It almost feels like we're in an age with a kind of new post-modernism. Everyone can have their own reality and make up their own "facts" to fit. This makes science and philosophy irrelevant because there is no shared reality that can be investigated and no "fact" that can be disproven.
I'm firmly in favor of making a media consumption class mandatory for primary education. Essentially a mix of logic & fallacies, evaluating sources, and meta scientific news literacy.
Which is, if one thinks about it, the real problem at hand: when the political ideology of half a country requires complete and uncritical rejection of...yanno... the things happening in front of one's face, you can't actually fix the thing. People have to agree that it's broken first.
So, while I’d support a policy from high that guarantees everyone this type of education, a single computer lab teacher can have a major impact on their own.
I think the good faith available has rather remarkably drained out of even that, today.
There are other problematic sacred cows that are really hard to broach that similarly touch on information overload. We've got copyrights that allow rent-seeking behavior even where the value lies not in the creation, but in the shared social history, and in any case have durations that are out of whack with the encouragements needed to create. We've got a first amendment protection of speech that protects very valuable discourse and the ability to criticize, yet is only protects from the government, not the increasingly important non-governmental organizations (like but not exclusively social-media platforms). And it's a blunt tool too; it protects from imposed silence, but it does not protect from drowning out with noise. There's no framework for dealing with, essentially, really smart spam - and even if there were some countermeasure, the first amendment would likely render it illegal! And while I think it's perfectly reasonable for corporations to have a voice, I don't think people really considered the downsides of lobbying and other intentionally misleading messaging when reinterpreting incorporation to include first-amendment protections.
But suggest that the first amendment is flawed now, and people immediately jump to the conclusion that you personally must want to live in a Stalinist dictatorship.
Best series ever.
Not healthy for your organs and also not really helping with teeth.
I'm sure this would work out horribly.
There is a lot of ideology involved, which correlates rather poorly with intelligence. There are, for example, quite a few Republican politicians that aren't obviously stupid, who still spent decades denying first the existence of climate change, then the human contribution, followed by the risks and, finally, our ability to act against it.
Other example: when people say "Barack Obama was not born in the United States" it is not intended as a statement of fact, which is why no amount of fact-checking and birth-certificate-producing stopped people from engaging in that particular conspiracy theory. It is an expression of ideology.
And because every comment on such topic must end with George Orwell: In 1984 the highest achievement of ideology is the expression of facts that are obviously wrong.
It’s a veiled way of signaling they are willing to discriminate against certain races to other racists, while claiming plausible deniability.
But there are two conclusions you might draw from that: (A) that intelligence and education aren't helpful, or (B) that those making horrible decisions were being selfish.
Given the trumpian sentiment of "not paying my taxes makes me smart", and perhaps the fact that other people were even smart enough not to say something like that (but still to act on the idea), I'm thinking you need to consider (B) as a serious component here.
That would suggest that intelligence and education might still be useful - but only when dishonesty and selfishness is not a dominating risk. I suppose there are measures one might take to at least reduce those risks, since obviously completely eradicating those is unrealistic.
For instance, if the educated are good at serving themselves but pullign the wool over the electorate's eyes, then perhaps more audits would help. A culture of much harsher penalties for selfish leaders, even where the selfishness isn't illegal, might help. But perhaps also the electorate itself should be smarter too - and that's not entirely impossible in principle too; e.g. you could imagine a pyramid scheme of elections, not too different from the electoral college today - just with more levels (not just two), and with explicit decoupling of the elector from their vote (so no more "republican" electors or "democrat" electors - they too are free agents), and with the explicit aim of voting for people who you think you can most trust - intellectually, morally, and as a planner - instead of those you most agree with (since with multiple levels, that's kind of hopeless anyhow).
...So I'm not really serious with that last suggestion, but I do think we need to be exploring options. A disillusioned electorate mixed with manipulative, egotistical, untrustworthy politicians, spiced with lavish lobbying, no funding transparency, and media so full of noise the signal is hard to find - that's a recipe for serious food poisoning. It may seriously simply help to switch electoral systems every once and a while, even if there's no single best system - simply to shake loose the manipulative habits that settle in after a while.
I think this was the case before. Nowadays it's a different, worse situation. We have more means of knowing but people a proactively smearing information. It's a super impressive neurotic trend of "modern" societies.
Now what to do ? I don't know, but I wish. It's kind of a quest, find knowledgeable and courageous people to gather, find ideas and enact them.
For most, it'll be brushed off and then moved on to the next new shiny thing in the news/outrage/propaganda cycle.
e.g. There is a scare story at least once a week that is plastered over newspapers/news sites such as "Having a bacon sandwich could lead to bum cancer!!!!", when the headline is clearly salacious. The actual research probably had a sensible conclusion of "Those who have had consistently more red meat, have an increased chance of cancer". If you hear see the same story hundreds of times, you are likely to ignore it or even despise it.
The same happens with the populist politicians. Take someone that isn't as controversial as Bolsonaro such as Nigel Farage in my home country.
A fair description of his political stance is a Patriotic Thatcherite that is anti-mass-immigration. When he was first becoming well known (back in the mid-2000s) he was constantly branded a racist and a fascist (there was no evidence of this) in an attempt to conflate his position with the likes of actual fascists of old like Oswald Mosley.
Now Whether or not you agree with his politics isn't important. In these attempts to constantly smear him he has become one of the most effective UK politicians in recent memory. To many he can simply do no wrong because they will dismiss any criticism of immediately, disregarding its validity.
That said, I don't think I disagree with your greater point.
Also, how can you brand somebody as "patriotic" when his party is a US-based corporation with links to the Russian government and tax havens?
Sad to see this rubbish on HN. Farage plays to the same racist tendencies as Trump and Bolsonaro do, with constant dog-whistling. He's absolutely controversial and hardly effective: he still has no MP in the UK Parliament after 15 years of trying, and has accomplished absolutely nothing over two mandates in the EU Parliament beyond annoying even his own allies.
It's not the "smearing" that build his success, but a situation of sustained economic weakness of the white working classes that fosters a climate of anger against migrants (who are seen as cheaper competition). That BNP fella was similarly successful for a while. Also, Farage's support is built on social networks, where his messages are spread without a debate, let alone "smears".
> This would be the same Farage that made sure his anti-immigration message in the 2016 Brexit campaign had "the only prominent white person in the photograph obscured by a box of text": https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farag....
You just did the very thing I was complaining about!
They are claiming that how an image was cropped and where text was placed somehow indicates racism. You are concentrating on nonsense and not actually making an argument against any of his policies or any of the assumption of the advert.
As for my descriptions of Farage. They come from other Journalists such as Brendan O'Neill (runs Spiked!). As for the rest of my description they are fairly objective.
> Sad to see this rubbish on HN. Farage plays to the same racist tendencies as Trump and Bolsonaro do, with constant dog-whistling.
When someone says "Dog whistling" that is the same as when someone runs out of arguments and says "Well you know it true and you aren't admitting it". It isn't an argument of any sort.
You just did the very thing I was complaining about, and I don't think you even knew you were doing it.
Most unfortunately, it's becomes impossible to make what we previously conceived of as an "argument" when one or more of the parties involved refuses to acknowledge the validity of objective reality (more commonly referred to as "facts").
No, you were not -- you were (and still are) trying to pass your biases (Farage "patriotic" and unfairly portraited while being "uncontroversial") as objective, by attacking straw men in how public debate arrives at objective conclusions about him. I pointed you at one of many examples of why that is not the case, and you doubled-down on it while completely ignoring the bits of my post that are inconvenient to your biases.
> not actually making an argument
Because there is no argument to make: Farage's "policies" are just a hodgepodge of badly-thought-out slogans designed to appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate. Like on Brexit, which he campaigned for but for which (like all "hard brexiteers") he has no practical or coherent plan.
The main problem with populists is precisely that their policies are unassailable, because they are completely devoid of details. They sell emotions, typically negative ones.
> When someone says "Dog whistling" that is the same as when someone runs out of arguments
As sad as it might make you, dog-whistling is a widely understood term in political debate, and there is little doubt that it is precisely what the likes of Trump and Farage do. (Well, to be fair, Trump has gone beyond that in recent days, turning to out-and-out discriminatory language.)
In my original post I said something along the lines of "He was less controversial than Bolsonaro" not that he was uncontroversial.
You didn't point me at anything objective. The best you linked me to a guardian article about an ad-campaign that claimed it was racist because one white person was removed from the photo. I think that sort of logic is ridiculous.
As for me ignoring parts of your post, yes I ignored parts of your post because I thought they were irrelevant to the point I was originally trying to convey.
> Because there is no argument to make: Farage's "policies" are just a hodgepodge of badly-thought-out slogans designed to appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate. Like on Brexit, which he campaigned for but for which (like all "hard brexiteers") he has no practical or coherent plan.
Well UKIP's manifesto of 2015 is a 76 page document according to the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32318683
I chose this because this is the last time I believe they fought a general election with Farage as Leader. So this would be indicative of his policies (as he would have had a fair amount of input in the process).
From the BBC summary it seems quite comprehensive. It seems to cover a similar number of areas as Labour's manifesto of 2015.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32284159
So I think your characterisation is quite unfair.
> As sad as it might make you, dog-whistling is a widely understood term in political debate, and there is little doubt that it is precisely what the likes of Trump and Farage do. (Well, to be fair, Trump has gone beyond that in recent days, turning to out-and-out discriminatory language.)
I know what the term means. However many of those that use the term do so as an accusation. They don't mention who they are whistling at and what terms they are using to do that.
> You didn't point me at anything objective.
Want more? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11465505/Nigel-Far...
Refusing to accept that Farage's campaigns are fundamentally based on discrimination, is just denying reality.
> Well UKIP's manifesto of 2015 is a 76 page document
Yeah, and no UKIP supporter would likely be able to describe any of it, except the bits on discriminating foreigners and closing borders. Because, frankly, that's pretty much the only thing they care about. Farage's latest outfit, the brexit party, smashes together old marxists and capitalist cronies, in single-minded pursuit of discrimination.
> They don't mention who they are whistling at and what terms they are using to do that
Because it becomes tedious to do that after a while. The targets of dog-whistling are almost inevitably minorities, because they are the ones who cannot be attacked directly without falling openly into discriminatory language - commonly known as "racist".
I know Varoufakis, his parable was very different - he was ostracized after reaching power, by people who could not match his academic skills and felt threatened. The similarities with movements like Trump or Farage are barely skin-deep - Varoufakis does not enjoy the support of entire sectors of the media.
Well you've just changed the goalposts again. After being quite clearly confronted with evidence that doesn't support your assertions (a summary of a manifesto with a clear set of policies) you change the goalposts to the UKIP supporter being thick or bigoted.
Have you actually talked to many UKIP supporters? I've spoken to UKIP when they knocked on the door and they seemed like pretty normal people.
> Because it becomes tedious to do that after a while. The targets of dog-whistling are almost inevitably minorities, because they are the ones who cannot be attacked directly without falling openly into discriminatory language - commonly known as "racist".
Right so you have plenty of energy to throw endless accusations around, accuse me of all sorts because I don't agree with you but when asked for specifics it is too tedious. Okay with that I think I will leave you to it. Bye.
Yes, they are quite banal people, mostly. That means little - the worst political movements of the last century were full of very banal people, a certain Ms. Harendt even wrote a famous book about it.
> but when asked for specifics it is too tedious
I was explaining why most people in these debates cannot be bothered to go into detail. If we had to explain every term in the book, we'd end up reciting the opus of Bertrand Russell at every meeting.
Another subjective ad-hominem attack on people you don't really know much about.
> That means little - the worst political movements of the last century were full of very banal people, a certain Ms. Harendt even wrote a famous book about it.
Dropping names of someone that wrote a book isn't an argument. Doesn't address the actual tenor of what I was saying.
I notice that you haven't addressed the fact that you were completely incorrect about Farage and his policies. Let me remind you what your claim was, you said he had no policies. I showed you the Manifesto of 2015 (which is as substantive as their rivals).
> I was explaining why most people in these debates cannot be bothered to go into detail. If we had to explain every term in the book, we'd end up reciting the opus of Bertrand Russell at every meeting.
This is a ridiculous. You have spent more energy telling me why you won't do something than actually doing it.
Respondents began to reply asking for additional information, how the claim could be verified, many simply asked for a source-others expressed concern for accuracy of information because they were potentially affected. Maybe one out of every few were “trollish” by popular definition. I read many of them. Very few seemed to be politically charged or even aggressive towards this attorney, they simply asked for more information.
Her responses were aggressive and antagonistic, calling respondents “trolls” and “enablers”. Even people asking in a considerate and mild mannered way because they were trying to inform themselves on the affair.
No facts ever came out. From the attorney or the local entity she claimed to have information on. She encouraged others to take the lack of information as proof that her friend’s claims were truth. Many did.
It was something to behold. An attorney was sharing what was effectively hearsay on twitter about a local business and actively combatting people asking for more information.
Strange times indeed.
Yes.
I know that everyone's jaded by various neo-fascist leaders, but this stuff does need to be called out, else it gets normalised.
What people care about is whether the politicians will instigate policies that are beneficial to them.
Bolsonaro ran with one of his main issues being law and order. In Brazil the crime rates are quite shocking (IIRC the murder rate is huge like 100s a day). It doesn't matter if he lies about the Rainforest if people see if cleaning up the streets.
Run that by me again.
How is denying something you know to be true a reasonable stance.
How is taking (or actively not taking) a course of action you know will harm the people you've been elected to serve, a reasonable stance.
This is pretty basic stuff for a democratically elected official.
:(
How do you do anything about that? Somehow reality has become not just optional and uncertain in our policies, perceptions and opinions, but downright irrelevant. When there's no merit in even trying to be truthful and accurate, well... you get this.