Category: Musings

The Economist‘s column Johnson recently wrote about the extent to which artificial intelligence can compose prose, and claimed we need not fear the “Writernator”.

The reason? Because during an experiment:

Each sentence was fine on its own; remarkably, three or four back to back could stay on topic, apparently cohering. But machines are aeons away from being able to recreate rhetorical and argumentative flow across paragraphs and pages.

Well, most of my students can’t do that either.

So while the article was trying to reassure writers that they need not fear losing their jobs to a computer, I saw quite another angle, a trail of thought that goes something like this:

Computers cannot create sustained arguments. Neither can most of my students. And only the best journalism seems to bother. Educated people can both follow and create sustained arguments. But to whom are they writing? We have many voters and public figures who are anti-intellectual, and only interested in the realms of fear, emotional expression, and personal identity. They have no interest in sustained argument. The media reflect this, with the emphasis on factoids. Articles have gotten shorter, even in journals like The Atlantic. Computers can’t do it, and computer programming is a reflection of ourselves. Perhaps the very idea of sustained argument needs to be defended. But how can one defend it except with sustained argument, and a reliance on the very intellectualism being increasingly rejected?

If I had read the article 20 years ago, I might have nodded along, not because computers weren’t writing then, but because I felt that sustained argument was a norm. It’s perfectly obvious to me why it needs to be preserved, as obvious as the preservation of free speech, democracy, respect for the opinions of others. These things aren’t obvious anymore.

Today on BBC4’s PM program, Evan Davis reported on Jacob Rees-Mogg’s insensitive statement that he would have got out of the Grenfell fire by ignoring the orders of the fire authority to stay in the burning building. He interviewed Andrew Bridgen, Conservative MP of North West Leicestershire:

Davis: Do you think he meant to say that he thought he would not have stayed put?

Bridgen: That’s what he meant to say…

Davis: And that in a way is exactly what people object to, which is he’s in effect saying, I wouldn’t have died, because I would be cleverer than the people who took the fire brigade’s advice?

Bridgen (Sigh.) But we want very clever people running the country, don’t we, Evan?

Well, I’m not sure people do. In fact, I’m pretty sure many people don’t see why having educated people run things is a good idea. They think that educated people run things to the detriment of uneducated people, and sometimes that is true.

People, Bridgen noted, tend to defer to authority, as they did in the case of the fire.

When people trust these authorities and the authorities fail, there is popular anger. At some point people will ask from whence does this authority derive? And one can say “from your votes”, but they feel that isn’t completely true. The response is to elect uneducated populists.

Intellectualism, and education itself, may have a much tougher advertising campaign to run than we suppose. The old norms are suspect, and assumed ideas need a cogent (or, better, non-intellectual) defense. I don’t think saving writers from computer-generated text is quite going to do that.

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Facts are discovered.

Knowledge is created.

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A recent Economist article queries the simultaneous increase in general happiness and increase in votes for populist parties. How can people who say they are happier, and who have better jobs and better lives, vote for parties that vow to destroy current systems and cause massive disruption? It seems counter-intuitive. Doesn’t history tell us that it’s the misery of people, it’s Germany in the 1920s, that leads to the rise of dictatorship and the undermining of rights? Why would anyone benefiting from a system vote to overthrow it?

I would like to suggest that the issue is virtuality, and the gaming mentality engendered by virtual activities.

In a world where you contact your friends in a virtual space more than in reality, where your car beeps because you are too close to another car, where Alexa reminds you of your appointment at 10, and where you can use an app to get your groceries delivered, the virtual nature of life has become immersive. It is not simply a matter of too much screen time. It’s the transition to perceiving the real world like it’s on a screen, with you holding the controls. The virtual has overcome the reality.

I live in California, land of automobiles. As cars became more electronic, I noticed drivers behaving more erratically and aggressively. I saw people driving as if they were in a video game, where the other cars were merely obstacles to their goal. When cell phones became a distraction, the self-centered driving behavior became even more marked. It wasn’t just more erratic and dangerous due to the distraction — with or without phone in hand, drivers took even less notice of what happened beyond their own vehicle. I’ve seen driving behaviors that demonstrate a disregard of the fragility of pedestrians in crosswalks, intolerance toward disabled drivers, frustration at people who don’t get out of the way quickly enough. In this state, where turning right on a red light is legal if conditions are safe, you’d better do at or you’ll get honked at whether conditions are safe or not.

These kinds of behaviors are what we see in games. When you know you are secure, you take more chances, and behave more aggressively. You stockpile your money and weapons in Assassin’s Creed, then you go on your hunt. As far back as The Oregon Trail, the idea was to get set up properly, then begin your dangerous journey, and take your chances. You are encouraged to think you’re living your own Odyssey. The other characters in the game are only there as foils to your individual character. They were created only to make your goal more difficult to obtain. Of course you honk at them.

As one sits at the computer interacting in virtual space, the people with whom one interacts also seem virtual and unreal. They aren’t really in our space. We can turn them off by turning off our computer or our phone, and go do something else. Politics comes to us in a 24-hour news cycle that tends not to distinguish between the significant and the irrelevant, and it often comes to us online, on a 2-dimensional screen. The party debates, for example, can seem like a TV show, sometimes interesting and other times worthy of the Off button. But they don’t seem like anything very important.

So now people are interviewed, and say they are happier and more employed. Yet they are voting for populist parties that channel anger and aggression against others. These aren’t opposites: they are normal gaming behavior.

It’s more fun and more dangerous to join angry groups on Facebook, especially those that provide a sense of belonging at the same time. And one can happily support populist parties because it feels like taking a chance, doing something risky — that means you earn more points. It’s similar to the increased disconnect between your car and the environment surrounding it. The perceived distance between the individual and government combines with the actual distance between oneself, sitting at a computer, and the reality of how that government affects your life. Politics is just a game you play in groups, the ultimate MMPG. It’s why it makes no difference whether the current government is fulfilling its promises or not — you support it if that’s the team you’re on.

We feel empowered sitting in our captain’s chair, the computer under our control. We can help our team. Click! I can post an outraged comment. Click! I can answer a poll. Click! I can make a small donation to a party that says they’ll give people like me an easier life. I don’t click because I’m unhappy, because I’m destitute. If I were really destitiute I wouldn’t have the time or ability to spend all this time in the virtual world. I click because it all feels like a game. What’s the harm — it’s just clicking things, posting words in cyberspace. That little frisson of excitement is because I know it is real, but as user7864 I don’t have to be individually responsible if I don’t want to be.

While there are articles on gamifying education, and on the effect of games on the human psyche, I’ve seen little on the gamification of social and political interaction engendered by our electronically connected world. And I realize my point of view could be seen as an argument against online voting, which would only seem to increase the disconnectedness and virtuality of political participation. Since we are already immersed, however, I don’t see the difference in voting virtually. Perhaps my click will make something better happen. At least I’ll get more points.

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Those of us who recall education, conversation, and research before the habitual use of the web often wax eloquently about all the affordances the web has given us. We can look up facts in seconds, engage in research from our sofa, video-conference with people in real time. It’s amazing!

We also know that things get lost with any new technology. It’s one of the major themes (well, the major theme) of my History of Technology class. We’ve seen that everything from real-life conversation, to civility, to shelf-browsing has suffered in ways connected to the advent of the web. I am considering examining these in some posts.

So here’s one. I have a colleague who researches American patent medicine in the late 19th century. Today I’m on Twitter, and see that A. J. Wright has posted a patent medicine advert. I’d like to share this with my colleague. In the old days of email, I might have sent it to him in an email. But now I won’t share it with him at all.

Why? Because the likelihood of it having been shared a zillion times, and him having seen it already, is very high. If I put the name of the product (H.R. Stevens’ Family Balsam Familine) into Google, I get some right away:

And there are more links below to sites like Rochester University, the Smithsonian, even eBay. My mind conjures up a Pinterest page of bunches of similar ads, and a quick search proves that yes, everybody and their mother saves images of patent medicines.

I am intimidated by the ease of finding more examples, so I’m less likely to share one. My “discovery” has been diffused by the commonality of the find, by the ease of access. Despite the fact that there are still areas of mystery (what is Familine made of?), I’m too deflated to care. It’s like that scene in Summertime where Katherine Hepburn discovers that the supposedly unique Venetian glass she’s been sold is just a cheap souvenir. In her case, she later discovers that hers is an original and the others are copies, but in my case they are all cheap souvenirs of a few minutes web searching. Hardly something one would share with a respected colleague.

It’s odd that in the web world, which seems so to value “sharing”, something can so instantly become not worth sharing.

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I read in The Economist, in an article called “Will Europe’s Green parties be the new leaders of the political left?“, a helpful way to view contemporary political polarization. Here’s the section:

If I’m understanding correctly, the reason that the far-left and far-right are becoming popular is because both are founded on these “post-materialist values”.

I understand that postmaterialism emerged in the 1970s to help explain the self-actualization of the younger generation, who valued personal experience and happiness over economics (because they could afford to). It just had never occurred to me that such values were the foundation of thought for the current political edges. The far-right is post-materialistic in that they value nationalism and homogeneous culture above material considerations. The far-left values environmentalism (Europe) or personal identity (America) above material considerations.

It does make sense. The conflict between Marxism and liberalism marked the 20th century. I had always thought of the two philosophies as diametrically opposed. At the same time, I teach that there are historically two forms of liberalism: the political (Locke, Jefferson, et. al.) and the economic (i.e. free trade). In contemporary times, it is possible to see globalism as the updated form of economic liberalism. But what is the updated form of political liberalism?

It’s not what is called “neo-liberalism”, obviously — that is also primarily economic, and retro because it brings back the initial forms of liberal capitalism that treated workers like dirt and believed in a nasty form of natural selection that sacrificed humanity.

There’s a gap here that is neither right nor left, but is more basic. I’ve said for years (to anyone who would listen) that if liberal democracy is to survive, it needs to come up with a damn good argument as to why it’s the best system. It’s rested on its laurels for fall too long, to the point where during my own lifetime it was just assumed as best, the system that other nations would implement if they could just get more advanced. It’s time to think like Jefferson and, as he said about the Declaration of Independence, “place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent”. If liberalism is materialistic, someone better justify what materialism is important. If democracy is good, someone must tell us why.

In the absence of a proper, cogent, meaningful, and plain argument for liberal democracy, the fringes have more space. And these fringes don’t even acknowledge arguments for liberal democracy or Marxism, because both are based on materialism.

Certainly Tr*&p voters know want material things (jobs, money). Tr*&p’s government is not only reneging on its promises to provide material prosperity, it is actively making the finances of poorer people worse, and yet his supporters won’t hear a word against him even as he steals their food. That can only mean that a deeper philosophy is at play which is post-material. The wall (as a symbol of these values) matters more than food and money.

That may seem strange except for a 2011 study by Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University. I’ve been thinking about it for years. In 2008, 1,400 people were asked whether they had ever used a government social program. 57% said no. Of those, 94% had. They’d received food stamps, social security benefits, unemployment compensation, student loans, etc. This gave me the idea that many people do not understand the role of government at all, much less how they benefit from it. It may seem illogical that people would, for example, push for budget cuts to programs that benefit them (the original focus of Mettler’s study). But it makes more sense if the problem is principle rather than facts.

This post-material focus also helps explain the tendency, noted in this piece in the Washington Post, for people to believe untrue things. It’s confirmation bias gone amok. The woman in the story believes the “fake news” about the two women in red because it “was true to what she knew of their character”. The overall idea is far more important than the actual facts because it’s the principle that matters, rather than what happened. Facts carry the taint of the material.

So if Emilie van Haute is right (and I suspect she is, since she’s studied this stuff for years), there is no way to get everyone back together and stop the polarizing forces that are at play. It might be better to acknowledge the deep attachments people have to things other than money and goods, and work from there.

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