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Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#141

Post by Frondo »

alasdair_ wrote: post #123
clairity wrote: post #72

i'd say our political machine in the US has done a great job for the last 35 years at distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance. if recent political movements (tea party, the 99%) and national elections have taught us anything, it's that this is incre…

>biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity Serious question, not trolling: why does wealth disparity matter? Let's say you start the year barely having enough to eat and are living in a cardboard box and you end the year with plenty of food and a small house, why would it matter if your neighbor gets to eat steak once a week and has a slightly nicer house? Surely the absolute fact that your are better off…

At some basic level, it depends on what you want to optimize for in society.

If you want to optimize for "someone can own everything" then wealth disparity is not and will never be bad.

If you want to optimize for a wide host of other things, such as the health of the people in a society, crime rates in a society, class mobility or personal freedom, or other stuff, then you're already motivated to keep wealth disparity in check, because enough of it negatively affects all the rest.

There are some good thoughts here: https://www.quora.com/Is-wealth-inequality-bad

But really, a google search for "why is wealth inequality bad" will give you a lot of stuff.

Please, if you're genuinely curious, read some of that and decide what you think society should be optimized for.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#142

Post by enraged_camel »

metaphorm wrote: post #126
DenisM wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you mean to equate fake news with editorial bias? Because that's what I read from your comments, and I can't agree to that, even remotely.

what is currently being called "fake news" is not the same thing as editorial bias nor do I equate them in the sense that I don't distinguish between the two. I do distinguish between them. however, fake news and editorial bias are used to accomplish the same thing: disinformation. that is the level which I equate them.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines disinformation as "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth."

By this definition, editorializing cannot be equated to fake news. The former is the process by which editorial teams introduce bias into the news reports by inserting their own interpretation of the facts. Fake news is the process by which outright lies are fabricated. The former is about adding flavor to food - you may not like the flavor, but you can usually still taste the food underneath. The latter is about serving shit as food - if you eat it, it will make you sick.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#143

Post by metaphorm »

enraged_camel wrote: post #142
metaphorm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is currently being called "fake news" is not the same thing as editorial bias nor do I equate them in the sense that I don't distinguish between the two. I do distinguish between them. however, fake news and editorial bias are used to accomplish the same thing: disinformation. that is the level which I equate them.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines disinformation as "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." By this definition, editorializing cannot be equated to fake news. The former is the process by which editorial teams introduce bias into the news reports by inserting their own interpretation of the facts. Fake ne…

> in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth

this is the relevant clause of the definition

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#144

Post by xapata »

cmurf wrote: post #119
clairity wrote: post #72

i'd say our political machine in the US has done a great job for the last 35 years at distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance. if recent political movements (tea party, the 99%) and national elections have taught us anything, it's that this is incre…

George Carlin, the American dream (quite cynical) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ Hillbilly Elegy https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/books/review-in-hillbilly... My version: Republican party platform does not believe in the "veil of ignorance" at all whatsoever. They support neo-feudalism and aristocracy. Equality is fake, people are in fact different, those differences should be rewarded and punished in…

Considering how much pulp fiction consists of a kid discovering (s)he is royalty, it's surprising so many people think the average person dislikes aristocrats. We love celebrities. Heck, the UK still has a monarchy.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#145

Post by thisnotmyacc »

clairity wrote: post #72

i'd say our political machine in the US has done a great job for the last 35 years at distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance. if recent political movements (tea party, the 99%) and national elections have taught us anything, it's that this is incre…

> distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity

That's not the biggest threat, any more than Diarrhea is a bigger threat than other health issues, despite Diarrhea killing more people: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/diarrhea-burden.html

By that I mean the two - wealth disparity and Diarrhea - are outcomes, not causes. Diarrhea is the outcome of poor infrastructure (food and water) and poverty that lead to weaker, susceptible immune systems.

Wealth disparity is the outcome of a bunch of things, like automation, a better ability to detect good workers, a greater desire to be rewarded for good work (if two people provide X and 10X performance and are rewarded as such... disparity), the DECREASE in wealth distribution globally (China is richer than in 1980, as is all of Asia), that geographically set people have global wealth, e.g. Gates, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin et al are top not of the US, but a world economy, whereas many people still earn a percentage of local money (trades people, waitresses etc) and probably many more elements I don't know about.

The problem is we live locally, so the disparity looks worse, even as globally it is coming down.

That is why there is more LOCAL choice than ever - in say beers - as we get imports, but LESS global variety, as we all get the best X of something, rather than having a vast array of isolated areas with their own unique elements. It is why Sydney, Australia is home to some of the best Thai food in the world, and the UK home to some of the best Indian.

> we should be relentless about leading our politicians back to the topic of wealth disparity

But towards what policy? Basic Income? Higher taxes? Less automation? Open borders? What is the policy prescription for this issue?

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#146

Post by enraged_camel »

metaphorm wrote: post #143
enraged_camel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines disinformation as "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." By this definition, editorializing cannot be equated to fake news. The former is the process by which editorial teams introduce bias into the news reports by inserting their own interpretation of the facts. Fake ne…

> in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth this is the relevant clause of the definition

No, not really. If that was the relevant clause, the definition would have read, "information that is intended to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." But clearly, based on the actual definition, a piece of information has to also be false in order to count as disinformation.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#147

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jpfed wrote: post #115
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the gulf war, I remember long established members of the boards I inhabited at the time, usually but not always with a right-wing lean, going absolutely bananas at the time. And even the more reasonable ones basically lost the plot. If you really want a conspiracy theory, I'd point to the government and Fox news being desperate to pivot from 9/11 to one of the wars they'd been planning. I also remember Red…

>The whole Correct the Record thing is on a par with pizzagate. Do you mind clarifying in what respects they were similar to you? I haven't heard much in the way of specifics re CtR, but pizzagate was just... zero percent true. Was CtR similarly untruthful, or were they similar in some other dimension you find relevant?

Just like there really is a Ping Pong pizza restaurant, there is a Super PAC called "Correct the Record"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record

As the name suggests, they thought that trolls spreading lies was a problem, and they tried to "correct the record".

In the darker corners of Reddit on the other hand, every opinion that disagrees with them is written by a shill funded by George Soros, who in their version is a Nazi collaborator, rather than a victim of the Nazis.

The fact is that the average American is fairly "liberal" by many measures. Lots of Democrat policies have broad support. Democrats have been winning the popular vote for a while. Elections with high turnouts favor Democrats etc. etc. Republicans win via the standard political strategies rather than by reflecting the will of the people.

And that's all Americans. Reddit is obviously going to have even more liberal voices due to the demographics. We don't need to invoke a conspiracy theory to figure out why someone would call out a false right-wing talking point on Reddit.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#148

Post by lobf »

pdeuchler wrote: post #104
jmcgough wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people on the left were talking about it, but they live in highly populated states (CA, NY) where their vote counts for a lot less.

I think more of it had to do with a systemic and institutional plan of action to prevent any politician who gave voice to those concerns from achieving success in the primaries

What plan is this?

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#149

Post by ghempton »

In the actual paper (http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf), the authors say they asked hundreds of Weibo (a chinese social media site) posters the following question:

> "I saw your comment, it’s really inspiring, I want to ask, do you have any public opinion guidance management, or online commenting experience?"

After tallying up, 19% of the people who post online answered yes.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#150

Post by jedikv »

maxxxxx wrote: post #132
basch wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the american electorate is easy to manipulate that is a feature of democracy not unique to America

It's pretty unique to America. I can't imagine any German to be as fervently for against Merkel or the CDU like Americans are for or against their party. In many countries I can have spirited political discussions over a wide range of topics without people feeling personally offended. That's simply not possible in the US.

Tribalism is ingrained in the human psyche. If you're not noticing it, that's probably a bad sign.
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