Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (15⧸10⧸2017)

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Oct. 15, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

28:24

This Week in Stupid (15⧸10⧸2017)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 15th of October 2017.
	We've got some fantastic stuff this week.
	Some really good stuff.
	But before I get to that, I have to stand on a point of principle.
	Donald Trump threatens to shut down NBC and other TV news networks that criticize him.
	This is not acceptable.
	He doesn't have to have a press conference, he doesn't have to invite any of these journals, and he is completely within his rights to sit there and scream fake news at them and tell them to just piss off because they're a bunch of liars.
	He is completely entitled to get all of the journals into Trump Tower and treat them like he's in a firing squad, I quote, because they are a bunch of mendacious hacks.
	But it's not acceptable for him to threaten to shut them down.
	They must be allowed to speak.
	There's just no way of spinning this.
	This is completely wrong for Donald Trump to have done.
	I absolutely condemn it.
	I disavow.
	I disavow.
	The thing is, it kind of annoys me, because I like Donald Trump.
	I'm not gonna lie, I found myself, if it wasn't for the way the media treat Donald Trump, I wouldn't care about him one way or the other.
	I'd probably dislike him like everyone else.
	But he and his team have been so good at resisting the pressure from the mainstream media.
	I have actually come to kind of like him.
	But he has been so unapologetic when it comes to the media.
	I really respect that.
	And so it really annoys me that he goes too far.
	Trump has threatened to shut down NBC and other American networks saying they peddle fake news.
	Well, how is that different to Facebook saying we're going to censor certain sites?
	How is that different to YouTube changing their algorithm so conspiracy videos won't be promoted to other people?
	I don't agree with it.
	If it's fake, then it's up for people to debunk it, to show that it's fake, to show that this is nonsense.
	It's not up to the powers that be to determine this for themselves and then dictate to the rest of us.
	Of course, we have to hear from Donald Trump's Twitter feed.
	With all the fake news coming out of NBC and the networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their license?
	It's not.
	They can become the left-wing version of Alex Jones if they like, and they are, given their stance on Russia, which is something I'll probably do a thinkery video on, because it's just... it's just stupid.
	They are now complaining that Russia bought Facebook ads.
	Well, here's a bit of a thing that you need to know.
	That's legal.
	The Russian government is allowed to buy Facebook advertising.
	That's not wrong.
	And it is highly ironic given the sheer amount of money the West has spent on propagandizing places like the Middle East.
	I mean, I really don't think we're in a position to judge if we're going to be talking about who's interfering with whose elections.
	Just saying.
	See, these criticisms are non-criticisms.
	The president has regularly targeted news networks critical of him since January when he gave press conferences the president-elect and shouted down a CNN reporter as fake news.
	That was amazing.
	I loved every second of it.
	Completely valid, completely justified.
	CNN basically are fake news.
	The term which Mr. Trump says he invented but has been used frequently before to describe proliferation of stories by anonymous bloggers, spread lies during the 2016 election, otherwise known as Hillary's campaign, but um shh, has since become one of those go-to insults when the media publishes critical coverage of the Trump administration.
	Yeah, but that's because a lot of the time it's true.
	I mean, again, just look at the Russian conspiracy theory.
	Neither NBC nor ABC released a statement following the tweet, but others in government stepped in to comment on the issue.
	Democratic Senator Ed Markley, shouldn't that be capital M Independent?
	What are you, a blogger?
	Wrote to FCC Chairman, not even trying to pronounce that, Wednesday, urging him to resist requests from the president to revoke licenses because of coverage, and I would concur.
	Do not allow Donald Trump to simply revoke licenses of stations he doesn't like.
	That will set a dangerous precedent.
	It's not wise to give the president the power to silence and censor the press.
	The same thing has been happening with Google and YouTube with regards to controversial political commentary and topics.
	And Alternet, a far-left blog, has found themselves with the same problem.
	So now it's time to push back.
	Well, that's good.
	I completely agree.
	Google's threat to democracy hits Alternet hard.
	We need to stand up and push back against Google's monopoly on steroids.
	Yes, we do.
	And this isn't from this week, but it was important to cover.
	We do need to do that.
	We need to do that as consumers.
	We need to be aware and we need to start using alternate platforms wherever we can.
	But remember, it only really matters when it's happening to them.
	It didn't matter when it was happening to their sort of right-wing equivalents, like, you know, the sort of far-right clickbait sites I'm talking about.
	Didn't matter then.
	But now the new media monopoly is hurting progressive and independent news.
	Now it's a problem.
	In June, Google announced major changes to its algorithm designed to combat fake news.
	Well, that's reassuring.
	I mean, if Google is going to combat fake news for us, then we don't even have to think about it.
	We can just take any news that Google decides to present to us as face value.
	We know that that's reliable.
	Oh, what's that?
	The CEO of YouTube actually thinks there are no biological differences between men and women?
	We've got a problem.
	Ben Gones, the company's vice president for engineering, stated in April that Google's update that search engine would block access to offensive sites.
	How do you know that they're offensive?
	To whom are they offensive?
	How are you measuring offense?
	What's your metric?
	This is an incredibly subjective measure for an objective problem.
	All the while working to surface more authoritative content.
	Well, I look forward to seeing lots of promoted young Turks videos in my newsfeed.
	This seemed like a good idea.
	No, it didn't.
	No, it didn't.
	This seems like a fucking terrible idea.
	But you're sat there thinking, well, Google is a far-left outlet that literally enforced progressive values with threat of being fired for advancing harmful gender stereotypes.
	So to you, this is not a good idea.
	This is a biased idea.
	But it's biased in your favour, so it's a good idea.
	But little did we know that Google had decided, perhaps with bad advice or wrong-headed thinking, that media like Alternet, dedicated to fighting white supremacy, misogyny, racism, Donald Trump, and fake news, even though a lot of that is already fake news, would be clobbered by Google in its clumsy attempt to address hate speech and fake news.
	The numbers are striking.
	We have had consistent search traffic averaging 2.7 million unique visitors a month.
	It's actually smaller than I was expecting.
	That's about half of what I get.
	Over the past two and a half years.
	But since the June Google announcement, Alternate search traffic has plummeted by 40%, a loss of an average 1.2 million people a month who are no longer reading Alternet stories.
	It's interesting because I too have noticed a throttling of my channel.
	I have noticed that my overall views, the views per video are still very good.
	Thank you for watching everyone.
	But the overall views on my channel are down and that's because they are no longer, or they've taken steps to reduce promotion of older videos.
	So that's millions of views I lose.
	What can I do?
	And they say they're not alone.
	Dozens of progressive and radical websites have reported marked declines in their traffic.
	But Alternet ranks in the top in terms of audience loss because we have deep archived from 20 years of producing thousands of news articles.
	We get substantial traffic overall, typically among the top five indie sites.
	So they have the same problem that I have, and presumably almost every other content creator has.
	Google are punishing independent media.
	They are taking sides with the mainstream media, and they are actually changing their algorithms in order to, well, effectively, silence us.
	Or at least reduce the reach of our voices.
	I do not think that Alternet, despite my ideological differences with them, should be punished via an algorithm.
	Just like I don't think I should be punished via an algorithm, or Stephen Crowder, or anyone else who I just don't agree with.
	Personally, I don't think Google should be picking favourites when it comes to the mainstream media versus its own grassroots news commentators.
	We are making your platform great, Google.
	We are making your platform worth using, and you're punishing us for it.
	And I'm by far the only person who's been saying, look, my views have dropped off, my income's going down, I mean, the adpocalypse.
	It's like you're doing everything you can to disincentivize us from actually carrying on.
	And I don't appreciate that myself, and I'm sure many other people don't, because if you think the alternative media is going away, you've got another thing coming.
	All that's going to happen is it's going to slowly but surely bleed away from your site.
	And that will be hundreds of millions of views you will end up losing to a competitor.
	But if that's the road you want to go down, hey, that's the road you want to go down.
	And they've got a good point here.
	The reality is we face two companies, Google and Facebook, which are not media companies, do not have editors or fact checkers and do no investigative reporting, are deciding what people should read based on a failure of how to understand media and journalism function.
	Now, that's a fair point.
	And I really think that the problem that Google and Facebook are having is that at any point, they agreed that they should have an editorial stance on the information passed around on their platforms.
	It's not your responsibility to police what people think.
	It's not your responsibility to police it if someone is lying or not.
	People have to take responsibility for the media they consume.
	It's up to them.
	It's not up to you.
	And the stupidest thing is, you have given yourselves a monumental, unscalable challenge.
	You're never going to be able to fact check the billions of people who use your site to consume and produce content.
	It's a stupid task.
	You were never going to accomplish this.
	And the thing is, you're going to end up breaking your own backs doing it with this kind of Sisyphian effort that you've got to put in every day to roll the boulder back up the hill only to see it roll back down again.
	You were stupid to ever say that you wanted a part of that.
	You should have just said no from the out.
	And on a parallel note to that, Owen Jones is getting woke.
	We can no longer pretend the British press is impartial.
	Fucking really, Owen.
	Really?
	Writing in The Guardian.
	Oh, we can't pretend the press is impartial anymore.
	No fucking shit, Owen.
	Do you know what your job is, Owen?
	You're not a journalist.
	You're an editorialist.
	You sit there and write far-left screeds for The Guardian, trying to advise the left how to implement its strategies.
	You are a tactician for the left, and you were employed by The Guardian, and you wonder why people aren't impressed when you go, we can no longer pretend the British press is impartial.
	Dude, you're a fucking symptom of that problem.
	Holy Christ, am I like, wow.
	2017 has been a crazy fucking year, I tell you.
	The country is more left-wing than its press.
	No, it's not.
	It's really not.
	Your bubble is more left-wing than the press, which savages dissenting views and defends a discredited status quo.
	No wonder people look elsewhere for news.
	No wonder people look elsewhere than The Guardian for opinion as well, Owen.
	Finally, there's a debate about media bias.
	Finally, Owen, welcome to 2014.
	Take a seat.
	You have so much to learn.
	It's becoming an unfortunate missed opportunity though, because so far it's only focusing on the left-wing blogs that have emerged in the past couple of years.
	Okay.
	Whatever the failings of, say, the canary, choose one of the farthest left blogs you can find.
	It only gained traction because there is a substantial body of opinion in Britain which feels marginalised, unheard, and attacked by the broader media.
	The reason for that is this.
	Britain's press is not an impartial disseminator of news and information.
	No, I know.
	Do you know what's really funny?
	It's difficult to find stories and the sort of small-scale stories of Islamist plots in The Guardian.
	But it's really easy to find them in the Daily Mail.
	What do you think that is?
	Do you think that might be something to do with the lack of impartiality in Britain's press?
	The worst part about the press as well isn't actually what they print.
	It's what they don't print.
	The things that they deliberately avoid covering.
	That's the problem with our press right now.
	Honestly, Kellyanne Conway really dropped the ball, which is like alternative facts.
	And they're like, alternative facts.
	And she should have just defended that to the hill.
	Yes, things you won't say is an alternative fact.
	Things that are true, facts that you don't talk about, making them alternative.
	She should have defended that term because that could have really been used to bludgeon them.
	Really give them a good broadside on how exactly they're failing vast swathes of the population by simply pretending they don't exist and never covering their issues.
	But instead, she absolutely dropped the ball on that.
	But never mind.
	It is, by and large, a highly sophisticated and aggressive form of political campaigning and lobbying.
	Well done, Owen.
	That's your fucking job, Sonny Jim.
	Holy shit.
	I can't believe you're finally woke enough to tell us the truth about what you do every day.
	Whether it's the Sun, the Telegraph, the Times, the Daily Mail, or the Daily Express.
	Wow.
	Wow, that's a good selection of right-wing rags.
	And the Telegraph and the Times are pretty credible, actually.
	But the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and the Sun, that's a good selection.
	Not the Daily Mirror.
	Not the Independent.
	No, no, no, no.
	The Times, the Daily Mail.
	You're such a fucking partisan.
	You can't even call out partisanship without being a partisan.
	It's embarrassing watching you operate, Owen.
	That means promoting the partisan interests of the Conservative Party.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, does it?
	Oh, does it?
	What does right-wing The Guardian mean?
	Does it mean promoting the partisan interests of the Labour Party, specifically Jeremy fucking Corbyn?
	Of course it does, you socialist scum.
	The press has been instrumental in upholding the political consensus established by Thatcherism.
	Let's talk about the political consensus on political correctness, Owen.
	That you're completely in favour of.
	You know all the sort of like anarchist types that are like, yeah, yeah, I'm really anti-establishment, except I'm anti-Brexit, I'm anti-offensive words, I'm pro-feminism, I'm pro-LGBT, I'm pro-all of this stuff.
	But yeah, me, I'm really anti-establishment.
	That meme going around is true about you, Owen.
	You're a radical in your parents' T room.
	It has traditionally defined what is politically acceptable and palatable in Britain and ignore like you not doing that now and ignore demonized and humiliated individuals and movements which challenge this consensus.
	The exact same thing is truth political correctness in the left-wing media.
	The exact same thing.
	Which is why I and other people, not even like me, but just other people who have a differing opinion, are demonized by you.
	Rather than challenging powerful interests, get ready for this, the press is more interested in punching down.
	Like, say, at, oh, I don't know, white men?
	You know, the people who are failing in society, the demographic with the lowest lifespan, the most suicides, the worst university attendance, the worst attendance and performance in school.
	Yeah, they do punch down, Owen!
	They fucking do!
	You hack!
	Disseminating myths and outright lies in the process.
	Oh, I totally agree.
	The distinction between news and opinions throughout much of the British press is blurred.
	I write opinion.
	Yes, that's literally all you do.
	And it goes in the opinion section of this newspaper.
	Yes, it does.
	The press abounds with writers who are just as opinionated as me, but their opinions go in the news section.
	Yes, they do.
	Finally, I mean, honestly, well done, Owen, for finally calling out your partisan left-wing hack friends.
	I'm a political activist, but so are they.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you're all, you're all horseshit.
	But the thing is, I'm not a journalist.
	I'm a political activist, too.
	We're all political activists here.
	They too use their news writing as a means to advance political aims and causes, even if they pretend otherwise.
	My god, that is just the guardian to a T, Owen.
	Well done.
	You have absolutely nailed them.
	Then there's the commentariat.
	The explosion in opinion is problematic.
	Is it problematic because it goes against your opinion, Owen?
	This is just too good.
	This is just too good.
	I can't believe these words came out of your mouth, Owen.
	Pundits do play, at least in theory, an important role in democracy, says the pundit.
	Go on, tell me what the problem with pundits is, Mr. Pundit.
	The problem is that the British Commentariat is by and large a cartel.
	Yes, say hi to Sam Chris for me and your other left-wing lovies, Owen.
	Yes, it's a fucking cartel.
	Jesus Christ.
	Its members are mostly there because of their views, their backgrounds, and to varying degrees, their connections.
	You are the problem you are talking about here, Owen.
	You exactly exemplify everything you've just said there.
	Only one in five leading British print journalists were educated at comprehensive schools, in a stark contrast to about 90% of the population.
	Yes.
	You are out-of-touch bourgeois pricks, and everyone hates you.
	Our backgrounds inevitably play an important role in forming our worldviews, determining our priorities, and creating our blind spots.
	I am in awe with how you wrote this.
	I know I keep saying it, but it's just like, wow, this is the most woke thing I've ever heard.
	One day, Owen Jones is going to look in the mirror and go, wait, that's me.
	The spectrum of opinion represented in the Commentariat is limited indeed.
	There is a broad consensus on economic issues, a big role for the market, a limited role for government, and contempt for ideas that challenge this consensus.
	Hey, let's talk about political correctness, Owen.
	Let's talk about LGBT pronouns.
	Let's talk about transgenderism.
	Oh, oh, we won't hear any dissenting voices.
	What about evolution's role on the behavior of men and women?
	Do you want to talk, Owen?
	Are you going to talk?
	No.
	No, is there a consensus that we're not going to breach here?
	Oh, I thought there might be.
	Oh, sorry.
	Sorry, I'll put those issues aside.
	no one needs to talk about those.
	Despite the dramatic collapse of much of their world view, I can't believe you think you're talking about someone else here.
	From the financial collapse to the 2017 general election to disastrous foreign interventions from Iraq to Libya, did you forget Brexit?
	Did you forget Donald Trump?
	Their sense of superiority remains the defining hallmark.
	We are reaching levels of wokeness that shouldn't even be possible.
	This is incredible.
	I swear, Owen, if I ever meet you, I'm just going to read you quotes back from this article.
	The Financial Times Janan Ganesh once described Jeremy Corbyn's sporters, for instance, as thick as pig shit.
	Oh, that's true.
	But there is no evidence that he or his colleagues have conceded that any of the pillars of their worldview are wrong.
	Wow, Owen.
	How did you fail to win the Remain vote?
	because you know you're so anti-status quo.
	How did you, how did Brexit manage to happen The opposite.
	The onward march of political wrongness.
	Again, you're such an anti-status quo warrior, aren't you, Owen?
	As they would see it, simply vindicates their rightness.
	The popular mood is a mass delusion and departure from reason.
	Owen, you're on the side that thinks reason is a social construct.
	A white male social construct.
	Don't start trying to defend reason all of a sudden.
	You're not in favour of it.
	You are just a gem.
	If anything ever happened to Owen, I'd be legit sad.
	I would be legitimately upset if you stopped writing articles in The Guardian one day.
	I'd be like, wow, that is the end of an era.
	This man brought me so much joy and happiness.
	And to hundreds of thousands of other people, Owen.
	You know?
	It would be so sad if you stopped doing what you're doing.
	Seriously, comedians don't make me laugh as hard as you make me laugh, Owen.
	I'm genuinely, I go to a comedy show and it's mindly amusing, but But this is golden.
	There are prominent male broadcast journalists who have outright partisan backgrounds.
	You just said you're a fucking activist.
	You are a partisan.
	Don't sit there and go, oh, they're partisans.
	Like, why would I give a shit about your opinion on other people's partisanship?
	Why would you think that would be an appropriate thing to bring up?
	You aren't the worst of this.
	I mean, they will at least say, well, objectivity is important.
	You don't.
	No.
	We're not impartial and we know it.
	Here's me writing an article about how other people aren't impartial.
	This is the best bit.
	Yes, some left-wing blogs exhibit problematic approaches to journalism, but then there's the likes of Novara, which is at the cutting edge of new left ideas.
	Oh god, I better check out this Novara then.
	How memes are spreading acid Corbynism.
	Wow, that's really good stuff.
	In this year's election, four out of ten voters opted for a Labour Party offering an unapologetically socialist platform.
	Yes, that is a real indictment of Theresa May, isn't it?
	It's a real demonstration of how phenomenally weak the Conservatives are with her because she stands for nothing.
	All she stands for is sort of this outdated Toryism that really needs to be changed.
	There should be, oh, I don't know, maybe a youthful, aristocratic, eccentric type who has a very good grasp on political science and the nature of the British state and actually seems to care about the electorate.
	That would be a good start.
	And literally anyone but fucking Theresa May at this point.
	And anyone but Corbyn.
	My god, our political, our political environment is trash.
	But it is confirmed that women are higher beings and feminism is about equality.
	A new study shows how men's brains are geared towards selfishness and women's brains toward kindness.
	That's amazing given how men's raison d'être is to support women and children.
	Men feel like men when they are supporting women and children, and yet somehow that's selfish.
	You know how women are generous goddesses who would do anything for their friends, families, or strangers on the street, and how men are simply not like that?
	No!
	To be honest.
	But go on.
	New research from the University of Zurich has deified women.
	It's canonized them all as saints.
	Wow.
	That's amazing.
	Sorry, no, it's men's brains reward selfish behaviour, whereas women's brains reward generosity.
	In a series of behavioural experiments that often involve making decisions about whether or not to share money, okay.
	Neuroscientists examine the areas of the brain that activate when pro-social, unselfish decisions are made, as opposed to when selfish decisions are made.
	I can hear the objectivists screeching already.
	With a test group of 56 men and women, they found that the stratium, the brain's reward center, which administers a delicious dopamine hit for correct behaviour.
	Okay, let's take that correct in inverted commas as it is. responds to much responds much more strongly in women when they make pro-social decisions than when men do.
	In contrast, selfish behaviour triggered the male stratium response much more than in females.
	In other words, women get rewarded for kindness, men get rewarded for being dicks, just like in real life.
	Fuck off vice.
	I hope Google throttles you.
	Okay, I'll take that back.
	That was a bit harsh.
	But what I love about this, after unilaterally condemning men to being the bad sex, now before all the dudes reading this think they're off the hook and can't help acting in their own best interest, oh, we're not even allowed to follow our own natural inclinations now.
	Yeah, okay, we're bad by nature.
	Sure, why not?
	But now that's no excuse.
	It's like, really?
	Really?
	And I love the way that, like, do you think that being social isn't women acting in their own best interest?
	Do you think that's the case?
	Of course it's not.
	It's completely within women's self-interest to be social.
	Note that all of this might have a cultural basis rather than a biological one.
	Suits check said that it was unlikely the differences between men and women's brains existed inherently, and were more likely the result of ingrained social attitudes.
	Really?
	That's amazing.
	Here's a biological difference between men and women.
	What do you think causes it?
	Society?
	The reward and learning systems in our brain work in close cooperation.
	Empirical studies show that girls are rewarded with praise for pro-social behavior, implying that their reward systems learn to expect a reward for helping behavior instead of selfish behavior.
	Really?
	With this in mind, the gender differences that we observe in our studies could be best attributed to a different cultural expectation placed on men and women, or it could be the fact that they are biologically different.
	And what's that?
	Every single society acts this way?
	Wow, that's weird.
	Must just be the patriarchy.
	It can't be that men and women evolved to do this.
	No, no, no, it's a giant social construct.
	But this is by far the best article of the entire week.
	Apple's vice president of diversity is going off the reservation.
	She's gone off script.
	She's just out there wild.
	And the best thing about it is the fact that she is a black woman.
	Get fucking wrecked.
	Social justice.
	She says, 12 white, blue-eyed blonde men in a room can be a diverse group of Aryans.
	Says the black woman.
	Fuck you, social justice.
	What are you going to say to that?
	What are you going to say?
	What is she a coon?
	Hope she's got internalized misogyny.
	Do tell.
	What's your rebuttal?
	Denise Young Smith, Apple's new vice president of diversity and my personal hero, doesn't believe in being a minority or woman are the only criteria for being diverse.
	Quartz reports.
	Fucking love it.
	There can be 12 blue-eyed blonde men in the room and they're going to be diverse too because they're going to bring different life experience and different perspectives to the conversation.
	She sounds brilliant.
	She'd been working as Apple's VP of Human Resources since 97 before moving to a new role earlier in May.
	The position will involve overseeing Apple's push to create a more diverse workplace.
	She believes true diversity goes further than skin colour or sex.
	Wow.
	That's completely against the narrative.
	What now, progressives?
	What now?
	The hypothetical room of a dozen white men also incorporates diverse personal histories, which Young Smith said she is quick to embrace.
	Diversity is the human experience, and I'm getting a bit frustrated when diversity or the term is tagged to people of colour or the women or the LGBT.
	Yeah, me too.
	Me too.
	It's not diversity, it's actually a monoculture they're trying to create.
	Apple, much like much of Silicon Valley, has been trying to improve its diversity for a number of years, but for some reason, women just don't want to go into tech at the same rate that men do.
	Must be that they're socialized.
	The thing I like about this is not the only right way to pop your pimples, which is remarkably overbearing in what I'm about to say about this article, but it's the fact that her recent comments seem to signal a broader view of diversity at the tech giant.
	She did, however, acknowledge that more traditional notions of diversity weren't lost on her.
	Say, the traditionalist notion of diversity, which would be the intersectional one.
	Given that she is a black woman and has been playing this role for a very long time.
	She has been railroaded into being the token black woman who needs to think in progressive, diverse, intersectional ways and has now gone off the rails.
	She's gone off script.
	She's taking this in her own direction because she's realized that white men aren't all the same, neither are black women, neither are any individual in between, because as she says, they're all individuals with their each unique life experience.
	God bless this woman.

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