Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler A thought weighing on me (political)

First an apology, I'm torn on posting political topics even in a place which is intended for people to discuss issues other than audio. On one hand it can rile people who have strong opinions on an issue. On the other, nothing will get resolved by not talking about them. This is especially true if we only read about and listen to like minded people reinforcing the sides of issues we are comfortable with.

So that said I'd like to present something I've been thinking about lately (behind the "show contents" button below which contains political speculation on my part). But before I do, there is a more general and non-politicial take away, I think everyone should be aware of ... and that is an understanding of a social media bot. From a page on Cloudfaire's website (it's an internet security company)

What is a social media bot

If you might get upset about speculation on Russian influence on social media please move on and not press the "show content button"

Interesting. I vaguely knew about bots, but I didn't know how prevalent they were and their degree of sophistication.

I completely believe Putin is behind much of our political discord. Unfortunately, the 2nd link came up bad so I couldn't read about the specific of that situation (maybe the site was down temporarily, I'll check again tomorrow).

Cork ... I cut and pasted the link poorly ... it's
Social Media Conversations in Support of ... are Driven by Bots

Your bias is showing....... You have been consistent in finding arguments and positions that support your views. I'm sure you know this, but that is what's called "confirmation bias". When you really want to have a conversation with others from a position of neutrality about the topic of COVID vaccines, herd immunity, mandates, the first and/or other constitutional amendments, or other politically divisive topics let us know. Until then, I'm not sure you will get too many people excited about having a debate with you. When considering the vast majority of this board's members are very much left of center, what you will get is groupthink and a bunch of high-fives. Those that are to the right of center, and willing to debate you and the other liberals, have lost interest and moved on (2X6 and Craigsub are two examples). The majority on this forum always have been left of center and fight in packs.

What I will say, however, is that I'd be a hell of a lot more concerned about the CCP and what Xi Jinping has planned than Russia / Putin. Of course Russa wants to see the general population within the USA divided and fighting, and our elected brain-dead bafoons in DC making moronic decisions. Which one of our enemies doesn't??? Do you really think Russia is our only adversary?

The Federation of American Scientists is hardly an 'unbiased' scientific advisory group. Their staff bios are all I need to look at to come to that conclusion. Therefore, their views on this topic are in question, and very unlikely - science-based without political motivation.

Hannah Safford
Associate Director of Science Policy
Hannah Safford is Associate Director of Science Policy at the Federation of American Scientists. Hannah has deep experience working on both sides of the science-policy nexus, including as a policy advisor for the 2020 Biden-Harris presidential campaign, a fellow at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; a researcher with the UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy; and as Chair of the City of Davis Natural Resources Commission. Hannah’s work and commentary has been featured on MSNBC and Al Jazeera, as well as in Nature, PNAS, and others. Hannah holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis, as well as an MPA in Public and International Affairs, an M.Eng in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources, and a B.S.E. in Chemical and Biological Engineering, all from Princeton University.

Karinna Gerhardt
Project Associate
Karinna Gerhardt is a Project Associate for Education, Workforce, and Talent. She supports the Talent Hub, policy proposal development, and FAS’ social innovation projects. Before joining FAS, she worked with the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG) to implement human rights and atrocity prevention programs in Bangladesh, Yemen, and Libya. Karinna holds degrees in Political Science and International Studies from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. She grew up in Seattle, Washington, and in 2019 she received a Truman Scholarship for Washington State.

Divyansh Kaushik
Science and Technology Fellow
Divyansh Kaushik is a Science and Technology Fellow for the Federation of American Scientists. He is a PhD candidate in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) where he is an Amazon Graduate Research Fellow studying ways to design human-aligned AI systems that are reliable in real world settings. He also holds a Masters degree from CMU in artificial intelligence. He also serves as the President of CMU’s Graduate Student Assembly, a role in which he has led advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill around higher education, science, and immigration issues and worked with members of Congress and their staff on several pieces of legislation that have been signed into law. In early 2021, alongside several business and community leaders, he helped the White House and HHS found the COVID-19 Community Corps which has since grown to over 15,000 members, including individuals and organizations. From November 2020 to January 2021, he worked with the Biden-Harris transition to bring forth several policy ideas to advance US R&D enterprise and maintain our global competitiveness.

He has previously served on the national advisory board of the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, the largest nonpartisan network in the country dedicated to increasing student voter participation. When he is not doing research, he loves listening to jazz, cooking delicious north Indian food, playing the piano, and going on hikes. And when he’s not doing any of that, he can be found writing on several policy issues or in the halls of Capitol Hill advocating for science policy. His work has been featured in prominent national media outlets including Forbes, Politico, Chronicle of Higher Education, US News and PBS Newshour.

Micheal ... I guess I do not see anything partisan in those bio's ... but for argument sake let say they are (everyone leans politically one way or the other.... see Good Science below), it would not mean the FAS is partisan ... actually, I think the FAS bends over backwards to be non-partisan. Their mandate is to apply science to help world policies. To keep national security on a scientific, evidence based, footing.

One of the main ways of vetting an organization is to look at who's backing them ... if it's not on the website, is vague, or is missing the major donors then it's a red flag ... in this case click on about and scroll down to Financials and Funding. You find such sponsors like the U.S. Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corp of NY, the National Science Foundation ... and others organizations for which science supports their efforts (left, right or otherwise )


Good Science is about showing a strong evidence on a subject and eliminating any other influences which might prove otherwise. There is no room for political leanings. It's when bad sudo science gets applied to prove a belief that leanings come into play. This is why scientists publish papers containing their data and how they came to the conclusions they did. It's so others can verify it. They put their name on the line and the last thing they want is for any bias to be found.

The articles published by the FAS attempt to take research and make it more accessible to non-scientists . Some like this one lack strong references but it does describe how they went about discovering the Bot activity and coming up with their numbers. Others have better citations like The role of bot squads in the political propaganda on Twitter which is probably even a stronger article on this topic. It has about 75 references many about Bots swaying opinion.

You might have missed it when I asked you to ignore the issue presented and zero in on "the bots" ...

My post was really about the high level of bot activity, how they amplify our political divide, and who's might be behind them. I only referenced this article because it was the one I remembered when I started thinking about how Russia would benefit by keeping us unstable.

Is that a very "left" thought?

I'm sure he's watching this closely and thinking about Taiwan.

Ever wonder why we have so many "brain-dead" Congressmen/women? Congress been non-functional for over a decade now ... about the time facebook became main stream and really stated taking off ... . There were also other factors ... but the on-line curated to your liking news was a big factor ... an of course any external influences that might have been injected into it ...

Michael, looks like I’m giving you all my answers in reverse order.
Confirmation basis is when you only look at evidence supporting your view and ignoring evidence to the contrary. If Im guilty of it a debate would expose it in short order. The only problem is that I lost my debating partner . The two biggest problems with debating things here is 1) people seem to take debates personally rather then looking at it as a tool to fact find. 2) i get the feeling people think it’s just yelling unsupported talking points at each other …

Perhaps I need to define what I think it is … (Michael, this may hint on my real thoughts about being confirmation biased )

When debating a topic each side makes its case (talking points)
Then each side needs to present evidence to back up those talking points.
The evidence needs to be strong enough that it is hard to refute because the other side will try and refute it.

If your going to debate a topic, it would be wise to understand both sides of it.
This requires you to have evidence to support your side and to understand what flaws maybe in any evidence presented against it.

To sum it up …

Without evidence, without support, the talking points are just words without substance …
In a debate the supporting evidence is exposed for both sides to see.
If the supporting evidence of a point is shown to be flawed the point is most likely flawed

(There need to be some more rules expressed but that’s the basics)