Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

> When it comes to election time, citizens are given one vote, a binary choice of two candidates. To make this choice, each individual voter crushes down all the dimensionality of their personal model of the world (which they mistake for shared reality) and out comes their decision who to vote for. The purpose of all the absurdity and chicanery in the interactive dance above, is to influence the manner in which each individual crushes their dimensions

I'm 100% in agreement on this. I've previously made the argument that one bit of input is small, thus the overall function of voting is actually to make winning voters think they wanted all their candidate's policies. I formed during the Obama years, after arguing against blue tribe friends arguing for corporo-statist health care. To be clear, this is the first time I will be voting for a major party candidate for President.

> "Donald Trump's model contains a dimension labelled 'Literally Racist', and it's value is '100%'. Furthermore, because(!)* anyone who 'is' 'racist' 'should' 'be shunned by society, absolutely, full stop', then therefore(!) you must(!) vote for Joe Biden."*

This does not represent my perspective at all.

First, I've been slow to come around to labeling Trump a simple racist. As I said, my last straw was Harris's "birth certificate". Back in May, I was still arguing with a friend who was claiming Trump's malevolence on Covid came from his desire to see brown people die. Focusing on race begets racism. I've been trying to find non-racial explanations the whole time.

Second no, I don't think racists should be outright shunned by society. People that do must not love their grandmothers. Racism is like farting. Everyone is going to develop some of it, but we should try to keep it to ourselves and spare each other the unpleasantness. It's problematic when people bring it up and make it part of their identity, either as oppressor or oppressed.

And lastly no, my decision to support Biden does not come from modus ponens on policies. Rather, I've been trying to find any reason why it would make sense to support Trump, to give his supporters the benefit of the doubt. For context, I was the one explaining to blue friends back in 2016 that Trump would likely win, because he was speaking to a lot of concerns that they casually wrote off.

While he's still talking about red tribe concerns, he has done little to actually address them. If he had improved the economic situation in the middle of the country, I'd get it. If he were devoutly religious, I'd get it. If he had reformed some aspect of the healthcare system towards a functioning market, I'd get it. If his trade policies could actually preserve American jobs, I'd get it. If he had actually built that wall, I'd get it. I wouldn't necessarily agree, but I would understand.

What has he actually done instead? He's continued to reject expert advice regarding Covid, leading to 210,000 American deaths. Rather than trying to calm the situation after George Floyd (even if it just resulted in some token reforms), he drove the division. He's setup tariffs that could only have worked twenty years ago, and has chosen to compete with China by adopting China's app censorship totalitarianism. He has withdrawn from foreign diplomacy to let China and Russia conquer unhindered.

The only charitable narrative I can come up with is that his supporters are still buying into his narrative as an opposition candidate, despite his past four years of office and his lack of results on goals they claim to care about. As they continue to be directly harmed by his actual actions, that becomes less plausible.

.. not really? Most of the time policy is set from the top. Netflix isn't exactly a worker co-op.

> thus the overall function of voting is actually to make winning voters think

More generally, the specific implementation of "democracy" in America was probably done with the best of intentions, but the rise of various forms of communication have now enabled and created the need/desire for more sophisticated forms. I would propose some reasonable form of more direct democracy, or at least comprehensive direct polling (non-binding) on individual issues - this way we'd at least have a half decent model about what people's beliefs are. Unfortunately, this may be unpalatable to certain parties who enjoy the ability to project what they want people to think other people's beliefs are.

That people have not been provided this improved (over one vote every 4 years, and then some other low-resolution voting here and there at other levels, all of which rarely results in changing much, or pleasing a large portion of the public) seems to have resulted in a situation where people have decided to take influence into their own hands, with the tools they have available: meme wars.

> This does not represent my perspective at all.

I may have estimated you erroneously.

>> Do you automatically presume any conservative group is white supremacists by default?

> Given the way Trump has captured the following of the conservative community, despite being a radical populist and having few policy accomplishments besides inflaming racial tensions, yes. It's reasonable starting assumption about any group that continues to express support for Trump.

Upon reconsideration, my interpretation has not changed. Can you possibly explain where you think I may have gone wrong in interpreting the above exchange? My sense of what you are saying is that because I have awareness of racist tendencies in Trump's model, then therefore I should reject him (as opposed to considering his racism as just one dimension among millions of others).

> And lastly no, my decision to support Biden does not come from modus ponens on policies. Rather, I've been trying to find any reason why it would make sense to support Trump, to give his supporters the benefit of the doubt.

I interpret this to mean that you are unable to see how someone could possibly evaluate the multidimensional nature of Donald Trump and (all things considered) decide to vote for him, without ~being similarly racist, or at least to some noteworthy degree? This is literally how I interpret your words, did you mean something completely different and I missed it?

> He's continued to reject expert advice regarding Covid, leading to 210,000 American deaths.

I don't like the manner in which he's done this, but I am very displeased with the way this pandemic has been marketed (for many reasons), so I am "ok" with his buffoon-like performance.

> He's setup tariffs that could only have worked twenty years ago, and has chosen to compete with China by adopting China's app censorship totalitarianism.

Here we disagree, significantly.

> He's withdrawn from foreign diplomacy to let China and Russia conquer unhindered.

Also here.

Other than these points, and then also our final decision on who to vote for, I believe you and I are largely in agreement on everything else you've written.

For godsakes the Republican party freed the slaves and voted for the civil rights act. It's the democrat party that should have to denounce it's history... except they let people like Ralph Northam continue to govern despite being photographed in a KKK hood. And before you start say "Oh the great switch" the part that's never explained by that bs theory is how one day people who had been fighting for civil right woke up and decided to undo everything they had fought for for the last 100 years. You're being taught to hate people that aren't hateful because then it makes it easier to justify the means of seizing power.

Everybody contributes to a companies culture and that drives the people at the top too.