AI Algorithms have ALREADY taken over
The confirmation hearings shit show (and Loyalty / Fealty Test) is going to be great for engagement and ratings! And now that it appears the Senate Majority Leader John Thune is NOT squarely in Trump’s camp (Thank God, I think….), it’s going to make the Circus / Wrestling Matches (oh excuse me, the hearings), that much more enjoyable to watch for most. The hamster wheel will keep on going, all while the BRICS countries are busy taking over the world and laughing at us and the fall of our Allies, the G7 countries. The historians are going to love this, and they’re going to love pouring through the individual social media feeds! You might become famous! The Social Media algorithms fuel by AI plus noise and propaganda is working just as designed, and the soulless AI algorithms have selected LEADER Trump in a very Darwinian way to ensure it’s on steroids.
Who planned this? Probably nobody (other than a select few like Putin and a few others), it’s just that water always flows downhill. It’s like if you want a project to get screwed up, just put in a weak manager, it will happen naturally and all the scammers and weak people will win in that environment. In the Terminator, who designed Skynet to try to destroy humanity? Nobody, humans were just not smart enough to prevent it, and the machines took over. Humans were mostly focused TOO MUCH on their own self interest and ego fulfillment. (The Vulcans figured this out)
This is a CLASSIC explanation for the Fermi Paradox (https://medium.com/@mariakonner/a-trump-win-would-prove-the-fermi-paradox-c80a3dd1cbac)
I’m a Cybersecurity and Risk Management professional. This has always been a tough job. It’s so hard to get to the root of any security / stability problems, because it’s almost ALWAYS a failure of human behavior — something people do NOT want to talk about, because it’s too emotional and personal, as well as being hard to prove. It has built in resistance to being diagnosed and dealt with — unless there is very wise and charismatic leadership.
What’s going on here is that many people are ADDICTED to the power they have or think they have on social media. My friends and family who are MAGA are all isolated, depressed, and feel powerless — some even wealthy and isolated in their ivory tower. And they love their new drug, and will NOT give it up! They feel like heros. They are completely unaware of the level of propaganda that they are digesting. If you think Trump didn’t try overthrowing the election results and is a very dangerous man, you have been pulled into the CULT, and unfortunately, nothing you say has any credibility. If you just admitted it and said you STILL voted for him because our system was so broken, at least you wouldn’t be starting off with a huge lie, thus setting yourself up of going down the slippery slope of a lie driven cult. There would be something to talk about. But instead, you are going to keep going closer and closer to the cliff and the Cult Leaders are hoping you are too deep in the cult to stop. This is right out of the Fascist & Cult 101 playbook. Perhaps you have been watching too much junk social media and TV — maybe you should read magazines, books, and Sci Fi more.
Think about the way drugs work. We mammals have a natural need for social connection. Wonderful endorphins get released when we connect — you know that feeling. And since that connection broke down during COVID, it has been getting progressively worse with the online dating cesspool, AI driven job search algorithms, people working so hard they can’t spend time with human beings, engagement with a predominance of electronic music instead of actual live music, etc. And our Cult Leaders LOVE IT! They’re typically not even smart enough to realize what’s happening because as we already know — Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. Even the “smartest” person in the world isn’t immune. The smarter you are, the more you can bend reality to match your desired interpretation that you are smarter than most, largely infallible, and maybe even ordained by God or Jesus himself. You might even justify war and murder to fulfill God’s plan. After all, that’s what heros do, right?
So what do we do about it?
First, I think it’s important to cut off the MAGA people from your life for a while, certainly the most vocal ones. You can’t let their addiction infect your energy. They have PROVED their addiction beyond a shadow of a doubt, and you can’t function effectively with addicts in your life — you should have ZERO guilt cutting them out, even if they’re family. Yea the Democrats have terrible leadership problems, inflation was really bad, but that’s not a good enough reason to vote for a dangerous man who tried overthrowing the election results. Inflation was more caused by a combination of the post pandemic economy and the Ukraine War, then a political failure, and there is no evidence that Trump would do any better unless he basically strips out our safeguards (you can save money by cancelling all your insurance….). What happened around the world in this election season was a stronger trending to simply “Throw the Bums Out” (throw out the incumbents) — due to overall economic stresses combined with an INSANE amount of propaganda, which doesn’t allow us to catch our breath and have faith in anything.
I can assert with a VERY HIGH level of confidence that Democracy Requires Engagement From Educated Citizens, and we haven’t been engaging, hardly at all (i.e. an untested brand new system isn’t going to fix it). I was a lobbyist for Cybersecurity Liability and Green Energy — I know this for a fact from personal experience. But this election has woken half of us up. And the good news is that all the time we wasted on talking and arguing with our MAGA friends, can now be redirect to our efforts. Stay away from them for some time, and after we focus on spending time with people we respect and care about, and band together to find ourselves and understand our role in this new world, we can consider reengaging. After all, we don’t want to start a Civil War — and the few powers that did plan for this (e.g. Putin) are expecting us to split apart.
Moving forward, I’m going to FOCUS on what I think is the single biggest problem — social media propaganda powered by the Algorithms that promote hate and division. We need to built up an immunity to it. We are in nothing less than a Cyber World World, and an emerging Civil War RIGHT NOW. The first thing you do in a war, is to establish SECURE communications — so we’re talking about a combination of social media networks to create scale, and various technologies like messaging and groups. This will be a combination of creating new networks with new technologies (e.g. BlueSky, other emerging technologies), as well as continuing to use and adapt some of the existing major platforms. Both Elon Musk and Trump have their own cyber armies connected with their PERSONAL social media platforms, with the rules set in their kingdom. So we need our own.
I’m going to focus evolving LOGIC BASED social media applications.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra7m_aCUE4w&list=PLltCWMwSKk4OU0IEAsUSOVURheCSdnQlW&index=18
BLOG: https://medium.com/@mariakonner/we-need-logic-based-social-media-apps-68d6ab74368f
When creating any secure network, a common cybersecurity framework is to ensure 5 things (overlaid with what we need here):
- IDENTITY: Who are you talking to? Are they credible? Are they even human? Where do they live, who are they associated with? Is this propaganda, who is it coming from?
- DENIAL OF SERVICE: How can you prevent from being drowned out by nonsense, noise, hate, division, etc — which the algorithms promote by multiple orders of magnitude.
- PRIVACY: Certain information should be kept private (e.g. Private Messages). Public information should NOT be used to Blacklist or Shadow Ban People — the most dangerous behavior is that which is affecting us significantly, and we don’t even know about. You can be assured X and Truth Social are doing this or will be. Not clear about the other platforms.
- AUDITING & ACCOUNTING: What are the algorithms, and what is the result of their use? For example, if people are shadow banned, what is the criteria, and is that being used consistently across different groups. The platforms will tell you they don’t want to publish this because that will allow people to game the system. There is some truth to this, but you need balance that with having no oversight at all, which is MUCH worse. The amount of power they have, and the lack of transparency of the impact of that power, is simply unacceptable. They are nothing less than DRUG DEALERS.
- INTEGRITY: Ensure the data/information has not been modified (information changes, deep fakes, etc.), or taken out of context (e.g. show only a small portion of a video, completely changing it’s meaning).
But we believe in democracy and the Democrats failed to stop Trump. Plain and Simple. Many of us could see this happening, some of us decades ago (e.g. Carl Sagan, Cass Sunstein). But we never had definitive proof, until now. Is the system broken, or did we fail to engage? I think it’s more the system is broken BECAUSE we failed to engage (from my personal experience as a lobbyist). And we failed to engage, primarily because we didn't think we needed to — things seemed to be going well, PLUS our world is TOO COMPLICATED! Sadly, we need some kind of existential threat or war every once in a while to keep awake, Most people in the county have never experienced a real world war like WW II.
Most MAGA are simply ignorant about the danger and the core tenants of democracy and the power of Propaganda and Psychological Warfare. I know they’re not stupid and I can prove it. How many rabid Game of Throne and Sci Fi fans are out there? They spend an enormous amount of energy paying attention and talking about this stuff. But many have been pulled into a CULT and that is hard to break out precisely because it is SO embarrassing to admit to anybody (including yourself). But don’t feel bad, this Psychological Warfare has been developed and fine tuned over thousands of years. We just don’t have an immunity to this VIRUS either!
It’s hard to have compassion for people who are so dangerously ignorant. And that now applies to a HUGE segment of the population. Normally you would just walk away. But in this case we can’t. And it’s even harder to have compassion for people who are ignorant and violent — something that is probably coming. But Ghandi did, because he knew people didn’t want to be ignorant and evil — he believed in people’s better angels (A Lincoln term). But more importantly, he knew we have to all focus on our better angels for our own peace and so that we can pull ourselves out of this mess and connect, or at the very least enjoy life. And these all go hand-in-hand.
Well I’m singularly focusing my free time on my music/entertainment (I’m based in NYC) and helping to create Logic Based Networks. For if we don’t create SECURE Logic Based Networks, and do it quickly before the MAGA expand their propaganda fueled networks which are DESIGNED to create hate and division, and giving power to the autocrats, nothing else will matter.
This could ultimately be a good thing if we respond in kind. Perhaps this had to happen, and as the Buddhists say — Everything is as it should be.
Cheers and thanks for reading.
