"The Ensh*ttification of Everything"

 

I've never been a big fan of On the Media --they've always struck me as too wimpy for the job at hand -- but I am a big fan of Cory Doctorow and this segment is an excellent introduction to some of his most5 important ideas.

[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone interviews Cory Doctorow, journalist, activist, and the author of Red Team Blues, on his theory surrounding the slow, steady descent of the internet. 

[15:59] Brooke asks Cory if the troubles that plague some corners of the internet are specific to Big Digital, rather than the economy at large—and how our legal systems enabled it all. Doctorow explains how the antitrust practices of the early 1900s went awry, and what exactly he means by “twiddling.” 

[31:29] Cory and Brooke discuss possible solutions to save the world wide web.  Among them: better enforcement of privacy laws, interoperability, and the ever elusive "right-to-exit." Plus, hear about the one industry that so far has been mostly immune to the forces of "enshittification."

The abortion narrative – – convergence, herd mentality, and the inability to say "oops"

To understand the politics of 2024, you need to understand the political journalism of 2022.

Tom Bonier, the analyst who probably came off the best over the past couple of years, has a highly recommended thread commemorating the anniversary of the Dobbs decision.

On the 2nd anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I figured I'd share a reminder of how abortion rights has become the most powerful single issue in politics, and is likely more salient now than it was in 2022.

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) June 25, 2024

 [For those who prefer their threads rolled up, here's a link.]

One important aspect which Bonier hits only tangentially is how rapidly the establishment press, particularly the New York Times and Politico, converged on the Dobbs-won't-matter narrative, and how far they have been willing to go to protect it from a growing mountain of conflicting data.

After you've been following the mainstream press for a while, the appeal of the narrative is not difficult to reverse engineer. If you are leery of being seen as a cheerleader for the Democrats, nervous about Republicans working the refs, and generally inclined to picture yourself as sober and above the fray," no big deal" was the obvious choice.

https://x.com/MollyJongFast/statu

 

 

 

 

Some of the sharper and more independent minded observers like Bonier immediately spotted trends in the data that undercut the narrative...

I shared that finding in a tweet and a hastily assembled chart the next day. To be clear, I have never seen a registration surge among any specific group like this before, and don't expect to again. pic.twitter.com/ZO8VV1IfQt

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) June 25, 2024

But most data journalists were treating the data as a drunkard's lamppost, a source not of illumination but of support for the approved Dobbs narrative and for that of the red wave. 

NYT 2022/10/17

Since the midterms, we've seen a lot of moonwalking and "but next time it'll be different" analyses, often with a data-based veneer (there is an essential distinction between following the data and coming up with an argument that supports your preferred point and doesn't conflict with the data). There has also been an alarming rush to credulously embrace Republican spin about how the election is going. The latest example being that Trump and the GOP have successfully pivoted to the center.

 

 

 NYT columnist and good soldier, Ezra Klein:

I found myself, this week, watching Trump’s May 1 rally in Waukesha, Wis. Most of it features Trump’s constant stream of overstatement, false nostalgia, wild braggadocio and barely veiled threat. But the tenor changed when Trump turned to abortion. Here, Trump swung suddenly to the left of his own base. The goal, he said, was “to get abortion out of the federal government. Everybody wanted that. That was uniform. Then about 10 years ago, people lost their way. They started talking about — how many months?”

This is Trump’s pivot on abortion. Unlike other Republicans [The "other" is doing a bit of heavy lifting here. -- MP], he’s saying the goal wasn’t, and isn’t, a nationwide abortion ban. The goal was letting states decide for themselves, and now they are.

“There are some very conservative states that voted a very much more liberal policy than anybody would’ve thought,” Trump said. “Very liberal policy, a couple of states. I won’t mention, but a couple of states really surprise people. But, basically the states decide on abortion. And people are absolutely thrilled with the way that’s going on.”

Thrilled? The one time you can hear the crowd boo Trump is during his abortion spiel. But he doesn’t back down. I don’t know if Trump’s effort to run to the center on abortion will work, but he’s definitely going to try, even if it offends his base. Is there any issue on which Biden is doing the same? 

With the possible exception of Klein and a couple of interns at Fox, no one actually believes that focusing on the overturning of Roe V Wade constitutes a pivot to the center, even if we forget about all the times that Donald Trump has abandoned actual centrist positions from previous campaigns. Dobbs was insanely unpopular from the beginning and has only grown more so as its scope has increased and the horror stories have accumulated, and Dobbs was correct is very much Trump's position.

Here is Donald Trump bragging about ending Roe v. Wade over and over pic.twitter.com/5MdthlkZbH

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) June 24, 2024

 

RNC Chair: It is absolutely critical to remember who it was that put anti-abortion and conservative judges on the district courts, on the circuit courts, and nominated the three conservative justices to the United States Supreme Court that overturned Roe. That was Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/VY9dVHTZSX

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) June 24, 2024

[I don't hear a lot of booing.]

As spelled out in a typically solid TPM post by Emine Yücel, the Republicans have no good messaging options when it comes to reproductive rights and particularly IVF. At this point, they're simply thrashing around looking for the least bad option. Perhaps the only thing working in their favor is the reluctance of publications like the New York Times and Politico to admit they got this story wrong.

My Marshall-McLuhan-in-Annie-Hall Moment

Even in its current sad state, you still find yourself in interesting conversations on Twitter.

 

 

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky born September 11, 1979) is an American artificial intelligence researcher^[2][3][4][5] and writer on decision theory and ethics, best known for popularizing ideas related to friendly artificial intelligence.^[6][7] He is the founder of and a research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California.^[8] His work on the prospect of a runaway intelligence explosion influenced philosopher Nick Bostrom's 2014 book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.

 

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

 I'm afraid even the Brothers Grimm would have found Bitcoin a little too fantastic

I'm edging closer to the notion that the tools which we would normally use to critique journalism are no longer up to the task of discussing the 21st century technology narrative. Instead, the appropriate methods are probably those of the folklorist. We are rapidly approaching the realm of the myth and the tall tale. Why not start thinking in those terms?

It is standard practice when discussing something like a Jack tale to list the Aarne–Thompson classification. For example, Jack in the beanstalk fall under the classification AT 328 ("The Treasures of the Giant"). We could do something similar with the vast majority of tech reported. TakeTheranos. This and other accounts of college dropouts supposedly coming up with some amazing innovation can be classified under "wayward youth finds magic object."

 I've been getting quite a bit of thought recently to how magical heuristics have come to dominate the conversation about technology and innovation, but the idea of actually treating the narrative as folklore didn't hit me until I read this:

The paperclip maximizer is a thought experiment described by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. It illustrates the existential risk that an artificial general intelligence may pose to human beings when programmed to pursue even seemingly-harmless goals, and the necessity of incorporating machine ethics into artificial intelligence design. The scenario describes an advanced artificial intelligence tasked with manufacturing paperclips. If such a machine were not programmed to value human life, then given enough power its optimized goal would be to turn all matter in the universe, including human beings, into either paperclips or machines which manufacture paperclips.[4]

    Suppose we have an AI whose only goal is to make as many paper clips as possible. The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off. Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips. The future that the AI would be trying to gear towards would be one in which there were a lot of paper clips but no humans.
    — Nick Bostrom, "Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence", 2003

Bostrom has emphasised that he does not believe the paperclip maximiser scenario per se will actually occur; rather, his intention is to illustrate the dangers of creating superintelligent machines without knowing how to safely program them to eliminate existential risk to human beings. The paperclip maximizer example illustrates the broad problem of managing powerful systems that lack human values

Suddenly it struck me that this was just the magic salt mill ever so slightly veiled in cyber garb. In case you're not up on your folklore...

It is Aarne-Thompson type 565, the Magic Mill. Other tales of this type include The Water Mother and Sweet porridge.

Synopsis

A poor man begged from his brother on Christmas Eve. The brother promised him, depending on the variant, ham or bacon or a lamb if he would do something. The poor brother promised; the rich one handed over the food and told him to go to Hell (in Lang's version, the Dead Men's Hall; in the Greek, the Devil's dam). Since he promised, he set out. In the Norse variants, he meets an old man along the way. In some variants, the man begs from him, and he gives something; in all, the old man tells him that in Hell (or the hall), they will want to buy the food from him, but he must only sell it for the hand-mill behind the door, and come to him for directions to use it. It took a great deal of haggling, but the poor man succeeded, and the old man showed him how to use it. In the Greek, he merely brought the lamb and told the devils that he would take whatever they would give him, and they gave him the mill. He took it to his wife, and had it grind out everything they needed for Christmas, from lights to tablecloth to meat and ale. They ate well and on the third day, they had a great feast. His brother was astounded and when the poor man had drunk too much, or when the poor man's children innocently betrayed the secret, he showed his rich brother the hand-mill. His brother finally persuaded him to sell it. In the Norse version, the poor brother didn't teach him how to handle it. He set to grind out herrings and broth, but it soon flooded his house. His brother wouldn't take it back until he paid him as much as he paid to have it. In the Greek, the brother set out to Constantinople by ship. In the Norse, one day a skipper wanted to buy the hand-mill from him, and eventually persuaded him. In all versions, the new owner took it to sea and set it to grind out salt. It ground out salt until it sank the boat, and then went on grinding in the sea, turning the sea salty.

I realize Bostrom isn't proposing this as a likely scenario. That's not the point. What matters here is that he and other researchers and commentators tend to think about technology using the specific heuristics and motifs people have always used for thinking about magic, and it worries me when I start recognizing the Aarne–Thompson classifications for stories in the science section.