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Episode 52 - Fame (Fandom II)

Does fame give society the right to the famous?
Peter Hotez is harassed at his home.
Eminem is followed to the bathroom for an autograph when he's having dinner with his family. From a song, The Way I Am. This particular song seems to really hit the nail on the head for this topic. Eminem basically says "I appreciate the support from the fans but there are times when I don't want to be a celebrity and I don't owe my fans anything other than music."

Artists are often seen as wanting fame or wanting to be famous. This is certainly true for some of them but this isn't easy to be certain of. Commercial art is now part of an industrial promotion machine that they are very likely unable to avoid if they want their music to be heard. And even if they *wanted* to be famous, would that mean that we have the right to bother them during moments when they aren't actively producing their art? 

If we say that artists deserve a private life does that make us hypocrites if we want to judge them for immoral things they do in their personal lives? What about politicians and scientists who aren't 100% wholesome? Are there any logical inconsistencies when we look at this?

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hotez
Eminem - The Way I Am (with lyrics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWmG0ZsUAag
Rush - Limelight (with lyric)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l63eixpYRWk
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/q-and-a/a60015/paparazzo-explains-staged-celebrity-photos/

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Juxtaposition is the placement of two ideas in very close proximity so as to imply a direct connection between them. At no point is it required that they be actually connected in meaning. Any conclusion that is false falls squarely on the audience and gives the person doing the juxtaposition an automatic out (I didn't *explicitly say* that).
Some examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvia_Grossman
https://thecjn.ca/news/international/activists-distribute-thousands-of-fake-anti-israel-new-york-times-papers/

Internet memes are usually a very good example of this form of expression. More and more, people think that memes are actual logical arguments for or against something when usually they are just indications of which biases they hold.

Music is often used for juxtapositional purposes in movies. We should *always* be wary of internet videos that are attempting to use music to enhance themes being spoken. This is an appeal to emotion and should always be regarded with suspicion.

Juxtaposition is very commonly used in the spread of disinformation. A picture or video is shown with words appearing on the screen. The words are assumed to be describing the picture or video but there are a *lot* of examples of this not being the case. This technique is often now coupled with false images to further distort and alarm people for clicks and outrage harvesting.

I notice juxtaposition a lot when it is just used with words. This happens a lot with misinformation online when two ideas are meant to be linked in the minds of the audience. .

Links
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/juxtaposition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

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Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Countering_Digital_Hate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Williamson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briahna_Joy_Gray
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/
https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-cdc-covid-vaccine-deaths-910677348223
Viki Male on Covid-19 vaccines and Fertility
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFudXb8l7H8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Samoa_measles_outbreak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

Bad Faith Ep 271
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOvSLCEwXw
Bad Faith Ep 270
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oENSYXWdUC4

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Decisions you make will consider the interests of some people but not other people. The people whose interests you wish to protect with your decisions are people in your community. The people whose interests you don't care to protect are not in your community. This definition makes it more clear that you can be in a community with people you don't know and you can be in a community with people who are only connected to you virtually.
This definition also becomes its own practical test. You should trust other people *if* they consider *you* to be part of *their community. How could you possibly know this? By watching their decisions. If their decisions include the advancement, maintenance or, at the very least, the lack of disdain for your interests then they consider you to be part of their community (at least within that context).
Does Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism fit with this definition of community?

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_and_libertarianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_oil_and_gas_industry

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We have evolved as social creatures and for most of that evolution our social interactions were person to person. This is why we absorb the news better when it's a person we can see that's telling it to us. Our current world of mass media (this probably started with radio but television has been the biggest player for this) distorts these effects. We see people on screen and sometimes we imagine what it would be like to be around them or talk to them. But those people don't know us at all. This social relationship is unidirectional.

If we only saw people playing various characters on screen this might not even be as big a thing as it is now. Forcing everyone to watch every Audrey Hepburn movie would undoubtedly still create some Audrey Hepburn fans. Some of us would want to see more of the beautiful and talented woman we had seen before. But fandom gets bigger when we interview actors. When someone tries to get to know them and display a portion of that real person's real character on the screen for us.
Neuroscientifically, when we see an interview of an actor whose work we have appreciated we create a model of that person in our minds. It is then possible (though it isn't always done) to use that model to create imaginary scenarios in which that person appears. Essentially these are fantasies. Is it useful to engage in these fantasy scenarios?

Reality TV gives this a whole new twist. The people being shown on reality TV shows aren't playing a character that has been carefully crafted for them with an accompanying script. Some *are* playing a character, though. But we get a much stronger notion that we *know* those people based on the interactions we are seeing on the screen. Again, neuroscientifically, this is the model of them formed in our minds that allows us to do things like make predictions of what moves they might make next.

Overall, is the experience of fandom a distortion of our social evolution? Is it healthy to engage in fantasies about the people we see in our media?

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Episode 47 - Explicit Paradox
I see a thing that happens with communication. When someone tries to make a point their point is less effective rather than more effective once they try "too hard" to make it. An attempt to more explicitly state a thing can sometimes make it less solid, real, or believed by the intended audience. If you had a person who was attractive but who attempted to explicitly tell you about how they were attractive they would become less attractive. If a person tried to explicitly state that they were witty (rather than just being witty) people would naturally wonder if that person is really as witty as they claim. I notice this in all sorts of things that people say. If I felt the need to tell people that I'm intelligent people would immediately worry that I wasn't. There is an aspect of this which is potentially a cultural distaste for bragging. This is why I can't say for certain whether this is universal or cultural.
Compare to the "Uncanny Valley" effect: wherein an attempt to artistically portray a human face gives a viewer an offputting effect as the face becomes almost, but not quite, perfect.
We can also compare/contrast this with the Streisand Effect where attempts to deny or otherwise limit an idea only makes it more real and talked about.
In screenwriting, it is sometimes said of dialogue that it is "exposition". This is dialogue that is meant to tell the audience what is happening. This is often seen as poor screenwriting. 
This phenomenon is used in comedy very often to make the audience understand what is the butt of the joke.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z36OznHFIt4

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/politics/state-elections-board-examining-dan-profts-people-who-play-rules-pac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE

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Limited time offers are sales techniques that are meant to give the person choosing whether or not to purchase something less time to consider their decision. This is a calculated sales technique and should be approached with caution rather than with glee.
Many conspiracy hypotheses include a set of dire consequences that are meant to make fear and override logic in their audience. People who believe the world is going to end (or just significantly change) will make a different set of decisions than people who don't. This is, generally, bad for all of society. The longevity of society is affected as that society has an increasing number of people who are *not* planning for its continued future. Conspiracy thinking degrades all of society and is a problem for everyone, not merely the people who believe in the unreality of the conspiracy.

The trolley problem and variants
The War of the Worlds question and its variants. Choose between annihilation of the species and:
Peace on the understanding that we are now vassals of the aliens
Peace on a land reserve without tech
Slavery to our new alien masters
Life as a food source for the aliens
How-low-would-you-go-ism



Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-freeland-demands-2b-to-buy-shares-in-a-company-that-doesnt-exist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

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I have a principle about rules: you only ever make a rule for something that you don't think people will do/follow if you didn't state the rule. This means that every rule says something about the people who are meant to operate by them. By explicitly stating the rule you betray something about the level of expectation of those meant to follow the rule. For this reason, we don't have rules about "obvious things" that we don't think people would really do.
Every so often someone drags out a list of really strange and obscure rules like "it's illegal to ride a cow while drunk in Scotland" and such like.
How we write rules makes a big difference to how they are implemented. We learn very early about wiggle room around the wording of rules. Some people seem to specialize in the practice of twisting away from the obviously intended meaning of a rule and toward an obscure interpretation that gives them an advantage. I call this practice "kindergarten bullshit" because it reminds me of the practice of kindergarteners learning the rules of the playground at school.

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What is platforming? Why do we talk about it and why is it considered a good or bad thing? How does this interact with misinformation? How can we interact with bad information actors while still being careful about issues of platforming? 
These questions and several others are explored in Part 3 of our extended conversation about Free Speech.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels

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Free Speech: Why would we limit it?
First and foremost, you can't yell "fire!" in a crowded theater. This example is widely used mostly because it is both so succinctly put and illustrative of the point.
Second, hate speech can inspire violent acts and is very often targeted against marginalized people for populist gain. We need to limit hate speech. If you don't want overt rules against it then make an effort to limit hate speech socially in your everyday lives. If a person isn't working to limit hate speech socially (in everyday conversations) and is *also* against having overt rules against such speech then we often think this person is advocating not for free speech for merely *for* that particular ideological hatred.
Third (and the one that we should probably spend the most time discussing), technology can greatly overwhelm legitimate efforts to tell the truth. It takes a lot of energy and resources to fully debunk a fictional claim that is masquerading as reality. When technology can broadcast every poor idea at scale and avoid most (or all) of the challenges that should be happening this creates the reality denying ideologies we have now. Free speech allows flateartherism, antivaxxers, climate deniers, Qanon, creationists, and incel to survive. Our technology allows them to thrive.
Fourth, this is a protection for the individual and society at large from the tendency of leadership to become tyrannical and overbearing. This isn't a thing that gives one person the right to make another person listen to them. Following the idea and the principles of free speech does not require anyone to avoid blocking someone on social media. It is not a requirement to have to listen to every obscene thing ever spoken.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53755067
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/media/twitter-musk-journalists-hnk-intl/index.html