O/T:- Smart Alec Lawyers

[BigFatPie]

Latest from Joe Biden on (apologies to Driller) Twitter;

‘We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.

Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.’

[Woodypie]

Latest from Joe Biden on (apologies to Driller) Twitter;

‘We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.

Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.’

Sounds about right to me. I suppose the other alternative is to build a wall.

[drillerpie]

Latest from Joe Biden on (apologies to Driller) Twitter;

‘We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.

Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.’

No need to apologise, you can say his name (no pun intended). I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy.

I'm just worried that his refusal to speak rationally about, and distance himself from, certain events will present the US electorate with a choice between crazy-you-know and crazy-you-don't, leading to the chance of another four years of Trump.

[BigFatPie]

No need to apologise, you can say his name (no pun intended). I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy.

I'm just worried that his refusal to speak rationally about, and distance himself from, certain events will present the US electorate with a choice between crazy-you-know and crazy-you-don't, leading to the chance of another four years of Trump.

Tbh I was referring to my use of Twitter rather than anything to do with Biden. I get the impression that you’re not a fan.

As for Biden himself, yeah it’s disappointing that the Democrats couldn’t come up with a more inspirational, spritely figure, though obviously I don’t agree with you regarding his stance on BLM. The US have a poor choice in November. We had a poor choice last December. The world’s f00ked.

[drillerpie]

Tbh I was referring to my use of Twitter rather than anything to do with Biden. I get the impression that you’re not a fan.

As for Biden himself, yeah it’s disappointing that the Democrats couldn’t come up with a more inspirational, spritely figure, though obviously I don’t agree with you regarding his stance on BLM. The US have a poor choice in November. We had a poor choice last December. The world’s f00ked.

Ah right, I missed that. Well I still think that Twitter encourages people to talk about politics by posting one-line passive aggressive 'zingers' at each other as well as links and memes that lead to a partial and one-sided examination of issues. Not to mention the fact that social media algorithms only show you content that gets the most extreme reactions, so will either confirm your biases or wind you up, so that you're more likely to interact with it.

I think it's fairly clear what's happened to politics since people started using social media for it, and it's not good. Nothing I see on this board persuades me otherwise.

Re Biden it's not just the fact that he's old. If they had a younger candidate who was even more scared of the lunatic fringes on the left the problem would be even worse. We could get into it but I think we both know where we stand so probably not much point.

[BigFatPie]

Ah right, I missed that. Well I still think that Twitter encourages people to talk about politics by posting one-line passive aggressive 'zingers' at each other as well as links and memes that lead to a partial and one-sided examination of issues. Not to mention the fact that social media algorithms only show you content that gets the most extreme reactions, so will either confirm your biases or wind you up, so that you're more likely to interact with it.

I think it's fairly clear what's happened to politics since people started using social media for it, and it's not good. Nothing I see on this board persuades me otherwise.

Re Biden it's not just the fact that he's old. If they had a younger candidate who was even more scared of the lunatic fringes on the left the problem would be even worse. We could get into it but I think we both know where we stand so probably not much point.

There’s no doubt that social meejah has polarised politics. I’m not on Facebook but we all know it uses the algorithms you’re talking about and it promotes content that you’ll either agree with or makes you angry.

To me though Twitter is great because you can literally follow people who do what the BBC is supposed to do and either inform, educate, or entertain. Experts in their field. It’s even got round to kicking some of the extremists off. 280 characters obviously isn’t ideal, but then you can follow the links to articles that may elaborate.

I do try and follow people who I don’t normally agree with, but Christ it’s hard at times. People on the right and far left often come from a position of ignorance and Jesus wept aren’t we all suffering now.

[drillerpie]

There’s no doubt that social meejah has polarised politics. I’m not on Facebook but we all know it uses the algorithms you’re talking about and it promotes content that you’ll either agree with or makes you angry.

To me though Twitter is great because you can literally follow people who do what the BBC is supposed to do and either inform, educate, or entertain. Experts in their field. It’s even got round to kicking some of the extremists off. 280 characters obviously isn’t ideal, but then you can follow the links to articles that may elaborate.

I do try and follow people who I don’t normally agree with, but Christ it’s hard at times. People on the right and far left often come from a position of ignorance and Jesus wept aren’t we all suffering now.

I don't know what counts as right and left anymore because their meanings from some years ago (taxation and redistribution) have largely been replaced by adherence to or rejection of identity politics, but there are people outside of what could be described as the trendy (Guardian, NY Times) left who are worth listening to.

My information diet is reading the news from the Guardian but in terms of YouTube and podcasts I go for IDW type people, which I think gives me two different perspectives. I don't know if it's me getting old, or whether the Guardian has gone downhill since Rusbridger was replaced as editor, or because I'm getting a more balanced perspective now (maybe a mix of all three) but I honestly find the Guardian becoming less and less trustworthy as it seems to be more involved in activism than accurately reporting what is happening in the world.

I used to read it thinking it was fairly accurate reporting with a political slant especially in the opinion pieces, which I could adjust for. Now I'm finding factual errors, some through laziness, and what is worse, I think some are deliberate.

If we leave the terms left and right and look for people who are 'progressives', meaning they want to improve society but don't have a blind loyalty to Labour/Democratic parties, and aren't afraid of discussing taboo subjects, then look for James Lindsay, Brett Weinstein, Sam Harris.

They are all extremely intelligent, all have PhDs (mathematics, biology, neuroscience) and are extremely eloquent. I find their rational, logical arguments much more convincing than those of the average metropolitan-left journalist, whose arguments mostly boil down to what is acceptable to say at dinner parties in polite society, and pointing at and mocking those who say anything that might be considered unfashionable.

[BigFatPie]

I don't know what counts as right and left anymore because their meanings from some years ago (taxation and redistribution) have largely been replaced by adherence to or rejection of identity politics, but there are people outside of what could be described as the trendy (Guardian, NY Times) left who are worth listening to.

My information diet is reading the news from the Guardian but in terms of YouTube and podcasts I go for IDW type people, which I think gives me two different perspectives. I don't know if it's me getting old, or whether the Guardian has gone downhill since Rusbridger was replaced as editor, or because I'm getting a more balanced perspective now (maybe a mix of all three) but I honestly find the Guardian becoming less and less trustworthy as it seems to be more involved in activism than accurately reporting what is happening in the world.

I used to read it thinking it was fairly accurate reporting with a political slant especially in the opinion pieces, which I could adjust for. Now I'm finding factual errors, some through laziness, and what is worse, I think some are deliberate.

If we leave the terms left and right and look for people who are 'progressives', meaning they want to improve society but don't have a blind loyalty to Labour/Democratic parties, and aren't afraid of discussing taboo subjects, then look for James Lindsay, Brett Weinstein, Sam Harris.

They are all extremely intelligent, all have PhDs (mathematics, biology, neuroscience) and are extremely eloquent. I find their rational, logical arguments much more convincing than those of the average metropolitan-left journalist, whose arguments mostly boil down to what is acceptable to say at dinner parties in polite society, and pointing at and mocking those who say anything that might be considered unfashionable.

I don’t like the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ anymore than you do. I suppose the only thing they have going for them is that they’re not subjective, unlike ‘evidence-based’ and ‘non- evidence based’, ‘intellectual’ and ‘emotional’, or ‘progressive’ and ‘reactionary’.

I’ll keep an eye out for the people you mention, though I am familiar with Harris and Weinstein, not so much Lindsay.

[drillerpie]

I don’t like the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ anymore than you do. I suppose the only thing they have going for them is that they’re not subjective, unlike ‘evidence-based’ and ‘non- evidence based’, ‘intellectual’ and ‘emotional’, or ‘progressive’ and ‘reactionary’.

I’ll keep an eye out for the people you mention, though I am familiar with Harris and Weinstein, not so much Lindsay.

Well I'm afraid we disagree here too. I think left and right are completely subjective according to place, time, social group etc, hence something like public healthcare is universally accepted in one country while it is seen as a radical left-wing idea on another.

Enforcing a country's borders is now seen in some circles as right-wing or even far-right position, whereas three or four decades ago it was a universally accepted state of affairs. Terms like fascist (which I think you have used to describe the current US president) are used freely in some sections of society to describe positions that other people consider fairly normal, like protecting public property from rioters. Ditto for white supremacist, which is now used not to describe the KKK but in mainstream newspapers to describe Medicins Sans Frontiers.

James Lindsay with two other academics set about trying to prove that the scholarship behind critical theory is, ahem, not evidence based. He wrote clearly (to anyone not warped by this ideology) satirical papers and submitted them for publication to woke academic journals. If memory serves he wrote one study of a dog walking area in a park which purported to show that toxic masculinity in hetro***ual white males was copied by their dogs, who humped other dogs without consent. It concluded that hetro***ual men should be kept on a leash in nightclubs to curb rape culture.

In case you're wondering, not only did it get published, it won an award for excellent scholarship.

I'll post a link later to him talking about his work. Aside from these academic papers he's very well read and explains where critical theory comes from and what it aims to do in a way that is quite informative.

[drillerpie]

There are various videos of him talking about this so I don't know which one to post, but this is as good as any.

https://youtu.be/xWhuQOVTFGw