What's in a Name?: a name can persuade and/or mislead

     I am certain that it happens throughout the world, but I can only (without a lot of research which I would just become depressed to do) talk about the US and its habits. The power of a name can move people one direction or another based on long-term associations. The name may not be appropriate. The name may mean something very different from popular usage. The name may be nonsensical. But they are still powerful.

Fear of the people? Redirect definitions

     Lately, the US political system is dismayed that “Democratic socialism” is becoming popular within the US. However, it isn’t the socialism part, which is actually not even close to textbook socialism, that scares them. It is the democratic part of the name. Most people in the US have very little idea what socialism is. If you want a summary, check out the Wikipedia link here (or above). It is a word, just slightly less to be feared than communism, to strike fear in the average (tell me what to think, don’t make me research the issues) US voter. The democratic part of the name says that people start deciding, once again, how taxes are to be raised and spent. And THAT is the part that is scary to the political system.

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Just what is “patriotic” anyway?

     One of the “worst” things someone can do in the US is to call someone “unpatriotic”. It is also one of the most flexibly defined words used within politics and barrages (I shall not call them discussions) between people. For some, patriotic means to support government actions no matter what. For some, patriotic means to support the Constitution and the laws no matter what. For some, the Pledge of Allegience is more a worship of the symbol than “to the Republic for which it stands”. The abstract (piece of cloth) is more important to some than our laws and principles. A visitor to our planet, and our country, would be so absolutely confused. I often am.

     We use the word patriotic to justify all kinds of actions. This is true especially in the war department. “Patriot” missiles. The “Patriot” Act. Whether they are misleading or not is a matter of perspective. This is often called “framing” which is putting something into a context (patriotism) that makes it more difficult to oppose them. Looking beneath the label is a necessity to decide but, just as true for other aspects of US legislation and politics, this does not seem to be a popular thing for the general citizenry. Politicians, and legislators, usually know exactly what they are doing and why.

Use of “framing” for legislation

     As stated above, people in favor of legislation may feel that the bill, or military campaign, may be validly called by its title. At best, however, they are still often misleading. The USA Patriot Act MAY have increased internal security against terrorists but it definitely weakend Constitutional rights, including privacy, of peaceful regular citizens and inhabitants of the US. The “Defense of Marriage Act” would more appropriately have been called the “Defense of Traditional Heterosexual Marriages Act” or even “Strengthening Attacks against Non-traditional Marriages Act”. You can see how the title makes the bill appear less biased than it actually was.

     Another example of misdirecting casual observers of legislation was the “Healthy Forests Restoration Act”. In support of its title, it is true that careful clearing of areas of land can reduce the likelihood, or severity, of forest fires. But the title doesn’t mention that the bill would also open up National Forests to commercial logging and that such logging would not be required to meet appropriate wildfire reduction logistics.

     The “Affordable Care Act” was a compromise bill that did some good but not fully as proposed. Although promised, the statement “if you like your plan, you can keep it” was not true for all people. Also, it did expand the number of people in the US covered but the “affordable” was not always true. As a compromise bill, everyone had areas that they disagreed with. It did not come close to making affordable health care available to all inhabitants of the US. (And has never covered undocumented immigrants in spite of what some sources have lied about.)

     The framing occurs for all political viewpoints and guards. “For the People”, “Patriotic”, “Family Values”, and so forth. Just call it by names that no one would ever consider “bad” and proceed. The political system in the US (and, likely, much of the rest of the world) knows that people (especially the 98%) have many needs for their time and energy and very often (way too often) do not choose to allocate their time to research what a piece of legislation does or what a candidate, or party, has really done.

Marketing

     Get your “gluten-free water” here! “Fat-free cardboard”. Why not? If a word becomes important, and frequently used, then it must be plastered onto every possible place. Get your “AI biscuits” here, folks! This happens with every marketing or technological or scientific fervor. Many times, I was in a room full of technical people and we would laugh at what marketing had put together. To us, it was silly. To the marketing people, and presumably to the people they were attempting to persuade, it was showing that we were on the front edge and no other company had something we didn’t. That might actually be true but the statement was still silly (see the first “gluten-free water” note at the beginning).

     This type of marketing method is called “processing fluency”. Basically, your eye (or ear) catches something that you associate with something good (“Artisanal bread”) or lack of something bad (“cholesterol-free vegetable oil”) and you have already categorized it as positive to buy without taking the time to remember that no vegetable, or vegetable product, EVER had cholesterol.

Binary protests. Pro and Anti. For and Against.

     Most issues are not “black and white”. Almost all issues are a shade of gray. But, when it comes to naming “causes” and “movements”, we can’t seem to make up our mind. The other viewpoint from pro-choice IS anti-choice but the media seems to be perfectly okay for the one side to call themselves “pro-life”. Ah, but what life? That is the question and is why we should always translate the issue firmly back to anti-choice for that is what it is. Pro-life, as a label, makes very little sense, since the opposite side of the position would be anti-life which would be very hard to justify.

     These situations fall into the “framing” methods mentioned above. Each frame, or scale, has different variations along it from “Anti-X” to “Pro-X”. But a group that is “anti-” already has a negative perception against it because people don’t like to think of themselves against something but, rather, for something. Sometimes, groups really should make use of marketing or PR groups to help in naming.

     Anti-fascism (or antifa, for short) is a great term and fascism is what people in the “Allied” group in World War II fought against. Most US people have little idea what fascism is but they do recognize that “anti-” is against something. If they thought about it, almost all people would agree they are against fascism with its marginalization of everyone who is not part of the command group. But, it can be counted on that most won’t do that consideration.

     At any rate, groups that are aware of naming biases don’t like to call themselves “anti-” so they change the frame, or scale so they can ALSO be “pro-” just as in “pro-choice” versus “pro-life”. Totally different frames that have nothing to do with the other but both get to declare themselves (correctly or not) by a “pro-” label.

Draping oneself under the flag or community standards.

     “Mothers for Freedom” is the title of a group which has a primary focus of forcing their opinions upon all families. That’s not how I, personally, define freedom. Many states end up with “Right to Work” petitions and legislation. These laws remove the ability to require everyone to join a union even though they get the benefits negotiated by the union. Thus, they can work even if the other union covered workers are on strike. A referendum that says “Union busting” or “Union weakening” just don’t have that same emotional appeal as “right to work”.

     I’m sure that those of you who are reading this can come up with lots of other comparisons that shift the frame. Or examples where the flag is used as a cover for things that most would not consider to be part of the country’s aims and values. I’d love to see a few in the comments.

Understand the language!

     It wouldn’t work if people got into the habit of looking past the name and understand the language that we speak then the titles, and use of potentially misleading names would not matter. Alas, that is not the case

but it should be!

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Recalibration: it is rarely a matter of comparing apples to apples

     My wife and I belong to a book club (she belongs to several, but we go to one together). A couple of books ago, we read the book “Happiness Falls” by Angie Kim. Not particularly giving a spoiler, the title is involved with something called a “happiness quotient”. The idea is that your recent past history will reset your scales.

     Say that I attended a pretty good happy film. As a 1 to 10 life experience (as opposed to a rating of the film itself), I rate it a 6 — pleasant and better than average. Now, envisage having just lost your job. You attend the same film but since you are likely feeling pretty rotten, watching that pretty good happy film might win a 8 for you as it was “just what you needed” at that time. Or your down feelings might negatively affect your appreciation of the film and you might get only a 4 for the experience of going to the film. In either case, you have altered your scale for evaluation.

     The range may also depend on the local environment. In a town where there are few restaurants and little competition, it is likely that a restaurant might get a 4/5. In a different area, with more restaurants and competition, it might get a 3/5. Same restaurant, same quality but looked at (and rated) differently according to the competitive environment.

     Let’s proceed towards the topic of “Happiness Falls” as mentioned above. If I have had a series of mishaps, or tragedies, occurring in my life, a well-prepared birthday party may seem like an 8/10 whereas if I just received the Nobel prize, I might consider it only a 6/10.

     I have a high pain threshold (which isn’t always to my advantage). I used to have my teeth filled without anesthesia. My current dentist doesn’t give me that option. But I know of some others who have to have general anesthetic before any dental work can be done. Our scales of 1 to 10 for pain are quite different.

     This is one of the many reasons why we cannot truly “walk in another’s footsteps”. Not that efforts to understand are not worthwhile — they are. But your feelings of pain, alienation, love, hate, and every other physical and emotional feeling are very unlikely to be at the same level as that of the other person. Your scales do not have the same endpoints.

     What evaluation scales do you have that seem to be out-of-sync with that of others?

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Normalization is abnormal: When journalism loses its intergrity

     I'm not really sure when it started. It was certainly present in 2016 but it may have been around for quite a while and I just didn't notice. This is about the peculiar idea of "normalization". This happens when people work hard to present a viewpoint -- particularly in comparison to another -- as "equally valid" even though they aren't even close to equally valid.

     The concept of normalization can be achieved in two different ways -- both ways bring multiple people or ideas into the same "normal" umbrella. One way tries to disguise, hide, or ignore aspects such that they appear to be "normal". The other works to expand the definition of "normal" such that the formerly abnormal (not hidden, not disguised) becomes a part of normal. This second form, closer to the dictionary definition, is unusual but not truly abnormal.

     Obviously, attempting to portray something as valid when it isn’t is a type of lie in itself. I guess that the economic world can celebrate the birth of a new vocation — the “fact-checker” — because of this devolution of news coverage. Once upon a time, if a newspaper reported something — including quotes from some celebrity news source — it would either only report what was true or would have expansion sentences “clarifying” the reality that exists around the quotes. Quoth the raven, “Nevermore”. Fact-checkers became required since journalists could no longer be trusted to report the facts. (Everyone recognizes that no one can get everything right all the time — but that is why the world invented retractions and corrections.)

     Just why did this “normalization” start appearing? In my opinion, mostly because of money.

     A quote from John Lydgate but more famously requoted by Abraham Lincoln:

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.”

     The new profit-oriented owners of newspapers, and broadcast stations, wanted to maximize their profits. They could publish the full facts, as far as they could be determined, and possibly irritate some of their readers or advertisers. Or they could go the realtor “beige” route (few people like beige but almost no one objects to it). Strip enough of the facts away that it seemed more palatable to those that might have objected but leave enough facts that both sides were represented. Or, allow a group to use a name that was highly misleading without putting the name in quotes.

     This is “normalization” and it skews reality such that the information presented is no longer useful. In my opinion, this is why “mainstream” corporate media has lost so much credibility — because they aren’t credible anymore (amazing, isn’t it?).

     Another way to look at normalization is by looking at two people as an example. Everyone has good points and everyone has bad points. At a certain level of research, person A has 6 good points and 2 bad points. At that same level of research, person B has 1 good point and 10 bad points. In a “normalized” article, they would each have 1 bad point and 1 good point presented. They seem fairly similar in morality, don’t they? Not the same but rather balanced. But the reality is that one is much worse than the other.

     So, one form of normalization is where we take two (or more) items or people and start ignoring what we don’t want to disclose about them (it can be applied to both). And, since we also want them to be considered of equal believability, lies are allowed to remain unchallenged and, thus, assumed by the reader to be true.

     Another, more constructive, form of normalization works to make the previously unaccepted acceptable. My mother-in-law had her lawn planted in low-water-consumption, low-labor, native plants. Practical, good for the earth, and the only such lawn on the block or even the entire section of the city. Luckily, the property was not part of a HomeOwners Association (HOA) whose primary purpose is to homogenize the neighborhood. Making earth-friendly landscaping acceptable would be a form of normalization. Or the Civil Rights movement. The 1960s did not achieve close to what it hoped in terms of civil rights but it did strive to normalize the existence of multiple skin pigment combinations to be an acceptable part of the community and partially succeeded.

     In both situations, normalizing brings the abnormal “into the fold” — either by manipulating the facts or by widening the acceptability of characteristics. In the above example of person A and person B, normalization COULD have been approached by presenting all of the facts unearthed about each person and then an attempt to make all the points acceptable. This is not usually done because it takes much longer to shift community acceptability criteria than it does to eliminate, and massage, the facts to allow them to be perceived as acceptable.     This is not the only manner in which the standards of journalism has declined within printed, broadcast, or streaming media — but it is a very important one. Being able to compare a whole idea, or a whole person, to another is vital. Of course, as discussed in a prior newsletter, what is reported cannot, or unearthed, be complete — there are too much data to be able to research and present — but, when known, there should not be deliberate distortion such that the presentation becomes a lie.

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False Savings: When a Bargain costs you more

     U.S. people love to get “bargains”. Even relatively rich people like to think that they are getting more from their money. But, often, those bargains are just not what people think they are. One example that always comes to mind for me is that of our daughter when she was purchasing perishable vegetables. But three tomatoes for $2 instead of getting a single tomato for a $1. Obviously a bargain — right? But what about if you only eat one tomato out of the three before the other two go bad? You now have paid $2 for one tomato. No longer a bargain is it? Quantities of perishable food is one category of potential false bargains.

     People like to watch movies about wars (that they aren’t part of and don’t have any risks from). Tanks are always a favorite to watch. They’re so big. They obviously show a strong defence don’t they? Well, no — not within the current wars around the world. (I’m sure there are still specialized needs for them.)

     However, the money used to construct them (and store them) are important to local economies (but NOT important to any war/defence budget) — so these end up part of the many “porkbarrel” contracts which inflate the defence department’s budget. (So strange — huge amounts of known waste but “sacred” because they are (inappropriately) associated with “defence”.) This is a category of obsolescent needs.

     People in the US seem to often celebrate their lack of arithmetic skills. Who needs them? We have calculators and Yahoo and all, don’t we? We expect, when we go into a supermarket, that we will get lower prices (per unit) for large quantities in comparison to small quantities. And, most of the time, that will be true. But you have to watch it. A 32 oz. jar at $3 is NOT a bargain in comparison to a 16 oz jar at $1.25. (Another trick, whole numbers seem to be smaller.) How about 16 oz. for $1.25 and a quart at $3? Changing the units (from ounce to quart) is an acceptable ploy to mislead.

     Similar to the tanks above, maybe we just don’t need it? We have walked along in a shopping mall and often encountered a nice briefcase, in a display, for $50. But we don’t really need a briefcase and $50 seems like a lot of money. But, we are used to seeing it and thinking about it. What happens if we come back from work and see the window with a clearance sign saying “$22.50 for briefcase”. We’ve been looking at it for what seems like “forever” and it might not be there soon. So, we buy it. Nice looking briefcase gathering dust in the closet. Did we save $27.50 or spend $22.50? Both, of course — but how many such items of “bargains” do you have hidden away within your house?

     Go down to the local car lot. See that gorgeous truck there in the lot. It has the capacity to carry an entire living room’s worth of furniture just in that truck bed. You lean back and have fantasies of the neighbors all wanting to use it and thinking you are great because you have such a piece of machinery. But, what is reality? How often do you need to haul around a living room’s worth of furniture? For all purposes, how often do you need to haul around something larger, or heavier, than fits into the trunk of your compact car? Our economy loves you for it but buying something that you may use one or two days out of the year is certainly a luxury.

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What's Happened to our Educational System (cont'd)?: Quantitative vs Qualitative

      All parents want their children to attend “good” schools. “Good” or “bad” is an answer to a set of questions that we would like to have quantifiable. And that isn’t easy to do. In the first place, all schools do not teach the same things. Secondly, they may not all evaluate the students’ progress in the same manner or use the same scales. Lastly, there are many types of educational achievements and many of them do not have “scores” associated with them.

     So, it was “decided” (in a rather arbitrary manner), in the US, to make schools comparable. Require schools to teach the same materials, in the same ways, and evaluated in the same way. And just eliminate (from the scoring at least — possibly completely from the curriculum) all of those “messy” areas that are difficult to assign numerical evaluations to. “Messy” areas like art, music, physical education, creative writing, and such. In addition, there are many “messy” areas that CAN be evaluated to a score but, in order to do such, much time and effort is needed. Such areas include non-fiction essays, book reports, topical research papers, and such.

     The “No Child Left Behind” Act had admirable goals but, in order to achieve much of it, all schools needed to be comparable. Doing such required the above methods. Teachers had to start “teaching to the test”. Things that would be on the standardized national tests were important to know — everything else was not.

     “No Child Left Behind” still might have worked — but not in conjunction with reduced resources and exploding class sizes. (I think around 12 to 15 students per teacher would be optimum — but those numbers are certainly up for debate.) The quantifiable “teaching to the test” stuff could be a part of the day’s curriculum. But most of the time should be devoted to material that fosters the creative, analytical, and investigative sides of their education.

     The “whats” and “whens” have become even less important in these days of information access. It is those “hows” and “whys” (and whether it is true or not) that humans most need to be able to do.

     Back to reality, however. Class sizes are NOT reasonable. Teachers are not well rewarded or recognized. When classes overflow, “teaching to the test” is what survives. The teacher is considered “good” if their students get good test scores. The school is considered “good” based on their test scores. These numbers affect school funding and teacher retention. Great teachers can lose their jobs in a manner that is parallel to the situation of dedicated school cafeteria cooks being replaced by less healthy pre-processed foods.

     Great teachers teach for the benefit of the students and not for the benefit of a numerical score.

     Being able to check the correct box on tests becomes more important than being able to write — or to read beyond recognizing the questions and answers. The numbers become more important than being able to create the next important “widget” for a future business. The numbers become more important than being able to research, and verify, what is correct and what is a falsehood. The numbers win. Education loses. Society loses.

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Ethics: Always in process

 

     There is a lot of talk about ethics currently -- especially in relation to developments in AI. According to the dictionary, ethics are the moral principles that govern behavior. Note there is nothing about "universal" or "unchanging" in the definition. Ethics are based within a specific society and their rules of behavior. Societies vary a lot in their viewpoints on many issues -- sex, gender roles, religion, death, expected behaviors, taboos, and so forth. A society that expects resurrection of the individual will look at death a lot differently from a society that expects only one life (whether they believe in an "afterlife" or not).

     Ethics also change along with societal norms. Fifty years ago, there were a set of behaviors that were normal, and expected, from the members of the community. Now, in this present time, some of those behaviors are no longer acceptable. The ethics relating to current societal norms may reasonably be applied to behaviors that are happening now. They can also be applied to past societies, writings, and other memorabilia but ONLY as if one is using a microscope. They can be examined and the difference between the ethics of that time and the ethics of the current time can be looked at as documentation of change. But the past behavior WAS acceptable at the time that it happened because the rule set, the ethics of the time, was different. Each period of time and each distinct society has its own rule books that should not be applied to judge behavior within other times/societies.

     The above is true -- but only in the abstract. In real life, everyone believes that their current ethics are THE correct ethics and ethics that differ are WRONG. People with different ethics -- whether of the past or of a different society or culture -- are BAD. This would be true in the opposite direction of course -- people of the past would consider OUR behavior to be BAD when judged according to the ethics of the past. This almost always leads to conflict and even to wars.

     A cultural anthropologist must always be very careful upon entering into a different culture/society because they are there to examine, analyze, and document. Since the new ethics are not known, it is easy for them to violate those in some manner which would make their work much more difficult or even impossible.

     We have been talking about the flux of ethics. Within the current time and current society there is a set of ethics rules that applies to everyone within that time/society. If they do not follow them they have to face social, and possibly legal or martial,  consequences. This is what is typically called an ethics problem.

     AI can face issues similar to that of human individuals. One is the ownership of intellectual property. For humans, taking such is called plagiarism. Generative AI systems need to be "trained" by giving it access to much information -- not all of which is legal for general use. In that way, AI may be considered to be plagiarizing or even stealing from others within the same subject matter? It may also affect the value of those systems, or people's valuable intellectual property, from which it absorbs information? I put question marks because those are part of the questions posed about defining ethics for AI systems.

     Humans can (and do -- much too often) lie. They do such deliberately (called with malice) and accidentally (by not verifying information before passing it along). If AI is trained with bad information (deliberately bad or non-verified information) then IT will use that bad information and pass it along as "good". For humans, this is called slander or libel -- but often not subjected to legal ramifications if done within social media. What is such when done by AI? Can this distortion of reality, and worldview, be considered a dangerous crime by AI systems? Another area of ethics in connection with AI systems.

     Humans can, and do, commit crimes as defined by the legal systems of their society. AI systems can be trained to do such faster, and possibly less noticeably, than that which is done by humans. AI systems can be trained to "phish", steal private (supposedly inaccessible) data, forge accounts, and other non-physical actions. If given access to "waldos" (physical systems capable of being controlled online) then they can even do physical crimes. What is the legal aspects, and ethics, of using AI systems for such actions?

     Humans can, and do, violate ethics systems. AI can be trained, or designed, to do similar violations and be done faster, and more effectively, than humans. These are the areas that badly need to be addressed before the problems that will occur become too unwieldy to deal with.