Silver Bulletin

> No conservative I know "hates immigrants." Consider what the policy intends to do rather than blanket-blaming it on hate.

If you look at the rhetoric from the Trump people over the years, they absolutely and clearly do hate immigrants, or are doing their best to seem that way. As an example, consider the following quote^[1] from Trump just a few years ago:

> They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country [...] That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.

It's trivial to find more like that. Weird white supremacist-adjacent rhetoric. Equating immigrants with animals. Etc.

American conservatives may not hate immigrants, but they sure love a guy who fervently expresses his hatred and disdain for immigrants every chance he gets. They've voted him into our highest office twice, and immigration was a central pillar of his campaign both times. I fully understand that many people who voted for him did so for reasons besides immigration, but at this point if they aren't willing to disavow him after the catastrophic first year-and-change of his second term then I am done giving them the benefit of the doubt, because there must be some…

> Wouldn't it normatively be more in keeping with a proper distinction between public and private to say lobby your congressman to stop the ceaseless funding and weapon deployments to countries in the ME that don't share our values?

If an individual lobbying the government wouldn't be overpowered by monied corporate interest in the government, maybe. Sadly that's not the case, at least in the US.

> The NSA has all your data anyway.

Yes, and this is incredibly unpopular and if we had a real representative democracy we'd be able to do something about it.

> In some jurisdictions you can even claim a right to be forgotten.

This too is popular and would be codified more broadly if, again, it wasn't for corporate lobbyists.

> Do you really think such public entities are more trustworthy than their private bedfellows merely because they fall on opposite lines of the public/private divide?

To beat a dead horse...

> the fact that a majority of your fellow citizens (in the USA at least) don't actually care about their (and by extension - your) privacy or human rights in the Middle East

Factually untrue.

The Iran war is incredibly unpopular, beating Iraq and Vietnam in unpopularity this quickly into the operation [1]

Most Americans want us to stop funding Israel [2]

Most Americans are against spying on fellow Americans (esp democrats/the left; tho republicans love a good ole police state)[3].

I'd argue strongly the reason these numbers aren't more in favor of…

>The like and reply system is an organic and representative method of what comments people find interesting

I think maybe you've got rose-colored glasses on? See e.g. this post from Nate Silver about old Twitter:

>If you’re one of those annoying people like me who thinks there’s value in pointing out hypocrisy ... you will get absolutely shat upon on Twitter. People feel extremely threatened when you point this stuff out. They will go great lengths to deter it. They will launch all types of ad hominem attacks against you.

>...

>Twitter’s architecture makes this worse, particularly the quote retweet and the Trending Topics module. It is a medium where dissent from the consensus is treated punitively.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blob

Or here's another post about old Twitter:

>Really, the problem with Twitter is just that it’s ruled by shouty jerks. All of the other problems — ubiquitous fear of “cancellation”, disruption of organizations, toxic status anxiety — ultimately come back to the Shouting Class.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-to-fix-twitter

It's interesting to me that HN threads about Twitter seem uniquely toxic, e.g. namecalling Elon. My hypothesis is that there's been a population replacement. Twitter was previously dominated by a certain group of shouters. The old shouters lost their power to a new group of shouters, and now the old shouters shout about the situation here on HN.

> When a mainstream media outlet takes a position, most people are able to distinguish between that outlet's position and a large social movement in favor of a particular political position

I hesitate to reference politics here, but read Nate Silver's writings on what he's termed "the Indigo Blob"[0][1]...

> The same cannot be said for these platforms, which by design attempt to make you feel like you're interacting with a large number of real people who hold real opinions

When I think back to how things went down during the pandemic, I'm convinced that the "real opinions" that most people held were based on blindly following position of whatever media they were consuming (and that media likely blindly following whatever government messaging).

Actual scientists posting actual statistics?[2] No-one wanted to see the data on who was - and wasn't - at significant risk from Covid.

At one point back then, one of my closest friends bluntly told me in a group chat that I was "a sociopath", despite him knowing that out of the two of us, I'm the one with the science PhD + published papers, and (at least science-wise) he's the layman.

Hey ho, he and I eventually made up...

[0] https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blob [1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/how-the-indigo-blob-runs-a-bluff [2] https://medium.com/wintoncentre/what-have-been-the-fatal-risks-of-covid-particularly-to-children-and-younger-adults-a5cbf7060c49

10 years ago, I thought it was important have newsrooms reporting on current events. But now it's so schlocky, even on things I agree with them on, that I think they do more harm than good. Really anyone who has to come up with something shocking to report everyday is going to put out garbage. I include in this major city newspapers, news only websites (like tech press), network and cable news, and weekly magazines.

Here are two good breakdowns of the problems/limits of modern mainstream news.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/journalism-needs-more-taylor-swift

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1714648538746118265

Americans wisely agree, trust in media is very low https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx.

It's worth pointing out that mass media has had a brief lifespan, about from the 1920s. And the "golden age" when everyone was following it was really only 1950 to 2000.

It's fine if it declines, and even if it disappears.

Canada's accidental banning of links to news is a good model, we should do it in the US. Let's tax any links to news sites from major web platforms.

He's not the final word on the matter, but Nate Silver writes...

> I've worked a lot with data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other federal agencies. In fact, an economic index based on a half-dozen of these statistics is part of our presidential election forecast, so we’ve pulled this data all the way back to World War II.3

> And I consider it to be of very high quality. When BLS data is revised as more information becomes available, it’s meticulously documented and explained. For more on how this works, including just how difficult the BLS’s job is and how it’s being made harder by declining survey response rates and cuts to federal agencies that track economic activity, I’d strongly recommend this edition of the Odd Lots podcast with Bill Beach, the former BLS commissioner under Trump 1.0 and Biden. It might not be the most riveting interview, but one thing that comes through is just how much of a straight-shooter he is.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont-fool