I blocked a commenter for two reasons (at least). The commenter was hijacking the discussion on this post and turning it into a platform for advocating her/his own interests, culminating in offering an apologia for gay sex.
Keith - great work here. Great connection with That Hideous Strength too. Yes, media and entertainment very often use the same tactics as that scene of the objective room. That is one of my favorite scenes in the book too. So insidious, so dangerous, so intentional in steering people away from Truth and objectivity.
On my substack I interviewed Leila Lawler about Lewis’ abolition of man and that hideous strength (we touched on the objective room scene). I’m interviewing another Lewis expert in a few weeks and we are going to deep dive into this scene and others from that hideous strength.
Great points. We almost never watched “children’s tv” when the girls were preschoolers so missed most of the popular shows you mention (Bluey, Peppa etc). My main concern wasn’t so much the propaganda but the vacuity you mentioned. I just couldn’t stand the idea of being subjected to that constantly and the demand for consumer articles attached to it. So we just skipped it all. (Actually very easy to do with young kids, if you never let them get addicted.)
But, there’s no total media blackout here either. We watch Disney movies (DVD, not streaming service) and the girl’s grandparents bought them Amazon tablets which have a variety of games and books. I’m pretty suspicious of these tablets and put a lot of boundaries around their use, but I haven’t seen any content that makes me want to run them over with a truck yet. (LOL.) I did get irritated the other day by a game that my youngest was playing where she was creating “elf kittens” with a “breeding machine”. Felt just a bit too “Brave New World.”
I am very ambivalent about the messages my daughters get but at the same time I know we are all swimming in the same water and there will be some exposure even if I avoid the blatant and obvious. My strategy is to put my energy into sharing what I consider high value literature, and so far so good.
While I respect the effort collecting this data must obviously have taken, I have to ask. . . why bother?
Observant people have always taken the notion that "conditioning is going on with children's programming" for granted. To be glib, that's why they call it "programming," after all.
But more seriously, I get the impression that you're literally trying to reverse-engineer the notion that truth and meaning can be conveyed through metaphor, symbolism, and narrative, rather than propositions and argument, by. . . using AI to scrape flagged propositions out of a huge sample of kids TV shows.
I guess there's theoretically some value to be had in being able to put something like rigorous numbers on the phenomenon, sure. But you're really just trying to use propositions as a proxy for what is often a far more subtle phenomenon. All you're going to get using that approach are the most blatant, hamfisted examples. It seems very difficult to me to write functional code that would accurately flag things like "The white male character is almost invariably in the wrong," "Feelings are generally presented as unfailingly accurate reflections of reality," "Men and women are assumed to be entirely interchangeable in their abilities and capacities," "Decisive action is generally frowned upon," "Conflict resolution largely consists of passive-aggressive tone policing," "The importance of the traditional family is either minimized or skipped over entirely," "Priority is given to voluntary peer relationships instead of familial ties," "Any restrictions imposed upon the characters are portrayed negatively," "Self-reliance and self-defense are discouraged in favor of reliance upon (usually female!) authority figures," "The importance and health of romantic relationships is portrayed as being entirely a function of personal pleasure and autonomy and does not contain any sense of mutual obligation or embeddedness in a wider community," etc.
That's where the real indoctrination happens. And none of it is amenable to the sort of rigorous, propositional definition required for coding AI prompts.
Haha! This is a great response. To be honest, the answer to "why bother?" was that I was quarantined in a hotel room, 1500 miles from home, waiting to finish Covid so I could fly home without being a slug and exposing everyone around me. I was bored and wanted to develop a better sense for what the most recent language models are capable of and these are some questions I wanted answered. I didn't doubt that some kind of propagandizing was going on, but now I have a better idea who and how and how much.
All of the examples of ideas you would like to flag are really stellar things to assess. Excellent really. While you seem to be self-assured that you already have a comprehensive grasp of the limitations of all these models and everything they will ever be capable of, the pace of innovation and constant algorithmic enhancements make me more inclined toward gathering empirical data rather than simply trusting my own untested opinions. Part of the purpose of this exercise was to test the actual capabilities and not presume I already had all the answers. Also, by building the automation, I'm able to test the limitations of new models as they emerge without going to so much trouble the next time.
Thanks! All of that's fair enough. Indeed, "Because I was stuck, isolated, and bored" strikes me as as an entirely sufficient reason to try something like this. You could certainly do a lot worse. Like, say, actually watching any of those shows, eh?
Though I the limitation I'm trying to get at is one of kind, not degree, I think. The human mind perceives, expresses, experiences, and generates meaning in ways I believe are fundamentally irreducible to propositions. Human consciousness isn't algorithmic, and meaning is a function of consciousness.
This is, for example, why there can never be a truly definitive, single "correct" meaning of, say, any decent poem (though there can certainly be definitively incorrect ones!). Or why the same poem can mean different things to the same person at different times.
The same is true of all narratives, to a greater or lesser extent. And the better and more effectively these layers of meaning are constructed, the less effective algorithmic analysis becomes.
So if you are going to subject a large n of material to algorithmic analysis, kids shows are probably your best bet. They're typically a lot simpler and less multilayered than material targeted at adults, or even teenagers. Young children don't have enough experience to be able to comprehend subtlety to any helpful degree.
Well. . . Yes. . . . But "alignment of interests," "team play," and "the media being full of genuinely terrible people," can explain most of what's likely going on here.
If someone thinks they can fly, and they are standing on the ledge of a tall building about to launch themselves into the air, there is nothing kind or loving about affirming their belief in their ability to fly. As it happens, I know and love many gay people, and because I love them, I take the trouble of being honest in my relationships with them. A person is neither "prejudiced" nor "condemning" for challenging the self-destructive pursuits that another person engages in, your idiosyncratic views of the biblical text notwithstanding.
I wrote out a long reply but realized it was probably a waste to do so. Simply put, you do not actually have to think that long to realize that homosexual acts can be incredibly self-destructive. You don't even have to get to the soul-destroying spiritual aspect. The sex acts associated especially with men having sex with men are the most dangerous and risky sex acts possible. The fact that we equivocate them with male/female relations (or gah, expect men and women to do them too) is a major societal illness, that more and more of us are coerced to go along with, and that is why people talk about it.
It is my business when they parade it in front of my children (sometimes literally and graphically. The days of "just leave us alone in our bedrooms/bathhouses/gay bars" were fifty years ago. That's not today.)
They are distasteful. All sin is distasteful. My own sins are distasteful. That's why when I commit them, I try to amend my life and as Jesus told the woman at the well, "Go forth and sin no more."
In principle there is no condemnation from christians, just saying (to put it bluntly) that "you're doing it wrong" and LGBT people still have time to turn around and do it right as God intended in the first place ("male and female he created them"). Your "inner feelings", even if strong and compelling are simply wrong in the big picture of creation. And we're not mere animals.
I blocked a commenter for two reasons (at least). The commenter was hijacking the discussion on this post and turning it into a platform for advocating her/his own interests, culminating in offering an apologia for gay sex.
Keith - great work here. Great connection with That Hideous Strength too. Yes, media and entertainment very often use the same tactics as that scene of the objective room. That is one of my favorite scenes in the book too. So insidious, so dangerous, so intentional in steering people away from Truth and objectivity.
On my substack I interviewed Leila Lawler about Lewis’ abolition of man and that hideous strength (we touched on the objective room scene). I’m interviewing another Lewis expert in a few weeks and we are going to deep dive into this scene and others from that hideous strength.
Great points. We almost never watched “children’s tv” when the girls were preschoolers so missed most of the popular shows you mention (Bluey, Peppa etc). My main concern wasn’t so much the propaganda but the vacuity you mentioned. I just couldn’t stand the idea of being subjected to that constantly and the demand for consumer articles attached to it. So we just skipped it all. (Actually very easy to do with young kids, if you never let them get addicted.)
But, there’s no total media blackout here either. We watch Disney movies (DVD, not streaming service) and the girl’s grandparents bought them Amazon tablets which have a variety of games and books. I’m pretty suspicious of these tablets and put a lot of boundaries around their use, but I haven’t seen any content that makes me want to run them over with a truck yet. (LOL.) I did get irritated the other day by a game that my youngest was playing where she was creating “elf kittens” with a “breeding machine”. Felt just a bit too “Brave New World.”
I am very ambivalent about the messages my daughters get but at the same time I know we are all swimming in the same water and there will be some exposure even if I avoid the blatant and obvious. My strategy is to put my energy into sharing what I consider high value literature, and so far so good.
Interesting. Very cool application of AI.
While I respect the effort collecting this data must obviously have taken, I have to ask. . . why bother?
Observant people have always taken the notion that "conditioning is going on with children's programming" for granted. To be glib, that's why they call it "programming," after all.
But more seriously, I get the impression that you're literally trying to reverse-engineer the notion that truth and meaning can be conveyed through metaphor, symbolism, and narrative, rather than propositions and argument, by. . . using AI to scrape flagged propositions out of a huge sample of kids TV shows.
I guess there's theoretically some value to be had in being able to put something like rigorous numbers on the phenomenon, sure. But you're really just trying to use propositions as a proxy for what is often a far more subtle phenomenon. All you're going to get using that approach are the most blatant, hamfisted examples. It seems very difficult to me to write functional code that would accurately flag things like "The white male character is almost invariably in the wrong," "Feelings are generally presented as unfailingly accurate reflections of reality," "Men and women are assumed to be entirely interchangeable in their abilities and capacities," "Decisive action is generally frowned upon," "Conflict resolution largely consists of passive-aggressive tone policing," "The importance of the traditional family is either minimized or skipped over entirely," "Priority is given to voluntary peer relationships instead of familial ties," "Any restrictions imposed upon the characters are portrayed negatively," "Self-reliance and self-defense are discouraged in favor of reliance upon (usually female!) authority figures," "The importance and health of romantic relationships is portrayed as being entirely a function of personal pleasure and autonomy and does not contain any sense of mutual obligation or embeddedness in a wider community," etc.
That's where the real indoctrination happens. And none of it is amenable to the sort of rigorous, propositional definition required for coding AI prompts.
Haha! This is a great response. To be honest, the answer to "why bother?" was that I was quarantined in a hotel room, 1500 miles from home, waiting to finish Covid so I could fly home without being a slug and exposing everyone around me. I was bored and wanted to develop a better sense for what the most recent language models are capable of and these are some questions I wanted answered. I didn't doubt that some kind of propagandizing was going on, but now I have a better idea who and how and how much.
All of the examples of ideas you would like to flag are really stellar things to assess. Excellent really. While you seem to be self-assured that you already have a comprehensive grasp of the limitations of all these models and everything they will ever be capable of, the pace of innovation and constant algorithmic enhancements make me more inclined toward gathering empirical data rather than simply trusting my own untested opinions. Part of the purpose of this exercise was to test the actual capabilities and not presume I already had all the answers. Also, by building the automation, I'm able to test the limitations of new models as they emerge without going to so much trouble the next time.
Thanks! All of that's fair enough. Indeed, "Because I was stuck, isolated, and bored" strikes me as as an entirely sufficient reason to try something like this. You could certainly do a lot worse. Like, say, actually watching any of those shows, eh?
Though I the limitation I'm trying to get at is one of kind, not degree, I think. The human mind perceives, expresses, experiences, and generates meaning in ways I believe are fundamentally irreducible to propositions. Human consciousness isn't algorithmic, and meaning is a function of consciousness.
This is, for example, why there can never be a truly definitive, single "correct" meaning of, say, any decent poem (though there can certainly be definitively incorrect ones!). Or why the same poem can mean different things to the same person at different times.
The same is true of all narratives, to a greater or lesser extent. And the better and more effectively these layers of meaning are constructed, the less effective algorithmic analysis becomes.
So if you are going to subject a large n of material to algorithmic analysis, kids shows are probably your best bet. They're typically a lot simpler and less multilayered than material targeted at adults, or even teenagers. Young children don't have enough experience to be able to comprehend subtlety to any helpful degree.
There is definitely a conspiracy. Satan and his minions are the instigators.
Also, there are many non-fiction heroes in the Bible.
Well. . . Yes. . . . But "alignment of interests," "team play," and "the media being full of genuinely terrible people," can explain most of what's likely going on here.
Interesting analysis, thank you. I totally agree about the vacuousness of children's programming.
If someone thinks they can fly, and they are standing on the ledge of a tall building about to launch themselves into the air, there is nothing kind or loving about affirming their belief in their ability to fly. As it happens, I know and love many gay people, and because I love them, I take the trouble of being honest in my relationships with them. A person is neither "prejudiced" nor "condemning" for challenging the self-destructive pursuits that another person engages in, your idiosyncratic views of the biblical text notwithstanding.
I wrote out a long reply but realized it was probably a waste to do so. Simply put, you do not actually have to think that long to realize that homosexual acts can be incredibly self-destructive. You don't even have to get to the soul-destroying spiritual aspect. The sex acts associated especially with men having sex with men are the most dangerous and risky sex acts possible. The fact that we equivocate them with male/female relations (or gah, expect men and women to do them too) is a major societal illness, that more and more of us are coerced to go along with, and that is why people talk about it.
I'm going to block you now.
It is my business when they parade it in front of my children (sometimes literally and graphically. The days of "just leave us alone in our bedrooms/bathhouses/gay bars" were fifty years ago. That's not today.)
They are distasteful. All sin is distasteful. My own sins are distasteful. That's why when I commit them, I try to amend my life and as Jesus told the woman at the well, "Go forth and sin no more."
In principle there is no condemnation from christians, just saying (to put it bluntly) that "you're doing it wrong" and LGBT people still have time to turn around and do it right as God intended in the first place ("male and female he created them"). Your "inner feelings", even if strong and compelling are simply wrong in the big picture of creation. And we're not mere animals.