Really nice piece. Great shout out to Boorstin. I may need to read him. And yes, of all the things, the loss of objectivity may be a top thing I'm saddest about. If you can make them believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities. (Voltaire?) And how do you recover from the destruction of objectivity? Trump caused it, but even when he dies it will last, for a generation at least. How do you come back from that precedent? Ugh.
"We should look out for our own (Americans) before the rest of the world"
So, the whole right wing believes this (fake) girl wasn't being looked out for, yet if it were real we'd see that someone put a life jacket on her, saved the puppy, got her on a raft, and there are adults both behind her and in front of her. Seems like she was taken care of to me.
The political right has long been quick to adopt new communications technologies.
Orwell's ever present viewscreens were inspired, in part, by the system of residential radios distributed by the Nazis that were limited to their approved stations.
Targeted online advertising tech rapidly was enthusiastically adopted by conservatives who'd long appreciated direct mail databased fundraising pioneered by Richard Viguerie.
Authoritarians know how persuasive messages customized to audience can be. ( The differences in Arafat's speeches in Arabic, Hebrew and English are good examples). They are delighted that generative AI techniques have made it economically feasible to serve bespoke realities to audiences of one.
Which reminds me of this irony:
The first prototype electronic newspaper was created at MIT in the mid-80s.
It's main design concept: personalization, its pages filled with articles of interest to the specific reader.
Punchline: Computer-projects, especially of that era, were often whimsically code-named.
Unfortunately, we have all seen this being manipulated by Bannon and Stephen Miller with Trump as their salesman. We saw Bannon & Miller go to Brazil and try to disrupt their country. Bannon kept telling us destruction of our government was and is their plan. The Lincoln Project and The Bulwark have been terrific. More people are joining every day and working to defeat Trump and Authoritarian Government. Today a couple of networks were showing a Trump of Today clip beside a 2016 video of him. Powerful but we need to figure out how to just shut off and quiet down his rhetoric. In 2016 there was a children’s book How to Stop Trump. It had kiddie cartoon pictures of his horrible ideas and at the end it advised he needed tv so much we just had to shut it off.
Can we just FINALLY call them what they are?! They are FACSISTS! They are domestic TERRORISTS! Half of maga belongs in JAIL, not anywhere near the levers of power ANYWHERE in our country, including the shit justices on the so-called "supreme court" who yet again said it doesn't matter if women die.
I have been watching the 6 part documentary on the National Geographic Channel entitled "Hitler:the Lost Tapes of the Third Reich"--it gave me goosebumps to see how closely Trump tracks the tactics and cultlike status of the former Chancellor, especially the part about interviewing attendees of one of his rallies where they could not recall the content of the speech but were impressed with it nonetheless
In “It can’t happen here” a similar scene occurs when a character attending a political rally was very excited about what the candidate said, but when he was asked what the candidate said, he couldn’t remember. Sinclair Lewis wrote that in 1935.
no we cannot control the weather but some scientists think we can control the dircetion of a hurricane. by using mirrors to direct extra sunlight at the ocean surface making the water hotter. Which the hurricane will follow. I saw it on a pbs special about climate change and some unique engineering that could be done. also it mentions since a big bunch of mirrors is slow to move no chance of making it a weapon was a comment I remember from the show.
I'm not sure how you combat such a thing in our general populace. How do we fix it? Perhaps the new podcast can offer a solutions discussion? Clearly education isn't the answer since many of the worst practitioners of this mis- and disinformation are people highly educated who use it to manipulate voters into placing them into positions of power. I wish the FCC could get some teeth.
1) What can I add that’s not blindingly obvious? The Trumplicants don’t care if the image is fake or not because they believe that if it wasn’t that specific thing, it would be something just as bad. So maybe that little girl isn’t real, but there are undoubtedly many such little girls suffering from the hurricane all because of the heartless, evil Democrats. Just like when some voter fraud conspiracy theory fell apart because of a lack of evidence, the same folks didn’t care because they just KNEW that there was some real voter fraud conspiracy out there that we just hadn’t heard about yet.
In a sane world someone who was fooled by a fake image would suffer some degree of embarrassment and be forced to admit their naiveté. But the Trumplicants have long since passed that point. Some Trumplicant could announce BEFORE publishing a fake image that it was a fake that they had just created, and the rest of the cult would accept it as a legitimate reflection of reality. Just like Trump could tell all of us BEFORE the election that he was going to claim fraud and how he was going to do it, and it made not one whit of difference to the cultists.
And even when they admit it’s a fake, it doesn’t matter to them because the fake image is serving some higher purpose in their minds. That’s what happens when you believe that the means justifies the ends.
2) But at least thanks to MTG, I’ll know who to blame the next time my golf round is rained out. I’ll blame THEM.
Really nice piece. Great shout out to Boorstin. I may need to read him. And yes, of all the things, the loss of objectivity may be a top thing I'm saddest about. If you can make them believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities. (Voltaire?) And how do you recover from the destruction of objectivity? Trump caused it, but even when he dies it will last, for a generation at least. How do you come back from that precedent? Ugh.
And THIS is why AI will be the death of us. NOT because it will develop a malevolent will to destroy humanity but because it is an exquisitely finely-tuned weapon to be wielded by PEOPLE of ill will. They can lie better and they can digest more data to get to exactly where you are with their lies.
Disturbing reading indeed. And it’s disturbing that people are so invested in their preferred truth that when the lie is revealed they still cling to it. By the way, it’s Hannah Arendt, not Ardent. I think autocorrect slipped it by.
Really nice piece. Great shout out to Boorstin. I may need to read him. And yes, of all the things, the loss of objectivity may be a top thing I'm saddest about. If you can make them believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities. (Voltaire?) And how do you recover from the destruction of objectivity? Trump caused it, but even when he dies it will last, for a generation at least. How do you come back from that precedent? Ugh.
Cf Fake Art: Just looking at the water surface on the background, one can tell it is a fake.
"We should look out for our own (Americans) before the rest of the world"
So, the whole right wing believes this (fake) girl wasn't being looked out for, yet if it were real we'd see that someone put a life jacket on her, saved the puppy, got her on a raft, and there are adults both behind her and in front of her. Seems like she was taken care of to me.
The political right has long been quick to adopt new communications technologies.
Orwell's ever present viewscreens were inspired, in part, by the system of residential radios distributed by the Nazis that were limited to their approved stations.
Targeted online advertising tech rapidly was enthusiastically adopted by conservatives who'd long appreciated direct mail databased fundraising pioneered by Richard Viguerie.
Authoritarians know how persuasive messages customized to audience can be. ( The differences in Arafat's speeches in Arabic, Hebrew and English are good examples). They are delighted that generative AI techniques have made it economically feasible to serve bespoke realities to audiences of one.
Which reminds me of this irony:
The first prototype electronic newspaper was created at MIT in the mid-80s.
It's main design concept: personalization, its pages filled with articles of interest to the specific reader.
Punchline: Computer-projects, especially of that era, were often whimsically code-named.
This project was called NewsPeek.
The Orwellian reference isn't so funny anymore.
Until we read Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951) and The Human Condition (1958), we are part of the problem.
Wow, you're super dark today and sadly I agree with you on the AI stuff. Who'd have ever thought we'd live in such dystopian times
Unfortunately, we have all seen this being manipulated by Bannon and Stephen Miller with Trump as their salesman. We saw Bannon & Miller go to Brazil and try to disrupt their country. Bannon kept telling us destruction of our government was and is their plan. The Lincoln Project and The Bulwark have been terrific. More people are joining every day and working to defeat Trump and Authoritarian Government. Today a couple of networks were showing a Trump of Today clip beside a 2016 video of him. Powerful but we need to figure out how to just shut off and quiet down his rhetoric. In 2016 there was a children’s book How to Stop Trump. It had kiddie cartoon pictures of his horrible ideas and at the end it advised he needed tv so much we just had to shut it off.
Can we just FINALLY call them what they are?! They are FACSISTS! They are domestic TERRORISTS! Half of maga belongs in JAIL, not anywhere near the levers of power ANYWHERE in our country, including the shit justices on the so-called "supreme court" who yet again said it doesn't matter if women die.
If "Half of maga belongs in JAIL", the other half belongs in church. They have determined that god gave them the country and they want it back.
I have been watching the 6 part documentary on the National Geographic Channel entitled "Hitler:the Lost Tapes of the Third Reich"--it gave me goosebumps to see how closely Trump tracks the tactics and cultlike status of the former Chancellor, especially the part about interviewing attendees of one of his rallies where they could not recall the content of the speech but were impressed with it nonetheless
In “It can’t happen here” a similar scene occurs when a character attending a political rally was very excited about what the candidate said, but when he was asked what the candidate said, he couldn’t remember. Sinclair Lewis wrote that in 1935.
I read the book in 2015 when Trump first ran and ol' Sinclair had him pegged
no we cannot control the weather but some scientists think we can control the dircetion of a hurricane. by using mirrors to direct extra sunlight at the ocean surface making the water hotter. Which the hurricane will follow. I saw it on a pbs special about climate change and some unique engineering that could be done. also it mentions since a big bunch of mirrors is slow to move no chance of making it a weapon was a comment I remember from the show.
I'm not sure how you combat such a thing in our general populace. How do we fix it? Perhaps the new podcast can offer a solutions discussion? Clearly education isn't the answer since many of the worst practitioners of this mis- and disinformation are people highly educated who use it to manipulate voters into placing them into positions of power. I wish the FCC could get some teeth.
A few comments...
1) What can I add that’s not blindingly obvious? The Trumplicants don’t care if the image is fake or not because they believe that if it wasn’t that specific thing, it would be something just as bad. So maybe that little girl isn’t real, but there are undoubtedly many such little girls suffering from the hurricane all because of the heartless, evil Democrats. Just like when some voter fraud conspiracy theory fell apart because of a lack of evidence, the same folks didn’t care because they just KNEW that there was some real voter fraud conspiracy out there that we just hadn’t heard about yet.
In a sane world someone who was fooled by a fake image would suffer some degree of embarrassment and be forced to admit their naiveté. But the Trumplicants have long since passed that point. Some Trumplicant could announce BEFORE publishing a fake image that it was a fake that they had just created, and the rest of the cult would accept it as a legitimate reflection of reality. Just like Trump could tell all of us BEFORE the election that he was going to claim fraud and how he was going to do it, and it made not one whit of difference to the cultists.
And even when they admit it’s a fake, it doesn’t matter to them because the fake image is serving some higher purpose in their minds. That’s what happens when you believe that the means justifies the ends.
2) But at least thanks to MTG, I’ll know who to blame the next time my golf round is rained out. I’ll blame THEM.
Really nice piece. Great shout out to Boorstin. I may need to read him. And yes, of all the things, the loss of objectivity may be a top thing I'm saddest about. If you can make them believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities. (Voltaire?) And how do you recover from the destruction of objectivity? Trump caused it, but even when he dies it will last, for a generation at least. How do you come back from that precedent? Ugh.
And THIS is why AI will be the death of us. NOT because it will develop a malevolent will to destroy humanity but because it is an exquisitely finely-tuned weapon to be wielded by PEOPLE of ill will. They can lie better and they can digest more data to get to exactly where you are with their lies.
Boorstin's The Image and Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics << https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ >> are ur-texts for whatever's happening right now .
Disturbing reading indeed. And it’s disturbing that people are so invested in their preferred truth that when the lie is revealed they still cling to it. By the way, it’s Hannah Arendt, not Ardent. I think autocorrect slipped it by.