WATCH OUT FOR BURNING CELL TOWERS —

Cell-tower attacks by idiots who claim 5G spreads COVID-19 reportedly hit US

US warns carriers to boost security, citing reports of attacks in several states.

The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly issuing alerts to wireless telecom providers and law enforcement agencies about potential attacks on cell towers and telecommunications workers by 5G/coronavirus conspiracy theorists. The DHS warned that there have already been "arson and physical attacks against cell towers in several US states."

The preposterous claim that 5G can spread the coronavirus, either by suppressing the immune system or by directly transmitting the virus over radio waves, led to dozens of tower burnings in the UK and mainland Europe. Now, the DHS "is preparing to advise the US telecom industry on steps it can take to prevent attacks on 5G cell towers following a rash of incidents in Western Europe fueled by the false claim that the technology spreads the pathogen causing COVID-19," The Washington Post reported last week.

The DHS alert will include "advice on ways to reduce the risk of attack, including installing appropriate sensing and barriers, cyber-intrusion detection systems, closed-circuit television and monitoring drone activity near towers," the Post article said. A telecom-industry official said that carriers in the US "have seen sporadic attacks on their cell towers that were apparently prompted by COVID-19 disinformation" over the past few weeks, the Post wrote.

In addition to warning telecoms, DHS reportedly issued an intelligence report on the topic "to senior federal officials and law enforcement agencies around the country," ABC News reported Saturday. DHS also teamed with the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center to issue a joint intelligence bulletin to federal officials and law enforcement agencies, the ABC News report said.

"We assess conspiracy theories linking the spread of COVID-19 to the expansion of the 5G cellular network are inciting attacks against the communications infrastructure globally and that these threats probably will increase as the disease continues to spread, including calls for violence against telecommunications workers," the DHS intelligence report said, according to ABC.

ABC did not publish the full intelligence report but provided several quotes from it. We contacted DHS and the USTelecom trade group today and will update this article if we get any response.

Update at 5:20pm ET: The DHS told Ars that it does not "comment on classified products, including official marked documents," but that it "remains committed to protecting the American public from infrastructure attacks" and that its "intelligence arm remains vigilant in looking for any kind of emerging threat to the homeland."

“Misinformation campaigns”

ABC quoted DHS as saying that "since December 2019, unidentified actors conducted at least five arson incidents targeting cell towers in Memphis, Tenn., that resulted in more than $100,000 in damages... Additionally, 14 cell towers in western Tennessee, between February and April, were purposely turned off by way of disabling their electrical breakers."

The warning to law enforcement agencies said that an April 22 Facebook post "encouraged individuals associated with anarchist extremist ideology to commit acts of sabotage by attacking buildings and 5G towers around the world… in furtherance of an 'International Day of Sabotage'" and that videos have been posted online "showing people how to damage or destroy cell towers," according to ABC.

"Violent extremists have drawn from misinformation campaigns online that claim wireless infrastructure is deleterious to human health and helps spread COVID-19, resulting in a global effort by like-minded individuals to share operational guidance and justification for conducting attacks against 5G infrastructure, some of which have already prompted arson and physical attacks against cell towers in several US states," the DHS report said. The DHS report also warned of possible attacks against the electric grid.

The World Health Organization maintains a list of COVID-19 myths, including the 5G conspiracy theory. "Viruses cannot travel on radio waves/mobile networks," the WHO explains. "COVID-19 is spreading in many countries that do not have 5G mobile networks."

Rather than being spread by radio waves, the WHO notes, "COVID-19 is spread through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. People can also be infected by touching a contaminated surface and then their eyes, mouth, or nose."

Conspiracy theories also suggest that 5G contributes to the coronavirus pandemic by suppressing the immune system. But as Ars Science Editor John Timmer wrote recently, the immune-system claim is "completely evidence- and mechanism-free.

"In both these cases, the only 'evidence' offered in support is the timing of 5G rollouts versus the appearance of the coronavirus in some locations, as well as maps that compare the locations of 5G services to the locations with the highest incidence of SARS-CoV-2," Timmer wrote. "Neither of these make sense as evidence. 5G was present in a variety of locations for a while without coronavirus appearing in them," and "plenty of cities without 5G service have also had high incidence of the virus."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/prepare-for-cell-tower-attacks-by-5g-covid-19-conspiracy-theorists-us-warns/

Conspiracy theorists, far-right extremists around the world seize on the pandemic

The coronavirus is providing a global rallying cry for conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists on both sides of the Atlantic.

People seizing on the pandemic range from white supremacists and anti-vaxxers in the U.S. to fascist and anti-refugee groups across Europe, according to a POLITICO review of thousands social media posts and interviews with misinformation experts tracking their online activities. They also include far-right populists on both continents who had previously tried to coordinate their efforts after the 2016 American presidential election.

Not all online groups peddling messages on the pandemic have links to the far right, but those extremists have become especially vocal in using the outbreak to push their political agenda at a time of deepening public uncertainty and economic trauma. They are piggybacking on social media to promote coronavirus-related themes drawn from multiple sources — among them, Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns, the Trump administration’s musings about the coronavirus’ origins and anti-Muslim themes from India’s nationalist ruling party.

“Honestly, it’s a dream come true for any and every hate group, snake oil salesman and everything in between,” said Tijana Cvjetićanin, a fact-checker in the Balkans who has watched ultranationalist groups promoting hate-filled messages on social media about the coronavirus, often against Jewish communities.

Civil rights advocates have warned for months that the coronavirus could aid recruiting for the most extreme white-supremacist and neo-Nazi groups — those actively rooting for society’s collapse. Some online researchers say they also worry about the barrage of false messages from extremist groups feeding what the U.N. has dubbed an “infodemic” that makes it hard to separate fact from fiction.

Opponents of government lockdown orders have used online platforms to organize protests across the U.S., including rallies where activists displayed guns inside Michigan’s state capitol. In Europe, rumors linking the coronavirus to 5G wireless technology have led to dozens of arson attacks on telecommunications masts — a phenomenon that now appears to have spread to Canada.

“It's like hitting conspiracy bingo,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, which is tracking coronavirus misinformation.

From 4chan to Facebook

As the world economy craters and the coronavirus’ global death toll ticks past 280,000 people, extremist messages are finding fertile ground on fringe online platforms like 4chan, Telegram and a gamer hangout called Discord. From there, such harmful content can make its way to mainstream sites like Facebook and Google-owned YouTube — each boasting roughly 2 billion users apiece — despite the companies’ attempts to weed out violent or dangerous content.

Facebook said last week that one collection of fake accounts and pages it removed in April — tied to two anti-immigrant websites in the U.S. — had drawn more than 200,000 followers with messages including the hashtag “#ChinaVirus” and a false claim that the coronavirus mainly kills white people. Twitter announced Monday that it would begin more aggressively labeling tweets that contain misleading or harmful coronavirus information.

But plenty of other fake coronavirus content continues to thrive online. That includes a slickly produced online video, called “Plandemic,” that garnered millions of views across YouTube, Twitter and Facebook over the weekend by promoting bogus medical cures and other conspiracy theories tied to the coronavirus. The video remains in wide circulation.

One coronavirus-related term, “Coronachan,” has also exploded on social media, first emerging in January and drawing more than 120,000 shares on Twitter in one week in late April, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that tracks extremist groups. (The term is a play on the name of 4chan, a message board that is a favorite gathering spot for the global far right.) In Germany, Telegram groups where influential extremists and far-right activists attack vulnerable groups have doubled their number of followers, to more than 100,000 participants since February, according to a review by POLITICO of those accounts.

The themes of far-right posts include long-standing grievances, including allegations that migrants spread disease, support for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, antagonism toward the EU or opposition to gun control. One online rumor, accusing Microsoft founder Bill Gates of creating the coronavirus, echoes centuries-old conspiracy theories and Anti-Semitic tropes about global elites pulling the world’s strings.

“These aren’t new lines they are spinning,” said Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “They will use anything they can, whether it’s coronavirus or something else, to bring people into their radical world.”

Public figures helping stoke the fires include French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen, whose Facebook account has more than 1.5 million followers, and Trump, who has defended his use of the term “Chinese virus” and pushed the theory that the disease may have come from a lab in China, despite pushback from his intelligence and defense agencies.

Extremist groups on the two continents have tried before to coordinate their messaging, with middling success.

After Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, far-right online communities sprouted up across the U.S. and Europe, at first using online platforms like Facebook and Google before shifting their focus to smaller, less-regulated networks to share conspiracy theories or organize protests.

Americans like Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, also tried to export U.S.-style online tactics in hopes of uniting European right-wing groups like Italy’s Northern League party and Le Pen’s National Rally in France, though, as POLITICO reported last year, he struggled to win over movements on the Continent.

Now, as the coronavirus gives the far right a new impetus to find audiences, many European activists are wielding the same U.S.-style tactics they have spent years learning to emulate, including the creation of online “meme banks” of photos designed to spread widely. That leaves them less in need of outside help, according to researchers tracking their movements.

“Europe’s far-right no longer needs additional resources from its transatlantic supporters,” said Chloe Colliver, who heads the digital research unit at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Blaming minorities

It does not take much digging through the online platforms to find far-right messages on the health crisis.

In Italy, extremist news outlets have flooded social media with reports blaming that country’s devastating coronavirus outbreak on migrants, including an online attack that singled out a Pakistani employee at a Chinese restaurant in a northern Italian town.

In France, activists called for sending non-white populations back to their “home” countries, while Le Pen, the far-right leader, alleged on Facebook that mosques had have “taken advantage of the confinement orders” by blaring “the muezzin's call to Islamic prayer” on loudspeakers.

Tommy Robinson, the British anti-immigration activist, has promoted the “#GermJihad” hashtag and reposted online messages from members of India’s ruling nationalist BJP party to his more than 36,000 followers on Telegram, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s review of his posts.

Others, on sites like Facebook and Reddit, have alleged that the Chinese created the coronavirus as a bioweapon to attack the U.S. economy, and will reap the windfall if they are not stopped. “China will become even more brazen and take down western economies with more filth in the future,” one Reddit user wrote.

Those claims go much further than the recent speculation by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the coronavirus originated in a government lab in Wuhan, China. (The president said this month that he thinks the Chinese “made a horrible mistake and they didn’t want to admit it.”)

While some online far-right users have jumped on Trump’s messages, others had already been promoting anti-China rhetoric before senior U.S. politicians began railing on Beijing, according to a review of social media posts from early February.

Attacking governments

Extremists are also using the coronavirus to call for resistance against their governments.

In Telegram channels with tens of thousands of followers, users mostly in the U.S. urged people to take up arms to protest the lockdowns and protect their civil liberties, sometimes posting photos of themselves dressed in biohazard suits and carrying automatic weapons, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

European far-right groups also have called for national governments to reclaim their power from the EU — a message primarily focused on countries like Greece, Spain and Italy where some people remain bitter about how the bloc treated them during the 2008 financial crisis. Those countries similarly have seen a spike in Russian disinformation campaigns, mostly through Kremlin-backed media outlets, aimed at sowing doubt about Europe’s response to the coronavirus, according to a recent review conducted by EU disinformation officials obtained by POLITICO.

A far more extreme incident occurred in the U.S. in March, when the FBI shot and killed a Missouri man who agents said had been plotting to blow up a hospital to call attention to his white supremacist beliefs. The man, who had posted anti-Semitic remarks on Telegram hours before being killed, had chosen the target because of "media attention on the health sector" during the pandemic, the bureau said in a statement quoted by NBC News.

Misinformation experts at the Oxford Internet Institute documented Facebook groups across 33 states aimed at instigating opposition to quarantine measures that rob people of their freedoms and ability to earn a living, according to Aliaksandr Herasimenka, a postdoctoral researcher. Some had fewer than 10,000 members, while others had grown much larger.

“The similarity and design of their Facebook groups suggests that many of these protests across individual states are related to each other,” said Herasimenka. It “might be directed, not necessarily managed, but directed or inspired by some centralized lobby groups that we don't know exactly what they are.”

Facebook has removed some of the protests from its network after determining they had violated state orders by encouraging people to take actions that could spread the coronavirus. But the policy hasn’t applied consistently across the social network, and Facebook has been adamant that it is not policing people’s political opinions. The company has often left it to a global network of independent fact-checkers to debunk the worst online offenders or counter misinformation by pointing people to credible sources.

Several of the recently created U.S. Facebook groups have been spearheaded by the Dorr family, brothers who manage a series of aggressively U.S. pro-gun organizations, The Washington Post reported last month. One Dorr-connected private group called Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine attracted 118,000 members; its Pennsylvania affiliate counts 89,000, according to a review of these Facebook groups. The Dorrs did not respond to requests for comment through their advocacy organizations.

“The audience for this stuff isn't the average American news consumer and I'm not even sure the audience is the average person stuck at home sheltering in place,” said Philip Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute. “It’s people who are reluctant to take any advice or instructions from the government at any time, whether it's about guidelines on what kinds of guns you can have or whether it's health-related instructions to stay at home.”

'There's only one conversation'

The anti-vaccine movement on both continents has also latched onto the coronavirus pandemic.

Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog, found posts within U.S. Facebook groups claiming the pandemic is an effort to force people into accepting vaccines and, perhaps, even a surreptitious plot to inject people with microchips. Similar messages appeared in WhatsApp messages shared widely in Italy, which has a long-standing anti-vaxxer community, while groups in France have called for a boycott of any government-backed coronavirus vaccine program.

U.S. anti-vaccine groups also organized an anti-lockdown rally this month outside California’s state capitol and have taken part in protests in New York, Colorado and Texas, using their opposition to state-ordered shutdowns as part of a broader message about personal “freedom,” The New York Times reported.

Other coronavirus themes emerging online include long-running conspiracy theories blaming the “global elites” for much of the world’s ills, particularly focusing on George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire who has long been a target for right-wing and anti-Semitic groups.

Since late January, attacks against Soros and his fellow billionaire Gates have shifted to accusing the men of either spreading the coronavirus or capitalizing on it to push a pro-vaccine agenda. Some Facebook users in private online groups seen by POLITICO also questioned whether Gates was also Jewish. Gates, who has made global public health a priority of his philanthropic efforts, has drawn their attention because of a 2015 video in which he discussed the dangers of a future global pandemic.

“Diseases have long been used to promote disinformation,” said Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, the social media analysis firm, who has tracked the spread of coronavirus extremist content.

“But right now, there’s only one conversation that everyone is having, and that’s about the coronavirus,” he added. “The disinformation actors know that as well, and they are trying to take advantage.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/12/trans-atlantic-conspiracy-coronavirus-251325

Book Review: The Death of Expertise

The thesis of Tom Nichols’ 2017 book, The Death Of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge And Why It Matters, posits that widespread rejection and distrust of expert knowledge. He argues this amounts to a democratic dysfunction that can easily lead to some form of mob rule or autocracy. Nichols is a professor of national security affairs and expert on Russian politics.

In this short, easy to read book, Nichols builds a compelling case that Americans’ anti-elitist attitudes are moving the U.S. toward some form of mob rule or autocracy, a trend that, in Nichols’ opinion, Donald Trump’s presidency reflects. Although Nichols points to concrete actions that experts can take by increasing their own transparency, accountability and public engagement, he is ultimately not optimistic: “Tragically, I suspect that a possible resolution will lie in a disaster as yet unforeseen. It may be a [major] war or a [major] economic collapse. . . . . It may be in the emergence of an ignorant demagoguery, a process already underway in the United States and Europe, or the rise to power of a technocracy that finally runs out of patience and thus dispenses with voting as anything other than a formality.”

Nichols lays much of the blame on the American people and their distrusting attitudes toward experts, knowledge itself and democratic institutions. “The death of expertise is not just a rejection of existing knowledge. It is fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are foundations of modern civilization.” He asserts that for “the average American”, their knowledge base is so low it has passed “uninformed” and “misinformed” to a level that is “aggressively wrong”. Many Americans just believe “dumb things” and often reject information that undermines false beliefs.

Nichols is aware that significant natural barriers against respect for knowledge and experts lie in human cognitive biology: “ We all suffer from problems, for example, like ‘confirmation bias,’ the natural tendency to only accept evidence that confirms what we already believe.” He argues that human biases are easily and routinely exploited by an ocean of online sources that are “making many of us dumber,” “meaner” and “enabling and reinforcing our human failings.” Maybe calling cognitive biases ‘failings’ misses the mark a little. Biases are normal and served well in early human evolution.

The problem is that in complex modern societies, playing on that biology is the key route that demagogues, autocrats and tyrants take in their runs for power. Understanding of that point dates at least back to Plato and Aristotle, both of whom were acutely aware of this human aspect of politics. This issue is extremely serious, not trivial.

Nichols sees flaws in modern higher education: “When students become valued clients instead of learners, they gain a great deal of self-esteem, but precious little knowledge; worse, they do not develop the habits of critical thinking . . . .” And, economic pressures on the press aren't helpful either: “In this hypercompetitive media environment, editors and producers no longer have the patience -- or the financial luxury -- to allow journalists to develop their own expertise and deep knowledge of a subject.”[1] This media critique raises the question of whether a free press operating in a capitalist, for-profit environment can ever be up to the task of reasonably informing a public that hungers far more for entertainment and self-affirming content than ice cold, usually uncomfortable knowledge. That's a question for the experts to chew on.

The death spiral: Nichols sees the current state of affairs as one where distrust in experts and knowledge has led America to enter a death spiral that “presents an immediate danger of decay either into rule by the mob or toward elitist technocracy . . . . and both threaten the United States today. . . . . the most disturbing aspect of the American march toward ignorance is not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge.”

Focus on fostering transparency, finding good leaders and boosting institutional efficacy, not issues: From this observer's cognitive and social biology-based point of view, Nichols paints a picture of a society overwhelmed by an ocean of false information and effective cognitive manipulation,[2] an economically stressed professional press unable to keep up with events, inept institutions such as congress and a failing higher education system. Maybe Nichols would dispute that picture, but that is how this reader sees it.

Regardless, if that is a reasonably accurate description of the American condition, then Nichol’s call for American citizens to become better informed won't succeed. Other analyses of democracy and social and technological complexity make it clear that it is impossible for citizens to be even ‘reasonably’ informed on enough issues to make ‘informed’ voting decisions.[3] Nichols himself says almost the same thing: “. . . . there are not simply enough hours in the day for a legislator, even in a city council or a small US state . . . . to master all of the issues modern policymaking requires.”

A plausible alternative option that might break out of the death spiral is to focus not on understanding issues, an impossible task, but on trying to foster more transparency, find good leaders somehow, e.g., look for morality and honesty, and look for institutional efficacy as evidence of good governance. Whether that would have any impact is an open question, but at least it’s another way to think about things. Questions: Does Nichols put too much blame on ordinary citizens and too little on other things such as America’s corrupted pay-to-play two-party system or ideologically-inspired gridlock in governance?

Is Nichols too pessimistic about where America is heading?

Footnotes:
1. Nichols cites the fascinating case of Ben Rhodes playing an inexperienced press corps to sell president Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Rhodes was Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser. A dysfunctional congress was in the background was a key driver of the press manipulation. “We created an echo chamber,” he admitted when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. . . . . When I asked whether the prospect of this same kind of far-reaching spin campaign being run by a different administration is something that scares him, he admitted that it does. “I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate after which members of congress reflect and take a vote,” he said shrugging. “But that's impossible. . . . . The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old . . . . They literally know nothing. Rhode’s implication was clear. Not only did he think the public was too stupid to understand the deal -- which was not wrong . . . . --but that everyone else, including congress, was too stupid to get it as well.”

Nichols calls this incident intolerable and assigns blame all around, including experts’ share of blame, but notes that “. . . . there is only one group of people who must bear the ultimate responsibility for this state of affairs, and only they can change any of it: the citizens of the United States of America.”

2. Regarding cognitive manipulation, Nichols comments: “Emotion is an unassailable defense against expertise, a moat of anger and resentment in which reason and knowledge quickly drown. And when students learn that emotion trumps everything else, it is a lesson they will take with them for the rest of their lives.”

All a speaker needs to do is provoke an emotion(s) such as fear, anger, hate, disgust and/or distrust. Once that is accomplished, they have disabled the listener’s conscious reason and made their message far more persuasive regardless of its truth or falsity.

3. Regarding politics, two social scientists comment in their book Democracy for Realists: “. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”



B&B orig: 10/18/17; DP repost 5/18/20

Asymmetry Between Professional Journalism and Propaganda

Ronan, a fine young man in a complicated world

CONTEXT

Professional new reporting is tedious, difficult and complicated. Information sources often lie, have secret agendas and/or withhold or distort key facts that undermine a narrative they want to convey. To make the situation worse, reporters face enormous time pressure and a need to deliver clean dramatic narratives to a public that is easily bored with just facts and sound reasoning. Drama and violence catches the attention of eyeballs and minds, not dull facts, nuance and shades of gray.

Some of that (~40% ?) reflects how the human mind evolved. Humans like bright shiny things that are easy to comprehend and outrage, laugh or feel smug and self-righteous about. That emotional reacting is a lot of fun. But some, probably most, of that pro-infoTAINMENT mindset results from our culture and its relentless winner-take-all, polarized for-profit lack of morality. The market for human attention is intense and full on 24/7/365. Almost everyone with something to sell is desperate for the attention of as many people as possible. The ones not desperate for attention are usually selling something illegal.

Dissecting a reporter

A New York Times article, Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?, goes through some of Farrow's reporting and raises concerns about how close to, or over, the edge of professionalism vs sensationalism the reporter has come on several occasions. The article is full of tedious facts, context and analysis. It is definitely not infotainment. It is info. The key point of the article is that coming too close to the fuzzy gray line or crossing into or past it imposes a serious cost on professional journalism. Call it the damage zone.

The NYT is clear that Farrow did not make anything up. He just crossed into the damage zone several times. That hurts the credibility of all professional journalism. In these polarized times with rampant mass propaganda, coming into to the damage zone gets exaggerated and used to smear everyone else the tribe does not like.

The NYT writes about one incident:

“It was a breathtaking story, written by The New Yorker’s marquee reporter and published with an attention-grabbing headline: “Missing Files Motivated the Leak of Michael Cohen’s Financial Records.” 

In it, the reporter, Ronan Farrow, suggests something suspicious unfolding inside the Treasury Department: A civil servant had noticed that records about Mr. Cohen, the personal lawyer for President Trump, mysteriously vanished from a government database in the spring of 2018. Mr. Farrow quotes the anonymous public servant as saying he was so concerned about the records’ disappearance that he leaked other financial reports to the media to sound a public alarm about Mr. Cohen’s financial activities. 

The story set off a frenzied reaction, with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes calling it “an amazing shocking story about a whistle-blower” and his colleague Rachel Maddow describing it as “a meteor strike.” Congressional Democrats demanded answers, and the Treasury Department promised to investigate. 

Two years after publication, little of Mr. Farrow’s article holds up, according to prosecutors and court documents. The Treasury Department records on Michael Cohen never went “missing.” That was merely the story put forward by the civil servant, an Internal Revenue Service analyst named John Fry, who later pleaded guilty to illegally leaking confidential information.”

What happened was that Cohen’s financial records were just put on restricted access. That is a normal practice in government to prevent leaks. The records never disappeared. Farrow's source either lied to him or was unaware that the records were simply subject to restricted access. The now-disgraced lawyer, Michael Avenatti, encouraged Fry to leak the documents. The NYT article comments that Avenatti was “barely mentioned in Mr. Farrow’s article.” The NYT characterized Avenatti as “a passionate antagonist of Mr. Cohen.”

Scrupulous attention to mind numbing details like this is what distinguishes professional journalism from dark free speech.[1] The NYT analysis of content that Farrow generates indicates that it is sometimes misleading. That fits my definition of crossing into the damage zone. NYT puts it like this:

“His work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.

That can be a dangerous approach, particularly in a moment when the idea of truth and a shared set of facts is under assault.”

What is the point here?

The point to be made is that the line between journalistic professionalism and most everything else is often complicated to clearly see, hard to avoid and easy to step into or across. As the NYT points out, when a reporter fails to disclose what they do not know for sure, a dull story is converted into a dramatic story. Telling people a great story, but then saying that although X is true, Y and Z have not been corroborated. That is a real buzz kill.

What it does show is, among other things, (1) how the human mind greatly prefers the simple dramatic to the complicated and/or ordinary, (2) how the human mind rapidly and unconsciously fills in undisclosed details to make an incomplete or ambiguous story into a satisfying but dramatic narrative, (3) how easy it is for a reporter trying to be professional to cross into the damage zone, knowingly or not, and (4) how much professional, social and economic pressure there is to cross into the damage zone, morality be damned.

For professional journalists, if the world of things they can say without entering the damage zone is X, the world of things the dark free speech artist can say is literally about 1,000X. Think about that. The playing field is heavily tilted to favor dark free speech over honest free speech. Dark free speech has about 1,000 players on the field for every player that honest free speech can muster.

That is how the human mind evolved. That is how our morals be damned, for-profit culture plays the game.


Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

Dogs go through puberty angst as adolescents just like humans

Teenage dogs also rebel.

New research finds that canines aren’t immune to the puberty blues: Pooches also act out when they go through adolescence just like their human best friends.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, scientists from the UK’s University of Nottingham and Newcastle University present evidence that pups act out similarly to human teens when they are going through puberty. In the breeds researchers analyzed — Labradors, golden retrievers and crossbreeds of the two — these teen years generally occur when the canines are between six and nine months old.

While in their pubescent months, researchers found that dogs were more likely to ignore commands from their caregivers — but not strangers — and were overall harder to train. Dogs who felt insecure about their relationship to their owner, authors found, exacerbated the behavior. In pups, this is characterized by increased anxiety and attention-seeking when separated from an owner. Insecure female dogs had an increased likelihood of reaching puberty earlier, the authors found.

“This is a very important time in a dog’s life,” explains lead author Dr. Lucy Asher in a press release.

Owners should keep doggy puberty in mind before putting a pup in its adolescence up for adoption or going through the adoption process, the study adds.

“This is when dogs are often re-homed because they are no longer a cute little puppy and suddenly, their owners find they are more challenging and they can no longer control them or train them,” adds Asher. “But as with human teenage children, owners need to be aware that their dog is going through a phase and it will pass.”

The authors acknowledge that their research, while groundbreaking, is considered common knowledge by some.

“Many dog owners and professionals have long known or suspected that dog behavior can become more difficult when they go through puberty,” says co-author Dr. Naomi Harvey. “But until now there has been no empirical record of this. Our results show that the behavior changes seen in dogs closely parallel that of parent-child relationships, as dog-owner conflict is specific to the dog’s primary caregiver and just as with human teenagers, this is a passing phase.”

And yelling at your pooch won’t make it pass faster, studies show, it just will ruin their fluffy lives.

“It’s very important that owners don’t punish their dogs for disobedience or start to pull away from them emotionally at this time,” says Asher. “This would be likely to make any problem behavior worse, as it does in human teens.”

https://nypost.com/2020/05/13/dogs-go-through-puberty-angst-as-adolescents-just-like-us-study/

Trying to Understand Another Person is Hard

Sorry, this is a long OP. It just strikes me as important and enlightening about what I believe is a deadly serious problem that just doesn't seem to get much attention.

Distrust in experts, government and/or anyone or group outside the tribe

Context

Minds disagreeing over most anything political rarely change. About the best one can hope for is to understand why there is disagreement. In my experience it is usually almost impossible to understand why another person thinks the way they do and thus why they believe what they believe. The level of American public distrust in both science and data is already shocking to the point of being literally terrifying. And, at least some empirical evidence indicates the plague is worsening, e.g., in the case of anti-vaccine beliefs, which are on the rise.

Given the seriousness of reality and reason disconnects, it seems important to try to understand the reasons for disagreement. People can at least see why disagreements exist on almost all political or politicized issues. The following two examples highlight how hard it is to try to come to a good basis for understanding. It takes effort, time and patience. And, I suspect that simply being persistent in trying to understand is often threatening to some degree. Persistence and focus tends to force people to examine their own beliefs and the basis in reality and reason for them. That psychological discomfort is probably why it is so difficult to come to a clear understanding most of the time (~95% ?).

On distrust in objective data

This comes from a recent discussion that raised the matter of political division that has led to both the president and the congressional GOP to single out and attack democratic states in both tax laws and federal spending.

Comment: Common sense informs you lower taxes leaves more money in pockets of tax paying families. An example of this is the California sales tax rate is 7.25% while in Oklahoma this tax rate is 4.5%. Applying common sense this is exceedingly easy to realize which population on a per capita basis enjoys more pocket change - rattle-trap pickup drivers on dirt roads! Data is endlessly available to you via Google research. However, common sense is more reliable.

My response: Common sense is an essentially contested concept. That is why I prefer data as the starting point to understand the reality of something. Thus, your example using sales taxes may be right or it may be wrong. It may be too narrow and focus only on money. Data is more objective than common sense. Political realities can be counterintuitive and this could be one such case.

 In terms of disposable income, CA ranks 7th and OK ranks 39th. The poverty rate in CA (13.2%) and OK (13.6%) are about the same, so higher taxes in CA don't seem to push a higher proportion of people into poverty.

For things other than just money, California ranks higher (30th) in provision of healthcare compared to Oklahoma (45th). In terms of happiness of residents, CA ranks 4th and OK ranks 43rd. For health of residents, CA ranks 17th and OK ranks 43rd.

I think your common sense assertion that lower taxes leaves more money in pockets of tax paying families is contradicted by facts, at least in the case of CA compared to OK. What do you think in view of the data?

Response to response: No response as of 5 days later.

On trying to understand the anti-vaccine mindset

When is distrust warranted, and when isn't it?

This is from a discussion on the rise of anti-vaxx disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories about a Covid-19 vaccine, which doesn't even exist yet. As far as I can tell, a basis in existing facts for such beliefs is nonexistent because the vaccine is nonexistent. Nonetheless, some intelligent, articulate people firmly believe something(s) is or will be bad enough about the Covid-19 vaccines in development that they seemingly will refuse to take it. That rigid anti-vaxx attitude is manifest regardless of bad effects on public health that it would probably lead to. Contrary data and reasoning in support of a new vaccine are almost completely irrelevant.

Comment 1: The problem with "trust the science" as a philosophy of politics is that nobody has a really satisfying answer to what happens when we do trust the science, and life ends up worse. At least we can hold politicians accountable when we don't fare well. Even when we cannot or do not hold them accountable, it's a bit easier to accept our misfortune for the simple fact that we put them there, and we made a mistake.

But I didn't have any say in who creates the epidemiological models. I don't have a platform on which to dispute what biochemists say about vaccination. If they say it's safe, my wants and needs, my self-determination and dignity, are of no consequence. And when the predictive models don't predict what they say they will, the argument is always "you can't hold us accountable, because we merely did what the data showed." And even if we were to still hold them accountable in our hearts and minds, in spite of their defenses, there's no way we can hold them accountable in action, because they exist and persist in a regime wholly insulated from public nomination or condemnation.

The reason I trust politics more than I trust science is because politicians have skin in the game. They, like scientists, look at the data. They weigh alternatives. They assess risk. And they create policy based on all of that.

But the difference between politicians and scientists is that when they make a decision, and they get it wrong, or the violate basic rights, they get punished via the criminal law, the ballot box, separation of powers, the courts, and in the extreme case, open rebellion or revolution. It may not be their fault they make bad decisions, but they have to pay the price anyway. It is one of the burdens of leadership. It is the price they pay for being instruments of the public trust.

That's why I supported the Italian courts for bringing the case against the seismologists. Because if science and scientists want a more active role in policy, if they want to be instruments of the public trust, they have to be willing to suffer the consequences when their science causes harm, or violates basic rights of person, or tramples long cherished customs and norms. If they want to replace politicians in a democratic system, they must become accountable to the deimos.

My response:

The problem with "trust the science" as a philosophy of politics is that nobody has a really satisfying answer to what happens when we do trust the science, and life ends up worse.

I think the answer is self-evident. When life ends up worse, fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again. That is the point of science. Science, like everything else that humans do is imperfect and will lead to lethal mistakes from time to time, e.g., thalidomide. So far, I think that there has not been a disaster of that magnitude in drug development since thalidomide. That looks to me to be a case of science learning from a mistake in the 1950s and trying to not make it again.

Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now, makes a compelling case that the benefits of science progress far outweigh the downsides for hundreds of millions of people.

But I didn't have any say in who creates the epidemiological models. I don't have a platform on which to dispute what biochemists say about vaccination. If they say it's safe, my wants and needs, my self-determination and dignity, are of no consequence.

The models and data are made public. Unlike most of politics (~95% ?), most of science (~99.9% ?) is transparent (protocols and data are put online for everyone to rip to pieces, confirm or otherwise play with), open to expert and public criticism and subject to revision or reversal based on (1) new evidence and/or (2) compelling expert or public criticism. That is nothing like politics. Politics is mostly irrational. Science is mostly rational, at least to the extent that humans can be rational.

If experts say a vaccine is safe, then the existing data, not ideology, self-interest or motivated reasoning, indicates that the vaccine is safe. The FDA is there with trained experts to (1) review the data and arguments that a vaccine is safe, and (2) reject those data and/or arguments if it deems them to be not convincing. What else can fallible humans do?

Assertions of safety are not purely made up. They are based on the totality of relevant evidence. Drug and vaccine development is a sincere but fallible human attempt to empower people's wants, needs, self-determination and dignity, by keeping them alive and healthier than they would be without the drugs or vaccines. How does developing a new drug or vaccine undermine anyone's wants, needs, self-determination or dignity? Dead people don't have any wants, needs, self-determination or dignity.

But the difference between politicians and scientists is that when they make a decision, and they get it wrong, or the violate basic rights, they get punished via the criminal law, the ballot box, separation of powers, the courts, and in the extreme case, open rebellion or revolution.

I disagree. Empirical evidence make it clear that politicians are not particularly accountable in democracies. Voter memories are short and usually flawed due to bias, tribalism, self-interest, infantile reasoning and etc. In the book, Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments, researchers comment on the human condition and politics: “. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

By contrast, when a scientist screws up by faking data and gets caught, they are usually severely reprimanded and often fired, a career-ending event. I see nothing close to the accountability imposed on politicians compared to scientists. The courts don't examine much of anything political, especially now under Trump and the Trump Party who have now significantly neutered both law enforcement and courts in the federal government and in red states. At least for most elected politicians and wealthy people and interests, the rule of law has degenerated into a politicized essentially contested concept. It is now just a sick joke to a large extent.

Comment 2: That the judgment was reversed in the Italian case doesn't mean they shouldn't have been brought to trial at all. The Italian people and the Italian state needed justice. A cynic would say they wanted vengeance, but whether we look at it cynically or not, simply saying "sorry, better luck next time" wasn't going to cut it.

Now perhaps you might say that the public outrage at the scientists was one of those infantile reasoning things, biased, self-interested, and so on, and ought to be ignored for the sake of enlightened progress and "the greater good." But that seems awfully contemptuous and callous to expect the people who suffered to do that for science's sake. To expect them to just let it all slide is a thing that I believe to be far more inhuman and unreasonable than human and reasonable.

Someone had to be brought to account. Due process was followed bringing the charges and securing the conviction. Due process was also respected by allowing the appeal for overturning the lower court's decision. Justice was served. And the alternative would have been far worse, with people (those infantile folks who don't think 'rationally') taking justice into their own hands, where due process matters less than getting one's due by any means necessary.

It's good of us to realize that science and scientists make mistakes. The problem is that, like I said, what to do when science does make mistakes is not very satisfying. Merely saying "fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again" is not good enough. People have got to pay a high price when they put their faith in somebody, or some institution, or some study, and they end up worse because of it.

To expect common people to just keep on forgiving technocratic elites, moving past it, giving people the benefit of the doubt all the time is, quite frankly, demanding that the people practice an overly Christian attitude towards science and technology purveyors that we can in no way rationally expect people to practice. And we ask common people to do this towards powerful and influential institutions that have the power and prestige of science, technology, and industry (and the three are more intertwined than not, making science anything but totally disinterested).

That sort of "forgive and let's do better, because science is self-correcting" is the same sort of argument of the Libertarians who say that the market is self-correcting, because if you aren't getting good service, you have the right to refuse to pay for more service. Sure, you can hold companies accountable by refusing to give them more dollars, but who or what is going to hold them accountable for the dollars that were already spent?

Government and politics. They are the ones who are held accountable when things go wrong, because--quite frankly--they are the only ones that we can, futile as it may be.

It won't be the medical experts, for example, that will have to bear the responsibility for the things the state does now on their behalf. It'll be the politicians. It'll be the police. It'll be the state.

But medical experts are not politicians. Their concern is with health, but politicians have to weigh more concerns than simply health. They have to be concerned with things like civil liberties, basic human rights, and the will of both the majority, and whatever minorities think differently than the majority.

You asked perhaps a rhetorical question of "How does developing a new drug or vaccine undermine anyone's wants, needs, self-determination or dignity?" Developing it isn't the issue. Making it mandatory is the issue. Requiring its use to participate in civil society is the issue. Because even if it was safe, and had no side effects, and could or would be very beneficial to public health, we have a long tradition in this country, and much legal precedent, that people don't have the right to require others go through medical procedures, or take drugs, or submit to medical care, even if there's very good reasons for the insistence.

Unreasonable? Perhaps. But that's our custom. The good thing is that we don't have to insist that people be wise in the way we need them to be in order for them to change. We can use due process too, just like the Italians used due process against the scientists.

My 2nd response:

That the judgment was reversed in the Italian case doesn't mean they shouldn't have been brought to trial at all.

I understand that and agree. That wasn't my point. The point I was trying to make is that the situation is complicated. Seismologists started bickering among themselves, which tells me that this is not a simple black and white situation, even for experts. If the experts cannot agree among themselves, how the hell are judges supposed to know more than experts about the underlying science and then apply a law that is probably ambiguous in its language? That was my point.

Now perhaps you might say that the public outrage at the scientists was one of those infantile reasoning things, biased, self-interested, and so on, and ought to be ignored for the sake of enlightened progress and "the greater good."

No, I am not saying that. What I would argue, again, is that things like this are very complicated and there is more than a little room for subjective judgments. For example, I bet the Italian law is ambiguous in its language making the original court judgment significantly or mostly subjective.

I do not ignore public sentiment, nor does my political ideology, pragmatic rationalism. In fact, pragmatic rationalism elevates public opinion to a higher position of influence than any other political, economic, philosophical or religious ideology that I am aware of. It is the only ideology I am aware of that explicitly demands real consideration of and accounting for public opinion, not mere lip service, in making and implementing policy. As far as I know, all the other ideologies are either silent about public opinion or they claim they are directly responsive to it. Science has shown the latter claim to be mostly lip service and a deflection from the fact that the ideology is more powerful and held in higher regard than mere public opinion.

It's good of us to realize that science and scientists make mistakes. The problem is that, like I said, what to do when science does make mistakes is not very satisfying. Merely saying "fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again" is not good enough.

Of course scientists make mistakes. How can they possibly not make mistakes? They are human. You argue that fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again is not good enough when scientists make honest mistakes as human beings inevitably will sooner or later. Fine. What protocol or method do you have that's better? I'm completely open to all reasonable possibilities. I would greatly prefer it if you did have a better and good enough way to deal with things like this. What is your better and "good enough" way?

Government and politics. They are the ones who are held accountable when things go wrong, because--quite frankly--they are the only ones that we can, futile as it may be.

Government should be held accountable for things under their control that go wrong. Right now, we are in a period where government under the GOP is withdrawing from transparency, accountability, competence and honest governance. I know the dem party had a hand in getting us to this dismal point. But right now, the populist and conservative right is driving this country toward some sort of semi-lawless, authoritarian kleptocracy tinged with an intolerant, vengeful Christian theocratic streak.

I know, that sounds insane to you. But it honestly looks exactly that way to me. That is only one example of thousands or millions of examples showing just how amazingly personal and subjective political reality and reasoning is in the real world in real time, right now. That is what modern cognitive and social sciences are uniform in showing about the human condition. Those experts don't even debate this any more. They have moved on to trying to understand it in increasingly higher resolution as more research data comes in.

..... we have a long tradition in this country, and much legal precedent, that people don't have the right to require others go through medical procedures, or take drugs, or submit to medical care, even if there's very good reasons for the insistence

I think there's a misunderstanding here.The original legal precedents were that government has the power to require people to go through medical procedures. At one time, states could force women to be sterilized if they could not afford to raise their offspring, were deemed to be "imbeciles", or etc. That has since been reversed.

The Supreme Court recognizes the 14th-Amendment due process right to protect people against arbitrary legislative actions. The test is a simple "rational review" standard. That means that legislation (1) cannot be unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious, and (2) must have a substantial relation to the legislative objective, which is public health in this case. The courts give this only minimal scrutiny to see if the law is "rationally related" to a "legitimate government purpose." If it is, then the law is constitutional. Almost all laws meet this test. A law has to be so nuts and/or incoherent that it is a joke on its face before federal courts will strike it down. That is a very rare event.

Even for a law a state cannot think of a rational reason to have, the courts will think one up for them to find the law constitutional.

Also, the Supreme Court recognizes each states’ “police power.” That gives the states authority to enact all kinds of health laws to protect people, including quarantine and vaccination laws.

One source commented on mandatory vaccines: "In 1905 the Supreme Court addressed mandatory vaccinations in regard to smallpox in Jacobson v Massachusetts. There the Court ruled that the police power of a state absolutely included reasonable regulations established by legislature to protect public health and safety. Such regulations do not violate the 14th Amendment right to liberty because they fall within the many restraints to which every person is necessarily subjected for the common good. Real liberty for all cannot exist if each individual is allowed to act without regard to the injury that his or her actions might cause others; liberty is constrained by law. The Court went on to determine in Jacobson that a state may require vaccination if the board of health deems it necessary for public health or safety."

Comment 3: Pending at 1 day.


Questions: Is it not important to try to understand the basis for minds in disagreement, e.g., because people can just compromise without understanding the basis for disagreements (assuming both sides are willing to compromise)?

Is persistent, focused questioning about the basis in facts and personal reasoning unpleasant or unfair to the point of being (i) more personally or socially harmful than beneficial, or (ii) more immoral than moral?