A common saying is, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." The key idea in the second paragraph is that serious events might look silly or comical at first, but should not be ignored.
Read about the Beer Hall Putsch, about how it was characterized by contemporaries, about it's efficacy, and it's not totally unreasonable to say, "Is this a modern version of that event?"
Are you lumping socialists in with communists? Leftists? And which communists are you concerned about (e.g. council communism? Autocratic communists? Stalinists? Maoists?)
Wheeling out 'communism' without qualifying who your bogeyman is based in a very, very shallow understanding of history.
> communism has killed, by some accounts, at least 65 million people during the last century.
Ok, but so has capitalism? Millions killed by lack of health care, capitalism fueled famines, wars over resources, pursuit of profit over quality, etc. It also ignores the massive genocides historically in capitalism.
Again, you are evaluating some very surface traits and not really looking at holistic systems. Your argument is a vague sound bite, but isn't really an attempt to meaningfully engage with the topic.
As the right flirts with nazism, the left flirts with communism. I dont think its particularly surprising and doesnt require deeper meta-analysis as youre trying to propose.
I'm a socialist, but I'm not a communist. I especially oppose planned economies and the idea of an autocratic workers party.
Am I 'flirting with communism' because I believe in universal health care, free education, public housing, public transportation, a strong social safety net, and a strong democratic process?
This was flagged dead. I vouched for it. There is nothing in here that is beyond discussion imo and we are still well into a situation in the US that requires discussion like this and this is a sufficiently nuanced take.
There is nothing new nor particularly insightful about this article. It's the same tired self-inflated story about how Trump supporters are idiots and if only we could somehow educate them how our POV is right, this would all go away.
If anyone was truly interested in resolving this conflict the talk would be about how to reach consensus and peace between the extremes. But no, it's this constant self-congratulatory stream of "news" and opinion pieces as if they've invented something completely novel.
Notice I said the extremes. The radical postmodernists are just dangerous as gun-yielding rednecks.
You're reading of it doesn't line up. Not only is he sympathetic towards people who fell for Trump's bullshit he aligns with the thought that larger tech companies should be more scrutinized and regulated.
Reaching "consensus" with anti-vaxxers is unlikely to result in a valid science-based policy. Seeking peace with people who want, and are willing to say anything to get, to destroy society is a losing strategy.
Picture this: it's the 80s and you're arguing for consensus between the extremes of creationism and science. But no, those scientists keep trotting out those "self-congratulatory stream of "[facts]" and opinion pieces as if they've invented something completely novel.”
(As far as I know, radical postmodernists have never attempted to attack the US Capitol.)
It may not be beyond discussion in principle but when something has been discussed many times, there's a power-law dropoff in how interesting it is, in HN's sense of the word.
My prediction is that countries will appear less democratic in the future whether or not those against democracy succeed. Advocates of democracy will write articles and think pieces about how delicate democracy is and how we must protect it and the enemies of democracy will turn around and agree. I do not look forward to it.
The lies of the left far exceed what has come out of Trump's mouth, much less the right's.
Funny how there were zero attempts at squashing the lies of the left (eg: the Russia hoax, the Steele dossier, Trump being a racist, the stolen-election recriminations, "mostly peaceful" protests, masks work-but-don't-work, etc etc etc.)
There is no room for truth anymore, we are well past the truth. Those that were supposed to be arbiters of truth (fifth estate) abandoned their responsibility and embraced Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It's sad that this is where we've gone and the people supposedly interested in preventing the undermining of democracy, the rule of law, bipartisanship, and political unity are now attempting to steer the conversation again. No, you who are squawking about 'lies,' 'riots,' and 'democracy' have already lost all credibility.
It's funny that your lies about the left are lies themselves. Actually, it's not funny and it's how trump whipped up thousands of people to attempt a coup last week.
Martin Fowler's entire post is a rehash of tired hostile factless memes. The whole thing is virtue signalling at its finest.
That's why he wrote it and that's why it was posted on HN -- specifically to signal to the community that he's on your side and that he will serve as a lever for leverage to be applied.
There is a concerted attempt across the entire industry to impose tyranny -- make a statement condemning Trump and his allies or else.
Waiting for the likes of FB and Twitter to de-platform the PBS, after all their Principal Counsel with the name of Michael Beller thinks that Trump supporters should be sent to "re-education camps" and he also said that he would have "thrown a Molotov cocktail" on the White House had Biden not won. The video is here [1], most probably it will be taken down because it shows "our people" being as bad as "them". Those were not "lies", were direct threats coming from a person who does actively shape public opinion.
What comparison are you trying to draw? I don't think you could honestly accuse PBS of being an organization that aids in the radicalization of insurrectionists no matter what the comments of Beller are.
Can someone help me to understand this election fraud stuff? I promise I'm not a quack.
I pretty much ignore anything Trump has to say, since he was obviously going to say it was rigged upon losing, so his opinion contributes no info to my mental model.
I keep hearing from conservatives that the actual evidence was never properly examined in court, and that the cases were mostly dismissed on issues of legal standing. Not being a lawyer, I have no idea how to interpret the legal results from any kind of objective standpoint.
I feel crazy, because every rational person I usually turn to is saying that it's a settled matter, but I haven't seen any good "breakdowns" of the actual allegations and their validity.
Back in November I felt pretty confident dismissing stupid Benford's law claims and sketchy graphs pointing out "Biden spikes" in Michigan. I had the data in hand and could confidently dismiss those. No fraud.
I watched the whole interrogation with the PA whistleblower mailman who talked with Project VERITAS, and I came away understanding that he was paranoid and confused and probably in way over his head. No fraud.
Electronic voting has always been criticized, so I don't know why this year should be any different. But that just seems worse, that potentially decades' worth of elections could have been tampered with if any of those Dominion claims are true?
But it's been weeks and weeks and there was a bunch of "evidence" since then, and I don't have the time or energy or legal expertise to make any sense of them. I feel like I'm going crazy because all my moderate/liberal friends are convinced it's the stuff of conspiracy theories. This is keeping me up at night, feeling like the whole exercise of democracy could be a total sham, and possibly always was.
Is anyone else having this epistemic crisis since November? Is this how people become conspiracy theorists? Can anyone else relate?
There are some convincing arguments made by data scientists examining time-series data. Most of the results are suppressed from Google, if you try searching "Lynda McLaughlin from the Data Integrity Group" you can find more info using Yandex or Bing.
> According to their analysis, which was published online as early as Dec. 24, time-series election data shows Trump’s votes were decrementing in various counties instead of increasing as they do normally.
> At least 30,593 votes were allegedly removed from Trump as result, including 17,650 votes in Dougherty County, 7,008 votes in Dodge County, and 5,935 votes in Putnam County.
This is by simple analysis of time-series data that was posted to public sources like the New York Times. There was an open-source repository on Github with the analysis, but it has since been removed. I regret not downloading a copy.
The source you're citing is citing another source, which is behind a paywall.
I'd like to look at the time series data as well, but it looks like either the "Data Integrity Group" didn't provide or The Epoch Times felt it unnecessary to share the data in the article.
> The Epoch Times was unable to verify the allegation independently.
Two things that I'd need explained to trust this take:
"Often, the data are in the hands of Democrat politicians and bureaucrats who refuse to make it available."
1) The Georgia SOS in charge of elections is a Republican, so why would it benefit him to work against the Republican Nominee
2) If the data is being held by Democrats who refuse to make it available, what "data" did The Epoch Times analyze that showed votes being removed?
In my experience, stuff like this often boils down to people's lack of understanding of systems or practices and they read into "anomalies" that might look weird to an uneducated outsider, but for someone that knows what they're talking about, isn't sinister...
i'm curious if this phenomenon has existed during previous elections. for example, is this a normal event when compared to previous elections or is this type of activity indeed suspicious.
from the article you linked:
> The one thing the time-trend line should never do is drop, which would mean that votes are disappearing from Trump's tally.
> That's exactly what happened. In at least 15 counties, according to the Epoch Times story, Trump lost in-person votes, while he lost absentee votes in three other countries. The total result was staggering:
> At least 432,116 votes — 213,707 election day votes and 218,409 absentee votes — were removed in total.
This is one fallacy I saw over and over and over again back in November. Taking 10 counties in Pennsylvania and saying "Doesn't that look suspicious to you??"
It's all meaningless junk stats without a random sample of other counties around the country and from the last few elections for comparison.
Try running the exact same analysis for Biden votes. Turns out that drops too. "The one thing they should never do is drop" turns out to be completely incorrect!
But honestly how reliable do you expect the data reports of individual counties? As I said elsewhere, stuff like this is mostly meaningless without comparing to a random sample of other counties, preferably from other elections.
Of course as another commenter said, we can't find the data they're using, so theres is an entirely worthless analysis.
The lack of standing was only a single component, Judges did see what "evidence" the suits had they found it uncompelling in addition to lack of standing. Below is the ruling from one of the Arizona cases:
"The judge ruled that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing; their fraud allegations were vague and implausible, and their evidence was unreliable or irrelevant."
Like you, I looked into the first 5 or so claims that were made, and found that there was nothing there. They are firmly in "boy who cried wolf" territory with me now.
If they had a smoking gun, I have confidence my various news sources would be telling me. I make sure to keep a healthy dose of conservatives and sane anti-establishment types in my media bubble, and I trust them to tell me the truth on that kind of thing.
The kind of sources I'm talking about here are Saagar from Rising, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald etc.
The claims that the Dominion voting machines miscounted (on accident or purposefully) have been addressed by hand recounts of the physical ballots. That was done for all of Georgia, and I believe in several other locations, and the hand counts matched the machine counts within the normal margin of error for a hand count.
Another claim about the voting machines is that they were fed extra ballots. For example, a poll worker said they saw another poll working repeatedly running a set of ballots through one of the machines.
Sounds bad, right? It turns out that part of the testing to verify machine are working is to run test ballots repeatedly through machines in a test environment not connected to the live environment. That is what the worker was witnessing. That this would happen and is a normal part of the process was covered in a poll working training session that that poll worked had not bothered to attend.
There were claims of Republican observers not being allowed in to observe in Pennsylvania. That is in fact true--some observers were not allowed in. That was because there was already the maximum legally allowed number of observers, split equally among Democrats and Republicans.
There were claims that a bunch of ballots were smuggled in, in Pennsylvania if I recall correctly. There was even a short video from surveillance cameras showing boxes of ballots being taken out from under a table and opened and added to the queue to be counted.
But if you looked at the full video, you'd see that those were ballots that had been in the queue to be counted, and when it was time to take a break from counting had been placed in the official ballot storage containers, locked, and stored under the table. All the purported proof of fraud video clip showed is the normal resumption of counting after a break.
There was a claim based on a worker reporting a bunch of mail in ballots being counted that did not have signatures on the ballots. True--but in the state the signatures were on the envelopes, not the ballots themselves. The procedure, which was carried out, is that workers open the outer envelope, take out the signed inner envelope, check the signature on the inner envelope, and if it matches the on file signature, open the inner envelope, remove the ballot, and add it to the queue of ballots to be counted.
Pretty much everything being offered as evidence of fraud has been like that--people seeing normal procedures that have been used without controversy and accepted by both parties for ages, not understanding them, and saying it must be fraud.
There have been claims not based on fraud. Most notable is Wisconsin, where plaintiffs claimed that the election officials had misinterpreted the state's election rules and had been conducting elections in an invalid way.
The state Supreme Court agreed with that one, and Wisconsin will have to change its procedures. But the court refused to throw out the election because Wisconsin had been using that procedure for years (it was actually put in place by Republicans about a decade ago). They were not going to take the extraordinary step of invalidating the entire election (and it would have to be not just the Presidential election...it would have to be every election in the state, and arguably past elections too). And they were especially not going to grant the plaintiffs' request to just throw out the election in counties where Biden won but leave it standing were Trump won.
As far as courts not considering the evidence goes, much of that seems to be based on the idea that since the cases have not gone to trial the court must not have looked at the evidence.
For some of the cases that is correct. If plaintiffs don't have standing, or the court does not have jurisdiction, the court will dismiss the case without looking at evidence. Plaintiffs can go refile in an appropriate court.
But for the cases where the plaintiffs did have standing and filed in the right court, the court will examine the evidence as part of considering defendant's mot...
> I keep hearing from conservatives that the actual evidence was never properly examined in court, and that the cases were mostly dismissed on issues of legal standing.
I'd like to try to address the first bit there, and maybe ask a question on the second.
Warning: I am not a lawyer.
----
First up: "the actual evidence was never properly examined in court"
This depends very heavily on what "properly examined" means. There's absolutely no question that evidence was filed in several lawsuits, so it's definitely seen by both the judge and defendants. The evidence has also been explicitly mentioned in rulings, so there's no question it was at least considered by the judge. For example, take Law v. Whitmer, from Nevada [0]:
> The Court nonetheless considers the totality of the evidence provided by Contestants in reaching and ruling upon the merits of their claims.
> Contestants offered Mr. Baselice to opine on the incidence of illegal voting in the 2020 General Election based on a phone survey of voters.
> The Court questions Mr. Baselice's methodology because he was unable to identify the source of the data for his survey and conducted no quality control of the data he received.
> Contestants offered Mr. Kamzol to opine that significant illegal voting occurred in Nevada during the 2020 General Election, based on his analysis of various commercially available databases of voters.
> The Court questions Mr. Kamzol's methodology because he had little to no information or supervision over the origins of his data, the manner in which it had been matched, and what the rate of false positives would be. Additionally, there was little or no verification of his numbers.
> ...
> As reflected herein, the Court finds that the expert testimony provided by Contestants was of little to no value. The Court did not exclude consideration of this evidence, which it could have, but gave it very little weight.
This wasn't the only case where the evidence was explicitly examined; Bowyer v. Ducey from Arizona [1], and King v. Whitmer from Michigan [2] are also cases where the evidence is explicitly called out in rulings (and there are probably others as well).
So the evidence was definitely examined in at least some cases; what a "proper" examination would entail, I don't know.
Another thing to note is that courts generally have rules about what evidence is considered admissible; evidence that doesn't meet certain standards (e.g., hearsay) generally cannot be used in a lawsuit. Even expert testimony may be excluded if it doesn't meet the standards used by the court (e.g., Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 702 governs expert testimony). In other words, it's not enough to just have evidence; the evidence needs to meet certain quality thresholds. The plaintiffs can complain that their evidence wasn't examined, but if it's not good evidence that's really on them.
One last thing is that one also needs to consider whether further examination would even matter. If your lawsuit is deficient enough that the outcome is obvious early in the proceedings, it makes no sense for a judge to order discovery, evidentiary hearings, etc.
----
Next: "the cases were mostly dismissed on issues of legal standing."
The thing is that cases can be dismissed for multiple reasons. If a case is dismissed both for standing issues and on its merits, does that count as "just" a dismissal for issues of standing?
The other problem here is that, at least on the federal level, courts are only allowed to hear specific suits ("cases" and "controversies"). This has been interpreted to include standing; in other words, a federal court can't skip standing just because it wants to see the case move forwards.
Standing for state courts is determined based on each state's laws, so it isn't really feasible to give a...
A lie is intentional. If a person legitimately believes the election was fraudulent, even if it was not, it's not a lie. It's a mistaken belief.
Calling the other side liars is precisely the kind of polarizing rhetoric that can undermine democracy. They are not liars if they legitimately believe what they are saying. 70% of Republican voters and some 10% of Democrat voters actually do believe there was election fraud [1].
The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views. And even if they do not accept the refutation, the arguments should be left up for people to read and make their informed choice.
I wish it were true. Its past that now. Folks believe things without evidence. Then they believe the court cases were thrown out, not for lack of evidence (which is ok with them) but because its fixed somehow.
There really is a threat of out-of-control baseless indignation, which won't be addressed by sober debate. That's not what happened this month, and I don't see a return to that any time soon.
> Suppressing their views doesn't change their beliefs either. It only increases their feeling of being oppressed.
Consider why every dictator strives to have complete control over the media, and you'll see that suppressing views does actually work on the majority of the populace unfortunately (not on the politically active, of course, but most people aren't)
But people generally want to believe in certain things. See confirmation bias. No amount of argument refutation works, because many beliefs are not rational. Many people hold on to existing beliefs until reality forces them to accept that they're wrong. Sure, they aren't intentionally lying to others. But in a way they are lying to themselves.
That doesn't mean I advocate suppression. But I definitely believe people need to be taught about cognitive biases in school.
> The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views. And even if they do not accept the refutation, the arguments should be left up for people to read and make their informed choice.
Isn't this what has happened with Trump? He said the election was a fraud, he hasn't been able to provide any evidence at all, and no (IIRC) people responsible for election security have said that there was fraud. Yet Trump continues to say that there was election fraud. At that point it is a lie.
In fact, I'd say the opposite of your argument: calling lies "mistaken beliefs", specially when they came from politicians with an agenda, is what allowed to create different realities for different groups and what is undermining democracy. Giving attention and importance to inaccurate facts and then debating the reality of facts gives people the impression that both sides are actually reasonable, when in reality one's true and the other's false. Climate change is the best example of this: for some reason, politicians and other figures have been allowed to say that they "didn't believe in climate change" and managed to move a matter of scientific fact to a matter of opinion.
When you let lies go unaccounted and presented as "beliefs", you allow liars to create their own alternate realities. People don't have to know the truth, just believe whatever their group leaders say. And once the realities of different groups are separate enough, truths stop mattering and it just matters who do you follow.
Attack the person does very little for you except in a purely emotional venue. It can actually make things much much worse, particularly when there are already strongly held beliefs involved. All it does is further polarize an issue in peoples minds and make it more likely that they will hold faster to their beliefs. (i.e. the attacker reinforces the mistaken belief in the attacked's mind and makes them even less likely to respond to a logical argument.) That's how you turn loud voices into a dangerous situation and do it fast. (In other terms, that's how you turn an argument/discussion into a fight). This is true in pretty much every context.
This is the most naiive take I have seen on this subject. What Trump has always done is deflect. You can't trust my opposition, I tell the real truth, as he frequently says, implies, and follows up with falsehoods, lies, misconceptions, alternate facts. Whatever you want to call it, its hard to define intent. However you can judge history. Trump does not recant his misconceptions. Often he stands by them, saying that he is partially right, being wrongfully accused, or was just joking.
This happening so frequently shows to me that he provides information in bad faith and when something seems like either a misconception or a lie, its looking pretty clearly that the intent is to manufacture a separate reality that is conveniently aligned with his goals. To put it simply, the intent is to deceive and that is the very definition of lies. Using lies to manipulate the media is propaganda.
> The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views. And even if they do not accept the refutation, the arguments should be left up for people to read and make their informed choice.
I don’t think this a good approach.
It takes real effort to refute a bad faith untruthful claim, but just it takes a single breath of air to make one. Lies scale better than the truth. And the people making bad faith arguments know this.
Maybe ridicule isn’t the answer but it’s something more than just facts and truth. Perhaps shame?
Yes but this is true for any side, no? It would be a bit haughty to claim "the lies of others vs our truths".
Lies will always exist because they work. But at the end of the day, either there is the possibility for earnest discussion as well, or there isn't. You cannot fix what you cannot talk about.
1. I still believe that lies started the legitimate belief. E.g. republican leaders like Trump lied about election fraud, convincing many that a problem exists which does not. Perhaps we might call that propaganda, or disinformation. So if we are to address the source of this problem, we cannot avoid the root lies which started the whole thing.
2. I believe that many have found it exceedingly difficult to refute the arguments of some of these folk, simply because they often do not approach these conversations in good faith. There is certainly a personality cult around Trump which many have been sucked into. It's not as simple as just "convincing" a cult member that they are logically or empirically wrong.
Is it acceptable for someone to be a cult member? Sure, absolutely. One can believe whatever they wish, as is their right. The problem happens when these beliefs become mostly violent and criminal. From what I gather, many have been taking this propaganda and turning it into a campaign to execute political leaders.
My take on the current problem is that people and companies are distancing themselves from the violent aspect of the far-right movement. This includes websites which are radicalizing people (Parler), and the leaders who are incentivizing the behavior (Trump). I find this a good thing -- these are sources of the lies.
No one is throwing people in jail for believing the election could be more secure. This does not prevent someone from having questions about the election, or conversations about it with people around them. It's not going to get you banned from reddit, or hackernews. Maybe you'll get downvoted because the questions (from my point of view) have been very thoroughly answered and debunked at this point, so to not know that might demonstrate that you haven't done much research on the topic, or are just ignoring the answers.
> 1. I still believe that lies started the legitimate belief. E.g. republican leaders like Trump lied about election fraud, convincing many that a problem exists which does not.
I have kept coming back to this over the last five years:
> On Bullshit is a 2005 book (originally a 1986 essay) by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what they say is true or false, but rather only cares whether their listener is persuaded.[1] Frankfurt's philosophical analysis of bullshit has been analysed, criticised and adopted by academics since its publication.[2]
IMHO this applies 100% to Trump (and many of his enablers). He will say different things days apart and cares not what was uttered before: he just spits out whatever he thinks will work in the moment, and if it sticks, he'll run with it until it stops working.
Republicans have been voicing their views on the election since November, and countless refutations have been made for many if not all of their claims. I'm not arguing for suppression, but it's clear that many people are not interested in changing their minds.
Calling the average voter-fraud-believing American a liar is obviously counterproductive. But that's not the same as a politician who should know better and doesn't appear to be operating in good faith.
And if you refute their arguments and they still repeat their same beliefs? If other people continue to join their cause, repeating the same statements?
If they call for, and plan violent action based on their beliefs? If they begin taking violent action based on their beliefs?
A lie is a lie, and at some point the responsibility falls on the person making the false statement, even if they truly believe it.
(One of the worst results of this situation is that many of the poor, rural people believing the lies have real problems and need help. But they aren't going to get it because of the politics. On the other hand, their actions have gone beyond debate and form a real threat to our society.)
There's a difference between suppressing a different view, suppressing a lie, suppressing someone yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, and suppressing someone yelling "let's go light the theater on fire".
As for refuting arguments, I'm a big believer in that, but so many people cannot change their minds, regardless of the evidence, partly because people telling lies have told them that the only honest person is the liar.
The lies in this case start at the top, and are clearly intentionally untrue.
That people farther away from the origin point come to believe these untrue things does not make the original lies anything other than lies.
On a small scale, it may be true that countering a mistaken belief with facts and reason is helpful--though a lot of research suggests that's not the case even one at a time--but on the large scale, lies must be called out as lies, and letting them stand leads only to repetition and widespread belief.
Had there been a better job done of calling out and suppressing the lies at the stage they were still only lies, it's possible we would have much less mistaken belief.
Also, the idea that most people are suffering from "mistaken belief" rather than being aware they are lies strikes me as naive, but that's a matter of opinion.
> The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views.
Facts have been shown not to change people's minds:
Parsed from outside, this piece could be the mirror image of its criticisms, which is what makes it extra interesting. It's like the myth of the Tower of Babel, where there was a divine event that caused people to be unable to understand each other, and could no longer speak the same language.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel)
Our language itself has a virus in it that is spreading through minds and causing shared meaning to decohere. That's really the level of disconnect there is with about 80m Americans on either side of it.
and what about the 170m other americans besides the partisans you're counting?
unless you're a politician, it makes little (rational) sense to join a party (yes, it affords voting in primaries in some places, but that's little consolation, since the primary candidates are whittled down by party insiders in the first place). voters should largely be independents, but identity and signaling are such strong attractors to humans.
You minimize the importance of scale of the lie. Kissing up to campaign donors or not pushing for a policy you made a campaign promise to enact are not the same as trying to throw an election result into doubt with no evidence at all. Scale matters. How far and vigorously you knowingly depart from objective fact matters. To claim otherwise is just another lie.
As a thought experiment: consider that Trump's "lies" are "fictions", not unlike a preacher who "lies" about the existence of God--or at least is missing the "objective facts" to back it up.
When Trump says the "election was stolen" he is using language that implies quid-pro-quo fraud occurred. This is of course a lie; there was no such fraud. But did the pandemic cause confusion, rule changes, altered turnouts, etc.? You betcha. And did Big Tech, embarrassed by the 2016 result, take actions to ensure a different outcome this time around? It's not clear exactly because it's not public, but it appears likely. Does his base have a right to feel bitter--like a mark who lost their money at a casino--even if it was all "legal"? It's only human.
America has always had a somewhat deep seated affinity towards authoritarianism and fascism. People might forget this but various right wing leaders in Europe had large followings in the US right up until WW2. It took a huge war and government intervention to change trajectory. Similarly Hoover's FBI and the federal agencies at that time, or Nixon's whitehouse, trended towards these ideas.
Social media might be a part, but it always feels like this is a longer historical trend. For as much as some Americans talk about freedom and liberty, it's not clear how much they support true freedom.
We have allowed our egos to be so affected by contemporary politicians’ rhetoric as to forget the core principles we all want to believed in.
Perhaps Trump was put in place (by somebody in a smokey room) to get the political left (who were previously notorious for promoting free-speech) to beg for censorship. Perhaps this viewpoint is cynical, but it certainly mirrors the end result we’re seeing.
> 139 Representatives and 8 senators voted to overturn the will of the people after rioters had gone home. Most, I assume, know full well that there's no credible evidence the election was fraudulent, but their fear of a primary challenge outweighs their oath to defend the constitution.
This is a very common meme that I think we should combat. In the absence of evidence that these elected officials believe something contrary to their actions, we should instead assume that their actions actually do follow their beliefs.
At what point do you decide that someone is not speaking in good faith? The tenth time you point out the evidence that their beliefs are wrong? When they call for your execution?
"Stop lying!" is ineffective, because they don't think they are lying. They are believing things to be true based on circumstantial evidence and wishful thinking because they actively want to believe it is true. IMO, if Trump and Cruz and all the rest are lying then they first and foremost lied to themselves. And it is ferociously difficult to convince someone that they are lying to themselves.
IMO, folks didn't take away the right lessons from the justification for the Iraq War. Those in charge believed the shoddy evidence for WMDs because they were actively looking for evidence that supported their POV and would justify the actions they wanted to take. The lesson should be to demand a higher evidentiary standard before you act on it. To be cold and dispassionate about that evaluation. I remember watching Colin Powell's presentation to the UN. There is no doubt in my mind that he believed in what he was saying. Nevertheless, dispassionate observers could tell that this was not hard evidence. "Trust us, its well-supported," cannot be sufficient justification for actions on the scale of "invade another country" or "overturn an election".
When someone accuses me of lying, I try to dredge up the evidence that backs up my beliefs and present it. If I cannot, I admit I am wrong or at least do not have any evidence for my beliefs, as I am not a complete degenerate. I hold everyone else to these same standards.
In cases where I'm actually lying...well, I try not to do that as I don't think it's a long-term winning strategy. (I could be wrong about that.)
> I don't have much confidence in how to counter it. It feels like a big chunk of our population have got sucked into a cult - how do you deprogram so many people?
Up until this point, I was very much agreeing with his take, but from this point forward it devolves into the usual paternalistic, quietly self-righteous and "subtly" anti free speech narrative this type of articles way too often seem to take.
This was a little sad to read. I used to think that Fowler was one of the smartest people I know about, I've now corrected that to he's one of the most "knowledgeable on software engineering and architecture" people I know about.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadRead about the Beer Hall Putsch, about how it was characterized by contemporaries, about it's efficacy, and it's not totally unreasonable to say, "Is this a modern version of that event?"
A friendly reminder: communism has killed, by some accounts, at least 65 million people during the last century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...
Wheeling out 'communism' without qualifying who your bogeyman is based in a very, very shallow understanding of history.
> communism has killed, by some accounts, at least 65 million people during the last century.
Ok, but so has capitalism? Millions killed by lack of health care, capitalism fueled famines, wars over resources, pursuit of profit over quality, etc. It also ignores the massive genocides historically in capitalism.
Again, you are evaluating some very surface traits and not really looking at holistic systems. Your argument is a vague sound bite, but isn't really an attempt to meaningfully engage with the topic.
Am I 'flirting with communism' because I believe in universal health care, free education, public housing, public transportation, a strong social safety net, and a strong democratic process?
If anyone was truly interested in resolving this conflict the talk would be about how to reach consensus and peace between the extremes. But no, it's this constant self-congratulatory stream of "news" and opinion pieces as if they've invented something completely novel.
Notice I said the extremes. The radical postmodernists are just dangerous as gun-yielding rednecks.
Picture this: it's the 80s and you're arguing for consensus between the extremes of creationism and science. But no, those scientists keep trotting out those "self-congratulatory stream of "[facts]" and opinion pieces as if they've invented something completely novel.”
(As far as I know, radical postmodernists have never attempted to attack the US Capitol.)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
From that perspective the flags are understandable.
We could even see 18th-century pamphleteering again as ideas seek to escape the zampolit.
Funny how there were zero attempts at squashing the lies of the left (eg: the Russia hoax, the Steele dossier, Trump being a racist, the stolen-election recriminations, "mostly peaceful" protests, masks work-but-don't-work, etc etc etc.)
There is no room for truth anymore, we are well past the truth. Those that were supposed to be arbiters of truth (fifth estate) abandoned their responsibility and embraced Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It's sad that this is where we've gone and the people supposedly interested in preventing the undermining of democracy, the rule of law, bipartisanship, and political unity are now attempting to steer the conversation again. No, you who are squawking about 'lies,' 'riots,' and 'democracy' have already lost all credibility.
Double standards
That's why he wrote it and that's why it was posted on HN -- specifically to signal to the community that he's on your side and that he will serve as a lever for leverage to be applied.
There is a concerted attempt across the entire industry to impose tyranny -- make a statement condemning Trump and his allies or else.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1r2rdmWsPE&
I pretty much ignore anything Trump has to say, since he was obviously going to say it was rigged upon losing, so his opinion contributes no info to my mental model.
I keep hearing from conservatives that the actual evidence was never properly examined in court, and that the cases were mostly dismissed on issues of legal standing. Not being a lawyer, I have no idea how to interpret the legal results from any kind of objective standpoint.
I feel crazy, because every rational person I usually turn to is saying that it's a settled matter, but I haven't seen any good "breakdowns" of the actual allegations and their validity.
Back in November I felt pretty confident dismissing stupid Benford's law claims and sketchy graphs pointing out "Biden spikes" in Michigan. I had the data in hand and could confidently dismiss those. No fraud.
I watched the whole interrogation with the PA whistleblower mailman who talked with Project VERITAS, and I came away understanding that he was paranoid and confused and probably in way over his head. No fraud.
Electronic voting has always been criticized, so I don't know why this year should be any different. But that just seems worse, that potentially decades' worth of elections could have been tampered with if any of those Dominion claims are true?
But it's been weeks and weeks and there was a bunch of "evidence" since then, and I don't have the time or energy or legal expertise to make any sense of them. I feel like I'm going crazy because all my moderate/liberal friends are convinced it's the stuff of conspiracy theories. This is keeping me up at night, feeling like the whole exercise of democracy could be a total sham, and possibly always was.
Is anyone else having this epistemic crisis since November? Is this how people become conspiracy theorists? Can anyone else relate?
> According to their analysis, which was published online as early as Dec. 24, time-series election data shows Trump’s votes were decrementing in various counties instead of increasing as they do normally.
> At least 30,593 votes were allegedly removed from Trump as result, including 17,650 votes in Dougherty County, 7,008 votes in Dodge County, and 5,935 votes in Putnam County.
This is by simple analysis of time-series data that was posted to public sources like the New York Times. There was an open-source repository on Github with the analysis, but it has since been removed. I regret not downloading a copy.
[1] https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/theres_evidence...
I'd like to look at the time series data as well, but it looks like either the "Data Integrity Group" didn't provide or The Epoch Times felt it unnecessary to share the data in the article.
> The Epoch Times was unable to verify the allegation independently.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20210104154823/https://www.theep...
1) The Georgia SOS in charge of elections is a Republican, so why would it benefit him to work against the Republican Nominee
2) If the data is being held by Democrats who refuse to make it available, what "data" did The Epoch Times analyze that showed votes being removed?
In my experience, stuff like this often boils down to people's lack of understanding of systems or practices and they read into "anomalies" that might look weird to an uneducated outsider, but for someone that knows what they're talking about, isn't sinister...
from the article you linked:
> The one thing the time-trend line should never do is drop, which would mean that votes are disappearing from Trump's tally.
> That's exactly what happened. In at least 15 counties, according to the Epoch Times story, Trump lost in-person votes, while he lost absentee votes in three other countries. The total result was staggering:
> At least 432,116 votes — 213,707 election day votes and 218,409 absentee votes — were removed in total.
It's all meaningless junk stats without a random sample of other counties around the country and from the last few elections for comparison.
Try running the exact same analysis for Biden votes. Turns out that drops too. "The one thing they should never do is drop" turns out to be completely incorrect!
https://youtu.be/aokNwKx7gM8
Of course as another commenter said, we can't find the data they're using, so theres is an entirely worthless analysis.
The lack of standing was only a single component, Judges did see what "evidence" the suits had they found it uncompelling in addition to lack of standing. Below is the ruling from one of the Arizona cases:
"The judge ruled that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing; their fraud allegations were vague and implausible, and their evidence was unreliable or irrelevant."
If they had a smoking gun, I have confidence my various news sources would be telling me. I make sure to keep a healthy dose of conservatives and sane anti-establishment types in my media bubble, and I trust them to tell me the truth on that kind of thing.
The kind of sources I'm talking about here are Saagar from Rising, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald etc.
Another claim about the voting machines is that they were fed extra ballots. For example, a poll worker said they saw another poll working repeatedly running a set of ballots through one of the machines.
Sounds bad, right? It turns out that part of the testing to verify machine are working is to run test ballots repeatedly through machines in a test environment not connected to the live environment. That is what the worker was witnessing. That this would happen and is a normal part of the process was covered in a poll working training session that that poll worked had not bothered to attend.
There were claims of Republican observers not being allowed in to observe in Pennsylvania. That is in fact true--some observers were not allowed in. That was because there was already the maximum legally allowed number of observers, split equally among Democrats and Republicans.
There were claims that a bunch of ballots were smuggled in, in Pennsylvania if I recall correctly. There was even a short video from surveillance cameras showing boxes of ballots being taken out from under a table and opened and added to the queue to be counted.
But if you looked at the full video, you'd see that those were ballots that had been in the queue to be counted, and when it was time to take a break from counting had been placed in the official ballot storage containers, locked, and stored under the table. All the purported proof of fraud video clip showed is the normal resumption of counting after a break.
There was a claim based on a worker reporting a bunch of mail in ballots being counted that did not have signatures on the ballots. True--but in the state the signatures were on the envelopes, not the ballots themselves. The procedure, which was carried out, is that workers open the outer envelope, take out the signed inner envelope, check the signature on the inner envelope, and if it matches the on file signature, open the inner envelope, remove the ballot, and add it to the queue of ballots to be counted.
Pretty much everything being offered as evidence of fraud has been like that--people seeing normal procedures that have been used without controversy and accepted by both parties for ages, not understanding them, and saying it must be fraud.
There have been claims not based on fraud. Most notable is Wisconsin, where plaintiffs claimed that the election officials had misinterpreted the state's election rules and had been conducting elections in an invalid way.
The state Supreme Court agreed with that one, and Wisconsin will have to change its procedures. But the court refused to throw out the election because Wisconsin had been using that procedure for years (it was actually put in place by Republicans about a decade ago). They were not going to take the extraordinary step of invalidating the entire election (and it would have to be not just the Presidential election...it would have to be every election in the state, and arguably past elections too). And they were especially not going to grant the plaintiffs' request to just throw out the election in counties where Biden won but leave it standing were Trump won.
As far as courts not considering the evidence goes, much of that seems to be based on the idea that since the cases have not gone to trial the court must not have looked at the evidence.
For some of the cases that is correct. If plaintiffs don't have standing, or the court does not have jurisdiction, the court will dismiss the case without looking at evidence. Plaintiffs can go refile in an appropriate court.
But for the cases where the plaintiffs did have standing and filed in the right court, the court will examine the evidence as part of considering defendant's mot...
I'd like to try to address the first bit there, and maybe ask a question on the second.
Warning: I am not a lawyer.
----
First up: "the actual evidence was never properly examined in court"
This depends very heavily on what "properly examined" means. There's absolutely no question that evidence was filed in several lawsuits, so it's definitely seen by both the judge and defendants. The evidence has also been explicitly mentioned in rulings, so there's no question it was at least considered by the judge. For example, take Law v. Whitmer, from Nevada [0]:
> The Court nonetheless considers the totality of the evidence provided by Contestants in reaching and ruling upon the merits of their claims.
> Contestants offered Mr. Baselice to opine on the incidence of illegal voting in the 2020 General Election based on a phone survey of voters.
> The Court questions Mr. Baselice's methodology because he was unable to identify the source of the data for his survey and conducted no quality control of the data he received.
> Contestants offered Mr. Kamzol to opine that significant illegal voting occurred in Nevada during the 2020 General Election, based on his analysis of various commercially available databases of voters.
> The Court questions Mr. Kamzol's methodology because he had little to no information or supervision over the origins of his data, the manner in which it had been matched, and what the rate of false positives would be. Additionally, there was little or no verification of his numbers.
> ...
> As reflected herein, the Court finds that the expert testimony provided by Contestants was of little to no value. The Court did not exclude consideration of this evidence, which it could have, but gave it very little weight.
This wasn't the only case where the evidence was explicitly examined; Bowyer v. Ducey from Arizona [1], and King v. Whitmer from Michigan [2] are also cases where the evidence is explicitly called out in rulings (and there are probably others as well).
So the evidence was definitely examined in at least some cases; what a "proper" examination would entail, I don't know.
Another thing to note is that courts generally have rules about what evidence is considered admissible; evidence that doesn't meet certain standards (e.g., hearsay) generally cannot be used in a lawsuit. Even expert testimony may be excluded if it doesn't meet the standards used by the court (e.g., Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 702 governs expert testimony). In other words, it's not enough to just have evidence; the evidence needs to meet certain quality thresholds. The plaintiffs can complain that their evidence wasn't examined, but if it's not good evidence that's really on them.
One last thing is that one also needs to consider whether further examination would even matter. If your lawsuit is deficient enough that the outcome is obvious early in the proceedings, it makes no sense for a judge to order discovery, evidentiary hearings, etc.
----
Next: "the cases were mostly dismissed on issues of legal standing."
The thing is that cases can be dismissed for multiple reasons. If a case is dismissed both for standing issues and on its merits, does that count as "just" a dismissal for issues of standing?
The other problem here is that, at least on the federal level, courts are only allowed to hear specific suits ("cases" and "controversies"). This has been interpreted to include standing; in other words, a federal court can't skip standing just because it wants to see the case move forwards.
Standing for state courts is determined based on each state's laws, so it isn't really feasible to give a...
Calling the other side liars is precisely the kind of polarizing rhetoric that can undermine democracy. They are not liars if they legitimately believe what they are saying. 70% of Republican voters and some 10% of Democrat voters actually do believe there was election fraud [1].
The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views. And even if they do not accept the refutation, the arguments should be left up for people to read and make their informed choice.
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/republicans-free-fa...
There really is a threat of out-of-control baseless indignation, which won't be addressed by sober debate. That's not what happened this month, and I don't see a return to that any time soon.
Consider why every dictator strives to have complete control over the media, and you'll see that suppressing views does actually work on the majority of the populace unfortunately (not on the politically active, of course, but most people aren't)
That doesn't mean I advocate suppression. But I definitely believe people need to be taught about cognitive biases in school.
Isn't this what has happened with Trump? He said the election was a fraud, he hasn't been able to provide any evidence at all, and no (IIRC) people responsible for election security have said that there was fraud. Yet Trump continues to say that there was election fraud. At that point it is a lie.
In fact, I'd say the opposite of your argument: calling lies "mistaken beliefs", specially when they came from politicians with an agenda, is what allowed to create different realities for different groups and what is undermining democracy. Giving attention and importance to inaccurate facts and then debating the reality of facts gives people the impression that both sides are actually reasonable, when in reality one's true and the other's false. Climate change is the best example of this: for some reason, politicians and other figures have been allowed to say that they "didn't believe in climate change" and managed to move a matter of scientific fact to a matter of opinion.
When you let lies go unaccounted and presented as "beliefs", you allow liars to create their own alternate realities. People don't have to know the truth, just believe whatever their group leaders say. And once the realities of different groups are separate enough, truths stop mattering and it just matters who do you follow.
Attack the person does very little for you except in a purely emotional venue. It can actually make things much much worse, particularly when there are already strongly held beliefs involved. All it does is further polarize an issue in peoples minds and make it more likely that they will hold faster to their beliefs. (i.e. the attacker reinforces the mistaken belief in the attacked's mind and makes them even less likely to respond to a logical argument.) That's how you turn loud voices into a dangerous situation and do it fast. (In other terms, that's how you turn an argument/discussion into a fight). This is true in pretty much every context.
https://fs.blog/2014/10/the-ten-golden-rules-of-argument/#:~....)
This happening so frequently shows to me that he provides information in bad faith and when something seems like either a misconception or a lie, its looking pretty clearly that the intent is to manufacture a separate reality that is conveniently aligned with his goals. To put it simply, the intent is to deceive and that is the very definition of lies. Using lies to manipulate the media is propaganda.
I don’t think this a good approach.
It takes real effort to refute a bad faith untruthful claim, but just it takes a single breath of air to make one. Lies scale better than the truth. And the people making bad faith arguments know this.
Maybe ridicule isn’t the answer but it’s something more than just facts and truth. Perhaps shame?
Lies will always exist because they work. But at the end of the day, either there is the possibility for earnest discussion as well, or there isn't. You cannot fix what you cannot talk about.
1. I still believe that lies started the legitimate belief. E.g. republican leaders like Trump lied about election fraud, convincing many that a problem exists which does not. Perhaps we might call that propaganda, or disinformation. So if we are to address the source of this problem, we cannot avoid the root lies which started the whole thing.
2. I believe that many have found it exceedingly difficult to refute the arguments of some of these folk, simply because they often do not approach these conversations in good faith. There is certainly a personality cult around Trump which many have been sucked into. It's not as simple as just "convincing" a cult member that they are logically or empirically wrong.
Is it acceptable for someone to be a cult member? Sure, absolutely. One can believe whatever they wish, as is their right. The problem happens when these beliefs become mostly violent and criminal. From what I gather, many have been taking this propaganda and turning it into a campaign to execute political leaders.
My take on the current problem is that people and companies are distancing themselves from the violent aspect of the far-right movement. This includes websites which are radicalizing people (Parler), and the leaders who are incentivizing the behavior (Trump). I find this a good thing -- these are sources of the lies.
No one is throwing people in jail for believing the election could be more secure. This does not prevent someone from having questions about the election, or conversations about it with people around them. It's not going to get you banned from reddit, or hackernews. Maybe you'll get downvoted because the questions (from my point of view) have been very thoroughly answered and debunked at this point, so to not know that might demonstrate that you haven't done much research on the topic, or are just ignoring the answers.
I have kept coming back to this over the last five years:
> On Bullshit is a 2005 book (originally a 1986 essay) by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what they say is true or false, but rather only cares whether their listener is persuaded.[1] Frankfurt's philosophical analysis of bullshit has been analysed, criticised and adopted by academics since its publication.[2]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
IMHO this applies 100% to Trump (and many of his enablers). He will say different things days apart and cares not what was uttered before: he just spits out whatever he thinks will work in the moment, and if it sticks, he'll run with it until it stops working.
Calling the average voter-fraud-believing American a liar is obviously counterproductive. But that's not the same as a politician who should know better and doesn't appear to be operating in good faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related... uhidential_election?wprov=sfla1
If they call for, and plan violent action based on their beliefs? If they begin taking violent action based on their beliefs?
A lie is a lie, and at some point the responsibility falls on the person making the false statement, even if they truly believe it.
(One of the worst results of this situation is that many of the poor, rural people believing the lies have real problems and need help. But they aren't going to get it because of the politics. On the other hand, their actions have gone beyond debate and form a real threat to our society.)
As for refuting arguments, I'm a big believer in that, but so many people cannot change their minds, regardless of the evidence, partly because people telling lies have told them that the only honest person is the liar.
That people farther away from the origin point come to believe these untrue things does not make the original lies anything other than lies.
On a small scale, it may be true that countering a mistaken belief with facts and reason is helpful--though a lot of research suggests that's not the case even one at a time--but on the large scale, lies must be called out as lies, and letting them stand leads only to repetition and widespread belief.
Had there been a better job done of calling out and suppressing the lies at the stage they were still only lies, it's possible we would have much less mistaken belief.
Also, the idea that most people are suffering from "mistaken belief" rather than being aware they are lies strikes me as naive, but that's a matter of opinion.
Facts have been shown not to change people's minds:
* https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/words-matter/201810/...
* https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/05/alternative-facts
* https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-say-they-ve-figured...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Our language itself has a virus in it that is spreading through minds and causing shared meaning to decohere. That's really the level of disconnect there is with about 80m Americans on either side of it.
unless you're a politician, it makes little (rational) sense to join a party (yes, it affords voting in primaries in some places, but that's little consolation, since the primary candidates are whittled down by party insiders in the first place). voters should largely be independents, but identity and signaling are such strong attractors to humans.
When Trump says the "election was stolen" he is using language that implies quid-pro-quo fraud occurred. This is of course a lie; there was no such fraud. But did the pandemic cause confusion, rule changes, altered turnouts, etc.? You betcha. And did Big Tech, embarrassed by the 2016 result, take actions to ensure a different outcome this time around? It's not clear exactly because it's not public, but it appears likely. Does his base have a right to feel bitter--like a mark who lost their money at a casino--even if it was all "legal"? It's only human.
Social media might be a part, but it always feels like this is a longer historical trend. For as much as some Americans talk about freedom and liberty, it's not clear how much they support true freedom.
Perhaps Trump was put in place (by somebody in a smokey room) to get the political left (who were previously notorious for promoting free-speech) to beg for censorship. Perhaps this viewpoint is cynical, but it certainly mirrors the end result we’re seeing.
Free speech is a libertarian ideal. The libertarian right and libertarian left both support free speech.
What you're seeing is the rise of the authoritarian left.
This is a very common meme that I think we should combat. In the absence of evidence that these elected officials believe something contrary to their actions, we should instead assume that their actions actually do follow their beliefs.
IMO, folks didn't take away the right lessons from the justification for the Iraq War. Those in charge believed the shoddy evidence for WMDs because they were actively looking for evidence that supported their POV and would justify the actions they wanted to take. The lesson should be to demand a higher evidentiary standard before you act on it. To be cold and dispassionate about that evaluation. I remember watching Colin Powell's presentation to the UN. There is no doubt in my mind that he believed in what he was saying. Nevertheless, dispassionate observers could tell that this was not hard evidence. "Trust us, its well-supported," cannot be sufficient justification for actions on the scale of "invade another country" or "overturn an election".
Nobody should accept that any more.
In cases where I'm actually lying...well, I try not to do that as I don't think it's a long-term winning strategy. (I could be wrong about that.)
Up until this point, I was very much agreeing with his take, but from this point forward it devolves into the usual paternalistic, quietly self-righteous and "subtly" anti free speech narrative this type of articles way too often seem to take.
This was a little sad to read. I used to think that Fowler was one of the smartest people I know about, I've now corrected that to he's one of the most "knowledgeable on software engineering and architecture" people I know about.