Whistleblowing is Good for Democracy

Leaks are vital for democracy to work, for our society to hold itself accountable. The whistleblower pushed things forward that we can address problems as a society.

National security officials invariably claim leaked information is damaging to our security, but it has and always has had a great benefit for our society. The Pentagon Papers uncovered the Watergate scandal and other illegal activities, leading to Nixon’s resignation. George W. Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretapping and torture programs were exposed. Obama’s drone strikes and cyberattacks were revealed. Leaks forced Flynn out of office, and proved that some of Trump’s worst impulses were thwarted by leaks.

[Trimm, 2019]

Ask Ourselves Questions

Meaningful lives are developed from asking questions and improving. Some good questions to ask our selves are if we’re happy and grateful, if we like our job and feel good, what are we learning, where are we going with our careers, whether we find meaning in our work or if there’s a better thing we should be doing. Those questions lead to the real changes, realizing what our number-one priority is, how to achieve that, what to stop doing, what to stop procrastinating, what we can do for others, and what we are avoiding.

[Foroux, 2019]

Momentum Is Important Psychologically

Momentum has a psychological effect in that it makes it easier to achieve goals and improve behavior with momentum. Seth Godin writes, “Fast starts are never as important as a cultural hook, consistently showing up and committing to a process.” Jerry Seinfeld recommends using a physical calendar where we mark off each day we accomplished our most important task.

[Oppong, 2019]

Distractions

When we are easily distracted, we are lacking momentum. This is becoming a villain in life, with 3 of 4 workers in one study admitting to being distracted at work, nearly 1 in 5 claiming to almost always being distracted.

[Oppong, 2019]

Frequency

Frequency in execution is more important than the duration of execution. This consistency keeps us clear and focused. Evaluate regularly that the things we do regularly are moving us in the direction we most want to go.

[Oppong, 2019]

Improvements Offered by Huggingface

Huggingface has imported their transformers library to TensorFlow. This includes better support for tokenizers and using TPUs (TensorFlow Processing Units optimized for deep learning work). This effort now supports PyTorch or TensorFlow and is important for building deep NLP models.

[Wolf, 2019]

Chappelle is Interesting and Funny

“This is the most important rule,” Chappelle said to Will Smith, “better to be interesting than funny.”

Critics panned Chappelle for Sticks and Stones. Critics said he was unfunny, but the audience laughed the entire time, not just at the punch lines. The audience score was 99% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Critics said Chappelle is old fashioned, but he covered the topics common today, made it funny, and fought for both sides, and was criticized for one side he presented. Cancel culture only allows you to express one side.

[Altucher, 2019]

Comedy

Comedy should be funny, and offer a truth we’ve avoided or conflict we haven’t resolved.

Chappelle took on Michael Jackson from several points of view. Many were offended. He’s asking the question, “what’s going on in the world?” He talks about LGBTQ+, and #MeToo, and Louis CK. He took on issues that are relevant, that are difficult, and that have always been difficult.

[Altucher, 2019]

Fear

“Don’t publish an article unless you are afraid what people will think of you.” This is how you know you are taking on topics you care about, how you know you’re not falling in for group think. Otherwise, you’re writing just one more article among millions.

[Altucher, 2019]

Hivemind

As a “techo-pragmatist,” Rose Cavanagh looks into how people behave. She published a book, Hivemind: The New Science of Tribalism in Our Divided World. Like bees, we swarm in sync and change direction en masse. Examples are the legalization of marijuana and support for gay marriage. This happens when enough of the hive takes a stance.

[Reese, 2019]

Evidence

We see how we work like a hive in cults and sports teams. The bond and shared emotions and goals show how we come together. We also line up physically, with our mannerisms, facial expressions, and gait. Psychologists call it collective effervescence, but it’s the feeling you get when dancing in a group or chanting at a sports event.

[Reese, 2019]

Social Media and Social Technology

Social media and social technology isn’t new, but it works as an amplifier to this part of our nature.

We can reach more people and form in-groups. We share more and we experience an emotional contagion.

Because we share with like-minded people, we form more extreme opinions. Psychologists call this group polarization. We interpret the world through these filters.

Before we had fewer information sources and agreed more on reality. Now we disagree on what happened, which is dangerous.

[Reese, 2019]

Challenging Hivemind

Challenging a hive’s beliefs is difficult. We have what’s called a spiral of silence when nobody speaks up and everyone assumes we are in agreement.

With something like racism, if nobody says something racist, we accept that nobody should say it, and those beliefs die out over time.

Now, we have the bystander affect, where everyone assumes someone else will handle an emergency. (In Oceanside last week, a teen died while everyone videoed his stabbing.)

[Reese, 2019]

Finding Fulfillment

We spend less time together physically, even our workplaces are disappearing. We don’t know what the implications of this will be.

For people who are isolated, our online presence is better. This is especially true of the elderly, people with chronic illness, depressed people, and people who struggle with social interactions.

However, we engage in social snacking, engaging just enough that it takes the edge off of our social needs, but doesn’t fulfill us.

[Reese, 2019]

Stay in Touch

With all the social change, it’s critical that we assess ourselves and our loved ones. Do we have face-to-face friends? Parents are engaging in overprotective activities. Teens are engaging in the world in different ways. Some of this is really good.

[Reese, 2019]

References:

Altucher, J. (2019, September 25). TEN THINGS EVERYONE GOT WRONG ABOUT DAVE CHAPPELLE’S “Sticks and Stones” SPECIAL. Retrieved September 26, 2019, from Medium website: https://medium.com/@jaltucher/ten-things-everyone-got-wrong-about-dave-chappelles-sticks-and-stones-special-b9a6b41a63e4

Foroux, D. (2019, September 25). 14 Questions to Ask Yourself Again and Again. Retrieved September 26, 2019, from Medium website: https://forge.medium.com/14-questions-to-ask-yourself-again-and-again-8e832d1394c1

Oppong, T. (2019, September 26). When You Lose Momentum, You Become Vulnerable to Distraction. Retrieved September 26, 2019, from Medium website: https://medium.com/@alltopstartups/when-you-lose-momentum-you-become-vulnerable-to-distraction-d53602cdce13

Reese, H. (2019, September 3). How Ideas Become Contagious Online. Retrieved September 26, 2019, from Medium website: https://onezero.medium.com/how-ideas-become-contagious-online-7be8f156f35e

Timm, T. (2019, September 26). Trump’s Ukraine Scandal Shows Why Leaks Are Vital to Democracy. Retrieved September 26, 2019, from Medium website: https://gen.medium.com/trumps-ukraine-scandal-shows-why-leaks-are-vital-to-democracy-193048b251f7

Wolf, T. (2019, September 26). Huggingface/transformers. Retrieved September 26, 2019, from GitHub website: https://github.com/huggingface/transformers