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[ED NOTE: Editors discussed whether we should even run this story. I decided to take a chance. BUT, it's up to the community how this goes. Feel free to downmod comments that attack the *commenter* rather than *add* something to the discussion.--martyb]

gznork26 writes:

Growing extremism can and has turned almost anything into a political struggle in which people pay diminishing attention to the topics and more to the 'tribal' group that they may be associated with. We've seen the effects on the functioning on the US congress, as well as in how laws on various topics have been playing out lately.

But the idea that without a center, things fall apart, may be more real than we thought, as this article at ScienceBlog about a Cornell study describes: https://scienceblog.com/527200/tipping-point-makes-partisan-polarization-irreversible/

It seems that up to a point, it is possible to reverse the polarization. Beyond that tipping point, it cannot. From what I've seen, the US is probably in the vicinity of that tipping point. The pattern described here sounds an awful lot like the period-doubling path to chaos, a mathematical construct in which a function that has a single stable state in one range of numbers starts developing two stable states, and then four, until stability is lost and the set devolves into chaos. If this reflection has any validity in the political or social realms, then we should also have seen the same pattern play out within discussions that turn to chaos.

Is there predictive power in this observation by the researchers at Cornell? If so, can anything be done to head it off, or are we all doomed to watch it play out?

Journal Reference:
Michael W. Macy, Manqing Ma, Daniel R. Tabin, et al. Polarization and tipping points [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2102144118)

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

(Deliberately keeping summary politically neutral. There will be plenty of blame to go around if this goes anywhere.)

House Energy and Commerce Committee Unveil Comprehensive Strategy to Establish a National Privacy Standard:

Today, House Energy and Commerce Committee [...] issued the following statement on a comprehensive legislative draft that establishes a national privacy standard to protect Americans and sets clear rules for consumer privacy and data security in the U.S.

"We now share more of our personal information online than ever before. Everything from information about where we bank, what we buy at the grocery store, to where we drive, and how well we sleep. In order to ensure that our information is protected, we need one national privacy law that supports small businesses and innovation, promotes transparency, and incentivizes solutions for data security. [...]

I assume they mean "supports individuals" instead of "supports small businesses", and that by "small business", they mean any business smaller than the federal government.

Commerce Committee [...] privacy framework is guided by Leader Rodgers' four principles—which she outlines here [...]

Principle #1: The internet does not stop at state lines, so why should one state set the standard for the rest of the country? Creating arbitrary barriers to the internet may result in different options, opportunities, and experiences online based on where you live.

Principle #2: A lack of transparency has led to where we are today and any federal bill must ensure people understand how their information is collected, used, and shared. We must also ensure that companies who misuse personal information must be held sufficiently accountable.

Principle #3: Any federal bill must ensure companies are implementing reasonable measures to protect people's personal information.

Principle #4: We must also protect small businesses and innovation. We know that in Europe, investments in startups are down more than 40% since their data protection and privacy law—the General Data Protection Regulation—went into effect. We must guard against a similar situation here. We want small businesses hiring coders and engineers, not lawyers.

Maybe it's just me, but looking at Principle #1, it occurs to me that the internet does not stop at national borders any more than at state lines.

Original Submission