Indian politics

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prasen9
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

It goes both ways. The government and the people. The government needs to regulate. But, people also stopped believing everything that they saw coming out of the printing press. So, people will grow up and stop believing everything they see digitally. My ex-father-in-law, who was a farmer in rural PA, believed that Obama had given permanent long-term pension at government dime to his kids' nannies based on fake news that came via email. It looked professional. I had to teach him how to check for validity of news. I think he got it at some point to move on from, "But, I saw it on the internet and it looked real." With every new technology, people learn how to deal with it. With the printing press, we decided that anything printed on newsstock and slipped under your door is not a trustworthy newspaper. We grew institutions of trust such as the AP, Reuters, PTI, etc. Society will grow up and democracy will survive. Or so I think. We'll see.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

^^^ I also hope you are right. But at the fundamental level, I see a problem, that we are at the point where technology can actually stay ahead of people's learning ability. I mean right-wing social media misinformation campaign in the US and India are being effective not because the people who run it are smart to figure out how to make it effective. BJP media cell probably does not have the smarts to figure out what will work and what will not, but the targeting and pushing done by big data analytics (I assume) is a force by itself. In other words, humans may have lost control of what their software does already!! That was not the case with the printing press, newspapers, etc.

This was why I actually said that humans may need to set up artificial intelligence that controls the intelligence in their software, when it comes to information supply in the world. This is certainly more in your research areas than mine, so I may be overstating it or I'm wrong altogether.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by Atithee »

The old adage, “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is,” will save the day. People will evolve and learn no matter what info overload is available. There were gullible supporters and there will always be.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

Jay, you are absolutely right. The fundamental differences are: a) how cheap it is to create copies of these misinformation campaigns. Thus, parties can take the scattershot approach. You don't have to pick which misinformation campaign will work. Just keep trying everything. No cost to you. No need to be smart. b) how fast things spread. Instantaneously. Yes, we can use AI to catch these but it will be like spam, malware, phishing, etc. Cat and mouse games. We are working on AI solutions but these will not be perfect. And, with the volume of garbage that can be generated, even if .01% leaks out, which is a very difficult accuracy to obtain with today's AI, it can be voluminous.

So, essentially, it is all of the above. Technology. Government. People.

That is why I was hoping more that people will grow up by and large. And, focus and trust only a few sites on the web. Etc. We could create digital signatures to prevent faking authentic websites' stories.

The younger generation is more savvy. I was buying a 5-10$ hat from the web. I messaged my daughter to get it. She replied back that she checked trustpilot and the seller has lots of problems. I am a researcher in this area and I know about trustpilot but I forgot because I hardly buy stuff. She routinely checks before buying as habit.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

^^ Then, perhaps, is the solution to force social media firms to somehow start giving truthfulness scores for everything, using some algorithms on social media sites? And maybe not people to post things which are not truthful below some criterion... But the algorithms will need to be common and not made up by those commercial social media operators, I suppose.

Then the same thing will need to be done for "biases" (or twisting or hiding truthful pieces for biases). But I guess algorithms for this would be very difficult.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by SaniaFan »

Ultimately it is on the conscience of the individuals.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

Agree Jay. And, those that are not verified or cannot be scored should be given a score "unverified". We can be very careful about "verified" news and hopefully, society will take these labels seriously and only believe verified news. There can be two categories: social chit-chat and verified news. Now it gets murky because the verifier gets to choose what is news and what is not. We will have to have some trustworthy verifiers.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

So the U.S. does not want India to buy more petrol from Russia on the cheap. I think India should by as much as they can from Russia without getting sanctions or financial/trade retaliation by the U.S. and the west. Walk the tight-rope. Keep nudging things up and keep saying that we only buy less than 4% of our petrol from Russia and increasing it to 4.5% is just standard ups and downs of the market, etc. However much you can get away with ...

I do not really support Russia and I want them to be squeezed. But, I also don't think sanctions really work. See Iran. All it does it hurt the people of the country who in both cases are innocent because they are largely not free democracies. Let the rich, i.e., the U.S. and the West do the squeezing if they want to. We have been sucked dry for over 300 years by the British and are only slowly recovering. One does need to be moral but one also needs to take care of their own people. If getting extra oil from Russia on the cheap means that we can build a few more hospitals and schools with that money and can grow the economy at even a small rate faster, that means we save a bunch of lives of our people.

Realpolitik.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

So, what the heck does this "Bharat Jodo" mean? I hear that Pappu is on a mission (I kinda like Pappu, by the way)... But I ain't don't hardly know much Hindi. What *is* "jodo" and what root does that word come from?

First I heard it, it sounded like " Drop Bharat"... Pappu isn't that foolish, I think. So it can't be that.

"Save India"? "Grow India"? "Kick India"? "Thank India?"

What is it?
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Re: Indian politics

Post by srini »

jayakris wrote: Wed Sep 07, 2022 9:59 am So, what the heck does this "Bharat Jodo" mean? I hear that Pappu is on a mission (I kinda like Pappu, by the way)... But I ain't don't hardly know much Hindi. What *is* "jodo" and what root does that word come from?

First I heard it, it sounded like " Drop Bharat"... Pappu isn't that foolish, I think. So it can't be that.

"Save India"? "Grow India"? "Kick India"? "Thank India?"

What is it?
From the limited Hindi i know, Jodo means Unite ? So Pappu is probably trying to Unite India by means of a "Paad Yatra/Journey by Foot". He is doing that to re-unite a "Divided India" which presumably got more divided in last 8 years of Modi rule due to BJP's divisive/communal hatred based politics. In India it's pretty common for politicians to do these journeys when elections are imminent, they use these to interact and know the pulse of people, though i suspect Pappu is not a full time politician like his rivals. So this will be a flop show. Previously other politicians like YS Rajasekhar reddy, his son Jagan in Andhra did similar journeys and got elected with thumping majorities. So in a sense this is old wine in new bottle!
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

^^^ Ah I see... Thanks. "Unite" is what it means. Had never heard the word before. May be English's "join" also comes from the same Indo-germanic root or something? Wonder what that is in Sanskrit though. Nothing comes to mind. Should investigate.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by Atithee »

Sandhi in Sanskrit seems close to jodna (to unite). Jod is also used in math for summation, it’s also used to say attach, glue, affix etc. but essentially the same root meaning. Surprised you haven’t come across this word, Jay. Even jugaad may have been derived from jod.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

Whatever they said above but in Bengali, it would be translated as "Join" India --- not in the English sense. It is almost as if India is broken and someone wants to join the pieces together. Not a very flattering campaign. Unite would be ekatrita or ekabaddha but then one has to add a do word "koro" to it and maybe he did not want three word that form a complete senetence ... in Bangla at least. I think both words have Sanskrit roots and should have Hindi counterparts that should be similar. But, using those words would make him look more erudite? I do not really like that Bharat Jodo slogan but hey, who knows maybe it will resonate.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by Atithee »

Not in Hindi, Prasen. Bharat Jodo meaning is unambiguous. If they wanted to say join India, it would be Judo not Jodo.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

Ah, so he wants to appeal to the Hindi belt I suppose. So it has left the Malayali and the Bengali confused. :-) Thanks for the clarification Atithee. In Bangla, we do not have these two different words. We only have joro. We do have Judo the martial art as a word. ;-) (I know you did not mean to pronounce it like Judo)
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