How to win in today's politics

(Segment starts at 1:30)

Every time I open up Twitter, I'm reminded of the John Oliver segment, where he concluded that all political arguments involve two sides who don't have a clue, and are only won by whoever lands the sickest burn.

... The good old days...

I miss the good old days when Twitter and comments sections were full of arguments about sports, instead of racists vs people calling others racists.

The good old days

What now after SG summit?

What the shit

I'll just leave this here.

On Bullshit; and Propaganda

You're fake news

Today's fake news and hoaxes have their roots in our propensity for bullshit.  Princeton philosophy professor Harry G. Frankfurt, in his critically acclaimed 2005 book, "On Bullshit", explains the distinction between bullshit vs lies.  Both liars and BSers want to convince you they're telling the truth, presumably because they want to get away with something.

The similarities end there, however.  Liars consciously engage in deception; they understand the truth but they try to hide it.  Whereas BSers do not consciously deceive, they just say things without regard for whether it's true or false; they don't know, and don't care, about the truth; in fact they see no substantive distinction between them.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without comfortable understanding of the substance.  Frankfurt believes Bullshit is more dangerous that lies, because it erodes the possibility of the truth being discovered.  People who lie, they lose credibility when the lies are exposed in the open.  Bullshitters rarely face such consequences; they sidestep the truth, because they see power and emotions as more real.  This is deeply problematic: without hard data and evidences (which are hardly ever 100% conclusive), when all problems are dealt with by hand-waving, society just cannot have constructive discussions and make sufficiently well-informed public policy decisions.

"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth … Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all bets are off … He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are."

Which leads us to Donald Trump.

It's a culture war

POTUS45 bullshits endlessly, because as president in charge of a massive government apparatus, he is required to speak on topics much too complex for him, or even any one person, to fully grasp.  His favorite mannerism is the hyperbole: he characterizes everything as either "terrific" or "a disaster".  But when challenged with the truth, he never backs down; he either doubles down or waves it off.  On the offensive, his strategy is to set the framing ("failing New York Times", "Obama wiretapped Trump Tower", "Hillary is founder of ISIS"), repeat often, and lead others (his press team, members of congress, media) to further spread his accusations without consequence.

TRUMP: Edward Snowden has caused us tremendous problems. Edward Snowden has been, you know, you have the two views on Snowden, obviously: You have, he’s wonderful, and you have he’s horrible. I’m in the horrible category. He’s caused us tremendous problems with trust, with everything about, you know, when they’re showing, Merkel’s cellphone has been spied on, and are – Now, they’re doing it to us, and other countries certainly are doing it to us, and but what I think what he did, I think it was a tremendous, a tremendous disservice to the United States. I think and I think it’s amazing that we can’t get him back.  [March 26, 2016]

But why does he need to lie so much?  

The reason he lies is more sinister.  He's honed his salesmanship skills from his years as a real estate developer, public figure, and reality show entertainer.  In the past, he has had to portray an illusion of (obscene) wealth -- to creditors, to employees and suppliers, to TV producers and audience, and magazine tabloids.  Today as president, many say he is just gaslighting the public, distracting them from any questions on his legitimacy. This is credible but perhaps too specific; I am convinced that his ultimate goal is simply: (i) to stay (and get more) riches, and (ii) to stay (and get more) power.

Roger Money-Kyrle, the 20th century British psychoanalyst, wrote his seminal paper "The Psychology of Proganda" about the most charismatic and manipulative public speaker of his time: Adolf Hitler in the run-up to the 1933 election.

"After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Money-Kyrle concluded that charismatic authoritarian leaders first elicit depression and despair in their audience, then paranoid terror of a deadly enemy, before finally offering salvation though a redemptive order that abjures reasoned discourse. Money-Kyrle thought that our anxieties make us vulnerable to this sort of rhetoric — anxieties that charismatic leaders exploit."

Facts don't matter

Fear is an important tool.  That's why bad leaders always seem to be in crises, even if they're crises of their own making.  It doesn't matter what is feared, or if it's even real.  Last year the lies conjured the terror of Muslim immigrants from war-torn Middle Eastern and African countries -- as if the United States' role in destabilizing that region has been forgotten.  Today, with ISIS defeated (has it really?), it's Latin American asylum seekers that are equated to MS-13 "animals", despite the fact that it was American deportation policy that allowed these violent gangs to proliferate in the first place.   Fear leads the people to a culture war, where the ballot box becomes a referendum on national security -- in spite of all evidence showing the actual positive benefits of immigration and diminishing magnitude of the situation itself.

In fact, there are multitudes of other real crises that, unfortunately, are much too complex to deliver in catchy one-liners:  trade war with China, actual wars in Syria and Yemen, insurgencies in Libya and Mali, and human rights violations in the Gaza strip, Xinjiang, Venezuela, and (of course) the Texas-Mexican border.

But facts don't matter anymore, because really, who has time for them in 2018?

...by "next election"

... and I want ice cream and a pony

Pompeo has that Sean Spicer-esque "I work for a f*in moron" look.

Trump-Kim Summit: Not looking good, folks...

Oh shit

WE ARE DOOMED... 

His lengthy explanation:

The word “denuclearization” is more or less native to the Korean Peninsula. This wasn’t the term experts used to talk about the elimination of nuclear weapons programs in South Africa, Iraq or Libya. In those contexts, the word was almost always “disarmament.”

“Denuclearization” [is] conveniently abstract. That allowed it to capture different aspects of what James Baker, [George H.W.] Bush’s secretary of state, called “the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula.” It covered at the same time the nuclear weapons that the United States withdrew from South Korea, the so-called “nuclear umbrella” of extended deterrence provided by the United States, and North Korea’s own nuclear weapons ambitions. [...]  Today, of course, things are very different than they were in 1992. There are no American nuclear weapons in South Korea (although the North Koreans don’t believe that, and some South Korean politicians have called for their return). More important, North Korea has moved in fits and starts to build a nuclear weapons capability that may be as large as 60 nuclear weapons, including a small number that can strike the United States.

North Korea’s disarmament is unlikely, except in the broader context of inter-Korean reconciliation and a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. (Even then, it seems like a long shot.) [...]   If the term “denuclearization” merely reduces the problem of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to a small challenge in the big context of a settlement of Korea’s division, then it is the right one.

Vipin Narang of MIT further elaborates:

That phrase — “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” — is a term of art that the United States and North Korea can interpret to suit their interests. 

Mr. Trump can walk away claiming that the phrase encompasses unilateral “complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement,” or disarmament of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea can interpret the phrase to mean termination of the American security guarantee and nuclear umbrella to South Korea, or more literally, as universal disarmament by all nuclear countries. And the phrase commits North Korea to no concrete action — especially since it pledged only to “work towards” it.  

And presumably, as long as he freezes any further long-range-missile and nuclear testing, Mr. Kim will get at least a short-term freeze on American and South Korean military exercises.  He views them as provocative, a sign that his enemies are training to overthrow the regime. To his domestic audience, Mr. Kim can now present the end of this provocation as a signal of North Korea’s sovereignty and security. 

Mr. Kim also leaves Singapore having snuffed out the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign. [...]  Having apparently helped get North Korea to the table, it is unlikely that China will ever again agree to a maximum pressure campaign. Tightening sanctions would only destabilize North Korea, and China fears a desperate and broken North Korea on its border more than it fears a nuclear North Korea. Even if sanctions by the US and the UN Security Council remain in place, without additional Chinese implementation, North Korea will find itself enjoying considerable breathing space. 

American allies in the region are not so sanguine. South Korea was taken by surprise by the sudden announcement of an end to joint military exercises. But it is Japan who is perhaps most terrified, because US-Japan exercises may be the next to go. Mr. Trump has chafed at the cost of America’s deployment in East Asia, and Mr. Kim led him right where he wanted to go. The only thing that may actually be dismantled is the architecture of America’s longstanding military alliance with Japan and South Korea.
 

So a bit of a nuance here.  James Hershberg, of George Washington University, adds:

Kim has only agreed (in his April 27 joint statement with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, reaffirmed when they met again on Saturday May 26) to the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. That very different idea means that even in the remote scenario that Kim agreed to intrusive inspections inside North Korea, he would insist, inevitably and at a minimum, on reciprocal rights to inspect comparable locations in South Korea — for example, all US military bases (where around 30,000 troops are currently stationed) and probably South Korean ones as well, plus any and all US warships or aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons that enter South Korea’s waters or airspace. After all, they can argue, how else can the denuclearization of the entire peninsula be assured unless North Korean inspectors are allowed to snoop around all possible hiding places in South Korea, and the Americans withdraw and/or dismantle their bases or equipment capable of storing or using nuclear warheads—such as any dual-use (able to use conventional or nuclear) weapons that the US has deployed in South Korea for decades?

G-7 Summit: Summarized in one photo

100% totally NOT photoshopped at all.

Cue the US-Canada war of 2018, where US Army attacks Canadian capital Toronto in retaliation for the 1814 burning of the White House.

The Future of Work, and Education

Source: McKinsey Global Institute (2017)

Today's job market is dramatically different than that of the previous generation.  Long venerable career paths (doctors, lawyers, oil engineers) have been replaced by new ones like startup executives, software engineer, or data scientists.  However, not everybody can, or want to, or should, learn coding.  So what really is the future of work?

What is the future of work?

We have heard futurists declaring manufacturing jobs extinct, replaced by factory automation.  Other manual laborers (accountants? lawyers? also likely victims: real estate brokers, insurance, and loan officers) may also disappear, replaced by AI and blockchain.  Service work may persist, but likely transformed beyond recognition.  McKinsey recently issued a report arguing that 1/3 of Americans would need to change careers by 2030, thanks to automation and machine learning.

However, in all likelihood technological disruption won't make the future of work "jobless".  Instead, it’ll look like a new labor market in which millions of Americans have lost their job security and most benefits that accompanied work in the 20th century, with nothing to replace them.

Source: Katz and Krueger (2015)

Subcontracting ("alternative work arrangements" -- basically freelancing) have already toppled the American labor market over the past 20 years, albeit quietly.  The "sharing economy" of late is not the primary driver -- these changes happened way before Uber was conceived -- but it is part of the same trend.  From Danny Vinik:

"Among “transportation and material moving workers,” a category that includes everything from taxi drivers to flight attendants, the share of contingent workers had doubled: In 2005, it was 9%; it was 18.2% by 2015. Among health care support workers, it nearly doubled, from 9.5% to 17.9%. The share of food preparation workers in contingent work had quadrupled. And this trend wasn’t limited to blue-collar jobs: The rise in contingent work was as large for people with a bachelor’s degree as it was for those without a high school diploma."

Source: Katz and Krueger (2015)

How should education evolve for the future?

Higher education, especially, is in desperate need of a massive disruption.  Most of us understand the whole deal, and let's face it: the vast majority of students are lazy, the vast majority of teachers are uninspiring, and the  administrators just wanna get by with minimum effort.   New York University sociologist Richard Arum writes that 45% of college students don't show any improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years; even after completing their fourth years, 36% does not demonstrate significant improvement.  Reading comprehension is also in steep decline: Forbes quoted a 2006 survey result which states that 45% of college students "don’t enjoy reading serious books and articles, and only do it when [they] have to."

Today’s college students are less willing than ever to make the littlest effort of showing up for class and learning whichever topic is on the test.  From Bryan Caplan:

"Fifty years ago, college was a full-time job; the typical student spent 40 hours a week in class or studying.  Effort has since collapsed across the board. “Full time” college students now average 27 hours of academic work a week—including just 14 hours spent studying.   Students at one typical college spent 13 hours a week studying, 12 hours “socializing with friends,” 11 hours “using computers for fun,” eight hours working for pay, six hours watching TV, six hours exercising, five hours on “hobbies,” and three hours on “other forms of entertainment.” Grade inflation completes the idyllic package by shielding students from negative feedback. The average GPA is now 3.2."

The other issue with higher education is that they cost too much, and they burden students with too much debt right when they need to build a career and financial standing.  It seems the only real, plausible argument for a college degree can be summed up in two words: credential inflation.  The same jobs today require higher qualifications than they did 20 years ago, even just to get your foot in the door -- just because college degrees are so widespread but practical knowledge is hard to find.  It's the same case outside of white collar work: there are so many new licenses certifications required for anybody to be a florist, home entertainment installer, or even a barber, in the US.

Vocational education—classroom training, apprenticeships and other types of on-the-job training, and straight-up work experience— teaches specific job skills, and revolves around learning by doing, not learning by listening.  Most researchers agree that vocational education improves pay and reduces unemployment.  Even formal education can benefit from adopting more practical (as opposed to pure academic) training.  Finally, the next wave of education is likely to emphasize lifelong, continual training—to keep current in a career, to complement rising levels of automation, and to gain skills for new lines of work that may arise.

--

Kevin Roose (NYT) argues that we are living in a MoviePass economy, wherein urban professionals' comfort and convenience are propped up by venture capital bubble and the working class' loss of benefits and job security.  Indeed, the major cost of technological dislocation would be income and wealth inequality, but this can be tackled with sound government policies, such as universal basic income, public health insurance, financial aid for lower income students, and other forms of social safety net.  These approaches, however, may not be feasible in developing economies -- the very countries whose workforce composition is highly susceptible to technological disruption -- due to insufficient government (tax) revenue and lack of political will.

So yeah, the future looks bleak, but we're not flying blind. Actually we have pretty good ideas, albeit not easy ones, for navigating the uncertain future of our economy.