[FRIAM] Tangled up in our own 2nd Amendment? Bleak Lives Manner?

[Steve Smith]

Glen -
> My fascination isn't morbid but focused on the opportunity to modify/eliminate the obsolete electoral college system. 

I never intended to suggest that YOUR's or anyone else's but my own has
a strong morbid-fascination aspect.   This is one of my character
flaws...  while the Trumpsters are doubling down on conspiracy, I have
been doubling down on morbid fascination.  Perhaps reporting such is
un-useful.

I think your analysis here (as usual) is generally valid and hopefully
even specifically useful.  Perhaps my own morbid fascination is like
nervous hysterical laughter as a release to then (maybe) allow me to
proceed with something more useful once I've disgorged.   I do think the
dynamic range in quantitative and qualitative complexity has become very
problematic for average citizens, up to and including most of us on this
semi-rarified list of technically/intellectually inclined unto-astute.

You speak often of "compression" in a general but technical sense.  I
suppose this is a problem of the character of the lossiness in the
compression algorithm of-choice.   Bleeding Heart Liberals (is that
still a term?) and Knee Jerk Conservatives represent *different* but
maybe similar lossy compressions?   Populism seems to be the
over-arching family of  algorithms and dog-whistles and jargon are (part
of) the code book?  My direct experience with conspiracists aligns with
this...  conspiracy #22.b-1.3 (by some arcane name) from conspiracy
domain Zed (e.g. Chemtrail, Illuminati, Atlantean, Lizard-Peeps,
Anti-Vax, Anti-Flouride, Q-anon etc.) seems to invoke a reserved Lexicon
among subscribers and (un)surprisingingly those with one subscription
seem to have a whole host of parallel subscriptions.

- Steve

> I doubt the rhetoric that "our democracy is under assault", for both this protest and when the guard was called out for the BLM protest. What's under assault is the hermeneutical complex by which our democracy works. Populists from both sides are confused about how infrastructure should and does work.
>
> The recent refusal to charge Sheskey in the Blake shooting is a good example. Those of us who've had intimate run-ins with how "justice" works in various parts of the country won't be surprised if a DA claims his office wouldn't be able to out-argue a self-defense defense in court, especially not with the qualified immunity cops tend to have.
>
> It's akin to the problems presented by explainable AI/ML. Where do you set the bar for algorithm complexity in relation to Joe Sixpack's ability to understand an algorithm? Should it be understandable? I have this very same problem with ranked choice voting and the security-risk-through-obfuscation of supply chain attacks and any large-scale open-source project.
>
> This tension between understandability and efficacy is ubiquitous.
>
> On 1/6/21 12:32 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> I normally cultivate my Morbid Fascination, but even I am finding this a
>> little bit "too much".
>