Writes Nate Silver, purporting to read the collective mind of Democrats, in "Is America ready for a gay president? Kamala Harris and a subscriber have questions about Mayor Pete, and I have annoyingly nuanced answers."
I've already blogged about what Harris said in her book about not picking Pete for VP — here, 10 days ago — and I don't want to redo that. I'm blogging Silver's piece because of the idea of "Demthink" and I liked these examples of how wrong it can go:
[W]ho thought it would be a good idea for Congressional Democrats to pose kneeling while wearing kente cloths when announcing police reform legislation? Who gave a thumbs up to Tim Walz playing Madden with AOC and then nonsensically tweeting out afterward that “@AOC can run a mean pick 6”? Meanwhile, Democratic messaging on the shutdown is already predictably lapsing into incoherence because of Demthink, with people like Sen. Chris Murphy wanting to check every box to appeal to different parts of the donor class rather than settle on one message.
"Demthink" is inherently incoherent. There is no one mind there, nobody to be coherent. Meanwhile, the Republicans have Trump. They didn't want him, but through the people they got him. And he is one person, who brought along his one mind and who takes responsibility for everything. He is, of course, susceptible to the accusation that he's incoherent. He's crazy, stupid, evil, etc., on and on. We've heard it a million times. But he is a real person, not a concoction of a group mind.
| Aspect | Marketplace of Ideas | Group Mind | Hive Mind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Structure | Decentralized, competitive arena of diverse voices. Individuals or groups pitch ideas; no single "mind" dominates. | Collaborative, semi-unified consciousness from group interaction. E.g., Demthink’s consultant-driven narrative. | Highly unified mindset; individuals sync to a central signal. E.g., MAGA’s loyalty to Trump’s voice. |
| Individuality | High: Individuals retain distinct voices, competing openly (e.g., moderates vs. progressives on X). | Moderate: Individuals contribute but align toward consensus (e.g., Demthink’s risk-averse VP pick). | Low: Individuals act as extensions of the leader/ideology (e.g., MAGA echoing Trump’s fraud claims). |
| Coherence | Intentionally diverse, often chaotic, as ideas clash to refine truth. | Can be incoherent due to competing inputs, like Demthink’s fragmented messaging. | Hyper-coherent in aligning to a single vision; Trump’s “incoherence” unified by persona. |
| Purpose | Truth-seeking via competition; bad ideas ideally lose out. | Consensus-building for action or identity (e.g., Demthink’s liberal values). | Unified action or belief, often dogmatic (e.g., MAGA’s “America First”). |
| Accountability | Diffuse: Ideas are judged, not people. No single owner of outcomes. | Diffuse: Blame spreads across the group, as with Demthink’s flops. | Centralized: Leader (e.g., Trump) owns wins/losses, giving a human face. |
AND: Assume the Democratic Party would be best off to find, as their next presidential nominee, an individual who would operate in the Trump mode — that is, with an individual mind and authentic beliefs and accepting full personal responsibility. 1. Who is out there who could function like that? and 2. Who is in the party now who would powerful obstruct the party moving to that format?
Grok's answer to question #1: John Fetterman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer.
Grok's answer to question #2: Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, "Big Donors & Consultants," "Interest Group Lobbies."
ALSO: What I'm seeing as "Trump mode" — an individual mind, authentic beliefs, and accepting full personal responsibility — is what Democrats have been calling "autocratic."
संदेश
101 टिप्पणियां:
I’m old enough to remember when they were pushing Pete hard, all those millions to the media for the tongue baths, Annie Leibovitz trailing around like a groupie. Who gave a thumbs up to the AOC/Madden line? They ALL did…
Even though they push Pete because they think he’s the most palatable it’s AOC who is the mist likely cult figure. A dictator’s lobotomized hot wife is their best bet…
Nate Silver could improve his punctuation.
The discrimination against gay people is done by Democrats on behalf of their own voters who are assumed to be too homophobic to vote for a gay man.
"Gay" isn't the issue -- competence is. Buttigieg was so incompetent that he's the first Transport Secretary anyone can remember. Before that, mayor of a dinky-shit little city near Chicago. Yip-yip-yip-Yahoo!.
Compare to Richard Grenell, as one example. Presidential material? Maybe Yes, maybe No, but Buttigieg is a crushingly obvious No.
I don’t know why certain Whites in the Dem party think Pete is a good candidate. He polls at zero with Blacks. Zero.
Nominating Pete would be incoherent. It might well kill the Democrat party.
The Democratic Party was taken over by consultants and data analysts during Bill Clinton's triangulation phase. When the Party's early ideology-driven support for Hillarycare went down in flames, and when the Crime Bill (1994) resulted in losing the House plus numerous other unintended consequences, Democrats shifted to polling and cynical calculations to scare soccer moms (then others).
Those in power focused on manipulating their own supporters rather than representing their supporters. This resulted in throwing out the working class in favor of big global (donor) businesses, throwing out bio women in favor of unstable transgendered people, and throwing out blacks in favor of gaming electoral votes through unchecked immigration.
Harris, famous for word salads and loving wine, couldn't come up with this strategy if her life depended on it. "Demthink" is what happens when a million narrow data points receive action with no sense of the bigger picture and no integrity and no vision. This is what ends with 80% vs. 20% polling numbers.
The Dems skip over the competence issue with Pete because he is gay.
And no one ever talks about his work translating for the academic journal devoted to the Italian commie Gramsci.
""Demthink" is what happens when a million narrow data points receive action with no sense of the bigger picture and no integrity and no vision..."
...I'm not convinced this is always a losing strategy. It might work if the narrow data points weren't so intent on killing and imprisoning their opponents...
...in that order...
"Nominating Pete would be incoherent. It might well kill the Democrat party."
Where do I donate?
Is it a group mind or a hive mind? Democrats these days are more and more like the Borg, only with blue haired men in dresses instead of cybernetic drones.
It doesn't help that Demthink sounds like Themthink (as in identity pronouns). When even the supposedly neutral medium -- language -- seems to conspire against you.
Demthink is an American English translation of the German "Kaput".
@rehajm: I'm not convinced this is always a losing strategy.
No, not at all. It works very well when there's a salient wedge issue. The key is that the policy change results in a net gain versus no action. Problems happen when the gifts/bribes/handouts are so finely calculated that any action will be worse than the current state of affairs.
I'd hold that the Democrat's recent high water mark of unity happened during Obama's first two years. They were serving too many masters started when the cowards wouldn't vote and "deemed passed" the Obamacare bill. That began the backroom gifts to major donors (i.e., insurance and medical providers) and guaranteed that state-managed health care wouldn't save a penny. They took big business support from the Republicans, but in doing it they stole from their own voters.
As if to dispel the notion that leftists have a hive mind, they go ahead and create a brand for their hive mind: "Demthink".
Which...if you give it 2 seconds is doomed to failure and soon to become the new moniker by everyone outside of late night show hosts: "Dumbthink".
On the gay President thing- we will see a gay President before we will see a Jewish President in this country. (I had previously correctly predicted a Black President before a Jewish President). Pete being gay isn't the issue. The issue is his mindset (Demthink) coupled with his actual nothing of note being achieved. Unless you make someone President for going to school. Or riding in a huge vehicle to within a quarter mile of his speech location where he then takes out his bike and rides that to the podium to talk about saving the planet.
A well accomplished, smart thinking, well presented gay person could absolutely be elected President in this country. Say...someone like a Richard Grenell.
A thought experiment : Imagine Pelosi was a Republican being asked if she hated Obama. Doesn't Pelosi come across like a panicking Republican being accused of hating Obama (when Obama was president) The cult of Obama maintained the Democrats (Themthink) as long as Obama was president. Which, could very likely happened to the GOP's (Trumpthink) once Trump is no longer president.
Is America ready for a gay president?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Trump should just go gay.
For extra credit, he can go trans, too. Giuliani can give him crosssressing tips from his SNL sketches.
Melania can talk about how she’s so proud to help Barron’s other mom on this next chapter of her life.
It would be an NYT feature come to life. CC, JSM
"Is it a group mind or a hive mind?"
What's the difference (other than an insect metaphor)?
Other similar expressions: groupthink, collective consciousness, mob mentality, echo chamber, swarm intelligence.
Less similar, but worth comparing: the marketplace of ideas.
The problem is that the democratic party has become incredibly bizarre. It isn’t demthink, it is just plan weirdness that doesn’t resonate with most voters. Men in girls bathrooms and playing women’s sports - check. Thinking Walz would appeal to most white male voters - check. Thinking Kamala is remotely qualified to be president merely because she is a black woman - check. Letting violent criminals out with no bail -check. Giving free healthcare and welfare to foreigners who enter the country illegally- check. Not helping ICE remove illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in this country-check. These are all batshit crazy ideas to most voters but democrats will defend them to the death.
There is obviously a hive mind at the core, and 30 years of hearing Rush and Hannity play those supercuts of Democrats in Media or politics all saying the exact same phrase of the day all the same all day long or week or now decade in the Trump phraseology, has only reinforced that obvious conclusion.
I added a chart to the post, distinguishing hive mind and group mind and contrasting both to the marketplace of ideas. Check it out.
Tim Walz comes off as more gay than Pete Buttigieg.
As a retired teacher, I think of them in those terms. Walz is the teacher that grabs the microphone at pep rallies, and thinks that the students adore his antics. Pete is the English teacher who is occasionally interesting and helps out with the theater productions.
Both men aren't competent enough for national politics.
Which Party is always trying to change and distort the language in the most Orwellian of ways? Think about that Nate! The list of obfuscatory terms is endless: birthing persons, undocumented, mostly peaceful, anti-fascist, horse paste, drink bleach, latinx, anti-Zionist, our democracy, cisgender, voter ID is racist, inability to ID an ICE agent is racist, genocide, authoritarian...
Harris' comments about Buttigieg are simply another version of "deplorables". She is blaming the voters. Once again, a non-winning strategy. Also, notice the systematic differences among the examples in the Grok chart.
I have a dream
The AI is stupid because it was raised on what the Uniparty believes. Using Trump as an example of setting the hive mind agenda severely misreads the order in which strong belief in conservative values and government arose vs Trump adopting those as campaign and governing ideas and DOING it after years of prior presidents disappointing us.
"Echoing Trump's fraud claims" LOL okay boomer. Again with the severe misunderestimation of the order of operations. As if we didn't know they cheated prior to 2020! Talk about dwelling in a bubble.
@Mike (MJB Wolf): The Party in power is the only one with the potential to manipulate language that way. The Parties out of power promise rainbows, lollipops, and heaven on earth -- "If only we can take power from the evil and corrupt tyrants!"
The statist language games are tiny little symbolic gestures to hang on to votes and reward those who are impressed by pompous job titles and certificates of achievement (i.e., every DEI supporter, and everyone who got ahead through nepotism).
I LOVE the chart. Shall we return to Silvers original analogy? "What is Demthink? It’s what you’d end up with if you trained a large language model solely on the inner monologue of people who either work in Democratic politics or watch MSNBC for eight hours a day."
Here, illustrated literally.
I'm assuming the prompts have something to do with that, as Grok, in my experience, hasn't been as Demthinky as Chat.
It's interesting that Grok gave MAGA examples for the hive mind. In the past several years, when I've read/heard "hive mind" it has most often been in the phrase "reddit hive mind".
Ann I think your last paragraph is missing a crucial element of what’s really going on here. The contrast isn’t just between a messy Democratic group mind and Trump’s singular “real person” mind. It’s that many people have given up on sorting through complexity altogether.
That resignation — the “I don’t care anymore, maybe a king would be better” mentality — is what makes people so easily played. If politics feels too complicated, the fantasy of one man who can “fix it” becomes irresistible.
But here’s the catch: they didn’t really choose Trump the man. His actual résumé is riddled with bankruptcies, scams, failed ventures, and public admissions that would sink almost anyone else. What they chose was the character he played — the billionaire boss from TV who always wins, the outsider who talks like a tough guy. It’s as if voters cast their ballots for a movie hero, forgetting they were electing the actor behind the role.
That’s why pointing out contradictions or failures doesn’t land. For many, Trump isn’t supposed to be fact-checked like a president — or Demthinked or Repthinked. He’s performing a role they’ve already bought into. And once you’re invested in the character, admitting flaws in the man feels like breaking the spell.
The difference seems obvious to me. First of all it shouldn't be called group of mind it should be called group of think. Groupthink is the result of quote unquote consensus. The hive mind is where the many are controlled by a centralized Commander EG the queen bee.
In practice I believe that hybrids of these two systems are commonly deployed to control whatever narrative is being pushed by leadership.
Just thinking out loud here therefore I conclude that the groupthink is really a cover for the hive mind where are the queen is actually an inner sanctum cabal of several powerful entities and then they determine what the quote unquote consensus needs to be and bullies the group into agreeing to it.
Someone in power figured out though that the hive mind is much easier to change if you can remove the queen bee.
Althouse's punctuation is impeccable.
..."Grok's answer to question #1: .... Gretchen Whitmer...."
Gretchen Whitmer, the politician so craven that she hid her face behind a folder rather than the photographed in the Oval Office meeting with Trump, is an 'independent thinker', Group #1? She has the mindset of a freakin' ostrich ! I would caution against the mistake of treating A.I. as if it's coherent; it's only ever coherent accidentally, as a product of statistical probability.
The "hive mind" examples from Grok are nonsense. The queen bee/ant in a hive does not direct the actions of the other insects but is rather served instinctively by the all the others. The whole point of a 'hive mind' is not direction from a single individual but the hive members work towards a singular goal without any open direction from a single source.
Also called Cult-think and lie-buy.
Tried Demthink. Came up with X'40'.
A Hive Mind leads to Insect Politics?
Temujin said:
"Pete being gay isn't the issue. The issue is his mindset (Demthink) coupled with his actual nothing of note being achieved."
yes & It's all about loyalty to the grand scheme/lie and check box identity "firsts!".
I’m having a hard time accepting Grok, when it suggests Gretchen Whitmer as “authentic beliefs and accepting full personal responsibility”.
I think a good answer would have been Tulsi Gabbard, but they keep pushing her away from the party.
Lots of words boils down to two salient points.
1) The Dem establishment doesn’t like the country or the people and their policies reflect that.
2) Dem policies like unfettered illegal immigration make law abiding citizens suckers
Christopher B, I don’t see much comparison between how a hive operates and how a dictatorship takes over. A hive mind is decentralized — no bee or ant is issuing commands, they simply act on instinct to sustain the hive. A dictatorship, by contrast, is the ultimate centralization: one individual consolidates authority and directs others.
If anything, the danger in politics isn’t people acting like hive insects but people surrendering their individual judgment to the will of a single leader.
This idea of a collectively trained LLM is an interesting idea. You could imagine a debate between 2 such LLMs, hashing out the relative virtues of the major parties platforms.
“Will an increased mix of renewables make energy more affordable?”
“Who pays in the end for tariffs?”
“Are transgender members of the military effective soldiers?”
“Don’t we need to eliminate the debt by some combination of taxes and massive reduction in spending? And who would feel the pain of each?”
I’m looking for questions that would find the contradictions and myths of each side.
Silver's description of "Demthink" is very reminiscent of the famous 'dances' done by worker bees to transmit information about pollen sources. We know what is going on but have no way to actually translate the language.
As Dave Begley noted, Mayor Pete gets roughly zero black votes, and would go down in flames as the Dem nominee for President or VP.
All the more reason for us to support him.
"Too bad Kamala was too bigoted to pick a gay guy. We think he deserves a chance."
Ronald J Ward, did you even read my comment?
Dave Begley noted, Mayor Pete gets roughly zero black votes..
this is not technically true at all.
Mayor Pete gets no POLLING picks..
if/when Mayor Pete is the DEMOCRAT Candidate;
he will receive the vast majority of the black votes..
because black votes do NOT come from humans,
they come from fraud
I’m going to have to beg to differ on the Queen Bee and Ant thing. The Queen DOES direct the operations of the hive by emitting chemical signals.
The difference is in how you think about people who think differently than you and what the purpose of politics is for you.
The purpose of Republicans is to make the system better for people living in it.
The purpose of democrats is to take as much stuff as possible through government and keep what they can.
Republicans engage people they disagree with in debate.
Democrats violently attack people they disagree with.
All of this is originating from the education/university system.
Silver forgot to add the end stage of Demthink is to shoot anyone who disagrees with you...
That was an interesting chart especially because it tried to argue that Trump's control of the Republican party in power represents "hive mind" while the Dems in opposition represent "group think."
It can be argued that the Dems do not have a leader or a unified vision - see the race for New York mayor where the majority of Dems oppose Mamdani but cannot unify against him. As opposed to that, there is the fact that the media and the Dem pols, Hollywood and academia organize on a single point of view and repeat the same set of words on all substantive issues and all newsworthy incidents. They have argreed to oppose everything Trump does and to blame everything on Trump. They would take Tylenol and harm their own babies if Trump said Tylenol harms the development of the unborn. They would support the right to bear arms if a Dem was caught shooting at Trump but they would oppose the right to bear arms the next day over some bill in Congress. And that's what I call hive mind. It maybe that bees are not that centralized (though I thought they were) but the Dems are.
The Republicans are not like that. Strong elements oppose parts of Trump's program - people like Rand Paul or the free traders - because that they have always opposed tariffs or certain tax programs. They won't agree to certain kinds of budget cuts. And when Trump can't win or bludgeon them over, he moves on - temporarily. You have to learn two or more sides of an argument to understand Republican politics in any detail. Of course the Dem media doesn't think this is true and has said it so often that Grok presents the Dem point of view as reality. That tells us something about Grok - it works more like a poll than like either observation or rational thought based on observation.
Good to learn more about artificial intelligence. It won't help in a breakout against the shadows in Plato's cave aka the Dem hive mind. But I still use it for tech questions and to gather statistics and to learn the latest on the hive mind.
Glenn Howes said...
This idea of a collectively trained LLM is an interesting idea. You could imagine a debate between 2 such LLMs, hashing out the relative virtues of the major parties platforms.
“Will an increased mix of renewables make energy more affordable?”
“Who pays in the end for tariffs?”
“Are transgender members of the military effective soldiers?”
“Don’t we need to eliminate the debt by some combination of taxes and massive reduction in spending? And who would feel the pain of each?”
I’m looking for questions that would find the contradictions and myths of each side.
These debates are all happening in various places in the Republican Party. Tulsi gabbard is a Republican now. The zeitgeist on free trade has changed completely from free trade to tax the billionaires who ship jobs to China.
These debates do not happen on the left. They never talk about policy. You never see major differences in democrat primaries. They all have to out democrat each other to win.
When Trump entered the primary in 2015 there were massive substantive differences between him and the establishment candidates.
The democrats had a chance to have a debate between Bernie and Hillary. They paid Bernie off with a bunch of money and a ew house instead.
Nate does have some good takes. This is one of them.
Lem: "It doesn't help that Demthink sounds like Themthink."
If ya down wit de mandem, ya tink de Demtink! Ya mon. CC, JSM
Intersectionality supercharges the incoherence, and the Dems can’t abandon intersectionality.
If you want to be misinformed, there sure are a lot of resources out there.
Republicans engage people they disagree with in debate.
Democrats violently attack people they disagree with.
Well, you see, the first is actual violence - people are being hurt by Republican language that negates their lived experience, literally erases them. It's a form of genocide.
So of course they have to respond to that genocide. And as the sign says, "Jeremy spoke in class today"; their response is their speech. More kinetic, but speech nonetheless.
Sigh. As the SONG says
NYT article says Kamala is revamping her pantsuit wardrobe in anticipation of her reentry into national politics. Oh lucky us.
Think Obama was our first gay president. Didn't we already acknowledge this? Wasn't this confirmed in his most recent biography tome?
“Meanwhile, the Republicans have Trump. They didn't want him, but through the people they got him.”
“Through the People” — what a concept!
Hillary labeled rural Republicans as "deplorables". Kamala just labeled all Democrats as "racist homophobes".
Labeling folks in your own party with a cancel-caliber slur term is ridiculously bad move. Clearly Kamala doesn't have a competent political strategist on her payroll to vet her public statements before she utters them. Stupid woman thinks she's still relevant; DNC needs to send her to away=away, to a secluded foreign mountain top for next four years without internet access, to limit further debilitating political damage emanating from her idiotic opinions.
@Althouse, that you and Grok think of Republicans as a hive mind tells me that neither of you understand us at all.
Speaking of “hive minds” and human beings consciously adopting insectoid hive mentalities, Frank Herbert wrote an interesting novel Hellstrom's Hive (1973; available on Kindle) where this concept gets explored. It's loosely connected with a real though fictional tv documentary that circulated a bit earlier, The Hellstrom Chronicle (still available on dvd at least), in which a (fictional) host “Dr. Hellstrom” guides the viewer through remarkable insect photography. Dr. Hellstrom thereupon appears as a character in Herbert's book.
Is America ready to transition (i.e. diverge)? A minority seem to believe they are, and have been forcing climate change with often catastrophic Choices, choices.
Silver gets one thing right -- the Democratic party inadequacies are at the heart of the Democrats' inability to organize an effective opposition.
Long story short 1: national change is never going to come from the Democratic party in Washington; it is going to have to be new and come from the states.
Long story short 2: the Washington establishments of both parties support American Empire and imperial leadership from Washington; the American people see a generation of foreign policy of no benefit to them.
A wall of money and privilege separates the interests of the American people from their notional government in Washington. It isn't theirs anymore. That's why Trump and the Trumpistas can trash the place so thoroughly with so little pushback; the ownership that goes with "ours" is gone.
Maybe when the checks quit coming the revolution might show up. Maybe not. If a majority can be converted into clients, then maybe a comfortable illiberalism will settle in. Hello Budapest! Wasn't the Democratic party just supporting a politically correct illiberalism all these years as the activist left grew its influence as the center exited stage right? The Republicans just substituted in nationalist illiberalism and they were in.
The modern Washington-centric federal government that doesn't work for the American people is largely viewed as a product of the Democratic party by most of the people outside Washington. The Democratic Establishment has supported for two generations wealth concentration for the superrich (the backbone of their donor class) and American Empire in the Greater Middle East (and elsewhere in the Global South) in what has come to look like a new neo-imperial era backed by huge defense budgets (a powerful corrupting constituency in itself). In the Middle East, more of the same was always supposed to open up some grand new vistas. But the future never arrived; just ever-increasing waves of violence and dysfunction.
Aren't those two separate groups? If you work in Democrat campaigns you might believe that your party has to "triangulate" to win elections. If you watch MSNBC all the time, that thought may not occur to you. Is there any "triangulation," cynical or not, in the examples Silver gives? They are pretty incoherent. Kneeling and wearing kente cloth isn't triangulation. Walz playing jock (or war veteran) is just politics and just a bad decision, not triangulation or any example of specifically Democrat thinking.
Grok is of course a moron. The president and the party that controls the White House make the agenda. That party is most likely united behind the agenda. The other party is on the defensive and presents something less coherent or cohesive. On the other hand, look back over the last 10 years. Democrats have adhered more closely to a party line than Republicans. Hardly any of them objected to Biden's disastrous policies. They parroted the same lines and were an excellent example of "hive mind" at work.
Funny, innit, how ALL the Hive Mind examples involve Trump and his supporters. NOT ONE addressing what being "woke" is all about. Or... Dem worship of the Lightbringer. "Barack Obama....mmm..mm....mmm."
Grok's obviously in the tank for the Left. Even hive-minded, you might say.
“The Queen DOES direct the operations of the hive by emitting chemical signals.”
YES! Trump as queen bee emits signals that his hive react to because the bees in the hive have been preprogrammed to react to him exclusively. Trump resonates with his followers because they already think the way he does, so when he emits signals, the bees in his hive recognize it as signals from their leader bee and are unable to not react as they have been preprogrammed for exactly this leader bee. Any other queen in the colony gets attacked and killed by the hive bees, they don’t want or recognize her chemical signals.
Trump and his hive mind bees have been made for each other.
Demthink makes a gay president impossible. They would never make it through the primaries because they would have to choose between supporting trans ideology or the gay & lesbian community. They cant support either community without alienating the other. Because Demthink is all about the trans now, they wouldn't stand a chance.
A president who is trans (e.g. homosexual) or a trans president? The former is equitable and the latter is Diverse.
Democrats are known to override democracy for Diversity and other purposes.
If I read the chart right, Grok’s take on MAGA “hive mind” looks a lot like Demthink’s and leftmediathink’s take.
Igna’s comment above is a good example of “projection”.
Eventually the bees make a new queen and the old queen is made to leave the hive with about half worker bees. The new young vibrant queen rules the old hive while the old queen is out in the wild without a hive.
I'm not convinced the democrat's have a death wish to push Kamala in 2028. She was at best a stop gap measure as Biden imploded during the July debate with Trump. The democrat's sole focus and reason for existing is to stop Trump but I don't think they have any other policies to sell that are even remotely popular. They are underwater in every policy question from Crime, illegal immigration and the economy. It doesn't matter if they push Gay Pete or Kamala, they need to re-invent themselves to remain viable.
According to many we've already had a gay POTUS, albeit closeted. His pastor was known for setting up gays with beards so they could appear to not be gay. Was he gay? I wouldn't place a bet either way.
And he's the only reason I know that definition of beard.
When you boil it down, this is just Nate Silver saying the Dems need better messaging...so no help for them there.
Demthink occurs when a large group of lefties suffering from fecal cranial impaction gather to share thoughts and develop strategies.
The funny thing Christopher B is your correct assessment of “hive mind” is how the left wants us to believe antifa functions.
The republican party is going to dominate elections until the hard left is removed from power in democrat politics. As long as there are pieces of shit like Inga and Rich dancing on graves democrats are going to be toxic to 60-70% of the electorate.
At some point the hard left will be driven out and the JFK democrats will split from the Republican party again.
"claim responsibility"? No way. Trump claims power, but never accepts responsibility. I'm old enough to remember Harry Truman--"the buck stops here". That's accepting responsibility, few modern leaders do, and Trump never.
AI is heavily informed by reddit - something like 40%. Which accounts for the the slagging of MAGA as "hivemind".
Bill Harshaw said...
"claim responsibility"? No way. Trump claims power, but never accepts responsibility. I'm old enough to remember Harry Truman--"the buck stops here". That's accepting responsibility, few modern leaders do, and Trump never.
***********
OK. Tell us what Trump should apologize for.
Everything Grok wrote and most of what commenters have written (except those who noted Frank Herbert and Reddit) are entirely wrong about the "hive mind."
The term arose in USENET in the '90s as a dystopian description of a kind of ultimate groupthink that humans would struggle to resist. It was drawn from Frank Herbert's books Hellstrom's Hive and even more from The Green Brain. Sadly, it was then taken up as a goal (!) by small but very loud groups of people (who struck me as utterly crazy). In Cryptonomicon (1999) Neal Stephenson satirizes these people (he shows some calling themselves "RISTs" Relatively Independent Sub-Totalities--I never actually saw that on USENET, but it's not impossible) while recognizing how dangerous they can be.
The Hive Mind also appears in Stephenson's 2019 Fall, as an undesirable result of the initial burst of uploaded consciousnesses into a kind of digital immortality.
The Hive Mind is not "run" by the Queen or anyone else but is the result of a large number of independent sub-processes in a distributed network that work in a kind of "pandemonium" system in which the survival of the hive is all that matters.
When used as a more general metaphor (as in "Hey Reddit: what does the Hive Mind think of this?"), the "hive mind" represents a kind of "wisdom of crowds" dynamic arising out of the interaction of many independent and competing processes.
The most important feature of the hive mind is that individuals have absolutely no intrinsic value; their only value is what they contribute to the survival of the hive.
"Hive Mind" is an absolutely TERRIBLE metaphor for anything to do with Trump and his party / movement / followers or whatever you want to call it.
The other day I used Grok to ask which position a particular circuit breaker was off and which was on. Grok with a 50/50 chance got it 100% wrong. After I told it that I was looking at one and they were wrong, it still insisted.
Grok got my zip code wrong based on my address, which is really easy, as well as other simple facts I've tested.
It gets lots of politically sensitive things wrong, and will usually admit it, but damn, how can you count on a tool that simply doesn't work? I still use it to save time, but you got to verify.
Something is making Grok stupid, and I think it's the same thing that makes a lot of us stupid.
Democrats are evenly divided between their socialist faction and their corrupt capitalist faction. Orange Evil is an insufficient unifying force; it would take a generational political talent (on the order of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama) to make the party strong again, and it would sound nothing like the current bastard-spawn language of Dem consultant and MSNBC personality.
@Prof M. Drout: entirely wrong about the "hive mind."
In 1989, Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the Borg and the rough concept went mainstream (and it then became wildly popular).
I recall that "Human Hive" entered to popular use with Sid Meier's Civilization turn-based games of the 1990s. This fictional culture seemed to be derived from the politics of Communist China and the Japanese empire.
AI tells me that the queen bee does not direct the hive. Her pheromones may signal that she is healthy and ready to procreate, but the workers themselves make the "decisions" about the hive (if that's the right word). Of course, we all know better than to trust AI.
Democrats would seem to fit the hive mind scenario better than Trump Republicans. Memes and mantras are implanted beforehand. DEI, climate change, "nation of immigrants," "Dreamers," "Black Lives Matter," "Defund the Police," "Save Our Democracy." Leaders have only to say the meme or mantra, and everyone knows what to do without getting specific orders or directions.
My husband was listening to James Carville's podcast today; Carville was ranting (as he does these days) that the Democrats need to accept the fact that they're the opposition and stop trying to come up with policies and ideas. Their whole job, he says, at least through the midterms if not 2028, is simply to oppose everything Trump says and does.
I asked whether Carville might be a closet Republican at this point.
I also noted that I hadn't noticed the Democrats trying to come up with policies or ideas in any great numbers, either.
Apparently he also had a "Nazi and fascism expert" on to discuss the eerie parallels between our time and 1930s Germany. So I guess bringing down the temperature is right out.
Enigma said...
"In 1989, Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the Borg"
Damn. You're right. I had forgotten about the Borg. That's definitely the vector that brought "hive mind" to a large audience.
Also, I should have typed '80s rather than '90s, because I was off USENET by the middle of '89 (except for endlessly arguing Gretzky vs Lemiuex on rec.sport.hockey.nhl), so the original hive-mind arguments that focused on Herbert's books, out of which came the insanity that Stephenson parodies with the whole "RIST" thing, must have been '86-'89 in rec.arts.sf (the era when all the most annoying people used "Wintermute" in their handles). Then the Star Trek Borg spread the idea to the masses.
no he isnt Carville just thinks if your wrap up the dogfood in a shiny new package the dogs will eat it, it worked twice before in 1992 and 2008
the Alliance in Firefly, seems to be very China infused, a largely huxleyan state with some orwellian touches,
wintermute was armitages alter ego from neuromancer no,
Didn't Heinlein introduce a colony of Humanoids with a hive mind in Methuselah's Children? In 1941. A woman on Lazarus Long's interstellar exploration ship, SPOILER, fearing death, chooses to join with them so her self continues to live forever in the hive mind.
narciso said...
wintermute was armitages alter ego from neuromancer no,
Sort of. Wintermute was one of the two AIs (Neuromancer was the other) that were working to get themselves free of hard-wired limits by having Case et al. hack them. Wintermute had created a persona for Armitage, but it was fragile and eventually broke down.
Essentially Wintermute was specialized for personality and improvisational ability; Neuromancer was for long-term detailed planning.
How does Grok (or any of the AI's) learn? It scours the internet for posts about the subject of a query. It changes it's response based on whether the original query doesn't satisfy the questioner. Rinse, lather, repeat. So Grok searches sites like Reddit, Blue Sky, X, "news" sources, Fact Checkers and more. And it spews out what too many think is a dispassionate compilation of "truths".
Then we see that lawsuits include AI generated case law that, miracle of miracles, happens to support the attorny's position. BUT TURN OUT TO BE INVENTED OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH. But, still.... Grok.... AI.... oh tell us oh great intellect, tell us, please. Scary. Or it should be,
I don't care about Pete's personal predilections as long as they're legal. Is he smart? Does he genuinely have the country's best interests at heart? The rest is identity politics and that never goes away.
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