FAKE NEWS? You haven't seen the real thing yet.

[Obelisk]

That's clearly and deliberately a comedic/satirical site. It doesn't seriously purport to be news or fact.

Doesn't stop people from falling for it.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Doesn't stop people from falling for it.

Which has nothing to with fake news. That would belong in a "some people are tremendously stupid" thread.

 

[Mr Tree]

Which has nothing to with fake news. That would belong in a "some people are tremendously stupid" thread.

At first it doesn't fit the shoe of fake news but I believe it to be a valuable part of the discussion as those tremendous ( ) stupid people. Use said stories to show the 'real' news is fake.

When satire can be abuse to discredit the news I believe it to be a part of the fake news issue.

I still love satire

 

[UKMikey]

If we're putting random stuff into the thread that we like here's a picture of some cute kittens. I love kittens.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Link isn't working...deleted

 

[Dotini]

​

There was a time we believed the news.
The news was given to us by accredited sources - Bulletins, wanted notices, epidemic warnings pinned to public notice boards. Newspapers that could be taken to court if they reported lies. Or radio that was intently listened to because they told us the truth about war.
And then a radio play changed that.
At first they said there was panic. Many years later it was changed into a myth.
The flip-flop continues.
So we learned not to take things immediately at face value - that maybe it was not the real thing.
We learned to check, and double check before we loaded the car and fled to the forest.

But - as technology sped up to disseminate information faster, wider, loaded with subjective bias, and motivated by everything from getting attention for advertising to propagating individual ideologies, the truth became increasingly harder to unearth. Sometimes there was no truth at all - it was all fake. 'Sources' were protected. Pictures were tweaked. Movies made illusions come to life. Credibility rested on whether what everybody believed was true was true.
Sometimes, even the science that we firmly believed in was dashed from our lips by a new piece of science - the sun didn't revolve around the earth after all, the universe wasn't staying in one place, and waves turned into particles.

We've come to the point now where almost anybody can make make a video of whatever, self-publish a book, print their own newspaper or start up their own radio station.

Even worse - we have the technology to pass the fraud around so quickly, so widely, adding our own subjective bias to it that Norman Rockwell's famous painting of the gossips has a new spin on the truth.

Which brings us to the question - What should we believe in? Why?
Most people resist the thought that what they firmly believe in could be a lie, fiction, a fairy-tale - whether religion, politics . . . or science.
And brothers and sisters kill each other over these 'truths'.
Can we change this? How?
Or is the situation only getting worse - a path we've created ourselves - focused firmly towards mutual self-destruction? Can we stop it? When?
Is there something we can do? What?

There is no doubt that the future is in our hands - or are we fooling ourselves again? Is it in someone else's hands? Whose?

Check this:

"There is new technology about to go on the market that will allow you to create audio sound bites (sic) of anyone, saying anything you want, and to the naked ear it is indistinguishable from the real thing. Adobe plans to release this software, and the previews are astounding. Allegedly intended to assist in dubbing videos, the program allows you to record someone’s voice—Hillary Clinton’s, for example—and then reuse their vocal signature to repeat any phrase, like “I ran a child sex trafficking (sic) ring.”

At the same time, there is emerging video technology that enables you to do the same thing with a person’s image. It samples numerous pictures of someone, maps their face and allows you to create video of them saying or doing anything.

The possibilities for abuse are limitless. Imagine what would happen to the New York Stock Exchange if a telephone recording emerged of the Fed Chair Janet Yellen stating Washington was about to default on its debt. How would North Korea react to video of an American general discussing a pending pre-emptive attack on Pyongyang?"

Source: http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/polit...-seen-nothing-yet/ar-AApJaFl?ocid=mailsignout

Obviously, if I have cited a 'source' it's real news, right?

It's time to go to war. The war against fake news.
Drafting begins here.
Join up.

What shall we start with?

In the last ~3 weeks, we have had two incoming missile attack warnings, Hawaii (1-13-18) and Japan ( 1-16-18), and a tsunami warning for the US East Coast and Caribbean just yesterday. All were false; fake news of the very worst kind, yet from what are presumed to be most highly authoritative sources. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but 3 times in 3 weeks?

Against this desensitizing melody of fake news, in the background is a long, slow drumbeat of real events barely reported at all. Too soon, reality will be turned upside down?

 

[Dotini]

Fake news is on course to get personalized, optimized and harder to stop.

Fake news may have already influenced politics in the US, but it’s going to get a lot worse, warns an AI consultant to the CIA.

Sean Gourley, founder and CEO of Primer, a company that uses software to mine data sources and automatically generate reports for the CIA and other clients, told a conference in San Francisco that the next generation of fake news would be far more sophisticated thanks to AI.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...rsonalized-optimized-and-even-harder-to-stop/

IMO, this technological development combined with the postmodernist philosophy infecting almost the entire establishment, means that objectivity, empiricism and pragmatism are now obsolete, bygone relics of a past era.

 

[Mr Tree]

Fake news is on course to get personalized, optimized and harder to stop.




IMO, this technological development combined with the postmodernist philosophy infecting almost the entire establishment, means that objectivity, empiricism and pragmatism are now obsolete, bygone relics of a past era.

Objectivism and empiricism will never be obsolete

It's what our sciences are based on. We need to find a way that people can see past the confirmation bias. (Something we all have)
If we don't objectivety and impericism won't be obsolete, people will believe it is but that's far from the same...

 

[Dotini]

How technologists are destroying reality:

The Era of Fake Video Begins
The digital manipulation of video may make the current era of “fake news” seem quaint.

Edmon de Haro

The Atlantic Daily, our free weekday email newsletter.

in a dank corner of the internet, it is possible to find actresses from Game of Thrones or Harry Potter engaged in all manner of sex acts. Or at least to the world the carnal figures look like those actresses, and the faces in the videos are indeed their own. Everything south of the neck, however, belongs to different women. An artificial intelligence has almost seamlessly stitched the familiar visages into pornographic scenes, one face swapped for another. The genre is one of the cruelest, most invasive forms of identity theft invented in the internet era. At the core of the cruelty is the acuity of the technology: A casual observer can’t easily detect the hoax.

This development, which has been the subject of much hand-wringing in the tech press, is the work of a programmer who goes by the nom de hack “deepfakes.” And it is merely a beta version of a much more ambitious project. One of deepfakes’s compatriots told Vice’s Motherboard site in January that he intends to democratize this work. He wants to refine the process, further automating it, which would allow anyone to transpose the disembodied head of a crush or an ex or a co-worker into an extant pornographic clip with just a few simple steps. No technical knowledge would be required. And because academic and commercial labs are developing even more-sophisticated tools for non-pornographic purposes—algorithms that map facial expressions and mimic voices with precision—the sordid fakes will soon acquire even greater verisimilitude.

The internet has always contained the seeds of postmodern hell. Mass manipulation, from clickbait to Russian bots to the addictive trickery that governs Facebook’s News Feed, is the currency of the medium. It has always been a place where identity is terrifyingly slippery, where anonymity breeds coarseness and confusion, where crooks can filch the very contours of selfhood. In this respect, the rise of deepfakes is the culmination of the internet’s history to date—and probably only a low-grade version of what’s to come.

Vladimir Nabokov once wrote that reality is one of the few words that means nothing without quotation marks. He was sardonically making a basic point about relative perceptions: When you and I look at the same object, how do you really know that we see the same thing? Still, institutions (media, government, academia) have helped people coalesce around a consensus—rooted in a faith in reason and empiricism—about how to describe the world, albeit a fragile consensus that has been unraveling in recent years. Social media have helped bring on a new era, enabling individuated encounters with the news that confirm biases and sieve out contravening facts. The current president has further hastened the arrival of a world beyond truth, providing the imprimatur of the highest office to falsehood and conspiracy.


But soon this may seem an age of innocence. We’ll shortly live in a world where our eyes routinely deceive us. Put differently, we’re not so far from the collapse of reality.

we cling to reality today, crave it even. We still very much live in Abraham Zapruder’s world. That is, we venerate the sort of raw footage exemplified by the 8 mm home movie of John F. Kennedy’s assassination that the Dallas clothier captured by happenstance. Unedited video has acquired an outsize authority in our culture. That’s because the public has developed a blinding, irrational cynicism toward reporting and other material that the media have handled and processed—an overreaction to a century of advertising, propaganda, and hyperbolic TV news. The essayist David Shields calls our voraciousness for the unvarnished “reality hunger.”

Scandalous behavior stirs mass outrage most reliably when it is “caught on tape.” Such video has played a decisive role in shaping the past two U.S. presidential elections. In 2012, a bartender at a Florida fund-raiser for Mitt Romney surreptitiously hit record on his camera while the candidate denounced “47 percent” of Americans—Obama supporters all—as enfeebled dependents of the federal government. A strong case can be made that this furtively captured clip doomed his chance of becoming president. The remarks almost certainly would not have registered with such force if they’d merely been scribbled down and written up by a reporter. The video—with its indirect camera angle and clink of ambient cutlery and waiters passing by with folded napkins—was far more potent. All of its trappings testified to its unassailable origins.

Donald Trump, improbably, recovered from the Access Hollywood tape, in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women, but that tape aroused the public’s passions and conscience like nothing else in the 2016 presidential race. Video has likewise provided the proximate trigger for many other recent social conflagrations. It took extended surveillance footage of the NFL running back Ray Rice dragging his unconscious wife from a hotel elevator to elicit a meaningful response to domestic violence from the league, despite a long history of abuse by players. Then there was the 2016 killing of Philando Castile by a Minnesota police officer, streamed to Facebook by his girlfriend. All the reports in the world, no matter the overwhelming statistics and shattering anecdotes, had failed to provoke outrage over police brutality. But the terrifying broadcast of his animalistic demise in his Oldsmobile rumbled the public and led politicians, and even a few hard-line conservative commentators, to finally acknowledge the sort of abuse they had long neglected.

That all takes us to the nub of the problem. It’s natural to trust one’s own senses, to believe what one sees—a hardwired tendency that the coming age of manipulated video will exploit. Consider recent flash points in what the University of Michigan’s Aviv Ovadya calls the “infopocalypse”—and imagine just how much worse they would have been with manipulated video. Take Pizzagate, and then add concocted footage of John Podesta leering at a child, or worse. Falsehoods will suddenly acquire a whole new, explosive emotional intensity.

But the problem isn’t just the proliferation of falsehoods. Fabricated videos will create new and understandable suspicions about everything we watch. Politicians and publicists will exploit those doubts. When captured in a moment of wrongdoing, a culprit will simply declare the visual evidence a malicious concoction. The president, reportedly, has already pioneered this tactic: Even though he initially conceded the authenticity of the Access Hollywood video, he now privately casts doubt on whether the voice on the tape is his own.

In other words, manipulated video will ultimately destroy faith in our strongest remaining tether to the idea of common reality. As Ian Goodfellow, a scientist at Google, told MIT Technology Review, “It’s been a little bit of a fluke, historically, that we’re able to rely on videos as evidence that something really happened.”

the collapse of reality isn’t an unintended consequence of artificial intelligence. It’s long been an objective—or at least a dalliance—of some of technology’s most storied architects. In many ways, Silicon Valley’s narrative begins in the early 1960s with the International Foundation for Advanced Study, not far from the legendary engineering labs clumped around Stanford. The foundation specialized in experiments with LSD. Some of the techies working in the neighborhood couldn’t resist taking a mind-bending trip themselves, undoubtedly in the name of science. These developers wanted to create machines that could transform consciousness in much the same way that drugs did. Computers would also rip a hole in reality, leading humanity away from the quotidian, gray-flannel banality of Leave It to Beaver America and toward a far groovier, more holistic state of mind. Steve Jobs described LSD as “one of the two or three most important” experiences of his life.

Fake-but-realistic video clips are not the end point of the flight from reality that technologists would have us take. The apotheosis of this vision is virtual reality. VR’s fundamental purpose is to create a comprehensive illusion of being in another place. With its goggles and gloves, it sets out to trick our senses and subvert our perceptions. Video games began the process of transporting players into an alternate world, injecting them into another narrative. But while games can be quite addictive, they aren’t yet fully immersive. VR has the potential to more completely transport—we will see what our avatars see and feel what they feel. Several decades ago, after giving the nascent technology a try, the psychedelic pamphleteer Timothy Leary reportedly called it “the new LSD.”

Perhaps society will find ways to cope with these changes. Maybe we’ll learn the skepticism required to navigate them. Thus far, however, human beings have displayed a near-infinite susceptibility to getting duped and conned—falling easily into worlds congenial to their own beliefs or self-image, regardless of how eccentric or flat-out wrong those beliefs may be. Governments have been slow to respond to the social challenges that new technologies create, and might rather avoid this one. The question of deciding what constitutes reality isn’t just epistemological; it is political and would involve declaring certain deeply held beliefs specious.

Few individuals will have the time or perhaps the capacity to sort elaborate fabulation from truth. Our best hope may be outsourcing the problem, restoring cultural authority to trusted validators with training and knowledge: newspapers, universities. Perhaps big technology companies will understand this crisis and assume this role, too. Since they control the most-important access points to news and information, they could most easily squash manipulated videos, for instance. But to play this role, they would have to accept certain responsibilities that they have so far largely resisted.

• How America Lost Its Mind
• The Real-World Consequences of 'Fake News'

In 2016, as Russia used Facebook to influence the American presidential election, Elon Musk confessed his understanding of human life. He talked about a theory, derived from an Oxford philosopher, that is fashionable in his milieu. The idea holds that we’re actually living in a computer simulation, as if we’re already characters in a science-fiction movie or a video game. He told a conference, “The odds that we’re in ‘base reality’ is one in billions.” If the leaders of the industry that presides over our information and hopes to shape our future can’t even concede the existence of reality, then we have little hope of salvaging it.

Life could be more interesting in virtual realities as the technology emerges from its infancy; the possibilities for creation might be extended and enhanced in wondrous ways. But if the hype around VR eventually pans out, then, like the personal computer or social media, it will grow into a massive industry, intent on addicting consumers for the sake of its own profit, and possibly dominated by just one or two exceptionally powerful companies. (Facebook’s investments in VR, with its purchase of the start-up Oculus, is hardly reassuring.)

The ability to manipulate consumers will grow because VR definitionally creates confusion about what is real. Designers of VR have described some consumers as having such strong emotional responses to a terrifying experience that they rip off those chunky goggles to escape. Studies have already shown how VR can be used to influence the behavior of users after they return to the physical world, making them either more or less inclined to altruistic behaviors.

Researchers in Germany who have attempted to codify ethics for VR have warned that its “comprehensive character” introduces “opportunities for new and especially powerful forms of both mental and behavioral manipulation, especially when commercial, political, religious, or governmental interests are behind the creation and maintenance of the virtual worlds.” As the VR pioneer Jaron Lanier writes in his recently published memoir, “Never has a medium been so potent for beauty and so vulnerable to creepiness. Virtual reality will test us. It will amplify our character more than other media ever have.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/realitys-end/556877/

 

[Johnnypenso]

Objectivism and empiricism will never be obsolete

It's what our sciences are based on. We need to find a way that people can see past the confirmation bias. (Something we all have)
If we don't objectivety and impericism won't be obsolete, people will believe it is but that's far from the same...

“The idea that objectivity is best reached only through rational thought is a specifically Western and masculine way of thinking- one that we challenge throughout the book.”

Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, ed. Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins, 8th edition.


"On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White"
"Ms Gutierrez said knowledge is "relational" and must be treated as such, saying: "Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively."

Rochelle Gutierrez PHD University of Illinois

 

[UKMikey]

^Not so much fake news, more some isolated academic nutter who I'm pretty sure most of us are free to subjectively decide to ignore.

 

[Imari]

“The idea that objectivity is best reached only through rational thought is a specifically Western and masculine way of thinking- one that we challenge throughout the book.”

Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, ed. Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins, 8th edition.


"On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White"
"Ms Gutierrez said knowledge is "relational" and must be treated as such, saying: "Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively."

Rochelle Gutierrez PHD University of Illinois

Do they provide any reasoning for this supposed scientific racism and sexism? Or are they just butthurt?

 

[Johnnypenso]

^Not so much fake news, more some isolated academic nutter who I'm pretty sure most of us are free to subjectively decide to ignore.

It's a direct response to the quote I used. Some people, people teaching our kids, or at least my kids and Godchildren, that objectivity and empricism is overrated. Kinda tough to ignore if you're a student in a class that teaches this.

 

[TenEightyOne]

^Not so much fake news, more some isolated academic nutter who I'm pretty sure most of us are free to subjectively decide to ignore.

Do they provide any reasoning for this supposed scientific racism and sexism? Or are they just butthurt?

Her argument's quite interesting and was much-quoted outside the context of the book. Her point (as I read it) was that the established "correct" methods of number conservation and processing (leading to the "right" ways of educating and assessing) were handed down by a white patriarchy - certainly that's largely true. Her research (particularly with students from other cultures) focusses on assessing other "right" ways and methods, it's really no more sinister than that.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Her argument's quite interesting and was much-quoted outside the context of the book. Her point (as I read it) was that the established "correct" methods of number conservation and processing (leading to the "right" ways of educating and assessing) were handed down by a white patriarchy - certainly that's largely true. Her research (particularly with students from other cultures) focusses on assessing other "right" ways and methods, it's really no more sinister than that.

I hear subjective mathematics, whiteness free, is all the rage these days.

Professor: "Ok class this is an easy one. What is 2+2?"
Student: "Usually I say 4 but I feel like today it's 5. No wait, 5.5"
Professor: "Great answer Zack. Don't forget, there are no wrong answers class"

 

[TenEightyOne]

I hear subjective mathematics, whiteness free, is all the rage these days.

Professor: "Ok class this is an easy one. What is 2+2?"
Student: "Usually I say 4 but I feel like today it's 5. No wait, 5.5"
Professor: "Great answer Zack. Don't forget, there are no wrong answers class"

Spoiler

Oh wait... you used a replacement number system introduced by Western explorers a few hundred years ago...

Why not try a different American method?

 

[Imari]

Spoiler

Oh wait... you used a replacement number system introduced by Western explorers a few hundred years ago...

Why not try a different American method?

Using different numerical systems doesn't change mathematics or science any more than using a calculator or computer that does everything in base 2 does. Math works just as well with Roman numerals or tally marks, although it may be more or less convenient to carry out certain operations with pen and paper.

Fundamentally there are not "correct" methods of number processing, there are useful methods of number processing. We define addition such that 2+2=4 because that's actually useful in describing the real world in a way that 2+2=5.5 is not. People are free to discuss whether these are the most appropriate methods, and at the highest levels of mathematics that absolutely happens. See the arguments over the axiom of choice.

Ditto the scientific method and rational thought. Just because you put different labels on something or shuffle it around so that it looks different doesn't mean that it is. That's the whole point of the universality of mathematics and science, they're based on objective observations, explainable axioms or assumptions such that any intelligent being should be able to comprehend the reasoning. That doesn't change with gender, race or culture, despite the history of certain classes of people being excluded from taking part.

Just because the practitioners of historical science (or natural philosophy as it tended to be called at the time) were arseholes, doesn't mean that the idea of science is suddenly non-rational and subjective. That it isn't is the whole point of it.

And while we're at it, Arabic numerals introduced by Westerners a few hundred years ago? I mean, that's a bit of a misnomer as well as I believe they were originally Indian, but still. I can't help but think it's a little disingenuous that in one post you're referring to the white patriarchy and it's cultural control and the next you're mis-attributing a numerical system where the clue is quite literally in the name.

Perhaps you're more involved in perpetuating the culture than you might have realised, albeit likely inadvertently.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Using different numerical systems doesn't change mathematics or science any more than using a calculator or computer that does everything in base 2 does. Math works just as well with Roman numerals or tally marks, although it may be more or less convenient to carry out certain operations with pen and paper.

Fundamentally there are not "correct" methods of number processing, there are useful methods of number processing. We define addition such that 2+2=4 because that's actually useful in describing the real world in a way that 2+2=5.5 is not. People are free to discuss whether these are the most appropriate methods, and at the highest levels of mathematics that absolutely happens. See the arguments over the axiom of choice.

Ditto the scientific method and rational thought. Just because you put different labels on something or shuffle it around so that it looks different doesn't mean that it is. That's the whole point of the universality of mathematics and science, they're based on objective observations, explainable axioms or assumptions such that any intelligent being should be able to comprehend the reasoning. That doesn't change with gender, race or culture, despite the history of certain classes of people being excluded from taking part.

Just because the practitioners of historical science (or natural philosophy as it tended to be called at the time) were arseholes, doesn't mean that the idea of science is suddenly non-rational and subjective. That it isn't is the whole point of it.

And while we're at it, Arabic numerals introduced by Westerners a few hundred years ago? I mean, that's a bit of a misnomer as well as I believe they were originally Indian, but still. I can't help but think it's a little disingenuous that in one post you're referring to the white patriarchy and it's cultural control and the next you're mis-attributing a numerical system where the clue is quite literally in the name.

Perhaps you're more involved in perpetuating the culture than you might have realised, albeit likely inadvertently.

I'm aware of the origins of 'Arabic' numbering - I stand by the timescale in which I described its introduction to the American continent. I don't claim that 2+2=5.5, rather I address the idea used by the discussed author that other bases, notations and methods can be equally correct. The incorrect summation that you repeated was from @Johnnypenso - it's very likely that he knew it was incorrect

Overall the author has met documented resistance to introducing study of alternative methods (such as Mayan and Yoruban) in maths education, her work is about addressing what she sees as an imbalance. Personally I learnt at primary school how to use Roman number and how to count in binary, decimal, base-20 and hex*. That's something that gave me a good preparation for tackling the strictly-prescriptive methods that I encountered in Secondary School in another part of the country, I was able to think outside a box that very definitely didn't work for me.

I'm in favour of researchers tackling work like hers because it can bring a better range of methods to teaching a subject that many students struggle with in different ways. I can see why there have been knee-jerk reactions to her comments about where the currently-authorised methodology has its roots but I don't think it makes her research any less valid.

*It was a very progressive school where all we did until 6 was Art, Music, Maths and Languages.

 

[Imari]

I'm aware of the origins of 'Arabic' numbering - I stand by the timescale in which I described its introduction to the American continent. I don't claim that 2+2=5.5, rather I address the idea used by the discussed author that other bases, notations and methods can be equally correct. The incorrect summation that you repeated was from @Johnnypenso - it's very likely that he knew it was incorrect

I assumed that you were saying something deeper than that. Saying that other bases and numeric systems can also be correct is what they teach in 8th grade math. The only people that disagree either don't understand math or are morons or both.

I guess was giving you credit for having a non-trivial opinion to espouse. The fact that other numbering systems are taught sort of undermines the idea that other notations and methods are taught as incorrect.

Let's not get into the Common Core thing where 3x5 /= 5x3. Anyone with half a brain knows that system is asinine and teaches entirely the wrong things, and teachers who actually want their students to succeed have been fighting it for years. We're talking here about math as used by sensible and reasonable mathematicians, not politicians who wouldn't know an exponent from their elbow.

Re: Arabic numerals, I guess you're right if you consider the American continent the only meaningful place to discuss. I mean, they'd been in use in Europe for some time which is where those explorers came from and where a lot of the mathematicians came from.

Overall the author has met documented resistance to introducing study of alternative methods (such as Mayan and Yoruban) in maths education, her work is about addressing what she sees as an imbalance. Personally I learnt at primary school how to use Roman number and how to count in binary, decimal, base-20 and hex*. That's something that gave me a good preparation for tackling the strictly-prescriptive methods that I encountered in Secondary School in another part of the country, I was able to think outside a box that very definitely didn't work for me.

Do Mayan and Yoruban have any features to recommend their teaching above binary, base-12, hexadecimal and Roman? There's only so many hours in the day, and those numbering systems have actual application in real life. If she's just complaining that her pet numbering systems don't get a look in outside of mathematics specialists, I'd say that's probably how it should be.

I'm in favour of researchers tackling work like hers because it can bring a better range of methods to teaching a subject that many students struggle with in different ways. I can see why there have been knee-jerk reactions to her comments about where the currently-authorised methodology has its roots but I don't think it makes her research any less valid.

Again, if you want to share the actual reasoning as to why these things should be taught above other things that have clear application, be my guest.

As far as I can tell it's all swings and roundabouts, which means that in the real world you use the way that means that you don't have to convert numerical systems, perform the operation and then convert back. The same reason that computer scientists learn to do math in binary and hex instead of always converting to decimal first.

It still sounds like a case of sour grapes that you're trying to use to prop up this idea that mathematics has been defined by the white patriarchy. The reality is that it's probably less so than most sciences because as a purely intellectual field it's not really restricted by access to funds and equipment, although there's still going to be the reality of the history of humans on Earth that influences everything.

 

[Mr Tree]

“The idea that objectivity is best reached only through rational thought is a specifically Western and masculine way of thinking- one that we challenge throughout the book.”

Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, ed. Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins, 8th edition.


"On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White"
"Ms Gutierrez said knowledge is "relational" and must be treated as such, saying: "Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively."

Rochelle Gutierrez PHD University of Illinois

I believe you qouted me due to it beeing on topic. I also think to know you do not agree with the text/author you qouted.

But to those people I'd ask what is male and white about it and what would you do/use to get to objective answers.

Also the proffesor should stop making assumptions if I think of a mathematician I think of an asian guy not a white male
Now serious if I think of a mathematician I think of well a mathematician... what does the colour of his skin have to do with his proffesion.

Really I don't get those ideas, I really don't. And the fact that people accept this (she has a ****ing phd for spewing ******** and is allowed to teach a class ) makes me depressed.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I found this story interesting, from CNN of all places, Trumps top priority in the Fake News battle. A clip of the discussion is included in the link but here is some of the text:

“I have to ask this question,” said Stelter introducing the discussion. “Has the news media come out of this controversy looking better or worse? Because I’m pretty sure we don’t look better.”

First he spoke with Nuzzi, who said that Trump’s feeling that he had a good week is “very unusual” considering his nominee was investigated and the New York Times story about Trump’s finances and taxes. She said it wouldn’t be considered a good week under “normal” circumstances but for Trump’s standards it was considered positive. She did not address the theme of the press or their coverage at that point.

Stelter turned to Sesno and said that “this controversy involving Kavanaugh only occurred because of the press, because of the Washington Post story Ford, the New Yorker story about Deborah Ramirez. There’s been so much reporting and frankly, Frank Sesno, some misreporting.”

“Do you think the press is coming out of this looking weaker,” he asked, “Because many people feel that the press chose a side through this?”

“Yes,” said Sesno. “Certainly that’s the way it’s going to look to Trump supporters and to people who have been questioning media’s bias and their ability to report straight for a long time.”

Sesno then pointed out some biased reporting that just occurred in the segment he was participating in. “By any reasonable measure, this has been an extraordinary week for this President,” he said, directly contradicting Nuzzi. He cited the trade deal with Mexico and Canada, the new unemployment numbers “that haven’t been this low since 1969” and the successful appointment to SCOTUS as examples of that “extraordinary” week, and then said that “the coverage has been unrelentingly negative.”

“Even Joe Scarborough goes on the air and says the mainstream media were unfair towards the President,” said Sesno. “I think the challenge grows even greater for the media to figure out where it’s going and to try to find some balance in all of this.”

Stelter played a clip of CNBC’s Sara Fagan, who said on MSNBC that “20 years ago, no major news publication would have published those second allegations. The second allegation or third allegation. And so we are now in a different place in this country.” He asked Sesno if that is true.

“Absolutely. Absolutely. I was bureau chief here at CNN during the Lewinsky thing. We had a whole series of procedures to make sure that hearsay didn’t get on the air, and that we were going to confirm it ourselves before we put it on the air,” said Sesno. “That’s completely been overtaken by events now, with social media..”

Asked what confirming means these days, Sesno gave examples of what corroboration is supposed to consist of, and said “some of these other things? I agree, we would not have reported in the ‘old days’.”

“Let me take you through some of the other examples,” said Stelter to the group. “We mentioned the New Yorker story, that’s the Ramirez story. Ronan Farrow and Jane Meyer interview her on the record, but some people said ‘hey the New Yorker” shouldn’t have published the story because there wasn’t enough supporting evidence. Then there was the New York Timesreport about a bar fight in 1985.” He explained that they had to apologize for having the story co-written by someone who had already written in opposition to Kavanaugh.

He said MSNBC’s interview with Julie Swetnick, Michael Avenatti‘s client, was something that NBC didn’t know what to do with.”

“They tried to verify her claims, they couldn’t,” he said. “This is another example of… in a prior generation, maybe the interview wouldn’t have aired at all.”

Nuzzi disagreed, saying there is no real value in comparing to the Clinton days, and that it’s “up to the reader, up to the viewer” to decide if the story is credible. She said that the New Yorker story was “pretty carefully written” and had “caveats in there.”

“I think that the press was trying in a very hurried way to do serious reporting and to really vet this nominee,” she said. “I think some mistakes were made.” Nuzzi did not offer any examples of those mistakes.

Stelter brought up some of the most controversial decisions made, and did ask the question about media bias, but he also left out CNN’s own publication and on-air discussion of an allegation against Kavanaugh that had already been retracted before they ran with it. And although he mentioned ‘misreporting” there was no account of which reports were in error. It was a decent but incomplete analysis.

It's an interesting take from people who have the inside track, as to how the news business has changed these last 20 years and how much higher the standards were for what was released as a story just 20 years ago. In this interview Brian Stelter references some actual fake news that CNN ran just last week. A laughably thin allegation was made on social media by an anonymous source to the effect that, me and my buddy beat up two guys in 1985 that a woman we knew said assaulted her. Also they were named Brett and Mark". The allegations were recanted before the CNN story aired, but they ran the story anyway.

 

[Johnnypenso]

MSNBC.
Edited video and commentary implying this is happening currently:


Original video showing it is actually from the Obama administration:


"Extravagant cruelty for any administration"...until she finds out it's from Obama's time in office.

 

[TenEightyOne]

MSNBC.
Edited video and commentary implying this is happening currently:


Original video showing it is actually from the Obama administration:


"Extravagant cruelty for any administration"...until she finds out it's from Obama's time in office.

I'm confused... surely the footage is from both administrations, unless Trump wasn't elected in 2016 after all? Can you show that this practice is no longer undertaken by the border authorities?

I didn't see MSNBC say that they did or didn't - I saw talking heads (a democrat and an activist) saying that it's still ongoing. Where's the fake in the opinion, and what are the actual facts?

 

[Johnnypenso]

I'm confused... surely the footage is from both administrations, unless Trump wasn't elected in 2016 after all? Can you show that this practice is no longer undertaken by the border authorities?

I didn't see MSNBC say that they did or didn't - I saw talking heads (a democrat and an activist) saying that it's still ongoing. Where's the fake in the opinion, and what are the actual facts?

I don't need to prove a negative. A responsible piece of non-fake news coverage would come with a caveat that the footage they are looking at is not linked to the current story and is historic footage. Then Merkley comes on and says it's policy that water is the first priority but he doesn't know that's being done so you need a committee to find out and that turning water over in the desert is the same as sentencing someone to death. At 1:10 Joy Reid links the dumping of water from the video directly to the Trump administration. Clearly fake news.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I don't need to prove a negative.

Fair do's, but you're the one saying that it's fake. The obvious thing would be to provide a source showing border security have stopped destroying water stashes. Because from your own link it doesn't seem to be the case.

A responsible piece of non-fake news coverage would come with a caveat that the footage they are looking at is not linked to the current story and is historic footage.

Is last year so historic?

Then Merkley comes on and says it's policy that water is the first priority but he doesn't know that's being done so you need a committee to find out and that turning water over in the desert is the same as sentencing someone to death.

I quite agree, that's exactly what it is. If the policy is still in place (or if it's a self-decided practice by the border agencies) then I think it's evil.

At 1:10 Joy Reid links the dumping of water from the video directly to the Trump administration.

As does the timestamp of some of the original video that you posted to 'clarify'.

Clearly fake news.

Not clear, you said you can't prove that negative.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Fair do's, but you're the one saying that it's fake. The obvious thing would be to provide a source showing border security have stopped destroying water stashes. Because from your own link it doesn't seem to be the case.



Is last year so historic?



I quite agree, that's exactly what it is. If the policy is still in place (or if it's a self-decided practice by the border agencies) then I think it's evil.



As does the timestamp of some of the original video that you posted to 'clarify'.



Not clear, you said you can't prove that negative.

Trump wasn't President in 2011.

 

[Rallywagon]

Trump wasn't President in 2011.

Out of that whole post, that's your only take away? I mean, I suppose it is a defense, of one clip in that compilation of many videos.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Out of that whole post, that's your only take away? I mean, I suppose it is a defense, of one clip in that compilation of many videos.

The clips used to set up the "story" is from 2011. Joy Reid directly links this to Trump and says it's "extravagant cruelty" and "effective for their base", implying that the action took place currently. I don't see how that's anything but fake news.

More fake news from 2014 CNN Journalist of the Year:

An award-winning journalist who worked for Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s leading news outlets, has left the weekly magazine after evidence emerged that he committed journalistic fraud “on a grand scale” over a number of years, the publication said Wednesday.

Spiegel published a lengthy report on its website after conducting an initial internal probe of the work of Claas Relotius, a 33-year-old staff writer known for vivid investigative stories. The magazine said Relotius resigned Monday after admitting some of his articles included made-up material from interviews that never happened.

The Hamburg-based magazine said Relotius contributed almost to 60 articles published in print or online since 2011, first as a freelance writer before being hired full-time last year. The reporter previously worked for other German and Swiss publications and won numerous awards, including CNN Journalist of the Year in 2014.

 

[TenEightyOne]

The clips used to set up the "story" is from 2011. Joy Reid directly links this to Trump and says it's "extravagant cruelty" and "effective for their base", implying that the action took place currently. I don't see how that's anything but fake news.

To be clear: you don't accept that your video (which you claimed was the "original") includes clips from Trump's administrative era? You don't accept that anti-migration activities play to Trump's base (the claim you just linked in that video)?

More fake news from 2014 CNN Journalist of the Year:

An award-winning journalist who worked for Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s leading news outlets, has left the weekly magazine after evidence emerged that he committed journalistic fraud “on a grand scale” over a number of years, the publication said Wednesday.

Spiegel published a lengthy report on its website after conducting an initial internal probe of the work of Claas Relotius, a 33-year-old staff writer known for vivid investigative stories. The magazine said Relotius resigned Monday after admitting some of his articles included made-up material from interviews that never happened.

The Hamburg-based magazine said Relotius contributed almost to 60 articles published in print or online since 2011, first as a freelance writer before being hired full-time last year. The reporter previously worked for other German and Swiss publications and won numerous awards, including CNN Journalist of the Year in 2014.

That's an absolute winner, although I'm sure most people see Der Spiegel as akin to The Daily Mail. I certainly do.

 

[Johnnypenso]

To be clear: you don't accept that your video (which you claimed was the "original") includes clips from Trump's administrative era? You don't accept that anti-migration activities play to Trump's base (the claim you just linked in that video)?

I accept that the part of the story I'm referring to, the part that sets up the whole narrative that Trump is, in essence, killing migrants by turning over water bottles, is fake. The clip of the water bottles being turned over is from 2011. Joy Reid directly links this to Trump which is fake in it's entirety. I don't accept that the video is playing to his base because the video has nothing to do with Trump. I accept that whatever actions Trump is engaged in plays to his base but that video is from the Obama era so, it's fake news.

That's an absolute winner, although I'm sure most people see Der Spiegel as akin to The Daily Mail. I certainly do.

Says a lot about CNN that the would pick a Daily Mail like journalist as Journalist of the Year.