Author: Jack Marshall

Comment Of The Day (2): “Observations On The Revived Claim That Google ‘Steered 6 Million Votes’ to Biden in 2020”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

For the second Comment of the Day on the controversial assertion that Google helped rig the 2020 election (a “completely baseless” claim, you understand), we turn to Curmie. “What?” you well may say. “Curmie has his own column in Ethics Alarms! What is this, the Curmie Show?” In the absence of what I consider a sufficient number rational, civil and well-articulated opinions on EA from the left side of the political and ideological spectrum, Curmie’s takes, often but not always dissenting from the main post, are not just welcome and appreciated but also treasured. I’m hoping that maybe the angry progressives, proto-trolls and one-note social justice warriors who visit here will read and learn from Curmie’s works. Then they wouldn’t have to get banned and then keep sneaking in quickly-trashed comments arguing that the mainstream media isn’t really biased, just to pick a wild hypothetical out of the air.

Besides, Curmie almost never has a typo…

You can read even more Curmie on his blog, here, where he cross-posts his EA contributions as well as thoughts on non-ethics topics. This is his Comment on the Day on “Observations On The Revived Claim That Google “Steered 6 Million Votes” to Biden in 2020”:

***

I find this interesting for a variety of reasons.

First, there’s nothing new here. Epstein’s analysis came in the immediate aftermath of the ‘20 election. Reportage from then is all over (wait for it) Google. So why is it a stand-alone story now? I could understand it as background for a subsequent critique, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, at least not yet.

It’s also purely speculative. We’re not talking about changing people’s votes after the fact, or adding or subtracting votes directly. This is about changing voters’ perception of who is the better candidate prior to their voting, and there is no conceivable way of determining the extent to which Google’s alleged manipulation affected voters’ choices. We can speculate, but it starts getting really mushy when we start suggesting numbers. Of course, virtually every part of society is engulfed in a quantification fetish, so I suppose that part is understandable.

Even assuming the allegations have a foundation, we’re looking at a phenomenon that’s been played out innumerable times by media from every political perspective. The “everybody does it” excuse may be unethical, but the fact remains that yes, everybody does it, which makes this a little less newsworthy. I’ve often referenced the year I spent in England working on my MA. You knew that what you read in the Guardian was filtered through a liberal lens, and what you read in the Telegraph was through a conservative one. But you also knew that both papers maintained integrity. We can’t say the same for any outlet, left or right, in the US in the 2020s.

It’s also true that anecdotal evidence is often misleading. I have no doubt that Jack’s blog posts are “buried” by Google, but there are multiple possible reasons for that, including good old capitalistic amorality: somebody else paid them to move their site higher on the list.

I also tried a little experiment this morning. With Jack’s permission, I have also posted things I wrote for the “Curmie’s Conjectures” series here on my own blog, as well. So I copied the title of one of those essays and plugged it into Google. The post on Ethics Alarms came up #1. The one on Curmudgeon Central, with precisely the same title, didn’t appear at all. That’s hardly evidence that conservative perspectives are being silenced at the expense of liberal ones!

I wouldn’t take on faith an assertion by PJ Media that NBA centers tend to be tall, but Epstein is a far more complicated and therefore interesting individual. His training is in psychology rather than quantitative analysis or marketing. This doesn’t discredit his critique of Google, but if the right is going to grant him omniscience, I await their agreement with him in the area of his actual specialization: for example, his claims that bisexuality is the natural norm for humans and most people claim to be straight due to social pressure rather than their lived experience.

It’s perfectly possible to be really good at one thing and really awful at another. But if Epstein is brilliant, then he’s brilliant; if he’s a wackadoodle, then he’s a wackadoodle. ‘Tis a tangled web out there, whether or not anyone is practicing to deceive. (Apologies to Sir Walter Scott.)

Comment Of The Day (1): “Observations On The Revived Claim That Google ‘Steered 6 Million Votes’ to Biden in 2020”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The power of social media and Big Tech platforms to influence and even control public discourse, public opinion and the democratic process is among the unintended and unanticipated consequences of the internet revolution. It had not had anywhere near the focus on it from the government and the news media, and the public is disturbingly ignorant and apathetic regarding how their own autonomy and freedoms of thought and speech are being distorted—in part, because the beneficiaries of social media and Big Tech power want them to be ignorant and apathetic. The proverbial frog is boiling. Many frogs, in fact.

The post yesterday about a revival of the 2020 claim by a researcher that Google had “steered” 6 million votes to Joe Biden in the 2020 election generated several provocative comments. Here’s one of them (#2 is on the way): a Comment of the Day by Ryan Harkins on the post, “Observations On The Revived Claim That Google “Steered 6 Million Votes” to Biden in 2020”:

***

All the way back in 2016, I was looking for some good white sheets on Alarm Rationalization, the methodology in accordance with ISA 18.2 by which process automation alarms are given priority and justification in control systems. The only words I used in the Google search were those two: “alarm” and “rationalization”. Ethics Alarms was the #2 hit on that search. That is how I found Ethics Alarms in the very first place.

I personally have seen the effects of Google favoring websites and search results that favor the narratives Google favors. This has occurred even on Google’s search engine for scholarly papers. Unless you are absolutely specific on the name of the paper, if it doesn’t fit Google’s preferences, the paper is buried pages down, if you can find it at all. And that is hugely problematic because I believe most people will not go more than a couple pages into a Google search. I know if I have to go that far, I need to stop and redo my query terms.

This is one more piece in the realm of fears and concerns that the conservatives in the nation possess. As a reminder, that list is as follows:

Continue reading →

Well, That’s It: I’m Kicking The Poynter Institute Off Ethics Alarms Because It’s Now A Symbol Of Journalism Ethics Rot

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yes, this is a Popeye, and I apologize for not doing it sooner. When this blog began in 2009, I often relied on the Poynter Institute’s erudition on journalism ethics matters for blog ideas, because back then, it actually was a relatively non-ideological, non-partisan source of media ethics commentary. In the intervening years, Poynter, like so many other institutions and ethics authorities, slowly morphed into another organ of leftist, progressive, Democratic Party and, eventually, Trump Deranged propaganda. It is now a purveyor of ethics rot in journalism rather than a nostrum for it, which is supposedly its mission. Today, like Popeye, I decided that it was “all I can stands” when Poynter joined other biased media “factcheck” attacks on Trump’s “Meet the Press” interview with a particularly blatant example of exactly the kind of bias Trump complained about in the interview. So I deleted Poynter from the Ethics Alarms blogroll, which I bet you didn’t even know existed. (It’s about half-way down the home page here, along with other links).

I should have exiled Poynter when it took over PolitiFact, already the worst and most biased of all the factcheck services, and continued its partisan and dishonest ways. Its latest, however, was particularly outrageous: “Trump’s ‘Meet the Press’ falsehoods about abortion, Jan. 6 security and bacon prices.”

Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 9/20/23: It’s Time…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Is this the date that marked the beginning of the slippery slope to total gender confusion in sports and American society generally? On September 20, 1973, in asuper-hyped “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match stunt, leading women’s pro Billie Jean King, 29 and in her prime, defeated retired tennis pro Bobby Riggs, 55, proving absolutely nothing. Riggs, essentially a hustler at that stage of his athletic career and an anomalous trick-shot artist and soft-hitter even when he was a competitive player, picked a hot period in the women’s rights movement to exploit by boasting that women were inferior and claiming that even at his age he could the best female players. After the #1 female pro at the time, Aussie Margaret Court, managed to lose to Riggs in their exhibition match, Billie Jean came to rescue the honor of her sex and her sport. Witnessed by over more spectators at the Houston Astrodome and 50 million TV viewers worldwide, King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. The reaction should have been “So what?”: any 29-year-old male pro would have mopped the Court with King, and she undoubtedly knew it. When a high school soccer team made up of boys easily defeated the women’s Olympic squad, which has been almost as obnoxious as Riggs, few called it a decisive rebuttal of women’s equality in sports. Decades after the Riggs-King sham, women’s pro tennis mega-champ Serena Williams admitted that she would have been an also-ran on the men’s tour. Yet now we have a woke-sanctioned political correctness myth that there’s nothing unfair about this…

…biological males thrashing female competitors in track, cycling, swimming, powerlifting and other sports where size, strength and being saturated with male hormones makes a difference. Thanks, Billie Jean! I’m sure Bobby Riggs is cackling in Hell.

Now let’s get some current ethics matters off the runway…

1. Remember this weird story [discussed here, #3] from 2021? Danish artist Jens Haaning, who was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark to recreate two of his previous works, 2010’s “An Average Danish Annual Income” and “An Average Austrian Annual Income,” which used actual cash to show the average incomes of the two countries. Haaning was given $84,000 by the museum to use in the new art works. Instead, he sent them two blank canvasses he titled “Take the Money and Run,” raising unanswerable questions about the nature of art, and modern art particularly. Is a blank canvas “art” in the right context? Is a joke “art”? Unamused, a Copenhagen court this week ordered Haaning to refund the money, minus his fee for creating the two blank canvas masterpieces.

2. And it begins….Harvard is already trying out ways to discriminate on the basis of race in its admissions without violating the recent SCOTUS decision declaring affirmative action illegal. Harvard has changed its supplemental essay questions from one optional open-ended essay and two optional short essays to a series of five required short essays, each with a 200-word limit. The student newspaper, The Crimson, criticized the limit as inherently discriminatory, because “shortening the essays has a disparate impact that falls heaviest on those from marginalized backgrounds. Learning to package yourself within a shorter amount of space is a product of advanced education; longer essays more equitably allow applicants to discuss their experiences in full, particularly if they are from non-traditional backgrounds and require more space to elaborate on nuanced qualifications.” Really? I would think that a longer essay is more challenging than a short one. But I’m sure a minimum word limit would have been found to be racist too.

Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Blogger Ann Althouse, Anti-Trump Derangement And Media Bias Warrior

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I doubt that Ann Althouse would ever vote for Donald Trump; I’m pretty sure she hasn’t yet. But the longtime liberal law prof-blogger from Madison has distinguished herself and enhanced her respect in my eyes by consistently debunking anti-Trump bias from the news media while pronouncing her disgust with its hypocrisy and unfairness. Her reward has been to end up with a commentariat that is much more conservative than she is, but Althouse continues to be a Trump Truthteller (try to say that three times fast). She had a particularly impressive day yesterday.

First, Ann threw a flag on Washington Post pundit Aaron Rupar’s “How not to interview Trump/Kristen Welker’s tenure as ‘Meet the Press’ moderator got off to an inauspicious start. I only maintain a Post subscription to read articles others send me too: essentially I’ve boycotted the rag as too biased and obviously partisan to trust. His thesis is emboied in the excerpt Ann selected:

“The first thing to understand about Trump is that he’s not a normal politician. He doesn’t give a rip about policy. What he cares about is saying and doing whatever it takes to fulfill his desires and thirst for power, including destroying democracy if necessary. Treating him as anything other than a depraved authoritarian is not only wrongheaded, but helps his cause by legitimizing him as a reasonable choice for voters. And that’s exactly what Welker did.”

Boy, do I hate that attitude toward anyone. I’ve detested it regarding Trump since he was elected, and I resented other people treated that same way my entire life. It is bigotry and bias plain and unvarnished: someone chooses to decide, without genuine evidence, that an individual is just bad to the bone, with evil motives, and anything he or she does is thereafter interpreted in that context. This is how Trump was judged guilty until proven innocent in the Russian collusion hoax. It is the exact mindset that led people to back his first impeachment for doing exactly what many Presidents had doubtlessly done before him; it was the reasoning behind the second impeachment as well: Yeah, nothing he said indicating he was telling his wacko followers to state a violent “insurrection,” but you know that’s what he wanted them to do, because that’s the kind of person he is.

Althouse strikes back,

Continue reading →

2024’s Voters: This Goes Right Into The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” File…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

But I bet they know all about systemic racism and the impending climate change apocalypse….

Dear Hysterical Climate Change Protesters: Demanding Impossible Things Is Unethical…And Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I just couldn’t decide what graphic to use to introduce this ridiculous story, this photo from The “March to End Fossil Fuels” in Manhattan over the weekend…

…or this video from the Ethics Alarms clip archive:

I must say, I’m leaning toward the video. The protesters are morons.

It is impossible to “end fossil fuels” until there are practical, affordable, effective substitutes for fossil fuels in the myriad ways civilization depends on it. These and similar protests, fueled by cynical politicians trying to expand their power (and totalitarian agendas) and insufficiently educated and rational members of the public indoctrinated by media propaganda and fear-mongering, are the equivalent of infantile tantrums. End war! End hunger! End poverty! End inequality! End gun violence! End prejudice! My mother refused to accept that she had to die at some point, but at least she didn’t take to the streets to demand an end to mortality.

Morons.

Morons!

Continue reading →

Once Again, Our Leaders Inflict “The King’s Pass” On Our Culture…Well, A Variation: “The Slob’s Pass”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has directed the chamber’s sergeant at arms to end the centuries-old rule requiring male U.S. Senators to wear a suit and tie on the Senate floor, with members of the upper house to wear modest business attire. This move was clearly made by Schumer to relieve pressure on Frankensteinian Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa), who has been violating the Senate Dress code and appearing in shorts, T-shirts, and hooded sweatshirts since he returned from a hospitalization for depression. He had been criticized and mocked as a result—as he should be.

The King’s Pass, Rationalization #11 on the List, is a corrosively backwards reaction by organizations to unethical conduct that violates organization norms and values, the value in this case being “respect”—respect for the institution, respect for the public, respect for the United States of America. If the organization’s (company’s, institution’s, industry’s, government’s, sports team’s…etc.) member who is breaching norms, rules, laws and values is deemed sufficiently powerful, important or popular, the rules and norms are not enforced when the King’s Pass strikes. When the most prominent member of a hierarchy is allowed to violate standards of conduct, the conduct of those of lower status will deteriorate in response: this is what “the fish rots from the head down” means, with the head in this case being a brain-damaged one.

Continue reading →

Observations On The Revived Claim That Google “Steered 6 Million Votes” to Biden in 2020

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Ben Bartley reports on PJ Media: “Robert Epstein….director of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), has concluded through a quantitative analysis of Google search engine manipulation and subsequent extrapolation to the population level that the company… added six million votes to Joe Biden’s column in 2020. If accurate, this was more than enough to have artificially swayed the election….The value of Epstein’s work is that it confirms what is immediately obvious to anyone paying attention who searches a contentious term in Google and then searches for the exact same term in a non-compromised search engine like DuckDuckGo.”

Observations:

Continue reading →

How Public Ignorance Grows: Two Case Studies

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

People who don’t adequately research what they write about as pundits, experts or authorities spread their own biases, ignorance and misconceptions like a virus-infected audience member coughing in a crowded theater. Two annoying examples of the phenomenon have surfaced in the last week, but the phenomenon is widespread and frequent.

Here was a collaborative effort: “The World’s Fair beats the hell out of Disney…” is the link currently displayed on the conservative news aggregator Citizens Free Press. That link takes you to an essay by Randy Tatano called “Bring back the World’s Fair.”

“Sadly, time machines don’t exist, or I’d transport you back a few decades to a wonderful tradition this country has abandoned: the World’s Fair,” Tatano writes. “This piece of Americana sadly made its last appearance in New Orleans in 1984. The event moved every few years from one major city to another, and there was always something new to experience….I was fortunate enough to grow up a 30-minute drive from the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York. It ran from April to October both years, and we made plenty of visits. Combining entertaining rides with a time travel element, it blew away anything you could experience in Orlando…The fair was so big there was an actual cable car called the “Swiss Sky Ride” which took you airborne from one end of the fair to another…It’s been almost 40 years since the last World’s Fair. I find it sad that an entire generation never got to experience one and wonder if we’ll ever see such an amazing event again.”

Tatiano bashes Disney several times in his article, but I found myself wondering, “Has this guy been to Walt Disney World?” and “Did no one tell him that the 1964 World’s Fair was substantially a preview of Walt’s last great project?” About half the New York World’s Fair major attractions Tatiano nostalgically marvels at were designed by Disney engineers and transferred to the new theme park as soon as the New York World’s Fair closed. He doesn’t mention others Disney contributions, like the G.E. “Carousel of Progress” and the audio-animatronic Abe Lincoln, who starred at the Illinois state pavilion. The experience at Flushing Meadows in Queens in 1964-65 didn’t “blow away anything you could experience in Orlando,” it was exactly what Disney World visitors a couple of years later experienced in Orlando: I was at the ’64 World’s Fair, and the similarities were the first thing that struck me when I finally got to Disney’s mega-park ten years later.

Continue reading →