U.S. Presidential Debate

The one thing that I really took away from the debate is: Canadian debates are horrible! Obviously it is much harder to moderate more than two people, but everything was better. You where able to hear the candidates and they could rebuttal points. What a major difference!

Knowledgeable or Intelligent

Although now-a-days people are more generally knowledgeable (they mostly know the moon isn't made of cheese, aliens don't live on Mars, there is an Ozone layer, things are made of molecules and atoms etc) are they more 'practically intelligent'?

Firstly what do I mean by 'practically intelligent'. Let define it as: The ability to solve a problem or come up with a view with the use of a lot of information some of which isn't self-consistent (and therefore wrong). For instance someone who was reasonably practically intelligent would conclude that SUV's are a ridiculous waste of resources (despite having the opinion, perhaps, that they are a fun and comfortable ride).

I think that although people are more knowledgeable (compared with a few hundred tears ago) they may be less practically intelligent. Why? Because they learn primarily by being dictated to. Humans are (as all successful animals) are curious creatures with an innate desire to experience and learn things. But when you spend the first ~18 years of your life being dictated everything from your knowledge to your spiritual beliefs coupled with constantly being bombarded by advertisements twisting your emotions and tying them to products you loose your curiosity (not to mention in most cases your attention span). All of the things in regular peoples lives direct them to be good conformists who consume. TV shows you what you are suppose to act like, look like and even think!

This is all well and good, but where is the evidence? Look at our political system and our news. They are riddled with inconsistencies, loose truths and plain lies. If people could think for themselves no politician could promise the world and get away with it, people would realize it is nonsense. But they don't.

Know Your Enemy, Know Yourself

The U.S. is fighting the war on terror in all the wrong ways and I think it's because they don't know their strengths and weaknesses, but they are learning. So far the U.S. has used its military might to fight the poorly defined war on terror. They are loosing the war and their shirts! Bush is like a drunk rich kid with a credit card ( see US Dept of State - Bush Proposes $2.4 Trillion Budget Emphasizing Defense, Security, where you can find out about his $521 BILLION deficit JUST IN 2004! To put that into perspective, he increased the public dept by 12.5% in 1 year! Fact-Check: Debt!).

The U.S. real muscle is in it's wallet. Instead of spending billions killing people, it could have used that money to build schools and hospitals for the people that hate them (like the way a company will spend money to improve it's image to a demographic), they wouldn't hate you anymore! Also changing the foreign policy so that you may not make as much money, but don't make the people soo angry they start terrorizing you would probably be cheaper. Know yourself, if you are good with money, buy the people off. Know you enemy, if they are willing to blow themselves up they be afraid of you blowing them up.

Diligent Fact-Checker

I have a crazy idea I want to play with. Fact-checking is inherently a bad endeavor for humans since we like to believe what we already "know." Also a good/thorough job take a long time. But somethings can be fact-checked less painfully (at least in theory), like official things with transcripts (he voted for, he served with, etc). So why not design an A.I. to fact-check these things. At least you could check when and what people have said on public record. Obviously it has limits since you can't ask a question that requires the interpretation of a bill (though in theory you could fact-check things like budget changes to the area in question etc). E.g. "Did Bush say he would toughen air pollution standards on power generation?" Answer: "Yes in a speech on [....]," I don't remember the date. Follow-up: "What has he done?" It can't go into depth, i.e. you'll still have to interpret some of the bill that he passed etc, but it can tell you if he's spent more, hired more people, commissioned anything etc. I think I'd be a useful tool for everyone and isn't far out of our capabilities. What do you say? (Ross you're the expert.)

Hypocrisy

Here is something I just want to bring to peoples attention. The outing of a gay person, I believe, is usually wrong since everyone has a right to privacy. But the exception is when it is something that goes beyond just being gay. For instance if you voted against gay marriage and are gay (Outing Mr. Schrock (washingtonpost.com)).

Propaganda and Satire

These seem (to me) to be the tools (mostly) of the in-power and the others, respectively. Propaganda works great to convince people of something that isn't true without evidence. But the real key to its success now is the effort put into rapid response instead of fact-checking (as this most recent and blown-up story shows http://www.fair.org/activism/cbs-memos-knox.html). But the really neat trick is the way the rapid response is used. You would think if you reported on something really early people would be especially skeptical of the news, but this is not the case. The opposite seems to be true. Most people seem to think are are getting in on a new secret even though it may be false. But the "coup de grace" is how the unverified piece of information then get readily repeated and before the facts are made public a new rapid piece of information is fabricated. Then all attention focuses on the "breaking" story and the last piece of info is pushed aside. Then when its validity is know it doesn't matter since most people will take the piece of information they have had longer as true.

The only effective counter to propaganda seems to be satire. When the facts are presented in such a way that the target end up looking or sounding absolutely silly, and the foolishness of the propaganda is fully revealed with a laugh, that's when minds change. I wonder how much of the "Reagan" programming could be undone by watching "Eddie Murphy Raw"? I guess that's why The Daily Show is doing so well. With the Republicans pumping out an abundance of rapid-nonsense, sequencing is enough to get a great chuckle.

Embryonic Stem Cells Politics

This is a crazy debate mostly because the info people have on this issue is soo poor. The best example of this is in the fact that people believe that in the U.S. you can't do stem cell research. Ha!G. W. Bush didn't stop embryonic stem cell research he just put the earnings into private hands. The press release that he sent says it all, in very sneaky terms. He declared that public funds can only be used on existing cell lines (60 of them). This does not exclude using private money for the research. So what? What if the private sector does stem cell research?
Well how much would you pay to re-attach your spinal cord or cure Alzheimer's? Well if a private company owns the rights to these cures they will be much more expensive than if the research is done publicly. So the pharmaceutical industry supports G.W. Bush's plan since it gives them almost exclusive rights since no one else can afford to do the research. Nice trick huh? As always Bush is looking out for his sponsors not his people.

Reporting Tailored News

The definition of news basically says any new information is news. In an election many peoples' jobs are to generate news. They do this mostly by making allegations about others. But here is where an interesting dilemma happens that is best illustrated by an example. Recently this came out: 6th paragraph. In it Kerry states the vice president had 5 deferments for his military service. The news is what Kerry said (and he did say that), but is it true? The facts are slow to catch up to the constant barrage of new news. So something is said and that's the news but whether it is: a blatant lie, a twisting of the truth (though clever wording) or true isn't know when the news breaks. By the time the facts catch up the message is already perceived as truthful (human nature) since it was heard soo many times. This means most of the stuff said in campaigns is said to twist public opinion fully knowing as long as something else is said before the facts catch up the public won't notice. That's why they keep firing allegations so often. If they stop the truth may come out.

A prime example is when the report was issued saying terror was down. All Republican stood up and said it was because of them and Bush. But when it was revealed to be a mistake and terror was up, well that's not the Republican's fault!

So what do you do: report everything and hope the public catches on (ha!)? Do you only report the statements that can be verified and publish their accuracy with the statement (in which case you'd be censoring until you verified the statement)?
In the U.K. the BBC have reporters who will jump on people who make false claims and not let them get away with false statements once the truth is known, but the U.S. media sponsors the Republican party (see the Simpsons: Krusty for Congress... and this funny story and G.W. Bush and Words or Conventional Wisdom). So what do the Americans do?