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Rightwing computer scientist and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer was the top donor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. He contributed $13.5 million and laid the groundwork for what is now called the Trump Revolution. Mercer also funded Cambridge Analytica (CA), a small data analytics company that specializes in "election management strategies." CA boasts on its website that it has psychological profiles, based on 5,000 separate pieces of data, on 220 million American voters. CA scoops up masses of data from peoples' Facebook profiles and uses artificial intelligence to influence their thinking and manipulate public opinion. They used these skills to exploit America's populist insurgency and tip the election toward Trump.
[...] We enter and participate in this digital world every day, on our laptops and our smartphones. We are living in a new era of propaganda, one we can't see, with the collection and use of our data played back in ways to covertly manipulate us. All this is enabled by technological platforms originally built to bring us together. Welcome to the age of platform capitalism—the new battleground for the future.
Previously on SoylentNews: Do Advertisers Know You Better Than You Know Yourself?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:14PM (27 children)
I don't think the internet will be destroyed. But social media, good riddance.
People should be able to distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy information -- and media. The key to this: an educated populace.
We are now reaping the failures of our education system that started some time back. Ignorance is celebrated. Intelligence is belittled and ridiculed. While a fictional strawman "geek hero" is created who brings us smart phones, etc.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @03:30PM (8 children)
We are now reaping the failures of our education system that started some time back.
Right on. I'll suspect some natural selection will unfortunately correct some of this. The question is how many others and what they will take with them on the way down.
Suppose you had insight and courage in Germany 1935. Would it matter?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:11PM (7 children)
I wouldn't call it "courage" but in Germany there were two fellows who invented a refrigerator. Fearing what the Nazi government might do, they went to the United States, where they wrote a letter to the president that led to the realisation of the atomic bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein-Szil%C3%A1rd_letter [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:51PM (5 children)
I am going to recommend once more that folks DON'T just cut and paste URLs.
A proper hyperlink with proper link text is the way to go.
In this example, we have Eastern European non-Roman characters.
What has resulted is not searchable via the S/N search engine nor via Google. 8-(
...not to mention not readable by a normal human.
A white space between words (rather than e.g. an underscore) would also help WRT the "searchable" thing.
I'm also recommending use of the Preview button to verify that what you -thought- you wrote is actually what will turn up.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @09:16PM (2 children)
It would be nice if rehash was smart enough to clean up bare urls when it linkifies them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @09:53PM (1 child)
...as in "Guess which of the dozens of character set this was using -before- it got changed to a Roman-equivalent for that site where I found it."
I don't think you have a strong enough grasp of the subject to be commenting on it.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @10:17PM
Wow, you kinda suck at this don't you?
I cut-n-paste a URL, rehash fetches the page and looks at the results to decide what to use.
Prick.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Tuesday April 11 2017, @10:08PM (1 child)
> [...] DON'T just cut and paste URLs.
I know how to do that, but I can't usually be bothered to make the effort.
> In this example, we have Eastern European non-Roman characters. What has resulted is not searchable via the S/N search engine nor via Google.
For me, the SoylentNews search has never worked when I attempted to search for comments. I assume it's because I'm not a subscriber. For example, a search of comments for "search" has no results for me:
/search.pl?tid=&query=search&author=&sort=1&op=comments [soylentnews.org]
> ...not to mention not readable by a normal human.
I'm aware that URLs are often not human-readable. I don't expect readers to read them. I'm aware that presenting them as URLs rather than as link text looks messy.
> A white space between words (rather than e.g. an underscore) would also help WRT the "searchable" thing.
Search engines typically ignore punctuation, do they not?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @10:44PM
Having tried others and having been disappointed with the results, these days, I use Google exclusively.
Google considers an underscore to be a searchable character.
Sites which use that character in URLs would be wise to use the same text (with whitespace, of course) in the page title.
Better still: Don't use the underscore in URLs.
(Too late for e.g. Wikipedia Launched - January 15, 2001. [wikipedia.org])
N.B. Google was founded in 1998 [wikipedia.org] and has used the same "searchable" criterion since I began using it that year.
Some sites which started before Google, went back and re-did their URLs to be Google-compatible.
Others never took any notice of how Google treats their URLs. 8-/
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @10:06PM
I think this is the point. A fucked state is usually unmanageable for an individual. Thus even if one has all the knowledge the brains to understand it and everything around. It still won't matter much. And thus emigration is in most cases the most efficient option.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:26PM (17 children)
We are now reaping the failures of our education system that started some time back.
It isn't a failure. Go read the writings of the people who designed the government schools. They wanted a compliant population to be good cogs in the Industrial Revolution's machine instead of rowdy individual Citizens. Good little team players, packed with enough knowledge to do their job but not taught to think independently since that would only cause them unhappiness. The ruling class of course continued to attend private schools that taught them how to lead.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @05:47PM (15 children)
Go read the writings of the people who designed the government schools.
Go google it! The demand of every idiot who can't back up his claims.
Good little team players, packed with enough knowledge to do their job but not taught to think independently since that would only cause them unhappiness.
You make two claims here, one true, one false.
(1) They realized the population needed to be educated so that there would be enough people with skills for the modern economy
(2) They wanted them to brainwashed so as not to question their place in society
Don't bother trying to prove #1, nobody disputes that.
I await your proof of #2. I'm sure I will be waiting a long time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:09PM (14 children)
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher [cantrip.org]
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:51PM (13 children)
You found an essay from 1991 that does not cite any historical documents by anyone.
That's not proof that the public school system was designed to do anything.
Its the opinion of one unhappy person.
Seems more like your are trying to disprove #1 by personal example than prove #2.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday April 11 2017, @09:59PM (12 children)
Alright, how about one with more sources? [wesjones.com]
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @10:55PM (2 children)
Looks like bullshit to me. As in the guy is lying about what his sources actually say.
For example, he claims:
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role.
But the actual source material [archive.org] is practically the opposite of that sinister portrait:
163 The diagnostic and directive function.
...
The mere offering of various forms of instruction does not complete the work of the secondary school. It must, as far as may be possible, add to that function the function of exploring, testing, diagnosing, and directing the education of the pupil. It must permit the pupil to discover and test his own special aptitudes and capacities...
The source material says its school's job to help kids figure out what they are good at and your guy twists that into forcing kids to conform to their 'proper' role.
Your guy obviously didn't conceive of a world where his claims could be fact-checked in a few minutes. He relied on his sources being entombed in the dusty vault of a library that few have access to so that we would have to trust his interpretation to be honest.
Maybe his other claims have more merit, but its telling that the very first one I decided to check turned out to be duplicitous. I really don't have the spare time to give him the benefit of the doubt after that.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @11:14PM (1 child)
Present day school policy managers perhaps also twists the original purposes the same way? That teacher after all tried to analyze his actual experiences during decades of teaching and student interaction. So even despite this, there's something seriously wrong with the way the school works.
How come we can make Mars rockets but not fix school?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @11:54PM
Part of the problem is that factory-schooling can only have so much variety. But you can not look at it in a vacuum.
Prior to public schooling, princelings got personal tutors, merchant kids got very small class-sizes, like ~6 kids per teacher and everybody else got apprenticeships, almost always in the family trade.
Compared to that, public schooling provides much broader options for the majority of pupils than would otherwise be available. So it isn't that conformity was a design goal, it is a result of the limited available resources.
I am not qualified to comment on which pedagogical strategies are better or worse. I'm just smart enough to recognize that the idea that public school is intended to turn kids into conformist robots is conspiracy theory and thus counter-productive. It might be satisfying to believe there is an enemy deliberately working to hold down the proletariat, but if you don't understand the reality of the situation you can't hope to fix it.
(Score: 1, Troll) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @11:10PM (7 children)
Here are the goals of compulsory numb-school, as per Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education [archive.org]:
(pointed out in the previous posters linked text)
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
The book [archive.org] is 776 pages long and the actual source material can be found under "376 PRINCIPLES OF SECONDARY EDUCATION", page 396 in the pdf [archive.org] file. I noticed some other interesting chapters too in the first pages.
The summary can almost be this: Got brains? GET OUT NOW!
Or at least study your own smarter curriculum regardless of what the school wants. Be it in classroom ignoring the teacher, library reading while skipping classes, which keeps up the image that "you go to school" or reading elsewhere away from the thug people. Remember that the only thing you need from your first 12-years of school are the papers that either get you into college or a decent job. Unless you start your own thing, in which case business performance is everything and not grades.
And don't take anyone elses word for that you are smart or dumb. Test it!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @11:39PM
> Here are the goals of compulsory numb-school, as per Alexander Inglis's 1918 book,
False
Those are some other guy's version of Inglis's goals.
A guy who is pushing a very specific narrative that seems to be only superficially related to what Inglis actually wrote.
There is so much irony in you two uncritically accepting what you are told about what Inglis wrote rather than checking it for yourself despite having the full text available to you.
Are you, by chance, a public-school graduate?
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:21AM (2 children)
Tried searching for:
"Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority." in the plain-text [archive.org] and was not able to find an occurrence.
" because its intention is to make children as alike as possible." does not show up either.
Neither does "School is meant to determine each student's proper social role.
Here is what seciton 151 (starting page 367) actually says:
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:53AM (1 child)
I think Gatto has written his text with only partial inspiration from Inglis's book. Gattos points seem valid regardless. There are other people with conclusions along the same lines.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:59AM
By the third null result, it was clear I was quoting a (possibly biased) summary :)
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:36PM (2 children)
I used to get yelled at in school for doing that (late 90s, early 00s). Apparently these days when you complete a test or assignment you're supposed to sit quietly and stare at a wall; individual educational reading is strictly prohibited.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:45PM (1 child)
Apparently these days when you complete a test or assignment you're supposed to sit quietly and stare at a wall;
Seems they mixed up jail with school.. :P
Time for kids to screw that hard.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:42PM
Eh, they're just treating it as the job training that everyone keeps saying it should be.
I spend a LOT of time these days staring at a cubicle wall. When I'm not on Soylent at least... ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:45AM
https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation_758 [archive.org]
"THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION is a freewheeling investigation into the real - as opposed to the `official' - history of schooling, focused on the U.S. but with examinations of other historical examples for the purposes of comparing and contrasting, as well as for tracing where ideas and concepts related to education originated. You will discover things you were never told in the official version, things that will, at times, surprise, disgust, and scare you. You will also be introduced to the little-known historiography of the the darker side of the construction of compulsory government schooling."
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @10:09PM
It's a failure for the outcome of the society as a whole. The individual power brokers want to abuse others to profit and get power is another issue.