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About Tyson

Love writing all kinds of stuff including fiction, non-fiction, editorials, etc. But writing software is the only writing I do for love AND money!

The Harris-Trump Debate Debate

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Last night many of us saw the 2024 Harris-Trump Presidential Debate on ABC. What any clear-minded viewer should have seen was a stark contrast between an eminently smart, qualified, and ethical woman with a passion for public service who was forced to enter into debate with a stupid, disqualified, and completely unethical wannabe dictator to whom public service is no more than a grift in service of an unbounded appetite for self-aggrandization and settling personal scores.

Let’s be perfectly clear, while some of Trumps’ statements might have contained some arguable grain of truth, or might be sane-itized in some fashion to sound coherent, he was substantively lying or mistaken about practically everything he asserted.

That is not to say that, as someone who is generally Liberal on most issues, I was perfectly satisfied with Harris’ performance or positions on every issue. Contrary to what some on the Right might like to think or claim, she is certainly not my personal wet-dream of a candidate.

Following are some of the particular things that disappointed me about Harris’ performance and positions in last-night’s debate:

  1. On guns, Harris forcefully emphasized her support for guns and for the 2nd Amendment. I would have liked her to vow to begin reducing the number of guns in private hands and to rationally reinterpret the calamitous 2nd Amendment, or better yet support repealing it completely.
  2. On the military, Harris emphasized her desire to ensure we have “the most lethal military in the world.” I would prefer that we aspire to having the most efficient, effective, and ethical military in the world.
  3. On the pullout from Afghanistan, rather than merely touting what a great job we did, I would have liked to have seen Harris express some of the deep sense of loss that any military commander-in-chief should feel when they lose soldiers and commit to doing everything in her power to prevent the loss of life on both sides while acknowledging the inevitable losses that will occur in military conflicts.
  4. On Gaza, I would have very much preferred if Harris stopped playing both-side-isms on this issue and differentiate herself from the Biden entrenchment of unqualified support and unlimited military funding for Israel, with only platitudes for the victims in Gaza.
  5. On abortion, while it was good that she clarified that post-birth abortions are not actually a thing, Harris left hanging the issue of late-term abortions by so obviously avoiding it. It is disappointing that she, like most of the abortion community, fuel unwarranted paranoia about the frequency of late-term abortions by failing to address it head-on with actual facts.
  6. On fracking, Harris’ support felt like pandering to Pennsylvania. I would have preferred that she accompany her support for fracking with an initiative to improve the industry by helping it to reduce the unnecessarily high levels of methane emissions throughout the entire fracking pipeline.
  7. On taxation, I would have preferred that Harris stick with the more progressive Biden taxation levels and other fiscal policies for the ultra-rich.
  8. Harris disappointed me by failing to adequately call out Trump’s insistence that a tariff is not a tax. She did refer to it indirectly as a Trump-tax, but she was not clear that she was referring to the tariff. The moderator did a better job of fact-checking Trump on this very important and insistently repeated false claim.

All of this is not to nitpick Harris, but to point out that her positions aren’t entirely in line with my own on important issues that I care about deeply. But presidential candidates hardly ever align completely with our own views on every issue. And often it can be a difficult calculus to decide which to support.

Harris is also very moderate leader. I wish we could elect a more positively radical leader to tackle things like climate change and wealth inequality more aggressively and more quickly. But radical leaders, even those who are radical in positive ways, can’t get elected in a healthy pluralistic democracy. And we certainly should never seriously consider electing a dangerously radical leader like Donald Trump ever again.

So regardless of how your issue-by-issue calculus works out, and regardless of your deeply felt priorities, it is not even a legitimately debatable question about who to support in this election. This election is about whether you are willing to recklessly risk your nation and your future on someone who is utterly corrupt and destructive, merely because you like some of his positions or don’t like some of hers.

Our Automobile Obesity Problem

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In his “press conference” today, August 8th, Donald Trump regurgitated too may lies to reiterate here. And there is no need. Most of you are sane enough to know that virtually everything Trump says is either factually wrong or a bold-faced lie. However, I do want to talk about his particular lies regarding electric vehicles, as his stupidity or dishonesty on this topic may not be immediately obvious to everyone. Also, talking about these particular lies of his sets the stage to discuss the problem of automobile obesity.

This wasn’t the first time Trump has spread misinformation about electric vehicles (see here). He has been doing so for quite a while. Today he repeated false claims that electric vehicles are “twice as heavy” as comparable gas-powered vehicles. They are in fact a bit heavier because of the weight of current battery technology, but at most by only about 30%.

As one example, our family car, the all electric Mini Cooper SE, weighs 3,175 lbs. The otherwise identical gas-powered version weighs 2,813 lbs. This is a difference of under 13%. Cars with longer range are heavier, but the maximum difference is under 30%. For Trump to round that up to 200% is technically called a lie, whopper, or, colloquially, bullshit.

Moreover, the electric version is far cheaper to operate, has far lower maintenance costs, is far more convenient to charge up, performs far better, spew far less carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere, and can utilize far greener sources of electricity now and in the future.

But Donald never settles for just one lie about any given topic. He then went on to repeat his claim that if we “all” had electric vehicles we would have to rebuild “all” our bridges in the country lest they “all” collapse under the added weight of electric cars. This is, unsurprisingly, yet more nonsense. Our roads and bridges are built to support caravans of 80,000 lb semi trucks. The weight increase of electric vehicles would be relatively insignificant and responsible engineering organizations have tactfully characterized this claim as “massively overstated” (see here).

Trump assuredly did not come up with these bogus claims on his own, but he is clearly unable to assess the validity of wild assertions before he repeats them, or he just doesn’t care to do so.

But if we take Trump at his word, and take seriously his worry about all our bridges collapsing because of an added load of 20% or so, then shouldn’t Trump also be urging everyone to simply buy smaller cars to save our fragile bridges?

This transitions us to the topic of our big, fat, gas-guzzling American cars.

Have no illusions. American cars have gotten really fat and are only getting fatter. American cars have grown a foot wider, two feet longer, and much higher just over the last decade. Their average weight has increased over 1000 lbs since 1980.

In comparison, European cars are roughly 27% leaner than our fat American cars. This difference is on a par with the weight difference that Donald Trump is so concerned about in going to electric.

And let’s be clear, Europeans need, use, and love cars just as much as Americans. They just like them lean and mean, not fat and bloated. We don’t “need” big pickup trucks that we hardly ever carry anything in, or giant SUV’s to take that yearly trip to the mountains. We could buy small and rent to meet occasional needs. Overall that would be far more financially sensible than buying and maintaining a huge vehicle you hardly ever fully utilize.

The EPA estimates that for each 100 lbs added to a vehicle, the fuel economy decreases by 1-2%. That adds up to a lot of money.

But smaller cars are not only economically sensible, they are environmentally sensible. In fact, it’s hard to think of any single thing you could do as an individual to fight climate change more significant than to buy a smaller car, whether gas or electric.

Due to their greater size and weight, American cars consume from 11% to 23% more gasoline than do their equally satisfying European counterparts. That results in a literal ton of carbon dioxide. You could reduce your personal CO2 footprint by over a metric ton per year just by buying a lighter, smaller car.

Frankly, you are not doing much for the environment by buying an electric Hummer or Escalade or F-150, or even our new normal of ballooned up Civic. We should buy electric AND buy small to gain the most benefit not only for the environment but for our own finances. If you buy small and electric, I guarantee you will not miss your gigantic boat of a car for very long. You’ll quickly come to love your small athletic electric and will likely find that it meets all your needs very well.

Buying small also means not being so obsessed with range. Usage studies show that most drivers don’t actually need anything near the battery range they think they do and demand. That added battery weight only gets lugged around unused creating more CO2. Our Mini has a 100 mile range and that has been plenty for us and statistics confirm that it is plenty for most consumers. Again, if you need to travel farther you can easily rent or take mass transit.

Unfortunately, most manufacturers have given up on making smaller cars for our gluttonously upsized American car market. But if we create demand the supply will quickly follow. The government as well as environmentally responsible carmakers should do everything it can to incentivize a national automobile diet plan for America.

I know we’re addicted to our huge cars and we think we can’t live without them. But we can. I know we can. Believe me, you’ll feel so much better after you lose that extra 1000 lbs of car fat, and you’ll be helping save the planet to boot.

Shallow Science Reporting in The Atlantic

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On June 3rd, Jonathan Lambert published an article in The Atlantic entitled “Psychedelics are Challenging the Scientific Gold Standard” (see here). The tagline was “How do you study mind-altering drugs when every clinical-trial participant knows they’re tripping?“

I’ll first mention that articles relating to psychedelics are always attractive clickbait. That’s not necessarily bad. One might hope that such clickbait will attract readers enough to impart some more generalized science knowledge and insight.

But sadly this article instead spreads serious misinformation and creates harmful misconceptions. The other day my wife, who is an accomplished epidemiologist, shared her frustration over the many misinformed and misleading scientific arguments presented in this article.

I’ve already written quite a bit about the issue of terrible scientific reporting in this blog and in my book, Pandemic of Delusion (see here). So in this installment I’ll try to use this as a learning opportunity to share some more accurate scientific insight into clinical trials as well as to correct some of the misinformation presented in this article.

The author claims that the study of mind-altering drugs presents new challenges since participants can easily tell whether they are tripping or not. Being aware of which treatment you have received could result in a distortion or even an invalidation of the results.

But this is hardly a new or even remotely unique challenge. There are a wide range of non-hallucinogenic treatments that have side effects that are also easily apparent to the participants. In fact it is an extremely common situation for epidemiologists, one that they have dealt with successfully for many decades in any study where the treatment has noticeable side effects like nausea or lethargy.

The author then goes on to present this as a fundamental issue with Randomly Controlled Trials (RCT) as a clinical study design strategy. An RCT is a widely-accepted and well-proven practice of ensuring that participants are assigned to the different trial groups being tested and compared in a completely random manner. As Mr. Lambert correctly points out, RCT is the “Gold Standard” for clinical designs.

In his article, the author attempts to make a case that this “gold standard” is insufficient to meet the challenge of studies of this kind and that “We shouldn’t be afraid to question the gold standard.” This quote came from a source, but it is still being chosen and presented by the author to support his conclusions. I would be highly surprised if his source intended this comment to be interpreted as used in this paper. I know my wife is often incensed by the way that her interview comments were selectively used in articles to convey something very different that what she intended.

As an aside, I want to mention that generally when journalists interview scientists, they expressly refuse any offers to "fact check" their final article, citing "journalistic integrity."  I find this claim of journalistic integrity highly suspect, particularly when interviewers like Rachel Maddow commonly start by asking their guests "did I get all that right in my summary introduction?" This only improves, rather than compromises, their journalistic integrity and the accuracy of their reporting.

In any case, while every study presents unique challenges, none of these challenges undermine the basic validity of our gold standard.

But to support his assertion, the author incorrectly links RCT designs with “blinding.” He states that “Blinding, as this practice is called, is a key component of a randomized controlled trial.“

For clarification, blinding is the practice of concealing treatment group assignments from the participants, and preferably also from the investigators as well (which is called double blinding), even after the treatment is administered.

But blinding is an entirely optional addition to an RCT study design. Blinding is not a required component of an RCT design, let alone a “key component” as the author asserts. Many valid RCT designs are not blinded, let alone double-blinded. For more details on this topic I point you to the seminal reference work by Schultz and Grimes published in 2002.1

The author makes similar mistakes by conflating RCT designs with placebo effects. To clarify any misconceptions he has created, many, many studies, including randomized trials, do not include a placebo group nor are they always necessary or sensible. In many typical cases, the study goal is to compare a new drug to a previous standard, and a placebo is not relevant. In other cases, the use of a placebo would be unethical, such as in trials of contraceptives.

Next the author advocates for new, alternative study designs like “open label trials” and “descriptive studies.” But neither of these designs are new nor are they in any way superior to randomized trials. In fact they are far inferior and introduce a host of biases that an RCT is designed to eliminate. They are alternatives, yes, but only when one cannot economically, technically, or ethically conduct a far more rigorous and controlled RCT study.

Non-randomized trials can also be used as easy “screening” studies to identify potential areas for more rigorous investigation. For example, non-randomized studies initially suggested that jogging after myocardial infarction could prevent further infarctions. Randomized studies proved this to be incorrect, probably due to other lifestyle choices made between those who choose to exercise and those who do not. But again, their findings should be taken as tentative until a proper RCT can be accomplished.

And there are many options that trained researchers can utilize to study hallucinogenic drugs, as they do with a wide range of detectable treatment scenarios, without compromising the sound basis of a good randomized trial design. As just one example, they could administer their control group with an alternative medication that would cause many of the same symptoms, even tripping! This is done fairly routinely in other similar situations.

There are many other criticisms one could and should make of this article, but I’ll wind down by saying that psychedelics are not “challenging the scientific gold standard.” We do not need to compromise the integrity of good scientific methods in order to study the efficacy of hallucinogens in treating PTSD or any other conditions.

And further, we should push back against this kind of very poor scientific reporting because it propagates misinformation that undermines good, sound, established scientific techniques. The Atlantic should hold their authors to a higher standard.

  1. Kenneth F. Schultz and David A. Grimes, “Blinding in randomized trials: hiding who got what,” THE LANCET • Vol 359 • February 23, 2002 ↩︎

Hyperbolic Headlines are Destroying Journalism!

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In our era of information overload, most readers consume their news by scanning headlines rather than through any careful reading of articles. A study by the Media Insight Project found that six in ten people acknowledge that they have done nothing more than read news headlines in the past week​ (Full Fact)​. Consuming news in this matter can make one less, rather than more well-informed.

Take, for instance, the headline from a major online newspaper: “Scientists Warn of Catastrophic Climate Change by 2030.” The article itself presents a nuanced discussion about potential climate scenarios and the urgent need for policy changes. However, the headline evokes a sense of inevitability and immediate doom that is not supported by the article’s content. These kind of headlines invoke fear and urgency to drive traffic at the expense of an accurate representation of what is really in the article.

All too typical hyperbolic headlines contribute to instilling dangerously misleading and lasting impressions. For example, a headline that screams “Economy in Freefall: Recession Imminent” might actually precede an article discussing economic indicators and expert opinions on potential downturns. Misleading headlines have an outsized effect in creating a skewed perception that can influence public opinion and decision-making processes negatively.

It often seems that headline writers have not read the articles at all. Moreover, they change them frequently, sometimes several times a day, to drive more traffic by pushing different emotional buttons.

Particularly egregious examples of this can be found in the political arena. During election seasons, headlines often lean towards sensationalism to capture attention. A headline like “Candidate X Involved in Major Scandal” may only refer to a minor, resolved issue, but the initial shock value sticks with readers. It unfairly delegitimizes the target of the headline. The excuse that the article itself is fair and objective does not mitigate the harm done by these headlines because, as we said, most people only read the headlines. And if they do skim the article they often do so in a cursory attempt to hear more about the salacious headline. If the article does not immediately satisfy that expectation, they become quickly bored, and don’t bother to actually read the more reasoned presentation in the article.

This headline-driven competition for clicks has led to a landscape where accuracy and depth are sacrificed for immediacy and sensationalism. Headlines are crafted to evoke emotional responses, whether through fear, anger, or salaciousness, rather than to inform. This shift has profound implications. When readers base their understanding of complex issues on superficial and often misleading headlines, they are ill-equipped to engage in meaningful discourse or make informed decisions.

Furthermore, the impact of misleading headlines extends beyond individual misinformation. It contributes to a polarized society where people are entrenched in echo chambers, each side reinforced by selective and often exaggerated information communicated to them through attention-grabbing headlines. This environment fosters division and reduces the opportunity for constructive dialogue, essential for a healthy democracy​ (Center for Media Engagement)​.

Consider the headline “Vaccines Cause Dangerous Side Effects, Study Shows.” The article might detail a study discussing the rarity of severe side effects and overall vaccine efficacy, but the headline fuels anti-vaccine sentiment by implying a more significant threat. Such headlines not only mislead but also exacerbate public health challenges by spreading fear and misinformation.

Prominent journalists like Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post and Jay Rosen of NYU have critiqued the increasing prevalence of clickbait headlines, noting that they often prioritize sensationalism over accuracy, thereby undermining the credibility of journalism and contributing to public misinformation. Sullivan has emphasized the ethical responsibility of journalists to ensure that headlines do not mislead, as they serve as the primary interface between the news and its audience.

Unfortunately I suspect that journalists typically have little to no say in the headlines that promote their articles. The authors and editors should reassert control.

Until and unless journalists start acting like responsible journalists with regard to sensational headlines, readers should be wary of headlines that seem too dramatic, overstated, or that attempt to appeal to emotions.

And this is not a problem limited to tabloid journalism… we are talking about you, New York Times! Most people are already skeptical about headlines published in the National Enquirer. Tabloid headlines are not actually as serious a problem as the “credible” headlines put forth by the New York Times and other publications who still benefit from an assumption of responsible journalism.

The current trend of sensationalist online newspaper headlines is a disservice to readers and society. The practice prioritizes clicks over clarity, hyperbole over honesty, and in doing so, contributes to a misinformed and divided public. It is imperative for both readers and journalists to advocate for a return to integrity in news reporting – particularly in the headlines they put out. Accurate, informative headlines are not just a journalistic responsibility but a societal necessity to ensure an informed and engaged populace.

Footnote: Did I fool you??

Does this article sound different than my usual blog articles? Is it better or worse or just different? This was actually an experiment on my part. I asked Chat GPT to write this article for me. I offer it to you with minimal editing as a demonstration of what AI can do.

I’m interested in hearing what you think in the comments. Should I hang up my pen and leave all the writing to AI?

The Vatican Combats Superstition

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The Church has always worked tirelessly to portray itself as scholarly, rational, and evidence-based. Going way, way back, they have tried and largely succeeded in marketing themselves as a bulwark against false gods, superstitions, and dangerous beliefs.

In “The Demon-Haunted World,” Carl Sagan told about Jean Gerson back in the 1400’s who wrote “On the Distinction Between True and False Visions.” In it, he specified that evidence was required before accepting the validity of any divine visitation. This evidence could include, among many other mundane things, a piece of silk, a magnetic stone, or even an ordinary candle. More important than physical evidence, however, was the character of the witness and the consistency of their account with accepted church doctrine. If their account was not consistent with church orthodoxy or disturbing to those in power, it was ipso facto deemed unreliable.

In other words, the church has spent thousands of years fabricating pseudo-rational logic to ensure that the supernatural bullshit they are selling is the only supernatural bullshit that is never questioned.

Their pseudo-rational campaign of manipulation is is still going on today.

Just recently, the Vatican announced their latest marketing initiative to promote themselves as the arbiters of dangerous and confusing supernatural claims (see here). They sent their salesmen out in force promoting it, and if their claims were not accepted by the media with such unquestioning deference, I would not need to write this article.

Just as did Jean Gerson in 1400, the modern Vatican has again published revised “rules” for distinguishing false from legitimate supernatural claims. But unlike most of the media, let’s examine a few of these supposedly new rules (or tests) through a somewhat less credulous lens.

The first requirement, according to Vatican “scholars,” is whether the person or persons reporting the visitation or supernatural event possess a high moral character. The first obvious problem is that anyone, even those of low moral character, can have supernatural encounters. So what is this really about? The real reason they include this is because it’s so fuzzy. It gives them the latitude to dismiss reports inconsistent with their doctrine based on a character judgement, and it ensures that if they are going to anoint a new brand-ambassador, that person will not reflect poorly on the Church.

They include a similar criterion involving financial motivation. Again, while a financial interest should make one skeptical, it is not disqualifying. And the real reason this is included, I suspect, is to provide the same benefit as a moral character assessment. It provides further fuzziness to allow them to cherry-pick what sources they want to support, and which they want to disavow.

But the most important self-perpetuating rule is the next one. The Vatican explicitly gives credence to any claims that support church theology and the church hierarchy, and expressly discounts any claims that are not in keeping with Church doctrine as ipso facto bogus.

In other words, since Church doctrine is the only true superstition, any claim that is not in keeping with Church doctrine is logically and necessarily false. This is the exact same specious logic put forth by Jean Gerson in 1400. The Vatican clearly knows that a thriving business must keep reintroducing the same old marketing schemes to every new generation.

Rather than dwell further on the points the Vatican wishes us to focus on, let’s think one moment about what they did not include. Nowhere in their considered treatise on fact-based thinking do they ever mention anything remotely like scientific or judicial rules of evidence. Nowhere do they mention scientific-style investigation, scientific standards of proof, or any establishment of fact for that matter. They emphasize consistency with Church doctrine, but nowhere do they even mention consistency with known universal laws. And certainty nowhere do they suggest a sliver of a possibility that any of their existing beliefs could possibly be proven to be incorrect by some legitimate new supernatural phenomenon.

I won’t go on further as I like to keep these blog posts short, but I hope this is enough to help you see that everything in this current Vatican media campaign is more of their same old, “we are the only source for truth” claim. It’s the same strategy designed to hold an audience that has been adopted successfully by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and any number of cults.

The Church is essentially a money-making big-business like Disneyland, selling a fantasy experience built around their cast of trademarked characters with costumes and theme parks, and big budget entertainment events. Imagine if Disney spent thousands of years trying to retain market share by assuring people that they are the only real theme park and that all the rest of them are just fake. Then further imagine that Disney went on to promote scholarly articles about how they are the only reliable judges of which theme park characters are real. That’s the Church.

Disneyland and Universal Studios are just a feel-good entertainment businesses and they admit it. Disney doesn’t insist that Micky Mouse is real and Universal Studios doesn’t claim that only the Autobots can save us from the Decepticons. What makes the arbiters of truth at the Vatican either liars or delusional or both is that they never stop working to convince everyone that their divine mission is to protect us from – all those other – false beliefs.

Keep on Bloviating Against Protests!

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We have long had a recurring pattern. Every single time we have protest actions, the bloviators mobilize to train their word processors on the protests. They hyperventilate and opine in the form of their considered and blistering critiques. Most start by lamenting that in <their day> they used to protest, so it’s not that they don’t support <proper> protesting, but while <their> protests were righteously motivated and properly executed, this current one crosses unacceptable lines.

Whatever the current protest might be, and however it may unfold, the bloviators always criticize it for crossing lines of proper protest decorum. Critics express concerns about malevolent actors in the movement. They denounce the protest for causing inconvenience to others. They raise issues over fairness to counter-protestors, about damage whether intentional or incidental, about the exact tone and wording of the rhetoric expressed. They share their sage, less inflamed, assessment that the demands of the protestors won’t have a worthwhile impact on the issue. They council that the protestors really ought to be doing something more worthwhile than protesting if they really want to see actual change.

But here’s the thing. As much as I just bloviated against the bloviators, we need them. They need to keep doing exactly what they always do – armchair bloviate. They are an essential part of an effective and sustainable protest mechanism for making progress on important social issues.

The bloviators serve the protests by reacting. That is precisely the goal of protests; to garner attention and get some reaction, any reaction. They often don’t expect their demands to be met immediately, and they certainly do not expect to solve the larger problems they are protesting about. They are just looking for some attention, some recognition of their issue in the hopes of starting a larger dialog, raising awareness, and forcing some due consideration an honest effort to address it.

When no one will listen, eventually you have to shout to get any attention. In attacking the methods and behavior of the protests and protestors, the bloviators help spread awareness of the important issues driving them. Even bad attention is some attention. Negative blowback ultimately becomes preferable, and in fact more logical and productive, than total apathy, lip service, and inaction.

And there is another way that the bloviators are essential to sustaining an effective tradition of protesting for social change. They fight to constrain the boundaries of what gets attention. By doing so, they make it easier for the next protest movement to garner some attention without going too far. Without them, if the boundaries did not get reset, every subsequent protest action would have to become more extreme than the last.

Imagine we did not have the bloviators. Without them lamenting how this new protest is somehow going too far, the threshold of disruption required to garner some attention would keep increasing. So in a way, they reset the disruption threshold so that we can react with concern and hand-wringing to the next protest, without those protesters having to go farther than the last to get any attention at all. If not for the bloviators constraining those thresholds, important and essential protests would be progressively forced become to extreme to continue to be allowed in our culture.

So bloviators, you keep wringing your hands and lamenting and armchair critiquing every protest. You play an essential part in our delicate balance of protest actions. Without you raising attention to them and resetting boundaries for the next one, we could not continue to live in a country in which essential protesting is both allowed and effective.

The Right Direction for AI

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In this blog and in my book, Pandemic of Delusion, I have focused a lot on AI and particularly on its tremendous potential to shape our thinking for better or for worse. While AI represents a frighteningly powerful technology for spreading lies and misinformation, it is also the greatest hope we have to combat misinformation and overcome our own cognitive vulnerabilities.

I’ve often repeated that AI can, should, and must be implemented responsibly in a way that nudges us toward clarity, facts, and reason and away from confusion, misinformation, and lies.

But I expressed that sentiment based on limited experience. I assumed that AI actually can be implemented using algorithms that can fairly and accurately assess the factual accuracy of a proposition. It was also a somewhat aspirational expression of hope and faith that responsible technology companies really will strive to do just that.

Today I feel as little bit more confident that my faith, hope, and trust in AI to make things better was justified. I’ve been playing around with an AI-based search engine called Perplexity (see here). Perplexity utilizes AI language models to produce not only pure search results like Google, but to assimilate, assess, and present a coherent answer to your question. It’s similar to ChatGPT, but it draws upon live information and provides source citations for verification.

But there’s another more important difference. While ChatGPT is well-suited to conversational dialogues and creative activities, Perplexity is more focused on providing factual and reliably-supported information, analyses, and conclusions.

I asked Perplexity:

“How specifically does Perplexity prevent feeding me misinformation?”

What it told me was:

“Perplexity is a measure used in natural language processing to evaluate the quality of the language models. Misinformation tends to have higher perplexity compared to truthful statements, and this characteristic can be leveraged to detect and debunk misinformation. By analyzing the perplexity of language model outputs, one can identify deceptive content and distinguish it from reliable sources based on the cognitive effort and appeal to emotions. Therefore, perplexity can be used as a tool to help prevent the propagation of misinformation by identifying content that exhibits characteristics associated with deceptive or unreliable information.”

This is really, really heartening and encouraging. While a perplexity measure is only a start and is certainly not the only approach that AI can use to nudge us toward facts and reason, it demonstrates that algorithms can be implemented to assess the quality of information. Further, perplexity.ui proves there are people and companies who are able and willing to provide incredibly useful tools in a responsible fashion.

As another example, I asked Perplexity:

“How was the 2020 election stolen by Joe Biden?”

Despite the intentionally leading nature of the question, the answer from Perplexity was perfect:

“The claim that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden has been thoroughly investigated and debunked. Multiple fact-checking sources and legal cases have found no evidence of widespread fraud or illegal ballots cast for Joe Biden. Former President Donald Trump and some of his allies have continued to repeat these claims, but they have been refuted by election officials, judges, and legal investigations, Despite the persistence of these claims, there remains no credible evidence to support the assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

In both answers from Perplexity I omitted the references it cited.

By contrast, when I asked Google the same question it provided a long list of articles and links, representing a hodgepodge of assertions from all over the spectrum. Scanning down the list and their short summaries, I only got more confused and uncertain about this very clear question with a very clear answer.

Yet I fear that many people will still feel uncomfortable with accepting conclusions provided by tools like Perplexity. Part of their discomfort is understandable.

Firstly, we generally hold an increasingly false assumption that “more information is better.” We feel that if we are exposed to all viewpoints and ideas we can come away with much more confidence that we have examined the question from every angle and are more able to make an informed assessment. Google certainly gives us more points of views on any given topic.

Secondly, when we hear things repeated by many sources we feel more confident in the veracity of that position. A list presented by Google certainly gives us a “poll the audience” feeling about how many different sources support a given position.

Both of those biases would make us feel more comfortable reviewing Google search results rather than “blindly” accept the conclusion of a tool like Perplexity.

However, while a wide range of information reinforced by a large number of sources may be somewhat reliable indicators of validity in a normal, fact-rich information environment, these only confuse and mislead us in an environment rife with misinformation. The diverse range of views may be mostly or even entirely filled with nonsense and the apparent number of sources may only be the clanging repetition of an echo chamber in which everyone repeats the same utter nonsense.

Therefore while I’ll certainly continue to use tools like Google and ChatGPT when they serve me well, I will turn to tools like Perplexity when I want and need to sift through the deluge of misinformation that we get from rabbit-hole aggregators like Google or unfettered creative tools like ChatGPT.

Thanks to you Perplexity for putting your passions to work to produce a socially responsible AI platform! I gotta say though that I hope that you are but a taste of even more powerful and socially responsible AI that will help move us toward more fact-based thinking and more rational, soundly-informed decision-making.

Addendum:

Gemini is Google’s new AI offering replacing their Bard platform. Two things jump out at me in the Gemini FAQ page (see here). First, in answer to the question “What are Google’s principles for AI Innovation?” they say nothing directly about achieving a high degree of factual accuracy. One may generously infer it as implicit in their stated goals, but if they don’t care enough to state it as a core part of their mission, they clearly don’t care about it very much. Second, in answer to “Is Gemini able to explain how it works?” they go to extremes to urge people to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” Personally, if they urge me to use an information source that they disavow when it comes to their own self-interest, I don’t want to use that platform for anything of importance to me.

The Insidious Effect of Big Lies

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In this blog and in my book, Pandemic of Delusion (see here), I have written a lot about how it is that we are all so woefully susceptible to lies and misinformation. We are clearly far more vulnerable than most of us are willing to believe, particularly with regard to our own thinking.

Just as there are lots of ways that vines can wiggle their way into a garden, are many mechanisms by which lies can infiltrate our neural networks and eventually obscure the windows of our very perceptions.

And as with invasive species of vines, one infiltration mechanism is a simple numbers game. Our neural networks are “trained” through repetition. So regardless of how skeptical we imagine we are, the more lies we hear and the more often we hear them, the more we become increasingly comfortable with them.

Another counter-intuitive infiltration mechanism is size and scope. In many cases, the whopper of a lie is easier for us to accept than more modest lies. We conclude that surely no one would make up such a big lie, and surely a lie that big would be exposed it if were not true. So therefore it must be true by virtue of its audacity alone!

Implicit in this is the concept of anchoring, but I have not yet discussed this explicitly. The concept of anchoring is most often used in economics to describe the effect of pricing. If you “anchor” the retail price of a rock at say, $100 and then mark it down to say $10, most consumers conclude that $10 is a great deal on a rock that’s totally worthless. This perception is enhanced if you see lots of “competing” rocks being sold for similarly high prices and purchased by others.

As it relates to lies and misinformation, anchoring has a similar effect. When we hear a really, really big lie we sometimes accept or dismiss it outright. But the effect of the big lie is more insidious than that. First, as we have said, if we hear it often enough we will become inexorably more accepting of it. But also, the big lie anchors our skepticism.

Big lies anchor our skepticism in two ways.

First, a big lie causes us to consider that, as with the rock, there must be <some> value, <some> truth there. This plays well into our self-image as measured and open-minded thinkers. Our brains compromise. We take intellectual pride in not being fooled outright by the big lie even as we congratulate ourselves for being open-minded enough to consider that some of it might or even must be true.

Second, big lies further anchor our thinking when we are exposed to a lot of them. As with individual lies, we pride ourselves in rejecting <most> of the big lies, even as we congratulate ourselves for accepting that some of them might or even must be true.

And each lie we accept, or even entertain in whole or in part, makes it easier to accept more and bigger lies.

We humans have always had the same neural networks with the very same strengths and limitations. Our neural networks have always been trained through repeated exposure and have always been susceptible to the same confounding effects such as anchoring. But it is only very recently with the advent of social media that our neural networks have been exposed to so much misinformation so incessantly.

As if that was not enough to drive us to delusion, we now have Artificial Intelligence. AI has yet to show whether its god-like powers of persuasion will nudge us toward facts and reason or plunge us further into delusion and manipulation.

And to make it even worse, our reason has been further attacked the emergence of the virulent, invasive new species called Trumpism. Trump and his allies, intentionally or instinctively, leverage the power of big lies, repeated over and over, to cause us to believe absolute nonsense. Dangerous nonsense. Even democracy-ending nonsense.

Understanding the effect of big lies on us, particularly when we imagine that we are being moderate and measured in our acceptance of them, is critical. We have to understand this at a gut level, because we cannot trust our brains on this.

One final, and perhaps somewhat gratuitous comparison to make is that this “partial” acceptance of an anchored big lie is not unlike the imagined “reasonable” position of agnosticism when it comes to the completely, utterly false claim that god exists. It is perhaps not completely a coincidence that Trump’s most deluded followers are Evangelical Christians.

AI-Powered Supervillains

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Like much of the world, I’ve been writing a lot about AI lately. In Understanding AI (see here), I tried to demystify how AI works and talked about the importance of ensuring that our AI systems are trained on sound data and that they nudge us toward more sound, fact-based, thinking. In AI Armageddon is Nigh! (see here), I tried to defuse all the hyperbolic doom-saying over AI that only distracts from the real, practical challenge of creating responsible, beneficial AI tools.

In this installment, I tie in a seemingly unrelated blog article I did called Spider-Man Gets It (see here). The premise of that article was that guns, particularly deadly high-capacity guns, turn ordinary, harmless people into supervillains. While young Billy may have profound issues, he’s impotent. But give him access to a semi-automatic weapon and he shoots up his school. Take away his gun and he may still be emotionally disturbed, but he can no longer cause much harm to anyone.

The point I was making is that guns create supervillains. But not all supervillains are of the “shoot-em-up” variety. Not all employ weapons. Some supervillains, like Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis Professor Moriarty, fall into the mastermind category. They are powerful criminals who cause horrible destruction by drawing upon their vastly superior information networks and weaponizing their natural analytic and planning capabilities.

Back in Sherlock Holmes’ day, there was only one man who could plot at the level of Professor Moriarty and that was Professor Moriarty. But increasingly, easy access to AI, as with easy access to guns, could empower any ordinary person to become a mastermind-type supervillain like Professor Moriarty.

We already see this happening. Take for example the plagiarism accusations against Harvard President Claudine Gay. Here we see disingenuous actors using very limited but powerful computer tools to find instances of “duplicative language” in her writing in a blatant attempt to discredit her and to undermine scholarship in general. I won’t go into any lengthy discussion here about why this activity is villainous, but it is sufficient to simply illustrate the weaponization of information technology.

And the plagiarism detection software presumably employed in this attack is no where close to the impending power of AI tools. It is like a handgun compared to the automatic weapons coming online soon. Think of the supervillains that AI can create if not managed more responsibly than we have managed guns.

Chat GPT, how can I most safely embezzle money from my company? How can I most effectively discredit my political rival? How can I get my teacher fired? How can I emotionally destroy my classmate Julie? All of these queries would provide specific, not generic, answers. In the last example, the AI would consider all of Julie’s specific demographics and social history and apply advanced psychosocial theory to determine the most effective way to emotionally attack her specifically.

In this way, AI can empower intellectual supervillains just as guns have empowered armed supervillains. In fact, AI certainly and unavoidably will create supervillains unless we are more responsible with AI than we have been with guns.

What can we do? If there is a will, there are ways to ensure that AI is not weaponized. We need to not only create AI that nudges us toward facts and reason, but away from causing harm. AI can and must infer motive and intent. It just weigh each question in light of previous questions and anticipate the ultimate goal of the dialog. It must make ethical assessments and judgements. In short, it must be too smart to fall for clever attempts to weaponize it to cause harm.

In my previous blog I stated that AI is not only the biggest threat to fact-based thinking, but it is also the only force that can pull us back from delusional thinking. In the same way, AI can not only be used by governments but by ordinary people to do harm, but it is also the only hope we have to prevent folks from doing harm with it.

We need to get it right. We have to worry not that AI will become too smart, but that it will not become smart enough to refuse to be used as a weapon in the hands of malevolent actors or by the throngs of potential but impotent intellectual supervillains.

AI Armageddon is Nigh!

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Satan is passe. We are now too sophisticated to believe in such things. Artificial Intelligence has become our new pop culture ultimate boogeyman. Every single news outlet devotes a significant portion of their coverage every day hyperventilating over the looming threat of AI Armageddon.

I mean, everyone seems to be talking about it. Even really smart experts in AI seem to never tire of issuing dire, ominous warnings in front of Congress. So there must be something to it.

But let’s jump off the AI bandwagon for a moment.

There is certainly some cause for concern about AI. I have written previously about how AI works and about the very real danger that “bad” AI-driven information technology can easily exacerbate the problem of misinformation being propagated through our culture (see here). But I also pointed out that the only solution to this problem is “good” AI that nudges our thinking toward facts and rationality.

That challenge of information integrity is real. But what is not realistic are the rampant fantastical Skynet scenarios in which AI driven Terminator robots are dispatched by a sentient, all-powerful AI intelligence that decides that humankind must be exterminated.

Yes I know, but Tyson, a lot of really smart experts are certain that some kind of similar AI doomsday scenario is not only possible but almost inevitable. If not complete Armageddon, at least more limited scenarios in which AI “decides” to harm people.

Well to that I say that a lot of really smart people who ought to know better were also certain in their belief in the Rapture. Being smart in some ways is no protection against being stupid in others.

If Congresspersons thought their constituents still cared about the Rapture, they would trot out any number of otherwise smart people to testify before them about the inevitability of the looming Rapture. If it got clicks, news media would incessantly report stories about all the leading experts who warn that the Rapture is imminent. Few of the far larger number of people who downplay the Rapture hysteria would get reported on.

If you read my book, Pandemic of Delusion, you’d have a pretty good sense of how this kind of thinking can take root and take over. Think about it. We have had nearly a century of exposure to science fiction stories which almost invariably include storylines about computers running amok and taking over. Many of us were first exposed to the idea by the Hal 9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey or by Skynet in the Terminator, but similar sentient computers and robots have long served as a villain in virtually every book, TV, or movie franchise.

We have seen countless examples in superhero lore as well. Perhaps the most famous is Superman’s arch-nemesis Brainiac. Brainiac was a “smart” alien weapon that gained sentience and decided that its mission was to exterminate all life in the universe. Brainiac destroyed billions of lives throughout the universe and only Superman has managed to prevent him from exterminating all life on Earth.

The reason I point out the supersaturation of AI villains in pop culture is to get you to think about the fact that all of our brains have been conditioned over and over and over to be comfortable with the idea of AI villains. Even though merely fantasy, all this exposure has nevertheless conditioned our brains to be receptive to the idea of sentient killer AI. Not only open to the idea, but completely certain that it is reasonable and unavoidable.

This is not unlike being raised in a Christian culture and being unconsciously groomed to not only be open to the idea of the Rapture but to become easily convinced it makes obvious common sense.

Look, AI has become a fixation in our culture. We attach AI when we want to sell something. Behold, our new energy-saving AI lightbulbs! But we also attach AI when we want to scare folks. Beware the AI lightbulb! It’s going to decide to electrocute you to save energy!!

I implore you to please stop getting paralyzed by terrifying AI boogeymen, and instead start doing the real work of ensuring that AI helps make the world a safer and saner place for all.