Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, June 5, 2024
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63 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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We have graduation exercises this morning, so I’ll be out of pocket the rest of the day.
Today in the “No Shit, Sherlock” file:
US maternal mortality rate far higher than in peer nations, report finds
‘Racial resentment’ a factor in violence of 6 January 2021, study says
@James Joyner: I’d say, “Have fun” but my own graduation was as boring as watching mold grow.
@OzarkHillbilly: If James’ student goes to the school he/she likely goes to based on where James and family live, there will probably be around 600-650 graduates.
My daughter graduated from that school, and it took over 2 hours for all the graduates to walk the stage and receive their diplomas.
@Mikey: I’m a boomer. There were well over 600 in my graduating class. The only reason I went is because my parents weren’t sure I would ever graduate.
It’s only 9:15 in the morning and one of the posts up has just started its death throes for the day, which got me musing. Yesterday I observed that if you poke a monkey it will fling its poo, but I really have to wonder who is the one doing the poking and who is the one flinging the poo.
@MarkedMan: Thanx for the warning. I’ll pass.
The GOP convention website used a pic of a city skyline as a backdrop image. One problem: It appears to not be Milwaukee. Apparently, it’s Ho Chi Minh City.
On more Mexican election news, things may get really bad.
Sheinbaum won as expected, but her party and coalition partner parties also manged to snag super majorities in both legislative chambers. this means not only they can pass any laws at all (no filibuster here, BTW), but they can also amend the constitution at will (no requirement for states to ratify anything*).
His outgoing majesty had wanted to weaken the National Electoral Institute (which handles all elections and enforces regulations in all campaigns in Mexico, from local to federal**). He has a grudge that they didn’t hand him the win in the 2006 election merely because he had fewer votes than the winner.
He also wants to eliminate the Institute for Public Information and Transparency, because he dislikes the privileged political class having to be open about their finances and income. And he wants supreme court judges to be elected by the voters, because the courts have stopped or derailed many of his illegal and unconstitutional schemes.
Now, Sheinbaum has supported these and other things. But what she said when a protege of his majesty may not be what she wants to do once she takes the office of president. Nor are the coalition parties necessarily in lockstep with his majesty or his party. But if any of these initiatives come to the legislature, chances are they will pass.
@OzarkHillbilly: Back in the Usenet days, I watch a number of unmoderated groups essentially become worthless because of a few individuals who constantly showed up to spew nonsense, and the inability of the commentariat to stop themselves from constantly engaging them. These were good and useful sites, some of which were unique and had been essential go-to’s for specific technical subjects. Despite the fact that the reader I used allowed me to filter out posts form specific readers or the replies, once a certain tipping point was reached the sites became worthless. I was sad to see them go. jI hope OTB isn’t going to follow that path.
@OzarkHillbilly:
They’re just trying to make America great territorially.
Now America has its Midwest in Southeast Asia, and it’s New Jersey in South America. And that makes it a great, BIG country.
Just wait til they place the Pacific Northwest on Mars.
@James Joyner: Congratulations and best wishes for the future to the graduate!
@MarkedMan:
That’s why I ignore the posts of JBK and Paul L, along with any replies that they receive. We would be better served by simply ignoring the trolls.
You know, I expect you all have a very solid take, but I understood James to be saying that the school he teaches at had its graduation today…
@OzarkHillbilly: I went to graduation every year in high school and college. I was in the school orchestra and had to play the commencement marches. The combo of my parents not caring about watching me march, being excused from orchestra duty because of my graduation, and the night of commencement being a work night for me made a perfect storm event for skipping the march altogether.
The Boeing Starliner (ie crewed capsule) is about to launch. here’s a link to a live video. Two astronauts are onboard.
@Kathy: Sheinbaum will take whichever actions will suit her desires and ignore his completely if she was classically trained (per the usual meme) as a minion.
Or she may surprise you and do what will benefit the citizens. (Not likely, I know, but a cracker can hope.)
@Jay L Gischer: Depends on who “we” is. (And, tbh, it never occurred to me that a service college with mostly already enlisted students* would have such a ceremony, but I am just a cracker.)
Either way, congratulations to the graduate or, more likely, graduates.
* And I could easily be wrong given how much I pay attention to details.
@MarkedMan: Usenet is where most of the classic terms for toxic Internet discourse (troll, flame war, Godwin’s Law) originated.
@Sleeping Dog:
43 years of experience has taught me that warning people not to feed the trolls never works. Never. Not once. There is always a critical mass of people that respond, and then the thread/group devolves into nonsense. It usually resets overnight, but I’ve noticed it starting here earlier and earlier each day over the past week or two.
@Kylopod: In my naive and younger days I was astounded at the havoc an OG troll could wreak in every single Usenet group I was a member of simply by butting into a well reasoned discussion and saying words to the effect, “Well the actual problem is that you are using a Mac/PC and people who use that are deficient in the following way”. It worked every single time, regardless of what the conversation was about, and the group would descend into chaos for a period of time. In the unmoderated groups I followed there would an outbreak every week or so, week after week after week, even in groups where it shouldn’t have entered into it at all (for example, programming language groups that were exclusive to PCs).
Years ago a writer (Annie Dillard) wrote a piece on how one morning she noticed a trail of ants near her workspace, and she drew a circle on the floor with sugar water and then picked twenty or so ants up on a straw and placed them on the circle. At first she was amused that they continued to follow the circle around and around and around, responding to their innate base programming. But as morning stretched into afternoon and then into evening with the ants marching the same futile path, she was gradually filled with horror and started question the meaning of life and whether humanity’s very existence was futile.
Some days that is how I feel watching the troll/commentariat interaction.
@just nutha:
The PRI went down because: 1) massive devaluation in 1976, 2) massive devaluation in 1982, 3) high inflation until 1993, and 4) the neoliberal reforms of the late 80s and 90s involved integrating in international trade, and many countries felt free to press Salinas into democratizing the country.
You’d think the current crop of politicos would understand this, and as his majesty may be trying to make his party into the new hegemonic force, they’ll take into account what the markets signal, like drops in the stock market and such. Especially since inflation is still on the high side, and reference interest rates are around 11%.
On other news, the Boeing Starliner is almost in its correct orbit, and no door plugs came loose as far as I know.
I noticed that the Hunter Biden gun case is going to trial. I suspect this generates a mild quandary for the NRA. On one hand, they hate Democrats. OTOH, if this law is approved universally 10%-20% of gun owners should also be charged. Courts would be full.
Steve
@MarkedMan:
I agree. But I would go further and say it is sometimes useful and productive to respond to such a person. If the person is spreading misinformation, countering it is a good thing. If someone is repeating a veiled white-supremacist talking point most normies aren’t familiar with, as Paul L. did not too long ago, it is a good thing to let others know.
It’s true that getting bogged down in an argument can be pointless, but I simply don’t accept the notion that engaging with such a person inherently accomplishes nothing. It very much depends.
I personally have a policy of not engaging with nuts on Youtube. A couple of years ago I watched a video reporting that Tom Hanks’ son was refusing to get the Covid shot on the grounds that since he hadn’t gotten Covid yet, that must mean he was hardy enough to withstand the virus without needing a vaccine. I posted a snarky comment that it’s hard to keep the anti-vaxxers’ arguments straight, since so many of them argue the opposite of what Hanks Jr. said–they say they got Covid already, which means they have natural immunity.
My comment was instantly flooded by anti-vaxxers. I ignored them. But others argued with them, and I have to admit, I didn’t mind so much. Not everyone has the time on their hands, of course. But I absolutely do not accept the defeatist attitude that the troll always wins, no matter what you do. It is absolutely possible to destroy the troll in a debate, even though the troll will never admit it and not everyone will be instantly persuaded to your side. So what?
My hot take of the day …
Anyone who can’t get 130 grand to a porn star clean without anyone knowing about it has no business being the one with the Nuclear Football.
@Kylopod:
FWIW, when I feel the need to counter misinformation spread by a loon or a troll, I do so without hitting the reply button and without mentioning the name. Trolls tend to be laser focused on seeing themselves mentioned, and so they ignore the post. I can only think of one time that a troll responded to something I wrote in this fashion, and it was short (I didn’t bother to read what they said, so I can’t tell you if it was relevant). If your purpose is to counter misinformation but don’t want to feed fuel into a pointless flame war, this is the most effective method I’ve found.
On June 4th, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy won the Democratic Party presidential primaries in California and South Dakota. It was 2am cdt, Wednesday June 5th in the midwest where I was watching him on TV address his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after the victories. Even though I would not be 21 years old until January 1969 and not qualified to vote in the November 1968 Presidential election, I had registered for the Draft at 18 when I was still in High School and I had a keen interest in who would be the next President USA.
Moments after RFK finished speaking and walked off camera word came over the air that he had been shot! I couldn’t believe it! Fifty six years ago today. The memory of his brother’s assassination not 5 years earlier flashed through my mind!
Apparently I woke up my dad. “Go to bed. It’s late.” he said.
“But Robert Kennedy just got shot!” I said.
Almost 24 hours later two friends and I boarded the Illinois Central passenger train in Homewood, Illinois to visit Carbondale to enroll in college at Southern Illinois University and look for housing. A train ride that I will never forget. Six hours and 300 miles. The conductor on the train was listening to his transistor radio for news. We were a few hours from our destination and it was still dark out on the morning of June 6th when he told us that he heard a report that Kennedy had died.
Lest we forget
Robert F. Kennedy
1925-1968
RIP
@MarkedMan: FWIW, “Annie Dillard” in my post above should have read “Annie Dillard?” since it is just a vague recollection.
@Sleeping Dog:
@MarkedMan:
I usually ignore them, too. I mean I don’t even read what they post. it won’t be wrong, stupid, ignorant, prejudiced, nasty, brutish, etc. 100% of the time, but that’s the way to bet. So, unless you need some trivial time wasters, or lack enough aggravation in your life, there’s no reason to read any of them.
The occasional trolls are worse, as their handle may not be familiar enough to avoid (I’m not saying all infrequent posters are trolls, but that some trolls post infrequently).
I do miss the downvote button. That one allowed me to downvote their posts unread.
I think as the Russian propagandists ramp up their misinformation war in support of Trump, as they are wont to do, we should take a hard look at those on the forum that perpetuate it and consider bans. It’s not going to get better by itself during an election year.
@Kathy: What they want above all else is attention, so even downvoting is a win for them. And there is nothing sweeter than getting someone worked up to the point of carefully crafting a five paragraph refutation of the poo they have just thrown on the table.
Does it feed the troll to let discussion of trolling hijack a different thread in which trolls have yet to participate?
If a troll falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, has it really trolled? Who’s on first? What’s on second? How many trolls can dance on the head of a pin?
@MarkedMan:
I figure they go back to their homes under a bridge, and tell the other trolls “I only got downvotes! I don’t know which liberalcommietranssocialistdemonrat I managed to mortally upset!
I may have a few details wrong.
@DK: I think you have to check the Department of Redundancy Department for that. Or maybe check with these guys.
@MarkedMan:
Or this.
@DK:
Let’ take another tack then.
I just finished a lecture series on exoplanets (planets outside the Solar System). It was good, but had much more info on how astronomers find and study exoplanets, than what they’ve found so far. Not surprising, because they know exactly what methods they use and how they work, but can gain relatively little data from their observations (ie more than you’d think, far less than we want).
Then yesterday I ran across a critique of the Drake Equation, claiming one needs oceans, continents, and tectonic activity, in order to obtain a sentient civilization in a life-bearing planet.
Maybe. You also would want a magnetic field, which I think is a feature often neglected. Radiation issues aside, magnetic fields also help to keep the atmosphere in.
The bottom line is we don’t know enough about planets around other stars to be able to tell. The first exoplanets found were largely large gas giants with very close orbits around their stars. This happened because just about all methods can detect these more easily. But it also showed at once that some systems were very, very different from our own.
So maybe oceans, continents, and tectonic activity are necessary to evolve an intelligent, technological civilization on Earth. And I’m willing to add magnetic field to that observation. This may not be the case elsewhere.
A large moon is also sometimes cited, as ours keeps the Earth’s spin axis stable. Asimov suggested in a novel, Robots and Empire, that it also helped pull heavier elements to the crust while both worlds were still partly molten.
Maybe. We still lack a lot of data.
@DK: Personally, I find the “don’t feed the trolls” stuff more annoying than the trolls, but that’s just me and I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum. And people really seem to enjoy it.
Similarly, people playing with the troll should just be sure they’re having fun.
@Gustopher: Just as it’s as sure as the sun rises that people will feed the troll, the same is true about other people complaining about it.
@Kathy: A magnetic field is absolutely necessary to life, not just intelligent life, but all life. At least, life as we know it, tho I can’t conceive of life that would be able to withstand and even thrive under constant bombardment from cosmic radiation.
@Kathy: For an intelligence to be detectable by us, it would have to operate at roughly the same time scale. But is there any reason to assert that intelligences couldn’t exist on a time scale 100 times slower or faster than us? Or 1000? That may affect the Drake Equation.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think so, too. For one thing, a magnetic field protects its planet from radiation. It also steers the solar wind away, which otherwise tends to knock atoms loose off the upper atmosphere. It’s entirely likely Mars lost much of its atmosphere due to the combination of low gravity and solar wind, because it lacked a magnetic filed (or more likely stopped having one as it cooled). Then much of its water evaporated and now floats among the Solar System detritus, and some of of it froze at the poles and underground.
Venus also lacks a magnetic field, yet it has more atmosphere than Earth (like 90 times more). But it has a stronger gravity than mars (about the same as Earth’s). Still, much of its water, if ot all, seems to have been lost as it made its way to the upper atmosphere and was then knocked away by the solar wind.
I wonder, though, if Venus has an interior as hot as Earth’s, whether speeding up its rotation would resurrect its magnetic field. Both planets are of similar size and mass, but we don’t know much about Venus’ composition.
But I also know we don’t know everything there is to know about either planets or life. And the universe has a habit of surprising us. Per J.B.S. Haldane, the universe may not be stranger than we imagine it to to be, but stranger than we can imagine.
What I think most likely is that life may not be able to arise in a world without a magnetic field, but it might 1) persist in a world that lost its magnetic field, or 2) arise elsewhere, but adapt to a world without a field.
For the first, we may find some kind of lifeform on Mars, perhaps “simple” unicellular organisms or microscopic multicellular ones, deep underground where perhaps temps are higher and some liquid water may be found (lots of “mays”).
For the second I mean any lifeforms inadvertently or purposefully brought to a barren world, might adapt to the conditions there and perhaps thrive. I can’t think of examples for that one.
@MarkedMan: Perhaps it is fate that the site will devolve into nonsense. Perhaps it is possible that “past performance is not a guarantee of future results” and that not all discussion boards are identical to each other. Either way, the choices seem to be 1) use the site as it is while it is useful, and 2) throw up your hands in despair and leave now before you have to leave muttering to yourself “I warned them, and they didn’t listen” with tear-stained eyes.
(There may be a third option [ETA: or even more]; some of my students used to complain that I tended to present alternatives as binaries even if there were other alternatives available, though few ever showed me an alternative that I’d missed.)
ETA, part 2: “FWIW, when I feel the need to counter misinformation spread by a loon or a troll, I do so without hitting the reply button and without mentioning the name.”
I guess there must be another alternative.
@MarkedMan:
Aside from timescales being dependent on frames of reference (see, Einstein, Albert), the notion has been tackled in science fiction (like, what hasn’t been tackled in science fiction?) But in those stories there’s always withe communication, interaction, or both.
Now, do you mean time passes more slowly or quickly for them than for us, or that they move, think, and act faster or slower than we do?
@Kathy: Mostly, I just scratch my head at what trolls say, but I also don’t take my virtual life as seriously as others do (at least most of the time), so the anguished cries of randos don’t carry as much meaning or impact. Then again, I’m as inclined to troll people as anyone (part of being undiagnosed NPD and somewhere on the sociopath spectrum, I suppose), and trolls make better targets than others do.
@DK: Or is the problem (???) that commenting about the perils of trolling and lamenting those who feed the trolls (thereby putting the site at danger of devolving into nonsense) is actually trolling, on its own merits?
@MarkedMan: There’s the entire “trees and forests communicate” thing that was proposed a few years back. I haven’t followed it, largely because I don’t want to live in a world where trees are not having rich, fulfilling lives in their community, so I’ve just decided it was true.
But, if it is true, I think humans would be really bad at figuring it out because the timescales are so much longer than our attention spans.
We don’t even know how long an Australian trapdoor spider can live, because after 43 years one was killed by a wasp. Outlive the the original scientist’s career.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_16_(spider)
I’m not sure if this detail is heartbreaking or sweet.
@Kathy:
One person’s trivial time waster is another person’s silly hobby.
I don’t advocate taking El Paul and JKB seriously, for that is the path to madness, but just batting them around like a cat does with a piece of tin foil.
@Kathy:
The latter. For instance, we detect variations of input at certain frequencies (ex: audio from 20Hz to 20Khz, changes from light to dark from maybe taking place over an hour to maybe 20 times a second?) If beings processed information at 1000 times that or 1/1000th of that we wouldn’t be able to communicate with them, and I doubt we would even realize they were beings rather than just some natural phenomenon.
@Gustopher:
Exactly!
@Just nutha ignint cracker: People are free to do what they want to, but no online community lasts forever. And one of the ways they die is to become overwhelmed by flame wars. It drives people away, including the “fresh blood” that every site needs to survive. Every unmoderated site eventually succumbs, and given that this site is moderated with such a light touch, we could reach the threshold of no return before someone tries to put a stop to it.
As for discussions of trolls and responses, I find it interesting to discuss. But I have absolutely no desire wasting my time trying to convince people not to feed the trolls. Maybe you can convince 1 person or even 90% of the people. But in the end all it takes is a few on each side.
The Senate just voted on the right to contraception. The republicans torpedoed it, bellowing how this was government overreach.
What fucking hypocritical weasels.
@Kathy:
If you’ve got plate tectonics, then both oceans and a molten core = reasonable magnetosphere may very well all come as part of the same package.
Assuming sufficient water to fill the basins.
Interesting point: the Earth has sufficient water to fill the SiMa basins, but not much more.
Odd coincidence, which may perhaps not be coincidence at all, but causal re. SiMa plates
1865, HERE WE COME!!!
https://wapo.st/3V3e9hi
@MarkedMan:
I try to avoid believing I have the power to persuade. (And yes, I knew you were using collective “you.” I’m just yanking your chain.)
@JohnSF: What is SiMa?
@MarkedMan:
It’s really hard to say. In fiction, there’s always interaction or communication.
Also, there’s a lot we can’t perceive directly we can device instruments to do for us. So, if trees “communicate” with sounds at ultra-low frequencies, or with chemicals, or with electrical signals through the ground, we can detect all of that.
@JohnSF:
For all that the oceans cover 3/4 of the world, and go down very deep, water is a ridiculously small proportion of the Earth’s mass. So, it takes relatively little water to make oceans.
The rest, who knows. Earth hasn’t cooled down all the way from its formation, as I understand things, in large part due to the decay of radioactive elements (and how the thermodynamics of the planet work). That’s why I wonder a lot about the composition of other planets and satellites.
We’ve found mountains on many worlds. How did they form? On Earth, they’re partly a consequence of plate tectonics. So, did Mars and Venus and the Moon at one time also had active tectonic plates? Have they cooled down all the way, or at least more than Earth?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
*mind blown* I have met the troll, and the troll is us.
We are all trolls now. Let he who has not trolled cast the first stone.
@Kathy:
This is correct. Lord Kelvin tried to estimate the age of the earth based on its current temperature profile, but radioactivity had not yet been discovered, so he assumed simple radiative cooling of a sphere of molten rock, and looked at the temperature gradient as you go deeper (1 degree Fahrenheit per 50 feet of depth). From those, he estimated the initial temperature and elapsed time since initiation. He was wildly wrong, coming up with a figure on the order of 100 million years.
@MarkedMan:
Rocks with relatively higher levels of magnesium silicate, the denser rocks which form the rather thin oceanic plates, and tend to be subducted.
As opposed to Sial; rocks with more aluminium silicate, less dense, form the much thicker continental plates, tend to be subducted rather less.
@Kathy:
Yes; but it’s the pretty close “fit” to the Sima plates that makes me suspect there is a linkage between the two that’s more than just coincidence.
Mars appears to have mountains due to magma hotspots fixed in place over many millions of years, where what a lot of “areologists” think were “proto-plates” got “stuck” due to less core heat, and perhaps relative lack of water for plate lubrication.
@Kathy: I can say for certainty that life takes many forms and that we are still learning how many variants.
Gonna say I have actually caved in Lechuguilla Cave (6 or 7 expeditions) and have exited covered in gorilla shit (the fecal matter of the rock eating bacteria), more than once. It’s a funny thing how we don’t know what we don’t know until it slaps us in the face.
@DrDaveT:
Kelvin is a good example as to why the argument from authority is a fallacy, especially in science.
@JohnSF:
For all the probes and rovers sent to Mars, we’re far, far, far from being able to study the planet as much as we’ve studied our own. At that, we can do a lot more on mars than we’ll ever be likley to do on Venus.
@OzarkHillbilly:
To this day, serious scientists argue whether viruses are alive.
On more concrete and less mysterious notes, I’m cooking bean soup in the pressure cooker, along with a piece of chicken breast. The chicken if for shredding to add into a pot of chilaquiles. It just cooks well under pressure.
And I’ll either attempt mint vanilla ice cream, or give the ice cream maker a break.
@DK: While I was teaching, I saw job one as teaching students how to push the envelope.