Tag: Democracy
-
Comment Peter Thiel et les techno-réactionnaires américains récupèrent la pensée du philosophe chrétien René Girard
Selon le philosophe, le désir naît toujours de l’imitation de celui d’un autre. Parti aux Etats-Unis en 1947, il remarque en enseignant le français que le « désir mimétique » est l’un des grands ressorts des récits littéraires. A partir de Proust, mais aussi de Stendhal, Dostoïevski, Flaubert ou Cervantès, René Girard montre que, loin des clichés romantiques…
-
For a long time I have been predicting the return of phrenology – Marginal REVOLUTION
The Photo Big 5 provides predictive power comparable to race, attractiveness, and educational background, and is only weakly correlated with cognitive measures such as test scores. We show that individuals systematically sort into occupations where their personality traits are valued and earn higher wages when traits align with occupational demands — Read on marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/for-a-long-time-i-have-been-predicting-the-return-of-phrenology.html
-
The Discourse is Getting Both Smarter and Dumber
I think that when historians look back on the Trump era, they will be more likely to note the collapse in norms surrounding things like truth and corruption and the existence of a fair justice system than policy changes. Likewise, think about how in late 2025 the most popular podcasts in the country among right-wingers…
-
Experts warn of threat to democracy from ‘AI bot swarms’ infesting social media | AI (artificial intelligence) | The Guardian
political leaders could deploy almost limitless numbers of AIs to masquerade as humans online and precisely infiltrate communities, learn their foibles over time and use increasingly convincing and carefully tailored falsehoods, to change population-wide opinions. — Read on www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/22/experts-warn-of-threat-to-democracy-by-ai-bot-swarms-infesting-social-media
-
Trump airing Macron’s private message was designed to hurt and intimidate | Donald Trump | The Guardian
No president had ever achieved such omnipresence. In this fractured country, it gives him a singular power. It wasn’t money that propelled him but conversation. The creation of chaos is not an accidental byproduct of Trump, it is the method. Every void is filled with a provocation. He lights more fires than can be put…
-
Donald Trump is waging war against human conscience | Osita Nwanevu | The Guardian
Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”…
-
How Grok’s nudification tool went viral
As people slowly started to understand the full potential of the tool, the increasingly degrading images of the early days were quickly superseded. Since the end of last week, users have asked for the bikinis to be decorated with swastikas – or asked for white, semen-like liquid to be added to the women’s bodies. Pictures…
-
American democracy is very much alive, though not in all regards well – Marginal REVOLUTION
The Senate also sided with the House on the Epstein files. Nate Silver and many others write about how Trump is now quite possibly a lame duck President. I do not doubt that there are many bad policies, and also much more corruption, and a more transparent form of corruption, which is corrosive in its…
-
Confidently Wrong – Marginal REVOLUTION
The authors then correlate respondents’ scores on the objective (uncontroversial) knowledge with their opposition to the scientific consensus on topics like vaccination, nuclear power, and homeopathy. The result is striking: people who are most opposed to the consensus (7, the far right of the horizontal axis in the figure below) score lower on objective knowledge…