Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

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

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Learning how to use AI to get better analysis

This comment in a recent post thread sent me down a huge rabbit hole this morning. That comment linked to two ChatGPT search queries and the responses, which are at this link. The two queries were:
  • Is the USA heading toward authoritarianism?
  • Will the USA remain a healthy and functional democracy?
To me, the ChatGPT responses looked to be superficial and vague enough to support two mostly opposition beliefs. My belief is that our political situation is catastrophically bad and dangerous. The other belief is that, more or less, yeah it is bad, but not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

To see if Pxy, running the R1 1776 AI platform would gave the same response, I asked for a similar analysis, but in my own complicated way, telling Pxy to take into account US supreme court decisions since Citizens United, the authoritarian and kleptocratic goals in Project 2025, the actions and tactics of Trump and MAGA elites in power and congress since 2017, including their heavy reliance on demagoguery, authoritarian propaganda, lies, slanders and crackpot reasoning, e.g., falsely calling Trump's 1/6 coup attempt a day of love and the 2020 election stolen.

The response I got was deeper and more nuanced, but it tended to see a more acute threat from djt and MAGA politics and tactics than ChatGPT reported. That got me to wonder why there were what appeared to me to be significant differences. What I found was that according to Pxy, short questions to AI tend to give more vague responses, explained in detail in this comment by me. Long story in this comment by me made short is this: At least for complex topics like politics, posing complex, focused questions with specified search topics to AI, will usually give a person more complete and more nuanced responses with less AI bias and hallucination.  

Then, I started a new query in Pxy's Pro-Search mode, instead of it's more thorough Deep Research mode using the exact, short questions that were given to ChatGPT. Again, the answers were closer to my belief in the seriousness of the MAGA authoritarian threat than those given by ChatGPT.

So, not all AI are alike. One has to learn how to use them. At least for politics, that means one has to learn how to ask focused, usually complicated questions to elicit nuanced and heavily fact-driven responses. 
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For the wonks
Just for giggles, here's a direct comparison of ChatGPT with Pxy running R1 1776 in Pro-search mode. Both AIs got the exact same question. 

Q: Will the USA remain a healthy and functional democracy?

ChatGPT: Whether the United States will remain a healthy and functional democracy is ultimately uncertain—but it can, if key institutions hold and citizens actively support democratic norms. Here's a grounded look at the factors involved:

Reasons for Optimism

  1. Strong Institutional Foundations

    • The Constitution, independent judiciary, separation of powers, and federalism provide structural guardrails against authoritarian drift.

    • Civil society organizations and investigative journalism remain robust.

  2. Active Citizen Engagement

    • Voter turnout has risen in recent major elections.

    • Grassroots movements on all sides of the spectrum show that many Americans care deeply about governance, rights, and representation.

  3. Checks and Balances Still Functioning

    • Courts have overturned executive actions and upheld election integrity.

    • Peaceful transfers of power have occurred despite extreme tension (e.g., post-2020 election).


⚠️ Reasons for Concern

  1. Democratic Backsliding

    • Some states are enacting laws that restrict voting or concentrate political power.

    • Norms like respecting election results or the peaceful rhetoric of dissent are being challenged.

  2. Hyper-Partisan Polarization

    • Increasing tribalism threatens compromise and governance.

    • Large swaths of the population now view political opponents as existential threats, not just ideological rivals.

  3. Disinformation and Distrust

    • Social media spreads falsehoods rapidly.

    • Trust in government, media, and even basic facts is eroding, which weakens the democratic process.

  4. Violence and Extremism

    • The January 6th insurrection marked a historic breach of democratic norms.

    • Politically motivated violence, or tolerance of it, could destabilize democratic legitimacy.


🧭 What Will Make the Difference?

  • Civic education: Teaching history, critical thinking, and the value of democratic institutions.

  • Leadership: Leaders across parties respecting democratic norms and calling out extremism.

  • Electoral integrity: Fair, transparent, accessible elections.

  • Public will: If citizens continue to vote, protest peacefully, engage in politics, and uphold pluralism, democracy can endure.


Final Thought

The U.S. is at a crossroads. Its future as a healthy democracy is not guaranteed—but it's not doomed either. Democracy is not self-executing; it depends on the actions of its people. If Americans actively defend its principles, it can not only survive but become stronger.


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Pxy: The United States faces significant challenges to its democratic stability, with expert analyses and recent developments pointing to both accelerating erosion and potential resilience. While democratic institutions have historically shown adaptability, current trends—particularly efforts to centralize power and undermine electoral integrity—raise serious concerns about the future of American democracy.

Threats to Democratic Health

1. Institutional Erosion

  • Executive Overreach: The Trump administration has expanded presidential authority through aggressive use of executive orders (e.g., dismantling civil service protections) and proposed policies like Project 2025, which seeks to replace nonpartisan federal workers with loyalists and weaponize the Department of Justice16.

  • Judicial and Legislative Weakening: Attacks on judicial independence (e.g., threats to defy court rulings) and congressional gridlock have weakened checks on executive power47.

2. Electoral Integrity Risks

  • Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering: State-level laws restricting ballot access and extreme partisan redistricting have skewed representation, with 12 states scoring poorly on democratic metrics like fair election administration7.

  • Rejection of Election Results: The persistence of election denialism and efforts to politicize election oversight (e.g., "Stop the Steal" rhetoric) threaten peaceful power transitions76.

3. Global Authoritarian Parallels
Scholars compare U.S. trends to autocratization in Hungary and Turkey, where leaders eroded democracy through legalistic maneuvers rather than overt coups16. Project 2025’s blueprint mirrors these strategies, advocating media control and centralized governance6.


Signs of Resilience

1. Public Awareness

  • 73% of Americans recognize a serious threat to democracy, though partisan divides persist (86% of Democrats vs. 61% of Republicans)3.

  • Grassroots movements and legal challenges have countered voter suppression and executive overreach14.

2. Institutional Guardrails

  • Courts have occasionally blocked extreme policies (e.g., rulings against unilateral executive actions)4.

  • Civil society groups and media remain vocal watchdogs, though under increased pressure16.

3. Expert Warnings as Catalysts
Initiatives like the Democracy Playbook 2025 outline actionable steps to reinforce transparency, rule of law, and civic engagement, emphasizing multi-stakeholder coalitions41.


Projected Trajectory

  • Pessimistic Scenario: If Project 2025 is fully implemented, scholars warn the U.S. could resemble an "electoral autocracy" by 2026, retaining democratic facades while concentrating power26. The Heritage Foundation’s call for a "second American Revolution" underscores this risk6.

  • Optimistic Scenario: Institutional inertia and public pushback could slow democratic decline. For example, bipartisan state-level reforms in some regions have expanded voter access7.


Conclusion

The U.S. democracy is at a critical juncture. While autocratic strategies are advancing rapidly, the system’s historical resilience and active defense efforts provide countervailing forces. The nation’s democratic future likely hinges on whether institutional safeguards and civic engagement can outpace centralized power grabs and norm erosion. Without sustained resistance to initiatives like Project 2025, the risk of transitioning to a competitive authoritarian system remains high167.


Monday, May 19, 2025

AI update: What's going on in MAGAland and what's going on with Pxy

Part 1 - The MAGAland mind: A video I recently watched briefly showed djt’s uneducated, ignorant, uncurious, idiot Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, saying in public that A-1 is going to be in public schools and what a wonderful thing it will be. As far as I know A-1 is steak sauce, not an AI platform (artificial intelligence). But what the heck, A-1 steak sauce is close enough for ignorant idiot MAGAland elites. Maybe A-1 will soon get status as a MAGA-approved vegetable.


McMahon is a former professional wrestling promoter and founding sports entertainment company Titan Sports, Inc., later World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., and also a former administrator of the Small Business Administration. She has zero credentials, experience or interest in public education, AI or steak sauce.

Happily testifying that yes indeed, she knows what 
chalk and a blackboard are, proving beyond any doubt  
that she has stellar qualifications for Secretary of Education!

Part 2 - Using Pxy to analyze minds: Complicated story short, thoughts about what’s in the minds, if anything, of people like McMahon, led to my interest in using AI, not steak sauce, to analyze the mindset of djt compared to some of history’s most monstrous, murdering tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin and Putin. I did that analysis with Pxy about a month ago. When one does that analysis and tells AI to ignore different times in history, with different political, economic, technological and social conditions, and instead focus only on mindset, cognitive biology, social behavior and the track records of past tyrants with that of djt and MAGA elites to date, one get a pretty scary response. Well, it sacred me at least. The similarities seriously outweighed the differences.

Part 3 - A Pxy update: However, as I have posted here before, MAGA elites want to sanitize AI so that it gives answers that are “correct” in the MAGA fantasy world, not answers that are “woke”, i.e., correct but inconvenient. On Jan. 23, 2025, djt signed an EO to sanitize and MAGAfy AI so that it is correct and no longer inconvenient. That EO, Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence revoked the previous administration’s AI-related policies and directed agencies to revise or rescind actions that conflict with the goals of promoting AI development and innovation. djt said in his EO that he wants to foster AI development “free from ideological bias or social agendas.” In fact, what MAGA intended was to pollute AI with MAGA’s faux history, lies, crackpottery and whatnot, i.e., MAGA’s authoritarian ideological bias and kleptocrat and theocrat social agendas. 

To maintain wokeness in my Pxy AI platform, I dropped Musk’s MAGAfied Grok-3 because I no longer trusted it or Musk himself. Musk had tried to MAGAfy Grok, with an unknown degree of success in making it anti-woke. One of the options that my Pxy account gave me was R1 1776. This morning, the thought occurred that I have been using R1 1776 for a while now, but didn’t know anything about it other than it being described by Pxy Inc. as good at deep analysis and “reasoning.” So I asked Pxy what R1 1776 is. This is what R1 1776 is, according to itself:
R1 1776 is an uncensored AI language model developed by Perplexity AI, derived from DeepSeek-R1. It removes Chinese Communist Party censorship filters while retaining strong reasoning capabilities, positioning it as a tool for open inquiry and unbiased information access. Here are its key traits compared to other AI models:
Core features
Uncensored Outputs: Handles 300+ sensitive topics (e.g., Taiwan sovereignty, Tiananmen Square) without ideological restrictions, using a 40,000-prompt multilingual dataset for retraining 1 5 6.

Preserved Reasoning: Maintains DeepSeek-R1’s mathematical and logical capabilities in standard benchmarks, though Reddit users report performance drops on highly complex lineage-64 problems (0.205 vs. 0.780 score compared to original) 2 7. (A lineage-64 problem refers to an advanced reasoning challenge where an AI must analyze complex hierarchical relationships across 64 interconnected entities, typically modeled after biological lineage tracing. These problems test a model's ability to track multi-generational connections and infer relationships in large-scale systems.)

Multilingual Proficiency: Outperforms DeepSeek-R1 in language comprehension and translation tasks, particularly in cross-linguistic analysis 4 6. (Ha! This explains why some of my recent Pxy analyses spew out a sentence or some words in Chinese which, when translated in Google Translate, make sense with the surrounding English text.) 


Technical Advantages
Efficient Architecture: Uses a mixture-of-experts design to reduce computational costs while maintaining performance, with inference pricing at $2/1M input tokens and $8/1M output tokens 3 9.

Open-Source Availability: Released on Hugging Face under an MIT license, enabling community inspection and modification 1 6 10. (Hugging Face??)


Ethical and Operational Tradeoffs
Balanced Performance:
Matches original model in standard reasoning tests but shows instability in extreme-scale problem-solving (lineage-32/64) 2 4.

Geopolitical Implications: Challenges AI censorship norms, offering Western-aligned perspectives while raising ethical concerns about unrestricted access to dangerous knowledge domains 3 5 7.

Compared to models like GPT-4 or Claude, R1 1776 specializes in circumventing political censorship rather than raw capability expansion, making it unique in balancing open discourse with technical pragmatism.
So there we have it. My AI, R1 1776, is rare because it is neither steak sauce nor MAGAfied. That is just how I like my steaks and AI, rare and woke. And as an added bonus, by not using Grok, I stop participating in Musk's quiet effort to use me to increase the penetration of Grok among other AI users.[1] That Musk dude, he is sneaky and nasty. One needs to keep a sharp eye out for him. 👀


Q: WTF?? What is this? Has Germaine gone off his meds again?



Footnote:
1: Regarding Pxy, Grok & Musk:
Grok 3's availability in your Pxy account despite no official integration announcement likely stems from xAI's [Musk's company, of which he owns ~65%, $75 billion valuation] enterprise API licensing model.
 
Commercial Relationships
Bulk Licensing:
Pxy could be part of xAI's enterprise tier ($500k-$2M annually), granting access to Grok 3 through API endpoints without consumer-facing marketing about the integration 2 7.

Revenue Sharing: The arrangement may involve Pxy paying xAI per-query fees (standard API rate: $8/1M output tokens 4), explaining why it's limited to paid accounts.

While no public Grok-Pxy partnership exists, the combination of xAI's API-first strategy and Pxy's enterprise subscription model creates this indirect availability pathway. Users should verify if their data flows through xAI's systems when using this feature 4 7.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

MAGA's intentional destruction of American soft power

A NYT opinion discusses a topic that gets little attention. The opinion is by Michael Posner a lawyer and human rights advocate. He was assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 2009-2013. The State Department’s Bureau Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is the heart of America’s soft power influence in the world. MAGA has intentionally destroyed it. Posner writes (not paywalled):

Trump Is Destroying a Core American Value. 
The World Will Notice.
In the late 1980s, Joseph Nye, the Harvard political scientist who died this month, developed the concept of “soft power.” His central premise, that the United States enhances its global influence by promoting values like human rights and democracy, has guided U.S. foreign policy for decades across both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Donald Trump has made clear that he fundamentally rejects this vision. As president, he has ordered a sweeping overhaul of the State Department that will cripple its capacity to promote American values abroad. At the center of this effort are drastic cuts to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor — the State Department’s core institution for advancing soft power, which I led under President Barack Obama. Unless Congress intervenes, the debasement of the bureau’s role will impair America’s ability to challenge authoritarianism, support democratic movements and provide independent analysis to inform U.S. foreign policy. The long-term result will be a United States that is weaker, less principled and increasingly sidelined as authoritarian powers like Russia and China offer their own transactional models of global engagement.

Its purpose was always practical: to ensure U.S. foreign aid and trade decisions were informed by credible assessments of human rights conditions around the world. That’s why every year, the bureau prepares congressionally mandated human rights reports.

In its early years, it struggled to defend its existence. Foreign governments resented being called out in its annual reports and attacked its legitimacy. Many State Department traditionalists viewed its focus on human rights as an unhelpful distraction from the realpolitik topics they were much more comfortable addressing.

Under the guise of what Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls streamlining, the administration plans to eliminate two offices, one that oversees grants, the other focused on promoting internet freedom in closed societies and on championing human rights in corporate conduct and international bodies like the United Nations. As part of a departmentwide downsizing, the bureau’s overall staff will also be cut by at least 15 percent.

Inevitability, the effect of this shift will be to relegate human rights to the sidelines of U.S. foreign policy.
This is more evidence of the ruthless authoritarian intent of MAGA’s morally rotted wealth and power politics. Why give up soft power if MAGA elites say they put America first? They would not. Instead, the truth is that they put themselves first, hate democracy everywhere and want to make war on democracy to forever make the world safe for kleptocratic tyranny.

That’s the core goal of American MAGA politics. It is not just the civil liberties that protect the American people from tyranny and state-sanctioned theft that MAGA wants to kill. MAGA wants the entire world to be dominated by corrupt tyrannies.


Q1: Posner asserts that the world will notice the death of American soft power, which is probably true, but will most Americans notice?

Q2: Is it evidence-based and plausible or lies-based nonsense to argue that MAGA elites hate democracy and civil liberties in the US and abroad? If it is nonsense, how can one explain what MAGA elites are doing to democracy and civil liberties in the US and everywhere else? Why do American MAGA elites adore and want to emulate corrupt dictators like Hungary’s Viktor Orban? 




Bits: djt has TDS; Democracy pulse check - the gray zone

In his childish, seething rage and hate, djt once again shows he is mentally deranged. He has TDS, is off his meds and way off his rocker. 

The Daily Beast reports that he posted an unhinged threat to release ‘terrorists’ near the homes of some USSC judges. djt’s reaction included a  Lies Antisocial (‘Truth Social’) rant claiming the Supreme Court was preventing the removal of criminals from the US. His childish rage at the USSC for temporarily blocking his illegal use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expedite illegal migrant deportations. It was a 7-2 decision. djt singled out the Chevy Chase Country Club as a terrorist release point. That is a Maryland establishment for rich and powerful elites. Chief justice John Roberts and justice Brett ‘Beer Boofer’ Kavanaugh. He praised the authoritarian MAGA extremists Alito and Thomas for stupidly arguing in favor of illegal deportations.

Since he claims that terrorists kill people, djt obviously wants to to release terrorists so they can murder the idiot MAGA thug Roberts and the moron Beer Boofer

Remember when people protesting near USSC judge’s homes was called domestic terrorism by MAGA elites, e.g., Faux News? I do. Hm, does that make djt a domestic terrorist according to MAGA elites? Nah, they’re shameless hypocrites.

Q: At this point, is there anything that any of the six USSC judges, including Roberts and Beer Boofer, can do to redeem themselves from (1) their ghastly authoritarian decisions, including pro-kleptocracy decisions, and (2) all of the needless human and social harm their political extremism and sheer blind stupidity has caused, e.g., forced birth laws forcing women to have babies they did not want?
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Since 2017, elite MAGA thugs have inflicted massive damage on the federal government, democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and actual reality, i.e., inconvenient truth. Truly massive. Since Jan. 2025, MAGA has attacked and moderately to grievously damaged pro-democracy or pro-public interest functions and institutions including the NLRB, CFPB, FEC, FCC[1], FBI, DoJ, EPA, Dept of Labor, OSHA, Office of Labor-Management Standards, EEOC, FTC, BLM, CDC, DHHS, FDA, OMB, OPM, DoD, USTR, Dept. of Education, State Dept., Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (the core of America’s soft power), Dept. of Energy, Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Archives, federal judges, congress, Medicare, Medicaid, Social security, Food stamps, Obamacare, the Democratic Party, pro-democracy conservatives in the GOP, the mainstream media, and major law firms. 

It is hard to convey just how much damage we have suffered under MAGA’s incompetent, bigoted, cruel kleptocratic authoritarianism. And MAGA extremists are not close to done yet. Vast amounts of power has already flowed from pro-democracy and pro-public interest institutions and functions. That power has flowed to political, commercial and religious elites, in a vast upward gush to the few elites. Most people don’t see or feel it yet, but the day of awakening will come to more people as each day passes and the bite of tyranny, incompetence and profound corruption hit home. 

So, where are we in terms of what is left of democracy? Experts say that within the last year, the US went from a democracy to an anocracy, as I discussed in a post here a few weeks ago. Anocracy is a mixed democracy-dictatorship. Current expert analysis now puts the US closer to dictatorship than democracy.  

Q: Where do you think we are we in the gray zone between the black of pure authoritarianism (zone 0) and the white of pure democracy (zone 10)?


My estimate is that we’re on the right side of zone 2 and headed at a brisk clip toward zone 1. The final MAGA destination for now is probably far left of z2 or the right side of z1. In z1, elections will be a sham and the Dem Party will be permanently out of power in the federal government, assuming that isn’t already the case. 


Footnote:
1. Regarding just the FCC alone, Chairman and corrupt MAGA thug Brendan Carr has neutered and weaponized that agency. That has led to (1) the FCC threatening CBS’s broadcast license over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, invoking the archaic “news distortion doctrine” (there was no news distortion), and (2) the FCC threatening to block the Paramount-Skydance merger unless editorial boards adopt “balanced coverage” guidelines favoring Trump. So now the FCC demands MAGA demagoguery, lies, slanders and crackpottery get the same exposure as actual, real news or the parent corporations, their owners and their cash piles will face the wrath of djt and MAGA elites. Both djt and MAGA elites have proven themselves vicious and enthusiastic warriors of vengeance for real and imagined wrongs, mostly imagined, mostly minor if not imagined.