Luis M. Rocha @lmrocha@qoto.org

Preference?

@cyrilpedia nice piece. Good movements. I would think that increasing funding for creating AI standards would be easier than a new agency.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/opinion/ted-lieu-ai-chatgpt-congress.html?smid=url-share

Teaching this #EvolutionarySystems and #BioinspiredComputing course this semester
https://casci.binghamton.edu/academics/i-bic
Just updated chapter 1 of lecture notes "What is Life?" https://casci.binghamton.edu/academics/i-bic/lec01.php

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jan/22/joseph-stiglitz-economist-income-tax-high-earners-70-per-cent-inequality?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Just came here Saturday morning to say that all things groovy started right here. #Jazz
Now's The Time / #CharlieParker　The Savoy Recordings https://youtu.be/YuVWNv2kEkE via

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/20/joe-biden-julian-assange-extradition-tribunal?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

@tiago You raise several very important points. I agree with several. But I will just reply to a couple I disagree with.

I disagree with you regarding the neoliberal stronghold in Europe vs the US. As I said earlier, Biden (and Obama) were able to pursue economic policies more to the left than Europe (including leftist governments). These include substantial financial relief directly to workers, direct investment in companies to protect employment (unconstrained by EU's budget rules), vaccine development, and several other social programs. Indeed that is why the US economy rebounded quicker than Europe's from both the financial crisis and the pandemic.

Even on social norms, the US often precedes most European nations in establishing leftist goals such as gay marriage, pot legalizations, etc. Sure some states now have crazy abortion laws, but the EU also has Poland and others. But where I live in New York, abortion law is much less restrictive than Germany's, for instance. So it is by far not obvious that left-wing voices have no political options in the US as you claim.

Regarding privatization, Portugal has the private post office, but other European countries have crazy gun-ho privatizations in other areas (including retirement and health care systems). In the US the situation is not ideal for my political beliefs, but there is much more public welfare state than you seem to think---including social security, medicaid, medicare and many state-level programs. New Mexico even has free tuition now. The SUNY system where I work is free for New York state families who make less than $125,000/year. This is cheaper than tuition in many European countries.

I also disagree with your assessment of the US public school system. My kids completed most of it here---though also did some years of their K-12 in Portugal (and are in college there actually). I have also studied in the UK and Belgium and have interacted with many undergraduate and graduate students from all over the World. From those interactions, I have absolutely no reason to say that European K-12 (or from anywhere else) is better than American on average. I also find European university education, in general, pretty bad most of the time---typically not a very supportive environment capable of encouraging the best in students.

Maybe I also have the perspective of seeing European, American and Brazilian tourists in Portugal. Let me just say that I am not convinced at all that American education is worse ;)

I just came to Mastodon on my lunch break to say that my guilty pleasure du jour é Matias Damasio. Adoro. Obrigado e Boa tarde.
https://youtu.be/-h_5VnvE2SE

@tiago Either you are not reading what I say, or you choose to pick the points sideways. You are mixing historical reality, versus current policy. I very much doubt that given current rules and neoliberal orthodoxy, Europe would be able to establish today the welfare state that it currently has. My point is that even if someone like Melenchon had won the French presidency (alas, close but no cigar), he would not be able to enforce a political platform based on government spending without leaving or breaking the eurozone rules. In Portugal, even when the communists were in the government coalition, they had to settle and agree to more right-wing positions on spending than Biden's due to the EU budget and deficit rules. These are facts, not opinion. The fact that European workers inherited more rights than typical US counterparts does not change that political parties in the EU and especially the eurozone are locked-in to neoliberal financial orthodoxy---which sees all problems as needing "structural reform", meaning reducing the role of the state in the economy.

All countries have inherited some of their political and social rights. Yes, the US worker on average is likely wose off than european counterparts; I never disputed that. But the US also has many other features that are more socialist than most European countries. For instance, public mail (it is private in PT, for instance), a very good public school system, including public busing and public food, a phenomenal public library system, public roads, public retirement system (it has been privatized in several European countries), regulatory infrastructure that was able to catch such things as dieselgate that european consumers clearly were not able to defend themselves from, PubMed, open-access policy for publicly-funded research, etc, etc.

If I am the only person you know that has these views, maybe you should meet more people ;) However, I think you are misrepresenting my views, so no wonder you can't find people with the views you think I have.

My whole analysis is not how you represent it. What I say is that the Democratic party in the US is a very wide coalition, with some of its members to the left of most European centrists. Moreover, in a a multidimensional view, the Democrats have recently been able to apply *some* policies to the left of most European governments, even when they are formed by supposedly leftist parties. And yes, Sanders, Warren, AOC, and the like have had an effective role in those.

I do not follow an absolutist, all-or-nothing analysis a la Greenwald at all. I think it is ridiculous to claim that those leftist actors have "no actual influence". You can easily see their legislation record, which has made effective difference not only on the discourse---that even people like Biden adopted---but on actual living conditions from Veterans to consumer and financial protections.

This is so cool!
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.add1602

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/06/us-police-killings-record-number-2022?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/05/house-democrats-moderate-republicans-unite-speaker?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

@tiago too many items to respond to. I will just say that economically the Democratic party in the US is less tied to the neoliberal orthodoxy that rules the EU, including by social- democrat and socialist-in-name parties. You just have to compare Obama's response to the financial crisis, to what was seen in Europe, especially against Greece, Portugal and the so-called PIGS---if that acronym alone does not speak volumes about the tone of European "centrist" politics.

All socialist and social-democrat parties in power in the eurozone abide by deficit and spending rules that effectively enforce neoliberal orthodoxy, no matter who is elected and where they profess to be on the left-right axis.

Even with the pandemic, Biden was more aggressive in spending (including on social programs) than Europe was. So, yes, economically the democrats have been able to enforce a more leftist agenda than European center-left governments, including the portuguese that until recently had a coalition with communists.

I did not claim that parties that do not support liberal democracies don't exist in Europe or south America. I just mentioned the communists in Portugal. I just meant that by definition they do not fit the American Democratic party wide coalition---liberal democracy is its core.

At least in Europe those parties have less influence in government than the Bernie coalition in the US. Even in France the last presidential election was between a fascist and a center-right candidate (definitely more Hilary than Bernie).

@tiago I disagree. In Portugal, the party that follows the same politics as Bernie Sanders has exactly one representative in parliament. In other words, the makeup of the democratic party umbrella in most European countries is quite similar. Most social-democrat or socialist parties in Europe have very similar positions, aligning themselves with very small parties to the left and right to result in similar coalitions. It is true that in other countries you still have communist or similar parties, which are not represented in the Democratic party in the US (or Labour in the UK for that matter), but those do not believe in liberal democracy. There are such parties in the US (and UK), but the electoral system rarely allows them to enter national parliamentary structures---even though they appear in local politics.

Regarding left-right dynamics in US vs. EU, in my experience, hearing what is said in public and seeing election results, I find that the political discourse in Europe has moved much more to the right than in the US in the last 10 years, from Hungary and Poland to Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, France, UK, etc. In several European (and also Latin American) countries working-class voters from the left have moved to nationalist populists, and centrist parties espouse a well-known financial neo-liberal orthodoxy that is much more challenged in the US, including by presidents like Biden and Obama (Paul Krugman discussing the "frugal" European countries comes to mind).

P.S. Bernie Sanders and the like have been in the US political system for a long time, not a new development.

@tiago I do see where you are coming from. I think where we disagree (by degree more than qualitatively) is on 1) European power and 2) the state of the US left. Europe, especially its megacorps and elites, have a lot of power in the World, including on US politics. I believe that challenging them at home will have greater impact on US politics than people in europe think. The narrative that Europe is a vassal state to the US helps them very much by making the european citizenry feel powerless. Regarding 2) I disagree that Democrats wholesale became pro-war neo-McCarthysts. That is what Greenwald also wants to push and I disagree. The democratic party contains a very wide spectrum of political positions. It has always been that way. Currently, it goes from pro-war neo-McCarthysts to democratic socialism , and includes other orthogonal dimensions including identity politics, environmentalism, etc. In other words, it includes the entire current German government coalition and more. Attempts, like Greenwald's, to paint the party as a monolith of "liberalism" more than false are ineffectual, or worse, simply destructive trolling. It is failing to understand how large coalitions work. I would indeed prefer that it were a formal coalition like in Germany, but the US election system does not allow such multi-party systems, except indirectly in the coalitions that get formed in the local primary politics of each party.

"Isto, porque a tipologia das provas é pouco utilizada como método de avaliação/selecção no sistema educativo e no mercado de trabalho [português], onde o conhecimento teórico/técnico tende a ser mais valorizado".
A escolinha portuguesa, incluindo universidade, seleciona as pessoas que aguentam estar sentadinhas à secretária horas a fio a levar com fardos de teoria na cabeça. É uma escola muito hierárquica, sem interesse pelas--aliás menosprezando-- competências criativas, práticas e de inteligência social. Estas competências desejadas noutros lugares, obtêm-se construindo (não "recebendo") conhecimento de forma material, com o corpo, na prática, em contexto social onde criatividade não é rejeitada. No meu caso---com carreira feita fora de Portugal---só desenvolvi essas competências fora da escolinha. Por isso sempre me oponho em Portugal a enfiaram as criancinhas tempo de mais na escola.
["https://www.publico.pt/2032755"]

@tiago my point is that by focusing your ire on the perceived opinions of Americans, you are perhaps contributing to obfuscating the horrible things that get done closer to home where (using Greenwald's argument) you have more power to change things. Anti-Americanism (strangely coupled with importing American cultural norms) has a long history in Europe (and elsewhere) and it has functioned as a mechanism that only benefits its elites who are left unchecked. Personally, I have made it a point to write opinions in Portuguese newspapers because I think I can perhaps inform and influence better here.

Regarding perceived American opinion, people typically get it wrong. For instance, all my leftist friends in Europe thought that the war in Iraq was something that had wide support in the US because that is what they saw in main media (including the NY times). But the biggest reason Obama won (first over Hillary then McCain) was his initial opposition to that war. The US is a very diverse country with a wide range of opinions. Trying to generalize its views hardly ever works.

Finally, I want to be clear that I always enjoy reading your thoughts on everything you post. If I reply and disagree on occasion is because I respect what you say :)