The confidence attack has a patch: drop electronic voting.
Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
51–60 of 136 posts
Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the reasons you gave: as a litmus test for whether a politician is a statesman or a shill, I look at whether he/she supports public education or not.
Which do you think is more likely to develop students into citizens capable of independent thought: a) Sitting at a desk. Not allowed to talk unless called upon. Exactly following a schedule determined by authority figures. b) Being free to move about the room. Able to choose your activity with your peers.A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by…
I am not downvoting you but I disagree. A friend of mine has two daughter in a Montessori like school. One of them has a young teacher, the other a more experienced one. One of them is severely lacking in basic arithmetic and grammar and the other one is striving.
Anecdata but when I add my experience and feedback from acquaintances in teaching position I conclude that the style doesn't matter as much as the teacher.
Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the reasons you gave: as a litmus test for whether a politician is a statesman or a shill, I look at whether he/she supports public education or not.
You should do some reading on pre-public education America, there actually wasn't much demand for it and private education served communities very well.
Which communities would those be?
Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should do some reading on pre-public education America, there actually wasn't much demand for it and private education served communities very well.
Exactly how well did private education serve black communities in America? That demographic had a >50% illiteracy rate, in 1900. [1] [1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp
You won't get an answer to this.
Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
#55There was one idea that came to mind when I read The Second Half of Watergate Was Bigger, Worse, and Forgotten by the Public posted here 8 days ago [0][1]. The first part of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) requires corporations to keep accurate financial records in order to not be able to hide bribes [2]. If a corporation can be compelled to be truthful in their financial records, then why can't a news organ…
Among other things, this would open the door to the government demand access to the identity of whistleblowers.
It also doesn't actually address the problem. The news media, when properly defined, doesn't actually lie.
Now that statement needs some qualifications: by "news media" I'm referring to Fox News and everything better. Fox, being the worst case here, actually takes great care to label their primetime 360-minutes-hate as opinion. It's just very easy to rephrase a lie: "Is Obama a muslim, or even a vegetarian? These are questions many people are asking!".
It's infowars and the like where actual lying happens. But those programs could just as easily add such caveats. And the sort of campaign this paper mentions simply happens on anonymously registered domains with no business (or any) presence in the US, or entirely on social media.
Ultimately, the problem is people that want to indulge their fantasies, and want to be lied to. No sane person would watch a red-faced lunatic alternatively sell herbal remedies for athlete's foot and accuse Hillary Clinton of running a ring of pedophiles from a pizza place and consider it a quality news source.
Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
#56The only counter-measure that works against polluting the polity with influence operations is earnestly educating people to be critical consumers of information. Why? Because one cannot empower government to counter-message influence operations without risking an abuse of power. My son's middle school appears to be tackling this problem to some degree by teaching students to: (a) not accept 'facts' without multiple s…
A good and important counter-measure, but not the only one. People also need better tools for analyzing and making sense of large quantities of information, especially as it evolves over time. Right now, all we have are search engines and excel spreadsheets, and it's clearly not enough. It's amazing how prophetic Neil Postman's criticism of computers turned out to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxgCoHv_aE Essen…
If only our newspaper organizations took that on more often. I would love to read a media source that just took issues in the spotlight, and just added contextual data, scale comparisons, and analysis to the hot topics.
Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the reasons you gave: as a litmus test for whether a politician is a statesman or a shill, I look at whether he/she supports public education or not.
You should do some reading on pre-public education America, there actually wasn't much demand for it and private education served communities very well.
Pre-public education America was also more rural.
The rise of public education is tied to some degree to industrialization and urbanization in the 19th to early 20th century. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_...). This makes sense as industrialized jobs (even the industrialization that occurred in rural areas) often require more complex skillsets.
As I see it, our society requires more complex skillsets than ever. So the need for an educated population is actually greater today compared even to when public education first rose up.
I'm fine exploring many ways to increase educational opportunity (which may include the inclusion of private firms). But based on the private college market (think diploma mill scams), I'm very distrustful of any politician who thinks that completely dumping education onto the private market with zero oversight is a good idea.
Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
#58The only counter-measure that works against polluting the polity with influence operations is earnestly educating people to be critical consumers of information. Why? Because one cannot empower government to counter-message influence operations without risking an abuse of power. My son's middle school appears to be tackling this problem to some degree by teaching students to: (a) not accept 'facts' without multiple s…
A good and important counter-measure, but not the only one. People also need better tools for analyzing and making sense of large quantities of information, especially as it evolves over time. Right now, all we have are search engines and excel spreadsheets, and it's clearly not enough. It's amazing how prophetic Neil Postman's criticism of computers turned out to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxgCoHv_aE Essen…
>People also need better tools for analyzing and making sense of large quantities of information, especially as it evolves over time. Right now, all we have are search engines and excel spreadsheets, and it's clearly not enough.
Interfaces don't seem to get designed, they just accumulate concretions.
Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
#59The only counter-measure that works against polluting the polity with influence operations is earnestly educating people to be critical consumers of information. Why? Because one cannot empower government to counter-message influence operations without risking an abuse of power. My son's middle school appears to be tackling this problem to some degree by teaching students to: (a) not accept 'facts' without multiple s…
A good and important counter-measure, but not the only one. People also need better tools for analyzing and making sense of large quantities of information, especially as it evolves over time. Right now, all we have are search engines and excel spreadsheets, and it's clearly not enough. It's amazing how prophetic Neil Postman's criticism of computers turned out to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxgCoHv_aE Essen…
> Essentially, he noted how computers gave people tools to produce and consume more information, but not the tools to discern, filter and analyze it more effectively. It's a profound and very important observation.
Is it, really? There's a myriad of analytic tools for every imaginable domain, and even more domain-independent ones. You just need to be skilled enough to use them properly; not because the tools are bad, but because the analysis itself is hard, and even a seemingly simple problem usually needs abstract thinking and domain knowledge.