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First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult

Something has gone wrong with the flow of information. It’s not just that different people are drawing subtly different conclusions from the same evidence. It seems like different intellectual communities no longer share basic foundational beliefs. Maybe nobody cares about the truth anymore, as some have started to worry. Maybe political allegiance has replaced basic reasoning skills. Maybe we’ve all become trapped in echo chambers of our own making — wrapping ourselves in an intellectually impenetrable layer of likeminded friends and web pages and social media feeds.

But there are two very different phenomena at play here, each of which subvert the flow of information in very distinct ways. Let’s call them echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Both are social structures that systematically exclude sources of information. Both exaggerate their members’ confidence in their beliefs. But they work in entirely different ways, and they require very different modes of intervention. An epistemic bubble is when you don’t hearpeople from the other side. An echo chamber is what happens when you don’t trustpeople from the other side.

Current usage has blurred this crucial distinction, so let me introduce a somewhat artificial taxonomy. An ‘epistemic bubble’ is an informational network from which relevant voices have been excluded by omission. That omission might be purposeful: we might be selectively avoiding contact with contrary views because, say, they make us uncomfortable. As social scientists tell us, we like to engage in selective exposure, seeking out information that confirms our own worldview. But that omission can also be entirely inadvertent. Even if we’re not actively trying to avoid disagreement, our Facebook friends tend to share our views and interests.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How & Where Can Preppers Store All That Information?

March 28, 2018

How & Where Can Preppers Store All That Information?

Information Collection for the Prepper – Part 2

Most of the information discussed in these articles will be electronic files – specifically PDF and TIF files. This article will discuss how to safely store these files and use them before and after the SHTF.

Portable Storage of the Library

What I need to be able to do is read PDF and view TIF (graphic) files using my cell phone. It would be best if I could read these files from a USB drive, or secondarily, from a miniSD card. The plan would be that I would copy these files from my computer to these storage (USB and/or microSD) devices. I will sometimes call the information stored on these devices as the “Library”.

I like the Corsair Flash Survivor Stealth USB 3.0 Flash Drives because the USB drive is built into an “armored” case. The case appears to me to be made out of steel and rubber and is shock resistant with a water seal. These devices are about 3 inches long and about 1 inch in diameter. I have carried 2 of these devices in my pocket, along with my EDC (every day carry) stuff, for over a year now. My grandson carried the one I gave him on his keychain. The paint is a little worn but the devices still work fine. I have two 256 GB drives.

Here are the things that didn’t work:

I can carry thousands of PDF and other computer files with me everywhere I go. I just needed a portable device to read them with. Read on and I will tell you about my struggles finding a portable device to read these drives with.

My current cell phone is an Apple 4S. It has no capability to store computer files, nor any way to read files even if it did. I searched diligently for a cable with a female USB connector, into which I could plug my above-described USB drives, and that would plug into the connector on my phone. I never found one. Given that I never found a cable that even if I made up such a cable myself, which I didn’t, there would be no software with which to read the files.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Every Prepper Group Needs an Information Specialist (and How to Start Collecting Information)

March 16, 2018

Why Every Prepper Group Needs an Information Specialist (and How to Start Collecting Information)

Many preppers gather into groups of like-minded people to provide skills and equipment they themselves don’t have. One position or skill that is often overlooked is that of the “Information Specialist.”

“Someone who wants senior command should cultivate a lively curiosity. Technical competence (survival skills), even tactical competence (planning and execution of survival and military skills), isn’t enough. Strategy depends on intelligence (access to knowledge [books, articles, blogs, databases, maps, military intelligence, etc.]), and that depends on asking the right questions.” ~ “Winning Colors” by Elizabeth Moon (Comments in parentheses by the author of this article)

There is a great deal of information that is available to preppers publically and legally today that most likely won’t be available after the SHTF. Useful information that may help you survive and prosper during those bad times.

About the Information Specialist series

This article, the first of nine parts, does not discuss the basic prepper subjects of food (seeds, planting, growing, harvesting, cooking, saving, plus hunting and fishing), water, clothing, shelter, defense, first aid and medical, transportation, skills, gadgets, etc. This information is readily available in books and blogs. Prepper gadgets are available from numerous sources.

These articles will discuss the many sources of “important facts (that) are well known or may be gathered from public sources. This form of information collection is known as open source intelligence.” (Source). We will be discussing Internet sources of information, with links that you won’t find anywhere else, all free and legal.

For the purposes of discussion in these articles, there are two kinds of information. “Survival Information” (parts 1 – 6) and “The History of Technology and its Use in the Restoration of Civilization” (parts 7 – 9).

First are news and disaster warnings to let you stay up with what is happening now.
Second is information and gadgets that you can collect now that would be of use to the prepper now and after the SHTF. This includes maps, information about people and places local to you, in your state and nationally, radios, etc.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Most of what you’re going to read today is pointless.

March 5, 2018

Most of what you’re going to read today is pointless.

We spend hours consuming news because we want to be well informed. But is that time well spent? News is by definition something that doesn’t last. And as news has become easier to distribute and cheaper to produce, the quality has decreased.

Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about what we consume: Is this important? Is this going to stand the test of time — say, in a week or in a year? Is the person writing this someone who is well informed on the issue?

“[W]e’re surrounded by so much information that is of immediate interest to us that we feel overwhelmed by the never-ending pressure of trying to keep up with it all.”
— Nicolas Carr

There are several problems with the way we consume news today:

First, the speed of news delivery has increased. We used to have to wait to get a newspaper or gossip with people in our town to get our news, but not anymore. Thanks to alerts, texts, and other interruptions, news find us almost the minute it’s published.

Second, the costs to produce news have dropped significantly. Some people write 10 or more blog posts a day for major newspapers. It’s nearly impossible to write something thoughtful on one topic, let alone 10. Over the course of a year, this works out to writing 2400 articles (assuming four weeks of vacation). The fluency of the person you’re getting your news from in the subject they’re covering is near zero. As a result, you’re filling your head with surface opinions on isolated topics. Because the costs have dropped to near zero, there is a lot of competition.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ye shall know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16)

February 20, 2018

Ye shall know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16)

Google eyes

Recently it was my birthday (I’m not going to say what date that was, for reasons which will become clear later) and when I did a Google search, I was surprised to find a “Happy Birthday” greeting from Google, complete with an image of candles. I didn’t know how Google knew that, but I was busy at the time, I couldn’t be bothered looking into it and I just wrote it off as one of those “weird web” things.

The issue surfaced again more recently in a more sinister form when I tried to delete an online “profile photo” of myself stored in my Google account. There was nothing particularly sinister about the photo, just a standard head and shoulders shot, but it was out of date and not particularly flattering and I thought “let’s get rid of it then”. I couldn’t. I spent an hour trying to delete that photo when it was the Christmas holidays and I had better things to do. I consider myself a fairly proficient Internet user, but I tried everything I could think of to delete that photo without success. First I tried following all the obvious links to things like “my account”, “my profile”, “update details”, “images” and so on. I right clicked and left clicked on the picture and hit the “delete” button many, many times. I tried to replace it by uploading a neutral landscape photo. It was very easy to upload a new photo, but impossible to delete the one which was already there: I just found that both photos were then stored in my Google account. I tried Googling for “how to delete your Google profile photo” and found some instructions, but when I tried to follow them, they didn’t work.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Battle for Truth

January 24, 2018

The Battle for Truth

As we begin 2018, we find the world in a new phase in the loss of trust: the unwillingness to believe information, even from those closest to us. The loss of confidence in information channels and sources is the fourth wave of the trust tsunami. The moorings of institutions have already been dangerously undermined by the three previous waves: fear of job loss due to globalization and automation; the Great Recession, which created a crisis of confidence in traditional authority figures and institutions while undermining the middle class; and the effects of massive global migration. Now, in this fourth wave, we have a world without common facts and objective truth, weakening trust even as the global economy recovers.

Gresham’s Law, based on the 18th century observation that debased currency drives out the good, is now evident in the realm of information, with fake news crowding out real news. Leaders are going directly to the people, bashing the media as inaccurate and biased. These forces are taking a toll. According to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer, media has become the least-trusted global institution for the first time, with trust scores of over 50 percent in only six nations, five of which are in the developing world. Putting pressure on trust in media are declining trust in search engines and social media. People have retreated into self curated information bubbles, where they read only that with which they agree, as if selecting their playlist for music. Fully half of respondents indicate that they consume mainstream media less than once a week. Nearly six in 10 agree that news organizations are politicized, and nearly one in two agree that they are elitist. Nearly two-thirds agree that the average person cannot distinguish good journalism from falsehoods.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Assange Keeps Warning Of AI Censorship, And It’s Time We Started List

January 22, 2018

Assange Keeps Warning Of AI Censorship, And It’s Time We Started Listening

Throughout the near entirety of human history, a population’s understanding of what’s going on in the world has been controlled by those in power. The men in charge controlled what the people were told about rival populations, the history of their tribe and its leadership, etc. When the written word was invented, men in charge dictated what books were permitted to be written and circulated, what ideas were allowed, what narratives the public would be granted access to.

This continued straight on into modern times. Where power is not overtly totalitarian, wealthy elites have bought up all media, first in print, then radio, then television, and used it to advance narratives that are favorable to their interests. Not until humanity gained widespread access to the internet has our species had the ability to freely and easily share ideas and information on a large scale without regulation by the iron-fisted grip of power. This newfound ability arguably had a direct impact on the election for the most powerful elected office in the most powerful government in the world in 2016, as a leak publishing outlet combined with alternative and social media enabled ordinary Americans to tell one another their own stories about what they thought was going on in their country.

This newly democratized narrative-generating power of the masses gave those in power an immense fright, and they’ve been working to restore the old order of power controlling information ever since. And the editor-in-chief of the aforementioned leak publishing outlet, WikiLeaks, has been repeatedly trying to warn us about this coming development.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Collapse of Media and What You Can Do About It

December 6, 2017

The Collapse of Media and What You Can Do About It

Photo by Poster Boy | CC BY 2.0

When a system enters into the final stage of its deterioration – whether that is an institutional system, a state, an empire, or the human body – all the important information flows that support coherent communication breakdown. In this final stage, if this situation is not corrected the system will collapse and die.

It has become obvious to nearly everyone that we have reached this stage on the planet and in our democratic institutions. We see how the absolute dysfunction of the global information architecture — represented in the intersection of mainstream media outlets, social technology platforms and giant digital aggregators — is generating widespread apathy, despair, insanity and madness at a scale that is terrifying.

And we are right to be terrified, because this situation is paralyzing us from taking the action required to solve global and local challenges. While liberals fight conservatives and conservatives fight liberals we lose precious time.

While progressives fight government, the corporations and the super-rich we drown in despair. While philanthropists, fueled by their own certainty and wealth, fight for justice or equality or for some poor hamlet in Africa we become apathetic and distracted from the real source of the problem. And while the president fights everyone and everyone fights the president, the collective goes mad.

In the background, however, the game of hoarding resources and not redistributing them accelerates; absorbing the sum total of our collective actions and commitments into a singular unacceptable future. There is only one way to avoid this fate; uncover the source of the disease and cure it by mobilizing solutions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Seneca Cliff for the Web as we know it?

November 1, 2017

A Seneca Cliff for the Web as we know it?

We can’t ignore the evidence any longer. The “Web”, intended as a constellation of independent information providers is dying. It is going through a Seneca Cliff of its own, being replaced by a “Trinet”, controlled by the three giant companies, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

I have been noticing it with the stats for “Cassandra’s Legacy”. You can see how the decline in the number of contacts has been steady over the past year. Here are the stats:

We don’t yet see a Seneca Cliff, that is a rapid drop in the audience (don’t look at the drop at the end of the graph; it is just because the data are for the current month). I think it is mainly because I have been trying to contrast the decline by publishing more posts, but that has not been sufficient to change the trend. Here are the data for another blog of mine, “Chimeras”

In this case, the blog used to be visited by students looking for text to cut and paste for their term papers on mythology. They are not coming anymore; evidently, they found other sources of information. Or maybe the search engines don’t lead them to my blog anymore. Hard to say, but it is a fact.

So, what’s happening? As always, things change and, in our times, tend to change fast. Many of us can remember the “age of mass media,” now obsolete as steam engines and mechanical calculators. It looks incredible that there existed a time when everyone was exposed to the same information, provided under strict control by the government. In the Soviet Union, it was under control of the Communist Party.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Information or Disinformation? Only 32 Percent of Americans Trust the Media

September 17, 2016

Information or Disinformation? Only 32 Percent of Americans Trust the Media

The News Leaders / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A Gallup Poll released this week shows the largest decline in trust in the media since the organization started asking the public’s opinion on the subject in 1972. Conducted with people over 18, across 50 states, only 32 percent of those surveyed said they trust the media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.”

Only 14 percent of Republicans trust the media, down from 32 percent in 2015. According to the poll, the steep decline in trust among Republicans has been influenced by Republican leaders, conservative pundits and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who continually claims the media is biased toward his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Democrats (at 51 percent, compared to 55 percent in 2015) and independents (30 percent vs. 33 percent last year) have a little more faith in the Fourth Estate than Republicans.

Young and old alike are distrustful. For 18 to 49 age group, only 26 percent say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, down 10 percent from 2015. For those 50 and older, it’s 38 percent, down 7 percent from 2015.

Gallup reports:

The divisive presidential election this year may be corroding Americans’ trust and confidence in the media, particularly among Republicans who may believe the “mainstream media” are too hyperfocused on every controversial statement or policy proposal from Trump while devoting far less attention to controversies surrounding the Clinton campaign. However, the slide in media trust has been happening for the past decade. Before 2004, it was common for a majority of Americans to profess at least some trust in the mass media, but since then, less than half of Americans feel that way. Now, only about a third of the U.S. has any trust in the Fourth Estate, a stunning development for an institution designed to inform the public.

With the explosion of the mass media in recent years, especially the prevalence of blogs, vlogs and social media, perhaps Americans decry lower standards for journalism. When opinion-driven writing becomes something like the norm, Americans may be wary of placing trust on the work of media institutions that have less rigorous reporting criteria than in the past. On the other hand, as blogs and social media “mature,” they may improve in the American public’s eyes. This could, in turn, elevate Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media as a whole.

Since 1972, the apex of trust in media by the general public was 76 percent in 1976.

6 Giant Corporations Control The Media, And Americans Consume 10 Hours Of ‘Programming’ A Day

May 29, 2016

6 Giant Corporations Control The Media, And Americans Consume 10 Hours Of ‘Programming’ A Day

If you allow someone to pump hours of “programming” into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world. In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market. In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the “programming” that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world. So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous “propaganda matrix”?

Just think about your own behavior. Even as you are reading this article the television might be playing in the background or you may have some music on. Many of us have gotten to the point where we are literally addicted to media. In fact, there are people out there that become physically uncomfortable if everything is turned off and they have to deal with complete silence.

It has been said that if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out. It is the things that we do consistently that define who we are, and so if you are feeding your mind with hours of “programming” from the big media corporations each day, that is going to have a dramatic affect on who you eventually become.

These monolithic corporations really do set the agenda for what society focuses on. For example, when you engage in conversation with your family, friends or co-workers, what do you talk about? If you are like most people, you might talk about something currently in the news, a television show that you watched last night or some major sporting event that is taking place.

Virtually all of that news and entertainment is controlled by the elite by virtue of their ownership of these giant media corporations.

I want to share some numbers with you that may be hard to believe. They come directly out of Nielsen’s “Total Audience Report“, and they show how much news and entertainment the average American consumes through various methods each day…

The ‘Anti-Knowledge’ of the Elites

November 1, 2015

The ‘Anti-Knowledge’ of the Elites

Exclusive: It’s fairly easy to spot the “anti-knowledge” spouted by the Tea Party and the Religious Right’s favorite candidates, but a more subtle form of reality-deprived “group think” pervades America’s elites though it is rarely noted in the polite circles of the mainstream media, writes Mike Lofgren.

In a previous piece, I described how the Republican Party and its ideological allies in the fundamentalist churches have confected a comprehensive media-entertainment complex to attract low-information Americans and turn them into partisans.

The propaganda they are fed has become so disconnected from facts, evidence and logic that it is all too easy to laugh at people operating on demonstrably — and even ridiculously — false premises, such as the notion that Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, is not a natural-born American, or that the Sandy Hook school massacre was an elaborate fake designed to take away the firearms of patriotic Americans.

It would be comforting to believe that somewhere in the commanding heights of our permanent government, there are important players who are serious grownups who know what they are doing. That, at least, is the impression they seek to convey with their sober demeanors, credentials from think tanks or prestigious universities, and the measured, almost soporific testimony they deliver to congressional committees.

Think of Robert Gates, Ashton Carter, Timothy Geithner or Eric Holder. On the surface, they seem the very antithesis of the Tea Party fanatic, gibbering about ISIS training camps in America. The preferred pose of these establishment personages is that of the politically neutral technocrat offering well-considered advice based on their profound expertise.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Human Permaculture: Some Ideas On How To ‘Seed’ Information For Fertile Results

October 28, 2015

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Human Permaculture: Some Ideas On How To ‘Seed’ Information For Fertile Results

SEEDS AND STORIES

In my previous article, ‘Human Permaculture: Looking at Migration as Flow to Solve Problems’ (1), I explored how we can apply permaculture water-designs to help people who are ‘flowing’ from one place along particular pathways to reach the destinations suitable for them in a way which can benefit those arriving and those already there. Applying such principles will need a concerted effort of communication among all those affected by human flow. This article also looks at other ways of applying permaculture-inspired ideas with people and technology.

If we can analogise the way in which people travel around as similar to water flowing, it is also possible to look at the way we use language and information as the ‘seeds’ which that water can nourish; or destroy. In our increasingly electronically-collected global information system, information can be used to help create huge blooms of beneficial change. Yet it is also important to consider where we plant such seeds, or whether or not we encourage certain types of language or technology, in order to best encourage growth which is mutually beneficial.
Seedbombs for travellers

The idea of using information as a way to help those traveling into Europe was suggested as a response to my previous ‘Human Permaculture’ article by Andrej Vesmir (2). As explored in that article, there are a small number of ‘crisis points’ in Europe where the number of people arriving into the place exceeds the amount of resources or infrastructure necessary to support such numbers. However, if networks of communication could be set up which provide up-to-date information about points of arrival, such ‘crises’ can be avoided as people will choose to travel to somewhere where their needs will be supported.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In the Public Interest: Monsanto and Its Promoters vs. Freedom of Information

October 4, 2015

In the Public Interest: Monsanto and Its Promoters vs. Freedom of Information

A protester holds a placard during a march in New York. (Waywuwei / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Next year, the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) will celebrate its 50th anniversary as one of the finest laws our Congress has ever passed. It is a vital investigative tool for exposing government and corporate wrongdoing.

The FOIA was championed by Congressman John E. Moss (D-CA), who strove to “guarantee the right of every citizen to know the facts of his Government.” Moss, with whom I worked closely as an outside citizen advocate, said that “without the fullest possible access to Government information, it is impossible to gain the knowledge necessary to discharge the responsibilities of citizenship.”

All fifty states have adopted FOIA statutes.

As the FOIA approaches its 50th year, it faces a disturbing backlash from scientists tied to the agrichemical company Monsanto and its allies. Here are some examples.

On March 9th, three former presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – all with ties to Monsanto or the biotech industry – wrote in the pages of the Guardian to criticize the use of the state FOIA laws to investigate taxpayer-funded scientists who vocally defend Monsanto, the agrichemical industry, their pesticides, and genetically engineered food. They called the FOIAs an “organized attack on science.”

The super-secretive Monsanto has stated, regarding the FOIAs, that “agenda-driven groups often take individual documents or quotes out of context in an attempt to distort the facts, advance their agenda, and stop legitimate research.”

Advocates with the venerable Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) do worry that the FOIA can be abused to harass scientists for ideological reasons. This is true; for example, human-caused global warming deniers have abused the FOIA against climate scientists working at state universities like Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Government Is Using Secrecy As a Weapon

June 8, 2015

Government Is Using Secrecy As a Weapon

“Everything Secret Degenerates”

Everyone knows Lord Acton’s famous quote:

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But few have heard this equally profound quote from Lord Acton:

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

Likewise, US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said:

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

But government secrecy is at an all-time high. Government is more hostile to the press than ever before.

The government prosecutes cases based upon “secret evidence” that they don’t show to the defendant … or sometimes even the judge hearing the case.

Government is “laundering” information gained through mass surveillance through other agencies, with an agreement that the agencies will “recreate” the evidence in a “parallel construction” … so the original source of the evidence is kept secret from the defendant, defense attorneys and the judge. A former top NSA official says that this is the opposite of following the Fourth Amendment, but is a“totalitarian process” which shows that we’re in a “police state”.

The government uses “secret evidence” to spy on Americans, prosecute leaking or terrorism charges (even against U.S. soldiers) and even assassinate people. And see this and this.

Secret witnesses are being used in some cases. And sometimes lawyers are being prevented from reading their own briefs.

Moreover:

A neocon “advocacy” group [was] immunized from the law, because the U.S. government waltzed into court, met privately with the judge, and whispered in secret that he had better dismiss all claims against that group lest he harm national security …

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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