more than the essence of social interaction itself, and 4) all of these factors and their interactions have real-life consequences that affect our personal lives more than we know.

How do you foresee the future use of technology?

I have a bad feeling that this downward trend of abusing technology will continue. I do think that businesses and politicians will continue to milk the heck out of this disinformation and advertisement cow just because they can. I don’t mean to take on such a radical view of the world, but I do believe that the elite in society ultimately are the ones who decide on what’s allowed and what isn’t. Because these unethical practices have become the industry standard and even a competitive advantage for some of these social media platforms, it’s going to tale a long time to push back against this current, especially because there are going to be financial consequences that harm the elite. Would a drug pusher advocate for making drugs illegal? Would drug addicts want drugs to be illegal? Would politicians who benefit from having a medium for effective campaigning want social media to be regulated?

This was mentioned in the film and I think that it’s worth mentioning again -- these corporations make the public feel like they are capable of regulating themselves when in reality, they are doing the bare minimum when it comes to ethically handling our data. It’s horrible that they’re doing the bare minimum because the public can’t easily demand that this bare minimum be changed to a higher standard because again, IT’S ALREADY AT THE BARE MINIMUM. It’s like when you ask a man who’s DECENT ENOUGH to start treating you better – and he replies with, “At least I don’t beat you as other men do.” As if that’s a good enough excuse to continue on this path to human destruction.

So, how do we push back?

I want to say that we should all boycott social media applications until they decide to do right by us, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. I also want to say that we should have everybody watch The Social Dilemma for them to become aware of the unethical practices that have become the industry standard. However, there are only a few of us who have access to this film and only a few of us who can comprehend it in the way that it was meant to be comprehended. Being individually aware is a great first step to pushing back, but it’s the uneducated masses that are most vulnerable to the fake news and propaganda being spread online. So, a better solution to halting these unethical practices is having an external body regulate these corporations. An organization has to intervene and create ethical standards for these companies. It’s the only real way to start pushing back.

What are your thoughts about these quotes from the film?

"If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product."

When something is free and too good to be true, be critical of what the product is doing to you and how it is affecting your life. More often than not, the world is not some great place where you get great stuff for free. Everything has a price, and we have to be wary of when we’re being used.

"There are only two industries that call their customers 'users': illegal drugs and software."

Social media is addicting. The reason why they make it so addicting is that their business model is most effective when you have users spending every waking minute on the application. More user engagement means more advertising exposure. Hence, we need to know that we are not the target customers of social media platforms, but we are merely users. To quote the film, “if something is not a tool, it’s demanding things from you.” When social media begins to demand your time from you, then it’s not playing the role of a tool for communication and entertainment anymore, but it is playing the role of a drug.

"Social media is a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures."

What is social media selling exactly? On the surface, it might seem like it is just selling the promise of effective advertising to third persons. However, this effective advertising has a goal – to change your behavior in some way to fulfill the commercial or political interests of a third party. You might plug into the app that you own a dog. It starts showing you dog videos, and then a cute chew toy that you might like to buy. Slowly, the algorithm recommends you rabbit videos next. You end up liking rabbits and then proceed to buy two chew toys – one for your dog and one for your newly acquired rabbit. Social media changes us in tiny ways that we aren’t aware of. So, we have to be cautious, especially because the algorithms, driven by purely financial incentives, could end up transforming our world view.

"The very meaning of culture is manipulation."

The algorithm used to power this effective advertising medium manipulates people into staying on the application as long as possible. But very few of us understand this. If more people knew about the unethical tactics used by companies to keep users engaged, they would feel incredibly manipulated. Is this what business and politics have come to? Has human culture evolved to a point where it’s perfectly fine to toy with people’s lives to fulfill a financial or political goal? Or has it always been this way, and the abuse of social media has just uncovered human nature’s tendency to value self-interest above all else?

To conclude this lengthy blog entry, an algorithm that blindly recommends fake news and propaganda to keep users engaged should not be the industry standard. People cannot be manipulated to serve commercial or political interests. Let people have access to unbiased truths and let them think for themselves what they’d like to think. We cannot rely on corporations to regulate themselves. These corporations must be regulated by an external organization.

Humans are better than this. We can do better than this.

#GreedyCorporationsCanKissMyAss

#cobibmo #film review #the social dilemma #im scaaaared

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ttammerr · 4 years ago

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Group Prompt #15: Take Apart Piece

For this prompt we wanted to take “taking something apart” and interpret it in a higher concept than just physically disassembling an object. We started having a conversation about the dissection of social scenarios, and how oftentimes one’s interpretation of a scenario can largely depend on a patchwork of disconnected parts of that scenario, which are often taken out of context and influenced by personal biases. People (even those of us in the group) have a tendency to form conclusions without a complete knowledge of what we’re forming conclusions about. We talked about how this idea is further materializing in the innovations being made in technology, such as artificial intelligence that can quite accurately replicate the way somebody speaks and deep fake videos that can make it seem like a person is saying something they never actually said. So as we march into the future, it gets more and more difficult to attain a complete and accurate knowledge of everyday scenarios. We tried incorporating these ideas by writing a script that could be rearranged into several different scenes that differentiate wildly, but realized that doing something like this is extremely difficult, so our final realization of this idea is much truncated and simplified, to a scene that could be changed drastically by taking out a few select words, and accurately reassembled by putting those words back in.

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shawnli1129 · 4 years ago

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Group 5#

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oumakokichi · 8 years ago

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what's your opinion on the "ouma is komaeda 2.0" debate? or, more aptly put: why is ouma NOT komaeda 2.0

I’ve written various pointsabout why Ouma and Komaeda are extremely different as characters in previousmeta, but all of them were a long time ago, and I don’t think I’ve everactually written an entire post that was only dedicated to talking about thetwo of them. So this is actually a really, really good question, and one that I’vebeen meaning to respond to for a while.

In order to go into depth aboutwhy the two of them are so different as characters (and most importantly, whyOuma isn’t just “Komaeda 2.0” or a “purple Komaeda clone” or anything of thesort), I’ll have to talk about spoilers for all of ndrv3. So please only readif you’re comfortable with that!

I suppose the most importantpoint to start with is the fact that Ouma is a deliberate subversion of Komaeda’scharacter (and Junko’s too, for that matter). The reason why they seem similar on a surface level islargely because that’s what you’re supposed to think, especially at first.

Komaeda is not exactly theantagonist of sdr2, but he is a force of conflict, someone who deliberatelyhinders the plot and stirs up chaos whenever possible. Ouma crafts this kind ofpersona for himself and steps into the role, but he is ultimately acting thepart. By constantly telling the group at large that he’s a liar, warning themnot to trust him, refusing to participate in their efforts to cooperate, hesucceeds in making himself seem much more antagonistic and hostile than heactually is.

The most important note ofdifference, however, is that whereas Komaeda poses a very real threat to hisclassmates because he really, genuinely looks down on them, Ouma is only everacting. His bluff is never anything more than a bluff, and his primary goal isto put an end to the killing game and all the chaos, death, and sufferingassociated with it. From start to finish, every single action that he takesproves this; even when he acts seemingly hostile or chaotic by “refusing tocooperate,” he also emphasizes that he does what he does “for everyone’s sake,”such as his plan to try and make the group watch their motive videos in Chapter2.

Because Ouma is a liar, it’simportant to note that many of the things he does or says change drastically inperspective on a rewatch. Things which seemed incomprehensible or downrightmean or aggressive on a first playthrough shift quite a lot when going throughthe game again. Every single line he has can be scrutinized and analyzed—and it’smuch easier on a second playthrough to see that even when he sets himself up asthough he’s a Komaeda-like figure early on, his actions truly are aimed towardstrying to maintain the group’s safety or breaking out of the influence Monokumahas over them.

To put their differences evenfurther into perspective, Komaeda is legitimately a threat to the group’ssafety as early as Chapter 1 of sdr2. Despite setting himself up to seem like arelatively laid-back, easygoing person who was agreeable despite maybe being atad too self-deprecating, he completely crushes this impression of himself inthe Chapter 1 trial, revealing his true colors as well as the fact that he canand will put everyone’s lives at risk if it’s for the sake of “hope.”

He’s a dangerous idealist, asubversion of everything Naegi was in dr1 as well as the beginning of thefranchise’s point that “hope” and “despair” are two sides of the same coin, andthat both can be lethal when taken to extremes. His adherence to the ideal ofhope is just as fanatical as Junko’s adherence to despair, and that’s preciselywhy Komaeda is such a threat. His persistence and loyalty to that ideal and hisdesperate need to see hope “triumphover” despair make him a threat right off the bat, because he is honestly, 100%willing to sacrifice other people’s lives in order to obtain that ideal.

Not only that, but he’sincredibly smart. Not to the point of having SHSL Analysis the way Junko,Kamukura, and arguably Ouma himself are, but Komaeda is still extremely cunningand intelligent. Whatever his own plans don’t account for, he knows hisinexplicable luck will fill in the gaps for him, and that serves to make himeven more dangerous than he would be otherwise. He’s effective, because he cancreate plans and take incredible risks and gambles in order to put them inaction, knowing that the outcome will work out the way he wants when it wouldn’tfor any normal person.

Ouma is not an idealist of anysort. He doesn’t embody “hope” or “despair,” but instead represents ndrv3’scentral theme: “lies.” As a result, he rejects the “hope vs. despair” themes ofthe previous games right from the start. Even when he’s literally set up by theHope’s Peak remember light in Chapter 5 to be a “Junko 2.0” figure, the “leaderof the Remnants of Despair,” it’s clear that he had no interest whatsoever in aconcept or ideal like “despair.” A large part of ndrv3 Chapter 6 is actuallyspent clearing up the false accusations of Ouma being “Junko’s successor,”objectively proving that he had no such interests.

Unlike Komaeda, who trulybelieves that “hope” is equivalent with “talent” and that people without suchtalents are disposable, just “stepping stones” along the way to his goals, Oumahas no such biases against people, regardless of their talents or lack thereof.He’s a realist, rather than an idealist, someone who grasps the necessities ofparanoia and suspicion in the killing game right away but who also values humanlives more than abstract concepts like “hope,” “despair,” or “talent.”

Ouma’s motive video, found inhis room in Chapter 6, shows that he and DICE were nothing more than a band ofpranksters who enjoyed “laughable crimes,” and that their most important mottowas a taboo against killing others. While he will retaliate and have peoplekilled if push comes to shove, as Chapter 4 shows when Miu tried to kill him,it’s not a course of action he wants to take, and he’s never one to make thefirst move. The fact that he calls himself a pacifist in his FTEs with Saiharafurther supports this, as does the fact that he refrains from punching Momotauntil Momota takes a second swing athim in Chapter 4.

There’s no denying that Ouma isdefinitely not harmless or weak;clearly, he can and will fight back when his back is up against the wall. He’sa master strategist and not someone anyone should take lightly as an enemy. Buthe’s not someone who instigates violence for no reason, nor does he enjoy it.Even though it was arguably in self-defense, manipulating Miu and Gonta intogetting killed in Chapter 4 still took a toll on him. Violating his own mottowith DICE and getting people killed, regardless of the fact that it wasindirectly, was still something he hated, and the fact that he refused to takethe same course of action in Chapter 5 is proof of that.

It’s important to note toothat, as I mentioned earlier, Ouma very likely has some variation of SHSLAnalysis. Like Junko and Kamukura, he displays an uncanny knack for predictingthe behavior and outcome of his classmates and the situations around them, aswell as a distaste for boredom and stagnation. “Boredom” has been associatedwith “knowing everything before it happens” for some time now in the DRfranchise, ever since dr0, and many lines in Ouma’s dialogue seem to indicatethat he is, in fact, bored by how much he’s able to predict everything aroundhim.

The fact that he writes roughly300-or-so page script in Chapter 5 in the span of only two hours also backs upthis theory. His script was able to predict nearly every single one of hisclassmates’ lines and responses in the entire trial, and according to Momota,it featured “multi-branching routes.” Clearly, this sort of script would beoutside the realm of possibility for a normal person, so it follows that histalent must be related to it.

My main point is this: whereKomaeda leaves everything to the whims of chance and luck, knowing that it willpull through in the end for him, Ouma leaves nothing to luck. He analyzes, strategizes, and plans everythingout, and when one plan falls through, he immediately comes up with another oneon the spot in order to try and lessen the damages. He’s not a gambling man andunlikely to take any risks unless he’s 100% sure he can win—though he willcertainly bluff and claim that he’s “betting it all on the line.”

Even his FTEs with Saihara areproof of this: despite seeming like he’s playing games entirely based on chanceor luck, Ouma manipulates the outcome every step of the way, and eventuallyloses on purpose in order to let Saihara win. His ultimate advice is to “win agame without playing it,” which turns out to be exactly what Saihara and the othersurvivors do in order to put an end to the killing game once and for all inChapter 6. Where Komaeda would undoubtedly take any bet because he would knowfrom the start that he’d be the most likely to win it, Ouma refuses to play bythe rules of anyone else’s games but his own, and tries to find any loopholesor workarounds possible, even to the point of snatching the game away from thereal ringleader and trying to grind it to a halt in Chapter 5.

Ouma wants to seem like Komaedaon the surface: dangerous, chaotic, and willing to sacrifice the lives ofothers for his own needs. Not only does this make him seem like a bigger andbadder threat than he really is, which keeps his classmates on their toes andprevents them from getting complacent, but it also plays up the role that boththe ringleader and the audience very likely expected him to play. By actinglike such a huge, chaotic presence in the group, Ouma was able to disguise thefact that his real aim was to end the killing game itself until very late intoChapter 5.

I have no doubt the audience probablyloved the façade he put on, especiallyat first. The audience, the ringleader, and Monokuma himself all prioritizeanything at all that will make the killing game more exciting—and from theirperspective, a character who seems dedicated to showing up, playing thevillain, and ruining everyone’s efforts to get along and be friends andcooperate would be extremely entertaining. Such characters prevent the gamefrom getting “too boring,” just as Komaeda prevented the rest of the sdr2characters from fully cooperating with one another by constantly interferingwith them in order to “try and witness their hope” for himself.

But by playing into that roleand pretending to be a Komaeda-like character, it was the perfect way for Oumato downplay his real objectives. Acting like he was enjoying the killing gamewas, as he admits in Chapter 5 before his death, “a lie that he had to tellhimself in order to survive.” Without that lie in place, he wouldn’t have beenable to act the part, or to avoid attracting the ringleader’s attention muchearlier, as he points out as early as Chapter 2 that Monokuma always shows upto “torment” the group whenever they try to openly cooperate and rely on oneanother.

I understand why people assumethat their characters are similar, but Ouma and Komaeda are incredibly different once you scratchthe surface. Just as Komaeda was an intentional subversion of themes and motifsbrought up by Naegi in dr1, Ouma himself is a deliberate subversion of Komaeda’scharacter, as well as many of the themes found in the entire Hope’s Peak arc,such as the “hope vs. despair” dichotomy.

Trying to say that he’s “theexact same character” or “just a rehash” misses the point entirely, and ignoresthe fact that viewing Ouma through the same lens as Komaeda glosses over manyof the actions he takes in-game in the later chapters. As an example, let’stake the fact that they both choose to commit suicide in Chapter 5 of theirrespective games.

Komaeda engineers his own deaththrough a method entirely of his own choosing, in order to “expose the traitor”among their group and further his own goal of witnessing hope win out overdespair. Ouma manipulates the circumstances of his own death in Chapter 5 ofndrv3, but not by choice; he didn’t foresee being poisoned by Maki because hegenuinely believed that even she wouldn’t want to continue the killing gameanymore after seeing “the truth of the outside world,” and he didn’t know themeans by which the ringleader would manipulate her into it. Where Komaeda’sdeath was arguably aimed to punish his classmates for their involvement withSHSL Despair, Ouma died intentionally in order to try and strike back at thereal ringleader, and in order to let Maki live and let Momota have a chance tosay his farewells with the rest of their classmates.

Just an example like this helpsto highlight the differences between them because once again, proving that ifyou scratch the surface of their actions and dialogue, they’re very differentcharacters with very different mindsets and objectives. Although their behavioris somewhat similar at times, they do what they do for very different reasons.

I feel that it’s important tonote that DR has always been a franchise based on the subversion ofpreestablished tropes and expectations. Dr1 took a handful of clichés andtropes and played around with them, sdr2 took what dr1 had to offer and subvertedupon that, and ndrv3 took both games and went even further with the subversion.

Trying to act like a charactercan’t be interesting or unique in their own right just because they havesurface-level similarities seems a pity to me, because many characters in DRhave these surface-level similarities with one another, many of which areaddressed and then turned on their head in the main story. Komaeda and Ouma areboth interesting characters in their own right, and while they certainly doseem to have a lot in common initially, I would say their differences vastlyoutweigh their similarities by the end.

This has gotten fairly long, soI’ll leave it at this for now. This was a really excellent question, so I hopeI’ve managed to express my thoughts on the matter. Thank you for asking, anon!

#ndrv3 #new danganronpa v3 #sdr2 #kokichi ouma #nagito komaeda #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #anonymous

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brainsnbeauty-ar · 8 years ago

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RE: liz & college ( part two ! )

the last post regarding this can be found here. note: much of the information disclose via that one generally focuses more on liz’s college acceptance & decision - making process, not her actual experience while attending columbia. liz’s experience is not only important to development in regards to her career, but her development as a character as well. it is no secret that liz is perceived as an extremely intelligent & driven girl by most who come in contact with her. this perception is not incorrect, for those are the traits she takes the most pride in. likely the result of her parents instilling the importance of good work ethic from an early age. she doesn’t want those that she will meet to assume any less of her ( as they did her senior year at her new school ) due to ... recent events. so, during her four years, she does take on her mothers last name. considering what happened occurred in new york, there’s a bit more of a risk of people knowing who she is but, for the most part, it’s just a minor precaution ( note: she continues to go by this post - college ). her only desire s that her father’s actions & how others view her as a result does not get in the way of her studies, if she can help it.

furthermore, the biggest & hardest lesson she’d learned in oregon had been that not everywhere is MSST. primarily in terms of those who attend other schools. not everyone places the value in education or enjoys learning -- liz knew that prior to, but she hadn’t been confronted with many who maintain that mindset until moving elsewhere. fortunately, when she goes to columbia, those attitudes are shifted drastically, for things are far more up to her speed & pace -- however, it is on the complete opposite end, yet another shift in attitudes liz’d had yet to experience. everyone that’s there presumably wants to be there ( & what with they cost of attendance, that should hardly be surprising ). even so -- it’s a bit more competitive than she’s used to. it’s different when in a team setting in which competition is necessary ( i.e. decathlon ), than it is with students constantly questioning other’s levels of intelligence. it’s a nightmare, so much so that liz finds it extremely difficult to make & keep friends due to constant contest. columbia is a diverse school, but there are those that still question her ambitions regarding astrophysics, especially considering it is an occupation within the STEM field. most aren’t shy about suggesting their skepticism has something to do with the fact that not only is a she a woman, but a woman of color. within STEM remain many with racial & gendered biases’, furthering liz’s mental turmoil in regards to pursuing her dream. she considers changing her major multiple times, but ultimately decides against doing so. she knows what she wants & she’s willing to go through the various trials & tribulations to get it. alll the while, liz is indeed working which seems impossible with all she has going on. she makes it work best she can. unfortunately, she hardly has any free time, but she supposes this is the price one must pay to pursue what they love. what is most likely to occur post her four years is this: she gets an internship junior year somewhere, & upon graduation, she ends up getting a full time job with them. following through with getting a masters may very well be within her future. post - any schooling, liz is bound to branch out & perhaps pursue a career with nasa or head her own astronautics division within an already formed company.

#﹡ °☆⋅. what to hide & what to show / facts & figures.#long post /#now the follow up hc should be 1) liz coming to terms with there being a Whole School of people just like her #& facing that there are those better than her academically !#2) the struggles she faces when actually heading out into the work force in relation to gender & race #3) four years of being lonely & reserved & seemingly only finding solace in doing school working & keeping busy #but ......... i'm lazy so idk when i'll write any of those :-)

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

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We Don’t Need Cops to Enforce Traffic Laws

The protests after George Floyd’s killing have sparked a national debate about how to reduce police power and hold officers responsible for their actions. These proposals have ranged from defunding and abolishing the police to, in the case of presumed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, give police $300 million more for “community policing.”

Regardless of which policy you personally prefer, any effort to eliminate racism in American policing must figure out what to do about traffic enforcement, which is the leading cause of interactions between police and the public, according to the Department of Justice. And, by law, it is almost entirely up to the officer whether to let the person go with a warning, give them a ticket, ask to search their vehicle, or escalate the situation even further. It is an interaction intentionally designed to let the officer do virtually whatever he or she wants, reflecting the inherent biases of our legal system.

Police pull over more than 20 million motorists every year, according to the Stanford Policing Project, which undertook a first-of-its-kind large scale study into what happens during more than 100 million traffic stops. It found “police require less suspicion to search Black and Hispanic drivers than white drivers. This double standard is evidence of discrimination.”

But, traffic enforcement is not just the most common way police interact with people. It is also a foundational element to modern policing that encapsulates how things got so bad and why.

“Historically, that’s how police got a lot of their discretionary power as a matter of policy,” said University of Iowa law professor Sarah Seo and author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom. “Because they need to enforce traffic laws.”

The problem, Seo told Motherboard, has to do with the history of the automobile in America itself. Before the car, basic tort law handled street conflict well enough; if your wagon ran into mine and caused damage to me or my property and we couldn’t settle it like reasonable adults, I’d sue you. This stopped being good enough once cars flooded roads, causing all sorts of conflict and crashes, not to mention death.

At first, private associations like motor clubs tried to encourage safe practices, but such pleas fell on deaf ears. We needed laws, and cities passed traffic laws not too dissimilar from the ones we still have today, although extreme cases like a law in San Francisco governed “the angle at which motorists should make turns from one street into another.”

Police quickly had a problem. With all these new laws, nearly every motorist was routinely breaking at least one of them. Enforcing the letter of the law meant ticketing or arresting so many people as to risk widespread anti-police sentiment. During the 1930s when motor vehicle use became prevalent, nearly every motorist was a well-off white person not used to being hassled by the police.

As a result, police adopted a new approach. They often added “courtesy” as a part of their official slogan, one the New York City Police Department still has today. But the flip side of courtesy, Seo said, is discretion, which became legally codified around the same time. It is up to the officer to judge whether or not they should write a ticket in any given traffic stop. And once Black people started to own cars in greater numbers after World War II, discretion became discrimination.

“By then, discretion for white people still meant being lenient,” Seo said, “but for Black people it meant harsh, abusive treatment.”

Today, we can still see how elemental discretion is to traffic enforcement, because we have an alternative, one many Americans loathe to the bone precisely because it had no discretion: automated enforcement cameras.

Speed and red light cameras are a proven, functional technology that make roads safer by slowing drivers down. They’re widely used in other countries and can also enforce parking restrictions like not blocking bus or bike lanes. They’re incredibly effective enforcers of the law. They never need coffee breaks, don’t let their friends or coworkers off easy, and certainly don’t discriminate based on the color of the driver’s skin. Because these automated systems are looking at vehicles, not people’s faces, they avoid the implicit bias quandaries that, say, facial recognition systems have.

Because of that, many drivers loathe them, especially ones used to being the beneficiaries of discretion. Only 13 states allow speed cameras and eight have explicitly banned them, including Texas (the rest have no explicit rule about automated enforcement). The most common and highfalutin objections to automated enforcement have to do with the Fifth Amendment rights to face their accuser, which they argue cannot be done when their accuser is a machine.

But this, Seo told Motherboard, is a tell of what they’re really after: discretion.

“The way I translated that argument is: ‘I need to be able to argue my way out of the ticket,’” said Seo. “That argument is made by people who believe as long as they can get a hold of a human officer with discretion, they can get out of a ticket.”

Tellingly, there is a clear demographic trend among people making this argument. They’re white. In all her research on the subject, Seo said she has never come across a minority group arguing traffic cameras are bad. Police unions also lobby against automation because they say the traffic stop has become a key crimefighting tool in arresting people with guns and drugs, although there are obvious staffing implications as well.

In this way, traffic cameras are emblematic of a wider issue with white privilege; it is hard to get the beneficiaries of that privilege to give it up. As the traffic cops of the early 20th Century found, to enforce traffic laws equally bumps up against the fact that, when behind the wheel, everyone breaks the law.

That isn’t to say traffic cameras can do everything. Drunk driving laws, for example, are not a simple matter like speeding tickets where a camera or radar gun can tell if someone is breaking the law before pulling a person over. However, officers need to use discretion not only when deciding whether to pull a vehicle over for suspicion of drunk driving, but also in how to handle a potentially aggravated confrontation, including getting a person out of their vehicle to administer a breathalyzer test (which are often unreliable).

For her part, Seo—who, for the record, supports separating criminal law enforcement from traffic laws and automating as much of it as possible—sees the solution here as part of the larger conversation about defunding the police, and one that harkens back to the original concept of policing in America.

“Historically, police officers come from a concept called ‘the police power’ which does not refer to police officers,” Seo said. “And the way it’s defined as a sovereign, inherent power to govern for people’s health, safety and welfare…When you look at what police officers in the 19th century did, they responded to public safety and welfare, for example finding lost children, taking care of drunk people sleeping on the street. It was very much a caretaking function of the government.”

So, instead of having one department that responds to all kinds of public welfare issues like homelessness, domestic violence, speeding cars, gunshots, and robberies, specialized agencies could respond according to their expertise and have the tools on hand necessary for that specialization alone. DUI patrols, for example, could be trained in de-escalation tactics, detecting intoxicated individuals, and substance abuse treatment.

As with any other drastic reform, these are not perfect solutions and they come with trade-offs including privacy concerns from all the enforcement cameras. But destroying systemic racism requires sacrifices. You may not be able to argue your way out of a speeding ticket, but it also can’t order you to step out of the car.

We Don’t Need Cops to Enforce Traffic Laws syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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I’ve been a hypochondriac for much of my life.

When I was 13, I read an article about a girl my age who had recently lost her hair to alopecia. For the next six months, my teenage self developed an obsessive hair-counting habit every time some collected in my hairbrush.

A few years later, as a freshman at university, a three-day headache led me to call home in tears, convinced I had a brain tumor. (I did not.)

In 2008, my 24 years of neuroticism reached their dizzying peak. I had gone wakeboarding on a warm lake during a trip to Las Vegas, and I woke up a few days later feeling a little under the weather. One three-hour Google spiral later, I was in a full-blown panic.

You see, there is an extremely rare but nevertheless horrifying amoeba called Naegleria fowleri that occasionally appears in warm freshwater lakes in the southern states and, if said lake water gets into your sinuses through a mistimed splash, the amoeba can climb up your olfactory nerve, reproduce, and quite literally eat your brain. Even though I understood the meaning of the words “extremely rare,” the narrative was just too perfect — neurotic hypochondriac who always worried needlessly about rare terrible diseases succumbs to rare terrible disease.

Of course, I was wrong again. The only thing eating my brain was my own irrational anxiety, and after a few sleepless nights, I felt sheepishly well enough to rejoin the Vegas revelry.

Fast-forward to today, and I’m pleased to say that my hypochondria — and my reasoning skills in general — have significantly improved. A large part of that was my choice of profession; I began playing professional poker shortly after the amoeba episode, and 10 years later, the game has trained my mind to better handle uncertainty.

But the most powerful antidote to my irrationality came from a surprising source: an 18th-century English priest named Reverend Thomas Bayes. His pioneering work in statistics uncovered an immensely powerful mental tool that, if properly used, can drastically improve the way we reason about the world.

Our modern world is notoriously unpredictable and complex. Should I buy bitcoin? Is that news headline reliable? Is my crush actually into me, or just stringing me along?

Whether it’s our finances or our careers or our love lives, we have to tackle tricky decisions on a daily basis. Additionally, our smartphones bombard us around the clock with a never-ending stream of news and information. Some of that information is reliable, some is noise, and some is intentionally created to mislead. So how do we decide what to believe?

Reverend Bayes made enormous steps toward solving this age-old problem. A statistician by training, his work on the nature of probability and chance laid the groundwork of what is now known as Bayes’s theorem. While its formal definition appears as a rather intimidating mathematical equation, it essentially boils down to this:

Javier Zarracina/Vox

In other words, whenever we receive a new piece of evidence, how much should it affect what we currently believe to be true? Does the information support that belief, dispute it, or not affect it at all?

This line of questioning is known as Bayesian reasoning, and chances are, you have been using this method of belief-building all your life without realizing it has a formal name.

For example, imagine a co-worker comes to you with a shocking piece of news: He suspects that your boss has been siphoning money from the company. You’ve always respected your boss, and if you had been asked to estimate the likelihood of him being a thief prior to hearing any gossip (the “prior odds”), you would think it extremely unlikely. Meanwhile, your colleague has been known to exaggerate and dramatize situations, especially about people in managerial positions. As such, their word alone carries little evidential weight — and you don’t take their accusation too seriously. Statistically speaking, your “posterior odds” stay pretty much the same.

Now, take the same scenario but instead of verbal information, your colleague produces a paper trail of company money going into a bank account in your boss’s name. In this case, the weight of evidence against him is much stronger, and so the likelihood of “boss = thief” should increase proportionally. The stronger the evidence, the stronger your level of belief. And if the evidence is compelling enough, it should make you change your mind about him entirely.

If this feels obvious and intuitive, it should. The human brain is, to some extent, a natural Bayesian reasoning machine through a process known as predictive processing. The trouble is, almost all our intuitions evolved out of simpler times for savannah-type survival situations. The complexity of more modern-day decisions can sometimes cause our Bayesian reasoning to malfunction, especially when something we really care about is on the line.

What if, instead of respecting your boss, you’re annoyed at him because you feel he’d been unfairly promoted to his current position instead of you? Objectively speaking, your “prior” belief that he is an actual account-skimming thief should be almost as unlikely as in the previous example.

However, because you dislike him for another reason, you now have extra motivation to believe the gossip from your co-worker. This can result in you excessively shifting your “posterior” likelihood despite the lack of hard evidence … and perhaps even doing or saying something unwise.

The phenomenon of being swayed from accurate belief-building by our personal desires or emotions is known as motivated reasoning, and it affects every one of us, no matter how rational we think we are. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve made an objectively stupid play at the poker table thanks to an excessive emotional attachment to a particular outcome — from chasing lost chips with reckless bluffs after an unlucky run of cards, to foolhardy heroics against opponents who’ve gotten under my skin.

When we identify too strongly with a deeply held belief, idea, or outcome, a plethora of cognitive biases can rear their ugly heads. Take confirmation bias, for example. This is our inclination to eagerly accept any information that confirms our opinion, and undervalue anything that contradicts it. It’s remarkably easy to spot in other people (especially those you don’t agree with politically), but extremely hard to spot in ourselves because the biasing happens unconsciously. But it’s always there.

And this kind of Bayesian error can have very real and tragic consequences: Criminal cases where jurors unconsciously ignore exonerating evidence and send an innocent person to jail because of a bad experience with someone of the defendant’s demographic. The growing inability to hear alternative arguments in good faith from other parts of the political spectrum. Conspiracy theorists swallowing any unconventional belief they can get their hands on until they think the Earth is flat, or movie stars are lizards, or that a random pizza shop is the base for a sex slavery ring because of a comment thread they read on the internet.

So how do we overcome this deeply ingrained part of human nature? How can we become better Bayesians?

For motivated reasoning, the solution is somewhat obvious: self-awareness.

While confirmation bias is usually invisible to us in the moment, its physiological triggers are more detectable. Is there someone who makes your jaw clench and blood boil the moment they’re mentioned? A societal or religious belief you hold so dear that you think anyone is ridiculous to even want to discuss it?

We all have some deeply held belief that immediately puts us on the defensive. Defensiveness doesn’t mean that belief is actually incorrect. But it does mean we’re vulnerable to bad reasoning around it. And if you can learn to identify the emotional warning signs in yourself, you stand a better chance of evaluating the other side’s evidence or arguments more objectively.

With some Bayesian errors, however, the best remedy is hard data. This was certainly the case with my battle against hypochondria. Examining the numerical probabilities of the ailments I feared meant I could digest the risks the same way I would approach a poker game.

Sick of my neuroticism, a friend looked up the approximate odds that someone of my age, sex, and medical history would have contracted the deadly bug after swimming in that particular lake. “Liv, it’s significantly less likely than you making royal flush twice in a row,” he said. “You’ve played thousands of hands and that has never happened to you, or anyone you know. Stop worrying about the fucking amoeba.”

If I wanted to go one step further, I could have plugged those prior odds into Bayes’s formula and multiplied it by the evidential strength of my headache-y symptoms. To do this mathematically, I’d consider the counter case: How likely are my symptoms without having the amoeba? (Answer: very likely!) As headaches happen to people all the time, they provide very weak evidence of an amoebic infection, and so the resulting posterior odds remain virtually unchanged.

And this is a crucial lesson. When dealing with statistics, it is so easy to focus on fear-mongering headlines, like “thousands of people died from terrorism last year,” and forget about the other equally relevant part of the equation: the number of people last year who didn’t die from it.

Occasionally, “red-pill” or conspiracy enthusiasts fall into a similar statistical trap. On its face, questioning mainstream belief is a good scientific practice — it can uncover injustice and prevent systemic mistakes from repeating in society. But for some, proving the mainstream wrong becomes an all-consuming mission. And this is especially dangerous in the internet era, where a Google search will always spit out something that fits a chosen narrative. Bayes’s rule teaches you that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

And yet for some people, the less likely an explanation, the more likely they are to believe it. Take flat-Earth believers. Their claim rests on the idea that all the pilots, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and GPS engineers in the world are intentionally coordinating to mislead the public about the shape of the planet. From a prior odds perspective, the likelihood of a plot so enormous and intricate coming together out of all other conceivable possibilities is vanishingly small. But bizarrely, any demonstration of counterevidence, no matter how strong, just seems to cement their worldview further.

If there is one thing Bayes can teach us to be certain of, however, it is that there is no such thing as absolute certainty of belief. Like a spaceship trying to reach the speed of light, a posterior likelihood can only ever approach 100 percent (or 0 percent). It can never exactly reach it.

And so, anytime we say or think, “I’m absolutely 100 percent certain!” — even for something as probable as our globe-shaped Earth — we’re not only being foolish, we’re being factually wrong. By that statement, we’re effectively saying there is no further evidence in the world, no matter how strong, that could change our minds. And that is as ridiculous as claiming, “I know everything about everything that could ever possibly happen in the universe, ever,” because there are always some unknown unknowns we cannot conceive of, no matter how knowledgeable and wise we think we are.

Which is why science never officially “proves” anything — it just seeks evidence to improve or weaken current theories until they approach 0 percent or 100 percent. This should serve as a reminder that we should always remain open to the possibility of changing our minds if strong enough evidence emerges. And most importantly, we must remember to see our deepest beliefs for what they ultimately are: just another prior probability, floating in a sea of uncertainty.

Liv Boeree is a science communicator and TV host specializing in astrophysics, rationality, and poker.

Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter. Twice a week, you’ll get a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling our biggest challenges: improving public health, decreasing human and animal suffering, easing catastrophic risks, and — to put it simply — getting better at doing good.

Original Source -> How an 18th-century priest gave us the tools to make better decisions

via The Conservative Brief

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latestnews2018-blog · 7 years ago

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Facebook would make a martyr by banning Infowars

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/facebook-would-make-a-martyr-by-banning-infowars/

Facebook would make a martyr by banning Infowars

Alex Jones’ Infowars is a fake-news peddler. But Facebook deleting its Page could ignite a fire that consumes the network. Still, some critics are asking why it hasn’t done so already.

This week Facebook held an event with journalists to discuss how it combats fake news. The company’s recently appointed head of News Feed John Hegeman explained that, “I guess just for being false, that doesn’t violate the community standards. I think part of the fundamental thing here is that we created Facebook to be a place where different people can have a voice.”

In response, CNN’s Oliver Darcy tweeted: “I asked them why InfoWars is still allowed on the platform. I didn’t get a good answer.” BuzzFeed’s Charlie Warzel meanwhile wrote that allowing the Infowars Page to exist shows that “Facebook simply isn’t willing to make the hard choices necessary to tackle fake news.”

Facebook’s own Twitter account tried to rebuke Darcy by tweeting, “We see Pages on both the left and the right pumping out what they consider opinion or analysis – but others call fake news. We believe banning these Pages would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech.” But harm can be minimized without full-on censorship.

There is no doubt that Facebook hides behind political neutrality. It fears driving away conservative users for both business and stated mission reasons. That strategy is exploited by those like Jones who know that no matter how extreme and damaging their actions, they’ll benefit from equivocation that implies “both sides are guilty,” with no regard for degree.

Instead of being banned from Facebook, Infowars and sites like it that constantly and purposely share dangerous hoaxes and conspiracy theories should be heavily down-ranked in the News Feed.

Effectively, they should be quarantined, so that when they or their followers share their links, no one else sees them.

“We don’t have a policy that stipulates that everything posted on Facebook must be true — you can imagine how hard that would be to enforce,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch. “But there’s a very real tension here. We work hard to find the right balance between encouraging free expression and promoting a safe and authentic community, and we believe that down-ranking inauthentic content strikes that balance. In other words, we allow people to post it as a form of expression, but we’re not going to show it at the top of News Feed.”

Facebook already reduces the future views of posts by roughly 80 percent when they’re established as false by its third-party fact checkers like PolitiFact and the Associated Press. For repeat offenders, I think that reduction in visibility should be closer to 100 percent of News Feed views. What Facebook does do to those whose posts are frequently labeled as false by its checkers is “remove their monetization and advertising privileges to cut off financial incentives, and dramatically reduce the distribution of all of their Page-level or domain-level content on Facebook.”

The company wouldn’t comment directly about whether Infowars has already been hit with that penalty, noting, “We can’t disclose whether specific Pages or domains are receiving such a demotion (it becomes a privacy issue).” For any story fact-checked as false, it shows related articles from legitimate publications to provide other perspectives on the topic, and notifies people who have shared it or are about to.

But that doesn’t solve for the initial surge of traffic. Unfortunately, Facebook’s limited array of fact-checking partners are strapped with so much work, they can only get to so many BS stories quickly. That’s a strong endorsement for more funding to be dedicated to these organizations like Snopes, preferably by even-keeled nonprofits, though the risks of governments or Facebook chipping in might be worth it.

Given that fact-checking will likely never scale to be instantly responsive to all fake news in all languages, Facebook needs a more drastic option to curtail the spread of this democracy-harming content on its platform. That might mean a full loss of News Feed posting privileges for a certain period of time. That might mean that links re-shared by the supporters or agents of these pages get zero distribution in the feed.

But it shouldn’t mean their posts or Pages are deleted, or that their links can’t be opened unless they clearly violate Facebook’s core content policies.

Why downranking and quarantine? Because banning would only stoke conspiratorial curiosity about these inaccurate outlets. Trolls will use the bans as a badge of honor, saying, “Facebook deleted us because it knows what we say is true.”

They’ll claim they’ve been unfairly removed from the proxy for public discourse that exists because of the size of Facebook’s private platform.

What we’ll have on our hands is “but her emails!” 2.0

People who swallowed the propaganda of “her emails,” much of which was pushed by Alex Jones himself, assumed that Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails must have contained evidence of some unspeakable wrongdoing — something so bad it outweighed anything done by her opponent, even when the accusations against him had evidence and witnesses aplenty.

If Facebook deleted the Pages of Infowars and their ilk, it would be used as a rallying cry that Jones’ claims were actually clairvoyant. That he must have had even worse truths to tell about his enemies and so he had to be cut down. It would turn him into a martyr.

Those who benefit from Infowars’ bluster would use Facebook’s removal of its Page as evidence that it’s massively biased against conservatives. They’d push their political allies to vindictively regulate Facebook beyond what’s actually necessary. They’d call for people to delete their Facebook accounts and decamp to some other network that’s much more of a filter bubble than what some consider Facebook to already be. That would further divide the country and the world.

When someone has a terrible, contagious disease, we don’t execute them. We quarantine them. That’s what should happen here. The exception should be for posts that cause physical harm offline. That will require tough judgement calls, but knowingly inciting mob violence, for example, should not be tolerated. Some of Infowars’ posts, such as those about Pizzagate that led to a shooting, might qualify for deletion by that standard.

Facebook is already trying to grapple with this after rumors and fake news spread through forwarded WhatsApp messages have led to crowds lynching people in India and attacks in Myanmar. Peer-to-peer chat lacks the same centralized actors to ban, though WhatsApp is now at least marking messages as forwarded, and it will need to do more. But for less threatening yet still blatantly false news, quarantining may be sufficient. This also leaves room for counterspeech, where disagreeing commenters can refute posts or share their own rebuttals.

Few people regularly visit the Facebook Pages they follow. They wait for the content to come to them through the News Feed posts of the Page, and their friends. Eliminating that virality vector would severely limit this fake news’ ability to spread without requiring the posts or Pages to be deleted, or the links to be rendered unopenable.

If Facebook wants to uphold a base level of free speech, it may be prudent to let the liars have their voice. However, Facebook is under no obligation to amplify that speech, and the fakers have no entitlement for their speech to be amplified.

Image Credit: Getty – Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, Flickr Sean P. Anderson CC

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theinvinciblenoob · 7 years ago

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Alex Jones’ Infowars is a fake news-peddler. But Facebook deleting its Page could ignite a fire that consumes the network. Still, some critics are asking why it hasn’t done so already.

There is no doubt that Facebook hides behind political neutrality. It fears driving away conservative users for both business and stated mission reasons. That strategy is exploited by those like Jones who know that no matter how extreme and damaging their actions, they’ll benefit from equivocation that implies ‘both sides are guilty,’ with no regard for degree.

Instead of being banned from Facebook, Infowars and sites like it that constantly and purposely share dangerous hoaxes and conspiracy theories should be heavily down-ranked in the News Feed.

Effectively, they should be quarantined, so that when they or their followers share their links, no one else sees them.

Facebook already reduces the future views of posts by roughly 80 percent when they’re established as false by its third-party fact checkers like Politifact and the Associated Press. For repeat offenders, I think that reduction in visibility should be closer to 100 percent of News Feed views. What Facebook does do to those whose posts are frequently labeled as false by its checkers is “remove their monetization and advertising privileges to cut off financial incentives, and dramatically reduce the distribution of all of their Page-level or domain-level content on Facebook.”

The company wouldn’t comment directly about whether Infowars has already been hit with that penalty, noting “We can’t disclose whether specific Pages or domains are receiving such a demotion (it becomes a privacy issue).” For any story fact checked as false, it shows related articles from legitimate publications to provide other perspectives on the topic, and notifies people who have shared it or are about to.

But that doesn’t solve for the initial surge of traffic. Unfortunately, Facebook’s limited array of fact checking partners are strapped with so much work, they can only get to so many BS stories quickly. That’s a strong endorsement for more funding to be dedicated to these organizations like Snopes, preferably by even keeled non-profits, though the risks of governments or Facebook chipping in might be worth it.

But it shouldn’t mean their posts or Pages are deleted, or that their links can’t be opened unless they clearly violate Facebook’s core content policies.

They’ll claim they’ve been unfairly removed from the proxy for public discourse that exists because of the size of Facebook’s private platform.

What we’ll have on our hands is “but her emails!” 2.0

People who swallowed the propaganda of “her emails”, much of which was pushed by Alex Jones himself, assumed that Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails must have contained evidence of some unspeakable wrongdoing — something so bad it outweighed anything done by her opponent, even when the accusations against him had evidence and witnesses aplenty.

If Facebook deleted the Pages of Infowars and their ilk, it would be used as a rallying cry that Jones’ claims were actually clairvoyance. That he must have had even worse truths to tell about his enemies and so he had to be cut down. It would turn him into a martyr.

When someone has a terrible, contagious disease, we don’t execute them. We quarantine them. That’s what should happen here. The exception should be for posts that cause physical harm offline. That will require tough judgement calls, but knowing inciting mob violence for example should not be tolerated. Some of Infowars posts, such as those about Pizzagate that led to a shooting, might qualify for deletion by that standard.

Image Credit: Getty – Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, Flickr Sean P. Anderson CC

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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