Ars Technica: Steve Ballmer’s new gov’t data project assumes that facts change minds

From Ars Technica:

Steve Ballmer’s new gov’t data project assumes that facts change minds

Having data is half the battle
The two main intertwined problems are that facts and data by themselves aren't always capable of changing people's minds and that the USAFacts project requires trusting the government data itself to be unbiased and accurate. This is something not everyone is willing to do.

Distrust of the government, of data, and of "experts" isn't universal, but it's amazingly, depressingly common. It's why accepted science like evolution and climate change continue to be questioned in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus; it's why people refuse vaccines and turn to homemade remedies instead of trusting modern medicine; it's why flat-Earthers still exist, it's why people believe the moon landing was faked, it's why people believe Hillary Clinton was running a nonexistent child trafficking ring out of a pizza place. Even when well-meaning people actively seek facts and evidence, confirmation bias dictates that we tend to gravitate toward that which confirms our existing expectations even when we consciously know better.

These problems have become worse and more noticeable in the age of President Donald Trump, who rails against nominally respected media outlets like the ("failing") New York Times as "fake news," calls the free press "the enemy of the American people," and only seems open to accepting data when it portrays him and his initiatives in a positive light.

Human-caused global warming is real, and there is no real scientific debate.

While the exact impact is still being studied, the fact of human-caused global warming is not in question.  Nor are evolution or the age of the Earth.

The Most Insane Claims From the Climate Conspiracy Manual Just Sent to Thousands of Teachers

Collected wisdom

I have no problem referring to the collected wisdom of others.  I have been saying this shit since 2002.

5) The end. pic.twitter.com/2lnSVBuHEF

— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) March 10, 2016

Signs of fascism

Holocaust Museum Poster Listing Fascism’s Warning Signs Goes Viral

• Powerful and continuing nationalism
• Disdain for human rights
• Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
• Supremacy of the military
• Rampant sexism
• Controlled mass media
• Obsession with national security
• Religion and government intertwined
• Corporate power protected
• Labor power suppressed
• Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
• Obsession with crime and punishment
• Rampant cronyism and corruption

Any of this ringing a bell?  Scared yet?  I sure as hell am.

The Immigration Ban

"I served in Iraq, as USAID’s man in Fallujah. Lived alongside Marines and interpreters as they fought terrorists."

"Detroit Man Says His Ill Mother, A Green Card Holder, Died Due To Travel Ban".
Imam: Detroit Man Lied, Mom Died Before Trump Travel Ban Was Imposed

How many fatal terror attacks have refugees carried out in the US? None

A lie by any other name...

"We all have to adjust to this unprecedented assault on the truth and stand ready to vigilantly defend against it, because without truth, what’s left? Our president is a pathological liar. Say it. Write it. Never become inured to it. And dispense with the terms of art to describe it. A lie by any other name portends the same."

A Lie by Any Other Name, Charles Blow, New York Times

17 people, 21 states

So Donald Trump won the election in large part because blue collar workers in the Midwest thought he and Republicans would help them more than the Democrats would.  Well, this is stupid, and one place it it can be seen is in his cabinet picks.

According to the Hill, Donald Trump's cabinet picks have a combined wealth of more than a third of American households.  That is, just 17 individuals have more net worth than over 40 million American citizens combined.  This is hard to wrap your head around, so here's another way to look at it: these 17 people have a greater net worth than enough Americans to make up the populations of 21 states and the District of Columbia.  Yes, if you put these 40 million people together they would match the populations of:

Connecticut
Iowa
Utah
Mississippi
Arkansas
Nevada
Kansas
New Mexico
Nebraska
West Virginia
Idaho
Hawaii
New Hampshire
Maine
Rhode Island
Montana
Delaware
South Dakota
North Dakota
Alaska
District of Columbia
Vermont
Wyoming

and maybe Oklahoma.

These are the kinds of people that presided over the predatory lending that crashed our economy; the types of people that created the concept of automation and offshoring.  Do you really think they're going to help you?

You've Been Warned

Via The Concourse on Deadspin:  You've Been Warned

• We’ve been warned of the many disturbing parallels between Donald Trump and Hitler.
• We’ve been warned that the rise of Trump resembles the rise of other authoritarian populist demagogues.
• We’ve been warned—by Donald Trump himself—that he plans to implement incredibly broad rules blocking Muslims from entering America, and that he views a Muslim registry or “watch list” as a wise idea.
• We’ve been warned that Trump will usher in a new age of white nationalism, which will evolve to quasi-respectable mainstream status with his blessing, silent or otherwise.
• We’ve been warned that Trump has unprecedented conflicts of interest that will call into question the integrity of nearly everything he does in the White House if he doesn’t completely rid himself of his business, which he will not.
• We’ve been warned that the free press, squeezed by public opinion and by government pressure, will tend to grow weaker and will by its nature normalize the actions of a Trump administration no matter how shocking those actions may have appeared to be just a few years before.
• We’ve been warned that despite facile promises to “Drain the Swamp,” Trump is stocking his administration with donors, Wall Street insiders, and billionaires, and has given every indication that he and his loyalists will embrace cronyism and corruption with a fervor not seen in decades.
• We’ve been warned that, despite inheriting one of the strongest economies of any president in modern history, Donald Trump will lie, dissemble, and change standards without compunction in order to declare that he is “making America great again,” statistics be damned.
• We’ve been warned that Trump’s penchant for involving himself directly in corporate decisions will enable corporations to extort money from the government as a matter of course.
• We’ve been warned that Trump’s impulsive use of Twitter can erase billions of dollars in value and potentially spark economic or political crises instantaneously and without warning.
• We’ve been warned that Trump’s coziness with brutal foreign leaders who despise human rights, aggression towards China, hostility towards Palestine, general lack of knowledge of world affairs, and thin-skinned temperament could upend the global order and set off any number of unpredictable international conflicts up to and including war.
• Nuclear war.

Progressive taxation

There seems to be a nasty trend among Americans of every stripe that just don't know how our tax system works.  People live in terror of going into the next tax bracket, thinking they'll actually bring home less money if they do that than if they had made less money in the first place.  This is wrong.  This is stupid.  Here's how it works.

Let's imagine that there are two tax brackets, $0-10,000 and $10,000 and up.  The tax rate for the first tax bracket is 10%, the rate for the second tax bracket is 50%.  Let's say there's a person that makes $10,000.  I'd like to hope that everyone will say this person will pay $1,000 in taxes.  Clear, straightforward.  Easy.

But now let's add a second person who makes $10,001.  This is where people get all discombobulated.  Many people will say that because the wages are in the next tax bracket this person will have to pay $5,000.50.  Unfair!  Ridiculous!  Well, that's right, because it's wrong.  The second person will pay, in fact, $1,000.50, a whopping 50 cents more than the first person.

How can this be?  It's because of how the progressive tax brackets work.  Each tax bracket applies to everyone equally.  Everyone in the above situation would pay the 10% rate on the first $10,000 they make.  Those that make more than $10,000 would pay the 50% rate only on the money above $10,000 - in the example, $1.

Sure, the United States Federal tax rates are slightly more complicated, with 7 brackets and 4 qualifications, but it's still really not that bad.  And the next time you hear about people wanting to increase the rate on the top tax bracket, try to realize that it just won't affect you at all.

And another thing...

Another thing that you may notice about this blog is that it will, absolutely, have a definite liberal bent.  This is not because I believe that it is impossible for liberals to have incorrect beliefs - anti-GMO and anti-vaxxers make that plain.  No, the reason is simple - the truth has a liberal bias.  Reality has a liberal bias.  Conservatives have built themselves such a bubble, such a safe-space, that they think that CNN and most of the media are part of some liberal conspiracy and only Fox provides "fair and balanced" news.  This is laughable on so many levels.

So, yeah.  Most of what I'll deal with here are conservative bugaboos.  Taxes.  Social Security.  Regulations.  Government.  Science.  I won't apologize for it, and I certainly don't expect conservatives to start accepting reality.  If they did, they wouldn't be conservatives anymore.

Introduction

My name is Brian Brooks.  I was born in 1977, I'll die... well, preferably never, hopefully not any time soon.  I'm currently experiencing the little dash in between the dates that bookend our lives.  This blog is my attempt to shout into the void, to pretend my voice is being heard with the hopes of making a change, making things better, and be remembered.

I've tried this in other mediums, but it's largely resulted in frustration.  You see, there's this thing called the backfire effect (follow that link for a thorough explanation by David McRaney on You Are Not So Smart).  People like to believe that their beliefs are rational and correct, but people don't like to be wrong.  This is where the backfire effect comes in.  When someone's deepest convictions are challenged by facts that contradict them, their incorrect beliefs are actually strengthened.  This is why things like dinosaur fossils and radiometric dating reinforce young-Earth creationists' beliefs that the world is only 10,000 years old, why data on rising global temperatures make people deny anthropogenic climate change more strongly, and Barack Obama finally providing his birth certificate made people even more sure he was born in Kenya.  Their beliefs have nothing to do with the truth (the scientific estimate for the age of the Earth is 4.5 billion years, average global temperatures are rising largely due to human activities, and Barack Obama was born in Hawaii), but they hold onto them regardless to everyone's detriment.

For this reason, a lot of discussion is pointless.  I used to try to show people facts to correct their misconceptions, only to have them throw it in my face.  I'd lose my patience at being lied to, or at being accused of lying, when I could demonstrate and back up my positions with references and data.  I would send people to the non-partisan fact checkers, only to have the same bullshit spouted back to me again and again.  I got sick of it, so I removed myself from that situation.

However, I can't just let the lies go.  I have to do something about the falsehoods and false beliefs and inhumanity floating around, but I just can't deal with the backfire effect.  So I'll shout into the void on this unadvertised blog.  I'll post facts, I'll post opinions, I'll post stories.  I may or may not leave commenting on.  I don't know if anyone will read this.  I don't need confirmation, I don't need feedback.  After all, no feedback, no backfire.