dedo

Real or not real is immaterial if it drives people into R wing parties and voting booths. Insensitivity to other people's POV is part of tribalism & that is what I am saying. Personally, I like much of liberal ideology excluding what was listed above. I don't think I am the one here with a "fixed position" likely from training and living in an environment where personal skill alone was not enough to produce a low enough error rate so the opinion of others was actively sought. Most people in tribes don't have that experience so I understand how they got that way. As far as right vs left autocracies, I explained that regarding different periods in history. Communism was the last to be proven a failure in many people's perception also aiding the rise of right. However, earlier in the 20th C., it was much more popular. Ping ponging back and forth between right and left is just a race to the bottom & oblivion. Unlike most tribalist actors, I am not interested in convincing people of my ideology that is always looking to improve, just solving problems. People who deal with risk consider the consequences of being wrong. If there is a common cumulative process, & it is not addressed, the world explodes regardless of who is in power & where.

Your post shows an inability to comprehend what will and will not offend massive swaths of voters in the US which is the whole problem in both liberal and conservative ideology which I believe comes from the exact same process / disease that produces: 1. tribalism. People in tribes can ignore almost any moral abomination in their tribe up to genocide depending on degree of infection and often accuse others of what they do. 2. Patriarchy that can affect both sexes defined as an obsession with bullying or picking on those perceived as vulnerable. Both conservative & liberal ideologies are infected. Some can legitimately argue which side is worse which is what is happening on this thread. However, saying or implying that it is only conservatives is complete nonsense & is exactly what brought the current US administration to power & may aid the rise of other extreme R wing groups in other countries. How many voters do you think this display sent to Rep voting booths? How many voters do you think this will send to R wing politicians? Do you think the people in pride parades showing complete nudity or sexual acts were LGBTQ advocates, or R wing imposters because they helped bring Maga to power? You can google articles on that. People in tribes seem to just lack the ability to understand how people outside the tribe think which is part of the disease. To say or imply that it only affects conservatives is nonsense and not consistent with a mountain of evidence. Extreme left wing groups have done their share of genocides & autocracy genocide by "committee" or a Communist Party is still genocide. You can make a legit argument at any point in time which side is "worse" & I may agree with you. However, "who is worse" changes at different points in history which is what you would expect from a cumulative process. Arguing over who is worse is the how the Middle East ended up with the harmony they have. It is a waste of time & is as fruitful as doctors in a trauma center giving a moral test to someone bleeding before rendering aid. Diseases don't get solved by moralists, politicians, or political advocates on the right or left.

Definitely is a possibility. But I think I addressed that in "possible futures" with civil war as a "possible future". However, US could go full on fascist as well as a "possible future" since if there is a common process causing this, then no one is immune including EU nations. So if US goes, EU is also at risk. Except if there is a cumulative process behind the rise of authoritarianism, then some EU countries could have lower levels of the process in society just as Germany & Japan are clearly not the same now as they were in 1939. Losing a war is the most common way for society to change ideology. Hopefully, we can find a better way.

Equal rights are great. Locking up abortion protesters is not equal rights and a great way to lose millions of voters from 52 million Catholics in the US. Equal rights for different gender identities & sexual preferences is great, but some in that community transferred to proselytizing a lifestyle drawing the ire of conservative parents fearful about their children creating great opportunities for R wing campaigns. Immigrants are definitely needed in the US, but to do it with an open border, while keeping legal immigration difficult created the perception that the sole purpose was to try to rig elections by altering voter demographics, another great gift to R wing campaigns. I could go on, but you put what I think is the solution in one of your quotes meaning to try and get to problem solving, instead of pushing ideology. It is nearly impossible to convince someone of your ideology, but at the height of the Cold War the US & the Soviet Union cooperated to solve small pox, even with extremes of ideology. So congrats on posting what may be part of the solution to save humanity. Now the evidence in this thread posted so far is that the Rep may make the same mistake & offend so many people that Dems roar back. Hopefully, at some point one of them will heed the "solution" you posted & solve problems.

Good idea. A recent easy to read book on the rise of autocracy in the US, that seems to target the current admin. & may appeal to those concerned in this thread is Snyder's "On Tyranny". I wish this was required reading for everyone in Congress so they might think a little before confirming people with potential to harm institutions for party ideology. A recent article about the rise of autocracy in general: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2024-02-16/indonesia-election-result-comes-amid-global-rise-of-autocracies This article, notes that the rise of autocracy is aided by liberal policies that many in the public object to which is my main problem with those policies, discussed in another thread. I believe it is the same process, & that could be debated, disproven, or improved, on the thread you suggest. The first reference is more relevant to the current thread.

I am talking about the rise of autocracy, those that do it, and those that follow them in all its versions. So no, I am not talking just about this administration. Autocracy is seen on both the extreme right, and the extreme left. Those are the actors that invade, commit genocide, etc. which is where autocracy can lead. It is not a black & white, good & evil, or right only, phenomenon but a continuum where some are worse than others. I also don't think it is confined just to political parties or to people of "low intelligence", people who are belligerent etc. Academics & scholars can also be controlled by ideology or tribalism & have autocratic tendencies effecting their judgement. Examples include Lyme Wars where patients were initially denied treatment for tick born illness. Allegations made about the origin of covid & contributions to gain of function research by US scientists, unproven but alarming, could be another example. Once I had a conversation with a very polite psychiatrist on a forum about Hitler's pathology & its cause. He was very nice but gave a "definitive" answer that firstly contradicted everything I read from other analysts, and secondly showed he had not researched the issue at all. When I gave a list of references he stopped responding. It was a bizarre encounter with someone obsessed with being some kind of proctor. A similar conversation with a maga activist just repeating her ideology on an issue of police violence also took a bizarre turn. She was making statements about wrestling submissions from my comment on a citizen's cause of death & it was clear she had never even seen a match, much less participated in the sport. The issue was about the difference between a choke & asphyxia. Activists were trying to accuse someone of attempted murder from starting a choke, never completed, when it was clear the citizen died from asphyxia, or being held down with pressure on the chest, both attacks I personally experienced in training. So the process of extreme tribalism (spouting ideology)& a desire to be some kind of autocrat, from my POV is not confined to maga but may be a common process with widespread implications. Common processes are behind many diseases and pathologies including atherosclerosis, coronary disease, and criminal violence where a researcher claimed 4 specific life experiences accumulate to produce violent criminals discussed in "Why They Kill . . ." by Rhodes. It is a pathology that is easy to see in actors actively committing or exhorting genocide, but more difficult to see in the process that got groups to that point. This thread is about the early process in my opinion for the extreme right. How far it goes is unknown & your guess is as good as mine.

Sorry, did not mean to imply probability weighting which is beyond my expertise. A wild guess would be we are heading for a Constitutional crisis possibly resolved by the Congress, or a false flag issue. Someone yesterday on X claimed there was a hit team in the US or coming with shoulder fired missiles. Of course, believing anything on X is a stretch. So your guess is as good as mine regarding the outcome of where we are now, and I believe I am as concerned as you.

By psychopathology, I meant that there is something wrong with behavior. Behavior pathology does not have to be from mental illness, it can also be from biology including genetics, difficult birth, or external influences on behavior from toxins, trauma, drugs, or to some sort of indoctrination added to life experiences. I believe the issues people are concerned about in this thread fall into the latter category, meaning external influences including indoctrination and life experiences. One criminologist proposed that criminal violence is caused by 4 specific cumulative life experiences including violent coaching or indoctrination discussed in the book "Why They Kill . . ." by Rhodes. Much less is known or proposed about what specific life experiences causes violent autocrats to emerge, and for people to follow them. What people are concerned about here, may be the same process that creates autocrats around the world and in different periods of history. What we don't know is how far it will go this time. I believe it is a good idea to try to figure it out, before we find out. That is because, if like criminal violence, it comes from a cumulative process then we either defuse the process that causes the pathology, or at some point it becomes fulminant and explodes.

Exactly. But maybe one reason "we never learn" is we need to consciously "expand the POV" as studiot suggests, and look in areas we don't normally look. It seems we do that under extreme pressure like in the middle of WWII & then the powers that be will listen. We need to find a way to improve collaboration without that pressure. High hazard industry does it with training and specific pathways to deliver information from the periphery, and that is a big part of preventing error. Not a programmer, but one told me that it is also done in open source software where people collaborate toward a goal. So it is at least possible, and perhaps joint problem solving can help, as opposed to individual research efforts, followed by sharing results.

Charon said that my answer was dichotomous, when I believe I mentioned ~5 possible futures for current events (there are probably more). This whole thread is about "something is wrong" with this current administration, meaning psychopathology. You mentioned issues in Europe. So if someone wants to explore it somewhere else, that could be interesting. Personally think the pathology is an external influence on behavior (in social norms), more than primary mental illness. Something in society is moving people to follow their autocrat of choice. Whatever that is, it threatens our survival. Artists often hint at it first, Elvis Costello (Two Little Hitlers) about relationships but it hints at autocracy & conflict which intersects a political theory of preventing conflict called "Democratic Peace Theory" meaning democracies rarely fight one another. However, something in society can turn a democracy into an autocracy which is what this thread is about. (Intersection of art or other disciplines with science could be another interesting thread.)

Maybe you didn't read all my posts as I outlined several possibilities from "DT fulfills hopes of voters" to "Civil war" with other possible scenarios including agreeing with possible JFK'd scenario, since two attempts made already, false flag, huge losses for Rep in midterms from shifting voter sentiment, to SHTF that a false flag could trigger, to impeachment. Dichotomous thinking implies two choices which is often just one choice since the alternative to the affected person's belief is often intentionally unrealistic. I did not assign probabilities but if it makes you happy to have a wild guess, I would say impeachment from shocking voters, vs false flag are near the top of the list, but that is just a guess. Human behavior is not easy to predict. A post on Quora I saw reviewed multiple Soviet Union leaders from "prediction" to what actually happened & the record was almost perfect that the predictions were wrong. So in reality, I just don't know. If you want to explore the psychopathology of what is going on consider a new thread to deal with that. Don't know if there are any mental health professionals here but my input would be from significant sporadic study of "what's wrong", a long history of working with psychiatrists including 2k+ consults from them, 30-40k consults regarding external influences on behavior (drugs), & 3 months of training in inpatient & outpatient psychosis, professional practice & solving problems using an airline model of a wide net of opinions, including subordinates, with great success which is the opposite of dichotomous thinking. I have seen subordinates solve problems their supervisors missed & once they came up with a superior solution to the academics I polled to solve a problem resulting in scores of near misses becoming near zero, all from casting a wide net for solutions. So my belief system & practice is anything but dichotomous. You may have an agenda that I don't meet, & so search for or make up issues from your own attachment to your agenda. So if you want to explore psychopathology in a new thread, I may add something but prefer to hear others as my technique is not so much to push an agenda, but to mine for ideas like a prospector for gold as the best ideas often come from unexpected places. On any given day, anyone can be an Alan Turing, at least for a short period.

Exactly. I try to consciously look at situations like a camera with telephoto lenses needed sometimes to focus, but wide angle lenses to take in the "big picture" required just as often to combat tunnel vision. I also try to look at more than one field to see if similar problems have been solved elsewhere. I think that "widening the perspective" to both history and other fields may be part of the solution to the OP's original question & may be a vital path to improving scientific progress.

I am alarmed as well. Did not know about Poland & glad they turned away from far right. Clearly there is psychopathology that is more widespread than one country. Authoritarianism is rising just as in the early 20th C. That might be an interesting thread in politics or medicine categories to discuss what is the psychopathology, how it works, & possible solutions.

Yes, & I commended someone on another thread for coming up with an idea for organized resistance. It can take time for organized resistance to work as in civil rights or women's suffrage, so the sooner it begins, the better. Also, being alert for "sudden emergencies" is prudent as that is a known technique for autocrats to consolidate power. Putin is accused of doing that. Nevertheless, although my ideology is more conservative than liberal, I believe my assessment of risk is higher than even most liberals, not from ideology, but from research of the problem behind It, which may be from cumulative factors in social norms discussed more in other threads. Currently, I put the estimated risk of SHTF at up to 90% in the 21st C., most likely to occur before 2050. That is unfortunate, because similar systems have been solved, but only with intentional action & that discussion has not even begun. PS: I was also an "exchemist" as I majored in chemistry undergraduate thinking that it would be easy before being proven wrong by physical chemistry that was anything but easy.

Did not want to stray too far off the OP's original ? as some of the "evidence" was outlined in other posts. A brief summary of evidence that the Fermi paradox is a filter to protect the galaxy from aggression includes: 1. There is a vast difference in ages between star systems. On Earth, even a 20 y difference in technology can produce a major military advantage. If alien intelligent life followed Earth evolution, then you would expect either endless war (Star Wars) or tyranny but there is no evidence for that. If aliens have visited, at least so far they are not aggressive. 2. There is evidence of a cumulative process behind group violence. The evidence is called the power law data discovered by Lewis Richardson in 1949, unfortunately mostly ignored in international relations literature & not even included in most textbooks solely devoted to theories about the "cause of war" which is unknown. Power law means there is a relationship between frequency & intensity for war, such that wars are small & frequent or rare and huge. Forest fires follow the same distribution as do earthquakes. So do other models, but these types of systems are often modeled with a computer sandpile model. Sand pours onto a sandpile and avalanches (wars) are measured that follow a power law. This implies that there may be an input process. If you look at the last two periods of global war, lumping WWI / WWII into one period of intense conflict, then the interval between "avalanches", onset to onset is 109 years with an intensity increase of about a factor of 20. If the pattern repeats, then the rough estimation of onset for WWIII is 2023 with an estimated casualty level of about 2 billion. If you model "end to beginning", or 1815 to 1914, then that puts onset for WWIII at 2044. Of course if the onset is later, intensity should be worse. Either way, it puts onset for WWIII in the 21st Century, likely sometime before 2050 meaning the "nuclear age". 3. We know FTL technology (if it exists) is much more difficult than nuclear technology. Thus, since nature often has "elegant design", it is logical that there may be a filter to protect the galaxy from aggression. Hope this is not too much detail & evidence is not proof, but it is evidence. Would prefer to be wrong & see evidence to the contrary that so far has eluded me. Also, some people just can't deal with it from denial. I have seen people used to dealing with life & death emergencies become agitated if conversation ventures in that direction, so I try to be sensitive to that as not everyone wants to discuss the "fate of the world" etc.

Since on another thread I pointed out that this admin. may have already met 2 of the 3 criteria for "dangerous leader disorder" in less than a month in office I don't think I am "blissfully unaware". However, I do always try to avoid dichotomous (black & white) thinking that can be seen in groups under pressure that some call "group think". If you watched the movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was pressured to attack Cuba by hawks who saw that as the "only alternative". Kennedy resisted & found another way. In contrast, in the run up to the 2nd Gulf War, the same dichotomous rhetoric was noted (by me) in US officials who said things like "attacking Iraq is better than doing nothing", as if those were their only choices. Thus, I always look for more possibilities without discounting evidence (not proof) of the worst possible scenario that should be prepared for. The defenses in the US currently is more than the judiciary. The Congress is heavily influenced by public opinion & the Rep could get massacred in the midterms & even the perception of that can swing the Congress if they sense losses on the way. Scotus also does not always rubber stamp DT & will also respond to changes in public opinion or even to their own sense of morality. There may be other safeguards. Hopefully, we won't be heading for the scenario acted out in last year's movie "Civil War", but even then the tyrant lost in the end. Of course, Hollywood needs a positive emotional outcome to sell movies.

All of this could be true, & the US could be on the brink of fascism -- or not. There are many possible futures at any moment in time. Someone else noted the possibility of "JFK'd". This is a possibility & could even be a false flag if someone wanted to trick the US into attacking another country that the event could be pinned on. Or DT could do what many of his voters hoped & voted for, & just clean up waste, solve problems, & eliminate perceived Dem extremism. Unfortunately, human nature often replaces unpopular policies with even worse. The Nazis replaced the Weimar. In support of the "hoped for" category is the observation that sometimes DT backs off in response to feedback. This is a good sign & points to the possibility of reversibility. For example, the airlines developed training for controlling authoritarian captains to prevent accidents & the training worked. This suggests that authoritarianism could be reversible. If not, and popularity falls like a rock, there is a chance of impeachment. So there are many possible futures & all we can do is make educated guesses & try to contribute something positive if the opportunity arises.

I would say that science is progressing, but not in a straight line and likely not in the best way forward. This means that critical areas of science may be getting neglected because other areas are easier to generate $. A neglected area may be the soft science of human behavior. Personally, I believe the answer to the Fermi paradox is that a lot of intelligent life destroys itself before advancing to FTL because technology advances faster than the science of understanding and preventing group violence. This likely occurs in the nuclear age and protects the galaxy from aggressive cultures. Defense companies make money selling weapons, not by selling harmony. So, because we race ahead with technology with little comparative effort to understand and prevent aggression, this flaw in human pursuit of science places humanity at high risk of getting "filtered".

Saw a recipe on line that emphasized putting the eggs in already boiling water is key to ez peeling. Found this works although still add baking soda to the water that may not be needed. Found that gently lowering eggs into water with a spoon keeps them from cracking instead of just dropping the egg. Cool the eggs with tap water when they reach your desired level of "doneness", unless you want to eat a couple hot, right after cooking. Since adopting this method, eggs peel fine.

A practical example that may apply about how both the "object" and the "interaction" matter could be organizational science from the safety literature. Many organizations only focus on qualifications of "the object" and they vet people as best they can, but give little regard to the "interaction". However, the safety literature has shown that improving the "interaction" is vital to reduce error and to make the "interaction" work, both training and infrastructure of the interaction is helpful. High hazard systems like commercial aviation developed specific infrastructure and training to improve the "interaction" as a response to near misses and plane crashes especially an event that occurred in the late 1970's where a veteran captain flew his airliner into the ground when a flight engineer on the plane who knew how to save the plane could not speak up enough even to save his own life. Then the airlines trained crew to speak up and officers to listen with training called "CRM" or "Crew Resource Management". The airlines also have multiple reporting systems to enable "interaction". Personally not a pilot, but I asked the question on an airline forum which of the feedback loops in commercial aviation was the most important & the pilot responded "CRM". So your philosophy has merit in that it can encourage focus on both the object, and the interaction, as important in producing favorable outcomes.

Not sure what your question is. If it is: "Is there evidence that a major political storm is coming?" I would say yes, there are multiple lines of evidence that a storm is coming, including what is going on in the US, and other countries. What you noted in DODGE amounts to political extremism and suppression of dissent which is interesting coming from someone who tried to trumpet "freedom of speech" as his rational for making Twitter into a right wing platform that gave free reign to those that support genocide. To quote myself: "The infected are capable of any moral abomination, accusing others of what the infected does, lying about it every step of the way." There is evidence of an infection in social norms, as evidenced by statistical data that shows that wars follow the same statistical distribution as forest fires. Thus, "brush" builds up in social norms until, boom, the world burns -- unless the "infection" is treated. I believe that extreme tribalism & a form of bullying or obsession with oppression of those perceived as vulnerable are the hallmarks, which explains in part going after USAID first. There is the diagnosis given to Hitler of "DLD" or "dangerous leader disorder" marked by: suppression of dissent, grandiosity, and extreme violence (internal or external). It has been noted on another thread that this administration has met 2 of those. Putin has met all three. There is the Doomsday Clock, set at the closest setting to MN in history backed by an organization with their own journal and Nobel Laureates if that means anything. There are nuclear threats pouring out of Russia although they have toned it down recently. If you want to stray away from evidence that can be considered "science" to pseudoscience, then there is a new book about Nostradamus & Trump recently released that I only mention as it seems to suggest the Senate eventually removes him which may comfort someone a little. However, even if a prophecy was true, which most here would deride, prophecies only show "possible futures" that could be changed with effort or self awareness. I read somewhere that Hitler read about himself in Nostradamus but it did not change him unfortunately. So, in response to what I think is your question, yes there is evidence of a storm brewing. We can hope that the institutions of the US will hold, and if there is a positive outcome, then whatever occurs will stimulate high level multidisciplinary problem solving to address the cause, before it is too late.

Only had a year of college physics, but my understanding is that matter has mass which bends space time from two effects, the mass of the matter also called gravity, and the spin of the matter called frame dragging.

This is a good idea. Healthy systems change from the bottom up including democracy (that still functions), civil rights, suffragettes, & high hazard industry. Unresisted, autocratic trending actors generally get worse. So starting early is a good idea to both mitigate extreme behavior, and to get the institutions prepared to act if looks like the executive branch becomes out of control

Yes, there was an initial claim that seemed to be alarming. However, simply saying "God saved me" is not a problem as it is reasonable to say any good thing comes from God. But when it crosses into "God saved me so I can do X, Y, Z, then I believe that qualifies for the DLD diagnosis. So what was said is right on the line & it is important to watch for more of that kind of rhetoric. Would also include for the final tier (internal or external violence), "preparation for internal violence", meaning forming a new secret police or gestapo. If that begins, or is hinted at, then those tasked with protecting the country should take notice.

1&3. Right now, it is likely no where near as severe as in the TS example, since in that example, secret police likely came after dissenters. However, this admin. has been in power less than 2 weeks. So we don't know where it goes. Will it be self-limited, or progress to an attempt at full on fascism? Regarding #3, it likely comes from the same process regardless of current severity. Where the process could end was defined as one of the diagnosis given to Hitler called "DLD Syndrome" (dangerous leader disorder) consisting of a triad of 1. suppression of dissent. (your example). 2. grandiosity. 3. Violence (internal or external. So if you start hearing rhetoric claiming a grandiose vision, or mission from God, watch out. Obviously, if aggression against other countries happens or if there is violent suppression of dissent, then the end stage has arrived. I used to just think this problem was just political leaders. Now, whenever I see part of the process anywhere, especially the internet, I believe it is the same process.