tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6692673940520434622024-02-19T06:05:22.382-05:00alspach.orgIn my experience, dogs can appreciate sarcasm but not practical jokesBrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09114693315217150768noreply@blogger.comBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-62592887031792289232023-08-19T08:48:00.002-04:002023-08-19T08:48:56.075-04:00What I want out of computer hardware reviewers<p>Since this is apparently becoming an increasingly sporadic and <a href="https://www.alspach.org/2020/09/towards-better-understanding-of.html">PC building-focused</a> blog, I feel compelled to comment on the recent controversy surrounding LTT and Linus Media Group's hardware reviews and other practices. GamersNexus' video lays it all out nicely.</p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FGW3TPytTjc" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div>First, some quick takes on the controversy:</div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Full disclosure: I'm a huge admirer of what LMG has built and, in general, the way they've grown and run their business. Building what Linus and his team have built is no insignificant achievement and the rising tide they've created in the tech YouTuber space has risen a lot of boats.</li><li>While I may not agree with every position he takes or decision he makes, I believe Linus to be a highly ethical person who operates from a strong personal moral compass. Again, his compass and mine don't align 100% of the time, but I'm saying I think he is a scrupulous dude.</li><li>That being said, I do think LMG's 'quantity over quality' approach is leading to many of the errors and questionable behavior that Steve is talking about. As the LMG team <a href="https://youtu.be/0cTpTMl8kFY">says for themselves</a>, that strategy probably made sense as LMG was growing, but it's not clear that it's necessary or optimal now that the company is worth over $100mm.</li><li>Being that big creates an obligation for LMG to recognize that its actions and mistakes can have a massive impact on smaller partners, businesses and other creators. This is the focus of GN's criticisms in the second part of the video and the part that resonates most deeply with me.</li><li>Parenthetically, this sort of takedown piece is very on-brand for GN. There's a lot GN does that I find valuable, but the 'self-appointed guardian of ethics in the PC hardware community' shtick wears thin sometimes.</li></ul><div>What I find more interesting is the thread of the discussion (addressed in the GN video, LMG's reply and <a href="https://youtu.be/TcSkrkXd2H0">this one</a> from Hardware Unboxed) about hardware review and testing practices. GN and Hardware Unboxed, among many others, trade on the accuracy and rigor of their testing. LTT Labs is an attempt to do the same thing and bring LMG into that space. These outlets develop elaborate testing practices. They conduct dozens of benchmarks and hundreds of test runs for significant hardware releases. They have strong opinions about testing methodology and boast of their experience.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>The LMG controversy has me wondering how valuable that work is, though, even to PC building enthusiasts. It's got me thinking about what I actually care about when, say, a new generation of CPUs or GPUs comes out; or when an interesting new piece of hardware is released.</div><div><br /></div><div>Specifically, I'm talking about what sort of testing is useful, particularly in the context of day-one reviews. This kind of coverage and testing isn't what <i>I personally</i> gravitate towards in this space: that would be the more entertaining, wacky, oddball stuff that I think nobody covers better than LMG at its best. I'm talking about the kind of coverage that major component categories get around new launches: CPUs, GPUs, cases, CPU coolers and, to a lesser extent, power supplies.</div><div><br /></div><div>The day-one review context is also important, because it imposes certain constraints on the coverage, some of which limit the possibilities and, frankly, the value of rigorous testing:</div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The reviewer is typically working with only one review sample of the product;</li><li>That review sample is provided by the manufacturer relatively close to the product launch, limiting the time the reviewer has to test and evaluate the product;</li><li>The reviewer is under an NDA and embargo (usually lasting until the product launch date), limiting the reviewers' ability to share data and conclusions with each other during the narrow window the day-one reviewers have to test.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div>First of all, for all these component categories, I'd like to know if the product suffers from a fatal flaw. This might be either a fatal design flaw that is apparent from the spec sheet (e.g. the limited memory bandwidth of lower-end 40-series GPUs) or something that is only uncovered through observation (e.g. 12-volt high-power connectors causing fires on higher-end 40-series GPUs).</div><div><br /></div><div>The thing is, though, neither of those types of flaws is identified through rigorous day-one testing. The design flaws are sometimes apparent just from the spec sheet. In other cases, the spec sheet might raise a suspicion and some testing -- perhaps a customized regimen specific to ferreting out the suspicion -- is needed. And often, some level of expertise is required to explain the flaw. These are all valuable services these tech reviewers provide, but they are, by and large, not about rigorous testing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Flaws that can only be detected through observation are rarely uncovered through the kind of rigorous testing these outlets do (and I don't think these outlets would claim differently). The typical pattern is that the product hits the market; users buy and use it; and some of them start to notice the flaw (or its effects). Then one or more of these outlets gets wind of it and does a rigorous investigation. This is an extremely valuable service these outlets provide (and also where GN really shines) but, again, you don't typically find it in a day-one review and it's not uncovered through testing.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm also looking for what I'll call 'spec sheet contextualization and validation.' I want to know what the manufacturer claims of the product in terms of features and performance. To the extent there's interesting, new, innovative or just unfamiliar stuff on the spec sheet, I'd love for it to be explained and contextualized. And I obviously want to know if the claim are to be believed. (There are also useful derivatives of the contextualization and validation that these reviewers often present and explain, for instance generational improvement, price-to-performance-ratio data and comparisons to competing products).</div><div><br /></div><div>Some amount of testing is sometimes helpful for that contextualization and more or less required for validation. And particularly in the case of validation, some degree of well-designed-and-executed, standardized benchmarking is required. It makes sense to me, for example, for an individual reviewer to have a standardized test suite for new GPUs that uses a standardized hardware test bench and ~6-8 games that represent different performance scenarios (e.g. GPU-intensive, compute-intensive, etc.).</div><div><br /></div><div>Things start to get questionable for me when outlets start to go much beyond this level though. The prime example of this is the component type where these outlets tend to emphasize the importance of their testing rigor the most: CPU coolers. To their credit, the reputable outlets recognize that getting accurate, apples-to-apples data about the relative performance of different coolers requires procedures and test setups that accommodate difficult-to-achieve controls for multiple variables: ambient temperature, case airflow, thermal compound application/quality, mount quality, noise levels and both the choice and thermal output of the system's heat-generating components, to name a few.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the thing is, the multitude of factors to be controlled for under laboratory conditions undermines the applicability of those laboratory test results to actual use under non-laboratory conditions, possibly to the point of irrelevance. Hypothetically, let's assume that Cooler A (the more expensive cooler) keeps a given high-TDP CPU on average 3 degrees C cooler than Cooler B in a noise-normalized, properly controlled and perfectly conducted test. Here are a few of the factors that make it potentially difficult to translate that laboratory result to the real world:</div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Component selection: </b>Though Cooler A outperforms Cooler B on the high-TDP CPUs reviewers typically used for controlled testing, the advantage might disappear with a lower-TDP CPU that both coolers can cool adequately. Alternatively, as we've seen with recent high-TDP CPUs, the limiting factor in the cooling chain tends not to be anything about the cooler (assuming it's rated for that CPU and TDP) but rather the heat transfer capacity of the CPU's IHS. I recently switched from a NH-U12S (with two 120mm fans) to an NH-D15 (with an extra fin stack and two 140mm fans) in my 5800X3D system and saw no improvement in idle thermals with the fans in both setups at 100% load, I suspect because of this very issue.</li><li><b>Mount quality: </b>CPU coolers vary greatly in ease of installation. So even if Cooler A outperforms Cooler B when mounted properly, if Cooler A's mounting mechanism is significantly more error-prone (especially in the hands of an inexperienced user), that advantage may be lost. In fact, if Cooler B's mounting mechanism is significantly easier to use or less error-prone, it might actually <i>outperform</i> Cooler B for the majority of users because more of them will achieve a good mount. The same applies to...</li><li><b>Thermal compound application:</b> Not only might a given user apply too much or too little thermal compound (where a reviewer is more likely to get it right), but, more deeply, the quality of the application and spread pattern can vary substantially between installation attempts, even among experienced builders, including, I would add, professional reviewers. Anyone who has built multiple PCs has had the experience of having poor CPU thermals, changing nothing about their setup other than remounting the CPU cooler (seemingly doing nothing differently) and seeing a multi-degree improvement in thermals. Outlets like GN providing contact heatmaps as part of their rigorous testing is a nod to this issue, but they typically only show the heatmaps for two different mounting attempts (at least in the videos), and that seems like too small a sample size to be meaningful. This brings up the issue of...</li><li><b>Manufacturing variance from one unit of the same product to another: </b>At most, these outlets are testing two different physical units of the same product, and frequently just one. I don't <i>know</i> this, but I suspect that because good contact between the CPU heat spreader and cooler coldplate is such a key factor in performance, the quality and smoothness of the coldplate matters <i>a lot</i>, and is exactly the kind of thing that could vary from one unit to another due to manufacturing variance. All other things being equal, a better brand/sku of cooler will have less unit-to-unit variance, but the only way to determine this would be to test with far more than one or two units, which none of these reviewers does (and, indeed, none can do with just one review sample provided by the manufacturer). Absent that data, it's very similar to the silicon lottery with chips: your real-world mileage may vary if you happen to win (or lose) the luck-of-manufacturing draw.</li><li><b>Ambient temperature and environmental heat dissipation: </b>Proper laboratory conditions for cooler testing involve controlling the ambient environmental temperature. That means keeping it constant throughout the test, which means that the test environment must have enough capacity to <i>eliminate</i> the heat the test bench is putting out (along with any other heat introduced into the test environment from the outside during the test period, like from the sun shining through the windows during the test). If the user's real-world environment also has this capacity, the test results are more likely to be applicable. If, on the other hand, the real-world environment <i>can't </i>eliminate the heat being introduced (say it lacks air conditioning, is poorly ventilated or has lots of heat being introduced from other sources), it changes the whole picture. Fundamentally, ambient temperature is a factor a responsible reviewer must control for in a scientific test. However, it is <i>almost never</i> controlled for in real-world conditions. And, arguably, the impact of uncontrolled ambient temperature is one of the most significant factors affecting quality of life in the real world (the other being noise, on which see below). From a certain point of view, PC cooling is about finding a balance where you get heat away from your components fast enough that they don't thermal throttle (or exhibit other negative effects of heat) but slow enough that you don't overwhelm the surrounding environment's ability to dissipate that heat. If the PC system outputs heat faster than the outside environment can dissipate it, the outside environment gets hotter, which sucks for <i>your</i> quality of life if <i>you're</i> also in that environment and trying to keep cool. This is why, considering only this issue, a custom water cooling solution with lots of fluid volume would yield a higher quality of life for most users than, e.g., a single tower air cooler. The greater thermal mass and conductivity of the fluid vs. the air cooler's heat pipes and fin stack allows for more heat to get away from the components quickly but remain <i>internal</i> to the system and then transferred into the environment over time, which is a better match for the primary ways we cool our environments (like air conditioning), which are better at dissipating relatively even, rather than spikey, heat loads.</li><li><b>Case and case airflow: </b>I think this is by far the most significant factor in the real world. Any relative performance difference between Coolers A and B under laboratory conditions can easily be wiped out or reversed when either cooler is placed in a particular setup with particular airflow characteristics. Both coolers might perform great in a case with stellar airflow and perform poorly in one that is starved for airflow. But, more deeply, certain cooler designs perform better under certain case airflow conditions than others. An AIO where the radiator's fans can't create enough static pressure to overcome the case's airflow restrictions won't realize its full performance potential. Reviewers (rightly) try to create consistent test conditions that are fair to all the products being tested, but <i>your</i> setup probably isn't.</li></ul><div>For these reasons, I regard relative performance data about different coolers under laboratory conditions as basically worthless, however rigorously collected it is. If I'm evaluating a cooler, what I actually care about are</div></div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The compatibility and rated performance of the cooler for a given CPU and case/mobo. This is spec sheet stuff, though some level of testing validation is valuable.</li><li>How easy and foolproof the mounting mechanism is, which is best surfaced through an on-camera build demonstration, not rigorous testing. Here, I find build videos far more valuable than product reviews, because if you see an experienced YouTuber struggling to mount a dang cooler, it should at least give you pause. I'd also note that build videos are inherently more entertaining than product reviews, because it's compelling to watch people struggle and overcome adversity, and even more fun when they do so in a humorous and good-natured way, which is a big part of the secret sauce of folks like Linus and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@PcCentric">PC Centric</a>.</li><li>The noise level of any included fans when run at, say, 30%, 50%, 80% and 100% load. This might be idiosyncratic to me (though I suspect not), but I'm particularly sensitive to fan noise. Given that the cooler <i>can</i> fit in my case and <i>can </i>handle the output of my CPU, what matters to me is how noisy my whole system is going to be, both at idle and under load. With any cooler, I assume I'm going to have to tune the curves of both its fan(s) and my case fans to find the best balance of noise and cooling across different workloads (e.g idle, gaming load, full load). I can't possibly know how this will end up in <i>my</i> build in advance, and rigorous testing under laboratory conditions doesn't help me. So the best I can hope for from a reviewer is to give me a sense of <i>how much noise</i> the cooler's fans will contribute to overall system noise at various RPM levels. (This is the primary reason I favor Noctua fans and coolers and am willing to pay a premium for them: they are super quiet relative to virtually all competitors at either a given RPM or thermal dissipation level. And it's the primary advantage of switching to the D15 in my current setup, since the larger fans and dual tower design mean it can dissipate more heat with less noise than the U12S.)</li></ul><div>Stated another way: If a cooler is rated for my CPU, fits in my case and can be mounted properly with a minimum of fuss, I assume it can adequately cool <i>my</i> PC at <i>some</i> noise level. The only question is how noisy, and that's a function of how fast I need to run <i>my </i>system's fans (including the cooler fan(s), but also every other fan) to achieve adequate cooling, and of the noise level of <i>my </i>fans (again, including, but not limited to, the cooler fan) when run at those speeds. No amount of laboratory testing can answer that question, however rigorous (unless it were conducted on a test bench identical to my system, which is unlikely).</div></div><div><br /></div><div>I've been throwing the word 'rigorous' around, and it's worth decomposing what it means and why 'rigorous' testing is (or isn't) valuable to the consumer. One aspect of it is just that the test is conducted properly and free of human error (and that the rigor of the process makes it easy to identify when human error is committed and correct it). Another aspect is that the testing methodology itself is well-designed insofar as it provides accurate and useful information to the consumer. My main concern with 'rigorous' testing in many of these product categories (especially with CPU coolers) is that the rigorous, laboratory testing methodologies don't yield especially useful information that can be applied outside of laboratory consumer conditions.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another aspect of rigor is repetition/replicability. Again, there are different dimensions to this. Certainly, a rigorous reviewer ought to conduct multiple trials of the same test to see if their results are consistent. But the thing is, this is more of a check on <i>other aspects of the rigor of the individual reviewer's own methodology and work </i>than anything else<i>.</i> If a review does, say, 50 trials (which is, realistically, way more than any of these outlets are doing for PC components) and finds that 5 trials are significant outliers, it suggests one of three things:</div><div><br /></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>The tester committed human error on the outlier test runs, in which case they should try to track it down and correct it, or else throw out the results of those five trials.</li><li>The testing methodology fails to account for some confounding factor that was present in those five cases and not the others, in which case the reviewer ought to track that down and control for it if possible.</li><li>The individual unit being tested (remember, these reviewers are typically testing only one unit of the product being evaluated) exhibits weird behavior. Technically, this is an instance of (2) because <i>something</i> must be causing the particular unit to behave oddly, it's just that the reviewer hasn't been able to control for that something. And given time constraints on day-one reviews especially, this is when an individual reviewer is most likely to say 'I don't know... maybe I have a defective unit here, but I can't be sure and don't have the time or resources to investigate further.'</li></ol><div>So, again, an individual reviewer doing multiple trials is valuable, but primarily because it helps that reviewer identify problems with their own execution, methodology or the individual unit being tested. A consumer should have more confidence in the data from a reviewer who performs 'rigorous' testing in this sense, but only to the extent their methodology is basically sound and with the understanding that any one reviewer's results have limited value in extrapolating to how a different unit of that product will perform for you, even under otherwise identical conditions because.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>The kind of rigor that <i>does help </i>a consumer to have confidence that the results <i>will</i> apply to them is the kind that comes from the repetition and replicability achieved by <i>multiple reviewers reviewing </i>different<i> units of the same product using the same (basically) sound methodology. </i>This is the kind of rigor that modern laboratory science provides (e.g. a scientist achieves a certain result, publishes his methodology and findings and then other scientists follow the same methodology with different people and materials and see if the result is replicated). It's also why it's important to consider <i>multiple reviews from multiple reviewers</i> when evaluating a product as a consumer. Consistent results across multiple reviewers makes it more likely that <i>you</i> will achieve a similar result if <i>you </i>buy the product. Inconsistent results suggest manufacturing variances, problems with quality control, design flaws that lead to inconsistent behavior across units, etc.</div><div><br /></div><div>So what really would be of greatest value to consumers in the space isn't more elaborate methodology and more trials (i.e. more rigor) by any <i>one</i> reviewer. It's <i>many</i> reviewers following (basically) the same methodology where that methodology does the minimum necessary to produce meaningful results and can be easily replicated; and that the methodology incorporates the minimum number of trials by an individual reviewer to reasonably provide for error identification and correction by that individual reviewer. If folks are interested in raising the PC hardware review sector (and discourse), figuring out how to achieve <i>that</i> is what they should be striving for.</div>Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15767964393760542308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-37732175170385911952020-09-22T22:42:00.001-04:002020-09-22T22:42:53.631-04:00An overview of PC build performance limitations and their resolutions<p>This post is the follow up to the <a href="https://www.alspach.org/2020/09/towards-better-understanding-of.html">more philosophical discussion</a> of why 'bottleneck' isn't a terribly helpful concept in understanding and fixing PC build issues. It intends to offer a more sound perspective that isn't fixated on the 'bottleneck' concept and is geared towards new builders.</p><p>This article isn't intended as a comprehensive guide to tuning or optimizing every aspect of a PC build. It's more of an overview to help new builders get oriented towards building for and optimizing the total play experience. I'll probably follow up with a final post in the series with more practical, step-by-step build development advice based on the framework I'm laying out here.</p><h1 style="text-align: left;">The total play experience</h1><div>Focusing just on statistical performance optimization in building or optimizing a PC is, I think, too narrow a view. Instead, the goal should be to optimize the total play experience: this includes not only what is traditionally thought of a 'performance optimization' (i.e. trying to squeeze every single FPS out of a game), but also elements that are more about 'quality of life' and contribute less directly, if at all, to, e.g., a system's scores on a synthetic benchmark.</div><div><br /></div><div>Broadly, the 'performance optimization' elements have to do with directly optimizing the system's <i>rendering pipeline</i>, so we'll start that topic with a brief discussion of what this is and the three main components that contribute to it -- <b>CPU</b>, <b>GPU</b> (or graphics card) and the monitor (or display) <b>refresh rate</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>But first, we'll start with the more indirect, 'quality of life' elements, because they're easier to understand and summarize.</div><h1 style="text-align: left;">Quality of life elements</h1><div>There are many aspects of a system that improve the quality of the play experience. For instance, having a keyboard or mouse that is responsive and 'just feels right' may significantly improve a gamer's experience. The right desk or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pXrfHUjzmM">chair</a> might greatly increase comfort. A reliable, low-latency Internet connection greatly improves the experience of online games. Not to take away from any of these factors, but at the highest level, I think there are three build elements that, when properly considered and set up, greatly contribute to quality of life in a modern gaming PC build: <b>mass storage</b>, <b>RAM</b> and <b>monitor factors other than refresh rate </b>(we'll discuss refresh rate in the performance optimization section).</div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Mass Storage</h2><div>Mass storage refers to where your system stores large sets of files, such as your operating system, game downloads, documents and save game files. In a typical Windows system, mass storage devices are assigned drive letters like C, D, E and so on.</div><div><br /></div><div>Physically, mass storage devices can either be mechanical Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), which store data using magnetic plates or solid state drives (SSDs), which store data using electrical signals in memory chips. HDDs are the older technology, are much cheaper per gigabyte of storage and tend to come in lager capacities (eg 2TB, 4TB and up). SSDs are newer, are more expensive per gigabyte and tend to come in smaller capacities (e.g. up to 2TB, though larger devices are starting to become available). Both HDDs and SSDs come in a variety of form factors. All HDDs and some SSDs need to be mounted to mounting point in your PC case and connected to your motherboard with one cable for data and to your system's power supply with a second cable for power. Some SSDs are cards that are installed directly into a slot on your motherboard and don't require any separate cables. Others are installed and connected just like hard drives.</div><div><br /></div><div>SSDs are able to store and retrieve data significantly (dozens or hundreds of times) faster than HDDs. This means that if you install your operating system on an SSD, your PC will boot noticeably faster than it will from an HDD. And if you store your games and save game data on an SSD, level and save file load times will be faster.</div><div><br /></div><div>In my experience of using computers over 30 years, switching to a system with an SSD had the single biggest impact on how 'snappy' I perceived my system to be as compared to any other innovation or evolution of hardware.</div><h2 style="text-align: left;">RAM</h2><div>RAM (Random Access Memory) is very fast storage that your system uses for programs that are actively running. For most modern (circa 2020) games will run fine on a system with 8GB of available RAM, with 16GB providing reasonable room for future proofing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Keep in mind that these are recommendations for <i>available RAM</i>. Your game you're playing isn't going to be the only thing using RAM on your system. The operating system itself has some overhead. And if, like most people, you have several browser tabs, chat programs and utilities running in the background while you game, each of those consumes RAM, leaving less than 100% of your total RAM available to the game.</div><div><br /></div><div>Running out of RAM while gaming is not fun. It can lead to the game becoming unstable or crashing in the worst case scenario. Short of this, when a typical Windows system runs low on available memory, it attempts to free it up by writing some data from RAM to one of the system's (much slower) mass storage devices in a process known as <i>paging.</i> This process consumes processor and disk resources as it runs, which can end up stealing those resources from the game itself and leading to lag or hitching.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are other considerations that go into fully optimizing a system's RAM beyond capacity. These include the speed at which the memory operates, the number of memory modules, the fine tuning of memory timings and more. Different systems are more or less sensitive to different aspects of memory performance/optimization: AMD Ryzen processors, for example, have been shown to benefit significantly from fast RAM.</div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Monitor Factors</h2><div>First of all, I strongly encourage you to think of your monitor as integral component of your gaming system. It's the thing you're going to spend all your time looking at. If it doesn't deliver a good experience to you, it's going to be a bummer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Refresh rate (discussed) later is only one factor affecting the quality of the play experience provided by your monitor. Other factors (by no means exhaustive) include</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>How accurately the monitor reproduces color</li><li>How black its blackest blacks are</li><li>How big it is physically</li><li>It's pixel resolution</li><li>What its pixel response time is (i.e. how fast pixels can change color)</li></ul></div><h1 style="text-align: left;">Rendering Pipeline Performance</h1><div>The elements of a gaming system most traditionally identified with its performance and specs make up its <i>rendering pipeline</i>. Before discussing the components -- CPU, GPU and monitor refresh rate -- let's talk about what the rendering pipeline is.</div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Frame rendering</h2><div>As you probably know, moving video and game images are made up of frames: still images that get shown to us very rapidly, one after the other. If the images are presented rapidly enough, this creates the illusion of motion. In games, the <i>rendering pipeline</i> is the process by which these frames get generated in realtime and are presented to the user.</div><div><br /></div><div>Performance of the rendering pipeline on a given system is traditionally expressed in <i>Frames Per Second</i>, <i>FPS </i>or <i>framerate</i>. As you know from your experience as a player, a game's framerate can vary from moment to moment based on how demanding the rendering work is at that moment. If a game isn't able to consistently generate enough FPS for a given user to perceive continuous motion, the play experience is compromised by stutter, lag, hitching, etc. The more FPS the system can present to the user, the smoother the play experience will seem (up to certain limits).</div><div><br /></div><div>In order to ultimately 'deliver' a frame to the player, each component of the rending pipeline must perform a specific function before 'shipping' the frame on to the next component. For example, the CPU must finish its work on a given frame before the GPU (the next component in the pipeline) can begin its work on it. The GPU needs the results of the CPU's work in order to do its job (this is a slight oversimplification but its true enough for our purposes).</div><div><br /></div><div>For a user to play a game at a steady 60 FPS, the system must present him with a new frame every 16.67 milliseconds. If the CPU takes so long to do its work before handing the frame off to the GPU that the entire rendering process can't complete within that 16.67 milliseconds, the frame rate with go down. This is an example of the proper understanding of the concept 'bottleneck.' If the frames take long enough to generate, the user will experience stutter, hitching and the like.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">CPU</h3><div>The Central Processing Unit or CPU is the general-purpose computing 'engine' of your system. In the frame rendering cycle, the CPU is responsible for two main things. The first is computing the <i>state</i> of the game in every frame. You can think of the game's state as the complete set of information about every element of the game and every object in the game world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Computing the game's state requires the CPU to do many things, for instance processing control inputs, updating the game's physics simulation and processing the behavioral instructions of enemy AI. The more complex the game, the more the CPU has to do each frame. A strategy game with hundreds of AI units on the screen at once will require more CPU resources to update its state than a simple 2D platformer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once the game's state has been calculated, the CPU uses that data to create the instructions that the GPU will use in the next step of the frame rendering cycle. These instructions are known as <i>draw calls</i>. The more visually complex the frame is, the more draw calls will be required for the GPU to render it and, therefore, the more draw calls the CPU will first need to make. Factors like how high the game's resolution is, texture quality, number of light sources in the scene and whether any post-processing effects (e.g. fog or blur) are being applied affect the number of draw calls.</div><div><br /></div><div>As far as performance goes, one CPU can be superior to another in its ability to run more instructions per second. When we speak of one CPU being 'faster' than another, this is essentially what we're referring to. A CPUs clock rate, usually expressed in megahertz or gigahertz (e.g. 4.5Ghz) is a measurement of how many instruction cycles per second the CPU can perform, with higher numbers indicate higher performance. All things being equal, a faster CPU will be able to drive more FPS than a slower one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Modern CPUs typically contain more than one CPU core. Each core is capable of running instructions independently of the other cores and at the same time, allowing the CPU on whole to do more things at once. Historically -- and still in 2020 -- most games are not coded in a way that takes advantage of lots of processing cores, so games generally benefit more from faster CPU clocks than they do from more cores. This is starting to change though. With the availability of inexpensive, higher core count consumer CPUs like AMD Ryzen and low-level APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan that let developers more easily create games that take advantage of and automatically scale to higher core counts, expect more and more games to optimize for multicore performance over pure clock rates in the years to come.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">GPU</h3><div>The GPU is an integrated set of components, including dedicated processors and (usually) memory, that can create visual images very quickly. Because their components are highly optimized for this task, GPUs can create these images much more quickly than general-purpose computing hardware (like a regular CPU) can, which is a necessity for high-FPS gaming: the modern CPUs and system RAM can't both process the game state and render the visuals quickly enough, so the workload gets split between the CPU and GPU.</div><div><br /></div><div>GPUs use raw visual assets (such as the textures used to create object's appearances) and follow the instructions contained in the draw calls to produce the frame images that the player eventually sees. A draw call might (effectively) contain an instruction that says 'apply this texture to the surface of a triangle with it vertices at the following screen coordinates...' The GPU is the system component that actually executes these instructions and ultimately determines what color each pixel in the frame should be based on that frames total set of draw call instructions.</div><div><br /></div><div>As GPUs evolve over time, manufacturers increase their capabilities by making their processing units faster, adding more processing units, adding more and faster memory and more. More powerful GPUs are able to process more FPS than less powerful ones. In some cases, new GPUs support entirely new capabilities. Nvidia's RTX GPUs for example, have specialized processing cores that allow them to accurately simulate how light travels and interacts with different surfaces, creating much more realistic lighting effects in a process known as <i>realtime ray tracing (</i>in games where the developer supports it<i>).</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>If a CPU is consistently able to hand the GPU an acceptable number of FPS but the GPU is unable to do its work quickly enough, then the GPU may be bottlenecking the system (in the legitimate sense of that term).</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Monitor Refresh Rate</h3><div>Once the GPU has finished rendering a frame, it sends that frame to the monitor (or other display device like a TV), which then displays it. Monitors are capable of updating themselves a certain number of times per second. This is known as the monitor's <i>maximum refresh rate</i>, or simply <i>refresh rate</i>, and is measured in cycles per second, or hertz (hz). A 60hz monitor can fully replace the image on the screen 60 times per second.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like other parts of the rendering pipeline, fully refreshing the display takes some (tiny) finite amount of time: it doesn't happen instantaneously. Modern monitors update themselves by replacing the contents of the screen one line (or row) at a time from top to bottom. On a 1920 by 1080 monitor, there are 1080 rows of pixels on the screen. During each update cycle, the first line is updated, then the second, then the third, and so on. After the 1080-th line is updated, the process starts over again for the next frame.</div><div><br /></div><div>As mentioned earlier, a monitor with a higher refresh rate (paired with other system components capable of driving it) will result in a gaming experience that feels smoother and more immediate, within the limits of what the player can appreciate. Some people can actually perceive the flicker between frames of a 60hz monitor. Others can't. Most gamers will perceive an improvement in smoothness when moving from a 60hz to a 120 or 144hz display. Elite gamers like esports athletes can benefit from 240hz and even 360hz displays, at least under certain circumstances. At an extreme, it's almost certain that no human being would benefit from a hypothetical 1000hz monitor as opposed to a 500hz one.</div><div><br /></div><div>If your GPU is not capable of driving more FPS than your monitor's refresh rate, you are leaving performance -- in the form of potential smoothness and immediacy -- on the table, <i>assuming you can personally perceive the difference between the current and potentially higher refresh rates.</i> For me -- a 40+ year-old person (whose vision and reflexes have therefore started to deteriorate with age) who doesn't play a lot of twitch-heavy game titles, I <i>can</i> appreciate the difference between 60 and 144hz in the titles I like to play. But I can't perceive any difference between 144 and 240hz or higher. A younger, elite player of twitch-heavy games might have a different experience, but a system capable of doing 240hz (as opposed to 144) would be wasted on me.</div><div><br /></div><div>The opposite situation can also be true: your GPU may be capable of providing more FPS than your monitor's refresh rate is capable of displaying. In practice, this usually results in one of two conditions:</div><div><br /></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>If you do nothing else, the system will continue to deliver frames to the monitor as it generates them. This means that the monitor may receive more than one frame per refresh cycle. At whatever point during the refresh cycle the new frame is received, the monitor will pick up refreshing the next display line based on the newer data in the second frame. This results in what players experience as <i>tearing:</i> a visible line on the screen that represents the border between where the monitor drew the frame based on the older vs. the newer frame data.</li><li>The GPU/game setting called <i>Vsync</i> forces the GPU to synchronize its refresh rate with that of the monitor. Since a standard monitor is a 'dumb' device in this respect, this is accomplished by the GPU artificially limiting the framerate it outputs to coincide with monitor's refresh rate. This means that even though your GPU and CPU might be able to output 300 FPS on a given game, Vsync will limit that output to 144hz if that's all your monitor will support. This eliminates tearing but leaves frames on the table.</li></ol><div>There are also what are known as <i>adaptive refresh rate technologies</i> like GSync and Freesync which make the monitors that support them smarter. These monitors are able to communicate with the GPU and can synchronize their refresh cycles precisely at the arbitrary FPS value the GPU is outputting at a given moment (up to the monitor's maximum refresh rate).</div></div><div><br /></div><div>If you are in this scenario (and assuming you don't have an adaptive display), which side of the lower FPS / no tearing vs. higher FPS / with tearing line you fall on is a matter of personal preference.</div><div><br /></div><div>As noted elsewhere, there are verifiable benefits -- especially for competitive gamers -- to running at the highest FPS possible, even if your monitor's refresh rate is lower. A full discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this post, but I do want to acknowledge it. But I consider it a specialized issue relevant to certain gaming scenarios, not one of general build advice.</div><h1 style="text-align: left;">Putting in All Together</h1><div>This table summarizes the six components of a build that most commonly impact quality of life and rendering performance, along with how the user will perceive a component with sub-optimal performance.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><table class=MsoTableGrid border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0
style='border-collapse:collapse;border:none'>
<tr>
<td width=623 colspan=4 valign=top style='width:467.5pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:0in;text-align:center;
line-height:normal'>‘Quality of Life’ Components</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>System
Component</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Description</p>
</td>
<td width=312 colspan=2 valign=top style='width:233.8pt;border-top:none;
border-left:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>What you’ll experience
if this component is limiting system performance</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Mass Storage</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Provides
long-term storage for lots of files like your operating system, game files
and savegame data</p>
</td>
<td width=312 colspan=2 valign=top style='width:233.8pt;border-top:none;
border-left:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>A slow mass storage
device (such a traditional HDD) will make loading games and saving/loading savegame
seem slow.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>RAM</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Provides super-fast
working memory for running programs (including games)</p>
</td>
<td width=312 colspan=2 valign=top style='width:233.8pt;border-top:none;
border-left:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>If the system
doesn’t have enough available memory for all running programs, games may
hitch, lag or slow down as the operating system <i>pages</i> to use slower
mass storage to hold data that would otherwise be in RAM.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Monitor factors
(not refresh rate)</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Affect the
perceived quality of the visuals displayed</p>
</td>
<td width=312 colspan=2 valign=top style='width:233.8pt;border-top:none;
border-left:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:-.25in;
line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Inaccurate color reproduction</p>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:
-.25in;line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Harsh or jagged edges around objects</p>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:
-.25in;line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Motion trails</p>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:
-.25in;line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Visual artifacts</p>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpLast style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:-.25in;
line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Overly bright or dim images (even after monitor adjustment)</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=623 colspan=4 valign=top style='width:467.5pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:0in;text-align:center;
line-height:normal'>Rendering Pipeline Components</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>System
Component</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Function</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.9pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>What you’ll experience
if this component’s performance is being limited by the preceding one</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.9pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>What you’ll
experience if this component gates the performance of the preceding one</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>CPU (or
processor)</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Provides general-purpose
computational power to the system. In games, does computational work to
update the game’s state and to create the draw call instructions the GPU will
use.</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.9pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>N/A</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.9pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:-.25in;
line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>N/A</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>GPU (or
graphics card)</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Executes draw
call instructions to generate the frame images that will be presented to the
user</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.9pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:-.25in;
line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Lower FPS</p>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:
-.25in;line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Lag and stutter</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.9pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;text-indent:
-.25in;line-height:107%'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Lower FPS</p>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;text-indent:
-.25in;line-height:107%'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Lag and stutter</p>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpLast style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;text-indent:
-.25in;line-height:107%'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>Missing out on certain visual effects / visual quality as you
lower graphics settings to compensate</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
border-top:none;padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Monitor refresh
rate</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.85pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Refers to how
many times per second the monitor can update every pixel on the screen</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.9pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0in;line-height:normal'>Visuals that
seem less smooth than they might otherwise be (difference may not be
perceptible to all users)</p>
</td>
<td width=156 valign=top style='width:116.9pt;border-top:none;border-left:
none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border-right:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt'>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:-.25in;
line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>With Vsync disabled, frame tearing</p>
<p class=MsoListParagraphCxSpLast style='margin-bottom:0in;text-indent:-.25in;
line-height:normal'><span style='font-family:Symbol'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span>With Vsync enabled, lower FPS than you would otherwise achieve</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table></div><div><br /></div>Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-65622774162610481992020-09-16T09:37:00.001-04:002020-09-16T11:53:06.922-04:00Towards a better understanding of 'bottlenecks' in PC building<p>In PC Building enthusiast communities, the subject of PC builds being 'bottlenecked' comes up quite frequently. It comes up a lot around the time new hardware -- like the recent RTX 3000 series -- is introduced. Or when (often novice) users are looking for build advice (e.g. 'Will a Ryzen 5 3600 bottleneck my build?').</p><p>I recently made a long post about how the concept of 'bottleneck' is frequently misused, poorly understood by and generally unhelpful for PC builders on <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/">r/buildapc</a>. The original post generated over 1,000 karma and lots of polarizing discussion and criticism. It's still available <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/ipg8f9/bottleneck_is_a_useless_concept/">here</a> and is worth a read if you're interested in the topic, though for reasons that are not clear to me it was removed by the moderators.</p><p>Since the original post, I've considered some of the criticisms and have been chewing on the issues more. This post represents me working through some of this in written form.</p><h1 style="text-align: left;">How is the term 'bottleneck' generally understood?</h1><div>When people use this term, what do they mean by it, both in general and specifically in the context of PC building? Among inexperienced PC builders, there is a lot confusion and fuzziness, but that is to be expected whenever novices engage with a concept in a new domain. I'll come back to this issue later, but to start I want to focus on the more sophisticated understanding of the term that more experienced folks, often with engineering backgrounds, have.</div><div><br /></div><div>The sense most experienced folks understand the term, which is nicely encapsulated by <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-bottleneck-in-engineering">this Quora answer</a>, I'm going to call the <i>Informal Engineering Version </i>of the concept. I define it as follows:</div><blockquote><div><b>bottleneck (Informal Engineering Version): </b>noun. A component of a system, the performance limitations of which limit the overall performance of the system.</div></blockquote><p>This definition struck me as fine in an informal sense, but left me feeling vaguely uneasy. It took me <i>a lot</i> of thinking to get at precisely why, but I think it amounts to two defects of the definition: a major and a minor one.</p><h1 style="text-align: left;">What's the alternative?</h1><p>To get at the major one, it helps to ask what the alternative would be to a system where the performance is limited by the performance of a single component. I think there are two.</p><p>The first would be a system where performance was <i>unlimited</i>. But this is, of course, impossible. Every system, just like every thing, has some specific nature, including specific limitations. In the realm of PC building, there is obviously no such thing as a PC of unlimited performance.</p><p>The second alternative would be that the system performance is limited by the performance of <i>more than one</i> component. There's a sense in which this could be true: in PC building it would be the theoretical 'perfectly balanced system.' And targeting a balanced build is good advice insofar as it goes. For instance, for a given build budget, and all other things being equal, it makes sense to spend it in a 'balanced' way, rather than under-investing in certain components and over-investing in others.</p><h1 style="text-align: left;">The 'every system has a bottleneck' school</h1><p>But in practice, it's not possible to achieve the Platonic ideal of a balanced build. In PC builds, and indeed in most systems, there will almost always be some single factor that imposes an upper limit on system performance. The proponents of the Informal Engineering concept of 'bottleneck' in the PC building community often espouse this view, with their mantra being 'Your system will always have a bottleneck.' For instance, they'll say, if your weak GPU is currently gating your build, as soon as you upgrade it, your previously second-weakest component (let's say your monitor with its low refresh rate) will become the new bottleneck.</p><p>It's worth examining what this actually amounts to. Because all systems, practically speaking, have some single weakest component, all systems are perpetually bottlenecked. But all this means is that all systems have some limitation on their performance, which is to say that all systems have some definite identity. It reduces the concept of 'bottleneck' to meaning nothing more than a statement of the law of identity; that a system can do what it does and can't do what it can't. Am I 'bottlenecked' in my inability to fly because I don't have wings? Or in my inability to still have my cake after I eat it because the universe doesn't allow for that?</p><p>This is why I say this conception of bottleneck is useless. Every system is equally 'bottlenecked.' Your brand new Core i9 10000k series, 256 GB RAM, RTX 3090 and 360hz display system is bottlenecked because it can only output as many FPS as its weakest component (whichever that is) allows it to.</p><p>The same system with, e.g. a GTX 700 series card instead would be less performant -- the neck of the bottle at the GPU would be narrower, so to speak. Proponents of the Informal Engineering definition would say that the latter system is more bottlenecked than the former. But I think this view is off. It's like saying that a corpse is 'more dead' than a living person. No it isn't. The living person isn't dead at all.</p><p>This wrong conception is common among PC building novices and is reinforced by veteran builders of the 'every system has a bottleneck' variety. Many of the new builder questions on, e.g., PC building Reddit communities ask things like 'Will this graphics card be a bottleneck in my build?' The invariable response from this is crowd is, of course, that every system has a bottleneck. Maybe it's the graphics card right now. But if the graphics card were upgraded, the system would be bottlenecked by some other component. What is the novice builder supposed to do with this perspective? Throw up his hands and resign himself to a system that will forever be hopelessly bottlenecked in one way or another, his performance aspirations always frustrated?</p><h1 style="text-align: left;">No, not every system is bottlenecked</h1><p>The way out of this dilemma is to identify that something is a bottleneck only if it, in fact, imposes a <i>significant</i> limitation on the overall performance of the system. This leads to what I'll call the <i>Interim Engineering Version</i> of the concept, which is close to the first definition on the 'bottleneck' <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottleneck_(engineering)#:~:text=In%20engineering%2C%20a%20bottleneck%20is,is%20limited%20by%20its%20neck.">Wikipedia page</a><i>:</i></p><p></p><blockquote><b>bottleneck (Interim Engineering Version): </b>noun. a component of a system, the performance limitations of which impose a significant limit on the overall performance of the system.</blockquote><p>On this improved conception, whether something is a bottleneck or not hinges on whether the performance limitation is significant. And what counts as significant is highly dependent on the context of use. If a given component's limitations don't impose a <i>significant</i> limitation on overall system performance in the context in question, than that component <i>is not a bottleneck</i>, even if it happens to be the single component that is limiting overall system performance. Moreover, if the system's overall performance is adequate to its purpose, then the system as a whole <i>is not bottlenecked</i>.</p><p>In PC gaming terms, within the context of playing <i>CS Go</i> at 1080p (i.e. 1920 by 1080, 60hz), the following systems are equally <i>not</i> bottlnecked:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Core i9 10900k, RTX 3090, 360hz monitor</li><li>Core i9 10900k, GTX 1060, 360hz monitor</li><li>Core i9 10900k, GTX 3090, 60hz monitor</li><li>Core i5 6500, GTX 1070, 60hz monitor</li></ol><div>All of these systems will deliver an acceptable play experience of at least 60fps at the target resolution and high graphics settings. Systems 1 and 4 represent 'balanced' builds. (1) is vastly more performant than (4), but both are not bottlenecked with respect to this task, and neither contains a single component that is markedly weaker than the others. Systems 2 and 3 each have an obvious component that is limiting the overall system performance (the GPU and monitor, respectively), but both will still be adequate to the task. Their limitations are not significant in this context.</div><div><br /></div><div>In PC building, there is no value, in and of itself, in achieving the Platonic ideal of a system where every component fully saturates the next component downstream at every step of the chain. It doesn't necessarily follow that the 'unbottlenecked' system will outperform a bottlenecked one. System 2 from the list above will offer a better experience than the perfectly balanced, Platonic ideal of a system from say, 10 years ago, in spite of the GPU being a 'bottleneck' because all of the components are better than the best components you could purchase 10 years ago, including the 'bottlenecking' GPU.</div><h1 style="text-align: left;">Component x <i>does not </i>bottleneck component y</h1><div>Another subtlety here is that while an individual component may 'be a bottleneck' in a given system, 'being bottlenecked' (or not) <i>is a property of the entire system, not of a component.</i> In other words, it is fine, in principle, to say 'My CPU is a bottleneck' or 'My CPU is bottlenecking my system.' However, the common PC building forum question (and responses to it) of, e.g., 'Will this CPU bottleneck this GPU?' is invalid.</div><div><br /></div><div>As noted above, it will always be the case, in practice, that some component of a system is not fully saturated by another component. The fact alone that your CPU is not capable of outputting as many FPS as your GPU is capable of processing doesn't tell us anything of practical utility in evaluating your build or whether or not it's 'bottlenecked.' That cannot be assessed without reference to the overall performance of the system against its intended purpose. Even if the CPU is capable of saturating only 25% of the GPU's maximum capacity, if your goal is to play <i>Control</i> at 8K / 60 FPS, then as long as the CPU can consistently deliver 60 FPS to the GPU, the system is not bottlenecked.</div><div><br /></div><div>More deeply, even when one component really is bottlenecking the overall system, that's the perspective to take on it. By analogy, if your shoes are too small, it's correct to say that they, e.g., limit your ability to walk. It would be weird, on the other hand, to say they limit <i>your feet's</i> ability to walk. Walking is an activity of a person, not of feet, even though it involves feet. Likewise, performance (or lack thereof) against a purpose is an attribute of a system, not of any one of the system's components.</div><div><br /></div><div>This usage is, by the way, perfectly consistent with how the term is used in practice in engineering contexts. No one regards a system as bottlenecked if its overall performance is adequate to the needs (or anticipated needs) it is meant to serve. When a system is inadequate, it is often good methodology to search for bottlenecks and to fix any ones that are identified. And it would obviously be poor methodology to, e.g., increase the diameter of the base of the bottle while ignoring the diameter of the neck. But once performance is rendered adequate (or adequate to address expected future needs), the hunt usually stops. Engineers generally don't waste time quixotically tilting at 'bottleneck' windmills if the overall performance of the system is acceptable to current and anticipated future needs.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a side note, this is where the term 'bottleneck' as the source of the analogy is unfortunate, because in actual bottles, the narrowness of the neck is a <i>feature not a bug.</i> It <i>improves</i> the performance of the overall system relative to its purposes. A bottle without a neck is a jar. Bottles offers numerous advantages over jars for the applications we use bottles for. It's cheaper to seal, for example, because the sealing component (e.g. a cork or metal cap) can be smaller, and, historically, cork and metal were expensive materials. Most crucially: the fact that the narrow neck reduces the flow rate makes it easier to pour out of the bottle in a standardized and controlled way.</div><h1 style="text-align: left;">Other kinds of performance limitations</h1><div>The minor flaw of the standard definition of bottleneck is the tendency to make it overly broad. Even the Interim Version of the definition suffers from this problem. It is important to recognize that bottlenecks are not the only type of performance-limiting condition of a system, or even of a PC build.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because PCs -- more than many other kinds of systems -- are inherently modular, with different modules contributing to performance in different ways, there is a tendency to regard any sub-optimally performing component as a bottleneck. But consider some examples of PC build issues:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>A CPU that is incapable of delivering enough FPS to the GPU for a given game, leading to perceptible hitching and slow down;</li><li>A GPU that is incapable of driving enough frames to saturate a monitor's refresh rate for a given game;</li><li>A power supply that <i>is not</i> capable of supplying enough wattage for a given build;</li><li>A GPU that does not support realtime ray tracing, meaning that feature is not available for a given game that supports it;</li><li>A power supply that <i>is</i> capable of supplying enough wattage for a given build but is failing, delivering inconsistent power output;</li><li>A front panel power button with a faulty contact, meaning the PC will not boot when the button is pressed.</li></ol><div>Each one of these examples involves some specific component of a PC build not performing as expected (or at all), where that lack of performance impacts the performance of the entire system. I take (6) to be an unambiguous example of something that <i>is not</i> a bottleneck, and I don't expect many people would regard it as one. It's an issue that impacts performance (indeed, this system won't perform at all) and it's isolated to one component, but it isn't a bottleneck. If you think about the corrective pathway, it doesn't involve increasing the capacity of the limiting component: it just involves fixing or replacing it. The issue also doesn't manifest to the user as any sort of delay or slow down in terms of anything 'moving through' the system. To call the faulty power button a bottleneck would be, I think, to torture the term 'bottleneck.'</div></div><div><br /></div><div>I consider (5) an exactly parallel example to (6). In this case, the power supply has the <i>capacity</i> to power the system, it's just faulty. This would likely manifest to the user as system instability (e.g. random reboots). Likewise, the corrective pathway doesn't involve increasing the capacity of the power supply (e.g. moving from a 500 to a 600 watt PSU), it just involves replacing the faulty PSU with a working one. Interestingly, however, in the comment thread on the original post, a redditor asserted that this example was not only a bottleneck but an 'obvious' one. Even more interestingly, another user commented on the same thread that no one could possibly consider this to be an example of a bottleneck and that I was criticizing a straw man. That's doubly amusing because the 'straw man' was put forth as an actual argument in the thread he was responding to. Again, I think this is a torturous use of the term bottleneck. A failing or defective component is an example of a system performance issue distinct from a bottleneck.</div><div><br /></div><div>Likewise, I don't think it's plausible to argue that (4) is a bottleneck. An inability to do realtime ray tracing may indeed result in a sub-optimal play experience, but it seems misguided to say the GPU's lack of ray tracing support 'bottlenecks' the system's performance. Lack of feature support is a distinct type of system limitation, not a type of bottleneck.</div><div><br /></div><div>(3) is the first example where it becomes plausible to call something a bottleneck, and indeed the first place where I think most people would start applying the term (e.g. 'The PSU's inadequate wattage is bottlenecking the system.') I certainly don't think this is a ridiculous position to take, but I'm going to argue that it isn't a bottleneck. Again, there's no question that the PSU's inadequate wattage is limiting system performance. There's also no question that the performance limitation is one related to <i>capacity</i>: if the PSU could deliver more watts, the performance limitation would be removed. However, as in (5), the limitation would manifest as system instability.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the literal bottleneck analogy, I think this is more like, say, the glass of the bottle being slightly porous and causing leaks than it is to the neck of the bottle being too narrow to provide adequate flow. Though the porousness of the bottle and the maximum wattage of the PSU are both <i>capacities</i> of their respective components that limit performance of the overall systems, they are capacity limitations <i>of a different kind</i> than those that can lead to bottlenecks. Stated another way: not (even) every limitation in the capacity of a component that significantly impacts the performance of the system overall is a bottleneck.</div><div><br /></div><div>(2) Is another example of something that would traditionally be referred to as a bottleneck, and I would go as far as to say it is one that most PC builders would argue is an unambiguous one. I don't think it's quite so unambiguous. The first thing that gives me pause is that we should observe that this condition (GPU delivering less FPS than the monitor's refresh rate) is incredibly common, even among very high-end gaming systems. In fact, it is a potentially desirable state of a high-end gaming system. A builder with a large budget, for example, might purchase the highest refresh rate monitor available (e.g. 360hz) knowing full well that his (also very high-end) GPU is not capable of fully saturating it all the time on all the titles he plays. And it would be perfectly rational for him to do so. Given that the 360hz monitor is (at the time of this writing) the highest-refresh-rate device he can purchase, it makes sense to have the headroom at his disposal. But to say the GPU is bottlenecking if it isn't constantly driving 360 FPS on every single title would be to drop a ton of context about how games work: notably that FPS are variable and that performance will differ from game-to-game and moment-to-moment.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a side note, another important element here is the market context. At the time of this writing, the most powerful consumer GPU yet announced is an RTX 3090. Though independent benchmarks have not been released, it is clear that even that card is not capable of fully saturating a 360hz display at every reasonable consumer resolution and combination of game settings. So if someone is going to assert that a 3090 is a 'bottleneck' in a given situation, the obvious response is: <i>in comparison to what?</i> That is: in comparison to what possible alternative that would alleviate the 'bottleneck?' As of now, the universe (more specifically the portions of it controlled by Nvidia and AMD) does not provide one. As noted earlier, this is like considering the nature of reality a 'bottleneck' to having your cake and eating it, too.</div><div><br /></div><div>More deeply, the situation has to be evaluated with reference to the whether the performance impact on the system overall is significant with reference to its intended purpose. The fact is that most people, can't perceive the difference between 120hz and 240hz, let alone 240hz and 360hz. This includes even <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/how-many-frames-per-second-can-the-human-eye-really-see/">most gamers</a>, who we would expect to better appreciate the difference than the general population. Perhaps some elite esports athlete would benefit from consistently driving 360hz as opposed to achieving a variable framerate between, say, 250 and 310hz, but for the average gamer, the performance difference <i>is not significant. </i>(I realize there are other reasons why it is desirable for a GPU to drive a higher framerate than a display can refresh at, but I'm ignoring them for the purposes of this example).</div><div><br /></div><div>Example (1) is, in my opinion, a clear an uncontroversial example of a bottleneck, properly understood. Here, a component (the CPU) is limited in a way that significantly impacts the performance of the entire system. This impact is significant because it is clearly perceptible by the player in the form of an undesirable consequence: noticeable lag and stuttering.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like example (3), the limitation of the CPU is one of <i>capacity. </i>But it is a specific type of capacity limitation: one in which the capacity limitation has to do with (by analogy) <i>flow</i> through the system. The rate at which the CPU can deliver frames to the GPU causes the GPU to have to wait long enough that the delay results in a play experience that is not smooth. In other words, bottlenecks involve a limit in the <i>throughput</i> of a component limiting the performance of the entire system. Finally, this yields the proper definition of bottleneck, which I'll call the the <i>Rigorous Engineering Version</i> of the concept. It is the one articulated in the second paragraph of the Wikipedia entry:</div><div><blockquote><p><b>bottleneck (Rigorous Engineering Version):</b> noun. A component of a system, the throughput limitations of which impose a significant limit on the overall performance of the system.</p></blockquote><p>'Bottleneck,' properly understood in this way and restricted to this usage is a valid concept and is applicable to certain types of PC build situations, as in (1).</p><p>So much for the theoretical discussion. In a future post, I'll take on the practical implications for PC building and PC building advice and, in particular, the questions PC builders should be asking (and answering) instead of the various flavors of 'Will component x bottleneck my system?'</p></div>Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-77388219686882364892020-05-01T16:04:00.000-04:002020-05-01T16:04:55.325-04:00COVID-19: The Story So Far<br />From an overlong Facebook post.<br /><br />The story so far:<br /><br />For years, experts had been warning us to prepare for a pandemic respitory disease. We didn’t. Government in particular did not adequately do so, nor did the healthcare industry, since there was no economic incentive for them to do so because healthcare pricing in this country is controlled by the federal government, particularly in the hospital sector where the weight of such a pandemic would fall, which did not incentivize preparedness.<br /><br />Then a pandemic hit and we squandered many chances to respond promptly (to the extent we could have being unprepared) because the present occupants of the White House and the state houses didn’t heed the early indicators. The former, in particular, attempted his typical routine of trying to create an alternate reality in which the virus went away on its own. The virus didn’t get the memo.<br /><br />The inadequacy of the preparedness and initial response resulted in tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.<br /><br />When governments finally started responding, the initial step was to initiate lockdowns of the population to slow the spread of the virus. We were told this was to ‘flatten the curve’: meaning to avoid a surge in people getting the virus all at once if it spread uncontrolled that would exceed the surge capacity of the hospital system. If that surge capacity gets overwhelmed at any point, we were told, more people than necessary will die. It will not reduce the overall number of people infected or needing hospitalization, though: it just spaces them out over time. The area under the curve remains the same (aside from the excess deaths due to overwhelming hospital capacity), it’s just flatter.<br /><br />We were told this step — and the lives jeopardized and reduced in quality as a result of it — were necessary sacrifices. But this phase was only temporary as we built testing and treatment capacity. Testing capacity lets us more selectively isolate people with the virus and those who may have come in contact with them, allowing healthy people to resume their normal lives. And increasing treatment capacity lets us treat more people at once, reducing the need to flatten the curve.<br /><br />Now, almost two months later, we’ve made some progress. As a country, we’ve gone from doing only a few thousand tests a day to over 200,000. It’s harder to get numbers about increased hospital capacity, though the number of people in ICUs has come down significantly from the peak a few weeks ago (over 15,000 to around 9,000 on a given day), suggesting the curve flattening is working but also that, in many but by no means all places, there is not, at present, a need for as much curve flattening because excess hospital capacity exists. And though 200,000 tests per day is impressive, it’s still an order of magnitude short of what the experts say we need.<br /><br />And still 95%+ of the population remains under lockdown. Neither state nor federal government have articulated sufficiently detailed plans for getting the treatment or testing capacity we need to end them.<br /><br />As a result, the de facto plan is to keep the entire population under indefinite house arrest (without any actual crime, trial or indeed any legal basis) as a form of preemptively rationing access to (allegedly) scarce healthcare resources. We are now told this will continue until the rate of infections or hospitalizations declines significantly, which was never something that curve flattening was supposed to achieve. And the de facto plan for dealing with the massive economic consequences of this is socialism: both rationing access to other necessary resources to deal with disruptions to the supply chain the economic devastation is causing, and engaging in massive, hastily assembled wealth redistribution plans, ignoring the fact that if production isn’t occurring than the wealth to be redistributed isn’t being created.<br /><br />And, perhaps most shockingly, almost all ‘respectable people’ are willing to tolerate it. They are fine with the government pointing a gun at them and their neighbors and saying ‘Don’t leave your house. Don’t run your business. Don’t have your kids learn. Don’t pursue any value other than the ones inside your four walls. Unless you’re a healthcare or ‘essential’ worker, in which case you are expected to put yourself at risk for the Common Good. Do this indefinitely because we’re in charge and, really, this is all we can do. We can point guns, tell people what not to do and shuffle wealth other people created around. We can’t adequately increase testing capacity. We can’t even have an actual plan or strategy for increasing and managing the treatment capacity we have. We certainly can’t invent a vaccine. So stay inside, because we have calculated (correctly) that you, the voting public, will tolerate lives being destroyed, including your own, if it happens slowly enough, in private, and in the name of the common good; but not if it happens rapidly and all at once with people hooked up to ventilators.’<br /><br />Apparently, they are absolutely right in that calculation. Most people apparently don’t care whether they live. Not in a meaningful sense. If they’re motivated at all, it’s to avoid death. But living is not avoiding death. They may succeed in that. But it isn’t living. When it comes to actual living, we’ve done more in the last two months to dig our own graves and climb into them than any other generation of Americans.Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-35158398519983362002018-11-08T15:46:00.001-05:002018-11-08T16:34:05.229-05:00A Brief History of Recent American Politics and Why It's a Huge Mistake To Go 'All In' on Either Major PartyFor most of the 20th and 21st Centuries, the Democratic Party has been driven by two consistent ideological themes: socialism and secularism. Socialism is bad. Secularism is good. Being a Democratic politician during that period is basically an exercise in how overt you can be with your socialism and secularism and still maintain power, because the Democratic Party is always more socialist and secular than the country as a whole.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Over the same time period, and particularly since 1980, the Republican Party has lacked a similar unifying ideology and has essentially been a coalition party for those who believe they stand to lose if there's more secularism or socialism. For most of that period, this coalition included</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Wealthy people</li>
<li>Business interests</li>
<li>Evangelical Christians (especially since 1980)</li>
<li>Conservatives (usually middle/upper class and white) with vested interests in traditional values and social structures</li>
<li>Principled free market, limited government supporters</li>
</ul>
<div>
Again, there's nothing essential that unifies those groups under the same banner. They're a coalition opposing socialism and/or secularism. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Opposing socialism is good, and to the degree that one is motivated by that (e.g. the free market supporters and the overwhelming majority of wealthy people/business interests who acquired their wealth legitimately), it's good.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To the degree that one acquired one's wealth and power illegitimately, most commonly as the result of some government privilege that has been bestowed upon you that actually is a form of statist/socialist/fascist cronyism (a minority of wealthy people and businesses), it's bad and gives the legitimate people a bad name.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To the degree that one is motivated by opposition to secularism (evangelicals, conservatives), it's bad.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To the extent that one was in that coalition for good reasons, being in the coalition with people in it for bad reasons undermined your good positions, even if being in the coalition was a necessary evil.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Since at least the Clinton Administration, it started to become clear that demographic changes in the electorate were going to make it more and more difficult for the Republican coalition to gain and maintain power. The electorate is becoming younger and more diverse, which means more socialist and more secular.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Seeing this, the Republican Party adopted a well-documented and successful effort to achieve and exploit structural advantages that would allow them to maintain power and further their political objectives in spite of the changing electorate. This included working to gain control of state legislatures and securing state and federal judicial appointments. Doing this enabled Republicans to not only better enact their policy goals, but also to stack the deck in their favor in the face of changing demographics through things like partisan gerrymandering and voting requirements that made things more difficult for likely Democratic voters. Essentially, the Republicans adopted and continue to be on a project to establish and maintain long term minority rule.<br />
<br />
In the midst of this, another group suddenly became ascendant as a political force: older, lower income white people who previously leaned Democratic but now increasingly felt like their interests were being threatened by the same demographic trends the establishment Republicans were threatened by. Crucially, these people tended to be culturally conservative (and therefore anti-secularist) but economically socialist- (or at least statist-) leaning, favoring protectionist economic measures and social programs that they believed benefited them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These folks found a voice in Donald Trump and his populism, leading to a question of how the existing Republican coalition was going to deal with this emerging faction. In some ways, the Trump faction was an odd fit for the traditional coalition: unlike the coalition's base, it was blue collar and statist economically. And stylistically it was more populist and, particularly in Trump, vulgar than the traditional base. Also in the person of Trump, it stood in sharp contrast to the values of the evangelical faction in particular. At the same time, it was well-aligned with the traditional base in cultural attitudes, ethnic composition and needing to exploit the same structural advantages to maintain political power in the face of changing demographics.<br />
<br />
In the end, the established coalition ended up embracing the Trump voters, but in a sort of bargain with the devil. In exchange for more voters and a commitment to take up common cause in advancing the long term minority rule agenda, the established coalition became beholden to Trump and his base. This is most obvious in stylistic and cultural ways: Trump (and to a lesser extent his base) are more vulgar, populist, nationalist (and white nationalist) and amoral than the established coalition would prefer (or at least would prefer to be perceived as).<br />
<br />
But there's a less obvious thing the established coalition had to abandon in the bargain: the last remaining connections (and pretenses thereof) to free markets, limited government and genuine capitalism (as opposed to 'crony capitalism'). The Trump approach includes huge elements of protectionism and bestowing economic favors on preferred constituencies. It included support for leftist positions on issues like healthcare (including support for the essential features of Obamacare as long as you do so while attacking the 'Obama' part of it). It also included adopting a more overtly authoritarian tone and approach to government, which Trump personifies in an absurd sort of way. To be sure, elements of some of these things were always present in the Republican coalition, in which good views on economic issues were always in the minority and good views on cultural issues were even less present. But the good ideological bits of the Republican coalition (the better economic stuff) have now been rendered inert and replaced by protectionist, nationalist cronyism. And the sneaky, patrician, slow-burn approach to achieving minority rule is becoming ever more overt, authoritarian and rapid.<br />
<br />
The Democratic party, given its underlying principled commitment to socialism, was never a great home for people who cared about economic and political freedom (it was, and still is, a better home in some respects for people concerned with certain political freedoms related to personal values, identity, autonomy and choice). So historically it was understandable that people concerned with freedom (especially on economic issues) gravitated to the Republican coalition. There really was no other choice if you wanted your views represented by people with actual influence in government. Similarly, the Republican party has never valued diversity, so someone strongly motivated by a concern for that value might understandably gravitate towards the Democrats.<br />
<br />
But following the Trump takeover, both of the major parties' core economic and political approaches are hostile to freedom. Both parties have some isolated pockets where they are better on certain cultural issues, the Democrats more so than the Republicans at present, but neither is consistently good. In their essential features, neither party is currently a home for people who put a high value on freedom, in particular those who understand that political, economic and personal freedom aren't distinct things but are all manifestations of the same fundamental human need to live according to one's own choices and values, rather than under coercion.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The other thing that happened during this time period was people started treating political identity like sports team fandom. Rather than seeing political affiliation as a minor element of identity or a tactical choice, people decided that identification with and finding a home in a political tribe was very important.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Various factors contributed to this. The fact that our political system is a two-party one, including structural factors that confer official power on the two dominant parties in ways that are not appropriate to what ought to be private clubs, serves as a backdrop for this. It is hard to influence politics outside the two parties. But against that backdrop, lacking an actual underlying unifying theme, the Republicans could only really find common identity in one thing: opposing Democrats. 'Being opposed to Democrats' became what it meant to be a partisan Republican, which naturally perpetuated an 'us and them' mentality. Since Democrats believe in the righteousness of their secular/socialist core ideology, it became equally natural to cast anyone who didn't embrace it as an enemy. This 'identity politics' serves to drive people who might find common cause on particular issues or even more granular principles into adopting one party identity or the other, and increasingly to the inflexible, tribal extremes of those identities.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But it's important to step back and remember that party affiliation does not have to be part of one's core identity. Closely identifying with a party may be required for a politician, but it isn't for the rest of us. And that is a benefit to us non-politicians, because neither party is wholly or even largely good. Neither represents a consistent, logical and necessary grouping of principles or positions. Does allowing people to marry someone of the same sex if they wish require a single-payer healthcare system? Does a strict adherence to Christian doctrine entail strict border enforcement? Does a belief that native-born Americans deserve special privileges entail laissez faire capitalism? Do some of these even represent coherent packages of viewpoints or are they hopelessly contradictory?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Working with or within the present political parties may be a useful tactic in achieving one's long term political goals, but doing so does not have to involve finding a 'home' there or buying into the abhorrent positions or contradictions doing so requires.<br />
<br />
In particular, it is a mistake to go 'all in' on a partisan political identity in this way if one's primary motivation is <i>to oppose the other guys.</i> Even if one (correctly in my view) identifies socialism as evil and (correctly in my view) identifies socialism as being at the ideological core of the Democratic Party, that does not justify fully embracing the mess of contradictions, bad ideas and (isolated) good ideas that constitutes a partisan Republican political identity simply because the Republicans are (nominally) the non-socialists.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Perhaps it's possible to work for change within one or both political parties to replace the current mixed- to fundamentally-anti-freedom core ideologies, bad positions and contradictions with something essentially good and pro-freedom. Perhaps it makes sense tactically to support one party or the other (or their candidates) at certain times or on certain issues in pursuit of a long term pro-freedom agenda. But to do so does not require one to don an elephant's trunk or a donkey's tail.<br />
<br />
I sympathize with people who want to see a more secular, diverse, less cronyistic society but feel forced to accept a package deal that includes socialism if they want to find a political home in one of the two major parties. I similarly sympathize with principled, freedom-loving people who previously found common cause and even a voice within the Republican Party but now find their party lead by a vulgar, amoral economic nationalist. It can be jarring and dispiriting to feel like you have no 'home' politically. Even more so if one goes from having a 'home' politically to suddenly having none.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Especially with regards to the Republican Party, this last point is worth further attention because the turn for the worse was so rapid and so recent as to be disorienting. It always would have been a mistake to go 'all in' on the Democrats or Republicans, even if one or the other was better on certain (or the balance) of the issues. But it's an even bigger mistake to go 'all in' on the Republicans now that they've transformed into something that is, in its core principles and on the balance of the issues, <i>at least as bad as the Democrats </i>and is, arguably, the greater threat of the moment because they happen to be the party in power.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
No amount of concern for positive values (such as freedom) or concern that the 'other guys' will advance negative ones (such as socialism) justifies going 'all in' on the Republicans. In fact, it's unclear that even allying with them tactically at present out of concern for those values is prudent since the recent shift in the party is <i>precisely away from those values. </i>It's unclear what can be accomplished by throwing one's lot in with such 'allies', other than inadvertently rewarding them for turning in the wrong direction. Of course, none of that is to imply that one ought to become a partisan Democrat instead. Joining a tribe -- or even accepting the idea that tribalism is required -- is far from the only alternative.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
(A related error is to assume that because, e.g., nothing has changed on the Democratic side, the Republican side <i>must</i> still be the better alternative. But this is like saying 'The unpleasant odor is still present on the other side of the room, therefore I'm going to stay on this side even though it has suddenly become fully engulfed in flames.' Perhaps avoiding the bad smell was the right choice at one time. But maybe now it would be better to endure the stink. Or perhaps leave the room entirely.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
More fundamentally, it's a mistake -- though an understandable and easy-to-make one -- to fail to identify and accept the present reality of what both parties are. It's a mistake to support or hitch one's wagon to one party or the other just because one previously has, either uncritically, out of inertia or for failure to adjust one's evaluations in response to changing circumstances (even though it can be hard to process the changes and update the evaluation). And most crucially, it is downright dangerous to go 'all in' on fundamentally flawed parties in a way that implies one becoming or genuinely causes one to become a member of a political tribe whose core values and actions ultimately promote the destruction of one's values.</div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-76071559535490963482017-07-04T09:18:00.000-04:002017-07-04T09:18:22.852-04:00Independence Day in Trump's America<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">This Independence Day, I am grateful to live in a country led by a strong, fearless, authoritarian figure who can fix everything and solve all our problems. I am grateful that America has finally realized the promise of its founding and elected a reality show entertainer and expert Tweeter to its highest office. I am thankful that instead of conventional politicians, we finally have a man in the White House who understands the common people with the unique perspective that only living in a gilded penthouse can provide.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I weep patriotic tears of joy at the courage our Great Leader displays in taking on the true enemies of our nation: a free press and our country's court system. May multitudes of fireworks spew forth tonight like the torrents of 140-character-truthbombs he targets at the hearts of these un-American swine.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I thank the Great Leader and his Great Collaborators in Congress for fighting dangerous ideas like the separation of church and state. I thank them also for working hard to correct the errors of our Founding Fathers who, let's face it, were pretty cool but could they really be as amazing as the Great Leader? Had John Adams lived under the tyranny of Barack Obama rather than George III, he surely would have appreciated the benefits of a government of men -- succesful, non-loser, high-energy, nonconsenual-female-genitalia-grabbing men -- not laws.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I look skyward, not only at the pyrotechnics (which are awesome, btw!), but also towards a future where our Great Leader will tweet America to realize its true potential as a nation of non-immigrants with massive social programs and expansive government controls that benefit the true Sons and Daughters (but mostly Sons) of Liberty: native-born people who basically look like me and simultaneously think they were born in the greatest country in the world yet have somehow gotten a raw deal.</span></div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-87488160082492760612017-06-23T00:17:00.002-04:002017-06-24T12:28:47.248-04:00Why I am concerned about Trump supportersThis is a post about why I am concerned about Trump supporters. Most of my recent political commentary and Facebook activism has been about analyzing and trying to oppose militant pro-Trump people. Why am I spending time doing this? Why do I think it's important? Why is it something I'm uniquely interested in? Here's why.<br />
<br />
First, what this isn't: This isn't a post about why I'm concerned about Trump being President. I am concerned about this, to be sure, and I think my main concerns here differ from what most people are concerned about. I may post on that another time, but I'm actually much more concerned about the emergence, behavior and ideology of Trump's supporters and the effects <i>they</i> are likely to have on the country than I am about Trump's occupancy of the Oval Office and the effects it might have (even though, again, I do think some of those are very serious).<br />
<br />
Second, a clarification of terms. By 'Trump supporter' I mean 'someone who is enthusiastic about the candidacy or Presidency of Donald Trump.' Not all Trump voters are Trump supporters: many voted for him un-enthusiastically or as the lesser of two evils. I'm talking about the people who actively embrace Trump and view him as being representative of them and their views. That still lumps a broad group of people together who obviously don't share a single, well-defined set of characteristics or views. This post is aiming to get at what I take to be the fundamental nature of Trump support as a movement an what it represents, and I think what I am about to describe captures that essential, even if it isn't literally true of every Trump supporter (or to the same degree).<br />
<br />
Now, on to two important things you should know about me and my beliefs that ground this discussion:<br />
<br />
First of all, I think two of the major cultural achievements of modern western society -- and of America in particular -- are the recognition of individual rights and secularism. In only western societies, and only for the last several hundred years or so out of the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, has it been possible to live one's life without having to conform to the tenets of some religious doctrine enforced at the point of a gun. And it's only these same societies who have embraced the principle that one's life has value because one is, fundamentally, an individual with inalienable rights, rather than by virtue of being a member of some group (such as a tribe, a religious sect, the aristocracy, etc.). While America has struggled and continues to struggle to fully embrace these principles, we're the first and only country to embody them in our founding, and that, in my opinion, is amazing.<br />
<br />
Secondly, I think economic freedom -- in particular freedom from government control over the economy -- is a pretty great thing, as well as a corollary of the individual political freedom described above.<br />
<br />
It's not my intent to argue for those beliefs here. Rather, I'm simply noting that 1) Those are my beliefs and 2) I think our country's greatness and success have a lot to do with the extent to which it embraces those principles.<br />
<br />
This bring me to <a href="https://d.pr/f/B6JTY6">this analysis</a> of polling data by Lee Drutman. You can read a summary of the analysis in the second half of <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/06/voter_study_group_and_why_obama_voters_defected_to_trump.html">this column</a> on Slate. One of the things that Drutman observes is that the traditional left/right political spectrum isn't really helpful in understanding the Trump phenomenon. As an alternative, he uses polling data about different groups of voters' attitudes on various issues to break the single left-right axis into a two axis system. In his model, the x axis represents people's views on economic issues (ranging from 'liberal' on the left side to 'conservative' on the right). The y axis represents people's views on social and moral issues, ranging from 'conservative' at the top to 'liberal' at the bottom. Here's a graphic from Drutman's report that shows how voters in the 2016 Election clustered in this model:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzE0Jqhd95gx9_EahpdWvm9BwueJFU6T_GzMe1qa1W1cR4fFa84S4Lk263n2S0C5EvKZid9iOdX88ZFc7NhglxQ0NeD-IOKeoNjRN12hhV-2GJgtWXAcn9se2d960rLp_jdtPdaNLLj_54/s1600/DrutmanQuadrants.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="558" data-original-width="534" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzE0Jqhd95gx9_EahpdWvm9BwueJFU6T_GzMe1qa1W1cR4fFa84S4Lk263n2S0C5EvKZid9iOdX88ZFc7NhglxQ0NeD-IOKeoNjRN12hhV-2GJgtWXAcn9se2d960rLp_jdtPdaNLLj_54/s400/DrutmanQuadrants.PNG" width="382" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
You'll notice that I put Drutman's 'liberal' and 'conservative' terminology in scare quotes in the paragraph above the graphic. I think his terminology is fine for the purposes of his analysis, but I want to talk about what the two axes <i>really </i>mean. When you look at the kinds of questions that go into the economic axis (the x axis), it's stuff like</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<ul>
<li>How important is the social safety net?</li>
<li>What is your attitude towards foreign trade?</li>
<li>What is your attitude towards income inequality?</li>
<li>To what extent should the government regulate the economy?</li>
</ul>
<div>
This axis represents the degree to which the respondents believe it is the proper role of the government to intervene in the economy: it's a familiar paradigm with socialism, communism and economic facisim at the left, laissez faire capitalism on the right and various degrees of mixed economy in the middle.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The social axis appears like a mixed bag at first, combining questions like</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>What is your attitude towards gender roles? Towards black people? Towards Muslims?</li>
<li>Are your stances on moral issues more or less traditional?</li>
<li>Do you feel that people 'like you' are in decline in this country?</li>
</ul>
<div>
In fact, I think this axis reduces to a measurement of the respondents' valuing of secularism and individualism (at least with respect to non-economic issues) vs. valuing of non-secular, Christian values and group allegiance.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At any rate, Drutman uses this model to divide the electorate into four segments based on the quadrant they fall into:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>The bottom left segment: the folks who tend to support government intervention in the economy and value secularism. These are liberals. Most factions within the modern Democratic Party fall here and this group made up a plurality of the 2016 electorate (44%)</li>
<li>The upper right segment: the folks who favor less economic control and don't dig secularism. Traditionally, this was the Republican religious conservative base, however, as Drutman's analysis shows, the GOP base is increasingly being co-opted by folks from the next segment (in fact, in 2016, there were just about as many GOP voters in the next segment as these traditional conservatives).</li>
<li>The upper left segment: the folks who favor more economic control and don't dig secularism. Drutman calls these folks 'populists', but I'm going to go ahead and call them Trump supporters. These are the folks who favor things like restrictive trade policies and increased government control of healthcare (as long as the name 'Obama' isn't attached to it), hold regressive or traditionally Christian views on social issues, and, in particular, see themselves as members of group that is in decline and getting a raw deal at the hands of other groups. This group has surpassed the traditional religious conservatives and now is the second largest group (28%) behind the liberals.</li>
<li>The bottom right segment: the folks who want more economic freedom and value secularism: libertarians in popular (and Drutman's) parlance. This is the group I place myself in (though I dislike the term 'libertarian'), and there are so few of us (less than 4% of voters) that we have almost no voice as a popular movement.</li>
</ul>
<div>
I'm used to my views being in the minority. But what's interesting and disheartening this time is that there's now a major political group whose views are, in both key dimensions, the <i>diametric opposite</i> of my own. This group is now ascendant, has become the second largest political faction <i>and</i> is on the verge of becoming the dominant faction within one of the two major parties. And all of this happened more or less in the space of an election cycle.<br />
<br />
And this isn't just about a group whose political views differ significantly -- even very significantly -- from my own. It's not about pure disagreement or rival teams. It's about a political movement that's views on both economic freedom and secularism are antithetical to American values. While it's true (as Trump supporters are fond of pointing out) that other political figures have long advocated for and continue to advocate for parts of this worldview (the barely closeted socialism of progressives, the attempts to institute Christian morality by law of religious conservatives, etc.) there's never been a major political group whose very essence on <i>both</i> fronts represents a 180 degree turn away from our founding principles.<br />
<br />
This is concerning because there are <i>tens of millions</i> of these folks. Had Trump lost the election, these folks would still be out there and they'll continue to be out there after he leaves office. They can't be ignored. Their most likely home -- the GOP -- certainly isn't ignoring them. How could they? They make up about half the Republican base. Moreover, as I've argued <a href="https://www.facebook.com/brialsp/posts/10155541803159236?pnref=story">elsewhere</a>, the more traditional Republicans who comprise the party leadership seem to think they are well-served by allying with these folks, even where they differ on concrete policy issues.<br />
<br />
And it doesn't matter if (as I suspect) most of the Trump supporters would disagree with this characterization of them (especially, I expect, with the parts about being opposed to capitalism and the idea that their principles are un-American). What matters is what's actually operative for these folks and what their political beliefs lead to, to the extent that they're successful in furthering them. And on those fronts I think it's pretty clear where these folks are headed: more authoritarian government; a more Christian, less secular country; more government interference in the economy in the areas where they like it; and a political apparatus that is increasingly hostile to those who disagree with them.</div>
</div>
<br />
<br />Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-22669445514958065712017-05-31T21:29:00.000-04:002017-05-31T21:30:33.415-04:00How to win an argument with a Trump supporter on Facebook<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://scottesoftware.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/mfga.png?w=310&h=265" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="265" data-original-width="310" src="https://scottesoftware.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/mfga.png?w=310&h=265" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Wait... what? Seriously? What?<br />
<br />
Why would you try to win an argument with a Trump supporter on Facebook? Nothing good can possibly come of that.<br />
<br />
If you're going to get into an argument with someone -- and I mean argument in the sense of a debate in which the parties share and react to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y">connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition</a> -- or really have any sort of discussion, there has to be some common understanding of the basic rules and goals of the exchange. And here's where you're doomed to failure if you approach the discussion unawares, because the Trump supporter is playing by an entirely different set of rules and with an entirely different goal in mind.<br />
<br />
Let's start with the rules. When normal people make arguments, they follow the rules of logic. To condense the entirety of Logic 101 into less than a sentence, this amounts to presenting premises in a valid structure, supported by evidence, that, taken together, give us reason to believe a conclusion is true.<br />
<br />
This only works, however, if both parties A) are willing to actually consider the evidence objectively, B) agree on what it means for something to be true and, crucially, C) <i>acknowledge that the truth is important</i>. But the typical Trump supporter, not unlike Trump himself, is <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/868807327130025984">determined to dismiss</a> any evidence that conflicts with their preexisting viewpoint. Similarly, most of us outside of Philosophy Departments at major universities hold a view of truth that has something to do with a statement <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/">corresponding to what we can observe in reality</a>. But for Trump and his supporters, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/20/us/politics/trump-inauguration-crowd.html?mcubz=1">not so much</a>.<br />
<br />
The last issue -- agreement with the principle that the truth is important -- is, however, the most significant consideration. It relates to the other major point of departure the serious arguer has with the Trump supporter: goals. There are lots of potential goals one might have when engaging in a political discussion with someone of a differing viewpoint, on Facebook or otherwise, for example:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">To change the other person's mind (though this is <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/84795/political-facebook-posts-dont-change-minds-study-says">pretty dubious</a>)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">To better understand the other person's position</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">To use the process of arguing/discussing as a means to better understand the topic or discover the truth (which may not lie in either party's original position)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">To understand the flaws in one's own (or one's opponent's) reasoning</span></span></li>
</ul>
<div>
The thing is, the Trump supporter's actual goal isn't any of those things.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As Matthew Yglesias at Vox <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15631710/trump-bullshit">persuasively argues</a>, there's something else going on when a Trump supporter repeats one of the president's statements (or one from the right wing media, or constructs an original argument using material from one of those sources):</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[The statement] serves... as a signifier of belonging to a mass audience. One chants, “Lock her up,” at a rally not to express a desire or expectation that Hillary Clinton will serve jail time for violating an obscure State Department guideline, but simply because to be a certain kind of member of a certain kind of community these days requires the chant.<br /><br />The big, beautiful wall that Mexico will allegedly pay for, the war on the “fake news” media, Barack Obama’s forged birth certificate, and now the secret tape recording that will destroy James Comey are not genuine articles of faith meant to be believed in. Their invocation is a formalism or a symbol; a sign of compliance and belonging. The content is bullshit.</blockquote>
I've argued <a href="http://www.alspach.org/2016/05/the-lessons-of-2016-america-is-ready.html">elsewhere</a>, as Yglesias does in his piece, that the essence of Trump-the-utterer-of-falsehoods is not that he is a liar, but that he is a bullshit artist. The difference is that the liar is trying to deceive you about the substance of his statement: he knows <i>something</i> to be true but wants to convince you that what's true is <i>something other than that.</i> The bullshit artist, on the other hand, makes statements without caring <i>whether they are true or not</i> in order to serve some other purpose.<br />
<br />
I have <a href="http://www.alspach.org/2016/10/tribalism-and-trump-support.html">long been of the opinion</a> that the defining feature of the Trump supporter is tribalism: putting membership in and allegiance to group above all else. When Yglesias says that Trump supporters repeat statements 'to be a certain kind of member of a certain kind of community,' he is identifying one manifestation of this tribalism.<br />
<br />
When you or I post the opinion on Facebook that, say, it was improper of Trump to fire James Comey under the circumstances that he did, we do so because we believe that opinion to be correct. We believe it is true. We believe it is right. We hope that by posting it and by providing arguments and evidence that support it, we will convince others of our opinion's righteousness. We could be forgiven for assuming that a Trump supporter, in posting the opposite opinion, is doing so because he believes he is similarly correct and with similar goals in mind.<br />
<br />
But the Trump supporter is not, in fact, concerned with the righteousness of his statement. He neither believes nor disbelieves what he is posting, and his posting of it is in no way impacted by any evaluation of whether the statement is true. Truth is not important. In fact, 'winning' the argument in the conventional sense isn't even important (since the Trump supporter knows he is unlikely to convince his counter-party and can simply take a page from Trump's book and <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/868801710038372352">unilaterally declare victory with no apparent basis</a> at any time anyway).<br />
<br />
What is important is loyalty. The purpose of making the statement is to demonstrate membership in and loyalty to the tribe. To demonstrate it to other members of the tribe. To those who are not members. To the president. To oneself. It is the Facebook equivalent of wearing a MAGA cap.<br />
<br />
And that, in a nutshell, is why you can't hope to win an argument with a Trump supporter on Facebook. For you, winning involves being successful in convincing your Trumpian opponent to come around to your side. It requires him to engage in a specific way, which he may or may not do (but -- let's be real -- probably won't). For him, however, winning requires only that you engage with him at all, which you've already done by entering the argument in the first place. Once you've engaged, he has all the opportunity he needs to achieve his actual goal: articulate a pro-Trump position and thereby demonstrate his loyalty. And the more you continue to engage, the more opportunities you provide for him to do exactly that. #winning.<br />
<br />
None of this is to say, by the way, that I think one shouldn't get into arguments with Trump supporters on Facebook (or be politically active there in general). I just think one shouldn't do so with the goal of winning the arguments in mind. There are plenty of good reasons to argue other than trying to win, and some of them are more important now than ever.Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-49844207033017026082017-05-21T11:29:00.001-04:002017-05-22T08:41:40.462-04:00But Hillary Clinton...Whenever some new revelation about a bad thing Donald Trump has done comes to light, his supporters practically trip over themselves racing to remind us of something Hillary Clinton (or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or some other hated liberal) did that is supposed to be similar. The idea seems to be that something about one of those Democrats having done the similar thing is more significant than or mitigates what Donald Trump is alleged to have done.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Having tried to engage with a number of Trump supporters who do this, I am convinced that this tactic is utterly disingenuous. Still, I think it's instructive to examine it. What are these folks trying to accomplish when they do this? I think a few things are going on, and I want to talk about why they are all bullshit.</div>
<h4>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></h4>
<h4>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Trying to appear as if they are calling for justice</span></b></h4>
<div>
<br />
On the surface, most of these attempts take the form of a call for overdue justice. For example, when it comes out that Donald Trump shared classified information with the Russian Ambassador and someone demands that he be held accountable, the inevitable response is "but Hillary Clinton was never held accountable for her private email server!" The implication here is that whatever Donald Trump has done, it is a far greater miscarriage of justice that Hillary's email indiscretions went unpunished. An occasional variant of this goes "We <i>know</i> Hillary did something improper with having the private email server whereas the allegations against Trump haven't been proven, yet you're all concerned with nailing Trump while giving Hillary a free pass."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Why this is bullshit: </b>Someone who is truly concerned with the mishandling of classified information should, of course, be concerned <i>both</i> about what Hillary Clinton did and what Trump is alleged to have done. Since it's not as if there's a finite amount of justice to go around, it's possible to think Hillary should be held accountable <i>and</i> that we should investigate credible allegations of the same behavior involving Trump and hold him accountable if they turn out to be substantiated.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you want to present yourself as a true and consistent champion of justice, you need to demonstrate that you want to see the underlying principle applied in all cases. But of course the Trump supporter never does this. It's always "but Hillary Clinton..." and then a blank out. No mention of what should be done about Trump's indiscretion, and certainly no suggestion that the same principle should be applied in his case.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Even if the Trump supporter is willing to concede that Trump should be held accountable, the level of concern never rises to Hillary email level (or Bill Clinton doing inappropriate things with a cigar tube level). As I've argued <a href="https://www.facebook.com/brialsp/posts/10155473018174236">elsewhere</a>, this way of thinking is ridiculous. Regardless of how egregious you think Hillary's actions were in the email case, she is not the current President. In fact, she holds no office whatsoever. If Trump is doing something similarly bad -- or even, I would argue, something considerably less bad -- it's appropriate to be much more concerned about his behavior right now, since he <i>is</i> the current President and is thus in a position to potentially harm the country through his active misdeeds. In fact, by identifying and addressing Trump's misdeeds now, we may be able to <i>prevent</i> damage to our country, rather than having to resort, at best, to retrospective justice (as was our only option in the Clinton email case). It seems to me that someone who was genuinely concerned with the country's well being would be all forr that.</div>
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">
Accusing liberals of hypocrisy</span></h4>
<div>
<br />
This usually takes the form of "Look at how the media / Democrats / the person I'm talking to is all over Donald Trump but gave a free pass to Hillary / Obama / whoever over the similar thing they did. What a bunch of hypocrites!"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Why this is bullshit</b>: Even if the target of this attack <i>is</i> guilty of hypocrisy, the Trump supporter raising the issue entails two significant admissions that undermine his own position. First, because it asserts that the target <i>should have been</i> concerned with the thing that Hillary or whoever did, it means that we <i>ought to be concerned</i> about the essentially similar thing Trump is doing now. Thus, the Trump supporter is conceding the premise that what Donald Trump is alleged to be doing (if true) is cause for concern. Secondly, because the Trump supporter then doesn't go on to demand that Trump be treated the way he believes Hillary (or whoever) <i>should have been treated </i>(see above), he opens himself up to the same charge of hypocrisy he is trying to level against his target.</div>
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">
To obfuscate and distract</span></h4>
<div>
<br />
Most of the Trump supporters I talk to aren't dumb, so I think they grasp the incoherence of their approach on some level. However, just bringing up Hillary has the effect of changing the subject to something other than the misdeeds of the person they support. As Trump himself has demonstrated, obfuscation and distraction are effective weapons, and Trump supporters like nothing more than to rail against their favorite liberal targets anyway. This tactic is also especially effective against well-meaning interlocutors who assume the Trump supporter is approaching the conversation with the same good faith as they are and attempt to answer the Trumpy's charges against Hillary point-by-point, allowing the Trump supporter to succeed in changing the subject.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Why this is bullshit: </b>It's senseless to argue with someone who isn't approaching the conversation in good faith, and these tactics are prime examples of bad faith. Once it becomes apparent that the Trump supporter has resorted to them, he exposes himself as a partisan sheep who doesn't bring anything to the table intellectually.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">
To garner sympathy</span></h4>
<div>
<br />
The Trump supporters often fall into this mode among themselves, but sometimes it bleeds out into discussion with people who don't share their viewpoint. The refrain goes like this "The media / Democrats / whoever are out to get Donald Trump. They never went after Hillary like this. The deck is totally stacked against him. See, unless you're part of the liberal establishment, you can't get a fair shake. Woe is us!"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Why this is bullshit</b>: Even if the media went easy on Hillary, the appropriate response to their going tough on Trump for similar (or worse) misdeeds is <i>thanks</i> (perhaps with a small dose of 'what took you so long?'). But more insidious is the notion that Trump -- and particularly his supporters -- are deserving of sympathy. Trump supporters championed and voted for a man who is, obviously and transparently, the least qualified, most despicable, most pro-authoritarian person ever to hold the office of President. Far from being victimized by those of us who refuse to tolerate this unacceptable state of affairs, Trump's supporters deserve to be held accountable for being complicit in it. A Trump supporter asserting that we, as decent, concerned citizens, are somehow in the wrong for calling the president to task for, e.g., sharing classified material when they themselves participated in enabling him to do so is obscene.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Regardless of the motive, bringing up Hillary Clinton is an attempt by the Trump supporter to switch the topic to one where he believes he holds the moral high ground. But, as noted above, one can only claim to hold such a position if one wants to see the underlying moral principle applied equally and universally. If you don't, it amounts to an admission that you don't believe there is any moral high ground (or principle) at all: just partisanship and allegiance to whatever team you're on. I don't think that's true, and I don't think someone who thinks that deserves to be let off the hook. In the future, my standard response to the 'But Hillary Clinton...' arguments is going to be as follows:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"This isn't about Hillary Clinton. This is about the conduct of the person you put in the White House and continue to support. What he's doing isn't OK, and neither is your supporting someone who does it."</div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-81096280388223540622016-11-09T09:52:00.000-05:002016-11-09T15:09:38.492-05:00The Arbitrariness Candidate<br />
For those struggling for an explanation of what happened, here's the best I can come up with so far:<br />
<br />
Obviously, Trump's election represents a rejection of the Establishment, of which Hillary Clinton is, in many ways, the perfect embodiment. But if that's what the voters of this country have rejected, what, exactly, are they *embracing* by selecting President Trump?<br />
<br />
Contrary to many of my liberal friends, I don't think the fundamental is racism or sexism or bigotry or even nationalism or authoritarianism. Those are elements of Trump, to be sure, and they are things to be concerned about, but they don't represent the fundamental of what I see people who were enthusiastic about Trump in my own circles embracing. I don't think the Trump supporters among my friends are motivated primarily by hate (though some are far more tolerant of it than I would prefer).<br />
<br />
I think the fundamental thing people are embracing is this: the arbitrary. Trump was the Arbitrariness Candidate. He may well be the Arbitrariness President.<br />
<br />
The arbitrary is that which is put forth without any evidence. The putting forth and accepting of claims without evidence (or in contradiction of it) defined Trump's campaign and his supporters. He asserted things (e.g. Mexicans are rapists, Ted Cruz's father participated in the JFK assassination, he alone can fix our problems without articulating any realistic or specific solutions, etc.) and a large number of his supporters accepted them even when no evidence was provided, time and time again. Even the racism and sexism that so many liberals fear are based in the belief in the arbitrary: the belief that one race or gender is superior (a belief for which there is no evidence). It is the essence of the Trumpian 'believe me', which is code for 'take my word for it because I'm not going to give you any reason to actually believe me.'<br />
<br />
And among his supporters, there is a widespread attitude of 'we know what Hillary represents: the Establishment'. This is true. But then it is quickly followed up by some version of 'Trump may not be perfect, but at least there is a chance that he will be better.' This belief, too, is rooted in accepting the arbitrary. Donald Trump has been in the public eye for many, many years. There is ample evidence to draw conclusions about what he will do as President. The inferences we might reasonably draw based on that evidence aren't guaranteed to be right, but they are at least reasonable, as contrasted with the belief that he will be consistently pro-freedom, conservative or, indeed, consistently anything, which is pure fantasy.<br />
<br />
Pure fantasy is not worthy of the same cognitive consideration as a belief for which there is some evidence, however robust or scant. (This is the answer to the emerging group of non-enthusiastic Trump apologists who are starting to say 'Well, you don't know what he'll do as President. Maybe it will be ok." It's true that we don't know for certain, but just imagining that it might be ok without being aware of any specific reasons to think so doesn't count as a refutation of people's legitimate, evidence-based concerns.)<br />
<br />
It is a grave, grave error to entertain the arbitrary in your thinking, even for a second. If someone puts something forth without any real claim at supporting it with evidence, there is no reason to even consider it possible. If one entertains every statement that someone puts forth as possible, even with no evidence, that does not constitute thinking. It constitutes engaging in a flight of fancy that one has mistaken for cognition. It is a recipe for the sort of cognitive fuzziness and paralysis that allow one to fall victim to the next charismatic figure who comes along who is capable of conjuring up those fantasies and evoking the emotions they connect with.<br />
<br />
I think a good, day one answer to 'what do we do next?' is this: fight the arbitrary. Both in your own mind and in the public square. Demand of your friends, your leaders, your teachers and yourself that views be supported by evidence. Train yourself, and help train others, to identify when things are asserted arbitrarily and to reject them out of hand until and unless some actual reason to believe them is provided -- whether you are disinclined to agree with the assertion or, especially, if you are inclined to agree with it. Do not accept the common belief that because we can't be certain of something, we must entertain all possibilities. That attitude elevates ignorance to the status of cognitive gold standard and is a direct path to the destruction of the intellect.<br />
<br />
Contrary to the prevailing cultural attitude, not all opinions are equally valid. If, as a people, we were as adept at detecting the arbitrary as we are at, say, detecting racism, I don't think we would have President Elect Trump, and I certainly don't think we would be as primed for abdicating our collective responsibility to think and judge and embracing an actual dictator as I fear we are.Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-77382241449935970322016-11-07T10:21:00.000-05:002016-11-07T10:24:20.697-05:00Election 2016 Final TakeHere's the truth: Trump is poison in a way that is unprecedented for a major party nominee. Hillary may not be a steak dinner, but she is some type of food, however unappetizing.<br /><br />There is no hope for the people who think that Trump is a steak dinner. They'll either figure out that he's poison eventually or they won't. But as amusing and sad as those people are, there just aren't enough of them to swing the election.<br /><br />If Trump does win, it will be because a bunch of people at the margin are too ignorant, lazy, uncritical or habituated to voting Republican to appreciate the difference between a plate of food (however lousy) and rat poison.<br /><br />If you still find yourself not knowing who to vote for but considering Trump, or have resigned to vote for him as the lesser of two evils, you are one of these people. You, and the system around you, have failed to prepare you to do your civic duty. If you see Trump and Hillary as basically equivalent, you don't understand what is going on or what is at stake, and those of us who have been trying to help you understand have also failed you. For that I am sorry. I tried my best.<br /><br />If you are one of these people, my final request of you is this: please recognize that if you actually go and vote, you aren't doing your civic duty. You have already failed to do that (or are simply unable to do so under the circumstances). Casting an actual vote in this condition is like standing in the middle of the town square and firing a gun at anyone who looks vaguely suspicious because you are concerned about a recent rash of burglaries.<br /><br />This election is a battle for the future of our country against someone who is trying to destroy it. If you see it as something other than that and are considering a vote for Trump, don't take the law into your own hands. On Election Day, please stay at home, shelter in place and let the police handle it.Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-64534825392432214062016-11-03T21:16:00.000-04:002016-11-03T21:16:28.544-04:00The 2016 Election Tobacco Analogy: Extended Version<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://images.thehollywoodgossip.com/iu/s--BaePJ0Gl--/t_full/f_auto,fl_lossy,q_75/v1470865317/barack-obama-smoking-photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://images.thehollywoodgossip.com/iu/s--BaePJ0Gl--/t_full/f_auto,fl_lossy,q_75/v1470865317/barack-obama-smoking-photo.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Most politicians: a pack a day smoking habit</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br />
Hillary Clinton: going from 1 to 1.15 packs per day</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br />
What even Hillary's strongest supporters think she is: going from 1 to 1.15 packs per day but also going for a light jog</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br />
What Trump's more naive supporters have convinced themselves he is: removing cigarette from mouth and inserting a spoonful of plain old (but definitely vanilla) yogurt</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br />
Old version of what Trump actually is: trading in pack a day smoking habit for full blown heroin addiction</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br />
Improved version of what Trump actually is: removing cigarette and inserting a lit sick of dynamite while trying to convince others that this is beneficial to one's health</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br />
What the more self aware Trump supporters think they're doing: removing cigarette and inserting a lit sick of dynamite while trying to convince others that this is beneficial to one's health </div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Bernie Sanders: a humidor full of secondhand Cuban cigars that someone has failed maintain the proper moisture level in</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Jill Stein: That which one finds in the ashtray after all the Bernie cigars have been smoked</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Obama: A pack of Marlboro Lights that, due to the fact that it is being followed by Trump and Hillary, is mistaken for a green salad.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Gary Johnson: weed</div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-23111152559205638212016-10-22T08:54:00.000-04:002016-10-22T08:56:35.830-04:00The three kinds of Trumpies I meet on Facebook<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i.amz.mshcdn.com/TWDK2toywmdl5XS6TcWOPlwq8c0=/fit-in/1200x9600/http%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F05%2Ffacebook-clouds-640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.amz.mshcdn.com/TWDK2toywmdl5XS6TcWOPlwq8c0=/fit-in/1200x9600/http%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F05%2Ffacebook-clouds-640.jpg" height="112" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
An extremely unscientific survey based on my newsfeed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The three types of people I see on Facebook who express support for Trump:</div>
<ol>
<li>Women who are strongly anti-abortion, recognize that Hillary Clinton is an extremely pro-choice candidate and believe that there is at least some chance Donald Trump would do things to reduce or restrict abortions (such as nominating anti-abortion justices).</li>
<li>People who hate Hillary Clinton, the Clintons generally and/or the Democratic Party so much that they would vote for a Dark Lord of the Sith if he were running against her. In fact, some acknowledge that this is what they are doing in voting for Trump. Mix of genders.</li>
<li>Men who believe the Establishment is destroying America. They see a vote for Trump as falling somewhere on the spectrum between registering a protest against this Establishment and an opportunity to actually burn this motherfucker down.</li>
</ol>
<div>
Attributes shared by members of all three groups:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Whiteness;</li>
<li>Sense that something is very wrong with this country (e.g. a great injustice being done to the unborn, economy that doesn't work for the people, danger posed by HRC/Establishment/people who don't look like them and don't share American values);</li>
<li>Skepticism or rejection of mainstream media or any information presented to them if derived from mainstream sources;</li>
<li>Tendency to obtain/post news and opinions from sources that cater exclusively to people who share their ideological viewpoint (e.g. right wing media, Catholic publications, etc.) and being highly credulous when it comes to any information that comes from these sources;</li>
<li>Among the 2nd and 3rd groups (less so the 1st), a tendency to see anyone who disagrees with, questions or challenges them as being hopelessly deluded into towing the Establishment line.</li>
</ol>
</div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-56257394746462529222016-10-21T16:01:00.000-04:002016-10-21T16:59:06.414-04:00The Unhappy People and The Orange Man (A Cautionary Conspiracy Theory Fable)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIwjNrmsTVYUoPmzir3D1C3T9TO0SkknxYBfXVP9v_l7N_jl0VkaUhp7HiSgkWxK5tq3UIXMYFq9w6yL_bKmnvzgSacO3jLXWgXGxLV_-fmK9iQKLjr5L5SdMOCaC1bnVOTURm_oGgsPls/s1600/il_570xN.407116640_sarb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIwjNrmsTVYUoPmzir3D1C3T9TO0SkknxYBfXVP9v_l7N_jl0VkaUhp7HiSgkWxK5tq3UIXMYFq9w6yL_bKmnvzgSacO3jLXWgXGxLV_-fmK9iQKLjr5L5SdMOCaC1bnVOTURm_oGgsPls/s320/il_570xN.407116640_sarb.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bad hombre puppets, which do not actually appear in this fable</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The country was an absolute disaster and a lot of people were unhappy.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Unhappy People felt like America was becoming unrecognizable. They thought it had lost its standing in the world. They saw that the economy wasn't working for them. They had lived through terrorist attacks and unnecessary wars. They saw more and more faces they didn't recognize and felt like they belonged to people who didn't share their values: real <i>bad hombres</i>. It wasn't great.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Unhappy People saw a political Establishment that didn't work for them. It wasn't responsive to their needs -- only to those of big banks and corporate interests and itself. Its policies weren't effective at keeping them safe at home or abroad.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Worse, its leaders weren't doing what they were supposed to: they kept overstepping their bounds under the Constitution, increasing the government's power and reach. You couldn't even trust what you read in the papers because the mainstream media was so biased in favor of the Establishment. And now, it seemed like the country was about to get <i>another</i> Clinton for President (or else some wishy-washy, out of touch Republican elite-type). More of the same.</div>
<div>
<br />
...<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Then along came The Orange Man. He announced he was running for President. The Orange Man was good at business. He built amazing things. Huge things. Things you had heard of like hotels and casinos and steaks. He was a TV star! Not only that, but he spoke the Unhappy People's language! He shared their concerns. He talked about the same issues that they did. And boy could he talk! The Orange Man <i>loved</i> to talk. And not in the fake way that the Establishment guys did. He told it like it is! He got in your face and wasn't afraid to shake things up. Because that's what The Orange Man was here to do: shake things up. Finally! </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And he did. He really did. He steamrolled those weak, low-energy Establishment Republicans in the primaries. He took over their party <i>just like that.</i> And they all fell in line, Establishment types and all. Because The Orange Man was tough. A real leader. And when the system is as broken as it is, that's what you need: a real leader. A man who's strong: a <i>strongman</i>, you might say. Someone who can repair the broken country by himself (because the Establishment sure isn't going to help). Someone who, alone, can fix it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Sure The Orange Man said some things that seemed extreme and vaguely unamerican to some of the Unhappy People. But drastic times called for drastic measures. Sometimes you need to take the good with the bad.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Establishment <i>really</i> didn't like any of this. They were afraid of The Orange Man. They said <i>he</i> was the dangerous one. They started using their pawns in the liberal media to try to discredit The Orange Man. Some of what they said about him was true, some of it was lies. But none of it mattered. It was just the Establishment trying to protect itself. Fortunately, The Unhappy People had <i>their own</i> media by now. And that media was the only one willing to tell the truth about things. They were the only ones who seemed to even care about what an awful, dangerous, corrupt, dishonest liar Hillary was. And they thought The Orange Man was great. In fact, The Orange Man even hired some folks who lead this special Unhappy People Media to run his campaign.</div>
<div>
<br />
...<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
As the election got closer, things started to go badly for The Orange Man. Bigly badly. He wasn't doing well in the polls. Most people thought Hillary beat him in the debates: even some people who supported The Orange Man. A bunch of stuff came out that was embarrassing for The Orange Man: his returns showing he paid no taxes and maybe wasn't such a great businessman after all. A tape of him saying some very rude things about women (the liberal media claimed he was bragging about sexual assault but of course that was just them being all PC -- it was just words and Hillary's husband did much worse).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Still, all of this stuff seemed to have some effect, because The Orange Man looked like he was <i>losing</i>. But how could that be? The Orange Man might be a lot of things, but he was no loser.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Fortunately, The Orange Man himself explained it. He wasn't really losing: the fix was in. Voter fraud. The liberal media spinning things again. And of course Hillary shouldn't even be running: she should be in jail. The Unhappy People Media agreed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To the Unhappy People, it made perfect sense. The establishment could never beat The Orange Man fair and square, so they had to cheat. They had to <i>steal the election</i> from him.</div>
<div>
<br />
...<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
But what The Unhappy People didn't know was that The Orange Man actually <i>was losing</i> -- and The Orange Man knew it. Or at least the people running his campaign did. They had known all along that he couldn't possibly win. Because even though The Orange Man's supporters really wanted him to win, there just weren't enough of them who would actually go out and vote. That was a little sad for The Orange Man, the people running his campaign and the people who lead the special Unhappy People Media, but fortunately they had a plan. Because they were playing the long game. Team Orange Man had an agenda of it's own.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And what was that agenda? It was to get someone into power who would support all of the most extreme things The Orange Man and his nuttiest supporters wanted. Things like banning all people of a certain religion from entering the country. Jailing political opponents. Some pretty vile, racist stuff. Stuff that can only work if enough Americans were willing to ignore or reject the country's basic principles. Stuff that could only work with a strong, authoritarian figure in charge, rather than a functioning system of checks and balances.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Extreme Orangists had learned that the country was <i>almost</i> ready for all this, but not quite, so they held a dress rehearsal. It gave them a chance to verify their techniques. See how people would respond. The Establishment did just what they expected: the Republican elite got in line because they were afraid to alienate The Orange Man's voters. Some people in the mainstream media had an inkling of what was going on, but for the most part they focused on the superficial stuff (like the nasty things The Orange Man said) and even helped The Orange Man when it served their interests (like in getting ratings). Whatever The Orange Man's original reasons for running were, the Extreme Orangists had taken over. To them, The Orange Man was a charismatic stooge with just enough of the important features to be useful for a trial run.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
See, the Extreme Orangists had studied their history (though not the Orange Man himself: he doesn't read). They knew that to bring their agenda about, they had to get enough people who were willing to go along with it. Enough people who were willing to look the other way at the horrible stuff. There weren't quite enough of these people in 2016 to elect The Orange Man. But they knew the best way to get more of them next time: it was to manipulate the Unhappy People.</div>
<div>
<br />
...<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
The Unhappy People were a perfect target. They sensed that things were going wrong in the country. They already felt like the system wasn't working for them. They hated and distrusted the Establishment. The got their news and information almost exclusively from their own Unhappy People Media (which the Extreme Orangists controlled) and were skeptical of any information that came from other sources.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There were just two problems. First, the Unhappy People weren't quite ready to abandon American principles and fully embrace the Extreme Orangist agenda just yet. And second, not all of them were motivated enough to go out and vote (even when it looked like The Orange Man might win).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Extreme Orangists knew the best way to fix both of these problems: it was to get the Unhappy People to be <i>angry and hopeless</i>. Even more angry and hopeless than they already were. Since The Orange Man was going to lose the election anyway, the Extreme Orangists saw the perfect opportunity to do this: they'd keep telling the Unhappy People that the <i>very system itself</i> was rigged until enough of them <i>really </i>believed it. Knew it in their hearts. Felt it in their bones. Woke up every day of Hillary Clinton's administration, overflowing with rage and despair and feeling, with every fiber of their being, that their America was already lost.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because if their America is already lost -- if the system is completely and irredeemably rigged against them -- what chance do the Unhappy People have? What hope is there other than to try something completely different, even if it flies in the face of the very values the Unhappy People once claimed to hold dear? Those values didn't work. The system itself has failed. Why not burn it down, either in the streets or, more likely, by electing The Orange Man 2.0 next time around (for the original Orange Man, having outlived his usefulness to the Extreme Orangists, will be long gone). The day will come, and this time, enough of the Unhappy People will finally be ready.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Most of the Unhappy People never realized any of this was going on, of course. But a few did. They remembered the <i>Star Wars</i> prequels and realized that while they thought they were trying to save the Galactic Republic from the Separatists, they were being tricked by the Emperor all along. Those who were fortunate enough never to have seen the prequels drew a little bit of smug satisfaction from that fact, but they too realized that while they thought they were fighting to save their country from the Establishment, they were actually being manipulated into working towards its destruction by people <i>who were even worse.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Those that realized this felt like fools. They knew they had been played like a bunch of ninety-nine cent kazoos. They stood on the brink of oblivion, faces red with shame, and wondered <i>is it too late to turn back?</i> </div>
</div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-63008482423057785722016-10-20T13:15:00.001-04:002016-10-20T13:23:43.883-04:00The nihilism of Trump's fraud allegations<p>[reposted from Facebook]</p>
<p>The other thing about Trump refusing to state that he will accept the results of the election is that it is an admission that he has abandoned all hope of actually winning.</p>
<p>It is such an obscene statement that it is going to contribute to getting out the vote for Clinton from people who otherwise wouldn't have come out. It also creates a disincentive for his supporters to come out and vote: if the system is rigged against him and he's bound to lose, why waste your time voting for him? Both of those things increase his likelihood of losing.</p>
<p>
It's another reason why I think destabilizing the country, rather than becoming President or even making up excuses for his loss, has become his actual goal. If he was just trying to protect his ego, he could have spun his likely impending defeat in a way that actually might improve his chances of winning ("Crooked Hillary and the liberal media are trying to steal the country from us. If you want to stop them, get out and vote for me!")</p>
<p>
It's really borderline nihilism. He no longer thinks he can win. He doesn't care about winning anymore. He doesn't care about his supporters (or that they desperately want him to win). He just wants to pour the gasoline, light the match and watch it all burn.</p>Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-64986355060485216412016-10-20T09:00:00.000-04:002016-10-20T10:13:40.513-04:00Hillary Clinton Must Be Elected President<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5784e0458d3eaea409023387-1190-625/heres-every-dictator-donald-trump-has-praised.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5784e0458d3eaea409023387-1190-625/heres-every-dictator-donald-trump-has-praised.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
It has been clear to me for a long time that Donald Trump is completely unfit to be President. Though I have known for an equally long time that I would not be voting for Mr. Trump, up until last night's debate, I had not decide how I would be voting. I am undecided no longer.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As a direct consequence of Trump's ongoing strategy of questioning the legitimacy of the election and his specific refusal last night to state that he would accept the results, I will be casting my vote for Hillary Clinton. I think it is vital that every freedom-loving American -- irrespective of their political views or affiliation -- do the same.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The conventional wisdom on Mr. Trump's casting doubt on the election's legitimacy is that he is so psychologically adverse to losing (and to being branded a loser) that he will grasp at any excuse to avoid that characterization. While this may be true, I believe it is insufficient to explain the preemptive attacks on the integrity of the electoral process. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Trump's baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud began <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/08/13/489889496/trump-calls-to-stake-out-polling-places">long before</a> it became clear that he was on an irreversible path to losing. Moreover, the allegations of the election being 'stolen' are literally incoherent to a degree beyond even Mr. Trump's baseline level. In order for an election to be stolen from a candidate (due to voter fraud or any other means), that candidate has to be <i>winning or at least competitive. </i>But Mr. Trump is <a href="http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo">currently</a> trailing Mrs. Clinton by 7 points in the average of national polls with less than three weeks until the election. He has only a 13% chance of victory. If he wins (legitimately or otherwise), it would represent <i>him</i> 'stealing' the election from Mrs. Clinton, but he (and his supporters) should <i>expect him to lose </i>based on the available data<i>.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Under these conditions, if Mr. Trump's primary goal is to avoid the stain of loserism and he's willing to continue to play fast and loose with the facts, why go with this bizarre and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/us/politics/donald-trump-voting-election-rigging.html?_r=0">unsubstantiated</a> narrative about widespread voter fraud? The traditional (and much more plausible) Republican narrative of liberal media bias ('the polls are rigged', 'the press is out to get me', etc.) maps much better to the facts and would still resonate with a Trump base that is enamored of conspiracy theories.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I believe there is something both simpler and far more sinister going on than Mr. Trump protecting his ego. The danger of the fixed election narrative, as commentator after commentator have <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/10/donald_trump_vs_american_democracy.html">pointed out</a>, is that it undermines people's faith in the electoral process. It plays into the narrative that the entire political system is rigged against his supporters. It will probably incite some of them to engage in voter suppression and intimidation tactics, if not outright political violence.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After watching Mr. Trump's performance last night, I don't believe these outcomes are unintended consequences of a thin-skinned misogynist trying to avoid looking like he lost to a girl. They are the intended outcomes of an authoritarian figure trying to undermine a country's longstanding traditions of representative government and peaceful transition of power so that it more closely resembles a system more to his liking.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
By running a campaign that involved attacking the political establishment, praising foreign dictators, threatening to jail his political rival and advocating <a href="http://www.alspach.org/2015/12/supporting-donald-trump-is-un-american.html">policies</a> that fly in the face of American values and constitutional protections, Donald Trump was trying to transform America into a less free, more statist country through the ballot box. It is now clear that he will not be elected, so, consistent with his political philosophy, he has now switched to openly attempting to erode that system in a far more direct and egregious way than any politician in American history.<br />
<br />
There is no longer any question that Donald Trump -- a man who his supporters believe is trying to save the American system of government from a political establishment that has sold out its people -- is actually trying to destroy it. And this is why he must be stopped.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because he has chosen to pursue his agenda by arbitrarily asserting that he will lose the election due to fraud, it is vital that Trump be defeated in a manner that leaves no doubt that the outcome of the election was legitimate.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I believe this means voting for Hillary Clinton so that her margin of victory over Trump in the popular vote is as wide as it can be. Based on current polling, a Clinton landslide (greater than 10% popular vote victory) is an attainable goal. Such an historic result -- hundreds of thousands of times beyond the margin that any reasonable estimation of the effects that fraud could have on the outcome would support -- would be an emphatic repudiation of the anti-American agenda of Trump and his supporters.<br />
<br />
Beyond this, I believe the seriousness of the Trump threat also requires a stern rebuke of the party that has collaborated with him. In my view, this means consistently voting for down-ballot Democratic candidates at the federal, state and local levels over their Republican opponents, <i>irrespective of the relative merits of the individual candidates</i> and <i>irrespective of the Republican candidate's level of support for or endorsement of Trump. </i>To be clear, that last point includes voting against Republican candidates who have specifically renounced Trump and those who have remained neutral towards him, in addition to those who have expressed support for him. The Republican party, its leadership and its base had every opportunity to stop or repudiate Mr. Trump's candidacy. Instead they embraced it. They must be punished for doing this so that it is clear to future members of all American political parties that supporting would-be dictators is a path to nothing but a crushing electoral defeat.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I do not advocate this approach lightly. I do so in full knowledge that, if successful, it would result in Hillary Clinton being elected President with not only a strong popular mandate but potential Democratic control of both houses of Congress. In such a scenario, the Democratic party would be emboldened to pursue the most Progressive parts of its agenda. I strongly disagree with large parts of this agenda and regard the more extreme ones as dangerous and inconsistent with freedom and American values. But, in general, such a scenario would represent a moderate acceleration of an already-in-progress trend towards a more socialist America with greater executive power, bigger government, less recognition of individual rights and continued ineffective foreign policy. But, frankly, this longstanding trend has been abetted by members and administrations of both parties. Its acceleration represents an unfortunate development, but it pales in comparison to how dramatically the trend towards a statist America would accelerate if an avowed proto-dictator who openly advocates undermining our constitutional system by any means possible were to come to power, or, worse, actually undermine that system without coming to power.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It is vital that such a man be stopped. In order to do so, I will be voting for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party in this election. I strongly advocate that you do the same.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-47021037665939299522016-10-10T22:35:00.000-04:002016-10-10T22:41:09.415-04:00Tribalism and Trump SupportA common question among those who are shocked and dismayed by Donald Trump's candidacy is 'How can his supporters continue to support him?' The question is often expressed with increasing alarm and incredulity after some new and more troubling example of Trump being Trump comes to light.<br />
<br />
I think a big part of understanding the answer to that question is understanding the concept of tribalism and how essential it is to the nature of Trumpism.<br />
<br />
Tribalism is the basis of all the most primitive forms of collectivism such as racism and sexism (though it is broader and more fundamental than any of its specific forms). On the most basic level, it involves elevating allegiance to the group with which one identifies above all else.<br />
<br />
Politically, we see this in the various Trumpian stances that attempt to single out and marginalize various groups who aren't on the 'approved' list: deporting illegal immigrants, objectifying women, banning Muslims from entering the country and infringing upon the rights of those who are already here, etc.<br />
<br />
But there's a cognitive element to tribalism too: it consists of substituting group allegiance for one's actual thought and judgement.<br />
<br />
Trump's supporters view themselves primarily as members of some group of which Trump himself is the standard bearer. How exactly that group is defined differs from supporter to supporter. It might be something like 'people who have gotten a raw deal at the hands of the establishment' or 'real Americans.' But however you define the group, its existence provides a handy cognitive shortcut: on any given issue or topic, you and the other Trumpies are right, and everyone else is wrong.<br />
<br />
This substitution of group allegiance for rational, objective, principled thought explains a wide range of Trump supporter behavior -- including behavior that seems weirdly contradictory or hypocritical, for example<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Thinking that 'locker room talk' that objectifies women and even bragging about one's ability to sexually assault women with impunity is fine, yet having a problem if someone talked that way about <i>your</i> wife or daughter;</li>
<li>Having a major problem with the serial infidelities of the spouse of your political opponent (and her alleged enabling thereof) while simultaneously supporting a candidate who is an open, unapologetic, serial philanderer;</li>
<li>Being indifferent to Donald Trump's many documented lies and frauds while detesting Hillary Clinton for being 'deceitful';</li>
<li>Embracing any conspiracy theory that tends to support your group's official line without any regard for standards of proof or evidence while simultaneously demanding evidence from your opponents ('show us your birth certificate!') that you are, in fact, determined to dismiss or ignore ('it's fake!');</li>
<li>Expressing dismay at President Obama for overstepping his authority and dangerously increasing executive power while simultaneously supporting a man with obvious authoritarian views and tendencies who openly admires actual dictators;</li>
<li>Heaping scorn upon Republicans who, whether for principled or pragmatic reasons, rescind their support for Trump while simultaneously giving Trump himself a free pass on the actions that caused them to regard continued support as untenable;</li>
<li>Claiming to be a champion of American values while simultaneously advocating measures that would undermine them.</li>
</ul>
<div>
In all these cases, the sin isn't the actual thing. The actual thing is fine as long as a member of your tribe does it. The sin is <i>not being a member of the tribe</i>. The thing isn't right or wrong. Nothing is actually right or wrong. "Right" and "wrong" are useful rhetorical labels to apply to people and things to show your tribal allegiance.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The tribal mentality also explains the common (maybe the only) retort of Trump supporters when you point out their candidate's faults: the attempt at moral equivalence. 'So what if Donald used nasty language? Hillary tried to intimidate the women her husband had affairs with." </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Do you see what's going on here? Its more than just childish tit-for-tat and playing fast and loose with the facts.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As long as we can pair off one of Trump's alleged failings with one of Hillary's, then they are equivalently bad. And if we can frame them as equivalently bad, then there's no objective basis for picking one over the other. No need to worry about pesky facts or arguments or the (sometimes legitimately tricky task) of wading through it all. We can now take the cognitive shortcut and treat it like a matter of personal preference, which is to say tribal loyalty. It's like rooting for the Yankees over the Red Sox.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's why Trump supporters (even the tacit ones) don't seem to understand that people could have serious, profound concerns about a Trump presidency that, in their view, disqualify him from office. The thought of someone being disqualified on principle literally doesn't compute for them. They would actually have to believe there are such things as principles we could use to identify disqualifying behavior first. They would have to believe there are standards by which we could judge whether some particular behavior was disqualifying. They would have to believe in the value of evidence that would prove (or disprove) the existence of the disqualifying behavior.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But there are no principles. There are no standards. There is no value to evidence. There is only the tribe.</div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-29863014287201929682016-07-29T09:15:00.001-04:002016-07-29T09:23:03.042-04:00Good on 'ya, Democrats<br />[I originally posted this on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/brialsp/posts/10154515951079236">Facebook</a> but I liked it so here it is for prosperity:]<br /><br />I think the Democrats -- with whom I have many, many issues -- did an excellent job of articulating the essence of Trumpism in fundamental terms and framing the election as a referendum on it (which it is). That is almost unprecedented in contemporary politics and deserves high praise.<br /><br />This was particularly true of POTUS' speech and the (sadly too few) good parts of HRC's acceptance speech. Way better stuff than anything the media has done in covering or analyzing Trumpism, where I find them to be at best superficial and at worst enabling of Trump.<br /><br />I've been thinking about this and railing against Trumpism for a year, yet things they said genuinely helped me crystallize my own thinking. That's saying something. Specifically:<br /><br />1. Great job (again, esp. by POTUS) referring to 'Trumpism' as a thing: a belief system shared by a group of people. It isn't just Trump coopting the Republican party and his supporters being bamboozled: this is an ideology embraced by his ardent supporters because they believe it.<br /><br />2. Not only articulating what the core intellectual principles of Trumpism are -- nativist tribalism, protectionism and economic nationalism -- but also making it clear that those principles are unAmerican. Being a Trump supporter *means* you embrace those things. The enthusiastic ones embrace them proudly and the reluctant ones do so tacitly, but *that* is what it means to support or vote for Trump.<br /><br />3. Recognizing that the nature of those beliefs *requires* totalitarianism. The Trumpies admire Trump's authoritarian tendencies because on some level they understand that bringing their fundamentally unAmerican ideals to this country requires us to abandon American principles -- individual rights, freedom of religion, acceptance of people with different ideas -- and replace them with a strong man who tells us what to do, because those things can't happen in a country where our form of Constitutional government functions. To paraphrase POTUS, these people want to be ruled.<br /><br />4. They articulated much of this in simple, understandable terms (unlike what I just did), weaving in concrete examples, idealogical content and a sense of contrasting tone/worldview.<br /><br />If the Democrats can keep this up and the election results in a rejection of the very essence of Trumpism, they will have done this country a great service.Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-31542672816921247822016-05-24T10:46:00.003-04:002016-05-24T13:50:21.761-04:00The lesson of 2016: America is ready for a dictatorThe politicians are watching, folks. Not Trump and Clinton and Bernie (though they are, too). I mean the guys and gals who will be running for Congress two years from now. And President four years from now. And beyond.<br />
<br />
They're watching and they're learning the lessons that the electorate is teaching them during this election cycle, same as they always do. They're learning because when we support the candidates we do, we're continually sending the message "yes, please give us more of that." More candidates like that. More of that approach.<br />
<br />
But this time around, I fear we've reached the tipping point, because the lessons we're teaching them sure aren't good. They're not good for constitutional government. They don't say good things about us as a people. They don't bode well for the future.<br />
<br />
It may take the media and politicians a while to catch on, but here's what I think they'll figure out once they do, because this, is apparently, who we are and what we want more of:<br />
<br />
<b>You don't need to present policies or a vision</b> -- <b> </b>It used to be that a Presidential candidate had to have a platform. It used to be that they at least had to pay lip service to the issues. They had to present a reason why you should vote for them. Not anymore. Trump paints a picture of a weak and damaged country that he can somehow "make great again," but offers nothing that stands up to even the most modest scrutiny in terms of how to do that. Hillary offers no compelling reason why she should be President other than A) She <i>really</i> wants to be and B) She isn't Trump. Both candidates' argument for why they should be elected amounts to "Vote for me because I want to be President and this is how I act," -- and, shockingly, that's going to be enough to get one of them elected.<br />
<div>
<br />
<b>We don't care if what you say is true -- </b>We are so apathetic that we don't even make an attempt to check what the candidates are saying against reality. It doesn't matter if there is any data to support an <a href="http://time.com/4131439/donald-trump-muslims-9-11-video/">assertion</a>. It doesn't matter if you support an ideology that has failed historically and is <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/venezuela-economic-meltdown-pressure-nicolas-maduro-1.3596682">failing spectacularly</a> elsewhere in the world as we speak. We're not even going to look -- even in an age where it takes just a few seconds to verify information using Google. It used to be that you had to be at least a little concerned with the truth. Now, to succeed as a politician, you can get away with spouting utter BS: making statements that you know to be false while being indifferent to that fact because you know your base is equally indifferent.</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>It's all about tone -- </b>A reality show performer locked up the Republican race long ago because a plurality of that party's voters respond to his pseudo-self confident "tough talk," in spite of his beliefs and policy positions (to the extent he has them) being outliers from the traditional Republican platform (e.g. limited government, Christian values, etc.). And Hillary has still failed to secure her party's nomination because of the widespread (and true) belief that she is a shifty, robotic opportunist who will say and do anything to become President. Sanders' slogan is so (I think unintentionally) telling: "Feel the Bern." The message is "Support Bernie because it <i>feels </i>right." We're evaluating the candidates based on how they strike us.</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>... and the tone we responded to is anger -- </b>Bernie exploits popular anger against perceived Wall Street excesses and alleged responsibility for the Financial Crisis. The picture on the <a href="http://www.feelbern.org/">homepage</a> of Bernie's supporters' website is portrait of righteous indignation. Trump galvanizes his supporters with nationalist, xenophobic rhetoric. And because the truth is unimportant (see above), this is what it's about: whipping people up into a frenzy and playing nakedly to anger, fear and resentment. This validates those emotions and, for many people, a candidate's "I acknowledge and share in your anger" is enough reason to support them.</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>We don't value freedom -- </b>As catalogued elsewhere (including by <a href="http://www.alspach.org/2015/12/supporting-donald-trump-is-un-american.html">me</a>), Trump's policies are in conflict with a boatload of fundamental American principles, including those related to free speech, freedom of religion and personal liberty -- yet he's the candidate drawing supporters from what used to be the libertarian-leaning political party. Sanders and his supporters are the intellectual force behind the Democratic Party and they unapologetically advocate a doctrine based on the subordination or abolition of property rights and fundamental economic freedoms. On both sides of the aisle, we are not only indifferent to freedom: we're actively looking for folks who will throw it out the window if it means solving a problem, real or imagined, that we've been lead to believe is important.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Right now, someone in Washington is in the process of putting all of this together. I don't think it's terribly hard to do: it's the glaring message we, the voters, are <i>actually</i> sending (as opposed to whatever message the more conscientious among us <i>think</i> they're sending). Maybe one of the current crop of candidates already has it figured out.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When that person realizes that a plurality of Americans 1) <i>really</i> respond to angry rhetoric, 2) don't care if that rhetoric is true or even coherent and 3) don't hold freedom as a significant value -- they're going to take the surprising yet logical next step and conclude that the American public is ready to embrace an actual <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/05/andrew_sullivan_thinks_donald_trump_may_defeat_hillary_clinton.html">dictator</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Soberingly, all the checks and balances in the world (or in the Constitution) aren't going to prevent that dictator from coming to power when he does step forward. The effectiveness of our system of government -- as well as the nature of the candidates for elected office within it -- are consequences of the dominant intellectual climate among the American people, not the causes of it. And right now, that climate isn't looking too good.</div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-50047419172509358602016-05-10T11:29:00.000-04:002016-05-10T11:29:19.524-04:00It's closer than you thinkIt's pretty apparent that the media doesn't know how to cover the 2016 Presidential Election, so here's a little public service announcement: it's closer than you think.<br />
<br />
I think I've made my own <a href="http://www.alspach.org/2015/12/supporting-donald-trump-is-un-american.html">no-fan-of-Trump views</a> clear, but that aside, I am dumbfounded that the mainstream media (who supposedly are anti-Trump) continue to laugh off his candidacy despite his continually proving them wrong. I don't think this is intentional or the result of some bias on their part: I think it's that they literally have no idea how to make sense of the Trump phenomenon because it is so unprecedented.<br />
<br />
I'm not saying Trump is going to win. I am saying, though, that there are completely plausible, realistic scenarios in which he does. From the beginning of his candidacy, in fact, I've been saying that he was the only one in the Republican field who had a shot of beating Hillary due to his ability to mobilize non-traditional Republican voters (sorry John Kasich).<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Don't believe me? Try playing around with <a href="http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-swing-the-election/">538's tool</a> and see how easy it is to flip the map based on the assumption that Trump mobilizes non-college educated white voters who break his way.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br />
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
Wanna see how close it is? Here's a plausible (as of this writing) path to Trump victory:</div>
<div class="p2">
</div>
<ul>
<li>He holds all the red states that Romney took in 2012. I think this is quite plausible. The only competitive red state in 2012 was North Carolina, where Obama lost by just 3% of the popular vote. In every other red state, Romney won by at least 8% (GA) and 10% or more everywhere else.</li>
<li>He flips Florida, Ohio and Virginia (or, less plausibly, two of those plus PA), which all went to Obama narrowly in 2012. I think this is possible if Trump focuses on mobilizing his base in those states since the <a href="http://www.rttnews.com/story.aspx?Id=2647535"><span class="s3">latest polling</span></a> shows a dead heat in OH, PA and FL. All four of those states were decided by 5% or less of the popular vote in 2012.</li>
<li>He also flips at least one of CO and NV. Both of these were decided by 6% or less of the popular vote in 2012, but it’s interesting given the Hispanic population in both states, who I understand are not Trump's biggest fans.</li>
</ul>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Per the above, let’s say Trump takes FL, OH, VA and CO — the 4 states from the above scenario that were closest in 2012. If this happens, he wins with 275 electoral votes to Clinton’s 263 (270 needed to win), and it’s All Hail President Trump:</span></div>
<br />
<div align="center">
<a href="http://www.270towin.com/maps/MeP2l"><img src="http://www.270towin.com/presidential_map_new/maps/MeP2l.png" width="500" /></a><br />
<small><img alt="" src="http://www.270towin.com/uploads/3rd_party_270_30px.png" style="vertical-align: middle;" /> Click the map to create your own at <a href="http://www.270towin.com/maps/MeP2l">270toWin.com</a></small></div>
<br />
<span class="s1">Not saying it’s going to happen, just saying it could…</span>Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-59194105741769660742015-12-15T10:34:00.001-05:002015-12-15T10:34:22.957-05:00The evolution of Star Wars marketing<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib5sjTAsBKPVLeG-0YonhYL9UxbtdqYUGPomC4avIBDaJSQYa6NtkqVm7WWK0Ye2QFyaVdkMMDY5lHWeCOrXx9pHOgutcwPzj7Wy7W3VOxXdy2J6EwQC79qhGDXigM1hr8HGJZrSIxmfxh/s1600/This-Death-Star-waffle-maker-will-make-you-want-to-join-the-dark-side-for-breakfast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib5sjTAsBKPVLeG-0YonhYL9UxbtdqYUGPomC4avIBDaJSQYa6NtkqVm7WWK0Ye2QFyaVdkMMDY5lHWeCOrXx9pHOgutcwPzj7Wy7W3VOxXdy2J6EwQC79qhGDXigM1hr8HGJZrSIxmfxh/s320/This-Death-Star-waffle-maker-will-make-you-want-to-join-the-dark-side-for-breakfast.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If your waffles aren't shaped like the Death Star, I hope you choke on them.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
When <i>Star Wars</i> first came out, it was like: "Here's this amazing movie. If you are a Star Wars fan, here is some <a href="https://i5.walmartimages.com/dfw/dce07b8c-fcd5/k2-_6c483c56-667f-499b-adff-c31fb53c27dc.v1.jpg">merch</a> you can buy."<br />
<br />
When <i>The Phantom Menace</i> was coming out, it was like: "Here's the next installment of this thing that is an amazing cultural institution. Star Wars fans -- you should totally see this movie. And here's some new <a href="http://images.techtimes.com/data/images/full/131407/jar-jar-tongue-via-flickr-jpg.jpg?w=600">merch</a> you should buy."<br />
<br />
Now with <i>The Force Awakens</i>, it feels like: "As everyone knows, the next chapter in our shared mythology is soon to be handed down. Previously uncontacted tribes in the highlands of New Guinea have already purchased their tickets. We won't even waste our time suggesting that you see it, because obviously you (and every other human) will.<br />
<br />
"Star Wars fans -- since everyone on Earth is going to see this movie, you need to step up your game. You don't want to be less Star Wars than those non die-hard Star Wars people, do you? Well guess what: the only way to prevent that is to fill every possible facet of your life with Star Wars merch. Seriously, if you're not making toast in the <a href="https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/images/products/in/large/LTP10026.jpg">Darth Vader toaster</a>, you're not a real Star Wars fan. If your kid isn't sleeping in the <a href="http://cnet1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2015/09/04/6f5af4ca-ab82-4b7b-8e38-46ec45400d90/resize/570xauto/60e7c9c830562fbee52a7fd9f641d004/starwarsbed1.jpg">Millennium Falcon cockpit</a>, you should put him up for adoption. Ladies, if you show up at the screening and your face isn't covered in <a href="http://www.geekykool.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/tumblr_nt1gf2eqYy1r8j8ioo1_1280.jpg">Cover Girl Star Wars makeup</a>, your man should probably murder you and dump your remains out of the nearest garbage shoot before jumping to hyperspace."<br />
<br />
That being said...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxD0EfoJp4QCL5ddsb62PrUV-6nn9z2PY9S6L88l19ZG076OgPbJOZAlr7Jr9eZIZM-7US-nKBwWbOqo-1UizeycLnXfVOVCT6ab8Sd9x34vzgeEFoVev9NCvzT3BfMCCAEImOU0-zX_lO/s1600/65990506.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxD0EfoJp4QCL5ddsb62PrUV-6nn9z2PY9S6L88l19ZG076OgPbJOZAlr7Jr9eZIZM-7US-nKBwWbOqo-1UizeycLnXfVOVCT6ab8Sd9x34vzgeEFoVev9NCvzT3BfMCCAEImOU0-zX_lO/s320/65990506.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-63947039648538440122015-12-11T09:04:00.000-05:002015-12-15T16:28:57.764-05:00Cruz Robotics<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Boudoir Androids. Conservative Values. Even Presidential candidates need a side project. So do videogame makers.<br /><br />A little something I threw together for <a href="http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah">The Daily Show's</a> '<a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ilzv60/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-ted-cruz-s-treasure-trove-of-raw-footage">Cruz Your Own Adventure</a>' campaign. Some fun with election 2016 after the serious stuff earlier in the week.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0Cnkw31phtQ" width="560"></iframe></div>Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-52375710135896267052015-12-09T08:56:00.000-05:002015-12-09T16:46:02.356-05:00Supporting Trump is un-American<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs9o9WCStGMO6ENvPF0izJipO_wLqqCc1XErSRGMoatQPpKzLiQVElQ7tVrFFJS_2T9Fa-eVV9J4W6d9-HYw7xG8_IcGKGLS36yrhGPnuUKpfixBX37N1pMFGPj1-VNPzU6SUtv1Yzef99/s1600/FlagArtsy2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs9o9WCStGMO6ENvPF0izJipO_wLqqCc1XErSRGMoatQPpKzLiQVElQ7tVrFFJS_2T9Fa-eVV9J4W6d9-HYw7xG8_IcGKGLS36yrhGPnuUKpfixBX37N1pMFGPj1-VNPzU6SUtv1Yzef99/s320/FlagArtsy2.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">An open letter to well-meaning Trump supporters everywhere.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dear Trump Supporter,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">You might not know it, but you're keeping company with some folks who believe some <a href="http://www.alspach.org/2015/12/why-you-should-take-donald-trump.html">pretty disturbing things</a>. Things like banning all Muslims from entering the US. Things like surveilling all American Muslims. Things like outlawing Islam entirely.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’d like to focus on and draw out the implications of a few of these things:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To advocate a ban on Muslims entering the US or to assume someone is a terrorist (or potential terrorist) solely because they are a Muslim (i.e. absent any specific evidence of terrorist intent or membership in a terrorist organization) is to accept the idea that one should judge people primarily insofar as they are members of groups, rather than as individuals. That is a collectivist premise that is at odds with the principles of individualism and individual rights.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To advocate a ‘Muslim registry’ or the surveillance of Muslims in the absence of reasonable suspicion/probable cause/evidence of illegal activity on the part of specific individuals is at odds with the 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments specifically and the notions of due process and equal protection generally.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To advocate the outlawing of Islam (or any other religion) is at odds with the 1st Amendment specifically and the principle of freedom of religion generally.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To embrace these ideas -- all of which are supported by a majority or plurality of Trump supporters according to recent polling data -- is to reject (at least) these four bedrock principles of our country (individual rights, due process, equal protection, freedom of religion). These principles were held by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in the Constitution, both of which you (rightly) claim to venerate. The equal protection clause (the idea that all people are entitled to the same treatment under the law) is part of the 14th Amendment, which is the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To support such proposals is to stand against these principles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To stand against these principles is profoundly un-American.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The (by no means exclusively Democratic/Obamian/potentially-Clintonian) failure to deal effectively with terrorism is a serious issue facing our country. But a weak, haphazard and ineffectual foreign policy does not constitute, in its essence, the betrayal of (or the danger to) America that the rejection of our core principles does. Nor, I would add, does a ‘poor' response to the imaginary ‘threat’ posed by Mexican immigrants.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Do you know who you <i>actually</i> stand with if you stand with Trump in rejecting individual rights, due process, equal protection and freedom of religion?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Islamic terrorists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They see the world as primarily composed of groups (in their case true believers, infidels, apostates, etc.), not individuals, and believe how people should be treated under the ‘law’ is governed primarily by their membership in certain groups, not individual rights. They regularly behead people for the ‘crime’ of not being in their preferred group without any sort of actual legal system or due process. And they certainly don’t think anyone should be free to practice any religion: everyone should subscribe to (their particular, niche variant of) Islam or die.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’d like to believe that the majority of you are conscientious, sincere individuals who care deeply about the future of our country. To such individuals I say: please understand that you are going down the path of rejecting the very essence of the country you love and of becoming the philosophical allies of the very people that you are concerned with protecting it from.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If, as I suspect, you are horrified by the thought that you share substantial philosophical common ground with folks like ISIS, perhaps it is time to reassess your views, including your support for candidate Trump.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sincerely,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A patriotic American </span></div>
<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?-->
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-24053442090007227722015-12-09T08:22:00.000-05:002015-12-09T11:42:56.166-05:00Why you should take the Donald Trump phenomenon seriously<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?-->
<br />
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghUM0zY3daQjOYtGcgtKiXgCm1jfHTzkolzc5Uc_j7CwWEd1CymaE6ybuLBZITsjadzUf-yKMauSyjJ95Aeq3Zhxjd1Rxs95qq-kIse9oi2yIuTnKBzavIMezgGOkn9y4qlqQ3E5kgp4Dt/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-12-09+at+8.18.18+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghUM0zY3daQjOYtGcgtKiXgCm1jfHTzkolzc5Uc_j7CwWEd1CymaE6ybuLBZITsjadzUf-yKMauSyjJ95Aeq3Zhxjd1Rxs95qq-kIse9oi2yIuTnKBzavIMezgGOkn9y4qlqQ3E5kgp4Dt/s320/Screen+Shot+2015-12-09+at+8.18.18+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some of my friends have questioned whether Donald Trump is sincere in the ridiculous things he says. I don’t want to speculate as to whether he is personally sincere or not. I don’t think it matters much.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But I do think it is a mistake to dismiss the Trump phenomenon in this way: i.e. as an (increasingly less) amusing sideshow, or as the ravings of someone who has become ‘unhinged', or as the behavior of an attention-seeking spoiled child or as ‘Trump being Trump.'
</span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here's why: these <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/12/donald_trump_is_expressing_the_bigotry_of_the_republican_party_s_base.html">two</a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/12/08/new_trump_poll_results_show_support_for_anti_muslim_positions.html">articles</a> provide an overview of polling data. While I disagree with some of the conclusions and interpretations, I think the data contained in these articles persuasively show that a majority or plurality of Trump supporters and, crucially, a <i>plurality of likely Republican voters</i> in certain states and possibly overall, agree with positions as extreme or <b>more extreme</b> than those articulated by Trump. These include:
</span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<ul style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Supporting a ban on Muslims entering the US</span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Backing the creation of a national database of Muslims</span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The idea that government should engage in surveillance to monitor ‘most Muslims’ (i.e. absent specific reasons to suspect specific individuals of illegal activity)</span></li>
</ul>
<ul style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That Islam should be made <b>illegal </b>in the United States (seriously, a plurality of Trump supporters in North Carolina -- 44%! -- believe this according to that second article)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Again - all of these are supported by a majority or plurality of Trump supporters and/or <b>all</b> Republican voters in various polls. ‘Majority’ means ‘more than half’. ‘Plurality’ means ‘more people support this than not.'
</span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, yeah, I think Trump should be taken seriously. </span></div>
Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669267394052043462.post-74433800581173636352013-05-02T14:06:00.000-04:002013-05-02T14:06:05.966-04:00Talking about Gamestar on Design MindsI wrote this brief article for <a href="http://designminds.org.au/">Design Minds</a>, an Australian blog dedicated to inspiring design thinking in educators. From the article:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A representation of an ecosystem that explores the consumption of energy over time. A study of the attractive and repulsive forces of the atom. A 3D visualization of a T-cell as it seeks out pathogens in the body. Each of these is a sophisticated scientific model built by a middle or high school student. But the students aren’t building those models in science class: they’re designing them into video games.</blockquote>
<br />
<a href="http://designminds.org.au/sophisticated-science-in-game-design/">Read more... </a>Skippyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333696897715660631noreply@blogger.com0