James Randi was an inspiration to me. He was one of the many magicians (including Penn Jillette) who also turned their attention toward exposing many paranormal claims. He was a first-rate debunker of those who prey on fear, ignorance and superstition, as well as an entertaining communicator. I was fortunate to be able to see "The Amazing Randi" make a presentation in person at the CSICOP Conference in Buffalo, NY in 1983.
It is awesome to see these charlatans fails so dramatically and so publicly
Below, I've transcribed an excerpt from Eric Weinstein's essay preceding Episode 39 of his excellent podcast, "The Portal." His warnings reminded me of something I often heard when I attended national conventions of Free Press. At those conventions, it was often said that one of the biggest stories is how the press covers the news, but that the press rarely covers how it is covering the news.
Marshall McLuhan['s] famous five word adage, "the medium is the message" can be interpreted as saying that the vehicle of communications is actually likely to be the principal constituent of the payload it delivers . . .
In the news media business, many people think that there is always a search for the most eyeballs. Yet there also arose a concept called the "Friday News Dump," which sought to find the spot in the week where people would give the least attention for the dissemination of bad news. Likewise, print media writers learn to hide their true underlying stories by "burying the lede" when the main story had to be told, but was not favorable to the paper's way of thinking. This would sometimes be handled in what is internally called the "to be sure paragraph," where the author too often effectively confesses the mitigating truth that they had hoped to avoid, at least until the penultimate paragraph many layers deep.
Well, what happens when you can actually calculate where your audience will stop reading, listening, feeling or thinking? Studies have suggested that just over half of all people spend 15 seconds or less reading an article while digitally grazing. Likewise, nearly three out of five link-sharers have not so much as clicked on the headline that they're passing on. . . . This . . . creates a fantastic opportunity for those whose ethics are sufficiently flexible. A particular form of our five word law when applied to news media would be "the headline generates the story" or "the headline is the story." Once this has been discovered, we see that, increasingly, the purpose of the article in our era is not to inform, but to minimally support the desired headline for wide dissemination.
Other forms of this principle are that, at least in the eyes of the weak and the dim, "the slogan is the platform," "accusation generates its own conviction," "the indignation is the reputation," "swarms generate their own consensus," "the messenger is the message" and "the aspiration is the implementation." This also explains the underlying wisdom of the moronic phrase, "not a good look bro." It is often a warning that you're saying something in legacy reality without regard to the optical limits of the situation. Here the most important word may well be "bro." It's a corruption or shortening of brother, letting you know that you are now in an informal world where barely the first three letters will be read before the word becomes too cumbersome to complete.
In an attempt to sum up, then I will leave you with this. There is not only a market for your attention, but one for your inattention as well. Your smartphone may well put all the world's information at your fingertips as is so often remarked upon. But unlike the fabled Library of Alexandria, it puts all the world's disinformation, misinformation, noise and distraction, as well. And what our CEOs and technologists have learned is that your emotions are responsive to objects and not substance when there are cat and GoPro videos to be watched. Increasingly, there will be a war on anyone found to be attempting to traffic in higher recursion limits.
In his analysis of Ibram Kendo's best-selling book, How to be an Anti-Racist, Coleman Hughes points to: 1) unsubstantiated claims, 2) misstated claims and 3) vague terms and 4) absurd claims from Kendi's earlier writings, such as Kendi's earlier belief that "white people are Aliens."
Here is a excerpt from Hughes' discussion:
Kendi says what they probably believe but are too afraid to say namely: "Racial discrimination is not inherently racist." He continues "the defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it's anti-racist. If discrimination is creating inequity then it is racist. The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to pasT discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
In so far as Kendi's book speaks for modern anti-racism then it should be praised for clarifying what the "anti" really means. Fundamentally, the modern anti-racist movement is not against discrimination. It's against inequity which, in many cases, makes it pro-discrimination. The problem with racial equity defined as numerically equal outcomes between races is that it's unachievable.
Without doubt, we have a long way to go in terms of maximizing opportunity for America's most disadvantaged citizens. Many public schools are subpar and some are atrocious. A sizable minority of black children grow up in neighborhoods replete with crime and abandoned buildings, while the majority grow up in single parent homes. Too many black people are behind bars.
All of this is true, yet none of it implies that equal outcomes are either possible or the proper goal. Kendi discusses inequity between ethnic groups, for example, which he views as identical to inequity between racial groups, as problems created by racist public policy. This view commits him to some bizarre conclusions. For example, according to the 2017 census bureau data, the average Haitian American earned just 68 cents for every dollar earned by the average Nigerian American. The average French American earned just 70 cents for every dollar earned by the average Russian American. Similar examples abound, so ask yourself: "Is it more likely that our society imposes policies that discriminate against American descendants of Haiti and France but not Nigeria or Russia? Or that disparities between racial and ethnic groups are normal even in the absence of racist policies?
Kendi's view puts him firmly in the first camp. "To be anti-racist," he writes "is to view the inequities between all racialized ethnic groups," by which he means groups like Haitians and Nigerians, "as problems of policy." Put bluntly, this assumption is indefensible. What would it take to achieve a world of racial equity top-down enforcement of racial quotas? A constitutional amendment banning racial disparity? A department of anti-racism to pre-screen every policy for racially disparate impact? These ideas may sound like they were conjured up to caricature anti-racists as Orwellian super villain, but Kendi has actually suggested them as policy recommendations.
As Hughes explains at the end of his video, Kendi has actually proposed a vast bureaucracy, unaccountable to voters, charged with making sure that no national, state or local law is "racist." This bureaucracy would also be empowered to investigate private businesses and to monitor the speech of public officials to make sure that "racism" (broadly defined by Kendi, to include a complete lack of numerical disparities in hiring) exist.
Hughes ends his video with the following:
How to be an anti-racist is the clearest and most jargon free articulation of modern anti-racism I've read and for that reason alone it's a useful contribution. But the book is poorly argued, sloppily researched insufficiently fact-checked, and occasionally self-contradictory. As a result, it fails to live up to its titular promise, ultimately teaching the reader less about how to be anti-racist than about how to be anti-intellectual.
[From Wikipedia]: Coleman Cruz Hughes (born 1996) is an American writer and opinion columnist on issues related to race and racism at the online magazine Quillette, a fellow and contributing editor at City Journal, and host of the podcast Conversations with Coleman. As Coleman Hughes comments: "What could possible go wrong?"
I participate in an online forum where, most members are knowledgeable of Meyers Briggs Type Inventory. The moderators and the majority of the members call themselves liberals, but are intolerant of any deviation from leftist ideology. Those people aren't liberals.
In the politics sub-forum I routinely criticize Democrats, because I used to be one, and they abandoned me. I refuse to worship at the altar of statism for good reason, and I find the tactics of Democrats infuriating. The precedents that have been set are injurious to our society. Perjury is OK because Trump. Falsifying evidence is OK because Trump. Screaming in people's faces, encouraging your supporters to keep political opponents out of the public space, is disgusting. I'm accused of being a Trump supporter for this. The idea that principles, hence precedents, matter, is justifiably dismissed because Trump.
I recently called out a venemous progressive who said my protestations of impartiality are a fraud, because I only criticize Democrats, therefore I am a Republican partisan. I have paid a heavy price for my obstinacy. My participation has been limited, and I suspect I'm not yet banned only because the forum has become a near-perfect echo chamber. The problem with driving out all opposition so that the only thing left is an echo chamber. That's the first strike of the bell announcing a funeral. If there is no enemy, there's no reason to exist.
I heard Steve Levitt (from Freakonomics fame) discuss this issue on an episode of his new podcast, "People I Mostly Admire." Here's the proposal for changing the high school math requirement for most of us. This is from an organization to which Levitt belongs, 21CMath.org:
We surveyed 900 “Freakonomics” podcast listeners — a pretty nerdy group, we must admit — and discovered that less than 12% used any algebra, trigonometry or calculus in their daily lives. Only 2% use integrals or derivatives, the foundational building blocks of calculus. In contrast, a whopping 66% work with basic analytical software like Microsoft Excel on a daily basis.
When was the last time you divided a polynomial? If you were asked to do so today, would you remember how? For the most part, students are no longer taught to write cursive, how to use a slide rule, or any number of things that were once useful in everyday life. Let’s put working out polynomial division using pencil and paper on the same ash heap as sock darning and shorthand.
What we propose is as obvious as it is radical: to put data and its analysis at the center of high school mathematics.
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James Randi was an inspiration to me. He was one of the many magicians (including Penn Jillette) who also turned their attention toward exposing many paranormal claims. He was a first-rate debunker of those who prey on fear, ignorance and superstition, as well as an entertaining communicator. I was fortunate to be able to see "The Amazing Randi" make a presentation in person at the CSICOP Conference in Buffalo, NY in 1983.
It is awesome to see these charlatans fails so dramatically and so publicly