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LOST IN THE WOODS: Labour’s Challenge for the 2020s – politicalbetting.com

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    Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 49,211

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Labour under Starmer is pointless, quite frankly 32% is impressive considering what they are offering. If you copy Change UK what the hell do you expect?

    The people looking for late 90's Blairism are limited to the article author a decent section of journalists and an incredibly small section of the British public.

    Fair enough if you think a Blairite approach is the right way to go despite its unpopularity (in the modern day rather than decades ago) but I think people should stop pretending it is about electability.

    If people would rather Labour lose whilst fighting the left and supporting the government that is fair enough but it isn't any kind of route to victory for Labour.

    The idea that the Red Wall wants Blairism is risible. Indeed that was when the rot for Labour started there.
    Nobody wants Blairism just as nobody wants Cameronism - times change and people move on. Whats more, if Blair was LOTO now he wouldn't want mid-90s Blairism either.

    What red wall voters want is someone who understands them and offers reassurance to their hopes and concerns. Blair did that. Starmer doesn't. Corbyn did it in reverse.
    If you look at the votes in red wall constituencies then 2017 was the first time the downward trend had been reversed in decades across the board. Now you may hate the left and all they stand for but lets not pretend that those places were leaking away from Labour for not being right wing enough, the evidence suggests the complete opposite.
    Having co-authored the successful strategy to win Stockton South in 2017 I do know something about this. The claim that the left had a successful campaign in most red wall seats is a joke. Go take a look at the Conservative vote change in 2017 in those seats they win in 2019. In almost every case they surged in 2017.

    Elections are simple. You need to win more votes than the other candidates. That means that if you win more votes than last time, you also need your opponent to win less votes. The Tories have been surging in most of the seats won in 2019 in the last few elections.

    Only you would consider that to be a success.
    Do you think Starmer is going to win more votes in marginal seats? Really, in your heart of hearts?

    I cannot see it myself.
    I think he will win more seats than Corbyn would have done had he stayed on, yes. Labour clung on with wafer thin margins in a lot of seats in 2019. Labour have been declining and the Tories ascending in another stack of seats. If Starmer stops that trend and those seats become more secure, that is success.
    So you dont even think he will match Corbyn in 2017?

    Even my Corbyn hating MP gave him credit for the massive increase in Party popularity between start of May and GE2017.

    Fantastic Radical Manifesto
    Do let me know when you figure out what happened in the 2017 General Election. The one where the Tories added 2.3m more votes to their 2015 majority.
    If you look at the reasons given for voting then Brexit is pretty much the answer there.

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/07/11/why-people-voted-labour-or-conservative-2017-gener

    Why do you think the Conservatives are still polling so high despite Labour having some right wing Blairite in charge who is committed to war with the left?

    The main difference between 2017 and now is Labour has a leader who very few people actually want to vote for.
    Yep. If only they had stuck with Him. Out of interest, where in the country are you? For me, it was clear in the 2015 campaign that unless we gave people their brexit vote they wouldn't start listening to us again. Far too many doorstep conversations in those two years to ignore. Then in the 2016 referendum they turned out in their masses to vote to leave. That turnout only beaten in 2019, when people in what had been solid labour wards turned out in record numbers to vote Tory.

    So yes, I do know about Brexit. But why do I still think the Tories are polling so high?
    They delivered Brexit
    They gave people furlough
    Boris is a lad isn't he
    Europe turned out to be twats like we told you
    My gran's had the vaccine

    I think the Tories are polling so high - and its a radical concept - because they are popular. Same as why they won so many more votes in 2017. Corbyn was so fantastically popular in 2017 that 20% more people voted Tory than gave them their majority 2 years earlier. As we know vote tallies don't count and the Tories piled up dead votes in seats won - but so did Labour...
    How are you this stupid?

    We have exactly the kind of brain dead centrist people like you were calling for in charge of Labour and the only difference between now and 2017 is lots more people do not want to vote for Labour.

    Will Starmer beat Corbyn 2017?

    Let's save all our arguing and cut straight to it, because clearly we disagree on things like winning votes being important so lets keep it simple.

    The answer is no, because centrism is dead, people like you just want purity not to win elections but you can't just be honest and say that so you have to pretend millions more people voting for Labour is a bad thing.
    What's so wonderful about Corbyn '17? He only won 262 seats, 55 seats BEHIND Theresa May of all people!
    As a Starmer supporter you need to start talking up Corbyn '17 because Starmer isn't going to come close to it.

    Which is basically the whole point, Corbyn 2017 wasn't brilliant, we lost but it was a hell of a lot more impressive than Labour will be under a centrist leader.
    What makes you think I'm a Starmer supporter?

    By the way:
    image
    The Starmer stuff from you seems like you are a supporter? Maybe you just fancy him or like him for his previous work as (whatever exactly his title was) it just seemed like the obvious place it would come from is political support. Or some kind of troll things were you don't like him but pretend to do so for entertainment I guess?

    If 2017 is such a terrible result why did the centrists before Corbyn (even back to Brown who still had the Scottish seats) and the centrist after Corbyn do worse?

    Anyone who thinks we actually won more seats or votes than the Conservatives is refusing to accept basic reality, although similarly anyone who thinks that wasn't better than 2010 and 2015 under centrist leaders or better than Labour look like doing now under a centrist leader is refusing to accept reality also.

    If you think every recent Labour leader is absolutely trash and you aren't looking to praise the centrist ones (in terms of electability or winning voters compared to the left) then you can trash 2017 all day long, it was a loss, it you want to big them up then you have a problem because they won't do as well as 2017.
    2019 was a more recent result than 2017. Why did Jezza do so much worse in votes AND seats than in 2017?
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,945
    Leon said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    America is going quite, quite mad. It is truly depressing. America is meant to be the ultimate guardian of Free Speech, it is turning into the opposite.

    And I do wonder how much of this crazed, self harming Woke agenda is driven by Chinese and Russian bots on social media. Quite possibly most of it. If you destroy the self confidence of a civilisation, and inject it with terrible guilt and moral doubt, you are halfway to defeating it. As we see here

    America sinks into self loathing and pointless Wokery. China has none of these problems
    China quite literally had a Cultural Revolution to drive out the Olds.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    America is going quite, quite mad. It is truly depressing. America is meant to be the ultimate guardian of Free Speech, it is turning into the opposite.

    And I do wonder how much of this crazed, self harming Woke agenda is driven by Chinese and Russian bots on social media. Quite possibly most of it. If you destroy the self confidence of a civilisation, and inject it with terrible guilt and moral doubt, you are halfway to defeating it. As we see here

    America sinks into self loathing and pointless Wokery. China has none of these problems
    But this particular nonsense was in part driven the President himself, omitting Dr Seuss, which is an American staple, from Read Across America Day. Of course the likes of Obama was happy to make use of them.

    Apparently Universal are now evaluating the future of Dr Seuss Land at their theme park...
    Biden did this??
    Apparently Dr Seuss has been "under renewed scrutiny" in recent years, but has been totally standard for those books on a Presidential suggested list for Read Across America Day.

    This year, not on there, and when asked, it was all erhh well hmmm. I presume some woke staffers went oh no better not include those Dr Seuss ones, they are racist.

    And now it has snowballed into a bigger thing.
  • Options
    Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 49,211

    dixiedean said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    Conical hats were super common in Taiwan in the 90's. Although admittedly not away from working in agriculture.
    But if you are outside all day they are the best Sun and heat protection.
    Surely these two are equally offensive...

    https://tintin.fandom.com/wiki/Thompson_and_Thomson

    When was the last time you saw an Englishman wearing a bowler hat / cane combo?
    I thought the Thompson Twins comprised an English bloke, a New Zealand lady, and a black guy:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9694K85Xc8
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 46,849
    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    America is going quite, quite mad. It is truly depressing. America is meant to be the ultimate guardian of Free Speech, it is turning into the opposite.

    And I do wonder how much of this crazed, self harming Woke agenda is driven by Chinese and Russian bots on social media. Quite possibly most of it. If you destroy the self confidence of a civilisation, and inject it with terrible guilt and moral doubt, you are halfway to defeating it. As we see here

    America sinks into self loathing and pointless Wokery. China has none of these problems
    China quite literally had a Cultural Revolution to drive out the Olds.
    So: they know how this works
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,466
    dixiedean said:

    Andy_JS said:

    justin124 said:

    There is some suggestion in tomorrow's Telegraph that the Tories are 'gearing up for an early election'. I wonder what is meant by 'early'? Existing boundaries remain in force until mid-2023.

    I assume the election is going to be brought forward by at least 7 months from December 2024 to May 2024 because no-one really wants another election just before Christmas.
    Under the FTPA, the next election is May 2024. Exact reasons escape me.
    Ta, didn't realise that.
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,945
    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    America is going quite, quite mad. It is truly depressing. America is meant to be the ultimate guardian of Free Speech, it is turning into the opposite.

    And I do wonder how much of this crazed, self harming Woke agenda is driven by Chinese and Russian bots on social media. Quite possibly most of it. If you destroy the self confidence of a civilisation, and inject it with terrible guilt and moral doubt, you are halfway to defeating it. As we see here

    America sinks into self loathing and pointless Wokery. China has none of these problems
    China quite literally had a Cultural Revolution to drive out the Olds.
    So: they know how this works
    Perhaps.
    Although Donald Trump running up and down stairs with a boulder on his back before a jeering crowd of tens of thousands of youths followed by ten years of re-education on a collective farm in Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas might have some entertainment value.
  • Options
    TheJezziahTheJezziah Posts: 3,840

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Labour under Starmer is pointless, quite frankly 32% is impressive considering what they are offering. If you copy Change UK what the hell do you expect?

    The people looking for late 90's Blairism are limited to the article author a decent section of journalists and an incredibly small section of the British public.

    Fair enough if you think a Blairite approach is the right way to go despite its unpopularity (in the modern day rather than decades ago) but I think people should stop pretending it is about electability.

    If people would rather Labour lose whilst fighting the left and supporting the government that is fair enough but it isn't any kind of route to victory for Labour.

    The idea that the Red Wall wants Blairism is risible. Indeed that was when the rot for Labour started there.
    Nobody wants Blairism just as nobody wants Cameronism - times change and people move on. Whats more, if Blair was LOTO now he wouldn't want mid-90s Blairism either.

    What red wall voters want is someone who understands them and offers reassurance to their hopes and concerns. Blair did that. Starmer doesn't. Corbyn did it in reverse.
    If you look at the votes in red wall constituencies then 2017 was the first time the downward trend had been reversed in decades across the board. Now you may hate the left and all they stand for but lets not pretend that those places were leaking away from Labour for not being right wing enough, the evidence suggests the complete opposite.
    Having co-authored the successful strategy to win Stockton South in 2017 I do know something about this. The claim that the left had a successful campaign in most red wall seats is a joke. Go take a look at the Conservative vote change in 2017 in those seats they win in 2019. In almost every case they surged in 2017.

    Elections are simple. You need to win more votes than the other candidates. That means that if you win more votes than last time, you also need your opponent to win less votes. The Tories have been surging in most of the seats won in 2019 in the last few elections.

    Only you would consider that to be a success.
    Do you think Starmer is going to win more votes in marginal seats? Really, in your heart of hearts?

    I cannot see it myself.
    I think he will win more seats than Corbyn would have done had he stayed on, yes. Labour clung on with wafer thin margins in a lot of seats in 2019. Labour have been declining and the Tories ascending in another stack of seats. If Starmer stops that trend and those seats become more secure, that is success.
    So you dont even think he will match Corbyn in 2017?

    Even my Corbyn hating MP gave him credit for the massive increase in Party popularity between start of May and GE2017.

    Fantastic Radical Manifesto
    Do let me know when you figure out what happened in the 2017 General Election. The one where the Tories added 2.3m more votes to their 2015 majority.
    If you look at the reasons given for voting then Brexit is pretty much the answer there.

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/07/11/why-people-voted-labour-or-conservative-2017-gener

    Why do you think the Conservatives are still polling so high despite Labour having some right wing Blairite in charge who is committed to war with the left?

    The main difference between 2017 and now is Labour has a leader who very few people actually want to vote for.
    Yep. If only they had stuck with Him. Out of interest, where in the country are you? For me, it was clear in the 2015 campaign that unless we gave people their brexit vote they wouldn't start listening to us again. Far too many doorstep conversations in those two years to ignore. Then in the 2016 referendum they turned out in their masses to vote to leave. That turnout only beaten in 2019, when people in what had been solid labour wards turned out in record numbers to vote Tory.

    So yes, I do know about Brexit. But why do I still think the Tories are polling so high?
    They delivered Brexit
    They gave people furlough
    Boris is a lad isn't he
    Europe turned out to be twats like we told you
    My gran's had the vaccine

    I think the Tories are polling so high - and its a radical concept - because they are popular. Same as why they won so many more votes in 2017. Corbyn was so fantastically popular in 2017 that 20% more people voted Tory than gave them their majority 2 years earlier. As we know vote tallies don't count and the Tories piled up dead votes in seats won - but so did Labour...
    How are you this stupid?

    We have exactly the kind of brain dead centrist people like you were calling for in charge of Labour and the only difference between now and 2017 is lots more people do not want to vote for Labour.

    Will Starmer beat Corbyn 2017?

    Let's save all our arguing and cut straight to it, because clearly we disagree on things like winning votes being important so lets keep it simple.

    The answer is no, because centrism is dead, people like you just want purity not to win elections but you can't just be honest and say that so you have to pretend millions more people voting for Labour is a bad thing.
    What's so wonderful about Corbyn '17? He only won 262 seats, 55 seats BEHIND Theresa May of all people!
    As a Starmer supporter you need to start talking up Corbyn '17 because Starmer isn't going to come close to it.

    Which is basically the whole point, Corbyn 2017 wasn't brilliant, we lost but it was a hell of a lot more impressive than Labour will be under a centrist leader.
    What makes you think I'm a Starmer supporter?

    By the way:
    image
    The Starmer stuff from you seems like you are a supporter? Maybe you just fancy him or like him for his previous work as (whatever exactly his title was) it just seemed like the obvious place it would come from is political support. Or some kind of troll things were you don't like him but pretend to do so for entertainment I guess?

    If 2017 is such a terrible result why did the centrists before Corbyn (even back to Brown who still had the Scottish seats) and the centrist after Corbyn do worse?

    Anyone who thinks we actually won more seats or votes than the Conservatives is refusing to accept basic reality, although similarly anyone who thinks that wasn't better than 2010 and 2015 under centrist leaders or better than Labour look like doing now under a centrist leader is refusing to accept reality also.

    If you think every recent Labour leader is absolutely trash and you aren't looking to praise the centrist ones (in terms of electability or winning voters compared to the left) then you can trash 2017 all day long, it was a loss, it you want to big them up then you have a problem because they won't do as well as 2017.
    2019 was a more recent result than 2017. Why did Jezza do so much worse in votes AND seats than in 2017?
    https://twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1344031412815589383

    https://twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1344003868926083072

    A few different reasons, Brexit being the main one, a stepped up campaign from centrists within the PLP being a contributing factor.

    Considering Corbyn's performance in 2017, what brought his vote down in 2019, the fact that Starmer is supposed to be more electable then Starmer should be leaving Corbyn 2017 in the dust let alone Corbyn 2019...

    But he isn't more electable, so he isn't.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,466
    edited March 2021
    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    Similar to the way the term "Mexican Wave" is regarded as unacceptable in the United States, even though no-one has ever found anyone in Mexico who is insulted by the phrase, and it isn't a negative thing anyway.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    Andy_JS said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    Similar to the way the term "Mexican Wave" is regarded as unacceptable in the United States, even though no-one has ever found anyone in Mexico who is insulted by the phrase, and it isn't a negative thing anyway.
    And although didn't originate there, became a "thing" at 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico....I don't know how anybody can see it as offensive.
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    America is going quite, quite mad. It is truly depressing. America is meant to be the ultimate guardian of Free Speech, it is turning into the opposite.

    And I do wonder how much of this crazed, self harming Woke agenda is driven by Chinese and Russian bots on social media. Quite possibly most of it. If you destroy the self confidence of a civilisation, and inject it with terrible guilt and moral doubt, you are halfway to defeating it. As we see here

    America sinks into self loathing and pointless Wokery. China has none of these problems
    But this particular nonsense was in part driven the President himself, omitting Dr Seuss, which is an American staple, from Read Across America Day. Of course the likes of Obama was happy to make use of them.

    Apparently Universal are now evaluating the future of Dr Seuss Land at their theme park...
    Biden did this??

    Edit: even Woke-Snopes half admits that is the case. A "quest for more diverse authors"

    FFS. America. Wake up. You are being asked to hate America, by malignant forces

    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-seuss-read-across-america/
    Snopes says the decision was made 4 years ago to broaden the day away from just Seuss and debunks the rest of it.

    What's wrong with that?
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,945
    Andy_JS said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    Similar to the way the term "Mexican Wave" is regarded as unacceptable in the United States, even though no-one has ever found anyone in Mexico who is insulted by the phrase, and it isn't a negative thing anyway.
    Perhaps this is to do with it originating in the NFL. It started in Seattle in 1984. And by 1985 was common to most US sports grounds.
    It is only known as that because the rest of the world saw it first in the World Cup in Mexico 1986.
    There really is nowt Mexican about it.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 46,849

    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.

    I am just a humble flinter, but do a quick Google on Young Adult fiction and Woke-ness. For some reason the YA genre has been the first to be truly impacted by this neo-Maoism. Careers have ended, professional lives have been ruined. The fighting is bitter.

    This is a taster, it has got worse since

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books

    All forms of creativity will, presumably, be devoured by the battle, if it continues as is. Eventually the pendulum WILL swing away from this madness back to sanity, it's just a question of who is left standing at the end
  • Options
    Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Andy_JS said:

    dixiedean said:

    Andy_JS said:

    justin124 said:

    There is some suggestion in tomorrow's Telegraph that the Tories are 'gearing up for an early election'. I wonder what is meant by 'early'? Existing boundaries remain in force until mid-2023.

    I assume the election is going to be brought forward by at least 7 months from December 2024 to May 2024 because no-one really wants another election just before Christmas.
    Under the FTPA, the next election is May 2024. Exact reasons escape me.
    Ta, didn't realise that.
    But the FTPA is being repealed and its successor goes back to five year limits and doesn't grandfather in the May 2024 date.

    So while May 2024 is currently the due date, by May 2024 it would be a case of going early.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    Leon said:

    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.

    I am just a humble flinter, but do a quick Google on Young Adult fiction and Woke-ness. For some reason the YA genre has been the first to be truly impacted by this neo-Maoism. Careers have ended, professional lives have been ruined. The fighting is bitter.

    This is a taster, it has got worse since

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books

    All forms of creativity will, presumably, be devoured by the battle, if it continues as is. Eventually the pendulum WILL swing away from this madness back to sanity, it's just a question of who is left standing at the end
    Of course, the new battle is AI "ethics".....there have been plenty of examples that supervised learning has produced "racist" output, because the training data was biased towards certain groups (GPT-3 isn't exempt from this, it has been deemed racially biased, bigoted, etc etc etc.)....except now the claims are no, that isn't the case, there are fundamental issues with the core algorithms that they are racist, not inclusive, etc etc etc.


    GPT-3’s bigotry is exactly why devs shouldn’t use the internet to train AI

    https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/24/gpt-3s-bigotry-is-exactly-why-devs-shouldnt-use-the-internet-to-train-ai/


    And this war is already causing all sorts of issues,

    ANOTHER AI ETHICS HEAD AT GOOGLE GETS FIRED OVER DIVERSITY ISSUES

    https://mindmatters.ai/2021/02/another-ai-ethics-head-at-google-gets-fired-over-diversity-issues/

    Yann LeCun Quits Twitter Amid Acrimonious Exchanges on AI Bias

    https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/

    AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

    https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/ai-ethics-research-conference-suspends-google-sponsorship/
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 46,849

    Leon said:

    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.

    I am just a humble flinter, but do a quick Google on Young Adult fiction and Woke-ness. For some reason the YA genre has been the first to be truly impacted by this neo-Maoism. Careers have ended, professional lives have been ruined. The fighting is bitter.

    This is a taster, it has got worse since

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books

    All forms of creativity will, presumably, be devoured by the battle, if it continues as is. Eventually the pendulum WILL swing away from this madness back to sanity, it's just a question of who is left standing at the end
    Of course, the new battle is AI "ethics".....there have been plenty of examples that supervised learning has produced "racist" output, because the training data was biased towards certain groups....except now the claims are no, that isn't the case, there are fundamental issues with the core algorithms that they are racist, not inclusive, etc etc etc. GPT-3 isn't exempt from this, it has been deemed racially biased, bigoted, etc etc etc.


    GPT-3’s bigotry is exactly why devs shouldn’t use the internet to train AI

    https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/24/gpt-3s-bigotry-is-exactly-why-devs-shouldnt-use-the-internet-to-train-ai/


    And this war is already causing all sorts of issues,

    ANOTHER AI ETHICS HEAD AT GOOGLE GETS FIRED OVER DIVERSITY ISSUES

    https://mindmatters.ai/2021/02/another-ai-ethics-head-at-google-gets-fired-over-diversity-issues/

    Yann LeCun Quits Twitter Amid Acrimonious Exchanges on AI Bias

    https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/

    AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

    https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/ai-ethics-research-conference-suspends-google-sponsorship/
    It is a costly diversion for the West. China has surely seen what GPT3 can do. They will be speedily building new iterations. We risk frittering away an amazing technological advance - in the west - through ridiculous arguments about bias. Of course GPT3 exhibits bias, it has read the internet, which is full of bias, in all directions.

    So it will exhibit bias however you prompt it. It is autocomplete times a trillion. Feed it 3rd wave feminism it will say bad things about men. Feed it Tommy Robinson it will be mean about Muslims. This is what it does.

    It is a performing monkey with the knowledge of a polymath. It copies and apes and does not know why it does these things....

    The next one...
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.

    I am just a humble flinter, but do a quick Google on Young Adult fiction and Woke-ness. For some reason the YA genre has been the first to be truly impacted by this neo-Maoism. Careers have ended, professional lives have been ruined. The fighting is bitter.

    This is a taster, it has got worse since

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books

    All forms of creativity will, presumably, be devoured by the battle, if it continues as is. Eventually the pendulum WILL swing away from this madness back to sanity, it's just a question of who is left standing at the end
    Of course, the new battle is AI "ethics".....there have been plenty of examples that supervised learning has produced "racist" output, because the training data was biased towards certain groups....except now the claims are no, that isn't the case, there are fundamental issues with the core algorithms that they are racist, not inclusive, etc etc etc. GPT-3 isn't exempt from this, it has been deemed racially biased, bigoted, etc etc etc.


    GPT-3’s bigotry is exactly why devs shouldn’t use the internet to train AI

    https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/24/gpt-3s-bigotry-is-exactly-why-devs-shouldnt-use-the-internet-to-train-ai/


    And this war is already causing all sorts of issues,

    ANOTHER AI ETHICS HEAD AT GOOGLE GETS FIRED OVER DIVERSITY ISSUES

    https://mindmatters.ai/2021/02/another-ai-ethics-head-at-google-gets-fired-over-diversity-issues/

    Yann LeCun Quits Twitter Amid Acrimonious Exchanges on AI Bias

    https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/

    AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

    https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/ai-ethics-research-conference-suspends-google-sponsorship/
    It is a costly diversion for the West. China has surely seen what GPT3 can do. They will be speedily building new iterations. We risk frittering away an amazing technological advance - in the west - through ridiculous arguments about bias. Of course GPT3 exhibits bias, it has read the internet, which is full of bias, in all directions.

    So it will exhibit bias however you prompt it. It is autocomplete times a trillion. Feed it 3rd wave feminism it will say bad things about men. Feed it Tommy Robinson it will be mean about Muslims. This is what it does.

    It is a performing monkey with the knowledge of a polymath. It copies and apes and does not know why it does these things....

    The next one...
    But the fundamental argument now from some quarters is that it isn't enough to make your dataset more diverse to match the real world....the actual algorithms contain racial bias, essentially the maths itself is exhibiting racist, sexist, traits or at the very least allows for the production of material that could be offensive to say marginalized groups (because the system doesn't understand the ever changing social norms of what is acceptable).

    I can see Silicon Valley getting very bogged down in the weeds with this stuff, especially as there is a vocal minority of the workforce among the big tech firms appear to be very concerned by this stuff.

    Obviously China don't care such sensitivities.

    Perhaps the West will lose the AI war and thus the 21st Century because of it?
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 46,849

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.

    I am just a humble flinter, but do a quick Google on Young Adult fiction and Woke-ness. For some reason the YA genre has been the first to be truly impacted by this neo-Maoism. Careers have ended, professional lives have been ruined. The fighting is bitter.

    This is a taster, it has got worse since

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books

    All forms of creativity will, presumably, be devoured by the battle, if it continues as is. Eventually the pendulum WILL swing away from this madness back to sanity, it's just a question of who is left standing at the end
    Of course, the new battle is AI "ethics".....there have been plenty of examples that supervised learning has produced "racist" output, because the training data was biased towards certain groups....except now the claims are no, that isn't the case, there are fundamental issues with the core algorithms that they are racist, not inclusive, etc etc etc. GPT-3 isn't exempt from this, it has been deemed racially biased, bigoted, etc etc etc.


    GPT-3’s bigotry is exactly why devs shouldn’t use the internet to train AI

    https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/24/gpt-3s-bigotry-is-exactly-why-devs-shouldnt-use-the-internet-to-train-ai/


    And this war is already causing all sorts of issues,

    ANOTHER AI ETHICS HEAD AT GOOGLE GETS FIRED OVER DIVERSITY ISSUES

    https://mindmatters.ai/2021/02/another-ai-ethics-head-at-google-gets-fired-over-diversity-issues/

    Yann LeCun Quits Twitter Amid Acrimonious Exchanges on AI Bias

    https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/

    AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

    https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/ai-ethics-research-conference-suspends-google-sponsorship/
    It is a costly diversion for the West. China has surely seen what GPT3 can do. They will be speedily building new iterations. We risk frittering away an amazing technological advance - in the west - through ridiculous arguments about bias. Of course GPT3 exhibits bias, it has read the internet, which is full of bias, in all directions.

    So it will exhibit bias however you prompt it. It is autocomplete times a trillion. Feed it 3rd wave feminism it will say bad things about men. Feed it Tommy Robinson it will be mean about Muslims. This is what it does.

    It is a performing monkey with the knowledge of a polymath. It copies and apes and does not know why it does these things....

    The next one...
    But the fundamental argument now from some quarters is that it isn't enough to make your dataset more diverse....the actual algorithms contain racial bias, the maths itself.
    Indeed. It is utter bollocks. This is why China will win, unless we wise up, ASAP
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.

    I am just a humble flinter, but do a quick Google on Young Adult fiction and Woke-ness. For some reason the YA genre has been the first to be truly impacted by this neo-Maoism. Careers have ended, professional lives have been ruined. The fighting is bitter.

    This is a taster, it has got worse since

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books

    All forms of creativity will, presumably, be devoured by the battle, if it continues as is. Eventually the pendulum WILL swing away from this madness back to sanity, it's just a question of who is left standing at the end
    Of course, the new battle is AI "ethics".....there have been plenty of examples that supervised learning has produced "racist" output, because the training data was biased towards certain groups....except now the claims are no, that isn't the case, there are fundamental issues with the core algorithms that they are racist, not inclusive, etc etc etc. GPT-3 isn't exempt from this, it has been deemed racially biased, bigoted, etc etc etc.


    GPT-3’s bigotry is exactly why devs shouldn’t use the internet to train AI

    https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/24/gpt-3s-bigotry-is-exactly-why-devs-shouldnt-use-the-internet-to-train-ai/


    And this war is already causing all sorts of issues,

    ANOTHER AI ETHICS HEAD AT GOOGLE GETS FIRED OVER DIVERSITY ISSUES

    https://mindmatters.ai/2021/02/another-ai-ethics-head-at-google-gets-fired-over-diversity-issues/

    Yann LeCun Quits Twitter Amid Acrimonious Exchanges on AI Bias

    https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/

    AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

    https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/ai-ethics-research-conference-suspends-google-sponsorship/
    It is a costly diversion for the West. China has surely seen what GPT3 can do. They will be speedily building new iterations. We risk frittering away an amazing technological advance - in the west - through ridiculous arguments about bias. Of course GPT3 exhibits bias, it has read the internet, which is full of bias, in all directions.

    So it will exhibit bias however you prompt it. It is autocomplete times a trillion. Feed it 3rd wave feminism it will say bad things about men. Feed it Tommy Robinson it will be mean about Muslims. This is what it does.

    It is a performing monkey with the knowledge of a polymath. It copies and apes and does not know why it does these things....

    The next one...
    But the fundamental argument now from some quarters is that it isn't enough to make your dataset more diverse....the actual algorithms contain racial bias, the maths itself.
    Indeed. It is utter bollocks. This is why China will win, unless we wise up, ASAP
    I think the likes of Goggle have big problems ahead. The workforce have already forced them to abandon things like work with the military, and a minority are very very vocal about these issues.

    At the same time, China literally have a AI called SkyNet that spies on its citizens. It isn't a secret, the company that created it is very proud of it and happy to show it off to a Western journalist.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLo3e1Pak-Y&
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    The big thing with AI, although many in the field are trying to move past "supervised" learning, i.e. where you train your systems with huge amounts of real world examples....what the past 10 years have shown is you can get ok, but imperfect solutions to a range of problems up and running quite quickly this way....and you can use it at the starter for having a look at other methods.

    So....having access to data is the new gold rush. And again, China aren't sensitive about harvesting all this data and giving it to their big tech companies and aren't concerning themselves if their system disproportionately discriminates against a black person in China.

    In the West, we are going the other way, the public increasingly disgusted by big tech using our data to target us. I can see Western governments producing lots of new rules to make this data collective much harder, which rightly or wrongly, ties one hand behind the back of Westerns AI based tech companies.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 46,849

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.

    I am just a humble flinter, but do a quick Google on Young Adult fiction and Woke-ness. For some reason the YA genre has been the first to be truly impacted by this neo-Maoism. Careers have ended, professional lives have been ruined. The fighting is bitter.

    This is a taster, it has got worse since

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books

    All forms of creativity will, presumably, be devoured by the battle, if it continues as is. Eventually the pendulum WILL swing away from this madness back to sanity, it's just a question of who is left standing at the end
    Of course, the new battle is AI "ethics".....there have been plenty of examples that supervised learning has produced "racist" output, because the training data was biased towards certain groups....except now the claims are no, that isn't the case, there are fundamental issues with the core algorithms that they are racist, not inclusive, etc etc etc. GPT-3 isn't exempt from this, it has been deemed racially biased, bigoted, etc etc etc.


    GPT-3’s bigotry is exactly why devs shouldn’t use the internet to train AI

    https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/24/gpt-3s-bigotry-is-exactly-why-devs-shouldnt-use-the-internet-to-train-ai/


    And this war is already causing all sorts of issues,

    ANOTHER AI ETHICS HEAD AT GOOGLE GETS FIRED OVER DIVERSITY ISSUES

    https://mindmatters.ai/2021/02/another-ai-ethics-head-at-google-gets-fired-over-diversity-issues/

    Yann LeCun Quits Twitter Amid Acrimonious Exchanges on AI Bias

    https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/

    AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

    https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/ai-ethics-research-conference-suspends-google-sponsorship/
    It is a costly diversion for the West. China has surely seen what GPT3 can do. They will be speedily building new iterations. We risk frittering away an amazing technological advance - in the west - through ridiculous arguments about bias. Of course GPT3 exhibits bias, it has read the internet, which is full of bias, in all directions.

    So it will exhibit bias however you prompt it. It is autocomplete times a trillion. Feed it 3rd wave feminism it will say bad things about men. Feed it Tommy Robinson it will be mean about Muslims. This is what it does.

    It is a performing monkey with the knowledge of a polymath. It copies and apes and does not know why it does these things....

    The next one...
    But the fundamental argument now from some quarters is that it isn't enough to make your dataset more diverse....the actual algorithms contain racial bias, the maths itself.
    Indeed. It is utter bollocks. This is why China will win, unless we wise up, ASAP
    I think the likes of Goggle have big problems ahead. The workforce have already forced them to abandon things like work with the military, and a minority are very very vocal about these issues.

    At the same time, China literally have a AI called SkyNet that spies on its citizens. It isn't a secret, the company that created it is very proud of it and happy to show it off to a Western journalist.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLo3e1Pak-Y&
    We are already losing the science war with China because of our - fairly understandable - sensitivities about animal research. They do not have these same sensitivities

    https://unherd.com/2021/02/chinas-plan-for-medical-domination/

    We need a Napoleon mixed with Churchill. We need a western leader who can shake us out of this madness, present us with the very real threat, and make us see sense. And then attend to our freedoms.

    It is not Sleepy Joe Biden. It is not Macron, Johnson, Merkel, UvDL.

    Who is it?

    Goodnight.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,466
    dixiedean said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Fishing said:

    If Dr Seuss is on the banned list, the likes of TinTin can't be long until its fully cancelled....as there is the well known one that is deemed particularly offensive, but many of the stories use "stereotypical traits".

    According to the publishers that withdrew the books, it was unforgivable to show a Chinaman wearing a conical hat, using chopsticks and eating from a bowl. This is just surreal. I've been to China a few times, and have seen plenty of Chinese doing all those things (though conical hats aren't that common). Why not allow children to develop some cultural awareness?
    Similar to the way the term "Mexican Wave" is regarded as unacceptable in the United States, even though no-one has ever found anyone in Mexico who is insulted by the phrase, and it isn't a negative thing anyway.
    Perhaps this is to do with it originating in the NFL. It started in Seattle in 1984. And by 1985 was common to most US sports grounds.
    It is only known as that because the rest of the world saw it first in the World Cup in Mexico 1986.
    There really is nowt Mexican about it.
    Even if there's nothing Mexican about it, that doesn't make it offensive.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I am glad I am not in the writing game, between AI and the woke brigade, must be a very worrying time......shame we don't know any writers who might be able to comment on this.

    I am just a humble flinter, but do a quick Google on Young Adult fiction and Woke-ness. For some reason the YA genre has been the first to be truly impacted by this neo-Maoism. Careers have ended, professional lives have been ruined. The fighting is bitter.

    This is a taster, it has got worse since

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books

    All forms of creativity will, presumably, be devoured by the battle, if it continues as is. Eventually the pendulum WILL swing away from this madness back to sanity, it's just a question of who is left standing at the end
    Of course, the new battle is AI "ethics".....there have been plenty of examples that supervised learning has produced "racist" output, because the training data was biased towards certain groups....except now the claims are no, that isn't the case, there are fundamental issues with the core algorithms that they are racist, not inclusive, etc etc etc. GPT-3 isn't exempt from this, it has been deemed racially biased, bigoted, etc etc etc.


    GPT-3’s bigotry is exactly why devs shouldn’t use the internet to train AI

    https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/24/gpt-3s-bigotry-is-exactly-why-devs-shouldnt-use-the-internet-to-train-ai/


    And this war is already causing all sorts of issues,

    ANOTHER AI ETHICS HEAD AT GOOGLE GETS FIRED OVER DIVERSITY ISSUES

    https://mindmatters.ai/2021/02/another-ai-ethics-head-at-google-gets-fired-over-diversity-issues/

    Yann LeCun Quits Twitter Amid Acrimonious Exchanges on AI Bias

    https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/

    AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

    https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/ai-ethics-research-conference-suspends-google-sponsorship/
    It is a costly diversion for the West. China has surely seen what GPT3 can do. They will be speedily building new iterations. We risk frittering away an amazing technological advance - in the west - through ridiculous arguments about bias. Of course GPT3 exhibits bias, it has read the internet, which is full of bias, in all directions.

    So it will exhibit bias however you prompt it. It is autocomplete times a trillion. Feed it 3rd wave feminism it will say bad things about men. Feed it Tommy Robinson it will be mean about Muslims. This is what it does.

    It is a performing monkey with the knowledge of a polymath. It copies and apes and does not know why it does these things....

    The next one...
    But the fundamental argument now from some quarters is that it isn't enough to make your dataset more diverse....the actual algorithms contain racial bias, the maths itself.
    Indeed. It is utter bollocks. This is why China will win, unless we wise up, ASAP
    I think the likes of Goggle have big problems ahead. The workforce have already forced them to abandon things like work with the military, and a minority are very very vocal about these issues.

    At the same time, China literally have a AI called SkyNet that spies on its citizens. It isn't a secret, the company that created it is very proud of it and happy to show it off to a Western journalist.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLo3e1Pak-Y&
    We are already losing the science war with China because of our - fairly understandable - sensitivities about animal research. They do not have these same sensitivities

    https://unherd.com/2021/02/chinas-plan-for-medical-domination/

    We need a Napoleon mixed with Churchill. We need a western leader who can shake us out of this madness, present us with the very real threat, and make us see sense. And then attend to our freedoms.

    It is not Sleepy Joe Biden. It is not Macron, Johnson, Merkel, UvDL.

    Who is it?

    Goodnight.
    The problem is by the time somebody is willing to really take action it a) will be too late and b) our system in the west doesn't allow for it i.e. China aren't thinking well how will this decision look in 4 years among the voters at the ballot box.

    They can devalue their currency overnight to remain competitive, yes it screws their citizens, but a) they don't know and b) what can they do about it? And of course, once they become the dominant player in various markets, they can squeeze the price and more Chinese get rich. So 10-15 years down the line, nobody is complaining that the Chinese government pulled a fast one over currency all those years ago.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,225

    Sean, if you're reading this, can you please write and publish a book called Don't Trust The B*tch in Apartment 23 please?

    Pretty please?

    Why not just get that AI thingy to write it?
This discussion has been closed.