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Politics and Economics-2017 Election
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King Lodos
Posted: 15 June 2017 18:22:05(UTC)
#173

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jvl;47958 wrote:
I think Prof Eman is admitting that it is a bot, not a person.


Hard to tell with Socialists – they all seem to run off the same script.
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Jon Snow on 16/06/2017(UTC)
Alan Selwood
Posted: 15 June 2017 20:07:13(UTC)
#174

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Sadly, most newspapers run to a political agenda : If they just reported the news factually, and did not sift through it in order to pick out features of it that represent left-wing, right-wing or any other virtual labelling system, we would not need to get into heated discussions about it all.

Since they are partisan, it seems only natural for people to read what coincides with their own world view. (After all, if you have come to the conclusion that people of one political persuasion or another are in tune with your own ideas, or regularly appear to be raving lunatics, what is the point of reading the lunacy, which just pumps up your stress hormone levels, when you can read other viewpoints that match your own thinking?)

If in doubt, try reading the news on Reuters - it's less aggravating than the moralising press.
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3 users thanked Alan Selwood for this post.
Guest on 15/06/2017(UTC), Micawber on 16/06/2017(UTC), Guest on 21/06/2017(UTC)
Prof Eman
Posted: 17 June 2017 21:59:36(UTC)
#175

Joined: 08/04/2010(UTC)
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Jvi/King Lodos
I have some sympathy as to your comments about some studies/research.
My students are suggesting some research on the lines as follows-
-How to identify a bot
-Are bots a growing part of our population
-the influence of bots on elections
-the influence of bot creators on society
Perhaps you can suggest other studies.
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King Lodos
Posted: 21 June 2017 18:43:18(UTC)
#176

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For me a more interesting question would be why they believe in bots, and what they think these bots are doing.

It's obviously possible to create Twitter bots – you might be a bot – but the idea that bots are now influencing elections seems unsubstantiated.

Louise Mensch's Twitter rants perhaps best embody this – talk of the Russian 'bot-net' .. I remember hearing about this first from The Guardian, when a writer employed the idea of a network of fake Russian accounts posting Conservative opinions in the comments section .. Obviously possible, but I don't recall any evidence .. Seems to me more like a way to explain a certain cognitive dissonance between our echo chambers and this great unknown of 'different' opinions that seem to exist somewhere outside it.
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jvl
Posted: 22 June 2017 07:53:17(UTC)
#177

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I think an interesting study would be along the lines of why we even talk about the bots and social media tactics, why they're being used. I would ask something on the human level:

"What the hell happened to the British brains starting sometime around 1997 that short-term over-pumped emotions started to trump cool logical thinking?"

Princess Diana died and I couldn't believe what I saw around me. People who never knew her, people whose interest had fuelled the paparazzi chase that helped kill her, were suddenly taking over the country with their super-grief and others were supposed to go along with it. What happened? I felt like a stranger in my own country.

I think that was just a symptom of the start. The Internet, smart-phones, endless shows based around ordinary people finding fame on the most superficial level instead of doing something worthwhile. Then came social media. But it seemed to start around then. It was all feeling, little thought.

Attention spans collapsed and very short term emotional thinking took over - as we still see with the Grenfell thing. Bots and social media appeal to emotions. The trouble with a lot of economically right-wing policies is that they need to be explained and the attention span of much of the country appears to have dissolved.
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Guest on 22/06/2017(UTC), dyfed on 22/06/2017(UTC), bill xxxx on 22/06/2017(UTC), Jon Snow on 22/06/2017(UTC), Jimmy Page on 30/07/2018(UTC)
King Lodos
Posted: 22 June 2017 09:02:26(UTC)
#178

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One of the great conflicts I struggle with is that while Capitalism's been by far the most effective economic system ever devised – lifting a billion Asians out of poverty; closing the global wage gap (see: Hans Rosling); etc. very quickly..

.. it could also be argued that many of the social problems you mention (from knee-jerk politics to reality TV) are also byproducts of capitalism .. We have an essentially capitalist media, news, arts and entertainment, and the only feedback loop that exists is driven by revenue.

Reading The Intellectual Lives of the British Working Classes is eyeopening – the same people who watch MTV Reality shows today were attending Shakespeare plays and reading the classics a century ago .. You could also say this drive to flood Europe with third-world refugees/Islamists is a product of Capitalism – it's being driven by the elite; Wall Street; George Soros; etc. because this economic system doesn't work with an ageing population .. You look at where we've got to with global debt and inflation, and it looks like the great run that made so many rich may be hitting an inflection point.
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dyfed on 22/06/2017(UTC), Jimmy Page on 30/07/2018(UTC)
simon peacock
Posted: 30 July 2018 13:24:17(UTC)
#179

Joined: 10/06/2018(UTC)
Posts: 2
The only reason to vote is to i) uphold the status quo or, ii) to change the status quo. If you subscribe to the opinion that politics is essentially a distraction designed to sell democratic snake oil to gullible fools, voting serves no purpose. Indeed it provides a veil of legitimacy to those who notionally rule. How can we trust politicians after they took us to war in Iraq using a sexed up degree dissertation as justification, without recourse to public opinion and contradicting the Attorney Generals initial advice respecting legality. It was President Eisenhower in 1961 who warned of the pernicious influence of the Military-Industrial-Complex, that nurtured fear in order to maintain a state of perpetual warfare. We are presented with an apparent choice but the reality is predetermined. Blair was a Thatcher imitator and Cameron admired and emulated Blair. The neoliberal, global, financial agenda was set in the 1980s and individuals are powerless to fight or change the system alone. We are all enslaved and voting is simply a placebo.
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