Note #1: See the chart above? Gee, what a surprise. Researchers found that the “factchecking” business is overwhelmingly biased toward progressives, Democrats, and the whole Axis agenda. I suppose research was needed to prove the obvious; so many people denied this because they were a) gullible, b) stupid, or c) lying. Yes, the study is from Harvard, but I think you can trust the rotting university this time.
I hadn’t seen or heard the derisive (but accurate!) nickname for DEI, as in “diversity, equity and inclusion” until I saw the Scott Adams “X” post above. I think he’s right. When a quick, pointed and accurate characterization makes people slap their foreheads and think, “Wait, why have I been willing to accept this nonsense?,” it can move metaphorical mountains.
The DEI fad has already been destructive to the economy, the workforce, society and its institutions beyond all imagining, making it one of the more damaging outgrowths of “The Great Stupid,” which really got rolling when its Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse equivalent (the fourth horse was a scratch, thank goodness) began galloping together in 2020. They were the George Floyd Freakout, the Black Lives Matter Scam, and the Wuhan Virus Panic, and together they brought virtue-signaling overdrive, progressive preening and an attack on core American and ethical values, not to mention civilization.
DEI , like the slogan “black lives matter,” was another ingenious manipulation of language to trap the slow of thought and the weak of character into going along with a movement that was intrinsically dishonest and unfair. Who could be against such benign concepts as diversity, equity and inclusion? But the objective was and is obliterating the cultural acceptance of merit as the aspirational basis of the American ideal. Along the way, the DEI industry itself emerged as an engine of waste and carnage with mostly underwhelming and undeserving drivers at the controls, as Harvard University demonstrated for us spectacularly.
Oh, we know how this will go: “Didn’t Earn It” will be roundly attacked a racist slur. Long screeds will be published to dispute “the lie”: the beneficiaries of DEI did earn it, the public will be told, just as anyone with ancestors on distant branches of the family tree who were victims of slavery at least a century and a half ago “earned” million of dollars in reparations today. (That response will anchor DEI to an absolutely indefensible policy goal: perfect.) Eventually, because this is what the dishonest and relentless far Left does, it will come up with another moniker, because DEI will finally have the aura of stench about it that it should—you know, just as “illegal aliens” became “undocumented workers” and are now “migrants” (or “visitors”), “performing major surgery on minors because they have been encouraged to believe they are the ‘wrong’ sex” became “gender-affirming care,” and the classic, “aborting the innocent unborn” was recast as “a woman’s choice.”
Never mind. “Didn’t Earn It” is an ethical tool to combat an unethical practice and ideology that is wasting financial and human resources.
I recommend using it.
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Pointer: Instapundit
Nicholas Kristof has sounded the alarm on the growing problem of artificial intelligence deepfakes on line. I must admit, I was unaware of the extent of the phenomenon, which is atrocious. He writes in part,
[D]eepfake nude videos and photos …humiliate celebrities and unknown children alike. One recent study found that 98 percent of deepfake videos online were pornographic and that 99 percent of those targeted were women or girls…Companies make money by selling advertising and premium subscriptions for websites hosting fake sex videos of famous female actresses, singers, influencers, princesses and politicians. Google directs traffic to these graphic videos, and victims have little recourse.
Sometimes the victims are underage girls….While there have always been doctored images, artificial intelligence makes the process much easier. With just a single good image of a person’s face, it is now possible in just half an hour to make a 60-second sex video of that person. Those videos can then be posted on general pornographic websites for anyone to see, or on specialized sites for deepfakes.
The videos there are graphic and sometimes sadistic, depicting women tied up as they are raped or urinated on, for example. One site offers categories including “rape” (472 items), “crying” (655) and “degradation” (822)….In addition, there are the “nudify” or “undressing” websites and apps …“Undress on a click!” one urges. These overwhelmingly target women and girls; some are not even capable of generating a naked male. A British study of child sexual images produced by artificial intelligence reported that 99.6 percent were of girls, most commonly between 7 and 13 years old.
Yikes. These images don’t qualify as child porn, because the laws against that are based on the actual abuse of the children in the photos. With the deepfakes, no children have been physically harmed. Right now, there are no laws directed at what Kristof is describing. He also links to two websites on the topic started by young women victimized with altered photos and deepfaked videos of them being spread on line: My image My choice, and AI Heeelp!
This is rather old story, but it’s new to me, and of course none of the accounts, including a “48 Hours” episode, explored the ethics issue involved.
Forrest Fenn (August 22, 1930 – September 7, 2020) was a decorated pilot in the United States Air Force. After his retirement he ran the well-known Arrowsmith-Fenn Gallery, later the Fenn Gallery, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It reportedly grossed around $6 million a year. After Fenn was diagnosed with likely terminal cancer in 1988, he began collecting gold coins and other valuable objects that he placed in a small, ornate box. He decided to hide the box in the wilderness, and to launch a treasure hunt. As his health improved and the terminal cancer diagnosis proved to be wrong, Fenn self-published “The Thrill of the Chase: A Memoir” in 2010. Along with various stories about his exploits, the book also revealed that he had hidden a treasure chest containing gold nuggets, rare coins and gems “in the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe.” Fenn wrote a (really bad) poem in the chapter titled “Gold and More” that he said contained sufficient clues to allow a clever and dedicated treasure hunter to find the box, with the contents estimated to be worth between one and two million dollars.
The box was finally found in Wyoming in 2020, and shortly after that, Fenn died. His treasure hunt, however, had sent over a hundred thousand would-be Indiana Joneses of both sexes and varying skills into the mountains with Fenn’s doggerel in hand as a treasure map. Many became obsessed with the quest. Five men died in separate incidents looking for Fenn’s box, and several others nearly perished. After the first two fatalities, Fenn was implored to call off the hunt, but he showed no indication that he felt that he had any responsibility for the fatalities, saying in response that all outdoor activities come with some risk. He also insisted that the box “was not in a dangerous place.”
You can guess this question by now. Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
I know my answer, and here are three clues to what it is: “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,””Rat Race,” and “attractive nuisance.”
It is time to hand out another Kaufman, the special award given to an alleged example of unethical treatment so dubious and so trivial that it warrants the reaction famed wit and playwright George S. Kaufman once gave spontaneously on a Fifties TV panel show, after aging crooner Eddie Fisher (father of Carrie, husband of Debby Reynold and Elizabeth Taylor) had complained that he wasn’t able to interest young women in dating him as easily as he used to. Kaufman’s reaction:
“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the development and construction of the Mount Palomar telescope. The Mount Palomar telescope is an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in your problem.”
And yet John Hinckley’s recent lament interests me even less than this. I assume you will feel similarly.
For once, I am speechless.
This has always been true, though some figures have been substantially successful at doing it.
We are reminded of the rule once again as Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced that she was undergoing chemotherapy after a cancer diagnosis in a two-minute video released yesterday. That announcement only came after weeks of wild speculation about Kate’s whereabouts, marriage status and health. It was, therefore, too late—too late to prevent the damage to her reputation and that of the royal family by proving that she and Prince William were capable of avoiding transparency when it suited them. The official excuse was that it had taken “time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them,” as she said in the video. As explanations for deceiving the public go, a “think if the children!” strategy is as good as one is liable to find, but even it leaves a scar.
“Students who identify as diverse in some way.”
How can someone pay tuition to be educated by an institution that would publish something that ridiculous? How could qualified administrators read that and not throw themselves into a wood-chipper? How could anyone even think such nonsense and not realize that something had gone seriously wrong with their internal wiring?
Oh yeah, this will improve public respect for law enforcement and the rule of law.
The Murrieta Police Department is posting hilarious arrest and lineup photos with suspects’ faces replaced by Lego heads. This is its response to a new California privacy law that forbids the posting of mug shots and other photos of individuals arrested for non-violent offenses. The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last September, went into effect on January 1 of this year. It also requires police departments to remove other mugshots from social media after 14 days….or replace them with Lego heads, I guess. So those risible images above are not gags or the product of a Babylon Bee wag. The police actually posted them.
I really hate this. Conservative bloggers and pundit declare the treatment of Donald Trump or another Republican by the mainstream media, unfair, dishonest and biased, then complain when the news media doesn’t treat someone else in the same unfair, dishonest and biased manner. This is always certifiably moronic, but this most recent case is especially so.
Nobody could listen to what James Carville said on CNN and honestly think the old Clinton political consultant was threatening to assassinate Donald Trump or advocating that someone else do it. Carville, who despite his Mayberry accent is a lot more articulate and clear about his meaning than the previous President, was making the case that Joe Biden shouldn’t be the one attacking Trump and that eh should leave that gutter-level task to surrogates “like me,” that is, Carville. He is simply stating his support for what used to be established, conventional political wisdom, and was a wise practice that kept the President from appearing nasty, partisan and petty, like Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Carville said that “he called” such attacks “wet work,” meaning, again obviously, the dirty work of Presidential politics. It was a metaphor, and a good one, unless a listener was either a complete paranoid dolt or determined to misrepresent Carville as revenge for the Axis deciding to try to make Trump’s use of the word “bloodbath” to describe what faces the auto industry if he is defeated a threat to encourage actual violence in the streets.
Ethics Alarms 