8 ms·

The only counter-measure that works against polluting the polity with influence operations is earnestly educating people to be critical consumers of information

• zackmorris 8y ago
  For the reasons you gave: as a litmus test for whether a politician is a statesman or a shill, I look at whether he/she supports public education or not.
  • wowzap 8y ago
    You should do some reading on pre-public education America, there actually wasn't much demand for it and private education served communities very well.
    • vkou 8y ago
      Exactly how well did private education serve black communities in America? That demographic had a >50% illiteracy rate, in 1900. [1] [1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp
      • NeoBasilisk 8y ago
        You won't get an answer to this.
        • excalibur 8y ago
          It was a rhetorical question.
    • __jal 8y ago
      Which communities would those be?
    • soundwave106 8y ago
      Pre-public education America was also more rural. The rise of public education is tied to some degree to industrialization and urbanization in the 19th to early 20th century. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_32 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_...). This makes sense as industrialized jobs (even the industrialization that occurred in rural areas) often require more complex skillsets. As I see it, our society requires more complex skillsets than ever. So the need for an educated population is actually greater today compared even to when public education first rose up. I'm fine exploring many ways to increase educational opportunity (which may include the inclusion of private firms). But based on the private college market (think diploma mill scams), I'm very distrustful of any politician who thinks that completely dumping education onto the private market with zero oversight is a good idea.
  • RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
    Which do you think is more likely to develop students into citizens capable of independent thought: a) Sitting at a desk. Not allowed to talk unless called upon. Exactly following a schedule determined by authority figures. b) Being free to move about the room. Able to choose your activity with your peers.A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction. The first describes the typical public school. The second describes a Montessori school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education Given the inertia of the system, it is unlikely that the public education system can be reformed from what it is. Why not support parents choosing a school based on what they consider best for their children as long as the schooling meets minimum standards? However, when politicians support this options, there are people that paint them as villains for "not supporting public education". Someone can support "public education" the concept of educating the public, and not support "public education" the system which is often driven by various special interest groups.
    • bsder 8y ago
      Allocate the same teacher/student ratio and randomize the students in a public school and at a private Montessori and get back to me with the data. Most private schools do better only because they weed out the expensive problems and force them back to the public system. The moment you randomize the students, the private schools drop back to the mean (or, generally, worse). I find this unfortunate, because education is in dire need of some real, evidence-based, advances. We have a lot of new data about achievement and learning. However, putting it to practice requires money, time and a LOT of effort. And you will have to fight the parents, too.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Most private schools do better only because they weed out the expensive problems and force them back to the public system. The single biggest factor is that private schools, as non-default choices, automatically filter for parental engagement in education, even before considering the filters they put in place in terms of admissions criteria. Students with parents engaged in their education do better.
  • virmundi 8y ago
    What does support mean to you? Funding it? Accepting common core? Accepting agendas that teach there 56 are genders? Your advice seems virtuous. Only support people who fund public education. However, is public education, as it exists today, a good thing? Would you vote for a strong black woman that wants to reform public school to the pre-common core system? Would you support a gay dwarf that wants to revert back to the days of New Math hysteria? Would you support a ciswhite man that wants to keep everything as is? Funding by itself is not a good metric. What to do with the funding is.
  • AlexB138 8y ago
    I'm reading this as you saying anyone who doesn't support public education is a shill. If that's the case, you believe that libertarians are shills, then? This strikes me as you essentially saying "anyone who doesn't think the way I do on this topic shouldn't be trusted".
    • Jedd 8y ago
      I read it more as 'anyone who doesn't support public education isn't a person that should be setting policy for society'.
      • antidesitter 8y ago
        Really? How did you read it that way? Seems pretty clear the GP specifically used the term "shill".
        • Retra 8y ago
          You used the term "specifically" but nobody is nitpicking the meaning of that word to elevate a non-generous interpretation of what you mean. Sometimes people are just not that careful with the words they choose and don't expect others to jump on their word choice as indicative of some highly nuanced intent.
          • antidesitter 8y ago
            > You used the term "specifically" but nobody is nitpicking the meaning of that word to elevate a non-generous interpretation of what you mean. What do you think the word “shill” means to most people? I’m baffled at your attempt to characterize this as “nitpicking”. > Sometimes people are just not that careful with the words they choose and don't expect others to jump on their word choice as indicative of some highly nuanced intent. It’s pretty clear the author intended to call politicians who don’t “support public education” shills. There’s nothing “nuanced” about that. If you don’t think calling such people “shills” was the intent, I’m curious to hear your alternative interpretation.
  • antidesitter 8y ago
    What exactly do you mean by "supports public education"?
  • clarkmoody 8y ago
    Talk about a whiplash moment! GP was talking about critical examination of evidence during the education process. Then you mention public education, as if that provides what GP meant. How about a politician that makes the distinction between education and schooling? Let's start there.
• gambler 8y ago
  A good and important counter-measure, but not the only one. People also need better tools for analyzing and making sense of large quantities of information, especially as it evolves over time. Right now, all we have are search engines and excel spreadsheets, and it's clearly not enough. It's amazing how prophetic Neil Postman's criticism of computers turned out to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxgCoHv_aE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxgCoHv_aE Essentially, he noted how computers gave people tools to produce and consume more information, but not the tools to discern, filter and analyze it more effectively. It's a profound and very important observation. His Six Questions are also more relevant than ever.
  • lisper 8y ago
    Wow, that is one of the best long talks I've ever seen. Do you know if there's a transcript out there somewhere?
    • excalibur 8y ago
      Not finding one. Any volunteers for Rule 35?
      • lisper 8y ago
        I would start here: https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/ https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/
    • jxramos 8y ago
      YouTube has a transcript feature for newer videos. I wonder if there’s a way to nudge them to process some old content.
    • mycall 8y ago
      http://www.paulos.net/teaching/hcc/papers/informing_ourselves_to_death--postman.txt http://www.paulos.net/teaching/hcc/papers/informing_ourselve...
      • 8y ago
• tboyd47 8y ago
  The "flooding" attacks identified by the researchers work by raising the cost of consensus building in a democratic society. Your approach helps deal with the increased cost on an individual level, but it does not help prevent the attacks or counteract their effects on a societal level. i.e. if I can raise the cost of getting quality information from 2 cents to $200 for everybody, you can empower certain people by giving them $200, but you can't bring the price back down to what it was.
• tomjen3 8y ago
  I wonder what they will do when he questions the teachers
• beginningguava 8y ago
  This is just legacy media trying to regain power. Fake news has been around forever, look up Yellow Journalism. The difference now is that the 5 multi-national corporations that controlled nearly everything we saw and heard are losing their monopoly on what information reaches the population. Everybody loved big data and social media when Obama used it to win and when Arab Spring happened. But now it's a threat to democracy, I wonder what changed?
  • DFHippie 8y ago
    Using electronic media to influence opinion isn't all "big data". Obama didn't use massive deception, for one thing. Putin's program involved lots of people pretending to be people they weren't to say things that weren't true. These two campaigns aren't different sides of the same coin, as you imply.
  • azemetre 8y ago
    Telling likely voters to vote for your candidacy is drastically different than telling people Climate Change is a Chinese hoax or that thousands of men, woman, and children seeking asylum are terrorists.
    • mc32 8y ago
      But it’s also false to claim most are women and children and that most are fleeing violence (most are men seeking economic sdvantage) and that entering illegally deserves as much rights as people who’ve applied legally and have waited decades. It’s also false to insinuate the Obama admin didn’t use teargas against wannabe border crossers. And it’s also false to insinuate it’s illegal. France, just the other day had suppressed a demo against taxes in Paris using teargas but no one’s outraged at that. Teargas is used as crowd control in many euro countries.
      • loveyourmother 8y ago
        The fact that people are downvoting you for just point out hypocrisy is sad.