Hapgood

I came across this today: Ok, so yeah, as they say — there’s a lot going on here. We’re going to diagram it in a minute. But let’s start with the basics. How open arguments work In order to analyze this, you first have to realize it does not stand alone. It is part of… Continue reading

When everything is evidence, discourse can get a bit stupid In case you didn’t hear, smoke was bad in NYC a couple of weeks ago. A thick blanket of the stuff, the result of distant wildfires, cloaked the city. The AQI was over 400 in places, which to health departments is “please don’t go outside”… Continue reading

There are two primary accounts of the relation between evidence and belief in misinformation research, and neither is adequate. The first model is simple and direct. The idea here is you see misinformation and it shifts your belief. It is not identical to the old hypodermic model of media impact, but bears some relation to… Continue reading

With that as your narrative, what evidence can you bring to bear? Repeatedly since at least 2020, the “riot bricks” trope has been popular. The idea, of course, is some secret conspiracy is making sure bricks are ready-to-hand for some riot that will appear spontaneous but is really a coordinated operation. It’s a silly trope,… Continue reading

Polling locations are, by necessity, formed out of locations that do other things the rest of the year. Schools, churches, community centers, and the like. They sometimes have cameras installed. Because voting is private, there are restrictions on filming in polling places. This applies not only to ballot selfies, but to video surveillance. In addition… Continue reading

From the book Ballot Battles: In Texas the institution currently empowered to adjudicate a disputed election is its legislature, far from the ideal institution for the dispute. If Texas experiences a ballot-counting dispute in a close gubernatorial election it is hard enough to imagine the state’s legislature resolving that dispute fairly, according to the merits… Continue reading

Terraforming is a process found in science fiction novels of deliberately modifying the atmosphere and ecology of a planet to make it more habitable for a given life-form. In early sci-fi, that life form was human — drop a few machines on a planet, watch them spin up an atmosphere and ecology, have the humans… Continue reading

If you want to study something, a first step might be to go out and collect it. If I was looking for themes in 16th century poetry about food, I’d go out and get 16th century poems about food. If I wanted to look at personal narratives of medical tragedy, I’d either solicit such information… Continue reading

There is a well-known saying — “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup that gets you.” This is true in the obvious way it is usually meant: many administrative crimes are difficult to prove. They happen at a particular moment, are witnessed by few, and intent is notoriously difficult to get at. Cover-ups, on the… Continue reading

A couple days ago I wrote up my description of the Information Intervention Chain. One of the points there was that work on each layer decreases the load on the layers below, and helps cover some of the errors not caught in the layers above. Here’s a simple example, where a user has has responded… Continue reading