Roundtable: Reporting on Reports

I am quoted in this nice piece looking at how journalists do their work, in particular how we deal with massive reports:

https://www.theopennotebook.com/2025/04/29/roundtable-reporting-on-reports-how-journalists-harness-hundred-page-documents/

Steering global culture in the 'right' direction

Disclaimer: I usually post links to stories published in the mainstream media. But this is just a random musing... it has not been fact checked nor published anywhere. Take it with a grain of salt.

I am one of many people extremely concerned by what I see going on in the US right now. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about all this and I think my concern boils down to 2 core issues.

1)    A shift towards ‘common sense’ truth

In  medieval law, a person's character, reputation and background were deemed as important as actual physical evidence of any one particular crime; so, someone could be convicted for being a "bad sort" rather than because it was provable that they did something wrong. Likewise, you could be acquitted, despite evidence, if you swore your innocence and had enough high-standing people come in and act as character witnesses. It seems like the US is going back to that... it doesn't matter (to Trump) if Abrego Garcia really is or isn't in a gang, it only matters that he's the kind of guy who might be in a gang. Trump thinks that Garcia has MS13 on his hand and it does not alter Trump’s overarching opinion about Garcia if it is shown that he does not.

Plenty of scholars have argued that there are two kinds of truth. One is based in fact and evidence. The other is based in common sense: what you feel in your gut to be true. The latter (as espoused by Trump and his supporters) is largely immune to change based on evidence. The 'common sense' approach aims to 'cut through bullshit' and get to the heart of things. There’s a lot that’s appealing about that, and it is reminiscent of 'faith', which also withstands lack of evidence. The fact-based approach certainly has issues: it involves more red tape and some people who you really think are guilty will go free because of lack of evidence. But it has widely been acknowledged that the fact-based approach is more fair and equitable. The problem with going with your gut is that your gut is often biased and leans into fear of change or fear of difference.  

This shifting perception of truth goes back to long before Trump; remember in 2005 “truthiness” was declared the word of the year. That was under Bush. But Trump has taken ‘truthiness’ to new heights.

2)    A shift towards self-interest.  

When my kids were little I told them they had to do 3 things: be good to themselves (eat veggies), be good to others (share toys), be good to the planet (don’t waste stuff). This advice applies to adults too. But it gets complicated. Some things fulfill all 3 missions – if I walk to the store instead of driving, I get exercise (good for me), don’t contribute to traffic (good for others) and don’t contribute to emissions (good for planet). But plenty of things require that we prioritize one thing over the other. If I give all my money to charity that’s good for others but no good for me. If a starving child steals food, that’s good for the child but bad for others. How do we weigh these concerns?

Different societies do this differently. Many Indigenous communities and eastern cultures place a higher value on ‘good for others/planet’ than they do on themselves (scholars call these ‘collectivist cultures’). Western societies tend to place a higher value on the self (‘individualistic cultures’). This affects everything from whether it’s deemed okay to take the last piece of pizza at a party, to taxation systems, to whether how a self-driving car should act in the case of a crash (a very cool experiment called the Moral Machine explored cultural differences in whether it should preserve the most number of lives, or certain types of lives). There is no absolute right or wrong here, just cultural differences.

But Trump is taking individualistic tendencies to extremes. He seems to be focused entirely on whether the price of gas/eggs/homes is going up or down (see above discussion of different kinds of truth, which applies here), and thus whether any one person will be able to afford a better life. There seems to be little to no consideration for what might be good for others or the world at large. This is literally embedded in the slogan “America First”. While I acknowledge that the leader of any one country is indeed supposed to make things better for their own populace, there surely needs to be a certain level of consideration for the broader picture. When Trump talks about Russia/Ukraine it’s all about what Americans will get in return for peace, and nothing about whether peace might be the morally correct thing to strive for on behalf of the world.

Trump now has a task force against anti-Christian values. Well, Christian values include such things as compassion, love, kindness, patience, generosity, forgiveness. Trump seems more focused on retribution and elbowing his way to the top of the pile.

I’m sure history must provide lessons on how to shift these issues in what I believe to be the 'better' direction. I support a society that privileges evidence over gut feelings, and that supports communal well-being. I’m just not sure how to get us there.

What PM Mark Carney means for science in Canada

The Liberals have won Canada's federal election, taking a rare 4th consecutive term. My story for Nature on what this bodes for science. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01343-1

AI cracks cartoon caption contests

AI has gotten reasonably good at puns and jokes, including visual ones, and can now write pretty good captions for caption contests, create funny images for cards, and more.

I tried it out on the New Yorker caption competition, and personally I like its suggestion better than the official winner.

 

ChatGPT: "Psst. Wanna buy some killer jokes?"

Actual winner: “Tell me a joke as if your life depended on it.” - Dave Matta, Pittsburgh, Pa.

I'm not the only one doing this, of course. Here's a paper on the topic from 2024 (wish I had seen it at the time!) https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.18949