Bari Weiss Resignation from the New York Times

Listening to a fascinating interview with Bari Weiss on the Megyn Kelly Show. Weiss resigned from the New York Times last Summer and this is some of her story. She describes herself as left of center on some issues and right of center on others. Anyway, starting at 21:20:

Kelly: “You’re a Jewish woman who’s engaged to another woman. I don’t know, I think some of us outside of that category would think it would save you or that it would help you with the New York Times. Nope, you have to be full submission to their orthodoxy or you’re out…. So, did you ever have in-person arguments with people or was it more just the frosty feeling?“

Weiss: “It wasn’t just a feeling. I mean, this was, by the end, there were slack channels with – this was following the Tom Cotton op-ed – there were slack channels with more than 2,000 employees of the New York Times including every member of the masthead of the paper going up to the very top. And people were saying, if this company is going to be an inclusive and diverse company, we need to talk about how Bari Weiss still works here. Or people were putting [inaudible] next to my name. They put guillotine emojis next to the name of my, the boss that hired me, he was pushed out of the paper, James Bennett. I don’t think anyone was punished or fired for any – I know that they weren’t fired for any of those things. So, it was very explicit by the end.

“But, there were certain things – there was another editor who, my editor, one of the editors was checking a piece by me and said, is Bari Weiss writing about the Jews again? Now, of course, he laughed that off, because what else are you going to do? But, just imagine that being said about any other minority group. It would be unfathomable.

“…I’ll furnish the war”

Armed protests being planned at all 50 state capitols, FBI bulletin says

“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” (explanation in a moment).

I’ll be honest, I’m all in favor of impeachment, especially if that means Trump can’t run again in the future. My concern is the impact that will have on the most passionate Trump followers. I recently sat through a 2-hour “1st hand account on the front line in DC”. I did it to try to understand where they’re coming from. I guess you could say that the following is what I came away with.

Here’s my concern. These people (not just the 200 that stormed the capitol building, but the several 1000 others who were there peacefully protesting) came from all over the country (the person in the podcast I watched is from WA) with the expectation that they could actually stop the confirmation of the electoral college vote. They don’t see it as a legitimate vote. So, what some see here as the normal, lawful procedures required to confirm the voice of the people, they don’t see it as lawful. It’s not lawful, because they believe there was a large-scale conspiracy to hand votes to Biden.

I don’t want to misrepresent this person, so I’ll say that from my perspective, many of these people seem to view this as 1776 all over again. Their protest failed to accomplish its purpose. And when people who believe there is injustice and corruption at the highest levels of government start to feel that there is no other peaceful recourse, they’re compelled to use more and more extreme measures. I’m concerned impeachment will only confirm this narrative with all the more certainty. Ashli Babbitt (whose death was absolutely a tragedy) is most likely seen as a martyr for the cause of the patriots. Trump and others have been banned from Twitter and are regrouping in Parler. Amazon, Apple and Google have cut off Parler. Figuratively and literally, this feeds into the notion that they’re outcasts and they’re being oppressed.

Bias

https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/news/news/shameful-moment-history-sisters-react-insurrection-us-capitol

The more I’ve thought about it, the more convinced I am that human bias operates on the exact same principles as machine learning. It comes down to (1) what “features” (criteria) we base our “predictions” (judgments) on and (2) the number and variety of examples we expose our minds to.

Let’s say I want to “train” a model in my brain to recognize whether a person is “good” or “bad”. And, let’s say my brain already has some definition of “good” (someone who smiles and displays a certain amount of camaraderie with others) and “bad” (someone who makes angry faces, yells, and breaks things).

For item #2 above, let’s say I train my brain by exposing it to media images of a certain group of people who – oh, I don’t know – were in and around the capitol building of a major world power on a day when the the fate of the nation was being decided.

Based on my “good”/”bad” labels, many in this sample fall into the “bad” category and fewer in the “good” category. Standout physical features of this sample of individuals tend to be things like red MAGA hat, patriotic paraphernalia, and perhaps, to a lesser extent facial hair and hairy chests. These features (their presence or absence) will become strong predictors in my model distinguishing good people from bad people.

Now, it’s time to use the model in my brain to make “predictions” or come to conclusions or judgements about an independent sample of individuals – let’s say, a large population of people gathered earlier in the day in the same area as the group we used to train our model.