Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

How the metaverse is going to work us over

Zuckerberg in the early days
(he hasn't changed, but now he’s just very   
guarded about making comments like that) 


A Wash. Post opinion piece by an information scientist at the RAND Corporation opines:
Here’s a plausible scenario that could soon take place in the metaverse, the online virtual reality environments under rapid development by Mark Zuckerberg and other tech entrepreneurs: A political candidate is giving a speech to millions of people. While each viewer thinks they are seeing the same version of the candidate, in virtual reality they are actually each seeing a slightly different version. For each and every viewer, the candidate’s face has been subtly modified to resemble the viewer.

This is done by blending features of each viewer’s face into the candidate’s face. The viewers are unaware of any manipulation of the image. Yet they are strongly influenced by it: Each member of the audience is more favorably disposed to the candidate than they would have been without any digital manipulation.

This is not speculation. It has long been known that mimicry can be exploited as a powerful tool for influence. A series of experiments by Stanford researchers has shown that slightly changing the features of an unfamiliar political figure to resemble each voter made people rate politicians more favorably.

The experiments took pictures of study participants and real candidates in a mock-up of an election campaign. The pictures of each candidate were modified to resemble each participant. The studies found that even if 40 percent of the participant’s features were blended into the candidate’s face, the participants were entirely unaware the image had been manipulated.

In the metaverse, it’s easy to imagine this type of mimicry at a massive scale.

At the heart of all deception is emotional manipulation. Virtual reality environments, such as Facebook’s (now Meta’s) metaverse, will enable psychological and emotional manipulation of its users at a level unimaginable in today’s media.  
I have been working on problems of deception, disinformation and artificial intelligence for close to four decades, including two terms as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). We are not even close to being able to defend users against the threats posed by this coming new medium. In virtual reality, malicious actors will be able to take the age-old dark arts of deception and influence to new heights — or depths.  
The metaverse will usher in a new age of mass customization of influence and manipulation. It will provide a powerful set of tools to manipulate us effectively and efficiently. Even more remarkable will be the ability to combine tailored individual and mass manipulation in a way that has never before been possible.  
Society did not start paying serious attention to classical social media — meaning Facebook, Twitter and the like — until things got completely out of hand. Let us not make the same mistake as social media blossoms into the metaverse.

Hm. It sounds like a lot of fun is coming our way in the Metaverse. Make no mistake, if there are better ways to deceive and manipulate us, those free speech tools will be used ruthlessly against us.

I like the way this guy thinks and writes. He sounds like me. Really, no reality modification involved. I could have written the information content of those two highlighted sentences, because they reflect my thinking and beliefs. Honestly, who else calls propaganda the dark arts or talks about defense against the dark arts?* 

* IMFO (in my firm opinion), teaching defense against the dark arts is urgently needed in American public schools. 

For better or worse, my mind is not alone. In addition to the sagacious herd here at Dissident Politics, there are at least some fellow travelers out there in the real universe. 


Dont trust him or you will be 
fooled, used and betrayed

A short summary of the current US Supreme Court





That speaks for itself. Too bad it's all true. 


Acknowledgement: Thanks for Freeze Peach for brining this to my attention.

Monday, August 22, 2022

Are Americans are waking up to the Republican Party's threat of fascism?

For the first time in recent months, registered voters in the U.S. say that the top issue on their minds is the threat facing democracy, according to a poll from NBC released Sunday. Previous NBC polls in March and May showed that the top issue on the minds of those surveyed was cost of living.

The poll this time found that 21 percent of voters ranked "threats to democracy" as the most critical matter facing the country, while 16 percent chose "cost of living," which ranked as second. In third was "jobs and the economy," with 14 percent.  
The poll's responses regarding the investigations into Trump's conduct fell largely along party lines, with 92 percent of Democratic voters and 61 percent of independents saying they believe the investigations should continue, while only 21 percent of Republican voters support the ongoing investigations, according to NBC.

Didn't expect that. Maybe I misjudged the American people's apparent lack of concern about democracy. I hope so. Poll results in November should clarify that bit of personal confusion. But, at least I didn't misjudge Republican voters. They are all in on fascism, religious and racial bigotry and corruption.

Mainstream media's crippling weakness

WikipediaFalse equivalence is an informal fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. Colloquially, a false equivalence is often called "comparing apples and oranges."


The profit motive is incompatible with unfettered professional journalism, a point I have argued here for years. I argue it again. The AP writes about CNN cancelling its Reliable Sources news program hosted for nine years by Brian Stelter:
Stelter said that it was not partisan to stand up for decency, democracy and dialogue.

“It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues,” he said. “It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces. But we also must make sure we are representing the total spectrum of debate and representing what’s going on in the country and the world.”

It was Stelter’s most direct reference to what is believed to be the reason for his demise; CNN hasn’t talked publicly about it. Since he started this spring, new CNN chief executive Chris Licht has made clear he wants to tone down opinion, particularly as it made Republicans resistant to the network.

Stelter, who wrote a book about Fox News Channel and was frequently critical of Fox, was a lightning rod for conservatives’ complaints.

Some of his final “Reliable Sources” guests were more direct. Eric Deggans, NPR television critic, said he hopes CNN will continue to give viewers context and not be reduced to false equivalency. “Just the facts” isn’t enough, he said.

In my opinion, Reliable Sources was reasonably reliable and not particularly controversial. It was mostly grounded in fact and defensible reasoning. That the Republican Party has gone off its rocker and turned to demagoguery, mendacity, bigotry and fascism is not debatable any more. That radical right crackpots and liars vehemently dispute undisputable facts does not change fact and truth into falsehoods and lies.

CNN has caved in to the profit motive at the expense of the public interest. Unspun professional journalism is simply not compatible with the profit motive. CNN abandons unspun truth for money and in the process betrays democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties.

Q: Should the total spectrum of debate treat lies and crackpottery the same as truth and sound reasoning, or does that amount to false equivalence or some other form of flawed reasoning?