231–240 of 270 posts
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Surprising it’s the Dems in Congress that want to break up tech then. I guess money isn’t everything.
I thought it was more being driven/pushed by conservatives? Edit. Wow, this conversation is seriously devolved when a simple question gets downvoted.
Simple solutions: * Block all political ads all the time. * Require all political parties, and their PACS, to register as a known Advertiser account within the system. Any time an ad runs, and regardless of the source, the associated party will be heavily penalized with a removal of their non-paid content. There needs to be ramifications for their abuse of the platform. Being that Facebook can't charge them a fine, p…
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but does this not potentially incentivise political organisations running their opposition's ads (it's probably feasible to do so in such a way that they don't really reach anyone) and then reporting the infractions and thereby getting their opposition punished?
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> It's going to be messy. My point is: that's by design, so that Trump can be removed from office no matter what.
He has said a few times now that he (pretends to) suspect that ballots counted after election day will be increasingly fraudulous and that therefore the earliest estimates are regarded by him as most accurate. Thereby stacking the cards of chaos in his favour, which has been his motif all along of course. Can't really see how he'll be removed over this seeing he's preparing for and even fuelling this chaos.
Anyway, look at Belarus: a free and fair election was won by an ~%80 margin by a Trump-like figure. Big deal, he still is in the process of getting removed from office.
Macron just last week welcomed the 20% Belarus loser as the "President-elect" to France, and refuses to recognize the Trump-like winner. That's Color Revolution 101: the election really doesn't matter, what matters is its legitimacy. Protests, the media, and any kind of election problems all help to delegitimatize an election, and allow Trump-like figures to be removed in the name of "integrity" should they actually win. This playbook works.
As I've said elsewhere, I think Biden will win big electorally, including on Nov. 3rd, so all of this ground-preparation will ultimately not be needed. Better safe than sorry though…
This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
This reminds me of the California/Australia wildfires. They're the result of a whole cascade of problems, from global warming to the details of under-supported local firefighting infrastructure, but those at the top aren't interested in any of those until they start to feel the heat approach them. I think the possibility of election "chaos" is starting to look real; you've already had this year "armed protestors occu…
Can I get a link? I must have missed this one and google isn't helping me, it sounds fascinating though
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> 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…
> 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 pollin…
No, but you did get what I'm saying with this next quote:
> 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?
Every individual decision is moderated by noise, lag, etc, but fundamentally yes this conclusion seems to be getting more and more valid. I've been trying to see the other dimensions but have been coming up increasingly short. For example when he's asked about his Covid response - he always comes back to talking about banning travel from China. It seems the only way he knows how to make policy is to claim some group is responsible for the problem, and exclude them. The concept of attacking the details of problem itself is beyond him.
So the deeper problem isn't merely that Trump has racist tendencies, but rather than it's the only lens through which he sees the world. In his mind, every problem is due to bad people disrupting things for good people. Stop the bad people and things will be good. But the world is much more complex than that.
I guess if you still believe his China policies, then it's possible to support his approach without being racist yourself. The problem is those policies also reek of the simple minded thinking of racism - tariffs to keep out bad Chinese goods, don't care about Hong Kong because it's Chinese, blaming Chinese apps specifically rather than data collection in general - and they will all be long term strategic failures that miss the big picture.
> 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.
If it were just the way he communicated I would get over it. But the real problem is the rejection of experts. He basically kneecapped the entire federal response, for which we've been paying a large amount of taxes, in favor of letting Covid spread unchecked. He's the leader and his job is to lead everyone - the "both sides" argument doesn't hold water. The standard politician thing would have been to defer to the experts and make sure he himself couldn't be blamed for errors. This culture is itself suboptimal, but would have produced much better results than what we got.
If he had listened to any experts, Trump could have easily gotten the wartime president boost rather than presiding over a needless disaster. The lack of PPE specifically would have dovetailed nicely into his call for domestic manufacturing, but instead crickets. If he were anything besides an empty suit, he would have figured this out by now.
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This is why TJ needs a better history curriculum. Support for confederate statues is not support for history or even support for Lee himself. The AHA even put out a statement to clarify since people don’t seem to ask historians what they think about the subject.
What is it support for and why do historians have special access to the internal motivations of contemporary protesters?
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> 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 pollin…
> 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). No, but you did get what I'm saying with this next quote: > I interpret this to mean that you are unable to see how someone could possibly evaluate the multidimensional nature of Donald Trump…
Donald Trump's full capabilities are unknown to you. At best, you can form a model of them based on observations, but this also has a dependency on the comprehensiveness and accuracy (unintentional bias due to interpretation) of your observations.
> So the fundamental isn't merely that Trump has racist tendencies, but rather than it's the only lens through which he sees the world.
With all due respect, this seems hyperbolic, to be generous.
> In his mind, every problem is due to bad people disrupting things for good people.
This is speculation.
> But the world is much more complex than that.
This seems ironic.
> I do get if you're still hanging your hat on his China policies
This is a figure of speech that typically implies certain things.
> then it's possible to agree with his approach without being personally racist.
One can also be not racist and disagree with his China policies.
> Although those policies also reek of the simple minded thinking of racism - tariffs to keep out bad Chinese goods, don't care about Hong Kong because it's Chinese, blaming Chinese apps specifically rather than data collection in general
This is your personal interpretation.
> and they will all be long term strategic failures that miss the forest for the trees
This is a prediction of the future.
> He basically kneecapped the entire federal response, which we've been paying a large amount of taxes for, in favor of letting Covid spread unchecked.
This is suggestive that you posses highly accurate knowledge of the incredibly complex causation behind America's sub-optimal performance, and that there weren't many mistakes all over the place, as well as lacking acknowledgement of vast uncertainty involved, in general.
> He's the leader and his job is to lead everyone - the "both sides" argument doesn't hold water.
I've made no such argument.
> The standard politician thing would have simply been to defer to the experts and make sure he himself couldn't be blamed.
Perhaps. One might argue that he had an irrational/inappropriate response to fault being near-completely laid at his feet, and responded to that rashly. True causation of human behavior is incredibly complex.
> This culture is itself suboptimal, but would have produced much better results than what we got. Doing so would have also greatly benefited Trump, in that he would have gotten the wartime president boost rather than presiding over a needless disaster.
Agreed. Sometimes life sucks.
> If he were anything besides an empty suit, he would have wised up by now.
Perhaps, but this again speculates about the comprehensive nature of Donald Trump, as well as what optimum behavior is under the current circumstances.
I see where you're coming from - generally, your points are reasonable. Something for you to consider though, is the complexity involved in how people react to not just what is said, but how it is said. I very much do not like how you, or the media, or politicians describe reality. This would be an example of where I agree with one of your points: "This culture is itself suboptimal." I believe the style of politics and journalism we practice in the West is dishonest & misleading, irresponsible, and dangerous (but the danger in play is not properly realized, because Westerners seem to not like to think terribly deeply about things.....they like to "KISS").
I wonder if my general impression of the entire system, is similar to your impression of Donald Trump: ~a complete joke, no respect whatsoever. I can easily appreciate how people disrespect Trump, but I cannot appreciate when those same people respect the general state of politics in the US.
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Social networks could just disable the Share or Retweet button and I think the problem will solve itself. I miss the old Facebook circa 2007 -- no likes and no shares made it a better experience for me.
I'm old enough to remember "manual retweet", and people still do it on Instagram which has no re-share functionality.
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I'm not sure, you'd have to ask someone who's asking Trump to denounce something he's clearly committed to. I'm asking about conservative groups who have denounced it. I have some faith that conservatism is not aligned with Trumpery.
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…
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This is why TJ needs a better history curriculum. Support for confederate statues is not support for history or even support for Lee himself. The AHA even put out a statement to clarify since people don’t seem to ask historians what they think about the subject.
I agree with that today in 2020, but that’s not what I learned growing up in northern Virginia in the 1990s. I thought nothing of driving in Lee Highway, and didn’t know that all these monuments are created in the 1930s. And that doesn’t even mean Trump’s assertion is even incorrect. Maybe the protesters had the same misconceptions about history as many people who grew up in a fairly liberal place in the 1990s. That…
Thinking nothing of the historical objects around us is not terrible. Most people are ignorant of most things, lord knows I am. A problem arises when people insist that defending confederate statues is protecting history, when if you went and asked the people who actually do history for a living they'd fairly universally disagree.
As for Unite the Right, I'd agree with you that there are people who want the statues to stay up and aren't white supremacists. However, it would not be possible to spend a few hours marching at Unite the Right and not notice the literal Nazi flags, the speakers giving speeches about whiteness, and the marchers shouting "gas the k--es, race war now". At that point, I'd expect an ignorant defender of confederate statues to think "wow, I've made a big mistake" and leave.