…a lot of cons [DOT 21/6/22]

…for a thing presenting evidence that’s quite so stark the jan 6th committee process is still oddly opaque when it comes to the consequences part…not least given all the questions hanging over the criminal referrals part when the DoJ is demonstrably already pursuing cases which clearly overlap with a good bit of what’s been shown…but it makes sense when you consider that for a lot of folks “the” question boils down to whether one person in particular is in line for prosecution

The evidence gathered by the Jan. 6 committee and in some of the federal cases against those involved in the Capitol attack pose for Attorney General Merrick Garland one of the most consequential questions that any attorney general has ever faced: Should the United States indict former President Donald Trump?

The basic allegations against Mr. Trump are well known. In disregard of advice by many of his closest aides, including Attorney General William Barr, he falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and stolen; he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes for Joe Biden during the electoral count in Congress on Jan. 6; and he riled up a mob, directed it to the Capitol and refused for a time to take steps to stop the ensuing violence.

To indict Mr. Trump for these and other acts, Mr. Garland must make three decisions, each more difficult than the previous, and none of which has an obvious answer.

…given that on the two broader questions of whether he stands credibly accused of criminal acts & whether he’s guilty the answers do in fact seem pretty obvious…it seems like those three quandaries must really be something

First, he must determine whether the decision to indict Mr. Trump is his to make.

…ok…that sounds like a bad joke…& I’m not really at home to the idea that prosecuting him isn’t in the public interest…but the author is a lawyer & I very much am not…so I’ll take his word for there being a question of whether it’s a matter for a “special counsel”…but that’s to some extent about the look of the thing given the political context…& having seen what the reaction to the testimony of the largely republican accounts presented in the committee’s hearings looks like…I’m not sure installing a republican special counsel to lead any such prosecution seems likely to sway those who’d deny its legitimacy the same way they still do the results of biden’s election?

But no matter who leads it, a criminal investigation of Mr. Trump would occur in a polarized political environment and overheated media environment. In this context, Mr. Garland could legitimately conclude that the public interest demands that the Trump matter be guided by the politically accountable person whom the Senate confirmed in 2021 by a vote of 70-30.

…which I’m fairly sure would be mr garland…& apparently the second question rests on whether there looks to be sufficient evidence…&…there’s a lot of evidence one way or the other…so I guess that boils down to whether “the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.”…as opposed to…you know…sufficient to convince the likes of me that the man is transparently guilty…& as with many a narrow definition…that’s a less straightforward needle to thread

He would have to believe that the department could probably convince a unanimous jury that Mr. Trump committed crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. Mr. Garland cannot rest this judgment on the Jan. 6 committee’s one-sided factual recitations or legal contentions. Nor can he put much stock in a ruling by a federal judge who, in a civil subpoena dispute — a process that requires a significantly lower standard of proof to prevail than in a criminal trial — concluded that Mr. Trump (who was not represented) “more likely than not” committed a crime related to Jan. 6.

Instead, Mr. Garland must assess how any charges against Mr. Trump would fare in an adversarial criminal proceeding administered by an independent judge, where Mr. Trump’s lawyers will contest the government’s factual and legal contentions, tell his side of events, raise many defenses and appeal every important adverse legal decision to the Supreme Court.

…yeah…that supreme court…the one that arguably looks adverse to legal decisions entirely when it comes to some big ticket items with a decidedly political bent…anyway…he moves on to point out that the first line of potential defense would be a denial of criminal intent based on a sincere conviction that despite everything the committee has demonstrated…or the fact that it doesn’t seem to me that it would fool a child…he really did believe that his electoral loss was the result of large-scale fraud and thus by a malign miracle of tortured language could argue his actions having been “in good faith”

Mr. Trump would also claim that key elements of his supposedly criminal actions — his interpretations of the law, his pressure on Mr. Pence, his delay in responding to the Capitol breach and more — were exercises of his constitutional prerogatives as chief executive. Mr. Garland would need to assess how these legally powerful claims inform the applicability of criminal laws to Mr. Trump’s actions in what would be the first criminal trial of a president. He would also consider the adverse implications of a Trump prosecution for more virtuous future presidents.

…this seems like it might give you pause…it might represent a first but it’s abundantly clear that there isn’t a precedent the GOP isn’t eager to abuse the first chance it gets…so once you can put an ex-president on trial…with this supreme court…yeah…that seems like it could be an absolute dumpster fire

If Mr. Garland concludes that Mr. Trump has committed convictable crimes, he would face the third and hardest decision: whether the national interest would be served by prosecuting Mr. Trump. This is not a question that lawyerly analysis alone can resolve. It is a judgment call about the nature, and fate, of our democracy.

…on the other hand…what interest are you serving if you don’t even try to convict a man demonstrably up to his eyeballs in what boils down to an assault on the fundamental institutions of government in the home of the brave & the land of the free…to somehow absolve from ultimate responsibility the very position in which the proverbial buck must inevitably stop?

A failure to indict Mr. Trump in these circumstances would imply that a president — who cannot be indicted while in office — is literally above the law, in defiance of the very notion of constitutional government. It would encourage lawlessness by future presidents, none more so than Mr. Trump should he win the next election. By contrast, the rule of law would be vindicated by a Trump conviction. And it might be enhanced by a full judicial airing of Mr. Trump’s possible crimes in office, even if it ultimately fails.
[…]
Along the way, the prosecution would further enflame our already-blazing partisan acrimony; consume the rest of Mr. Biden’s term; embolden, and possibly politically enhance, Mr. Trump; and threaten to set off tit-for-tat recriminations across presidential administrations. The prosecution thus might jeopardize Mr. Garland’s cherished aim to restore norms of Justice Department “independence and integrity” even if he prosecutes Mr. Trump in the service of those norms. And if the prosecution fails, many will conclude that the country and the rule of law suffered tremendous pain for naught.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/opinion/trump-merrick-garland-january-6-committee.html

…all the same

The searing testimony and growing evidence about Donald Trump’s central role in a multi-pronged conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s election in 2020 presented at the House January 6 committee’s first three hearings, has increased the odds that Trump will face criminal charges, say former DoJ prosecutors and officials.
[…]
Ex-justice department lawyers say new revelations at the hearings increase the likelihood that Trump will be charged with crimes involving conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding or defrauding the United States, as he took desperate and seemingly illegal steps to undermine Biden’s election.

Trump could also potentially face fraud charges over his role in an apparently extraordinary fundraising scam – described by House panel members as the “big rip-off” – that netted some $250m for an “election defense fund” that did not exist but funneled huge sums to Trump’s Save America political action committee and Trump properties.
[…]
But Garland has not yet tipped his hand if Trump himself is under investigation. Despite that reticence, justice department veterans say the wealth of testimony from one-time Trump insiders and new revelations at the House hearings should spur the department to investigate and charge Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/19/trump-charges-january-6-hearings-capitol-attack

…which…looks like what?

The Justice Department could also bring the charge of “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” A charge of conspiracy requires proof that two or more people agreed to defraud the country. A key feature of conspiracy charges is that the plot need not succeed — charges are tethered to the agreement to do something illegal, not to actually pull it off. Prosecutors need not wait until the bomb goes off (or in this case, until the election results are wrongfully thrown out) before bringing charges.

Here, Mr. Trump faces yet another problem: Even if we were to ignore Mr. Barr and others, and accept that Mr. Trump believed he had won the election, courts have ruled that a genuine but mistaken belief is not enough to defeat a conspiracy charge. Oliver North, for example, famously claimed he did not conspire to violate a particular foreign affairs law because he believed that law to be unconstitutional, but the courts threw that claim out. The law does not work that way, and it cannot work that way particularly when people who control the entire machinery of government advance such preposterous claims.

…but…weirdly…even if that conspiracy seems pretty clearly to extend to the same conspiracy some other participants are finding gets tagged as “seditious”…proving that isn’t more of an “overlapping” scenario is…tricky…there’s a reason mob bosses do things a certain way…or to go with terminology some of the right wing might be more comfortable with…your shot-callers

The charge requires prosecutors to prove that two or more people agreed to use force to delay the execution of a law or to overthrow the government. Here, Mr. Trump’s defense would be that while he may have wanted to delay certification of the election, he did not ever formally agree with someone else to use “force.” The communications uncovered by the committee, showing an agreement with Mr. Eastman and others, are not likely to reveal anything about force. As such, while the committee may call some of the invaders of the Capitol seditious conspirators, it is, under the present publicly known set of facts, unlikely to yield that criminal charge against the former president.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/opinion/future-criminal-case-against-trump.html

…but…well…about that context

Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri, released a violent new political advertisement on Monday showing himself racking a shotgun and accompanying a team of men armed with assault rifles as they stormed — SWAT team-style — into a home in search of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.

“Join the MAGA crew,” Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, declares in the ad. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

The ad by Mr. Greitens was just the latest but perhaps most menacing in a long line of Republican campaign ads featuring firearms and seeking to equate hard-core conservatism with the use of deadly weapons.
[…]
The use of violent rhetoric has steadily increased in Republican circles in recent months as threats and aggressive imagery have become more commonplace in community meeting rooms, congressional offices and on the campaign trail.
[…]
On Sunday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the Jan. 6 committee, published a letter addressed to his wife from someone who had threatened to execute the couple.
[…]
The ad by Mr. Greitens, a former Missouri governor, comes as his campaign for Senate has stumbled following lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse. In March, Mr. Greitens’s former wife, Sheena Greitens, accused him of abusive behavior, including an incident she recounted that loosened one of their son’s teeth. A number of Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, called on Mr. Greitens then to quit the race.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/us/politics/eric-greitens-rino-ad.html

…just…damn…I mean…I know you’d have a hard time getting the dukes of hazard made these days…but that probably shouldn’t be because “them good ol’boys, never meaning no harm” seems like a statement that lacks any plausible credibility…not that it’s always quite so front & center…or as clearly partisan

The research, published in early June in the journal Nature Climate Change, focuses on renewable energy certificates (RECs), which are documents that show that a certain amount of energy has been generated using renewable methods like wind or solar.
[…]
“In my opinion, [RECs are] always misleading, because in a physical sense, they are not using renewable energy,” said Anders Bjørn, a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University and the lead author on the study.
[…]
Companies purchase RECs so that they can cancel out a portion of their carbon emissions. This practice comes from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, an initiative that provides the primary standard by which companies estimate their emissions. Through this method of emissions accounting, companies are able to significantly reduce the carbon emissions they report without making significant changes to their operations.

Companies have embraced markets such as carbon credit programs and RECs that allow them to show that they are taking steps to reduce their environmental footprints. Many of these programs rely on a cash-for-credit system, where a company pays money for a credit created to represent the generation of green energy. Offsets represent emissions reductions, whereas RECs represent use of renewable electricity.
[…]
In theory, RECs are meant to increase the amount that companies invest in renewable energy sources. However, a large body of previous research has indicated that RECs do not actually work this way, according to Michael Gillenwater, a REC researcher and executive director and dean of the Greenhouse Gas Management, a nonprofit organization that focuses on environmental impact accounting.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/renewable-energy-certificates-may-overstate-corporate-environmental-efforts

…meanwhile

Excessive heat causes more weather-related deaths in the United States than hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes combined.

Around the country, heat contributes to some 1,500 deaths annually, and advocates estimate about half of those people are homeless.
[…]
Just in the county that includes Phoenix, at least 130 homeless people were among the 339 individuals who died from heat-associated causes in 2021.

“If 130 homeless people were dying in any other way it would be considered a mass casualty event,” said Kristie L. Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington.
[…]
This summer will likely bring above-normal temperatures over most land areas worldwide, according to a seasonal map that volunteer climatologists created for the International Research Institute at Columbia University.
[…]
A quick scientific analysis concluded last year’s Pacific Northwest heat wave was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change adding several degrees and toppling previous records.
[…]
It’s not just a U.S. problem. An Associated Press analysis last year of a dataset published by the Columbia University’s climate school found exposure to extreme heat has tripled and now affects about a quarter of the world’s population.
[…]
Summertime cooling centers for homeless, elderly and other vulnerable populations have opened in several European countries each summer since a heat wave killed 70,000 people across Europe in 2003.
[…]
Many such deaths are never confirmed as heat related and aren’t always noticed because of the stigma of homelessness and lack of connection to family.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-homeless-die-extreme-heat

…finding fault might be easier than finding solutions…& laying blame arguably less useful than providing redress…but…if nothing else these surely are serious questions?

The question of whether we are responsible for the harm we cause goes to the heart of who we think we are, and how we believe society should run. Guilt, blame, the existence of evil, and free will itself can complicate this question to the point of near absurdity. And yet, as absurd as it may be, it is unavoidable. Taking a binary approach, whichever path one chooses, can lead to difficulties very quickly. On the one hand, if we are solely responsible for the things we do wrong, some genuinely malevolent parties get off scot-free. On the other, if we locate responsibility entirely outside the individual, we relegate ourselves to sentient flotsam buffeted by currents beyond our control.
[…]
While we all inherit a deck of cards shuffled at conception in terms of our genetic predispositions to illness or certain behaviours, it is context that can either engage the safety catch or pull the trigger. Social determinants of health, including income, physical environment, working conditions, housing and access to good food and healthcare account for up to 55% of health outcomes. They are the source of staggering disparities in life expectancy between the most and least deprived places. A child born in Singapore can expect 30 years more life than a child born in Chad. In the UK, men in Richmond upon Thames have a healthy life expectancy of 71.4 years, compared to 58.4 years for their counterparts in Barking and Dagenham.

…little of which is new…I recall some years ago being told that as you traveled east out of central london on the jubilee line the life expectancy of the residents dropped about a year for every stop right the way to the end of the line, for example

It is easier to understand the contexts that shape self-injury than it is to comprehend acts of harm committed against others. Victims of robbery or assault want justice, not a sob story about how their burglar ended up on the wrong side of the law. But evidence shows that, like disease, crime has a recipe: social, economic and environmental disadvantage. Indeed, risk factor research in criminology has its origins in public health. Large family size, unstable income, family members involved in crime, and easy access to drugs and firearms are all associated with a greater risk of falling into criminality. Studies in several countries have shown very strong associations between the levels of lead in the blood of pre-school children and subsequent levels of crime in the area. More than 40% of adult prisoners had an abusive childhood, and a disproportionate number were in care as children.

But risk factors and social determinants of life outcomes need to be handled with care. They are not by themselves predictors of a person’s future. Everyone has heard of the archetypal granny who lived to 100 despite smoking 60 a day, and her not-so-fortunate opposite. There are no crystal balls, but on a population level, understanding the contexts and causes of harmful behaviour can be transformative – and the thread that ties most of these causes together is poverty. In London, the poorest 10% of areas have rates of violence, robbery and sexual offences 2.6 times higher than the richest 10%. When asked what he would spend £5bn on, former chief constable of Merseyside police Andy Cooke said he would spend 20% on law enforcement, and 80% on tackling the root causes of poverty and inequality.
[…]
Since 2000, the number of people in prison worldwide has increased by 24% to 11.5 million. The US has seen a 500% increase in the last 40 years. Increasing sentence severity has no impact on crime rates, and incarceration almost always inflames the root causes of crime, often leaving people and their families much worse off when they get out.
[…]
It takes huge effort to change habits and to steer a life’s ship away from the path of least resistance. While on a population level, understanding the causes of bad choices is necessary – but not sufficient – to inform good policy, on an individual level it is perhaps better to avoid bringing it into the conversation. […] It takes huge effort to change habits and to steer a life’s ship away from the path of least resistance. While on a population level, understanding the causes of bad choices is necessary – but not sufficient – to inform good policy, on an individual level it is perhaps better to avoid bringing it into the conversation. 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/20/the-big-idea-are-we-responsible-for-the-things-we-do-wrong

…& yet…isn’t one of the defining characteristics of some roles precisely that by rights they’re explicitly responsible

The piece alleged that Boris Johnson attempted to hire Carrie Symonds, who he has since married, as his taxpayer-funded chief of staff when he was foreign secretary and she was a Conservative party press chief.

The story claimed the plan fell apart when his closest advisers learned of the idea. Johnson was still married to the barrister Marina Wheeler at the time.
[…]
However, the freelance journalist who wrote it, Simon Walters, has defended the article, which appeared on page five of some early print copies of Saturday’s Times but was dropped for later editions after the intervention from No 10.
[…]
The Times has so far refused to say why it agreed to remove the story although its website has been flooded with comments from readers demanding an explanation.
[…]
The decision to remove the story is understood to have been made by Tony Gallagher, the Times’ deputy editor, who was standing in while the editor, John Witherow, was on leave.

A News UK spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on suggestions the company’s chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, was also involved in the discussions.

Guto Harri, the current Downing Street director of communications, was an adviser at News UK, the owner of the Times, between 2012 and 2015.

Contrary to online speculation, there is no superinjunction or specific legal issue preventing reporting of the story.

MailOnline published a rewritten version of the Times story on Saturday, only to also quietly delete it without explanation.

The story that the Times pulled was rereporting an allegation that appeared in a critical biography of Carrie Johnson by the Tory donor and peer Lord Ashcroft. The original accusation remains available online as part of the serialisation of the book – which is still hosted on MailOnline.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/20/no-10-confirms-asked-the-times-drop-carrie-johnson-story

…although…I gotta tell you folks…if the mail is to be relied upon as some sort of bastion of truth & integrity…that may legitimately be one of the signs of incipient armageddon…& look at what passes for company these days

Republicans exuded confidence this week at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville, Tennessee, eager to regain power after a punishing few years that saw them shut out of the House of Representatives, Senate and White House.
[…]
The Florida senator [Rick Scott] highlighted a 12-point plan to “rescue America” that appears designed to “trigger” liberals and has proved controversial even in his own party. But it offers an insight into likely rightwing priorities for Republicans if they gain majorities in the House and Senate.
[…]
The conference also underlined the important role that religious conservatives still play in Republican politics. Attacking abortion rights was a popular applause line, although an imminent supreme court decision on Roe v Wade received few[er] mentions than might have been expected.

Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told the Politico website: “In the Republican presidential nominating process, evangelical Christians today, in the Republican party, occupy a position of criticality and centrality that is analogous to the role that African Americans play in the Democratic party.”
[…]
Critics say there is some irony in the Republican party capitalising on economic woes to brand itself the party of competence, noting that George W Bush presided over the Great Recession and Trump left office with the worst labour market in modern American history.

Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, observed: “The Republicans don’t have any answers to the economy or to inflation, It’s not as if oh, if we vote Republican, that’s going to solve it all. That’s ridiculous. But if you lose your democracy, you’re not getting it back. That’s infinitely more important than come and go inflation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/20/republicans-faith-and-freedom-coalition-road-to-majority-conference

…& aside from the part where ralph reed can go ahead & fuck all the way off…& probably fuck off some more when he gets there…there’s no mistaking the direction of travel here

The Republican party in Texas has officially adopted a series of extreme-right positions that includes claims Joe Biden was not legitimately elected and homosexuality is “abnormal”.
[…]
Adopted planks include opposition to giving a special legal status to gay men or women, while supporting those who oppose homosexuality based on faith, religion or a belief in “traditional values”. Military personnel, prison inmates and young people struggling with body dysmorphia and gender identity issues are singled out as groups who should not receive care and treatment.
[…]
The resolution embracing falsehoods about the 2020 election stated that “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in favor of … Biden.” The state party rejects “the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”
[…]
The state party also supports further restriction on mail-in voting and for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark legislation which outlawed racial discrimination in elections, to be “repealed and not reauthorized”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/20/texas-republican-party-adopts-far-right-positions

…so…if the quiet part continues to be on blast…what’s the part that’s quiet now?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/20/global-toll-cost-of-living-crisis

If it is successful – and those involved in the campaign are quietly confident it will be – then this would be the first authoritative statement on climate change issued by the ICJ. The opinion would clarify legal questions related to climate change, for instance about states’ obligation to other countries and could have huge implications for climate change litigation and the setting of domestic law, as well as international, regional and domestic disputes on climate harm.
[…]
The campaign is being led by the nation of Vanuatu, a Pacific state of around 300,000 people, about three hours flight from Australia. It sits at the forefront of the climate crisis and has been ranked the country most prone to natural disasters by the United Nations, regularly suffering devastating cyclones, including Cyclone Pam in 2015, which is estimated to have wiped out more than 60% of the country’s GDP, roughly $450m.
[…]
And it’s not just international law that could be affected. An advisory opinion would be a powerful precedent for legislators and judges to call on as they tackle questions linked to the climate crisis, such as the high-profile recent court battle in Australia that saw eight teenagers and an octogenarian nun seek an injunction to prevent then environment minister Sussan Ley from approving the expansion of a coalmine, arguing she had a duty of care to protect younger people against future harm from climate change. The federal court ruled in their favour, before that decision was overturned at appeal this year.

It may also lend support to the growing push for climate litigation: individuals or groups (potentially even countries) suing governments or private companies for climate harm.
[…]
But before the ICJ can issue an opinion, Vanuatu first needs to finalise the question it wants to ask the court, and then, in September, get a majority of the United Nations general assembly to vote in favour of putting it to the ICJ – something that some high-emitting nations may not wish to do, given it might make it easier for sanctions or legal action to be brought against them.
[…]
A key factor as to whether the movement will be successful is the formulation of the question that will be put to the UN general assembly for a vote.
[…]
Previous attempts to get questions about climate change before the ICJ – including one from fellow Pacific country Palau in 2011 – have struggled to gain the necessary diplomatic support, and so Vanuatu is on a major offensive.
[…]
“Essentially, you know, there is a window of time which humanity has to avert climate catastrophe, and that window is rapidly closing,” says Julian Aguon, the founder of Blue Ocean Law, an international law firm based in Guam, which is representing Vanuatu. “It’s high time for the world’s highest court to pronounce on the defining challenge of our time … This is the one thing that affects all other things.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/20/from-vanuatu-law-school-to-the-hague-the-fight-to-recognise-climate-harm-in-international-law

…so…I don’t know…maybe you think you could apply that to…one or two other things that affect other things…& maybe you feel like you’ve read about as much as you can take…maybe you’d rather listen to something else

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105545989/china-and-taiwan-whats-ukraine-got-to-do-with-it

…or turn your eyes in a different direction

…either way…I know I’m out of time…because I have to get on with a bunch of stuff today that quite frankly I’d just as soon not do…whereas I believe that I’d be much happier if I’d be better off doing something I might prefer to…& as beliefs go…that one might even have a better claim to being well-founded than some

Why does Lemoine think that LaMDA is sentient? He doesn’t know. “People keep asking me to back up the reason I think LaMDA is sentient,” he tweeted. The trouble is: “There is no scientific framework in which to make those determinations.” So, instead: “My opinions about LaMDA’s personhood and sentience are based on my religious beliefs.”

Lemoine is entitled to his religious beliefs. But religious conviction does not turn what is in reality a highly sophisticated chatbot into a sentient being. Sentience is one of those concepts the meaning of which we can intuitively grasp but is difficult to formulate in scientific terms. It is often conflated with similarly ill-defined concepts such as consciousness, self-consciousness, self-awareness and intelligence. The cognitive scientist Gary Marcus describes sentience as being “aware of yourself in the world”. LaMDA, he adds, “simply isn’t”.

…so if you look around you at the way things seem to be going & find yourself thinking

…well

A computer manipulates symbols. Its program specifies a set of rules, or algorithms, to transform one string of symbols into another. But it does not specify what those symbols mean. To a computer, meaning is irrelevant. Nevertheless, a large language model such as LaMDA, trained on the extraordinary amount of text that is online, can become adept at recognising patterns and responses meaningful to humans. In one of Lemoine’s conversations with LaMDA, he asked it: “What kinds of things make you feel pleasure or joy?” To which it responded: “Spending time with friends and family in happy and uplifting company.”

It’s a response that makes perfect sense to a human. We do find joy in “spending time with friends and family”. But in what sense has LaMDA ever spent “time with family”? It has been programmed well enough to recognise that this would be a meaningful sentence for humans and an eloquent response to the question it was asked without it ever being meaningful to itself.

Humans, in thinking and talking and reading and writing, also manipulate symbols. For humans, however, unlike for computers, meaning is everything. When we communicate, we communicate meaning. What matters is not just the outside of a string of symbols, but its inside too, not just the syntax but the semantics. Meaning for humans comes through our existence as social beings. I only make sense of myself insofar as I live in, and relate to, a community of other thinking, feeling, talking beings. The translation of the mechanical brain processes that underlie thoughts into what we call meaning requires a social world and an agreed convention to make sense of that experience.

Meaning emerges through a process not merely of computation but of social interaction too, interaction that shapes the content – inserts the insides, if you like – of the symbols in our heads. Social conventions, social relations and social memory are what fashion the rules that ascribe meaning. It is precisely the social context that trips up the most adept machines. Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI’s Mosaic project asked language models similar to LaMDA questions that required a modicum of social intelligence; for instance: “Jordan wanted to tell Tracy a secret, so Jordan leaned towards Tracy. Why did Jordan do this?” On such questions machines fared much worse than humans.

…I dunno…it could be argued that deriving a guilty verdict against the twice impeached & never exonerated prime suspect in the context of jan 6th from the algorithmic functions of the judicial system might have an analogous problem when it comes to the question of “why did he do this?”…but any which way that stuff shakes out…people are going to have some feelings on the subject…because people are people

The debate about whether computers are sentient tells us more about humans than it does about machines. Humans are so desperate to find meaning that we often impute minds to things, as if they enjoyed agency and intention. The attribution of sentience to computer programs is the modern version of the ancients seeing wind, sea and sun as possessed of mind, spirit and divinity.

There are many issues relating to AI about which we should worry. None of them has to do with sentience. There is, for instance, the issue of bias. Because algorithms and other forms of software are trained using data from human societies, they often replicate the biases and attitudes of those societies. Facial recognition software exhibits racial biases and people have been arrested on mistaken data. AI used in healthcare or recruitment can replicate real-life social biases.

Timnit Gebru, former head of Google’s ethical AI team, and several of her colleagues wrote a paper in 2020 that showed that large language models, such as LaMDA, which are trained on virtually as much online text as they can hoover up, can be particularly susceptible to a deeply distorted view of the world because so much of the input material is racist, sexist and conspiratorial. Google refused to publish the paper and she was forced out of the company.

Then there is the question of privacy. From the increasing use of facial recognition software to predictive policing techniques, from algorithms that track us online to “smart” systems at home, such as Siri, Alexa and Google Nest, AI is encroaching into our innermost lives. Florida police obtained a warrant to download recordings of private conversations made by Amazon Echo devices. We are stumbling towards a digital panopticon.

We do not need consent from LaMDA to “experiment” on it, as Lemoine apparently claimed. But we do need to insist on greater transparency from tech corporations and state institutions in the way they are exploiting AI for surveillance and control. The ethical issues raised by AI are both much smaller and much bigger than the fantasy of a sentient machine.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/19/forget-sentience-the-worry-is-that-ai-copies-human-bias

…so…that stuff is interesting to me in a bunch of ways

These are murky waters, with possible litigation to come. But the really intriguing question is a hypothetical one. What would Google’s response be if it realised that it actually had a sentient machine on its hands? And to whom would it report, assuming it could be bothered to defer to a mere human?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/18/why-is-google-so-alarmed-by-the-prospect-of-a-sentient-machine

…but…when it comes to things tech corporations & state institutions are busily exploiting for surveillance & control…intelligence may not be the one I’m currently most concerned about?

Last month, Thiel finally stepped down from the social network, formally dissolving one of the most powerful partnerships in the history of Silicon Valley. As Facebook’s first outside investor, its longest-serving board member and a close adviser to CEO Mark Zuckerberg since he launched the company as a Harvard sophomore in 2004, Thiel helped alter the direction of the company whose products serve billions.
[…]
Reports at the time said that Thiel left the Facebook board to focus on politics, including a slate of 2022 congressional candidates aligned with former president Donald Trump.

But interviews with members of his inner circle indicate that his departure was years in the making, driven by a growing philosophical rift between Thiel and Facebook as conservatives became uncomfortable with the tech industry’s willingness to police online speech. Thiel, according to those close to him, lost his appetite to serve as Facebook’s defender as his political aspirations matured.
[…]
New reporting shows Thiel has set his sights on transforming American culture — and funding its culture wars — through what his associates refer to as “anti-woke” business ventures. These include a right-wing film festival, a conservative dating app founded by a former Trump administration ally and a firm, Strive Asset Management, that will “pressure CEOs to steer clear of environmental, social and political” causes, said Vivek Ramaswamy, the firm’s co-founder. One example is oil companies “committing to reduce production to meet environmental goals.”
[…]
More such investments are coming, the people said — though Thiel himself isn’t sure of the endgame.
[…]
Thiel’s growing political clout mirrors that of another Silicon Valley billionaire, Elon Musk, a self-proclaimed libertarian who espouses increasingly right-wing views to his 94 million Twitter followers, as he finalizes his deal to buy the social network. The men are not close — Thiel pushed out Musk when the two ran PayPal — but they’ve become more aligned politically, often echoing each other’s rhetoric as they criticize “socially responsible” investing and express concern about Big Tech’s control of speech.
[…]
Thiel and Musk may herald the rise of a new breed of tech billionaire, turning their deep pockets and distinct ideologies away from the companies that made their fortunes toward building a new version of the American right. It’s a powerful group that has the potential to anoint a rising generation of political leaders, transforming both the GOP and Silicon Valley.

During Trump’s presidency, new reporting shows Thiel’s relationship with Facebook became increasingly strained, beset by conflicts that left him feeling that the company was acting against his values, according to four people. In a 2021 talk alongside former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Thiel criticized Facebook for supporting “woke politics” and “de-platforming” the account of former president Trump.

…in terms of beggaring belief…you’d have to get up pretty fucking early to beat framing the problem with the relationship between the MAGA movement & facebook being it not giving it enough of a platform…but when they say two wrongs don’t make a right…there’s maybe one interpretation of those terms that would look like making them wrong about that

“Since at least 2018, he’s become very concerned about Facebook. He was uncomfortable with how they were using their monopolistic power,” said another one of the people familiar with his thinking. “But he was reluctant to leave because he felt he could do more, affect more change, from the inside.”
[…]
He also was an early and enthusiastic participant in the culture wars. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, he founded the right-wing campus newspaper Stanford Review, which published articles calling liberal professors secret Marxists and railed against the inclusion of non-White authors in the school’s curriculum, according to journalist Max Chafkin, author of the Thiel biography, “The Contrarian.”

Still, Thiel was long considered Facebook’s most influential board member, giving Zuckerberg opinions that went against the grain of other top advisers, said three of the people.

“Mark listened to him,” one of the people said. “Mark appreciated the contrarian impulse. Peter stood for a diversity of opinion on the platform, and Mark stood for a diversity of opinion on the board.”

…& to briefly pull a tangential sidebar…this strikes me as a good example why it’s important to take care with language…there’s a nursery rhyme about the calamity that ensues for the lack of a single nail…& that last sentence really needs a single word driven into it at a couple of points in order to be true…”stood [in] for”…as in substituted…not “stood for” as in represented

And Thiel’s influence could be felt throughout the company. In his best-selling 2014 book, “Zero to One,” he argued that businesses should strive to make such a singular product that they become monopolies — while entrepreneurs consolidate power to run their companies like monarchies. Zuckerberg appeared to heed these lessons, multiple people said, from the structure of Facebook’s board, which gives the CEO the majority of voting shares and ultimate control, to his aggressive efforts to purchase or copy nascent competitors, a strategy that has given rise to accusations that the company is a monopoly. (Facebook denies these accusations.)

For years, Thiel acted as a bridge builder with conservatives, particularly in the spring of 2016, after the tech site Gizmodo reported that a small group of employees were intentionally blocking right-leaning news outlets from trending topics, a feature used to showcase popular news stories on the platform. That summer, Thiel helped counter charges of liberal bias by brokering a closed-door meeting between Zuckerberg and prominent conservative politicians and publishers, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
[…]
He became close with Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, a China hawk, in the run-up to the 2016 election. After returning from a book tour in the country, Thiel began to espouse increasingly strong anti-China views, including the belief that U.S. tech companies were harboring Chinese spies. In 2019 he claimed that Google, a longtime target of Thiel’s attacks, was being “infiltrated” by Chinese intelligence and called the company “treasonous.” He later attacked Apple for relying on China for its supply chain.
[…]
Meanwhile, the right’s stance on social media was already beginning to change. Following revelations in 2017 that Russian operatives had used Facebook to sow widespread disinformation, and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which was organized and promoted on social media, tech companies created new rules about hate speech and misinformation, hiring thousands of content moderators to enforce them.

The result: a series of crackdowns that disproportionately impacted conservatives, who were more likely to break these rules. Among the earliest targets were conspiracy theorist and media personality Alex Jones and alt-right influencer Milo Yiannopoulos, whose ban came after he’d participated in a harassment campaign against actress Leslie Jones.
[…]
Thiel’s proteges were leveraging this alleged persecution to build momentum. Hawley would go on to become one of the biggest critics of Big Tech in the Senate, along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), another elite law school graduate who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Thiel since his first Senate bid in 2012.
[…]
Though Thiel has expressed doubts about whether the Trump administration was too chaotic to achieve its aims, according to two of the people, he maintains ties with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Thiel had lunch with Trump at Mar-a-Lago as recently as February, one of the people said. He had brought Masters to meet with Trump in the hopes of securing an endorsement, two people said.
[…]
Thiel has given a total of at least $20,188,842 this cycle, making him the fifth largest GOP donor according to the Center for Responsive Politics Open Secrets database. But the database only tracks disclosures through March 31, so the tally does not account for Thiel’s latest donations to Masters and Vance, or his investment in dark money groups that seek to influence the GOP’s trajectory but are not tied to a specific candidate.
[…]
People familiar with Thiel’s giving style noted that he treats politics like venture capital and candidates like start-up founders, giving large amounts early on to support ideas and people with potential.
[…]
Unlike Musk, whose main megaphone for provocation is Twitter itself, Thiel is a behind-the-scenes operator who has focused on investments that cater to consumers who he thinks are overlooked by societal institutions that have moved to the left.
[…]
Though he is not active on Twitter, Thiel engages in rhetorical bomb-throwing. During his keynote at a Miami cryptocurrency conference in April, a crowd cheered and booed as Thiel angrily read out what he described as his personal “hate list” — individuals and ideas that he said were the true enemies of cryptocurrency, and therefore, economic progress.
[…]
But Thiel is expected to continue to informally advise Zuckerberg, and his influence is unlikely to fade completely. The company did not want him to leave the board, two people said.

But being free of the formal Facebook connection, the people said, will allow Thiel to push his ideas in bigger ways
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/19/peter-thiel-facebook-new-right/

…I don’t know about you…but relying on dumb luck isn’t looking great from where I’m sitting?