2+2=5

The other month James Lindsay had a twitter feud with the 2+2=5 group. For those not up on that discourse, it's basically Critical Theory saying everything is relative. That tool is now being applied in the harder sciences. Part of that is to get easy papers published (academia always needs a new kick for job progression). 

Part of the thinking is accurate. Not all operators or things are always understood the same way. That's why assumptions are always baked into discourse. One argument is that things like addition operators and numbers are well defined. Therefore, if you're using slightly different logic, it's on you to explain your assumptions, not upon others to infer them. This is what separates white supremacy from Critical Theory.

But, the power dynamic boils down to being able to say 2+2=5 and being free from critique. It's what 1984 discussed with respect to the ultimate goals of newspeak - being able to eliminate any ties language has to objectivity. The narrative matters more than objectivity. Why? We've already got enough objectivity.

It's hard not to see the media's reaction to the Biden laptop (there is no evidence it gives) or the censorship of election issues in the same light.  For instance, twitter is now banning Benford Law links (the standard? statistical analysis used to look for fraud, including voter fraud). Or, perhaps more accurately, they're banning specific links which tie Benford's law to voter fraud and then specifically cite the objective data on swing state votes.

It's not just that saying "2+2=4" is getting you banned off twitter, youtube or facebook.  It's that discussion must say 2+2=5 and saying 2+2=4 is offensive, divisive and aligns you with white supremacy.

Is that just the natural trap that cultish utopian movements fall into? "Say the name of God". Just recognize our power/legitimacy (in an Orwellian way).  It seems like once you can't say objective facts because they convey the wrong meta-narrative balance, you're in trouble. Once too many people start believing 2+2=4, then the overlords will say, then we have a problem. They're trying to curate the right level of detachment from reality. And, that's scary.

War Game: Is the Chicanery going as planned?

Remember the election war game white paper from this summer that most people dismissed as conspiracy theory thinking? (see one report). Is it going as planned?

I think so.

If I remember, the talking points around its analysis suggested the key for things for the Dems was to gain narrative control early. This would pressure state legislatures not to disrupt things. Media control was used to ensure Trump couldn't declare early victory. Slow counting was key to enable this. Then media control would declare Biden victory.  One weak point was how to solidify this without seeming duplicitous. Getting foreign leaders to congratulate early seems to be a very smart innovation since the white paper came out.

The war game's likely scenario was that some electors would not be able to validate the election. That would leave things up to the house. 

I suspect that's where we'll wind up. 

I think that is the best and fairest case anyway. Republicans might not like it. But it seems the most honest. Then the Trumpist move is to stoke Pelosi's ego so it happens. Then, from the Republican side, Biden is castigated. 

As far as the Supreme court goes. If things get to them with respect to uncertified electors, they may decide they need to nip election chicanery in the bud. The easiest way to do that is to enable uncertified electors, trusting the House not to upset the Dem's wise move of getting things called early. Plus, this protects Deep State institutions and corruptions from Trump's laptop enabled criminal probe.

The main chip Trump has to play here is the special prosecutor chip. If this scenario buys Trump off from burning down "corrupt" elite actors & institutions with a vindictive special prosecutor, Trump MIGHT go for it. He goes down as less of a loser, at the cost of unfulfilled revenge.

I think that deal would work for him. He's taking the bet that state apparati will resist any criminal investigation so much it probably won't happen. The media will play cover for that. Therefore the safe bet is to avoid tearing the country down more, and get it out in the open that "extra-legal" means were used. This then forces government strucutres to come out and decide how to enfrancise voters via mail-in or equivalent means while figuring out how to keep just the right number of extra late counted votes from going to your side.

Here's the logic that keeps things from an early shutdown - provided of course the war game plan to demoralize Trump does not succeed. If I remember, that seemed to be a key point mentioned in the war game play.

link for this excellent twitter thread statistical analysis

link

Rabbit Hole

 Looks like I'm heading down the rabbit hole in election conspiracies.  I stumbled on the Penssylvania GOP site and it was better than rando social media (which is infinitely better than any big media). Then I went to Barne's Law, as his experience (doing?) and litigating fraud, including in Gore Florida. That brought me to some technical analysis, which being a mathematician I enjoyed.

That's when I got mad.  P-values of 10^-147       yes -147      yes!!!!!

Here are some threads

• Shylock Holmes
• Elefant Respecter

And to think social media will throttle all this to the nth degree - because "narrative" & "illegitimate use" by conspiracy theorist nuts.

Optics

 Most election fraud stories can be explained non-conspiratorially. The issue seems to be the perfect storm of:

• Tech giant censorship
• Biden has his son's jailtime riding on this
• Biden has his legacy riding on this
• Hillary will do anything for revenge (and to avoid Clinton foundation investigation)
• The media, via the Hunter laptop, has shown they will deny the sun is yellow to avoid giving anything to Trump
• The media and many elites are now a de-facto quasi-religion who don't want their sacred utopian ideals repudiated
• Media has no credibility
• Mail in voting obviously enables electioneering (all votes matter rationalization or Ilhan Omar styled pay-outs)
• One opponent is literally considered Hitler
• People are willing to riot, burn and beat to not give space to Trumpists
• China, Iran, and many other world powers obviously prefer Biden to Trump
• Trump is gunning to expose Obama and lots of power players
• The intelligence agencies are about to get exposed via Flynn's return to head of the NSA of DNI
• Guilianni was likely going to replace Barr to "get some blood" and pull a RICO on Antifa-BLM and whichever politicians were colluding them to RICO standards.

The major problem though, is, while each of these are conspiracy theory type stuff, the throttling of info means none of it can be discussed rationally.

The logic is that enabling rational discussion last election is what enabled Trump to play the dynamics of populism. The establishment vowed that should never happen again.  But what that means is channels like this one, with a few POTENTIALLY disturbing issues, are siloed and prevent a nexus of verification from occuring.

That's bad. It also makes for back reactionary dynamics.  Watch most any historical movie about tribal groups fighting off an imperial power. It's always the prevention of expression or culture that is the rallying cry. Stories rely on that for a reason....

So look at this to see what's throttled. Some of it is obviously conspiratorial low percentage issues. But, so was Epstein Island and Weinstein, and Flynn frame job, and.....     That's the dynamics at play. 

https://twitter.com/PhillyGOP

My now "Restricted" blog

 Looks like this blog is now in a restricted mode on Parler. It wasn't yesterday. 

https://parler.com/profile/Cgoble72

Not sure why. I checked various google blacklist tools to see if academic discussion about election dynamics from an evolutionary perspective are now banned (by the a very open social media site). Nothing.

I still come up in google search terms. So this is very interesting... Not sure what I did to anger the algorithms.

(And yes, I did test posting links to other blogger blogs)

The Ethos of Inclusion: Forces its Formalization via Lawfare?

The sanest way to think of Trump's lawfare w voter "fraud" is to think of it as forcing out some uniform rules for future elections. 

• When does voting start and end?  The moment you write your ballot or the moment it is recieved? Or anytime up until the hegemony gets what it wants because "all votes matter"
• What type of ID do we really want?  None? All persona's are legal? Exclusionary ID like photo ID like most Western countries?
• How do you balance security against "every vote matters" inclusion?
• And most importantly, what role is voter harvesting going to play? And how does it get safeguarded?

The last point is the most salient, but hardest to confront through lawfare.  One side will deny its existence. But as Blogojevich's recent Fox interview, and Ilhan Omar's project Veritas expose with the Somali community - it is alive and well and certainly played a pivotal role in Trump's loss (though apparently hard to find on youtube even with direct search terms...)

But just making it illegal isn't going to change much. It is a default modus operandi.  Whoever doesn't play with it won't survive for long.  This reality has been hammered home to the politically naive and inexperienced Trump.

Results support the Democratic narrative that there are huge numbers of voters for whom the old process doesn't enfrancise.  How do you accommodate their political interests without guaranteeing more "extra legal stuff" that, for many, is now part of the ethos of inclusion?

 

Evolutionary Transitions & Political Trajectory Wells

"All votes matter" vs "Conservative rule of law"

This post could have been called: Why we're seeing the "All votes matter" ethoses pushing ballot counting one way while "Conservative rule of law" is pushing it another. 

Written another way, it comes out as

• "doing the right thing by people" by way of  "if it just saves one life" heart-string-tugs / villainization
• save the system by giving up what seems compassionate for the moment, but which kills boundary maintenance & system trust (by way exploitive manipulation guard erosion). 

In practice, the rhetoric of white supremacist (intersectional logic) emerges as essential for understanding what is happening.  See James Lyndsay's twitter or New Discourses to see why.  

THE HEARTLESS TRAP

The "all votes matter" logic is impossibly hard to refute: at least within large populations where individuals are largely insulated from the direct effects of their aggregated individual decisions. For instance "all votes matter logic", where you always have to stretch to accommodate just one more thing/item/person, is not a general feature of aboriginal populations. These groups have great intra-support networks. And individuals within them go to great extents to avoid greed & grift. But, if you break norms there is absolutely no slack given. The tribe does no sacrifice itself for individuals who violate (logical or irrational) survival norms. They are EXTREMELY conservative.

THE INESCAPABLE PROGRESSIVE VECTOR

The rhetorical position of "all lives matter", represented by ballot counting norm changes & open border logic, is an inescapable vector in human groups.

This means, in the long run, you really can never beat the State (as Trump has found out). The State will always tend to grift and enlargement. This follows Evolutionary Transition literature. 

According to this literature, systems are selected for:

1. dependency increases (eg big gov, social state, we riot if you don't support us)
2. role specialization (eg elite classes, sacred identities)
3. coordination (eg media, state collusion)
4. conflict minimization (eg the application of law which "solves" noisy voices, authoritarianism, selective prosecution, special rules for key organs)

To expect these tendencies not to be expressed in government means fighting the inescapable current of human evolution. That states like revolutionary France, revolutionary US, etc. have been able to do this for a time is rare. 

1800's European critiques of the survivability of Jeffersonian democracy are apt. The US was always a rare blip.

Error

 Well it looks like I blew the election prediction. I figured Trump would sneak by in PA, WI and maybe MI for a 290 - 300 take.  Now it looks like even GA may flip blue.

Both sides' fall-back states are getting the late votes they need that just cause them to eek by. It's a game of he who counts last gets to count just right.  In this PA is king, and mail-in voting from big urbans is your savior.  See the Barnes video (he seems well used to the chicanery played in Bush-Gore Florida).

The real issue is obviously, should late votes count (rule of law) or does every vote matter. The latter matches the Black Lives Matter ethos so perfectly, I suspect it reflects the major moral fault line facing the US (and other countries).

Do you go so progressive that everything matters that no one can be left out or not made to achieve equal outcomes? Or, do you stay hard nosed, keeping tight arbitrary norms, which inevitably exclude things in "racialized" ways.

THE BIOLOGY 

As I've said before, globalization, specifically pan-nationalism, reflects one deep seated biological tendency now being probed by groups. It is operationalized by an out-group focussed, no-borders societal approach. But his increases the likelyhood of severe gaming (freeloading). If norms can't keep up with things, the adaptiveness of your group implodes.

That, is what people fear about the US right now. In order to win an election, the blue side opened things up so much, so quickly, in such a norm breaking way, it was going to be near impossible for faith in rule of law to stay. The red side's fight against systemic bias in the system is similarly burning up social cohesion capital.

So while I think Hillary certainly used her dirty political machine to nail Trump, and while I think corrupt Biden decided to play in the gutter to hit Trump and save his son (& political elites) from jail, I think it wouldn't matter who won or who didn't. The US is now functionally ungovernable, and the structural forces that led it to be that way are increasing and really can't be tamped down.

CONCLUSION

So while I would have preferred a purge of the deep state, more legs to the current Israeli peace movement, and a removal of woke religion from public institutions, it seems like the deep-state's supporting edifices have finally proved too much for Trump.  The odds were never in his favour. Covid and the leverage it gave for voting norm shifts proved too much for non-elite populism to overcome. Big tech thumbs were just enough to edge it out. Trump's achille's heel was always getting too many enemies. But it was also his strategic strength. It caused everyone to fire all their guns. Sometimes the superposition proves just too much.

Weekend Violence

 Other than a house contested election, this looks to be about the worst scenario possible for election violence.

I got surprised that Biden took Arizona so easily. Some republicans still think mail-in and absentee ballots may make that a pre-mature call, but I doubt it.

That leaves Pennsylvania as the key to the whole election. They allow late voting and don't require signature matching.  That's a rife combo for fraud.  In addition, Pittsburg is a known hotspot for election shenanigans. 

That leaves both camps ready to come out this weekend at the same time in their "shows of commitment". That spells disaster!  I doubt things will be sorted out by then. But the legal theatrics will have peaked. That means my model for civil unrest (R celebrations peaking Tuesday and Wed, D protests peaking on the weekend) is wrong.  You'll get competing demonstrations and violence will ensue.

Add to this, the Supreme court's decision under Roberts to steer away from uniform voter decisions to favour state autonomy via some convoluted reasoning between which non-legislative rule changes are and aren't allowed under emergency Covid measures, and you're going to end up with a Supreme Court deciding the whole election via its call on Pennsylvania.

Decisions like that which the populace sees are fairly arbitrary and politicized do not bode well for civil stability.

It is going to get nasty as duelling protests gradually ramp up. The rate at which violence emerges all depends on how much control Democratic grass root activists have over BLM and Antifa. I think the dragon is out of the box on this one.