Free Speech vs Misinformation and Social Media vs Broadcast TV

Kevin Drum comes down firmly for unregulated speech on social media, while completely ignoring a variety of issues.


We must distinguish between free speech (ideas that challenge us) and mis-information.  And we need to do that in the context of an election that was heavily influenced by a foreign state organization, and produced a result that is seriously screwed up.  While it's screwed up in the sense that a Republican won the election, that is not the issue.  The issue is that a racist, corrupt, "grab em by the pussy" person won the election.

The scale of the media system is vastly important here.  Not only does Facebook reach a broader geography than TV, it also has vastly higher bandwidth.  Facebook can deliver at least thousands of variants of a single message.  It can deliver millions of distinctly different messages.  And a different subset of those millions of messages are delivered to each individual, allowing the individually most effective messages to be delivered.

The lack of human oversight in determining what gets published and consumed is also an issue.    The inability to determine and hold accountable the author of a message is also a problem.


Here's an example of the difference between free speech and mis-information:

A couple-few years ago, climate deniers stated that the climate had not changed in 17 years.  This is not a valid logical argument because the starting point was a cherry picked anomalously warm year.

In the local newspaper a couple of weeks ago, someone stated that the Swedish economy had grown more slowly than the U.S. economy because the Swedish economy is more socialist than the U.S. economy.  This is misinformation because it is not a valid logical argument.  Economic growth is strongly dependent on population growth and the U.S. population has grown faster than the Swedish population. 

These are not "ideas that challenge us".  And the flood of misinformation blocks the transmission of ideas that challenge us.

Deconstructing Misinformation: UBI

My local newspaper republished an editorial from the Orange County Register arguing against Universal Basic Income (UBI).  Let's deconstruct it to extract the basic arguments and see where it falls on the Misinformation scale.

"there will never be enough money to endlessly provide a financial boost to every American who can use one"
This is a straw man argument.  "Basic Income" is not "endlessly provide".  The fact that this argument exists suggest the authors are primarily interested in spreading misinformation rather than having a meaningful discussion.

"Supporters don’t suggest using the money to replace existing welfare payments, but to supplement them"
This is also a straw man argument.  There are lots of different supporters with lots of different proposals and beliefs.  Yang specifically proposes offering people a choice between the UBI or the welfare payments.  From the point of view of any single recipient, the welfare payments are either replaced, or they aren't supplemented.

"These “free money” programs only diminish the value of work, education and investment. Anyone would enjoy having an extra 500 bucks in their wallet every month, but the way to prosper is to learn new skills, work hard and invest"
Here we finally have a real argument.  There's no evidence to back up this statement, but a theory is presented that can be studied and evaluated.
For the middle and upper classes, the UBI wouldn't make much difference.  Basically, society will adapt to the UBI.  Employers will pay well paid and adequately paid employees a bit less.  For people having a hard time making ends meet, a UBI would give them an opportunity to learn new skills, and give some an opportunity to experience investing.  Education and investing would remain valuable.  Being a doctor would still earn far more than UBI would provide.

The real value of work is how it fulfills us.  We frequently find people volunteering their time, not because the unpaid work is providing a monetary value, but because the volunteer enjoys working on a project with other people.  The UBI provides a bit more leeway to choose between more fulfilling work, more education, or more investment.  The greater choice adds value.

Yang points out how UBI increases the value of work because welfare payments are reduced when one gets more money from work, decreasing the incentive to work harder.  But UBI payments don't go away just because someone works two jobs.

Yang links to the research.

"Instead of figuring out new ways to redistribute existing wealth, policy makers need to figure out ways to boost business investment and job opportunities"
This isn't actually an argument against UBI.  But redistributing existing wealth helps boost business investment.  Businesses will react to an increase in money that is more likely to be spent by investing to capture more of that cash flow.  Creating a larger middle class improves the ability of the middle class to invest and create new job opportunities.


So the one argument the Orange County Registrar provides lacks a lot of the relevant context.  The OCR states a conclusion without having educating themselves on the existing research.  So this is pretty much mis-information.

Politics and Stupidity

Vox reports on a Poll stating that 'a full 74 percent of Republicans surveyed — believe it’s “likely” or “somewhat likely” that President Donald Trump’s offices were wiretapped during the 2016 presidential campaign.'  Vox then says 'it’s not because they are “stupid” or willfully ignorant.'

I call bullshit.  If you can't figure out when a person who lies constantly is lying, you are stupid.  Consider the following oft-repeated lies from one person:

• Obama was born in Kenya.
• The Mexicans will pay for the wall.
• My health care plan will reduce costs and raise coverage for everyone.
• Obama wiretapped me.

If you can't figure out for yourself that those lies are lies, you are stupid.

The reporter, Brian Resnick, also normalizes the Republicans and Trump.  "It infects liberals too. When Gallup polled Americans the week before and the week after the presidential election, Democrats and Republicans flipped their perceptions of the economy. Nothing had actually changed about the economy. What changed was which team was winning."

But that is not at all the same thing.  To create an equivalence, you need to find a person that is repeating a set of obvious lies over and over again, and then show that Democrats in general are willing to believe one of the more recent lies.

It seems probable that Mr. Resnick is using ambiguous definitions of "intelligent" and "stupid" to draw his conclusions.  A much better article of his sheds some light on this.

If you break down "intelligence" into more granular and well defined concepts, you can then make more convincing statements.  In particular, Mr. Resnick means to say "It's not because they haven't memorized a lot of facts".  But "It is because they are not curious as to what the truth is."

Where I come from, rote memorization is not a sign of intelligence, but curiosity about how the world works is a sign of intelligence.  It is true, as Resnick says, that "To be curious, you don’t need to be a genius."  But it is also true that to be a genius, you must be curious.

Feel the Burn

I was listening to Sarah Silverman interview Bernie Sanders.  He makes some good points, but there were a couple of contradictions that bothered me.

At one point he states that Trump Supporters are smart and hurting and not racist, but did not vote for Democrats because they do not trust the Democrats because the Democrats did not stand up to Wall Street.  Sounds great.  Except that they then turned around and voted for a party that has never stood up to Wall Street by electing a man who lies constantly.  I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.  If you are smart and cared about the working class, Trump is not the person you turn to.  You turn to Trump if you're an idiot or you're racist.

Maybe Bernie feels he has to say something that at first glance sounds politically correct. Maybe it's our form of a progressive elite dog whistle.  Well call them "smart" and we won't call them "racist", but we're kinda depending on the fact that they're too stupid to make a logical inference.

Also, he's quite happy to distinguish between Us Americans and Those Foreigners.  I think that contradicts his message of cooperation.

I'd like to see a debate between Bernie Sanders and Brad DeLong.  Sanders claims we are losing jobs to foreigners because of NAFTA.  DeLong points out NAFTA has had essentially no effect.  Sanders would be much more convincing if he argued that the Oligarchs had maintained a strong dollar and thus driven manufacturing out of the United States.

The reason we progressives lost the last election was not because we are liberal elites who hurt the feelings of the white working class.  It's not because the white working class is ignored and can't be heard in Washington.  It's not because the white working class doesn't trust Democrats or Democrats don't work on behalf of the white working class.

It's because the political class has learned how to use the new publishing infrastructure.  I first saw this at Watts Up With That, a website where some weatherman reposts other people's content about climate change, but Watts puts a Denier spin on each re-post.  It's a nice study in how to make a steady stream of income with minimal work.  He has a large crowd of un-critical viewers happy to engage in his conspiracy theory.  Conspiracy theories are entertaining, and there is a large population of viewers that like to interact with fake news.

Breitbart and the alt-right are similar.  They like to re-publish news articles with "analysis" framing the articles to agree with their beliefs while ignoring any actual evidence.

And other advertisers have been learning how to refine their click bait.  

Fox News and right-wing radio have done this for a long time, but Watts Up With That and Breitbart require far less capital.

The key insight of Trump (or maybe Bannon) was that nearly 50% of people who vote are happy to engage with properly presented click-bait.  And then they just opened up the spigots.  Breitbart and similar outlets created click-bait on any subject they could think of (pizzagate!) and pushed it out over and over.  Right-wing media and talk-radio followed along because they were picking up really cheap content that they could re-publish.  Smart kids in Macedonia figured out this formula for creating click-bait and joined in the game.

The KGB and China helped refine some of the techniques.  Keep pushing out lies.  Keep on the attack.

One really effective technique is the Turn the Tables technique.  If attacked, repeat the exact same attack back at the attacker.  If Trump is accused of being a misogynist for sexual assault, then accuse Clinton of being a misogynist for staying married to her adulterous husband.  If one side claims the election was influenced by Russian hackers, claim the election was influenced by massive voter fraud.

It doesn't matter if the first attacker has evidence and the counter-attacker has no evidence. The beauty of this technique is that the weaker party then gets to turn around and claim that both sides constantly attack and demonize each other and thus that both sides must be creating fake news.

So, we've lost the war.  Democracy is dead.  Democracy depended on relatively expensive communications channels where a premium for Truth was able to minimize the competing Fake News.  (Although 1930's Germany is a notable exception.)  The internet made communication cheap and allowed a flood of Fake News to compete.  And now we see that the voting populace is really not capable of evaluating two contradicting news articles to determine which is valid. 

Ranked Choice Voting: The Time is Now

Progressives are currently gazing into their navels trying to figure out what they could have changed about the recent presidential campaign.  You hear a gnashing and a wailing: "Oh, we should have listened to the White Working Class better.  Oh, if only Clinton had done a better job of communicating her policies.  Oh, if only we had communicated our policies better to the White Working Class."

But communicating better is not an option.  The Democratic priorities were communicated. Many failed to listen due to apathy.  Communicating better isn't going to solve electoral apathy.  Many failed to listen due to being unwilling to invest enough effort into the election. Many refused to listen.  The alt-right does not care what any Progressive has to say.  They will not listen to Progressives.

Since we cannot reach a large part of the electorate, our only choice is to improve voter turnout for the portion of the electorate that we can reach.

Let's also be clear that write-in votes for Bernie Sanders were not the problem.  And votes for Jill Stein were not the problem.  People trying to express their preferences is not a problem.  The problem is that our current voting system does not allow people to express their preferences.

That's why it's time for us to turn to Ranked Choice Voting.

Ranked Choice Voting would have allowed Jill Stein voters to state their clear preference for Stein while allowing them to also point out that they prefer Clinton to Trump.  Ranked Choice Voting would quite likely have handed the election to Clinton.  (Yes, sure, Trump would have run a different campaign if the rules were different.  More likely, he wouldn't have run a campaign at all if Ranked Choice Voting were in effect.)

Ranked Choice Voting allows voters to fully express their preferences.  People who thought that neither Clinton nor Trump should be president may well have not voted.  Ranked Choice Voting gives these people a voice.  Without Ranked Choice Voting, there is only a small benefit to voting for a minor party candidate.  Recording that you would like the Green Party to be a larger party does perform some small amount of advertising.  But since most people need to vote for the better of the two mainstream candidates, we can't obtain a clear signal as to how important a minor party is to most of America.  With Ranked Choice Voting we could obtain a much clearer signal.  We would see far more votes for minor party candidates.  

As the strength and preference of minor party candidates became apparent, a variety of effects would occur to further increase the number of votes those parties receive.  First, the media would pay more attention to the parties.  Second, as people see the real strength of the parties, they see that supporting those parties is more of a viable option than they had previously considered.  Third, as multiple options become more viable, researching the available options and switching between options becomes more likely.

Sure the potential exists for weakening the Democratic Party.  But in order to be a viable party, the Democrats have no choice.  And the increased voice that is given to various factions among the Progressives will only strengthen us overall.

WASP Supremacy under Attack

I came across an item in a comments section today that I think speaks volumes. 

 "I am not a traditional GOP Constituent, I am a perfect TRUMP backer as a Nationalist...I loathed Bush 1, loved Bill Clinton in his first term and was disgusted with him in his second for the sexual shenanigans and lies, I was a reluctant Bush 2 supporter in 00 but him being a Texan won me over then appreciated him mostly after 9/11 then disgusted with his second term as I felt he was chasing his Dads war.

"As a cultural Texan WASP middle class dude from a family of military, police and fire fighters something has gone horribly wrong under Obama in my opinion as well as millions of others like me that went Trump. There seemed to be a sort of anger after Obamas first election that I noticed a "payback" attitude and theme among his supporters in his coalition that I first dismissed but as 2010 came and we had the Cambridge Police incident and Obama began taking sides I noticed a troubling trend. Liberals became emboldened to attack middle flyover America in schools, Hollywood movies and television and even sports as a cry for Social Justice. Bakers were sued, shut down and lost their businesses for their Christian faith and one woman was jailed at a county clerks office. But when it came to Islam Obama and liberals have developed a double standard and protective shield as they continue to import more and more of them under the guise of diversity and multiculturalism . 

"Now we see almost regular terrorist attacks by Muslims that are almost always hidden for what they are by a media that sympathizes with Obamas worldview. Now I cannot watch football without Kaepernick kneeling on our flag and anthem for a cause he cannot explain and police officers are being ambushed without warning just sitting in their cars. Under Obama I believe that something "broke" in our political discourse and Trump is my voice that I feel tread upon and under siege. "

Critical Thinking

I've been seeing a lot of opinions and comments online and in discussions with co-workers that seem to show a decided lack of critical thinking.  It's time to start fighting back against that crap.

For this blog post, we will start with an opinion piece published in the New York Times yesterday.

"We are supposed to be open to hearing opposing views."  Absolutely.  Present us with a well argued, well stated opposing view, and we will be happy to listen.  But bullying is not an "opposing view".  And going around stating that "The world is flat" is not an opposing view that we need to be open to hearing.  "Hilary wants to take our guns" is not an opposing view.

"I felt strongly that as a country we needed to focus on domestic issues, and for me, the Republicans were more prepared to do that."  That's a fine opinion to hold.  However, endorsing a racist candidate and rewarding him for being a bully is not a means justified by your stated desired end.  [And, for the record, the Democrats have been trying to focus on domestic issues for the past eight years.  Health insurance, minimum wage, better access to education for better 21st century jobs, equal pay for women, investment in infrastructure, good jobs in high tech renewable resources instead of trying to prop up jobs in the dying coal industry... those are all domestic issues.]

"I have been labeled “racist,” “sexist” and “xenophobic” on Facebook. I have been called a “white without a conscious,” a “misogynist,” a “bigot” and a “barbarian” online by people all over the country. ... My father is Hispanic. ... My mother was raised by her stepfather, who is African-American and the only maternal grandfather I have known. ... My family and friends come from all ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations."
And yet you rewarded a racist, misogynist, bigoted bully by endorsing him to be president of the United States.  By your actions, you stated that it is okay to call your father a "rapist" and to call women "nasty".  But suddenly when you feel insulted it's no longer fun and games?  Look at how you feel.  That's how Hispanics, women, and Muslims felt.  And yet you didn't stand up for their concerns.  Why should we stand up for your concerns now?

"We all have reasons for casting our votes. What I do not understand is hatred toward one another."  Your actions are making my life more difficult.  Your actions are reducing my future income.  And you don't understand why I would strongly dislike you for your actions?  Your actions are putting my mixed-race children in danger.  If you want to play fast and loose with your life, that's your privilege.  But when you cross the line and start playing fast and loose with my life, we are never going to be best buddies.

"We have spent too much time in our own bubbles..."  There's that false equivalence I love so much.  No.  You have spent too much time in your bubble.  I do read Breitbart, and WUWT, the Wall Street Journal, and the National Review.  I have watched Alex Jones.  I have sought out the alt-right conspiracy theories and the most rational arguments I can find from the right on various policy issues.  I did read the Republican Party platform.  I did listen to you.  I did carefully evaluate your arguments.  It's time for you to get out of your bubble and start to think critically.

"How can we assume we know someone based on the color of their skin, their religion, or their political choices?"  My preferred candidate for president did not assume we can know someone based on the color of their skin; yours did.  We have strongly agreed in America that there are strong limits as to how much your choice of religion can affect me; and in return I have agreed not to let your choice of religion affect how I view you.  Of course, your preferred candidate wants to treat people differently depending on their religion.  But political choices?  That's an action that you are taking to affect me.  That's the point to politics: to choose actions that we will take that will affect one another.  When you affect me, especially when you do harm to me, I have to start quickly making assumptions about who you are.  Are you a brown shirt that will destroy my property and beat me up?  Are you going to throw me in jail for my religious beliefs?  Are you just going to lead us into another recession and make my retirement much less relaxing than I had planned on?

"The narrative should be one of inclusiveness, openness, respect and love." Precisely.  and yet you chose to support a different narrative.  The Green Party, by the way, is all about inclusiveness, openness, respect, and love.  And boy do they want to focus on domestic issues.

Critical Thinking.  I hope you learn how while you are at college.