At a small event in San Francisco last night, IBM hosted two debate club-style discussions between two humans and an AI called “Project Debater”. The goal was for the AI to engage in a series of reasoned arguments according to some pretty standard rules of debate: no awareness of the debate topic ahead of time, no pre-canned responses. Each side gave a four-minute introductory speech, a four-minute rebuttal to the other’s arguments, and a two-minute closing statement.
I’d pay so much money to see prominent political leaders debate this machine.
Most prominent political leaders aren’t human.
Oh, they’re human alright… the worst of humanity combined into one package. And to top it all off, I’d bet they never learned to debate at all. They use emotional arguments and firebrand speeches, but I’ve not seen a real debate from any of them. Add to that, most of the debates in the states are scripted before said “debate” ever airs. Anyone who thinks political leaders have ever held a true debate in their lives are as naive as anyone who believes we actually get to pick our leaders here.
Trump was picked. The people who picked Trump got Trump.
If moderates stopped trying to one-up each other to show how cynical they are and actually vote moderates in, at local, state and federal levels, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Actually, it’s mostly about name-recognition because most moderate voters either aren’t politically engaged enough to investigate every candidate or don’t have the time. (It’s not an accident that the U.S. doesn’t have a law guaranteeing paid time off to vote the way we here in Canada do and that they keep closing down polling stations to lengthen the wait times.)
Trump got in on electoral college votes despite losing the popular vote because of a mixture of deplorables and the “anything but more of the same!” votes from people who are desperate for change, and people who wanted to “throw a brick through the window of the political establishment”.
Edited 2018-06-21 02:50 UTC