Is there a common cause for rising antisemitism and historic racism?

[living sounds]

BUT it's complicated.....


JR

Yea, it's always complicated with biology. DNA is so incredibly unstructured and messy, nothing like the hierarchical structures used in engineering...

It will be fascinating to see how AI may help to navigate this maze...

 

[JohnRoberts]

Yea, it's always complicated with biology. DNA is so incredibly unstructured and messy, nothing like the hierarchical structures used in engineering...

mutation and natural selection is a powerful organizing force.

It will be fascinating to see how AI may help to navigate this maze...

I have heard speculation that AI could thwart woke-ness but I am not that optimistic, my sense is that technology like social media amplifies/accelerates cultural malaise.

JR

 

[jabe]

I have heard speculation that AI could thwart woke-ness

Seems odd, given that humans who label things "woke" are completely unable to define the term.
Unless one defined "woke" as "not racist". Then AI is already on the job.
AI has a racism problem, but fixing it is complicated, say experts
AI chatbots use racist stereotypes even after anti-racism training
As AI tools get smarter, they’re growing more covertly racist, experts find
etc., etc.

 

[living sounds]

I have heard speculation that AI could thwart woke-ness but I am not that optimistic, my sense is that technology like social media amplifies/accelerates cultural malaise.

AI can do lot's of things, but I was thinking about deciphering the genetic code, to find out what does what and how and why.

 

[living sounds]

Seems odd, given that humans who label things "woke" are completely unable to define the term.
Unless one defined "woke" as "not racist". Then AI is already on the job.
AI has a racism problem, but fixing it is complicated, say experts
AI chatbots use racist stereotypes even after anti-racism training
As AI tools get smarter, they’re growing more covertly racist, experts find
etc., etc.

And attempts to make AI more "inclusive" resulted in generated images of female Popes and black Nazis...

 

[fallout]

Seems odd, given that humans who label things "woke" are completely unable to define the term.

To keep things simple, 'woke' evolved into meaning left or progressive.

Similar how the words 'fascist' and 'nazi' are thrown around these days.

 

[JohnRoberts]

And attempts to make AI more "inclusive" resulted in generated images of female Popes and black Nazis...

I have seen/heard speculation that fixing the bizarre generative AI results, like black WWII Nazi soldiers, or woman popes, might help reduce wokeness more broadly. Software products like chatGPT appear to reflect biases of their creators (coders), and input data.

I repeat, I am not optimistic about this, but I remain generally optimistic. I expect AI to replace many white collar workers improving productivity and economic growth. I wouldn't want to be competing against AI to hold my job.

JR

 

[ijvanl]

Are you in NSW, by any chance?

I have relatives in Australia, most in NSW. Several have left the country because of the rise of corruption, crime and fascism. It seems to be the worse in NSW.

Hm, this is interesting. I am indeed in NSW, but I've had almost the opposite experience; a good number of my American friends left the USA or chose to stay in Australia due to the state of the American political climate at the moment, what with the rise of hard-right politics and xenophobia in the mainstream sphere, and the associated severe weakening of women's rights, trans rights, Black and minority rights etc.

In a lot of ways, the current state of Australian politics, including the NSW state government, reminds me a lot of the USA 20 or 30 years ago — we have our fair share of issues caused by corruption or incompetence, and there is a very small fringe contingent of hard-right fascist lunatics, as there seems to be in every political system, but the rise of the aggressively populist, often highly xenophobic "politician-as-personality" which has defined recent politics in many places — as seen in the US with Trump, Brazil with Bolsonaro, etc. — kind of hasn't happened here in any real capacity, and any attempts to create such figures have largely been used as a last resort by floundering political parties, and have been met with unbridled derision from pretty much all sides (see our last Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, whose attempts at feigning everyman-style relatability have generally ended in often highly public embarrassment). Most of our politicians tend to range from proactive and quite reasonable at best, to greasy and incompetent at worst.

NSW in recent decades has had a bit of a history with government corruption, but not nearly at the level of many other places in the world; our system of ICACs (Independent Commission(s) Against Corruption) has also done an excellent job of rooting it out, holding those involved accountable and making sure it doesn't occur again.

As a country, though, I quite like Australia. Our media isn't perfect but it's reasonably truth-minded in most places, we have a fantastic public health system, our electoral system is among the most robust in the world, and most of our urban areas are walkable and have excellent public transport. It's a niche issue, but Australian trans healthcare is also very good, which is nice when trans healthcare in most of the world is piss-poor to non-existent.

 

[ijvanl]

And attempts to make AI more "inclusive" resulted in generated images of female Popes and black Nazis...

I would argue that this is less a result of "inclusive" politics as a whole more than it is a result of AI engineers doing a crap job of attempting to fix a fundamental problem with their dataset.

For those who haven't heard of this one — the developers of Facebook's image AI tool, when it was (quite rightly) criticised for including very few images of non-white people in their training data, attempted to fix this issue not by trying to include more varied images in their datasets — arguably the correct response, given that any data scientist would agree that the fix for an unrepresentative sample of a population is to, well, pick a better sample — but by surreptitiously adding words like "Black", "ethnically ambiguous" etc. to users' text prompts before presenting them to the AI model, which didn't even solve the issues that the original criticisms were about — the AI was still worse on average at generating images of non-white people than images of white people, it just on the whole generated more of them.

 

[cyrano]

Adjusting data to feed to the AI has had unexpected results in the past. One of the AIs had a very large number of people of Indian origin added at one point, to counter the number of white people. That resulted in most generated pics to look like the source.

It's a very old sore in science that adjusting data can be dangerous.

 

[cyrano]

That's what I was referring to, epigenetic changes are heritable traits that do not change the DNA sequence. There are a number of mechanisms for it. Coded functions are switched on or off because of certain stimuli.

Certain diseases do change your DNA. Sometimes it's temporary, sometimes it's permanent. The mechanisms are being discovered as we speak. A baby inherits DNA from it's parents, but the mother also changes some of her DNA. etc.

When it comes to external influences, that has barely begun to being researched.

In the animal kingdom, some DNA changes due to acquired skills have been observed, but the exact mechanism has to be unraveled yet. There is the example of sea slugs acquiring the ability to do photo-synthesis. The DNA for it gets absorbed from the algae consumed by the young slug. Usually it doesn't reproduce in the next generation. Only in rare cases that happens and slugs hatch that have the ability from birth in the next generation.

Learned abilities do not enter the DNA sequence, there is no mechanism for it.

That we know of...

Most species have DNA backup. The only example that has been studied widely, are bats because they seem to have a double backup. How, when and why the specimen changes to backup isn't exactly known. The backup DNA is one of the reasons why bats are so resistant to virii and bacteria.

There is a plethora of exceptions out there. Like the Hydra that has the same DNA for every individual because they don't use sexual reproduction. They simply divide, like bacteria. So you could even say they live forever, since you can't distinguish between "parent" and "child" after division and both have identical DNA...

We know around a million insect species. There are ten to thirty million insect species out there. That leaves a lot to be discovered. And then we're not even talking about the deep seas...

 

[cyrano]

Hm, this is interesting. I am indeed in NSW, but I've had almost the opposite experience; a good number of my American friends left the USA or chose to stay in Australia due to the state of the American political climate at the moment, what with the rise of hard-right politics and xenophobia in the mainstream sphere, and the associated severe weakening of women's rights, trans rights, Black and minority rights etc.

In a lot of ways, the current state of Australian politics, including the NSW state government, reminds me a lot of the USA 20 or 30 years ago — we have our fair share of issues caused by corruption or incompetence, and there is a very small fringe contingent of hard-right fascist lunatics, as there seems to be in every political system, but the rise of the aggressively populist, often highly xenophobic "politician-as-personality" which has defined recent politics in many places — as seen in the US with Trump, Brazil with Bolsonaro, etc. — kind of hasn't happened here in any real capacity, and any attempts to create such figures have largely been used as a last resort by floundering political parties, and have been met with unbridled derision from pretty much all sides (see our last Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, whose attempts at feigning everyman-style relatability have generally ended in often highly public embarrassment). Most of our politicians tend to range from proactive and quite reasonable at best, to greasy and incompetent at worst.

NSW in recent decades has had a bit of a history with government corruption, but not nearly at the level of many other places in the world; our system of ICACs (Independent Commission(s) Against Corruption) has also done an excellent job of rooting it out, holding those involved accountable and making sure it doesn't occur again.

As a country, though, I quite like Australia. Our media isn't perfect but it's reasonably truth-minded in most places, we have a fantastic public health system, our electoral system is among the most robust in the world, and most of our urban areas are walkable and have excellent public transport. It's a niche issue, but Australian trans healthcare is also very good, which is nice when trans healthcare in most of the world is piss-poor to non-existent.

These days, I get most info from a YT channel, run by Jordan Shanks. I believe he lives in NSW, but I'll admit I get confused about the different parts of Australia.

My relatives didn't move to the USA either. They're a bit scattered around the world these days. I'm a bit wary to discuss politics with them, since I got into a heated argument about the weathermen, a 70's US terrorist group. My relative, who is the son of the man who wrote the book about Australian history, kept denying there ever was US internal terrorism. I do think it happened, as the FBI has several pages about them, but there was no way he accepted it. And he took it badly, never visited us again. His son told me not to worry about it. His dad was known to be stubborn...

Some of them still live in Australia. One turned from sheep farming to grapevines after he lost 40,000 sheep due to drought. Most others live in town and have "modern" jobs like magazine publishing. Another one is working as an IT person in banking. He moves every few years and selects his jobs in order to learn new languages.

 

[ruffrecords]

"Historic" racism?

It goes back to the Romans and Greeks and before. In antiquity it was common to enslave people deemed inferior or barbarian. Not much has changed.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Tubetec]

Here in Ireland weve seen a drop off in police recruitment since covid ,
They managed only to get 170 new members this year , where its normaly at least 1000 they take in .

Today the Garda representative association is complaining about members of the public using phone cameras to identify them ,and a generally unfriendly attitude from the public , yet its a well known fact many police services have been using biometric recognition for years and in many countries without proper legal oversight , it all amounts to a Stazi like ,secret police ,
And in a way a reminder of the dark days under the empire .

Covid was used as an excuse to vastly increase police powers of survailance , now public trust is damaged , its making the job of policing more difficult .

Along with all this goes a sense of betrayal , by our elected representatives ,
who sold us all out to social media and marketing in return for their 15 minutes of fame .
The building and housing system has failed , generations of Irish builders are leaving our shores ,just like in the bad old days , every Irish person that leaves is replaced with another fleeing wars or just seeking a better life , but there coming to a country that already has more than 13,000 homeless people .
Rural isolated communities are expected to bear influxes of hundreds of people , housed in old state institutions , re-purposed hotels , and B&B's .

 

[living sounds]

I would argue that this is less a result of "inclusive" politics as a whole more than it is a result of AI engineers doing a crap job of attempting to fix a fundamental problem with their dataset.

For those who haven't heard of this one — the developers of Facebook's image AI tool, when it was (quite rightly) criticised for including very few images of non-white people in their training data, attempted to fix this issue not by trying to include more varied images in their datasets — arguably the correct response, given that any data scientist would agree that the fix for an unrepresentative sample of a population is to, well, pick a better sample — but by surreptitiously adding words like "Black", "ethnically ambiguous" etc. to users' text prompts before presenting them to the AI model, which didn't even solve the issues that the original criticisms were about — the AI was still worse on average at generating images of non-white people than images of white people, it just on the whole generated more of them.

As usual with computers, the problem tends to be "user error".

 

[living sounds]

what with the rise of hard-right politics and xenophobia in the mainstream sphere, and the associated severe weakening of women's rights, trans rights, Black and minority rights etc.

The other side to this is the aggressive focus of a growing proportion of the left (that has strayed from classic liberalism) on group identity, perceived grivances and "corrective" policies. Emphasizing differences and even elvating certain groups does have the opposite effect of judging people by the "content of their character". It creates tension and fules discord. This has played itself out throughout history and is well document in more recent events like the Rwandan genocide.

It has been normal for many years now in elite colleges in the US to have new students sort themselves by race and other personal identity at the first day of college and discuss their situation (read Coleman Huges for more on this). This is not how you create social cohesiveness. A culture of victimhood has been created and proliferated. And because there is no way for a white kid to be black (a high status "victim") many created an LGBT identity for themselves, leading to currently more than 22% of Gen-Zers in the US identifying as LGBTQ+ (which surely mostly does not reflect actual sexual preference).

Next, social media has put this subculture into contact with people far removed from it, who in turn feel their identity threatened. There is a lot of poverty and disadvantage in white America, especially rural. As a young man, growing up dirt poor in rural America, with bad prospects of having a job to feed your family and many of your friends dying of drug overdoes, what would be your reaction if you were asked to "check your privilege"?

So how can the problems be fixed?

Abandon identity politics
Change policies to help disadvantaged people by objective metrics instead of focussing on race, gender, identity etc.
Fix bad laws and policies, probably only possible by changing the ill-adapted US political system first, as as Maxwell Stearns suggests:

>>
1. Double the size of the House of Representatives, with half continuing to be elected by district, a new cohort elected by party, and the entire chamber based on proportional representation. This reform will allow us to end the two-party duopoly and create space for thriving third-, fourth- and fifth-parties that better align with voters’ values/worldviews.
2. Transform how we choose the president and vice president. Power to choose the president will shift from individual votes processed through the Electoral College to party coalitions within the House of Representatives. They will select the president and vice president from party slates by inviting up to five party leaders, in descending order of representation, to negotiate a majority coalition.
3. Provide a new mechanism for ending a failing presidency. The House can remove the president with a 60 percent no confidence vote based on “maladministration.” This standard is lower than the requirements for impeachment, and the amendments leave the impeachment clause intact. These reforms infuse parliamentary selection, proportional representation, and coalition building into the U.S. constitutional system while retaining and preserving our most essential institutional structures. The proposal would end the two-party system, create space for multiple parties, end partisan gerrymandering, moderate the most extreme ideologies, reduce polarization, and incentivize negotiation and compromise.
>>

 

[fallout]

So how can the problems be fixed?

Abandon identity politics
Change policies to help disadvantaged people by objective metrics instead of focussing on race, gender, identity etc.

I agree with the quote above but not the proposed solution. For one, I don't see a problem with the electoral college.

What defines a 'failing presidency'? One side doesn't like how things are going?

The bureaucracy needs to be addressed first and foremost. Term limits would also be a good start.

 

[living sounds]

I agree with the quote above but not the proposed solution. For one, I don't see a problem with the electoral college and also what defines a 'failing presidency'? One side or the doesn't like how things are going (re: Trump, re: Biden)?

The bureaucracy needs to be addressed first and foremost. Term limits would also be a good start.

Maxwell Stearns gives a good rundown in his interview with Michael Shermer:

https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer-show/max-stearns-how-to-repair-americas-broken-democracy/

And for even more details you could read his book.

 

[JohnRoberts]

The other side to this is the aggressive focus of a growing proportion of the left (that has strayed from classic liberalism) on group identity, perceived grivances and "corrective" policies. Emphasizing differences and even elvating certain groups does have the opposite effect of judging people by the "content of their character". It creates tension and fules discord. This has played itself out throughout history and is well document in more recent events like the Rwandan genocide.

It has been normal for many years now in elite colleges in the US to have new students sort themselves by race and other personal identity at the first day of college and discuss their situation (read Coleman Huges for more on this). This is not how you create social cohesiveness. A culture of victimhood has been created and proliferated. And because there is no way for a white kid to be black (a high status "victim") many created an LGBT identity for themselves, leading to currently more than 22% of Gen-Zers in the US identifying as LGBTQ+ (which surely mostly does not reflect actual sexual preference).

Next, social media has put this subculture into contact with people far removed from it, who in turn feel their identity threatened. There is a lot of poverty and disadvantage in white America, especially rural. As a young man, growing up dirt poor in rural America, with bad prospects of having a job to feed your family and many of your friends dying of drug overdoes, what would be your reaction if you were asked to "check your privilege"?

So how can the problems be fixed?

Abandon identity politics
Change policies to help disadvantaged people by objective metrics instead of focussing on race, gender, identity etc.
Fix bad laws and policies, probably only possible by changing the ill-adapted US political system first, as as Maxwell Stearns suggests:

>>
1. Double the size of the House of Representatives, with half continuing to be elected by district, a new cohort elected by party, and the entire chamber based on proportional representation. This reform will allow us to end the two-party duopoly and create space for thriving third-, fourth- and fifth-parties that better align with voters’ values/worldviews.
2. Transform how we choose the president and vice president. Power to choose the president will shift from individual votes processed through the Electoral College to party coalitions within the House of Representatives. They will select the president and vice president from party slates by inviting up to five party leaders, in descending order of representation, to negotiate a majority coalition.
3. Provide a new mechanism for ending a failing presidency. The House can remove the president with a 60 percent no confidence vote based on “maladministration.” This standard is lower than the requirements for impeachment, and the amendments leave the impeachment clause intact. These reforms infuse parliamentary selection, proportional representation, and coalition building into the U.S. constitutional system while retaining and preserving our most essential institutional structures. The proposal would end the two-party system, create space for multiple parties, end partisan gerrymandering, moderate the most extreme ideologies, reduce polarization, and incentivize negotiation and compromise.
>>

I was with you until I read the proposed changes to the US government. I didn't immediately understand the use of "we" and "us". Perhaps a cut and paste quote from Maxwell Stearns, professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, explores this issue in his book, “Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy.”

I/we have watched parliamentary governments from a distance for years. I don't think our experiment in governance is failed yet, but the constitution can always be amended if needed (with some difficulty).

JR

PS; we could use more law and order to root out corruption, and less lawfare used for political advantage. I apologize for this veer.

 

[fallout]

One thing I do agree with is that the two party system seems to have run its course. It's too similar to sports at this point, at least for those of us sitting in the bleachers.