Glen - > My fascination isn't morbid but focused on the opportunity to > modify/eliminate the obsolete electoral college system.
I never intended to suggest that YOUR's or anyone else's but my own has a strong morbid-fascination aspect. This is one of my character flaws... while the Trumpsters are doubling down on conspiracy, I have been doubling down on morbid fascination. Perhaps reporting such is un-useful. I think your analysis here (as usual) is generally valid and hopefully even specifically useful. Perhaps my own morbid fascination is like nervous hysterical laughter as a release to then (maybe) allow me to proceed with something more useful once I've disgorged. I do think the dynamic range in quantitative and qualitative complexity has become very problematic for average citizens, up to and including most of us on this semi-rarified list of technically/intellectually inclined unto-astute. You speak often of "compression" in a general but technical sense. I suppose this is a problem of the character of the lossiness in the compression algorithm of-choice. Bleeding Heart Liberals (is that still a term?) and Knee Jerk Conservatives represent *different* but maybe similar lossy compressions? Populism seems to be the over-arching family of algorithms and dog-whistles and jargon are (part of) the code book? My direct experience with conspiracists aligns with this... conspiracy #22.b-1.3 (by some arcane name) from conspiracy domain Zed (e.g. Chemtrail, Illuminati, Atlantean, Lizard-Peeps, Anti-Vax, Anti-Flouride, Q-anon etc.) seems to invoke a reserved Lexicon among subscribers and (un)surprisingingly those with one subscription seem to have a whole host of parallel subscriptions. - Steve > I doubt the rhetoric that "our democracy is under assault", for both this > protest and when the guard was called out for the BLM protest. What's under > assault is the hermeneutical complex by which our democracy works. Populists > from both sides are confused about how infrastructure should and does work. > > The recent refusal to charge Sheskey in the Blake shooting is a good example. > Those of us who've had intimate run-ins with how "justice" works in various > parts of the country won't be surprised if a DA claims his office wouldn't be > able to out-argue a self-defense defense in court, especially not with the > qualified immunity cops tend to have. > > It's akin to the problems presented by explainable AI/ML. Where do you set > the bar for algorithm complexity in relation to Joe Sixpack's ability to > understand an algorithm? Should it be understandable? I have this very same > problem with ranked choice voting and the security-risk-through-obfuscation > of supply chain attacks and any large-scale open-source project. > > This tension between understandability and efficacy is ubiquitous. > > On 1/6/21 12:32 PM, Steve Smith wrote: >> I normally cultivate my Morbid Fascination, but even I am finding this a >> little bit "too much". > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
