1-800-Dial-An-Epistemologist

January 28, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants you to know up front that you are valid. There: it's been said. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway95 - To Edit a Cat"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Ryan North (@ryanqnorth) discover powerful ideas for information & food distribution, conversational gambits, and pets before diving into an elaborate memento mori proposal."Ryan North is known throughout the land as a man of powerful ideas himself, so it was only right and proper (and goddamn delightful) to bring him on the show and see what gold his forays into the idea mine would uncover: he did not disappoint.If you haven't yet, subscribe by searching "Idea Factory Giveaway" in your podcatcher of choice (and let me know if it doesn't pop up). If you're already there, feel free to leave a 5-star rating and a nice review (it helps; algorithms, etc, you know the deal). Do it for no other reason than to spite everyone out there who said you wouldn't. Or couldn't.Instant Band Night 9: PI DAYWe're just a little over a month out, so this is your reminder to strap that helmet on, seat yourself comfortably in the cockpit of your confetti-filled Invitation Cannon, warm up the prefire sequence, grasp the controls with both hands, and take aim at every fun-loving person you know: EVENTBRITE // FACEBOOK 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I have a set of questions that I would really love an answer to. I know I've talked about this at least once, but it's been a while and this has been on my mind a lot lately: 

  • The internet (more specifically social media and commenting systems) has now definitively shown us that there are way, way more people in this world than we originally thought who are dumb, vicious, and proud of it.

  • Seriously: we already knew they existed in the cynical abstract, yes, but the evidence is now clear that there are so many of them, SO MANY MORE than even our most nihilistic, misanthropic imaginings could have dreamed.

For the purposes of this ramble, I will call this the Knowledge. (I realize the term has a specific connotation for London cabdrivers, but guess what none of us in the room are right now?) Stick with me: something that the Knowledge seems to imply is that every society that's existed since the dawn of time has very literally vastly underestimated the percentage of vicious dumbshits it harbors. Which brings me to my first question:1. Is it .......... possible, then, that all of the social conventions and systems of government that have ever been posited or implemented have been based on faulty premises? Like even a little? Maybe?I'm serious. Democracy touts the value of "one person, one vote," but I am no longer sure that's an idea we can hold inviolate, sacred, and Absolutely Not To Be Questioned anymore now that we know how many proud MAGA chuds exist. Here I'm specifically saying that I'm not 100% comfortable with a system that gives me and (specifically) a vicious dumbshit equal say. Note here that I'm careful to include both qualities: dumbness is, to an extent, not something you have control over; viciousness, however, is a choice. Which leads me to my second question, mostly for the philosophy, history, political science, or sociology crowd:2. Does there exist a body of work or school of thought that deals with the notion of weighting a society specifically in favor of intelligence, compassion, and inclusivity?I know talk of compassion and inclusivity might seem hilariously ironic given that what I'm asking is "can we just make it so vicious dumbshits can't vote" (a seemingly hard-hearted and exclusionary proposal), but that's the actual specific case I'm arguing for.THINGS I AM NOT ASKING FOR: "Can we make it so black/gay/Christian people can't vote?"THINGS I AM ASKING FOR: "Can we make it so MAGA morons can't vote?"THINGS I AM NOT ASKING FOR: "Can we put MAGA dumbfucks in jail, or take away their things, or drag them into the streets and beat them to death with tire irons?"THINGS I AM ASKING FOR: "Can we make it so MAGA dipshits can't vote?"(That sound you hear is me slapping tar, glue, and a spike strip onto that rhetorical slippery slope someone out there no doubt wants to push me down.)Loud, proud Trumpites have deliberately and gleefully embraced cruelty wielded in the service of weaponized, systemic bigotry. Surely we can agree that this is a bad state of affairs, and that these specific people (a) are easily identifiable (b) should not be put in charge of so much as a single bowl of goldfish, much less be allowed to determine the fates of others. What happens if you disenfranchise the vicious idiots, and ONLY the vicious idiots?I can't be the first person who's thought of this. But I also have no training in philosophy, history, or any of the social sciences, so I don't really have a good basis for modeling this scenario out, either. 3. But surely somebody else with the right training has at least taken a crack at it. Yes?? No???Something else I find myself grappling with is that even the act of asking questions like this feels a little wrong. Like it's ......... elitist or something. But is it???? I think myself better qualified to vote than someone who believes Obama's a Muslim and all liberals are pedophiles. Does that make me an asshole? Or am I just factually correct? On one level this seems obvious, and on another it's "Me, an intellectual" writ large. Is it okay to think about this? What is this tension I'm experiencing?? Does the existence of the Knowledge imply a need to retool some core assumptions of individual human value on which the foundations of every society in history have been laid or not???? I need a hotline to an epistemologist. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.If I pick Quentin up so his feet dangle down and then set him on the floor, he'll stand up. If I take my hands away (but not too far away), he'll remain standing on his own for a few seconds before cautiously squatting down and returning to the safety of Mother Earth. He finds this hilarious; I, too, find myself laughing delightedly. I don't know why I'm encouraging this, to be honest: once he figures out standing, he'll figure out walking. And once that happens, I'm going to be chasing him all over the apartment: you can babyproof all you want, but there'll still be things at baby level you don't want him touching that can't be relocated. In our case, it's a router and 4G hotspot that he sometimes wants to poke, or a floor lamp that he likes to grasp and shake -- I always say a gentle "No, buddy," and quickly relocate him -- it feels useless and mean to scold him harshly when the odds of his actually understanding what's going on still seem fairly low. I don't really have a point here, I'm just saying he's probably going to be walking in the near future and that's going to be something to see. 

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye. 

  • I've said this before, but David J. Roth is literally the only person I want out there writing Trump thinkpieces. Trump factual articles can and should appear by the hundreds, but Roth's commentary is the only commentary I want to see; it would just simplify things a whole lot. Thank you for your time. (Deadspin) 

  • It's time to read about The Young Left’s Anti-Capitalist Manifesto! (538) 

  • Google made an AI that can beat humans at StarCraft 2. Part of its training involved forking into different "agents" with different styles, accumulating 200 years of experience in a week. Well, shit. Now I want to see how it does in a tournament against a bunch of Korean players. (DeepMind blog) 

  • Marie Kondo's Brilliant Interpreter Is The Unsung Hero Of The Konmari Phenomenon. (Quartzy) 

  • New from the Department of No Shit, Really? Huh: absolutely none of the bullshit that justified killing net neutrality has materialized. (Motherboard) 

  • I know nothing of the Niskanen Center, so take this with whatever size grain of salt turns out to be necessary, but they've offered a compelling-sounding explanation of the ELEVATE Act, which is an effort to try to solve the country's employment shitshow. 

  • It's actually kind of a bad idea to think of your job as a higher calling. (Quartz) 

  • I don't care if it's for communications: letting Facebook put laser satellites in orbit seems like a nonstarter. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • Applying machine learning to hospital blood tests can reduce the number of tests needed while boosting their diagnostic effectiveness. (Princeton) 

  • You don't need digital detoxes, and in fact, they might be fucking you up. (Quartz) 

  • Amazon Ruined Online Shopping. (Atlantic) 

  • We might be wrong about why some climate change deniers believe what they do. Which is potentially good news: if we can figure out what the real reason is, there's a chance to convince them. (Anthropocene) 

  • There's an ebola outbreak in the DRC poised to really mess things up if it makes it into a nearby city. Quasi-silver lining: ebola isn't transmissible by air? (Vox) 

  • I'm'a let the summary do the talking on this one: Fake news accounted for nearly 6% of all news consumption, but it was heavily concentrated—only 1% of users were exposed to 80% of fake news, and 0.1% of users were responsible for sharing 80% of fake news. Interestingly, fake news was most concentrated among conservative voters. (Science) 

  • The reason why no bacterial cold ever knocks down 100% of the population is that some people's bodies just kill the fucker when it tries to gain entry. How? If we could crack this nut and replicate it, we wouldn't need antibiotics ever again. (The Conversation) I, uh, should note that this is something DARPA is looking into as well. 

  • We should consider moving some endangered species into cities, where they might do great. (Anthropocene) 

  • If I'm reading this right, fecal microbiome transplants might be more of a crapshoot (hnurr hurr hurr) for some disorders than we thought, but if there's no downside to a failed one, why not just keep trying with different donors until you find a super pooper? (Frontiers via EurekAlert) 

  • FUCK: there's a whole ecosystem on the surface of the ocean that we're endangering with plastic cleanup efforts. Now fucking what? (Atlantic) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some bandsDADBRADThe Nervous VegansVictory Hug 

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict upon someone you don't.