CharonY

! Moderator Note Based on the description of the topic there is likely no good discussion to be had, especially as it involves illicit drug abuse and might encourage harmful self-experimentation.

There were already assumptions that RFK Jr. will be tapped for health secretary, but it seems official now. At least it made kind of sense why he was so into dewormers. Next thing we know, we'll replace vaccines with well, disease, I presume.

I do think that this is also, and perhaps primarily driven by societal inclinations. Malicious actors exploit it, but it only works because folks were already half way there. Indeed, though one could argue that over time (at least for cigarettes) evidence was amassed and eventually became a fact in public consciousness. In this current information climate, I am not sure whether that would happen anymore.

I was thinking a little bit about what (up to this point) has been the biggest damage done by this new form for right-wing populism. And the element I keep getting back to is the full erosion of trust in institutions. While folks might have distrusted politicians, which is a good thing in terms of checks and balances, it has become a lack of trust into virtually anything, be it media, public health agencies, scientists and so on. This created a situation where anyone could appeal and win over folks, and especially giving algorithms and their companies outsized power over the public.

Yes, because it highlights that some of these parameters might have explanatory power to those differences. Two contradicting arguments are often made with regards to gun control in the US. 1) gun violence is just a thing that cannot be stopped structurally. It is just bad people making bad decisions; and 2) we cannot compare the US to anywhere else as the US is just so unique. Unless the argument is that the US is just uniquely bad, it must mean that the US has some structural issues.

Are you sure that is isn't the case though? But I will highlight again that lazy is not necessarily the point. Spending time on something else is not a sign of laziness, but of prioritization. Edit: I should add, that there are not a lot of incentives to do so, even before the rise of social media. Schools and Universities were the institutions where such skills were trained, with incentives to do so. Their influence has eroded as well and the modern media landscape and social media has a distinct anti-intellectual slant. Not necessarily out of maliciousness (though it adds to it) but in part simply because we reduced attention spans to less than a minute now.

Haha, just perfect. Couldn't get an actual Russian, it seems. Not unexpected, but still.

That would be highly dependent on the country and also how you define "justified". But generally speaking, there are ways to undermine democracy even while staying within the boundary of constitutional law. After all, the term limits in the US were an amendment to the constitution. Perhaps a bit strange is the second amendment, which some folks declare to be a safeguard against tyranny. But I suspect specifically those guys see things a bit differently now.

Depends, I think the difference that I see is that the drug is a clear external agent that, while strongly connected to society, could at least in theory be cut off. But here I think it is our very thinking that is affected, which makes things more invisible and insidious more akin to 1984 where folks are not able to follow a concept as the language moved away from it.

Perfect pick on so many levels. I am just glad that Hannibal Lecter wasn't a real person.

I think both element amplify each other. If one stream does not entertain you, there are other sources to get your dopamine kick. And the algorithm makes sure to feed you from the well. I think it is also not necessarily specific sources that are an issue in isolation, but more that folks get access to virtually the same thing but from different directions, that solidifies their assumptions. Also, folks are strangely willing to scroll for a long time until they find something for their kick. But unwilling to spend a fraction of that time doing an assignment. Anything to avoid thinking.

I should clarify, with eroded I don't meant that they are lost per se. But they do not function as expected, i.e. inform and calibrate folks to a common baseline of reality. As I mentioned, I think even without hijacking, we would run into at least similar issues as we do not have mechanisms to deal with a couple elements. a) oversupply of information (in the broadest terms, includes cat videos), b) constant distraction by algorithms and related mechanisms, diminishing the time spent on sifting through the presented information, potentially related to that, c) diminishing role of folks trusted to sift through that and present a coherent analysis with explanation. Folks increasingly are not willing or able to read longer articles (much less, books) and even have not the patience (nor do they expect) folks to explain why certain conclusions are wrong or not, even things are even slightly complicated. The latter was always an issue with the broader populace, but the attention span has even further diminished. Also, the conventional wisdom to simplify things for e.g. science reporting has now become a liability.

Just my two cents. I think "lazy" is not very useful way to think about this situation, as it is not easily quantifiable and because of that, we will not know whether it is something new for this election or whether the level of laziness (whatever it may be) has been unchanged. However, the question of inept is more interesting, and while it is pretty useless as a broad statement, it is important to look how people adapt to the onslaught of information presented to them. Even without malicious players, the democratization of information requires some skills to be able to identify reliable information. This used to be the role of news, but their role (and ability) have been diminished. Add to that broader societal changes in education and (I think) we have a serious erosion of ability to, even identify facts (much less interpret them). The fact that there are malicious players are able to utilize it to their own benefit is, I think, just a symptom of the overall vulnerability we are facing. And so far, I have yet to see an approach beyond teaching medial literacy in school. And that does not seem to yield much benefits outside of limited tests, either. In part because the approach is still based on outdated assumptions. The way people think about information, the desire for instantaneous answers and all the other elements are changing how we think and what what information we trust. It mirrors in a way some themes in Orwell's 1984, only that it is not governmental mandated language, but rather an emergent property of information overload.

Why? Because of fewer immigrants? BTW, crime rate is always calculated on a population basis.

I am a bit wary to blame the specific post-COVID situation on everything, as many traditional parties were already losing ground before. However, major events (record asylum claims and then COVID) have accelerated things. What I am missing a bit is how the erosion of traditional information pipelines has contributed and more importantly, what it means going forward. Most papers I have seen in that regard are ultra-focused (understandably) but discussions on e.g. social media on education and politics are (in my biased opinion) too muted, relative to their impact. This is especially worrying as the pace of the change seems to outpace the speed of research on the matter.

I probably have mentioned it a couple of times (dangers of getting old, forgetful and repetitive) but it seems to me that because we are not able to establish a common reality, conventional wisdom gets out of the window in terms on how to appeal to folks. While there might be overarching themes, I suspect that as a whole folks increasingly uninformed.

Well, there were a big deal of casualties (e.g. COVID-19) the first time round. Plenty of chances to improve that record.

By ignoring those claims you mentioned and instead and collect data? The loss of manufacturing jobs is an almost certain trend given increased automation, as well as increases in salary. Ultimately, manufacturing has become more capital than labor intensive. The data also shows that China is not likely to blame, data from the US bureau of labor statistics has shown decline in manufacturing employment in sectors with as well as without competition with China, and a rough reading of journal papers suggest at most a contribution of 25% of the decline in manufacturing was affected by China. Essentially the labor market has changed and entry level jobs are fewer than the used to be and there is increasingly a requirement for higher education. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24468 The underlying issue is that finding real information takes work. Work that few folks are willing to do, unfortunately. That is why blaming has always been such an effective tool. Some elements of blame have, for a short period of time, become sufficiently distasteful that it has retreated (just a little bit) in modern politics. Over the last decade or so, it has become the de facto strategy for major parties.

And yet another danger is that Trump aims to replace at least some taxes with tariffs. Simple calculations show that even ignoring the downsides, such as price increases, this is not feasible. I.e. either more debts have to made or the government's operating budget will decrease (based on how much is cut in taxes). Other issues are nicely summarized here https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/can-trump-replace-income-taxes-tariffs. I think economics universally agree that this is not a great policy. However, the one reason why it might be implemented after all is because it actually provide benefits to rich folks (somewhere around the 5th top quintile) at the cost of lower income. And luckily we learned that those are so much easier to fool.

And especially as helping the working class form the Trump campaign was a) trust us bro, and b) we'll deport everyone taking your jobs.

The Republicans have frequently proposed budget cuts to especially basic research (e.g. NSF-funded projects). So it is a likely outcome. They appear also to be on war path with public health now, apparently because they suck at it.

Yeah sorry, I think meant to compare it to total shooting homicides in other countries (exempting suicide). I am not sure which table I was looking at at that time, but I am guessing it might have been Germany or UK.

And what I am really afraid of is that even with college education, critical thinking skills are diminishing. Still better than no education, but the effect by be lower (or I might be wrong, and just disillusioned).

I think it is the reverse, folks think that already. There is no need to link the ideas up really, just support and leverage it. And this is the only thing that Trump actually can do shamelessly. You can't afford to start a business because the elites are overregulating everything. I am going to fix it so that you can afford it. Houses are so expensive because foreigners are taken them all. I will fight them and you will be able to afford beautiful houses. I will make such a great economy, the best economy where your wife can stay home and does a woman's true job. And you will be able to support them. I will protect you from the evil elites who will screw you over and the foreigners who are taking all the good jobs (if you want to appears smart you can also claim that foreigners are suppressing all your wages, but be careful with those big words).

I don't think that specific solutions even presented clearly will help if it does not address what the voter think it should address. And it is not the economy as such. Most folks have no idea how the economy is. And studies have shown that the worries of folks regarding the economy can even be disconnected to their actual own economic situation. There is a reason why folks are more worried about the border than anything else, regardless of the actual impact on economy and crime. And folks want their fears validated and addressed. And that is the issue. The Democrats actually went there and addressed border issues. But that again was not the point. If they wanted those "undecided" voters, they would had to be punitive and cruel about it. It doesn't even matter if it solves the issue, but if they saw that someone punished those undesirables, that might have been enough. But of course, that would have alienated a vast segment of Democratic voters. It is a lose-lose situation.