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More (and ongoing) developments on the Whistleblower/Ukraine thing:
House Speaker Pelosi has begun an inquiry into impeachment of the president:
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/24/763700264/trumps-ukraine-call-may-be-game-changer-on-impeachment
The (live at the time of this submission: 2019-09-26 14:30 UTC) House Intelligence interview of the Acting Director of National Security:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-49841920
The unclassified-version of the whistleblower complaint was released:
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190812_-_whistleblower_complaint_unclass.pdf
As was the memo/pseudo-transcript (not 100% guaranteed as they are hand-typed, no recordings of calls are made any more in the US in the aftermath of Watergate) on the call between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy[*]:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf
[*] Yes, Zelenskyy, see: Zelensky, Zelenskiy, Zelenskyy: spelling confusion doesn't help Ukraine.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday September 29 2019, @07:07PM (12 children)
No maaan, the last presidential candidate I voted for belonged to neither party. I'm a part of some problems, but not this one. You're just being pissy about reality being a shitty place to exist, don't direct your incontrollable bladder at the leg of the messenger. "Advertisements" is actually the statistically sound answer to the question you raised. Who spends more on advertisements is a really good predictor of who wins. The voters don't rationally choose to vote in corruption, they just watch campaign ads sponsored by industry X telling them to be afraid of candidate Y, so they say "well I don't like Z, but at least they're better than Y!" It's not even obvious how to stop this cycle without restricting either wealth or speech.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 29 2019, @07:27PM (11 children)
The voters don't rationally choose to vote in corruption
Ok! And whose fault is that?? The real issue is the voters, not the politicians. You're taking this personally. I can't help that, but it does cloud your judgement.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday September 29 2019, @07:44PM (10 children)
You seem to be making a bad attempt a provocative asshole schtick, so I'm doing the same back. Don't have a cow, man.
It's a systemic problem, there's no more "fault" in this situation than there is fault in a fly who lands in a honey trap. You originally asked if anybody knew what compelled voters to behave the way they do, and I politely provided you a pretty good answer. Now you want me to assign fault? Take your "good" and "evil" bullshit back to whatever brand of Church you were molested into, I was answering a question about an amoral human system -- not trying to assign blame to specific cogs in the sausage making factory. Do you have a voter denigration fetish or something?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 29 2019, @07:53PM (9 children)
Nothing to do with good and evil. That is extraneous bullshit. It's about personal choice and who is responsible. Apparently even you are in denial.
So, everybody wags the dog, the world trudges on..
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday September 29 2019, @07:57PM (8 children)
If people behave predictably in a given system, what is responsible for the behavior: the people, or the system?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 29 2019, @08:13PM (7 children)
The people, obviously. The system wasn't "given" to them, they made it, and they maintain it. People have to accept that they have a choice, and that they are responsible. Why the obtuseness? I mean, I know why, but why?
Understand that, for humans, the choice to be Pavlov's dog is a choice, even if made passively
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday September 29 2019, @08:33PM (6 children)
I'm honestly not sure what you mean by choice (though I have a guess). If you mean it in a sense that includes Alpha Go "choosing" to make moves, I agree that humans have choice -- but so does the supervenient system of humans. If you mean it in a mushy biocentric "OMG FREEEE WIIIIILL" sort of way, I'm gonna go back to calling your beliefs good and evil bullshit. I feel like there is a systems analysis question wrapped up with a moralising who-should-we-blame question, and I only really believe in one of those things. Yet, you claim this isn't about good and evil bullshit. Why yes, this is a bit hard for me to understand.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 29 2019, @09:19PM (5 children)
I'm gonna go back to calling your beliefs good and evil bullshit.
Whatever... your choice :-)
The reality boils down to simple physics. Superficial bullshit ain't my thing.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday September 29 2019, @09:40PM (4 children)
Simple physics of choice and blame? Ooookay man, best of luck getting those papers published. The Institute of Noetic Sciences might be interested in collaborating with you, FWIW...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:03PM (3 children)
Simple physics of choice and blame?
Yes, simple electrochemical energy drives it all. Oh wait, you're not a dualist, are you?? That would definitely blind you to the connection.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday September 29 2019, @10:56PM (2 children)
Not a dualist. I feel like that cookie has to crumble one of two ways:
* Consciousness is a part of base reality, and even electrons are conscious on some level.
* Consciousness is a supervenient phenomenon implemented on top of base reality, and swapping out the details of base reality doesn't have to affect the higher-order mechanisms of consciousness built atop it -- we aren't really real in the most base sense of the word, we're just along for the ride.
I'm pretty agnostic as to which of these is true, and I'm not sure that we can test between the two even in theory. Note that without invoking something extra neither option leads us to a meaningful understanding of "choice," other than in the sense of "this system is so complex and/or chaotic that our most useful way of modelling it is to treat it as a black box which does things we don't fully understand." That's only a clever basis for "blame" if you're trying to train that opaque system through negative reinforcement, and I think that's roughly why we evolved/invented the concept of blame. It's sometimes a useful concept for achieving goals, but it doesn't really correspond to reality at all. "Blame" isn't something that can be objectively debated, outside of discussing which subsystem is to "blame" for a supersystem failing, or something like that.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 29 2019, @11:35PM (1 child)
I am only pointing out the absurdity of people who blame all their troubles on a system that we all ourselves run. All choices, whether to resist or submit (fight or flight), are strictly personal, a personal reaction to one's environment, including all the sociological (peer) pressure. It is our choices as group that shape the system. As a group we can turn on a dime, just that easy [youtube.com]. You should know that each individual in that film is seeking out its own personal advantage for the best spot for the night. From the right distance I'm sure we look exactly the same.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday September 30 2019, @12:26AM
The flock is more than the sum of the birds; it is the product of every message passed to and from every bird. The bird is more than the sum of it's organs, the brain more than the sum of it's neurons. Yet changing the specific implementation of a neuron, brain, or bird does not necessarily change the behavior of the flock. We could theoretically replace some of those birds with replicants that moved in a sufficient similar fashion and have the flock as a whole behave as before. We're talking about systems which emerge on top of the messages passed between subsystems. If we're going to "blame" people for the way the system functions we might as well go down to the next subvenient set of systems and blame the people's neurons, or the molecules those neurons are made of, or the atoms those molecules are made of, or the fermions and bosons those atoms are made of, or the base-3 supercomputer in another dimension that those fermions and bosons are implemented on top of, or the base-12 superdupercomputer another dimension below that...
I think we have a tendency to focus on the level of "people" because that has been a useful strategy for navigating the world and copying our patterns. Of course no level really matters any more or less than another, but I think higher-order systems tend to be more powerful than lower order systems, so "blaming" the lower order systems for the behavior of higher order systems is, like, technically causally true, but also missing the bigger picture (and something that we tend to do down to the level of people, but not past it).