InfoWars: A critical weapon in the global authoritarian attack on democracy and truth

American and other democracies are in a bitter, existential InfoWar against forces of foreign and domestic authoritarianism. In essence InfoWar constitutes a combination of dark free speech (divisive lies, slanders, bigotry, crackpot reasoning, irrational emotional manipulation, etc.) and dirty tricks. The big gun is dark free speech.  A WaPo opinion (not paywalled) focuses on the foreign InfoWar that China wages against the US:

The PRC is increasingly controlling global narratives and silencing critics

The United States is not yet losing the global information war, but we soon will be — unless we act quickly and make the most of our strengths.

Russia recently amped up its disinformation and misinformation around the U.S. election. The United States recently accused RT, Russia’s state media, of out-and-out intelligence activities. Still, of all the globe’s information warriors, the most formidable is still China, which spends billions each year to dominate the world’s information space. More than missiles, ships, drones or guns, this is the real threat to our national — and global — security. Listen to China’s president, Xi Jinping, as quoted by then-Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) during a congressional hearing last November: “Once the front lines of human thought have been broken through, other defensive lines also become hard to defend.”

How is China controlling global narratives and silencing critics? By buying television and radio frequencies around the world, partnering with news organizations, seeding pro-China content into local media, courting journalists and content creators with trips, training and new equipment and winning over their bosses with free content.

The PRC targets both Chinese and non-Chinese audiences worldwide, far beyond its own borders. China’s largest media conglomerate, Xinhua, has 37 bureaus in Africa, far more than any other news agency, African or non-African — a dramatic increase from just two decades ago. The PRC is running information operations into Latin America, from Cuba to Nicaragua to Venezuela and beyond.

Even in countries boasting a free press, China’s free-for-the-taking content lures the cash-strapped media industry: Consider Xi’s visit to South Africa in 2023, when he put his name to an article hailing China and South Africa as “comrades and friends.” Three leading South African newspapers reprinted the talking points verbatim on their front pages. 

In China, the PRC has made tremendous progress fortifying the so-called Great Firewall, deterring citizens from accessing outside information while funding party-approved, entertainment-focused content to lull them into cocooning themselves within.

Once again, critically important but shockingly under-reported issues related to defense of democracy bubble up from all the usual MSM fluff and noise. This is the heart of MSM's weakness:

American capitalism is not compatible with the level of MSM professionalism and blunt honesty needed to (i) properly alert the public to authoritarian dangers, or (ii) to adequately defend democracy and truth against foreign and domestic authoritarian dark free speech. Regarding defense of democracy and truth, I continue to give the MSM an F. American professional MSM is far too damaged by its fealty to the profit motive. America's authoritarian propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, faces no sanction for its role in fomenting domestic kleptocratic authoritarianism, i.e., DJT and MAGA. Weakness and subversion of America's professional MSM is a key weakness in our defenses against internal and external authoritarianism. Maybe a decisive, lethal weakness.

A NYT opinion comments (not paywalled) about Russia's worldwide authoritarian  tactics of hiring thugs to beat dissidents up or assassins to murder them:

Putin Is Doing Something Almost Nobody Is Noticing

In November 2022, my editors asked me to be careful about what I ate and stop ordering takeout. Initially, I didn’t think much of it. But I soon realized the importance of their advice when, just one month later, my colleague Elena Kostyuchenko discovered she had been poisoned in Germany, in a probable assassination attempt by the Russian state.

Such stories have become routine. Last year, an investigative journalist, Alesya Marokhovskaya, was harassed in the Czech Republic; in February, the bullet-riddled body of a Russian defector, Maxim Kuzminov, was found in Spain. In both cases, the Kremlin was assumed to be involved. Russian opposition figures know well that even in exile they remain targets of Russia’s intelligence services.

But it’s not just them who are in danger. There are also the hundreds of thousands of Russians who left home because they did not want to have anything to do with Vladimir Putin’s war — or were forced out, accused of not embracing it enough. These low-profile dissenters are subjected to surveillance and kidnappings, too. Yet their repression happens in silence — away from the spotlight and often with the tacit consent, or inadequate prevention, of the countries to which they have fled.

It’s a terrifying thing: The Kremlin is hunting down ordinary people across the world, and nobody seems to care.

So there we have it, democracy and truth fans. American kleptocratic authoritarians like DJT and their wealth and power MAGA movement are not much different from the goons that rule China with an iron fist. But so far, the US dictator squads still rarely resort to breaking knee caps and murder, like the fun-fill Putin and his hired thugs and murdering monsters.

1488

 Anyone know what that number symbolizes?

Here it is:

1488 is a combination of two popular white supremacist numeric symbols. The first symbol is 14, which is shorthand for the "14 Words" slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The second is 88, which stands for "Heil Hitler" (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet). Together, the numbers form a general endorsement of white supremacy and its beliefs. As such, they are ubiquitous within the white supremacist movement - as graffiti, in graphics and tattoos, even in screen names and e-mail addresses, such as aryanprincess1488@hate.net.  Some white supremacists will even price racist merchandise, such as t-shirts or compact discs, for $14.88.

https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/1488

So, the following image might just be a coincidence then?

An analysis of MAGA; A Taliban update; Abortion war update - gone from nuts to the Spanish Inquisition

An interesting NYT opinion (not paywalled) by David French posits the following analysis related to MAGA "moral values", or more accurately, immoral values:

After enduring weeks of lies about the Haitian immigrants who live in Springfield, Ohio, and an entire news cycle devoted to covering Trump’s connection with Laura Loomer, one of the most overtly racist figures in MAGA America (she once spoke at a conference of white nationalists and declared, “I consider myself to be a white advocate, and I openly campaigned for the United States Congress as a white advocate”) — I’m hardening my view. Trump loses now or the Republicans are lost for a generation. Maybe more.

The reason is plain: The yearslong elevation of figures like Mark Robinson and the many other outrageous MAGA personalities, along with the devolution of people in MAGA’s inner orbit — JD Vance, Elon Musk, Lindsey Graham and so very many others — has established beyond doubt that Trump has changed the Republican Party and Republican Christians far more than they have changed him.

In nine years, countless Republican primary voters have moved from voting for Trump in spite of his transgressions to rejecting anyone who doesn’t transgress. If you’re not transgressive, you’re suspicious. Decency is countercultural in the Republican Party. It’s seen as a rebuke of Trump.  

Trump has set the course of the Republican Party’s cultural river for more than nine years. Fewer and fewer resisters remain, and they’re growing increasingly exhausted and besieged. You can see it online in response to the Mark Robinson [the self-professed black Nazi] news. The mere suggestion that Republican primary voters can and should do better is greeted by scorn and contempt.

So, French's interesting assertion is that the GOP rank and file have (morally) degenerated from generally disliking transgressions to demanding Republican politicians who transgress. That opinion feels a lot more right to me than wrong. Of course my bias and probably minority opinion that all rank and file DJT supporters are MAGA may be clouding my perception here. 

Defining transgression: As usual, the concept at issue ought to be defined. Exactly what is transgression in this context? French does not explicitly define it. Presumably it means immoral things like accepting dark free speech as legitimate. For example, denying inconvenient but obviously true facts. It also includes (i) employing bigoted rhetoric and engaging in bigoted behaviors, and (ii) joyfully, intentionally provoking target people and groups to inflict as much unjustifiable, unwarranted pain and unhappiness as dark free speech can inflict.

Assuming I am wrong and most rank and file DJT supporters do not demand transgressions in their politicians. The what do they demand? Truth telling? Hell no. Acting toward the non-MAGA world in good will and good faith? Hell no. Protecting civil liberties? Absolutely, positively not, e.g., abortion and voting rights.

Q: Do most of the MAGA rank and file demand that Republican politicians sufficiently transgress enough before they support them, assuming transgression is more or less as defined above?

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The WaPo reports:

As Taliban starts restricting men, too, some 

regret not speaking up sooner

Women have faced an onslaught of increasingly severe limits on their personal freedom and rules about their dress since the Taliban seized power three years ago. But men in urban areas could, for the most part, carry on freely.

The past four weeks, however, have brought significant changes for them, too. New laws promulgated in late August mandate that men wear a fist-long beard, bar them from imitating non-Muslims in appearance or behavior, widely interpreted as a prohibition against jeans, and ban haircuts that are against Islamic law, which essentially means short or Western styles. Men are now also prohibited from looking at women other than their wives or relatives.

Apparently, the 20 year US war in Afghanistan did not turn out quite like some American nation builders had hoped. How much did that kerfuffle cost? Oh yeah, according to one estimate it cost about 2,400 American service members, an estimated 46,000 Afghan civilians, about $2.3 trillion (that includes interest on debt, veterans' care, and other indirect costs) plus an unknown current monthly cost for veterans benefits.

 

  

Sex alert: Don't look! Too sexy for looking 

Dork on the street: Woof! Look at those hot toes! (catcall whistle)

Righteous Taliban thugs beating on the dork 

with their clubs: You're under arrest, 10 years hard labor for you, pervert!

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From The Rock and Hard Place Files: Several sources report that the number of women dying from withheld abortion related health care is increasing. The situation is caused by radical Republican authoritarian zealots writing intentionally ambiguous forced birth laws. The ambiguity and threat of criminal prosecution makes health care providers reluctant to have anything to do with abortion-related care, even sometimes when it kills women seeking care. Radical right authoritarian theocrats who support draconian forced birth laws are blaming the dead and harmed women for breaking the laws. And in addition, now they are threatening health care providers for not providing care.

Rolling Stone reports:

Republicans Threaten Doctors Who Fail to Provide 

Emergency Pregnancy Care Amid Abortion Bans

As doctors refuse to provide necessary care due to abortion bans, providers feel threatened by Ron DeSantis’ admin and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill

MAGA thug DeSantis and 

MAGA thug Murrill

Florida health officials issued new guidance about abortion on Thursday, threatening to take “regulatory action” against doctors who delay in providing emergency medical care to pregnant patients, as providers say the state’s abortion ban has doctors afraid to do their jobs and is putting patients at risk.

“They know their law is what puts women in danger and they’re just trying to threaten physicians so that we feel scared, rather than taking accountability for what their law is doing to people,” an OB-GYN in Florida tells Rolling Stone. She asked that her name not be used because the state controls her license and she fears retaliation for speaking out against them.

“You are simultaneously being told you are going to prison if you make a mistake and provide abortion in a context they don’t consider valid, while also being threatened with regulatory action and malpractice if you do not provide that care,” Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Yes on 4, the ballot measure that would relegalize abortion in FL, tells Rolling Stone. “It’s an impossible choice — physicians are being threatened on all sides by the government intervening in their medical decisions.”

In Louisiana, Attorney General Liz Murrill released a six-page statement with similar language to Florida’s health department. She claimed the media and politicians are spreading “disinformation” about Louisiana’s abortion ban.

“To be clear: nothing in Louisiana laws stands in the way of a doctor providing care that stabilizes and treats emergency conditions,” said Murrill. “Any statements to the contrary are flatly incorrect. Any hospital or doctor at any hospital or emergency room who refuses to treat and stabilize a woman having a miscarriage or suffering with an ectopic pregnancy could be committing both medical malpractice and violating federal law.”  

Murrill’s statement comes after increased pressure on Louisiana for passing an unprecedented law reclassifying common pregnancy care pills, including misoprostol, as controlled dangerous substances. Hundreds of doctors have spoken out about concerns the law will cause delays in care for women, particularly since misoprostol is used to treat postpartum hemorrhage and will be removed from obstetric carts.

Given the shameless mendacity that all or essentially all MAGA elites routinely rely on, it is reasonable to believe that DeSantis and Murrill are cynical liars. 

Q: Is it reasonable to believe that DeSantis and Murrill are cynical liars?

Major neuroscience update: Zeroing in on ways to measure and characterize cognition

A new research paper discusses an absolutely amazing aspect of cognition in the brain. In essence, when engaged in significant cognitive effort, like listening to a story, the brain compresses a huge amount of information into a small set of electrical signals. 

One author described the stunning degree of data compression like this: “If human language was similarly efficient, I’d be able to tell you the details of every Wikipedia article just by speaking a dozen or so words.” That has to be either a gross exaggeration, or the high degree of compression is incomprehensible to me. I do not see how this can be remotely possible.

If this research holds up on replication, it is mind-blowing.  PsyPost reports:

A new neuroimaging study reveals that when we engage in more complex cognitive tasks, our brain activity becomes not only richer in detail but also more streamlined. The findings suggest that the brain adjusts its patterns of activity to match the demands of the task, allowing for more efficient processing during mentally challenging activities.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was driven by a desire to understand how the brain manages different cognitive demands. Previous research by the same team had revealed the brain’s remarkable ability to reconstruct missing data from minimal measurements, raising questions about why the brain can generate such detailed and efficient activity patterns with limited input.

“Several years ago, my co-author and graduate student at the time, Lucy Owen, and I came out with a precursor to this study, where we found something very surprising,” explained study author Jeremy Manning, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College and director of the Contextual Dynamics Lab.

“At the time, we were working with neurosurgical patients who had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor for seizure activity. A challenge with working with those recordings is that our brains contain roughly a hundred billion neurons, but we can only safely implant around a few hundred wires into someone’s brain. So there is a massive undersampling problem: for every measurement we take, we miss roughly a billion others! We wanted to understand how much of that ‘missing’ data we could reliably and accurately reconstruct using statistical ‘hacks.'”

“We were very surprised to find that just a few hundred measurements from an essentially random sampling of locations throughout someone’s brain could give us enough information to fill in an accurate guess about activity patterns throughout their entire brain, at millimeter-scale resolutions (roughly on par with the best fMRI available today), but at millisecond-scale sampling rates (roughly 1000 times faster than fMRI),” Manning said. “If human language was similarly efficient, I’d be able to tell you the details of every Wikipedia article just by speaking a dozen or so words.”

To assess the informativeness and compressibility of brain activity, the researchers used advanced computational techniques. They measured informativeness by analyzing how much specific information about the task was reflected in participants’ brain activity. Compressibility, on the other hand, was evaluated by examining how efficiently the brain’s activity patterns could be represented using fewer components or data points. A highly compressible brain pattern is one in which fewer pieces of information are needed to reconstruct the full activity.

“In the world of machine learning, the ability to reconstitute a detailed pattern from its parts is called ‘compression,'” Manning told PsyPost. “Highly compressible patterns can be accurately rebuilt from just a tiny sliver, like reconstructing the complete text of a novel from just a single word. Another related property is called ‘informativeness.’ This refers to how ‘expressive’ a sequence of patterns is– akin to the length of a novel.”

The researchers uncovered two key findings. First, brain activity was more informative and compressible when participants engaged in the more demanding task of listening to a coherent story compared to the scrambled story or resting conditions. This suggests that during higher-level cognitive tasks, the brain produces detailed, information-rich activity that is also organized efficiently. In simpler tasks, or during rest, the brain’s activity is less organized and contains less specific information.

Second, the study found that these brain patterns became more informative and compressible over time as participants continued to listen to the coherent story. As the narrative unfolded, the brain seemed to adapt by refining and optimizing its activity patterns. This pattern was less pronounced in the scrambled conditions, where the lack of a coherent structure in the story likely led to less mental engagement and, consequently, less organization in the brain’s activity.

“Going into this study, we would have guessed that ‘compression’ and ‘informativeness’ would have changed in opposite directions,” Manning said. “That would be analogous to either being able to reconstruct short novels from just a few words (perhaps under certain cognitive circumstances — representing high compressibility but low informativeness), or being able to reconstruct longer novels from more words (perhaps under different circumstances — representing low compressibility and high informativeness). Finding that compression and informativeness change in the same direction helped us to understand that these two aspects of how our brains respond can vary independently from each other.” 

“We looked at data from a little over 100 participants, using one set of experimental conditions, and using one method for measuring brain activity,” Manning noted. “Although it is tempting to generalize to ‘all humans and circumstances,’ the true test of these findings, as with any study, will be in how well they replicate and generalize.”  

“We are deeply curious about understanding fundamental questions about how our brains work, and what makes us ‘us.’ This line of work is a tiny part of a much broader literature aimed at uncovering the neural basis of thought,” Manning said. “My website is www.context-lab.com. It has links to all of my lab’s publications, data, and software, along with some open courses that could be of interest to people who want to learn more about this stuff.”

In their research paper (behind a paywall), the authors describe the significance of their research like this:

How our brains respond to ongoing experiences depends on what we are doing and thinking about, among other factors. We examined two fundamental aspects of brain activity under different cognitive circumstances: informativeness and compressibility. Informativeness refers to how specific the brain activity we measure at a given moment is to whatever was being done in that particular moment. Compressibility is a measure of how redundant the activity patterns are. We found that when people were engaged in higher-level cognitive tasks, their brain activity was both more informative and more compressible than when they were engaged in lower-level tasks. Our findings suggest that our brains flexibly reconfigure themselves to optimize different aspects of how they function according to ongoing cognitive demands. 

So, this paper is saying that during high-level cognition (high cognitive load), the brain dynamically, i.e., cognitive load-sensing, produces detailed, information-rich activity that is organized and compressed with astounding efficiently. The effect was more pronounced in higher-order brain networks associated with complex functions like decision-making and memory. 

As participants continued engaging in a complex task like listening to a coherent story, brain patterns became more informative and compressible over time. That suggests the brain adapts and optimizes data process while engaging in a significantly cognitive loaded task. In essence, the brain's data compression ability seems to become more efficient and effective during complex, engaging cognitive tasks, allowing for rich information processing while maintaining compressible, organized activity patterns.

This research challenges the researchers' initial hypothesis that informativeness and compressibility would trade off against each other. Instead, they both change in the same direction during complex cognitive tasks. That is counterintuitive, at least to me. That alone ought to prompt real quick testing in other labs this to see if these results replicate and get either verified or debunked.

Germaine mental status: Mind blown

One of the tyrant things tyrant-kleptocrat DJT will do if he gets re-elected: Pervert justice

 The NYT reports (not paywalled) about what DJT tried to do to his enemies while he was in office. We can reasonably expect he will do the same again if re-elected, but this time with a lot less restraints and an even more enraged vengeance:  

As President, Trump Demanded Investigations of Foes. 

He Often Got Them.

He has threatened to target his perceived enemies if elected again. A look at his time in the White House shows how readily he could do so.

It was the spring of 2018 and President Donald J. Trump, faced with an accelerating inquiry into his campaign’s ties to Russia, was furious that the Justice Department was reluctant to strike back at those he saw as his enemies.

In an Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump told startled aides that if Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not order the department to go after Hillary Clinton and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump would prosecute them himself.

Recognizing the extraordinary dangers of a president seeking not just to weaponize the criminal justice system for political ends but trying as well to assume personal control over who should be investigated and charged, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, sought to stall.

“How about I do this?” Mr. McGahn told Mr. Trump, according to an account verified by witnesses. “I’m going to write you a memo explaining to you what the law is and how it works, and I’ll give that memo to you and you can decide what you want to do.”

The episode marked the start of a more aggressive effort by Mr. Trump to deploy his power against his perceived enemies despite warnings not to do so by top aides. And a look back at the cases of 10 individuals brings a pattern into clearer focus: After Mr. Trump made repeated public or private demands for them to be targeted by the government, they faced federal pressure of one kind or another.

The broad outlines of those episodes have been previously reported. But a closer examination reveals the degree of concern and pushback against Mr. Trump’s demands inside the White House.

And it highlights how closely his expressed desires to go after people who had drawn his ire were sometimes followed by the Justice Department, F.B.I. or other agencies. Even without his direct order, his indirect influence could serve his ends and leave those in his sights facing expensive, time-consuming legal proceedings or other high-stress inquiries.

Nearly four years after Mr. Trump left office, a more complete picture of how Mr. Trump’s critics and rivals came to be scrutinized by the government is emerging from interviews and court records.

Mr. Trump sought to use the government to go after four broad categories of perceived enemies and critics.

One was F.B.I. officials, whom he sought to portray as biased or corrupt as they investigated him. Another was political rivals, whom he sought to tar with allegations of the same kind of wrongdoing, like collusion with foreign countries, that he was under investigation for.

He also wanted government power deployed against news organizations that produced coverage he did not like, as well as against people from his personal and business life he felt had betrayed him.

The NYT article is long and has some examples of DJT's authoritarian moral rot. Two points for consideration:

• Most of the MAGA rank and file (my guess, about 99.5%) will either (i) never become aware of information like this and thus it will have no impact on their votes in November, or (ii) become aware of what DJT did but will reject that reality as communist Dem/liberal/MSM lies, or rationalize it into less importance compared to how evil and tyrannical Harris and the Dems would be.

• This information, coupled with everything else, will lead very few or no MAGA elites (mostly corrupt authoritarians) to change their vote for DJT -- most MAGA elites already know all about all the nasty business that DJT did. They heartily approve and are looking with hopeful anticipation of a lot of purging and jailing of opponents to come. 👍 

Elite MAGA thugs

Hm, Matt Gaetz, naughty newt, proud sex pervert and 

prominent, MAGA respected & approved thug MAGA elite

MAGA seal of approval

Matt Gaetz accused in new court filings of attending drug-fueled sex party with teen -- The sworn affidavits contain details that previously only existed as rumors, according to a new report

Even the Hindus are shocked 😮: 

Matt Gaetz attended drug-fueled sex party with 17-yr-old girl, court docs claim

As expected, Gaetz denies the charges as all good MAGA elites do when accused of lawbreaking, 

corrupt sleaze, lying, pedophilia, murder, fornication, tax evasion, wife beating, etc.

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Reporting about DJT and other fun-filled MAGA-approved/inspired activities:

A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban

Trump’s Electoral College Power Play in Nebraska Is a Troubling Sign of Things to Come | He’s already pressuring lawmakers to change the rules in his favor. Imagine if he loses.

Trump to women: Stop ‘thinking about abortion.’ You’re broke and depressed, but I can make you happy (😱)

New Docs Reveal Horrific Extent of Matt Gaetz’s Creepy Sex Scandal

Mark Cuban says Trump's billionaire backers know they can manipulate him because he's 'so transactional, and so devoid of core values'

Is Donald Trump a fascist?

Election-Deniers' Georgia Scheme Is Going Exactly According To Plan | The MAGA fanatics who hijacked the election board just passed a ballot-counting measure that could royally f*ck things up.

Donald “Blame the Jews” Trump Is Truly Losing His Sh*t Now

Etc.

A MAGA storm is 

coming

Personal musings about essentially contested concepts and rationality

In my opinion, "rationality" in politics is an essentially contested concept . If so, at least as applied to politics, a definition will never be universally agreed on. The Google definition, the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic, itself is circular/flawed. My new friend Perplexity agrees with me that "rationality" is an essentially contested concept (ECC). For politics, "reason" is also an ECC. So are concepts like reasonable, open-mindedness, fairness, true truths, the rule of law and lots of other concepts common in politics, sometimes including, "constitutional", as in that is (or isn't) constitutional.

In view of the human messiness, my personal definition of rationality constitutes a description of an ideal to strive for. Specifically, my definition of rationality for politics is, more or less (and subject to revision or correction), that it is a state of mind consisting of (i) some non-trivial degree of self-awareness of human cognitive biology and social behavior such as unconscious biases and personal moral beliefs, (ii) a reasonable degree of open-mindedness and acceptance of (all three are essentially contested) toward inconvenient facts (not essentially contested among rational people -- see the circularity in that?), true truths (essentially contested) and sound reasoning (essentially contested), and (iii) reasonable adherence (contested) to a personal moral framework. 

See how messy that is? That, coupled with personal agendas among the elites, is mostly why politics is so damned messy.  ECCs shoot through about all or nearly all of politics. It is a freaking human plague. ECCs arise from the human brain-mind that came from evolution. Disagreements over ECCs lead to or underpins the "rationality" of wars, savagery, good things, stupid things and just about all other kinds of human behavior and disagreement.

In time, I came to understand and internalize what an ECC is and what it does to people, and their minds and politics. That understanding significantly changed how I viewed politics, individual humans acting alone and humans acting in various groups, e.g., families, clans, tribes, cults, and nations. My understanding of ECCs also made me aware of how powerful and effective dark free speech is in the hands of a talented demagogue. Demagoguery relies heavily on appeal to ECCs that the demagogue defines in ways that serve the demagogue's personal agenda, usually ideological supremacy and/or crass personal lust for lots of wealth and power. A demagogue's appeals are usually irrational and/or based on false information. 

For me, stumbling across the concept of the ECC was a major personal epiphany. Applying it to rationality was fun.

How philosophy wonks define

"bounded rationality"

As we all know, Herbert Simon introduced the term ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon 1957b: 198; see also Klaes & Sent 2005) as a shorthand for his brief against neoclassical economics and his call to replace the perfect rationality assumptions of homo economicus with a conception of rationality tailored to cognitively limited agents.

Hey!! Is that yahoo calling me a cognitively limited agent??

Them's fightin' words!