Viral Media Rewards Absurdity

"I can't believe Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for intentions instead of action..."

I heard the same sentiment expressed with varying levels of clarity and expletives dozens of times Friday. "What on earth has come over the commission?" "Nobel is rolling in his grave," and "They have officially made this into a sham," and "Why the hell would they do this?"

I'll tell you why. I'll prove it on one sentence.

Can you name the winner of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize without looking it up. No? It's Martti Ahtisaari. Here's the sad part: that name probably doesn't help you. A good percent of us could not identify this former President of Finland for love nor for money.

That's alright, lets try again. Can you name any winner of the Nobel peace prize in the past five years? When I tell you that 2007 was Al Gore and some other people for some global warming stuff, you might say "man I knew that," but the recognition on Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank (2006), International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei (2005), or Wangari Maathai (2004) is pretty low.

So what's special about this? Well, lets consider this: news is a form of media. Media is an industry. Industries seek to make profit. How does media make money? Media makes money from advertising. Advertising pays more when more people see it more. Media wants to make as much money as possible. Media wants as many people to watch it as possible. Media reports the news which people will watch.

This dynamic is as old as the news as a business is (which some people link especially strongly to the development of cable news stations). The issue is: now not everybody gets their news from the news stations. As a matter of fact the majority of the news which I receive is transmitted to me virally either by a friend in an IM or via an IRC channel.

So what gets transmitted? Mostly it's the inane and the insane, in short the absurd. You know the memes as well as I do. I see easily as many links to the likes of Chris Crocker, various forms of Bill O'Riley expressly because he is losing flipping a shit or making an ass of himself, and Reuters' Oddly Enough as I do to "actual news." Try getting the same sort of stories you get off the BBC on Digg. They are probably there, but they are also probably awash in a great deal of other stuff.

Awash isn't a bad word for this whole situation. We're awash in way more information than we can reasonably process. We rely on summaries of everything, from what our friends are up to to the disturbing little bullet points that accompany a one page news article on CNN because they believe we have lost our attention span so badly that we are unable to finish and analyse a one page news article for ourselves.

And what is coming out on top? Well, your diligent readers will probably pick, choose, and not fluctuate but items which actually go viral reward the news site with a huge traffic spike. Spikes like this are very lucrative both financially. They are also psychologically attractive for the same reasons the lottery is.

Check out what is right at the top of the webpage of CNN, which is generally regarded as a fairly reasonable news site. Will the naked burgler that CNN reports as caught change your life? How about that an "ultrarunner" says shoes are the devil? This stuff is not news, its just a light laugh that sells well.

So if somebody is determined to make the news or "have an impact," they are going to have an easier time doing it if they are doing something that will go viral: the inane or the insane, the absurd. The Nobel Peace Prize, like all Nobel Prizes was founded essentially as a form of activism by the man who invented dynamite as an attempt to recognise those who have helped improve humanity. This was to offset the destructive and warlike ramifications of his own invention. The goal is to highlight and reward those who have done something significant to better humanity.

So how can the people who award the prize make sure the prize has an impact? By making sure everybody knows about who won it. How do they do that in this modern age?

They pick somebody who is doing good, but where the statement is just absurd enough to go viral.

Now I'm not proposing that this is some giant media conspiracy. I'm arguing that this is an unconscious algorithm that evolves from the combination of the strength of viral media introduction, media companies trying to make as much money as they can, and the people who are making news attempting to be sure they have an impact. This is the age that rewards Sarah Palin's cutesy folksy gimmicks, and reactionary "opinion pieces" where people completely lose their shit on youtube.

So, in conclusion, stop linking garbage, go read some damn news, and make the world a better place. Hell, while you're at it you might even give yourself an education. :p

America Loves a Man Who Served?

Every election everybody is abuzz over who "nobly served their country in its time of need," and how a candidate's military service (or lack thereof) will impact the election. Parties, for as long as I have lived, have had groups come out every election to tout the extent of their candidate's military service or their opponent's lack thereof. The question really is: are candidates who have convinced the public that they served really any more successful than their peers?

Lets look at recent candidates who have flamboyant war stories...such as getting shot or tortured. Who would that be? John McCain (2008), John Kerry (2004) and Bob Dole (1992). All three of them, as I am sure you know, lost their elections.

So, the question comes from this, does military service in general indicate a losing candidate? Lets look at the records. The 1992 and 1980 elections must be skipped for now because they were between two candidates who won at some point. Al Gore (2000) served in the Vietnam war, while Dukakis (1988) and Mondale (1984) served in Korea. Ford (1976) served in WWII (remember, he was president but he never won an election, which is what is in question here). McGovern (1972) also served in that war. Prior to that a good chunk of the baby boomers were not even of voting age, and it gets a little hard to consider everything one contineous culture.

So, now lets examine the other side of the coin. What are the military histories of winning candidates?

Carter and George Bush Senior each won and lost one election. Both of them won against somebody with equal or less military experience, and both of them lost to somebody with no combat experience. Carter (1972) served on a submarine. He won against Ford, who had a considerable record of service, and lost against Regan who never saw battle at all and couldn't serve overseas. George Bush Senior (1988, 1992) served active duty Navy and saw combat. He won against Dukakis (who served) in 1988. Its reasonable to say this didn't break the trend because when both candidates in an election served they can not both lose. He lost to Clinton, who had no record of military service.

George W Bush (2000, 2004) worked first in the Texas Air National Guard and then was discharged to inactive duty in the Air Force Reserve. Various forms of the National Guard have been socially seen as a great way to draft dodge, and were a popular alternative to serving in the Vientam War for particularly well well-connected people. Since social perceptions directly influence elections, its reasonable to say that is what matters here, and that against the candidates George W Bush faced it isn't unreasonable to say that the majority of the public considered him the figure with less military service.

What about the rest of the candidates? Obama (2008) has no military history. Clinton (1992, 1996) employed significant shennanigans to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. Regan (1980, 1984) tried but never saw battle and couldn't serve overseas because of his nearsightedness. Nixon (1968, 1972) was exempt twice over from service, joined anyway and requested multiple times for more demanding duties but retired never seeing combat. This history brings us neatly back, once again, to the time before the baby boomers were of age to vote.

So what can we scientifically conclude from this? Nothing: this is just a statistical correlation. It is, however, a very strong correlation that United States presidental elections have, for the past 40 years, tended very strongly to favor the candidate with less military service.

So, why is this? Hippy baby boomers won't vote for "baby killers" they spent their college years protesting in the streets? Maybe, after all it really does fit the timeline, but I have never heard of a generation who sold their beliefs out so rapidly and wholeheartedly as the baby boomers (upcoming post). Atom proposed that the numerous foreign interests which contribute to our election campeign funds might be more likely to financially support a non-military candidate. That sounds very plausable, but I haven't been able to discover enough election campeign contribution data to really draw correlations either way. Personally, I'm not really ready to break out my tin foil hat quite yet.

What are the odds of this happening by accident? There have been 9 elections since 1972. If for each election a winner was selected at random from the two major parties the odds of it lining up with this exact correlation by random chance would be .19% or just a touch more unlikely than 525 to 1. So, its fairly likely that there is something mathematically to this, but I really haven't a clue what it is. I'd welcome any thoughts on the topic.

Oh no! Robots stealing American jobs? Cry me a river.

I am utterly stunned by the number of blithering idiots who come up to me and tell me I am hurting people by taking their jobs by working on robots.

Lets be perfectly clear here: the purpose of technology is to make human life easier. Normally that is a celebrated thing: either we have to do less labor, or we will undo some mess we made, or we will simply have the same amount of labor but it won't be as tiring. All throughout history this has been true: the wheel, the plow...all of these things changed the way humanity lived in a tremendous and drastic scale. All these things are celebrated cornerstones without which our society would never have become what it is.

Think back. At the time, what did people do before the automatic printing press? They copied books by hand. Monks in monasteries carefully painstakingly copied books word for word. When the printing press arrived, what happened to them? They were all replaced by the printing press and found other tasks to do. This was not considered some great tragedy, this was considered one of the greatest societal changes in human history: now material to read was accessible to people who were not the richest of the rich.

Lets try again: the cotton gin. You remember that right? It was on a page with the name "Eli Whitney" in your middle school US History textbook. This machine separated usable cotton from the junk it grew in, a process that was previously done by hand. This was considered a tremendous improvement as one person could now do the work of many with this machine. Uh-oh, doesn't that mean you are "destroying jobs?" Sure does, but people adapted! The Cotton Gin has gone down in history as an important contributor to the American Industrial Revolution and a major shaping factor on the Southern economy at that time.

Lets try again: how about the automatic weaving machines that revolutionized the textile industry? How about the dynamite and the (even more) backbreaking work involved in mining prior to its introduction? The plow? The wheel? All of these things decreased the need for simple manual labor and meant that one person could do more in a given span of time. The completely natural effect of one person being able to do the work of many is for the one person to continue doing that job and for the many to go find new jobs. What the hell would have happened if we had tried to restrict the development of the plow to preserve the jobs of the people who dug the holes for the crops by hand? No, that concept is laughable. It is normal for technology to replace our nastiest jobs: that is what it is there for. The only question is, how do we manage to adapt?

Historically, as the complication of the technology around us increases the length of time we spend in the education system increases. In the late 1800's graduating highschool was a rare feat. By the late 1900's it was a bare minimum. This is because the modern world requires a higher level of literacy and more math skills than simply counting cattle.

So here is my big question: what about this multi-thousand year trend changes just because you start calling your machines robots? What changes when its a "dark factory" instead of an automated threshing machine, or an automated welder, or any other of a million other devices which have reduced labor by the same scale as any of those devices would?

The answer is that nothing has changed. Last turn of the century it was the industrial revolution and, with any luck it will be the robotic revolution this time around. Last time around nobody screamed "but what will all the town blacksmiths do?" and tried to stop things, and it is only a sign of how completely spoiled our generation is that we even consider doing such a thing today. Lets face it: even if I am wrong and it isn't moral, the development of technology is going to happen either way because its flatly profitable.

If you work in a factory (or any number of other places), your job has a very good chance of being replaced in the next 100 years. This is a natural and positive thing because, if history serves as any example, if your children study hard in school they will probably have far easier jobs than yours when they grow up. The question we ought to be asking is not "how can we stop or weather this revolution" but "what is wrong with our education system that we may not be able to keep up with our own inventions."

The fear and anger people feel is misdirected. The "robots" that are coming to take the jobs you use to do are merely messengers of the fact that technology is continuing to develop and that, in fact, nothing has changed at all.