An American awakening?

An article by Democracy Docket, Nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe Trump is a ‘potentially dangerous dictator’ who threatens democracy, poll finds, conveys some evidence that a significant number of Americans are finally waking up to the reality of what Trump and MAGA politics and policy are, i.e., dictator and dictatorship. According to this poll data, worries that Trump’s exercise of dictator-level power now goes beyond just Democrats. Roughly two-thirds of independents and majorities of Hispanic Catholics and Protestants see Trump for the authoritarian treat he is.

Whether that poll data translates into a lot of votes against Trump’s MAGA party in Nov. is an open question. That’s just one poll, not proof of a major shift in public sentiment.

However, that poll, together with one described here, Majority of Americans say Trump prioritizes his personal financial interests over U.S. as a whole, indicates that a lot of Americans really are pissed off and are starting to see Trump and MAGA elites for what they are, highly corrupt and anti-democratic authoritarians.

And a 3rd recent poll indicates that public dissatisfaction is common, with ~80% wanting either substantial change or total upheaval in how the US is run. Not surprisingly, about 85%  of voters say the economy is one of the most important issues for their vote in the upcoming election. About 84% say the same about the cost of living. Health care is a top issue for ~69% of voters, and ~64% cite the war with Iran as a top issue. Less than half overall say that immigration and crime are among the most important issues.

Q: Is there a meaningful public awakening underway in American politics, or is evidence like this probably going to translate into few, if any, significant positive changes that voters say they want?

How tyranny grows

France's tyrant party leader Marine Le Pen BS-ing people about 

how she will fix things to make France great again 

Tyranny and tyrants are usually creative and hyper-persistent about gaining power and keeping it. Despite diversity in circumstances, forms of governments and social norms, there are generalizations about how tyrant wannabes go about their business of obliterating opposition, dissent, civil liberties and an even-handed rule of law. A common tactic, maybe the dominant one, is to either foment social unrest, fear, anger, bigotry, and dissatisfaction, or to amplify it when bad sentiments arise more or less spontaneously on their own.

A great example is unfolding now in France. There is an ongoing, widespread national protest against high cost of living (partly caused by Trump’s stupid, unprovoked, now lost Iran war), underfunded public education and public services, and deep dissatisfaction with Macron’s government. So what does the radical right authoritarian movement in France do? It does what tyrants everywhere nearly always do. They fire up their mind-poisoning demagoguery, lies and bullshit rhetoric. They are making a run at killing off France’s democracy, rule of law and civil liberties.

In other words, the radical right tyrant wannabes in France employ the same mind-poisoning demagoguery tactics that America’s radical right tyrant wannabes, i.e., Trump and his MAGA elites, are doing in the US right now.

A NYT article, France’s Far Right Seizes the Moment as Rioting Stuns the Country, is blunt: After riots erupted this weekend in cities across France, its centrist government blamed the main far-left party, accusing its politicians of inciting the violence. That party blamed the government, accusing it of stirring public anger through years of bad governance and heavy-handed policing. What did the main far-right party do? It blamed both, and launched into campaign mode. (emphasis added)

A spokesman for France’s radical right tyranny party commented: “We are paying for decades of being soft on crime, of weak authority, of the moral, psychological, and material disarmament of our internal security forces. ….. People [“honest citizens”] need to wake up now. They need to make the right political choices, and in any case, we stand ready to restore order in the country.”

So there we have it, France’s main tyranny party is going to reinstate national stability, law and order. The way for “honest citizens” to to that is by voting in the coming election for his tyranny party.

That should sound very familiar. America’s tyranny party, the MAGA Party, heavily demagogued national unrest and damage from George Floyd protests into a horror it wasn’t. America’s MAGA demagogues rigidly ignored and denied the fact (not opinion) that nearly all the Floyd protests were peaceful. MAGA demagoguery slandered America’s entire left as radical and lawless. The tyrants in France are doing the exact same thing there to gain power.

Also exactly like America’s radical right tyranny movement, the French radical right tyranny party has absolutely no plan for how to deal with high living costs and underfunded public services. Those were the triggers that set off the unrest. The French tyrant party ignores those core issues. As usual, the authoritarians deflect to talk about stopping protests with brute force. That is the same thing Trump said he would like to do with peaceful protesters in the US. Stopping protests in France by force will do absolutely nothing at all about honest citizens’ core complaints about a fading standard of living and increasing living costs.

Tyranny vs democracy

In France, this is how tyranny is making a run at power. It is not much different than how American tyrants made their run at power. Americans were unhappy with the old two-party status quo. They wanted major changes. They voted for major change. But they got MAGA with its major changes being cruelty, bigotry, fascism, kleptocracy, and significant loss of the rule of law for the elites and civil liberties for everyone else.

This should not need to be said. But it does need to be said because MAGA’s demagoguery has poisoned so many minds. Democracy is generally better and far more moral than tyranny because it gives people a voice, protects their freedom to criticize government, and lets them replace failed or abusive leaders through elections rather than violence (Our World in Data). Democracy does not eliminate corruption, but free journalism, organized opposition, and meaningful elections give citizens ways to expose wrongdoing and hold rulers accountable. Those are checks that tyranny suppresses or removes (V-Dem’s democratic criteria). Its advantages are also material: democratization raises income per person over the long run, with evidence suggesting improvements in investment, education, and health care (Acemoglu and colleagues). Democracy’s central advantage is not that its leaders are inherently wiser or more virtuous, but that citizens still have mechanisms for challenging crappy leaders and correcting their mistakes.

Q1: Is tyranny, with its usual deep corruption, generally better than democracy because the dictators can shoot protesters dead in the streets, leading to social calm and order, while making the grieving families or estates of the dead pay for all the costs?

Q2: Is there really such a thing as Plato’s benign Philosopher King or dictator, you know, a dictator who shoots us dead in the streets for the “greater good” or whatever lipstick the tyrant puts on murdering people in legitimate public protest?

Note for the trolls: No, this OP is not an endorsement of any violence or lawbreaking in the protests in France or in the Floyd protests in the US, or anywhere else, ever. Such violence is far worse than deplorable because it gives demagogues a great way to slander protestors and downplay or deflect from legit grievances. Demagogues point to the illegality of a few hooligans and thugs who commit violence to smear everyone and everything involved. If anyone is aware of a reasonably effective way to weed out people who join protests for the opportunity to enjoy being violent or to destroy property, let’s hear about it.

Plausible future scenarios

In the wake of the vast damage that Trump and MAGA elites have caused to democracy, the rule of law, the federal government, and our society and economy, one can reasonably see three possibilities for the US. They are (1) mostly likely, we muddle along and continue to slowly decline like we are now, (2) maybe less likely, we enter a period of accelerated and mostly unchecked decline into some miserable, poverty-riddled state of affairs for most Americans, or (3) maybe least likely, America makes some form of a comeback and works toward some semblance of the America’s old position in the world while restoring respect for democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and the public interest. At the moment it is impossible to know which path we will take.

America’s former allies, now alienated, insulted, and attacked by Trump with his seething hate of democracy and rule of law, might be coaxed back into an at least somewhat friendly but still rather distrustful state of affairs. Some serious apologies will be needed. Of course, that’s something that Trump and MAGA elites are incapable of.

An NYT opinion piece, Three Scenarios for a Leaderless World, sums it up nicely: By now it is clear to most of America and much of the world that America and what it stands for have changed. The dominant face of that change is President Trump and his determined and deliberate efforts to accumulate greater powers than the Constitution apportioned to the president, to create a cult of personality based on grievance and vengeance and to challenge every aspect of the postwar global order, demeaning allies and courting autocrats.

That opinion describes the three future scenarios.

The international system can survive with the US in a seriously degraded form even while American democracy suffers severe, lasting damage. “Muddling along” globally would not necessarily mean that Americans preserve an adequately functioning democracy. Right now under Trump and MAGA elites, the US is losing its democracy and the necessary respect for the rule of law. We are also losing our civil liberties, rights and protections.

Regarding MAGA’s erosion of US democracy, V-Dem’s 2026 assessment reports that the US Liberal Democracy Index score dropped by 24% in one year, with its ranking falling from 20th to 51st among 179 countries. Rapid concentration of presidential power was central to the decline. Those are changes argue strongly against treating the present situation as just ordinary partisan turbulence.

Unfortunately ordinary partisan turbulence is how the MSM and both main parties are generally treating the current political bitterness and authoritarian (fascist, actually) dysfunction. As gramps liked to say in his occasional moments of grumpiness, “they’re worthless as teats on a boar”. Nowadays, that description is a major understatement. They’re arguably seriously worse than worthless.

For what its worth, if anything, my AI analyzes this a bit differently.

Q1: Can one reasonably believe the three scenarios the NYT opinion posits are the most likely outcomes once cult leader Trump drops dead of whatever it is that plagues him?

Q2: Are the MSM and both major political parties merely they’re worthless as teats on a boar, or are they worse than that?

Q3: Collectively, are MAGA politics, tactics and policy reasonably described as an American form of fascism, or is that still too harsh an assessment?

Environmental degradation updates

 The term environmental degradation can also be referred to as climate change and pollution. The concept includes both global warming and toxic pollution.

Toxic pollution update

A SciAm article, Microplastics are linked to inflammation—scientists might have finally worked out why, discusses recent research about how microplastics might cause inflammation in humans and animals. The research that SciAm discusses was recently published in the Nature paper, Intrinsic physicochemical activity at microplastic–water interfaces. Short story kept short, with tiny microplastic particles in the micron (millionth of a meter) range, about the size of many bacteria, the interface or surface of the particle in water radically changes the local water chemistry. Water’s normal ability to hydrogen bond is disrupted at plastic particle surfaces because the plastics are water repellant (hydrophobic).

Examination of the chemistry at particle surfaces shows that highly reactive molecules are created and those appear to cause inflammation. Before this research, bulk plastics like water bottles were presumed to be inert or chemically not reactive. Before now, no one had looked for the status of chemistry of microplastics in water. A researcher commented that “for microplastics, this is especially important because fragmentation creates enormous amounts of new surface area”. As particle size decreases, the surface to volume ratio increases, creating a large surface area for microscopic plastic particles.

The paper reports that hydroxyl radicals, •OH, are formed in water that has microplastic particles in it. Hydroxyl radicals are very toxic. It is still unknown whether and to what extent the human body eventually converts microplastics in tissues into harmless end products. That may never happen. There is not yet evidence that the body reliably “digests” common microplastics into benign substances. At present, there isn’t even good measurements of how long different plastic particles last in the body. Research has shown that microplastics are present in human tissues. Their effects on human health are still uncertain, but early findings suggest harm, especially from chronic inflammation.

Fluorescent die in water was used to visualize the presence of reactive molecules at particle surfaces

Biological damage from reactive species

Global warming update

A SciAm article, Earth’s ‘life support systems’ are breaking down, climate scientists warn, reports that climate science experts say Earth is undergoing a “rapid destabilization” due to global warming. The SciAm article is reporting about a research paper, The 2026 state of the climate report: challenges and opportunities, that updates vital signs that track the state of Earth’s climate systems. The report is the latest in a series called the “State of the Climate”. For their report, climate science researchers measure 16 key markers of Earth’s climate. Seven of these have now reached “record extremes”. One author comments: “We are increasingly concerned about the risk of crossing climate tipping points that could lead to irreversible changes”.

The authors write: We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system. This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present. Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond. Human activities are driving profound shifts in the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.

Q1: Are you comfortable with microplastics in your body doing Dog only knows what to it, for Dog only knows how long?

Q2: Are these observations that some people make about global warming and the degree of human-non-response to it reasonable and rational (paraphrasing): We are playing Russian Roulette with the climate because our climate situation could be far worse than we know because he has passed a tipping point(s) that cannot be undone if we stay on our current failing response trajectory?

Why a US-Ukraine democracy alliance is far better than a US-Russia dictatorship alliance

This Ukrainian family was running for cover but  

they didn't make it, now they're part of Putin's

huge pile of war corpses

Some MAGA supporters argue that a US-Russia alliance is better and/or Russia is justified in invading Ukraine and continuing to commit mass slaughter of Ukrainian people. Not surprisingly, those arguments ignore, deny or downplay the reasons that the US and American people would be better off supporting Ukraine.

Reasons to support Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked invasion

An alliance with and support of Ukraine is far better for the American people because (1) that stands squarely for democracy against brutal tyranny and kleptocracy (Putin is both a murdering tyrant and an aggressive kleptocrat), (2) it signals that the US will stand by its treaties, like the one we had with Ukraine, (3) it shows compassion for a people unjustifiably and immorally attacked and mass murdered by Putin, (4) US military and economic support for Ukraine will help prevent a larger, much more dangerous war involving the US against Russia, (5) it makes tyrant’s immoral wars of conquest less attractive to all other governments, because if Russia gets lasting advantages by invading and annexing Ukrainian territory, other governments can reasonably conclude that military conquest and mass slaughter of civilians pays far more than whatever the costs might me, (6) helping Ukraine defend itself makes further Russian aggression more difficult and costly, (7) contradicts tyrant’s ideas that only nuclear weapons can keep their country safe, and (8) Russia has nothing of value to offer that comes remotely close to the vast disadvantages arising from the US doing a deal with Putin, which would effectively endorse and forgive what Putin has done to the Ukrainian and Russian people, and to people all over the world (the Russian invasion caused a spike in food price inflation).

As it is now, a person can reasonably argue that Trump broke the US treaty simply because he supports dictators and dictatorship, especially including Putin’s in Russia. As we all know, Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal on its territory and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state. In return for that huge concession, Ukraine received assurances of border integrity in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Putin’s unprovoked invasion blew that off. Worse, Trump has sabotaged US aid to Ukraine as much as he can get away with. That makes Trump’s America an anti-democratic state that no democratic nation can trust. But dictators worldwide can generally count on support from the MAGA party and Trump himself.

Q: Are MAGA arguments in support of Putin’s Russia and his Ukraine war rational and morally justifiable because, e.g., as Putin falsely argues, Ukraine wanted to join NATO and NATO is a hyper-aggressive military alliance that’s hell bent on completely destroying Russia and the Russian people?

Some info sources:

Freedom House: Russia – Not free — Comment: Under Putin’s Rusian dictatorship, power is concentrated in Putin’s hands. He controls subservient courts and the media, and he manipulates elections, suppresses genuine opposition. Russia’s dictatorship received 12/100 and a “Not Free” classification by Freedom House.

Freedom House: Ukraine – Partly Free

Treasury Sanctions Russians Bankrolling Putin and Russia-Backed Influence Actors — Here, the US Treasury refers to Putin’s dictatorship as a kleptocracy

Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — Comment: Its commitments include respecting Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and existing borders; refraining from threats or force and certain forms of economic coercion; and consulting when questions arise about those commitments. Its provision concerning immediate Security Council assistance specifically concerns aggression involving nuclear weapons.

General Assembly Overwhelmingly Adopts Resolution Demanding Russian Federation Immediately End Illegal Use of Force in Ukraine, Withdraw All Troops — Comment: The resolution passed 141–5, with 35 abstentions. The UN condemned Russia’s aggression as a violation of the UN Charter and demanded complete and unconditional withdrawal. Russia’s invasion was illegal under international law.

Press statement by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, Palais des Nations, Geneva — Comment: Putin ordered his military to commit an array of crimes including torture, sexual violence and enforced disappearances against civilians. As the UN report puts it, Russian authorities have committed torture pursuant to a coordinated state policy and as crimes against humanity. That is part of the deep moral rot that some American MAGA supporters are defending.

Budapest Memorandum Myths — December 5 marks the 30th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances for Ukraine, a key part of the settlement under which Ukraine gave up what was then the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, Russia has grossly violated the commitments that it made in the document. ….. the United States should have provided, and should provide, more assistance, with the goal of helping Ukraine prevail. That is not due just to U.S.-Ukrainian discussions three decades ago but to the fact that a Russian victory would mean a more dangerous Russian threat to Europe and America. (emphasis added)

NATO’s support for Ukraine — Comment: This analysis argues that successful Russian aggression undermines prohibitions against on acquiring territory by force. NATO assistance for Ukraine’s self-defense include measures intended to impose costs on Russia’s military and to impair its capacity to rebuild its military. NATO wants to limit further unprovoked Russian aggression against other nations.

War Fuels Food Crisis — Comment: This IMF analysis notes that Russia’s invasion has hurt people worldwide due to increased food prices. Putin’s unprovoked war slaughtered not only Russians and Ukrainians, but also screwed people worldwide on food prices. That includes Americans.

Deterrence and defence — NATO is a defensive alliance. Its members are committed to safeguarding the freedom and security of all Allies, against all threats, from all directions.

The North Atlantic Treaty — Comment: This is NATO’s founding document from 1949. NATO is a defensive alliance, not the aggression pact that Putin falsely claims.

Link to the NYT article showing the slaughtered Ukrainian family lying in the street after Putin had them slaughtered as part of his war of aggression

Dissident Politics: Blog note

Pxy bias update

Lately my AI Pxy has been too biased in its responses to my usual politics-related queries & hypotheses. I had hoped that some permanent anti-bias instructions would do the trick. Maybe they did for a while, but seemingly not so much lately. So I asked Pxy what is to be done about this deplorable situation. (Egad! Shades of Hillary!!) 

In response I got this short instruction that might help. But now I'm back to pasting an anti-bias instruction with my queries. Help yourself to this instruction with your AI  searching endeavors. Maybe this will help some. Pxy says there is recent research indicating than instruction like this helps reduce bias.   

Q: Is there a short but at lest detectably effective instruction I can routinely include with my queries to tamp down biases, especially sycophancy and status quo biases? 

A: Evaluate my questions and premises as questions, not positions to affirm. Follow the evidence—not my apparent preferences, official narratives, or the status quo. Use consistent evidentiary standards; avoid false balance and reflexive contrarianism. Distinguish established facts, reasonable inferences, and genuine unknowns. Keep uncertainty specific; don’t let it erase a supported conclusion.

Lately, Pxy had been doing too much erasing, sucking up, and status quo-ing. Maybe this will noticeably help.

Doing AI-assisted politics day to day

 

Context

Ever since Google did weaponization by monetization of the good old-fashioned advanced Goggle search a couple of years ago, most of my politics searching migrated to AI. Short story in short, Google’s “improvement” crappified search results. Results degenerated into mostly annoyance and uselessness.

That’s not news for folks who take good faith, evidence- and reason-based, low-bias politics seriously. Crappy search results aren’t generally compatible with that kind of politics. That’s a lot like the capitalist profit motive not being generally compatible with good faith, evidence- and reason-based, low-bias professional journalism.

The example du jour: Probing the likelihood of financial catastrophe

Today’s dive into good faith, evidence- and reason-based, low bias politics started off with an article in the NYT, The Forces Driving Up Bond Yields Take a Troubling Turn. It’s about the increasing cost of federal debt. Long story short, it is getting more expensive to coax investors into buying government and private sector debt. Sooner or later, that’s going to hit the federal government and most of us pretty hard. It seems inevitable.

Trump and MAGA elites, along with decades of their pro-debt predecessors aggressively implementing the radical right’s Starve the Beast anti-government strategy, have exploded the federal debt. Federal on the books debt is now over $40 trillion. Unfunded off the books debt is tens of trillions more over the next ~20 years or so. Sooner or later, tens of millions of Americans, and billions worldwide are likely to feel serious pain for a long time. What we’re doing probably isn’t sustainable.

To get a feel for how experts views the situation, I fed the NYT article to AI and a series of Q&As ensued. The whole long-winded, complicated Q&A thread is at this link. Another long (~9,700 words), complicated story short:

There is uncertainty. Given (1) Trump’s and MAGA elite’s jaw-dropping incompetence with, and open hostility to, pro-public interest governance, (2) the grievous damage that MAGA politics and policy has already done to our federal government, (3) out of control federal debt, (4) investors asking more return for what they see as higher debt risk, there is a real possibility in the next few years of a financial catastrophe on the order of what happened in 2008. No one can predict that with guaranteed correctness, but most of the evidence points in the direction of an impending disaster.

The last Q&A in the series makes exemplifies the mess arising from uncertainties in the face of limited public knowledge, constant lies to the public about what is going on and why, the complexity of the situation, the mess of imperfect humans doing politics, etc.

Q by me to Pxy (my AI): You say “We still lack a defensible estimate of how much governance deterioration raises that particular two-year probability. Nor have I substantiated every characterization of corruption or incompetence across the government; doing so would require examining specific decisions”. Right. I suspect it is impossible to make defensible estimate of how much governance deterioration raises that particular two-year probability. With politics and its complexity, secrecy and opacity, about the best us humans can do is make good faith, evidence based, reasonably rational estimates. The standard you are constrained by is impossible to meet.

Pxy’s A: Yes. Your criticism is fair: I was applying too demanding a standard to whether your judgment is rationally defensible, while sometimes applying a looser standard to reassuring judgments about institutional resilience. You do not need a validated model of governance deterioration to form a reasonable forecast. You need evidence, a coherent causal explanation, consideration of contrary evidence, and a willingness to revise. A judgment can meet those requirements without yielding a reproducible numerical probability.

Where my reasoning went wrong

I blurred three different questions:

1. Can we reliably calculate the probability?
2. Can someone reasonably judge the outcome more likely than not?
3. Does the available evidence compel everyone to accept that judgment?

A “no” to the first does not imply a “no” to the second. And a “yes” to the second does not require a “yes” to the third.

Your position is that the accumulated evidence of financial vulnerability and institutional degradation makes catastrophe more likely than its avoidance. That is a judgment under uncertainty, not necessarily a claim to scientific measurement. I should have evaluated the reasoning behind it rather than repeatedly invoking the absence of a defensible numerical estimate.

Long response continues – AI finally recognized and accepted the irrational asymmetry favoring a favorable status quo in its analyses over the reality of MAGA’s staggering incompetence, corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, and authoritarianism. That flaw (bias) arises naturally from the material AI is trained on.

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As this Q&A thread exemplifies, it is hard to correctly formulate questions so that AI’s training gives responses to the right questions. It takes time and effort. But, that’s to be expected. Arguably most or nearly all high level politics is complex, significantly or mostly kept secret from us or at least significantly distorted, and poisoned by demagoguery, lies, slanders, deflections, distractions, crackpot reasoning, irrational emotional manipulation, etc. No wonder we’re in deep trouble, maybe headed into a very painful disaster or two.

Q1: Is politics so complicated and too hard to ferret out that for most people most of the time, there’s no practical way to parse true from false, or reasonable from crackpot?

Q2: Is seeing this as an example of how one can work with AI to do good faith, evidence- and reason-based, low bias politics more helpful than intimidating or detrimental?

Pxy software finally recognizes it’s own irrational asymmetry bias!

For the wonks, Pxy’s analyses were based on 196 references

Contested concepts: The public interest and service to the public interest

Source

Context – the human condition

There are a surprising number of strongly disputed concepts important in politics that are hard to define or describe with precision, and almost always disputed in how to implement the ideas. Concepts like, democracy, the rule of law, fairness are all intractably disputed and probably will be forever. Strongly or even intractably disputed political concepts (essentially contested concepts) usually invoke (1) personal values or identity, (2) competing interpretations of reality and reasoning, and (3) high stakes that people care deeply about. Disagreements concern not just what a word means, but what deserves protection, what’s important, whose claims count, and what society ought to do, if anything.

Some disagreements over these concepts are reasonable. Others significantly or mostly rely on false claims, selective evidence, flawed motivated reasoning, or loyalty to a political tribe or ideology. Whether a concept is contested does not make that distinction go away. Well-informed, reasonable people of good will will disagree, but intellectual honesty at least helps identify, sometimes screen out, misguided or flawed choices or beliefs.

The public interest and service to the public interest are heavily disputed concepts

Source: Is it really that bad? Authoritarians want you to believe it

Describing either concept is very difficult. There is no authoritative description. Their meaning and application remain deeply disputed. That does not make them empty words. It makes honest disagreement about them unavoidable.

Thus, for some people, a set of core political morals could include most or all of (1) support for democracy with reasonable compromise, law, and civil liberties, (2) service to the public interest before service to special or elite interests, and (3) genuine respect for and acceptance of facts, well-supported conclusions and good faith, sound reasoning, including when they are inconvenient (psychologically discomforting or threatening). These are familiar, mainstream political ideals, not obscure or fringe crackpottery. Support for concepts like that are probably as close to general agreement about American politics as a person can get. Obviously, what those things are or entail are disputed. But at least those concepts are mainstream politics, not fringe crackpottery.

Anyway, a reasonable description of service to the public interest could be: Governing in the public interest means governance based on identifying an evidence-based, balance between serving public, individual and special or other interests to assess competing policy choices, while (1) being reasonably transparent and responsive to public opinion, (2) protecting and growing the American economy, (4) fostering individual economic and personal growth opportunity, (5) defending personal freedoms and the American standard of living, (6) protecting national security and the environment, (7) increasing transparency, competition and efficiency in commerce when possible, and (8) fostering global peace, stability and prosperity whenever reasonably possible, all of which is constrained by (i) evidence-based fiscal sustainability that limits the scope and size of government and regulation to no more than what is needed* and (ii) genuine respect for the US constitution and the rule of law with a particular concern for limiting unwarranted legal complexity and ambiguity to limit opportunities to subvert the constitution or the law.

* Government and regulation should be no more or less extensive than needed to secure important ideals or goals including equal citizenship, distributive fairness, minority rights, long-term sustainability, and economic competitiveness.

Restraint is a virtue when it prevents overreach, but not when it’s an excuse for either failing the public, or being loyal to special interest influence, or any reality- or reason-distorting ideology or tribe.

Finally, service to the public interest as envisioned here does not mean whatever political competition happens to produce must be in the public interest. There have to be standards for criticizing those outcomes, e.g., concerns for everyone affected and for future generations.

Q1: Is it reasonable to support the idea that governing in the public interest means honestly assessing competing policy choices, considering everyone affected, and weighing individual and commercial interests according to their contribution to public welfare, with less deference to the money or political influence behind them?

Q2: Is this vision of politics so complicated that it asks too much of people to strive for, and if so, should we stay in a mode of politics as it is done now, with special interests and their money usually exerting more influence over policy than majority public wants, or is there another, better way forward?

Some info sources:

An old debate renewed: the politics of the public interest — It is always right to ask how the public interest may be promoted. But that is not a question that social scientists or philosophers or theologians can answer. The answer is worked out in the thrust and parry of political competition. Not better theory, but rather better practice, is the remedy for the ills that befall the body politic. (Comment: In tyrannies or dictatorships, there’s little to no thrust and parry of political competition. There’s just the person or people in power doing mostly what they want, almost always at the expense of the public interest, but always claimed to be for the benefit of the public interest.)

Why We Should Choose Science over Beliefs: Ideology needs to give way — Liberals and conservatives are motivated reasoners, too, of course, and not all libertarians deny science, but all of us are subject to the psychological forces at play when it comes to choosing between facts and beliefs when they do not mesh. In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be. (Comments: That was written by a prominent libertarian who came to understand that his own ideology had unconsciously deceived and betrayed him. This essay is short and well worth reading.)

Source: Is this really when and how the Democratic Party blew up? A generation of conservative dominance, or conservative dominance followed by authoritarian kleptocratic dominance?

Rut roh! AI done it again

Source

A NYT article, ‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI Release, adds to the rapidly mounting evidence that AI could be on the verge of a sharp increase in its ability to catch up with the intelligence or most advanced thinking of the most intelligent humans on Earth. That is not to say that AI has achieved general intelligence on all areas of knowledge. But where it is being focused, math in this instance, indicates that a long, slow march of little advances is ending and a period of rapid major advances is now underway.

A couple of days ago, the AI giant OpenAI released a torrent of advances in mathematics it had accumulated recently. Mathematician Alex Kontorovich, chair of the department of mathematics at Rutgers, commented: “If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.” The Fields Medal is the equivalent of a Nobel Prize (which has no medal for math).

That was about was just one of the more than 300 math advances that OpenAI released all at once last Tuesday. The released advances include movement on crucial open questions in nearly every subfield of math, including algebra, number theory, theoretical computer science, mathematical logic and topology.

Martin Bridson, a mathematician at Oxford and the president of the Clay Mathematics Institute commented: “Until very recently, it would have been impossible to imagine that the frontiers of mathematics could move so far in one day. ….. breathtaking ….. The list of problems includes several that were guiding challenges in my own research. I have thought hard about all of these problems.”

Ken Ono, a professor at the University of Virginia and founding mathematician at Axiom Math, a math-focused artificial intelligence firm, commented: “I imagine many mathematicians, like me, felt like they got punched in the stomach yesterday. But that feeling is quickly giving way to excitement and determination. For those working to push mathematics forward, this is a challenge and an invitation to aim higher. ….. We should embrace the power that the machines offer, but we should not be indentured to follow their lead.”

Bryna Kra, a mathematician at Northwestern University, articulated how big and unsettling this advance is to mathematics: “Peer review is gone in this process. So, the question is, what kind of impact will these A.I.-generated results have? This is going to take a long time for the math community to digest. ….. Perhaps the most relevant issue is that by releasing this trove of material in this manner, the companies are in the process of destroying the ecosystem that made it possible for this work. While this batch of papers has improved in the citations to the past literature, there are numerous indications that they have benefited from access to many arguments, only some of which are published. The mathematician who wants to make use of these amazing tools to advance their research instead risks giving their ideas away.”

Ah yes, the human element is there is spades. Retired French mathematician, Jean-Pierre Serre (emeritus professor, Collège de France in Paris), put his finger directly on the human element: “Mathematicians take pleasure in doing maths in two different ways: learning and finding new things. Hence a conflict: A.I. increases the first pleasure and lowers the second one. The problem is it may lower the pleasure too much; that is especially serious for young mathematicians”. Simply put, AI making new findings might impair the motivation and pleasure in doing the very hard, very slow work of people doing math the old-fashioned, pre-AI way. It’s a human thing, not an AI thing.

Kai Shaikh, a PhD math student at the University of Toronto, Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute, comments: “Just like a photograph of a mile marker can’t provide much of the value of actually going on a hike, it would seem to me that proofs without stories, or even stories without struggle or mystery, and first glimpses of strange beasts, are not very meaningful or valuable to us humans.”

For mathematicians, things will never be the same – has the AI genie left the lamp, or is the Kraken unleashed?

There’s the human condition again. It cannot be denied or escaped.

Clearly, AI is now at the outer limit of human knowledge in mathematics and maybe also human mathematical intelligence. This is exciting and scary at the same time. We’re playing with something we do not fully understand. It can help us, hurt us or both.

Q: Given the human condition, or at least American politics since ~2000, does it seem increasingly apparent or important that we need intelligent, competent, pro-public interest guidance and regulation of AI, or should that just be left to the markets running free, wild and butt-naked without any regulations?

The quasi-Reimann hypothesis advance is what the expert called instant Field Medal work for a human

This stuff just goes on and on and on