WHOSE REALITY WINS?

 With 20,000 troops protecting the District of Columbia and Congress and all 50 states deploying whatever security they can muster to defend their capitols, those of us waiting eagerly for Trump to leave office and for Joe Biden to become President might be able to breathe at least a bit easier in the expectation that the transfer of power will actually take place, although, tragically, far from peacefully.

Whose reality wins?

However, even with Trump out and Biden in the Oval Office, we can by no means relax. Despite the horrendous attack on Congress and democracy--and five dead--followed by what is being characterized as a bi-partisan impeachment, many members of Congress, other influential Republicans throughout the country and right-wing religious leaders continue to inject the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election into the supercharged echo chamber of right wing media, where it continues to resonate and radicalize.

It's hard to know how many of those influencers and opinion makers truly believe The Lie and all the evil collusion it implies, nor how many of the 74,000,000 who voted for Trump are fully committed True Believers. One clue is that after all that's happened somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of Americans still approve of Trump as President. Another is that fewer than 10 percent of Republicans think he should be impeached.

What is crystal clear is that being on the Trump team demands total loyalty, certainly not to facts or reason, nor even to a conservative ideology, but to whatever Trump, the only source of Truth--says. It makes little difference what mix of his supporters are passively going along with the mob, play acting, or acting out his revealed Truth; the real-world results are much the same. As DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone said about those rioters who intervened to try to keep him from being shot with his own gun, "Thank you, but f___ you for being there."

Right now the Big Lie still demands believing that the election was stolen through vast fraud, that Trump won by a landslide, and that democrats, progressives, RINOs, Vice President Pence and anyone who is not willing to eagerly follow Trump through every twist and turn of his quest for ultimate victory is evil, devoted to the destruction of the United States, and as such, an enemy of the people. That lie is likely to persist and fester for years. But even if it fades, we can be sure a new one will appear.

It's crazy, right? How could anyone believe such nonsense, not even counting the even more bizarre black hole of Q-Anon, nor whatever twisted beliefs about race, religion and White nationhood drive Trump's most militant and violent followers?

Yet crazy or not, whether we choose to recognize it or not, we are now in a war between our reality and theirs. It's beyond the point where patience, logic, facts, science, reality-based media or prestigious influencers can be counted on to win the day. Shots have been fired and blood spilled. The advance guard of an alternate reality has stalked the Capitol hunting traitors and carrying flex cuffs. The Trump flag has flown over Congress. The first gallows has been erected. 

We don't need a Churchill or Roosevelt to tell us that war has been declared. A war not just between progressive and conservative policies, between the talking points of left and right, between the "standard hyperbole" of politicians charging up their bases, or between competing narratives, but between a world that makes sense to most of us and a world that makes sense only within the armed perimeter of what has become a 70-million-strong cult.

Within that cult is a world defined by doublethink, where a fair election must be undone to protect the integrity of elections, where Patriotism requires an attack on the nation's Capitol, where tyranny is defined as unity and resistance to mob rule is divisive. Like the most dangerous cults, it promises power, prestige and salvation for the Righteous and death to feared and hated non-believers and apostates. Be on Team Trump or be damned.

There is a time for patience, empathy and understanding, but not when someone is battering your head in with his flagpole. There are periods during which one can hope that the simple passage of time will soften divisions and heal differences, but not when a crazed mob is crashing through your door. Whether we asked to be or not, chose to be or not, we've all been drafted into a battle not between right and left, nor right and wrong, but between two realities that cannot co-exist. Either Biden won in a fair election or Trump was robbed of the presidency in a treasonous nationwide coup. Either Q is right and the deep-state elite are an international cabal of satanic pedophiles--"baby-killing socialists"--as Pastor Robert Henderson preaches, or not.

Clearly our political, corporate, religious and civic leaders need to make it absolutely clear in speech and action that Biden won and is the legitimate President, and that white nationalism, racism and bigotry are not acceptable. The legal system from the Supreme Court down to police on the street needs to recognize the clear and present danger of domestic terrorism from the right and use all the tools at their disposal to contain and reduce it. The media need to look this threat in the eye and implement ways to limit the ability of hate-driven individuals and groups to organize and radicalize.

Unfortunately, even if all our leaders and institutions step up to their responsibilities, that will not be enough. This battle involves us all. I don't know just where or when you or I will be called to the front, but it will happen. Will it be with a friend, a family member or a stranger trying to get you to drink his or her tainted Kool-Aid? Or with a religious leader, school-board member or local politician arrogantly advancing The Cause? The time to speak up and step up is now, before their reality infects yet more hearts and minds. If not, there will come a tipping point after which you and I will find ourselves living in--or perhaps dying from--their toxic reality.

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REA

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This article first appeared on OpEdNews, 1/19/21.

THE SLEEP OF REASON

The artist and Chinese political dissident, Ai Weiwei's recent warning that "Abandonment of rational thinking leads to a collapse in which fear and joy, ignorance and reason, all blow in the wind" is a terrifyingly accurately depiction of this moment in time with America's President and his followers denying reality and furiously tweeting in the dark.

The Sleep of Reason by Francisco Goya

Credit: Brooklyn Museum

Years of attacks on scientific knowledge, rationality and expertise of all kinds, particularly relating to critical health, environmental and climate-related issues have, tragically, set the stage for just such a destabilized and destructive state of mind. As a consequence, today, with a dangerous pandemic sweeping across the land, and one hundred and fifty thousand Americans already dead, even the most minimally-invasive and 'reasonable' steps to mitigate the disaster such as mask-wearing and social-distancing continue to be met with powerful surges of irrational fantasies and fears, leaving the rest of us, in Ai Weiwei's imagery, and Bob Dylan's prophetic words from the 1960's, "blowing in the wind."

So deep is this 'sleep' of un-reason that violations and distortions of ordinary rules of law and governance, institutional standards, decorum and even measurable facts seemingly pass unnoticed and un-opposed in the night. Swirling in a maelstrom of Orwellian double-speak, "alternative facts," cries of "fake news," conspiracy theories and a continuing flood of blatant lies and denials, the reasoned process of discourse essential to the functioning of democracy becomes muddied and impossible to sustain.

While the President's 'gut feelings' about untested cures and virus prevention are given equal weight against demonstrable scientific evidence, leading scientists and epidemiologists are demeaned and their voices silenced. Widespread national protests in favor of Black Lives and against police violence become distorted into exaggerated and menacing projections of 'anarchism' in the streets. At the point where the most fundamental democratic acts of census taking, voting and delivering the mail provoke radically fearful and polarized reactions, the narcotic has fully taken hold.

Reason seems to have been fully detached from the requirements of fact. Propaganda, passion and sheer misinformation are free to activate the latent fears and anxieties in the mind of a paralyzed and destabilized public. Faith in the electoral process erodes, and in an American first, a sitting President openly proclaims that he might not accept the results of an election that goes against him! 

In just such a moment, some threshold is crossed. It could be the point when the unprecedented intrusion of federal paramilitary units into American cities against the wishes of state and local officials in the name of preserving 'law and order' becomes more than just one more fleeting outrage in the news cycle. Perhaps it will be the moment when the fever breaks.

For there is a point when sleepers do awaken. At times they are shaken into consciousness by the very intensity of the fearful specters unleashed in their own minds; at others by encounters with the rough and unforgiving edge of external reality against which even their fantasies are powerless.

"El sueño de la razon prodúce monstros" (The sleep of reason produces monsters), the Spanish painter Francisco Goya inscribed in his famous etching more than two centuries ago during a similar collapse of rationality in the chaotic aftermath of the French Revolution. Yet the lesson of history is that, inevitably, the darkly demonic forms, wildly exaggerated images, fears and nightmares will fade in the bright light of day: reason reasserted. In a partial reframe of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous words: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward reason."

lka

Rhyme or Reason: Responses to the Pandemic

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Daniel Defoe's classic novel "Journal of the Plague Year" based on the experience of London in 1665 details the understandable but often irrational behavior of both leaders and citizens coming to terms with the deadly epidemic sweeping the City during that year in which London lost between 14 and 21 percent of its population.

Image from the Great London Plague of 1665

Credit: Science Source

First came the very human response of denial: surely this will pass swiftly; perhaps it is limited to very few people or certain regions of the city; perhaps it can be contained; perhaps when the weather warms it will magically vanish; perhaps prayer will help.


Then distortion of the data soon followed to support these theories. As bodies piled up or were carted away, records were altered to attribute the deaths to other, more usual, acceptable, or even invented causes. Naturally, those responsible for affected districts sought to avoid the blame or opprobrium of being associated with the disease, and thus reported these false accounts to their superiors.

As in every case we know of from ancient Rome, to Europe in the Middle Ages, to modern-day China, actual facts about a growing epidemic, no matter how tightly controlled by the authorities, will be leaked to the general public, with predictable responses. Spreading like wildfire, often blowing limited or incomplete bits of information completely out of context, rumors themselves contribute to the impact of the contagion.

One all-too-human tendency inevitably leads down the path of stigmatizing easy-to-identify 'others' as the source. Another is the search for quick cures: rituals, signs or amulets to ward off the illness; or in other cases the promotion of folk-medicines or sometimes dangerous potions claimed by others to heal the sick.

From the perspective of authorities anxious to avoid challenges to their power, the next step is often to portray the disease and disaster as emanating from foreign sources, both external and internal. During the Antonine smallpox plague in ancient Rome, Christians were portrayed as the disease's source since they refused to serve the Roman Gods. During the Middle Ages in Europe, popular fear and anger during the scourge of the Black Death was directed against the Jews who were charged with and often murdered for poisoning the wells regardless of the fact that they drank the same water and often suffered from the same diseases.

If all this sounds familiar in the age of Covid-19, it should. But in this twenty-first century, we all should know better. Plagues and pandemics, despite President Trump's declarations, do not "magically go away by April;" nor are they "hoaxes" concocted by political enemies; or malicious evils carried by immigrants or sent by rival powers; nor can they be cured by untested potions, wishes or by "injecting disinfectants."


"History does not repeat itself, But it does rhyme," Mark Twain is alleged to have said.

In an age defined by science and deep medical knowledge, not myth, mystery and ignorance, isn't it time for us to finally bring the rhyme scheme up to date? A few nations, including Australia, New Zealand and South Korea are applying science and expertise to defeat our current plague. Can we do the same?

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Les Adler

AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAN NOW WRITE BOOKS

A computer just wrote a book. It's not a particularly catchy title--Lithium-Ion Batteries--and the author, a system called Beta Writer, isn't going to win a Pulitzer. However, it is a full-fledged, meaningful and readable book entirely written by a machine--the first but certainly not the last.

Authors watch out--one more "human only" skill bites the dust

Credit: Mirko Tobias Schaefer/Wikimedia 

If your reaction to this news is along the lines of "what's the big deal," that's understandable. Hardly a day goes by without news that AI has equaled or surpassed us plodding humans at yet another activity once thought to require uniquely human intelligence.

Artificial intelligence systems--let's just call them AIs for short--are now as good as humans at a large and rapidly growing number of tasks, and far superior in some others, including games like chess and Go, mastery of which was once seen as one of the pinnacles of human intelligence, and highly esteemed (and highly paid) skills including sinking basketball three-pointers. This is happening so rapidly and so frequently that most of us don't even notice the next advance.

However, some heavy-duty thinkers including Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking have been warning us for some time about the potentially existential risks of AI.

Gates, Musk and Hawking are not so much worried about AIs that are better than humans at one particular task or another, but about the emergence of an AI that is smarter and more capable than humans in every area. This kind of entity, they point out, could rapidly design and create an even smarter AI, which in turn could quickly improve on itself, leading to an intelligence explosion that could leave the human race, quite literally, in the dust.

Beta Writer, the system that created Lithium-Ion Batteries is pretty smart. It read thousands of scientific articles, extracted their most important findings, melded together related items, and them summarized them in readable, if technical prose. It produced the kind of comprehensive,  well organized, up-to-the-minute review of a scientific or technical field that until now would have been produced by an expert or a team of experts in a field. As such, it joins the ranks of expert systems that are matching or surpassing humans at increasingly high-level tasks. As an author myself, I can't help but be impressed. However, it's far more limited than the kind of AIs Hawking worried about.

Most researchers working on AI argue that these system, even if increasingly savvy and capable, are on the whole benign, for example helping doctors make accurate diagnoses, providing even amateur investors with high-quality guidance, and making all kinds of complex systems such as air traffic, shipping and product delivery run more smoothly. AIs are now integrated, mostly invisibly, into almost every aspect of our lives, and we rely on them whether we choose to or not. And although they occasionally do destructive things, for example the financial "Flash Crash" of 2010, or the deadly real crashes of  Boeing's 737 Max 8 aircraft, it wasn't because they were too smart or being malicious.

It's extremely difficult to predict when, if ever, an AI will emerge that surpasses humans in all of the areas that we consider important, including a deep understanding of itself and the world, emotional as well as analytic intelligence, creativity and imagination as well as problem solving. However, those who have thought most deeply about this, point out that such an entity may well have values and goals that are very different than ours.

These critics, or prophets, warn that we should be working as hard on "the control problem"--making sure that any emerging super-smart AI has the safety and security of us humans embedded so deeply into its design that it can't decide to act against us--as we are working to make AIs smarter, more capable and more ubiquitous.

All I know is that hundreds or thousands of times more money and talent is being poured into developing smarter, more capable AIs than are being devoted at that boring, but potentially vital control problem.

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Earlier posts on AI and its risks:

Google's Alphazero is now scary smart

Advanced artificial intelligence--friend or foe?

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WHO NEEDS SCIENCE? CERTAINLY NOT TRUMP'S EPA.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 with the mandate to enforce national environmental protection standards, and to conduct research on pollution in order to strengthen environmental protection and guide policy-making.

 Andrew Wheeler

the smiling face of the new EPA

To coordinate these efforts, the EPA created the Office of Science Advisor. Here's how the EPA's website describes the Science Advisor's role as of 9/28/18:

The Science Advisor works across the Agency to ensure that the highest quality science is better integrated into the Agency's policies and decisions. In this capacity, the Science Advisor leads the OSA and chairs the Agency's Science and Technology Policy Council which reviews selected science issues that have implications across program and regional offices. The mission of the OSA is to provide leadership and serve as an honest broker for cross-Agency science, science policy, and technology issues.

But not for long. The EPA is planning to delete the Office of Science Advisor, ostensibly to "eliminate redundancies" and "combine offices with similar functions." The scientist who has filled the post since 1981, Dr. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, is an expert on the effects of chemicals and other risk factors on human and environmental health. Apparently, her expertise is no longer needed at the EPA.

Neither is that of Dr. Ruth Etzel, the head of the Office of Chilren's Health. Dr. Etzel, a specialist in children's diseases and a strong advocate for protecting children from pollutants, was placed on administrative leave, stripped of her ID, email and access to the building, and sent packing.

It's more evidence, if needed, that Trump's EPA, currently headed by Andrew Wheeler, a lawyer and former coal lobbyist, is not all that interested in the kind of inconvenient facts once provided by Drs. Etzel and Orme-Zavaleta. Protecting people and the environment has been pushed to the rear, while deregulating polluting industries has been ushered to the front. The new EPA can now freely focus on Trump's promise to advance the cause of "beautiful, clean coal."*

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* That beautiful clean coal produces lots of toxic waste, including neurotoxic mercury. Now the EPA is going to make it easier for polluters to put that into the air you and your children breathe, and the water you drink.

Not to mention radiation. If you believe that a little ionizing radiation is good for you, then today's EPA is the place for you, as they also work to justify reducing radiation protection rules.

And you can now include particulates and ozone; the advisory boards dealing with both of these pollutants are being gutted or disbanded.

You can read more about these anti-science and anti-citizen steps here.

This just in (11/4/18): The EPA's website will no longer discuss climate change. I guess that for Trump's EPA, climate has nothing to do with protecting the environment.

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Science is not a four-letter word


Zerospinzone co-founder Lou Miller takes Senator James Inhofe and other climate change deniers to task for demeaning climate science and science in general at a time when the U.S. is more in need than ever of home-grown scientists and scientific expertise. His critique appears in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat of 1/28/10.

A simple intervention can inoculate female college students against the stereotype that they can't do well in science

New research by a team at the University of Colarado, in Boulder, adds to the growing number of studies showing that surprisingly minimal interventions -- in this case having university students in an introductory physics class write two 15-minute essays about the values that are most important to them and why they are personally important -- can boost the grades and achievement levels of students whose performance would otherwise be stunted by the debilitating effects of negative stereotypes.

You can read about research on the surprisingly powerful effects of negative stereotypes in this New Scientist article.

And about some of the research on simple interventions to inoculate the targets of negative stereotypes against them, here.

And about the most recent research in my Suite101 posting, here.

Robert Adler

avandia