India ruling party's IT cell used AI to show smile on arrested protesters' faces | Hacker News Reader

India ruling party's IT cell used AI to show smile on arrested protesters' faces

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That is getting real freaking dystopian. Sure, we would have been able to do this before, and the Soviet Union did a ton of photo editing. But doing this particular edit must have been so easy. No cost at all, no mental barrier. You would almost think 'why bother'. And before anyone says 'yeah, but the truth came out'. Well, we saw it, but how many of the particular audience of whatever that outlet was will never see the original photo and will never question the narrative they were sold?

> yeah, but the truth came out

The truth came out this time. To borrow from Ozark: this isn't the only time they doctored photos, it's the only time they got caught.

The truth came out too late anyway. The fact that it's been fact checked doesn't matter. People wo want to believe in a certain agenda have already got the misinformation they need, and it's not like they're seeking out other sources to fact check their information. They're not even the target audience of people who are fact checking this misinformation so the damage is already done.

And those having seen the doctored images wont know (or care) that they were fake.

Exactly. Even when a major TV channels was busting fake news in my country, people just switched to other govt-sponsored (bribed?) channel to hear what they wanted to hear. It became a common meme to say that major TV channel has an agenda (and either silence or whataboustism ensues once people are questioned about the actual fake news).

People will always switch to the brand of media that shows the truth that validates their existing beliefs. Today, there are a handful of "belief buckets" to choose from. In the USA, you have conservative news channels and mainstream news channels. You can pick your favorite source of truth, but they come as a package deal. If you strongly believe X is factual, you'll tune in to the channel that presents X as factual. That channel will also present Y and Z as factual, so you may slowly start believing Y and Z, too.

The obvious end state of this all will be news channels customized per-person. It's already starting with the custom-tailored Facebook/Twitter feeds. If you personally believe A, Y, and C, but not X, B, or Z, your news reports will be customized to show A, Y, and C as factual and ridicule X, B, and Z. Someone else will get presented an entirely different set of facts. Once the algorithm knows your beliefs, AI can produce an unlimited number of articles confirming those beliefs, complete with photos, videos, sources, fact checks, official reports and references.

Just use the word "Filter Bubble". It's cleaner. /Facebook meme

I kind of knew that. But I didn’t realize how bad it was until the last few years.

The WSJ, Forbes and the National Review were what I considered reliably conservative sites that I use to be able to quote to conservative friends. Once they turned against Trump, they became part of the untrusted “mainstream media”.

Then when FoxNews called the 2020 election fairly, then they became sellouts and people started flocking to NewsMax. Whatever I thought of FoxNews over the years, I always thought their election night coverage was straight down the line.

RedState kicked out all of their neverTrumpers because they were losing readers.

Then conservatives started criticizing NewsMax when they would slightly push back against the “election was stolen” claims.

Also the truth came out here, but I wonder if the truth will get out on Indian Twitter given that the Indian government is one of the most prolific issuers of Twitter takedowns, and the odds of them being approved has supposedly spiked from about 50% under the old leadership to about 99% since Elon took over. Previously governments had to expect some pushback against over-reaching takedown requests, but the new policy of rubber stamping nearly any request without a second thought means it's open season for them to censor anything inconvenient.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/2/twitter-fulfillin...

Mm, can’t wait to live on Mars with chairman Elon.

That is what a lot of us think the real threat of "AI" is: not that it will autonomously produce bad outcomes for humanity, but because it's a tool that's indifferent to truth or falsehood it allows any kind of truth or reality based politics to be totally flooded out of the public sphere. Everyone ends up fighting in the hall of mirrors.

Yeah. The postmodernists (as I understand them) have been talking about "post truth" and "claims of truth are just assertions of power". And I've always thought that their position was insane.

Now they look more like prophets. That world is increasingly the world we live in. The question becomes, how can we stay sane in that world? How can we find enough actual truth (truth that is actually true, true in the old sense of corresponding to the reality of what is) in order to function? To function as individuals, and to function as a society? How do we deal with this?

Disconnect and build a network of trust.

Or build walled gardens inside the connected world. Dunbar's number, right?

Interesting, what are your views on that?

I've only thought about it superficially. I think web of trust is a better model for how humans work, but whenever someone tries to translate it to the digital world it fails.

(Lets call this approach digital villages for the sake of argument).

We have lots of examples of digital villages working - forums, subreddits, chatrooms, MUDs, etc etc. Maybe it's a case of worse is better? Or maybe everyone who implements web of trust immediately tries to jam crypto in there and turns off all the normal people? What do you think?

I tend to think the small scale worked better for more meaningful connections (high signal to noise, content to interest, less counting likes and subs, less ads) My best experiences online aren’t Big Social : it’s small forums, IRC chatrooms with high engagement, high trust scenarios like people being themselves immediately without anonymity.

I tend to think lots of social spaces have been engineered by engineers, not people. The tech has been more important than the value it can bring in a human context. (Exaggerating for emphasis here, it’s not black and white but functionally true)

Big fan of the Six Idea’s (M.J. Adler) for meaningful life that is fairly universal: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty - the ideas we judge by; and Liberty, Equality and Justice - the ideas we act on.

I feel a food online social space should strive for high marks in these areas.

Doesn’t that just create echo chambers?

Sure, what of it? There's no rule saying people can't eblong to more than one echo chamber.

> That world is increasingly the world we live in

I think the point of the postmodernists was that was always the world we live in, it's just that the Internet has made it much more visible and we can see the fraying and the contradictions. It's just that, for a fairly narrow window of time and societies, there was enough of an honor culture about being caught lying that the discourse-reality matched fairly well the actual reality. But even in the 20th century that required hiding a lot of perspectives, or only slowly and begrudgingly acknowledging them.

There's a distinction of degree but not of kind between "presenting the version of events most favourable to yourself" vs "presenting an entirely fictional version". I don't know how we get that back.

I think you capture it, but to make it clear, post-modernism existed before the Internet.

I’ve never considered the post-truth perspective as having anything to do with intentional misrepresentation, but rather relativism (which is dangerous in other ways, imho). Outright lying has been used by authoritarians, but it really seems like we need a term to describe societies controlled by blatant, obvious lies (which is where I would consider the US at the moment). People like to use fascism, Marxism, etc., but those used similar techniques, for very different ends.

I have a suggestion for the word to describe the current situation in the US:

Agitprop.

It's not just blatant, obvious lies. It's lies *designed to agitate people". I mean, the goal is "media engagement" (and secondarily, "political engagement"), but that comes downstream from getting everybody stirred up.

There are 330 million people in the US, and 1.4 billion in India. You don't need lies for agitprop - such numbers will furnish you with enough real incidents to drive whatever narrative you wish, if you're in a position to pick what gets publicity. Cherrypicking. I'm sure you can think of a few recent examples.

That’s some kind of meta-lying, too. By cherrypicking, you are implicitly saying, “these are the issues of our times, why would I else present this important issue”

I wrote up a much longer reply to this, but I can't get myself to submit it. tl;dr is there are some basic things you cannot say in public today without getting cancelled. And I'm not talking about kiddy porn or extreme Trumpisms.

Edit: Literally took 5 minutes for the first downvote, despite not mentioning a single "issue". What's that old phrase? QED?

I suspect your comment is downvoted because it's ominous and substance-free. Reasonably so, I think. Your comment is in fact a negative drag on the quality of conversation here.

Live a little. Go ahead and share your perspectives. The maximum downvote damage is -5 points. You'll survive. I'll upvote you even if I disagree. Unless they're just the standard talking points from one side or another on some contentious topic, which is too boring to upvote.

OK, here's an example: A couple of months ago they were tossing around the idea of "retaking Crimea". I believe that any effort to do that should be based on a best effort assessment of the will of the people living there, because those are the people who will be getting artillery shells in their livingroom in exchange for it. Based on my own experience with expats from there and Donbas, who still have family in the area, those people are happy being Russian again. Show me on CNN or NPR where their voices and perspectives are being shared.

Again, this is just an example, not my personal agenda. What I want to point out is that we've normalized that there are a handful of forbidden topics that you will get punched for if you approach them with anything but a pre-formed opinion that matches the status quo.

Edit: And just as a turn of the screw, I'm going to say that the COVID vaccines are pretty shit compared to ones like smallpox, polio, and rabies vaccines, which actually (and sometimes retroactively) prevent you from getting the disease you were vaccinated against. Oh heck, I'm not allowed to say that thing that we all know. I mean if you take a high level view of it, they take the edge off the problem, but they still kind of suck.

> those people are happy being Russian again. Show me on CNN or NPR where their voices and perspectives are being shared.

Here we go, as requested:

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/ukraine-cris...

> One voter, Grigory Illarionovich, told CNN, “I’m for restoring Crimea to Russia. Returning what Khrushchev took away.”

> Another voter in Perevalnoye, Viktor Savchenko, said he would never vote for the government in Kiev. “I want us to join Russia, and live like Russians, with all their rights,” he said.

> Victoria Khudyakova said she also had voted to join Russia, which she sees as being “spiritually close” to Crimea. “For me, Russia is an opportunity for our Crimea to develop, to bloom. And I believe that it will be so,” she said.

[...]

> CNN analyst and Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner similarly stressed that Sunday’s vote was in no way staged. “When you look at the celebrations, you can’t doubt that these people really are very happy,” he said.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/06/591266939/how-people-in-crime...

> DEMID KUPAYEV: (Through interpreter) I witnessed how babushkas came up and said, thank God the time has come for Crimea to return to its historic homeland.

> KIM: Kupayev says international sanctions have made finding work in commercial shipping harder. But like many Crimeans, he calls economic hardship the acceptable price of joining Russia.

Yep, 2014 and 2018. Meanwhile, for the second one, if you scroll down to the "More Stories from NPR" section:

- Two dead, 23 wounded in a Russian strike on a Ukrainian medical clinic

- Ukraine secured military aid, including advanced fighter jets, at the G-7 summit

- Zelenskyy arrives at G-7 summit in Japan as leaders ramp up pressure on Russia

- Russia attacked the hometown of Ukraine's Eurovision band just before its performance

Fair and balanced reporting, right there. The first and last bullet points aren't at all the bald-faced examples of atrocity propaganda that we've just accepted as part of our daily feed.

Next, they're going to be raping nuns on tables[1] and throwing babies out of their incubators[2].

[1] http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/ComeingU...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony#:~:text=In%2....

OK, I think that's a valid consideration. I don't think you'll get much pushback for prioritizing the will of the people, and their disinterest in living in a war zone. I have not read anything on NPR or CNN calling for the expansion of war in the Baltics. But they run opinion pieces too, just like most other media outlets.

I was expecting something controversial. :)

The counterargument of course is that the region was annexed by aggression, which is dangerous to legitimize. Letting the bullies win is a recipe for creating more and bigger bullies.

But sometimes there are no good answers. I don't know any trustworthy sources of information from that area (only expats and news reporting which are all various degrees of clueless and biased).

Avoiding inflicting war on a reluctant people sounds humane. Restoring national sovereignty to a conquered people sounds noble. Impeding the spread of territorial aggression and natural resource theft sounds righteous.

Personal opinion, pragmatic I think: You can't retake Crimea without obliterating Russia. You can't obliterate Russia without horrifying consequences. Don't retake Crimea, but draw a very clear and public line, and allow no concessions regarding the next Crimea (Ukraine). This turns out to be very close to the foreign policy of most of the world.

Ah, like the red lines drawn up for Assad in Syria.

And Crimea is strategic. Look at a map. Without it, the Ukraine and its ports are always under threat from the whims of Russia.

It’s probably true that you can’t crush Russia without serious consequences. Unfortunately, you can’t let it win territory without very serious consequences either.

This follows its own tragic logic now and you (we) can’t wish for a nice solution that has no consequences down the line. Letting Russia off the hook is a terrible precedent.

I agree completely.

We were asleep when Russia took Crimea, and unprepared to react with anything more than stern words. We were not ready for Putin. He obviously saw the opportunity, took the risk, and he won.

It would be tragic to return to a world where aggressive expansionism is the norm.

But fighting back through Crimea would be tragic also. And it's not clear we would have the support of the locals. That's courting disaster even before you contemplate that the opposing leader is mercurial and nuclear.

My opinion is that we have to take the L on Crimea, but make it clear that the world is not sleeping any more, and that Ukraine is not next on the menu.

Syria is an important example. US bluster doesn't carry much weight in the world these days.

But the situation in Ukraine is very different. It astonishes me that there's political disagreement on Russia's aggression toward neighbors, but if we fail Ukraine it will be squarely the fault of one group of people, and it will be incredibly damaging to US interests in the world.

I don’t think a long fight through Crimea has to be necessary at all. The Russian troops cab withdraw over the bridge to Russia when it’s apparent they will otherwise be trapped.

Leaving Crimea to Russia is not just appeasement, it’s strategically unsound.

The Ukrainians can also dam the river to Crimea again and continually attack Russian supply lines to Crimea. Russia will be in a tight spot if the water supply to Crimea stops and the bridge explodes.

This is a more recent article that offers a more nuanced perspective, even down to the title:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/15/why-crimea-is-...

(The Guardian is pretty much pro-Ukraine, pro-war in general.)

To your edit:

There's nothing controversial about saying that it'd be better if the COVID vaccines were better!

The COVID vaccines we have are measurably better than not having a COVID vaccine, and people had worse health outcomes if they believed (acted) otherwise.

Some narratives allow nuance and some do not. Public health communication is a very problematic place for nuance, and the natural nuance of science was weaponized to serve an agenda (which was sometimes blatantly dishonest) -- so avoiding nuance became a pragmatic approach to achieving better outcomes under existing circumstances.

If you felt cancelled for holding out for the complicated nuanced reality, I can sympathize with that feeling. I can also sympathize with those who believed that focusing on the nuance would, broadly, harm people!

Anything other than “trust the science” was eviscerated during the pandemic, as if “trust” had anything to do with science.

I’m hoping at this point we can agree that the efficacy and function of the available vaccines was overstated and the pressure campaign to take it may have been some of the most intense propaganda inflicted on a western nation in recent memory.

Trust is a social phenomenon. The pandemic was a huge social upheaval.

The best information available was being provided by epidemiologists and doctors and statisticians and researchers. It was messy and contradictory and confusing sometimes, especially in the beginning. Like science.

Other information was being provided by politicians and radio hosts and religious figures and somebody's uncle. It was speculative and invented and delusional and manipulated and dishonest sometimes, according to the whims of famous personalities and media outlets. Like gossip.

Given those options, "trust the science" is a pretty reasonable message.

Not "trust the science to have all the answers immediately and with complete accuracy and no amendments", because that is not science.

More like "trust the science over the gossip".

But I take your point. People don't understand science, so it's very easy for them to feel betrayed when science does its usual messy science things.

And of course there were stochastic parrots on either side.

That said, the "trust the science" parrots had better health outcomes than the "impeach fauci" parrots. This seems unlikely to be a coincidence -- and as a blunt social influence tool, it's reasonable to conclude that "trust the science" was the better choice of intense propaganda, if not as persuasive as we all would have liked.

I follow the Ukraine & Crimea goings on. I've now got two twitter accounts, one for pro Ukraine, one for pro Russia. Post something anti one on the wrong account and you soon get blocked etc. It's very polarised as you might expect in a war.

It's hard to find balanced discussion on something like the status of Crimea. Which is complicated - as you say the locals are largely Russian. Then again Russia signed an agreement recognising it as Ukrainian, then invaded and used it as a base to launch war on the rest of Ukraine which they show every intention of repeating if they can.

I haven't downvoted you but I was tempted. Either submit it, submit anonymously, or don't. As it is your comment asks for attention while providing only frustration in return; it's just noise.

> it's just that the Internet has made it much more visible and we can see the fraying and the contradictions

I think the internet has other effects like amplifying niche ideas.

If you were a conspiracy nut before the internet, your local friends will set you straight and either the conspiracy theories fade from your mind or they remain stagnant.

With the internet on the other hand, you can find other likeminded people, people who will accept your conspiracy theories and share their own which you will eagerly consume, and down the rabbit hole all of you will go.

It’s like a bunch of anorexic teen girls encouraging each other and sharing tips on how to starve and throw up. Very quickly you will have a bunch of dead kids.

There is nothing in principle which prevents us from solving this problem. We cannot predict which new knowledge will solve it. But we can say that if we don’t solve it, it will be our fault for not producing the required knowledge fast enough.

Alternatively, it could be our fault for creating a world in which that fast growth in knowledge is required. We didn't have to pursue technologies that make the centralization of power and control easier and easier.

Eventually, some thing that we cannot control (e.g. Giant meteor, pandemic, etc) will come to destroy us.

If it does, it will be our fault for not progressing fast enough in terms of knowledge.

There is no world in which we could, or would want to limit our growth in terms of scientific knowledge. Not to mention the fact that to do so would mean ceding full totalitarian control.

Are you really arguing that we should have no boundries on progress for fear of a rogue asteroid destroying us all? Shouldn't we consider the risks of what we may accidentally break or purposely misuse along the way? Scientific knowledge comes with risks, both in how the tools can be used as well as errogant or misguided belief that we know enough to understand all meaningful implications of wielding said knowledge.

Even the concept of progress as a goal seems misguided and risky. We shouldn't assume something is better simply because it isn't what we had before. "Not worse than what we had before" is a great goal but one that requires effort and focus, it isn't a given law of the universe that all change is good simply because it's change.

Ok, you pick the areas in which to limit progress.

Or we could try to progress everywhere, including in areas of safety from technological risk.

Centralization is technology.

There will always be people looking at any advancement and figuring out how to leverage it to expand their personal capability to project power. Nothing is immune to it. Even primitives of decentralization can be leveraged in a way that defacto centralization is the inevitable outcome.

You don't research things that can't be centralized. You just don't centralize. The cost there though. Is then you have to accept certain things just ain't gonna happen.

Watching Mastodon and the Fediverse expand is an experiment we can watch in real time.

Newcomers to the technology clamoring for it to be more centralized is a daily occurrence. It seems almost entropic, the push towards centralization. It seems to require constant effort to keep it decentralized.

I've always wondered if the push towards centralization is a reaction to fear of the lack of control.

True decentralization and censorship resistance requires taking the bad with the good. I'm the case of Mastodon, if I can't be censored for sharing my views on technology, politics, or sports then the person wishing to sharing illegal photographs of threats that may be illegal in some jurisdictions can't be censored either.

It raises the very interesting question of whether freedom of speech is an all our nothing concept. Very few people would support the idea of being able to say literally whatever you want, but can you really have freedom of speech at all if someone else gets to draw the bounds with which your speech much stay?

In my experience, the only person who has a right to tell me what is acceptable to say in public is myself, which is why it's absolutely essential for me to do so with integrity and discretion.

As we start to build trust economies (which really may only be the way forward), we have to start valuing integrity and discretion, or... as you say, all or nothing.

I think this has something to do with Jefferson's "the cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate", and maybe, just maybe why they insisted on educating it. I wish they'd have made it a constitutional right, along with the right to free speech.

(edit: Bing chat says, "It is true that some of the founding fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, were strong advocates of public education and believed that it was essential for a democratic society. However, they did not explicitly include it in the Constitution, perhaps because they faced opposition from other delegates who favored state sovereignty or feared federal interference. Or maybe they thought that it was implied by the preamble, which states that one of the purposes of the Constitution is to “promote the general welfare” of the people. In any case, the lack of a clear constitutional right to an education has left room for debate and controversy over the years, and has resulted in significant disparities and inequalities in the quality and accessibility of education across the nation."

Oof, the idea that the edit includes a quote from an AI attempting to understand and explain the founding fathers' opinions on public education really cuts to the core of my worries about AI research.

You can make a distinction between empirical truths and things (often claims) that are right and wrong. The former has no 'history'; while the latter is contextual and tied up in the practice and expression of reasons, which is to say, it is essentially historical and cultural.

That's really all that postmodern thought says really. Naturally, for a government to be right or wrong, requires that citizens be critical of it, almost actively antagonistic in their demands for reasons, evidence (be it empirical or otherwise) and clarification. Postmodern thought is a critical tool. So that's not that different than what we have right now (most of HN for instance is hyper-critical of nearly all government truth claims), only the demands on citizens are likely outpacing their resources and abilities.

Even empirical truth has a remarkable degree of social construction. Consider the notion of "force", as empirical as it gets. But then you look at relativity or even just centrifugal force. Scientific revolutions consist of reinterpreting objective facts.

It's not just "nothing is real", which is just intellectual laziness. It's noting that we always interpret the world; we can't avoid it. Ordinary interactions usually arrive at similar interpretations, but people have a remarkable way of being influenced in that judgment. And sometimes that can lead to some really bad outcomes. It's important to recognize that the potential is always there even in things that seem obvious.

> Now they look more like prophets.

Not to me. They just look like another group claiming grand and sweeping theories of truth.

That's somewhat ironic since "postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism toward the 'grand narratives' of modernism."[1]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

Postmodernism is ironic exactly because it is such a "grand narrative" that it is supposedly trying to avoid.

A lot of what enables this is centralized infrastructure. If you have your messages and browsing history and files on your own device, and you make end-to-end encrypted connections to the people you talk to, it's a lot harder to do this kind of thing. Because you have your own personal copy of the thing from when it first happened and if you remember it you can go back and verify it yourself. Then you can point that out, and anyone else can go into their own copy from however long ago and see that the fake doesn't match the original.

Social media companies notoriously blocked users from sending a story to each other in DMs a couple of years ago. It's not a stretch to go from there to deleting past messages in order to memory hole something. And the companies may not even be doing it by choice if they're being pressured by a government.

They can't do that if your data is yours and they can't read it, instead of the only copy being on their servers.

And governments in Australia and the EU are trying to pass laws that make e2e encryption without a back door illegal…

I don't think that Tucker Carlsen style BS machines have anything to do with governments censoring your private messages. You are talking about an entirely different threat model here.

"Censorship apparatus exists" is a threat regardless of what it's being used for because the apparatus doesn't care what it's being used for, and that can change overnight.

They have always been crooks. Just because lying has become even easier doesn't mean that there is no truth.

So I mean, postmodernism is a pretty "diverse" field, and while there are some who would claim to be full relativists, they aren't usually taken very seriously.

What someone like Herbert Marcuse would claim is that there is something like a "definite negation," or Jacques Derrida would call a "trace;" that is, there, sitting behind every signifier (of de Saussure's structural linguistics) its negation of another signifier that defines its position in an ordered chain or a symbolic network. They would not argue that things are relative; rather, social life is regulated by these vast signifying networks that one becomes "subjectivated" in (begins to understand oneself as a subject), where one's "agency" also stands at the limits of this intelligibility: as they say, everything you "decide" is already pre-conscious; every notion of what is "possible," is limited by what is already "intelligible," i.e. what operates in the social-symbolic function as it, like an algorithm, constantly moves and exchanges its various symbolic orderings in what we call the "economy." To be a true agent means to do something which radically restructures this network and radically redefines all its terms: Foucault's "fearless speech," Badiou's "Event." The latter thinker actually explicitly rejects relativism (and is in some ways a platonist--actually many so-called "postmodern" thinkers, Whitehead among them, are considered platonists.)

The position you claim is from "post-modernism":

>"claims of truth are just assertions of power"

finds its origins in Nietzsche, who famously claimed that truth, morality, beauty, etc. were invented by the weak because they feared the powerful and they were jealous of the fact that they couldn't kill their enemies, eat fully, and have sex all the time (Master Morality, which was just doing whatever you wanted). So they rose up, took over, and invented these categories and systems of valuation in order to justify a new regime of power where nobody was able to do what they wanted, and everything was regulated by vast systems of control justified by these metaphysical notions (he refers to this as "Christian Morality.") He claims that Christian morality, after centuries of struggle, has finally won out in the Bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, but now "God" has been subordinated to "Science" while retaining all the metaphysical baggage of christianity "truth, beauty, morality," etc. This is from Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, the argument from which was expanded in Foucault's Discipline and Punishment (the most widely read book from what most people would call "postmodernism").

>truth that is actually true, true in the old sense of corresponding to the reality of what is

The so-called "correspondence theory of truth" is considered a fallacy of the layman in academic philosophy. Truth has always been, in logic, a category: a value, specifically a boolean value. One can make claims about the structure and order of logic and the relation of that to psychological, social-processes (as Frege, Husserl, and many other "anti-psychologists" of the 19th and 20th centuries did); but to claim that language, a signifying act, somehow directly corresponds to the physical objects that it categorizes, can't really be valid: as Shakespeare said "a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet." There is no reason why the words we use have any correspondence to experience--even if there is surely some reason why words can evoke experiences, emotions, like when one hears the name of a past-lover. But that can be attributed to what the "postmodernists" claim: the name evokes an entire symbolic structure and brings it to the surface of consciousness.

> The so-called "correspondence theory of truth" is considered a fallacy of the layman in academic philosophy.

So in your understanding of academic philosophy, how do you account for the critical difference between the two statements below?

“Earth is flat.”

“Earth is a spheroid.”

I don’t see what is fallacious about accepting the second statement as corresponding to facts and dismissing the former for not corresponding. If it’s merely a matter of semantics regarding the words “correspondence” and “truth”, an alternative verbalisation of the critical distinction between those two statements must nonetheless be available; and it should be prioritised in discourse.

> The so-called "correspondence theory of truth" is considered a fallacy of the layman in academic philosophy. Truth has always been, in logic, a category: a value, specifically a boolean value.

Perenially underappreciated in online discussions.

Very nice summary.

I don't have any prescriptions for society as a whole but I can tell you what has worked for me.

Basically I rely on my own observations and experiences: don't trust and verify, to adapt the old saying.

Second I limit myself to trusted sources of information and if I can't find one then I just don't get information on that topic: no information is better than false information.

In practice what this means is no algorithmic news feeds, I'm still looking for a good news source for my local city (haven't found one yet, I moved recently), I think a lot about incentive structures and how that might bias an information source, I (try) to apply skepticism to what I read, I block as much noise as possible (for example I don't pay attention to surface level political news because its all noise and virtually no signal), I focus on long term trends rather than "points" in the timeline.

This is far from perfect but its what has evolved as my approach over time.

>The question becomes, how can we stay sane in that world?

Diversify your information sources.

It will probably do both of those things through autonomous weapons systems and through disinformation.

Some doors were maybe better left unopened, we opened this one. Let's see how it goes.

100%. And the thing I've personally found quite shocking is how the past 5-10 years or so have shown that even when the truth does come out, there are enough "mirrors" as you put it so that people can question anything and believe whatever they want to believe, facts be damned.

A couple weeks ago when the Patriot Front had a white supremacist rally and march in front of the Washington Monument (now of the "red bike guy" fame), many prominent right wing Twitter talking heads tweeted that it must be a left wing conspiracy to make conservatives look bad and that the marchers were federal agents, despite 0 evidence of this, and indeed despite plenty of evidence that they were just actual Patriot Front members. It was difficult for me to tell if they actually believed that fairy tale, or of they felt that it didn't really matter because they knew if they shouted "fake news" loud enough they could get enough like minded people to upvote it.

It was difficult for me to tell if they actually believed that fairy tale, or of they felt that it didn't really matter because they knew if they shouted "fake news" loud enough they could get enough like minded people to upvote it.

It's a tactic to call everything a false flag, even your own ops. It requires virtually zero time, effort, or education to get everyone on your side doing it. Liberals fall for this trick frequently because they are obsessed with being seen to have to correct answer, so they invest for more effort in debunking than the liars did in making their claim.

> Liberals fall for this trick frequently because they are obsessed with being seen to have to correct answer, so they invest for more effort in debunking than the liars did in making their claim.

Excuse me while my eyes roll into the back of my head.

Whether "liberal" or "conservative", some of us still care that facts matter. And honestly I would never have worried so much about calling out so much bullshit in the past until I saw so many of my fellow (voting) citizens actually believe this BS and take it to dangerous extremes. For example, when QAnon first came out, I just smiled a bit and laughed - "This doesn't even reach the level of bad fan fiction" I thought. Yet, lo and behold, significant swaths of the US population believe this, and I find that frightening.

Sorry for not expressing my point more clearly. It's not that nobody should ever engage in debunking, but that deliberately bullshit statements are often introduced on social media to steal the time of well-meaning debunkers.

I realized Qanon was going to be a problem from when it first appeared, but that's because I've spent about 20 years paying close attention to mis- and disinformation and political influence groups. What I'm pointing out here is that the time costs of lying vs debunking favor liars, especially when aggregated across communities.

Ah, gotcha, understood.

haha. they don't get all this delishus Kool aid that is to die for!

I know my good good friend Conservative Fearless Leader will never let me go to jail or die of preventable disease or banish my rites when I want defending.

oops... too late. at least I didn't need to be right.

The Dallas shopping center shooting was the first time in my life I couldn’t tell the difference between online truth and lies. I’m very good as finding out the truth vs lies but this time I couldn’t. Usually disinformation is easy to spot but this time it came out so fast that I had no idea what was real vs fake. It’s a scary time to be living in when you have no idea what is real anymore.

Personally after I was involved with some "news" that was then reported completely wrong (not by malice, but pure incompetence) I've stopped believing anything I read or hear in the media. This was 25 years ago and the trend has only increased. Yes, there is quite a bit of fakery, but 99% of "bad news" is a result of the: 1. No expectation by the public credible sources are quoted when news are reported. 2. Reporters not knowing their arse from their elbow. 2. Their editor/writers"trying to spice it up a little". 3. The speakers making bloody mistake after mistake when reading from a teleprompter in the most important stuff. 4. Other media picking it up and adding their own spin.

It's like "Chinese whisper". I can't count the number of times my partner tells me when I come home "have you heard, there is this horribly stupid law that is coming into effect next month". Then I check, and it's not a law, but a proposal, it hasn't been even accepted to be discussed yet and the details are completely different too.

I understand, not many smart people these days go into "traditional news reporting". It's a pity, because good news reporting is a prerequisite of a well functioning democratic society

It will only get worse, as revenue from traditional news drops they'll be more and more dssperate to make money the only way they can, by increasing the emotional load of the stuff they report. Everything has to be extreme, outraging, horrible etc.

> I can't count the number of times my partner tells me when I come home "have you heard, there is this horribly stupid law that is coming into effect next month". Then I check, and it's not a law, but a proposal, it hasn't been even accepted to be discussed yet and the details are completely different too.

It's certainly not the only source of error, but I find that the answer to my first question ("What, where did you read about that?") is almost always "Facebook".

It's become a running joke in my household. It turns out though that some people read news as entertainment, and don't really care if it's particularly true. This is probably fine, but it breaks down when the evoked response is outrage instead of a laugh.

Arguably there are epistemological reasons why this has always been the case; we don’t know much of anything - we’re limited in time and space. Acceptance of this and trying to use your best judgement is the key here.

Just do your best.

All tools are indifferent to truth. There's no such solution as "make tools that are inclined to truth", it would be even worse because everyone has their own definition of truth when they need it. What we as a humanity need is a tool to keep tabs on trust. You doctor the photo once - all your further photos are considered doctored from now on.

The risk, danger and shallowness of perpetrating lies supported by fake images does not stop at politics.

Think fake instagram accounts with images, coercing and shaming victims for personal revenge. Shady companies selling fake stories supported by fake pictures of "satisfied" users. Influencers and celebrities making themselves look younger, prettier, fuller.

you see anyone who wants to spin a web of lies, AI as a tool makes it easier, possible and in som cases unavoidable.

IMO it doesn't even matter if the truth comes out, the truth wasn't first.

I think the primary issue is that, while internet users usually question the authenticity of photos (as a normal practice), they tend to subconsciously trust what they see in videos.

It will require a significant mental shift to now question practically every single piece of audiovisual content.

> internet users usually question the authenticity of photos

Maybe _you_ do that, but I would not generalize, and I would not necessarily think I’m always capable of doing that myself “by default”

I used to think this problem would solve itself, in that once people were fooled a few times, they'd stop being so easy to fool. The Trump era shut down that quaint idealistic notion. Turns out a lot of people -- maybe all of us to some extent -- actively enjoy being fooled. It makes for a communal experience that we'd otherwise miss out on, or something.

Yeah, the problem is that it's surprisingly easy to fall for the fake if it re-affirms your world view.

I'd hope that people don't like in a world where they believe they have to question the authenticity of everything they see. Why would they keep using the internet at all? And what psychological impact does that have when you view the world assuming everything may be a lie?

I am hoping that AI tooling like this becomes even more widespread (Google Photos is doing that) that more people will finally understand that they cannot trust everything they see online. I hope.

That is not an improvement, because it turns "online" (which is basically everything everywhere - all news media, TV, newspapers) into a politically useless wasteland.

It could just as well be an improvement that makes people smarter, because they will learn not to just believe what they see/hear/read.

Instead, they will have to learn to identify good explanations and rule out bad explanations.

"Online" is already a useless, trustless wasteland and has been since at least 2014. If this causes people to finally see it then maybe we can collectively build something better.

But the conclusion becomes “you can’t trust anything”. I worry about a civilization that can’t agree on even the most basic of facts.

Welcome ... to the desert of the real.

It's not “you can’t trust anything”. It's "you can’t trust anything you're told”.

And that's nothing new. We have been lying since we figured out how to talk.

The sky is not falling.

Indeed. Its not like everything is lost. The majority of the population (anecdotal) jump the gun when it comes to believing a random forwarded message. Just that needs to change to "let me do my research first". That is all.

Just wait until POWs start denouncing their former armies, or KIAs magically return home, or Ukrainian children in Russian families start magically saying how much better it is, etc etc. The demoralizing effect of watching a loved one do this would be immense.

that all happens already when they are forced by their captors say it willingly to remain safe and alive.

The truth comes out but the pro fascist people will have the ammo to keep lying about and repeating the lie. A percentage of the rest will believe it. They keep chipping away like that

This phase won't last long in the grand scheme of things. We've had about 150 years in which people have been conditioned to trust anything that they see in a photograph, but it's always been possible to fake it and for the last 30 years it's been getting dramatically easier. AI just brings us full circle back to the era of woodcuts—just because you see a photorealistic image or hear an audio recording does not mean it's real.

We're likely going to see a few cases like this that take off while people are adapting, but this naivete won't last forever. There will always be a few gullible people, but, just like with Photoshop, we'll get to the point where most people understand what's possible and adapt their reactions accordingly.

The era of easy to reproduce but hard to fake media is actually the historical outlier.

Before that media was written text and everyone knows anyone can make up anything they want in that domain. Before that most people were illiterate so it didn’t matter much. Media wasn’t even much of a thing.

We are headed for the post-media era when any arbitrary piece of media depicting anything can be created for little or no money by anyone with a computer. Nothing can be believed unless you were there or hear it from a known reliable source that was there.

There’s going to be an ugly transition period when we have tons of people who haven’t gotten this memo yet. These people are going to be manipulated en masse with tremendous effectiveness. The push to deplatform misinformation is largely an attempt to stop this, but I think it’s futile. People just have to learn that media is dead and they can’t trust anything anymore.

Hunter Thompson was ahead of his time. The only journalism worth doing in this future is individual gonzo journalism where you go and experience and tell the tale directly to your audience. That of course is vulnerable to spin by the teller, but so are all tales. It’s the best we have. Hopefully honest tellers of first hand tales will exist and get the reputation for honesty they deserve.

> Before that media was written text and everyone knows anyone can make up anything they want in that domain.

From what I gather, Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico was pretty much fanfiction (had somebody write?) about himself. This problem may be older than I thought.

Anyone doing history knows that all the sources are biased. You have to corroborate evidence and adjust for knowing the context in which the work was produced to determine how reliable it is.

Sure. But there was an era that lasted around 100 years when a photo alone was pretty reliable. Photos and especially videos were at least hard to fake. That era is over. Absolutely anything can be faked cheaply and easily.

Really early photography was so poor compared to modern HD images that obvious fakes fooled "serious" people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies vs Arthur Conan Doyle, for example. But yes, it required more effort, and the effort reduction for fakes offered by AI is extremely powerful.

(There is also the sad business of the 1932 Pulitzer https://www.pulitzer.org/news/statement-walter-duranty )

Photography has always been less reliable than many people thought it was, even without considering photo doctoring. Like statistics, the frame you choose in a photo can completely alter the story it's telling. It might be that entering an era where complete fabrication is easy will make people more resistant to the subtler tricks that have worked well hitherto.

Bill Watterson had a series of strips about this in Calvin and Hobbes in 1992 [0].

> CALVIN: This is what I like about photography. People think cameras always tell the truth.

> CALVIN: They think the camera is a dispassionate machine that records only facts. But really, cameras lie all the time! Select the facts and you manipulate the truth!

> CALVIN: For example, I've cleared off this corner of my bed. Take a picture of me here, but crop out all the mess around me, so it looks like I keep my room tidy.

> HOBBES: Is this even legal?

> CALVIN: Wait, let me comb my hair and put on a tie.

[0] This is the one I quoted, but the one before and after it are related: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/09/17

> People just have to learn that media is dead and they can’t trust anything anymore.

That is easy enough. What is difficult is to teach people they cannot just trust the people who tell them what they want to hear.

> Hopefully honest tellers of first hand tales will exist and get the reputation for honesty they deserve.

The odds of that are basically zero. There is no reliable way for people to know whether someone's tales are first hand or not, nor whether they are honest or not. If people stop consuming mainstream media and turn to gonzo journalism, powerful interests will manipulate information channels to direct eyeballs to the journalists they buy. The audience will not notice.

> We've had about 150 years in which people have been conditioned to trust anything that they see in a photograph

This is also about as long as we’ve had popular democracy. (Something like a fifth of Indians are functionally illiterate [1][2].)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363173220_LITERACY_....

Won’t the same apply to public online conversations (social media, forums)? Anyone can be a bot, and thus I think something like conversing digitally with only those whom you exchanged keys with their phone via bluetooth or NFC irl will be more and more common? I know no solution besides web of trust architecture + irl exchanged keys.

Nah, this is fine.

I know hundreds of people have already seen this, but maybe at least some people will see this: these edits were most probably made with a 6 year old face editing app. They are not caused by Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, or any other recent AI "stuff".

> Verified account @wokeflix_ tweeted the same image in a meme

> Verified account @randomsena tweeted the same image

> Another verified account, @RealAtulsay, tweeted the same image

Isn't "Verified" on Twitter just a subscription now, meaning it's just that these people have given Twitter money? Why it matters (in a journalistic sense) who has paid Twitter or not? And why are only some of the verified accounts mentioned as verified accounts, while others are verified but not mentioned as verified?

Such a weird article overall.

I suspect there is considerable overlap in a Venn diagram of those who never hear about the image being manipulated and those who still think a blue tick is reserved for human-verified accounts.

I think that's their point. It's a way of subtly pointing out that verification on Twitter is now useless, and shouldn't be trusted any more than claims from any other user. Even less, I guess, since it's not a equal distribution of people paying for verification, they all skew pretty hard to one side.

That’s probably true for Twitter blue but there appears to be multiple forms of verification, including a government one and an organizations one.

Would be great if they just came out and said it, instead of this passive aggressive nonsense.

Well let’s see what Twitter says about their new blue program

Your account must have no signs of being misleading or deceptive

Your account must have no signs of engaging in platform manipulation and spam

So Twitter is telling us that those accounts should not be deceiving. Yet, they are.

https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit...

Pretty much the definition of "win-win situation" in Elmo's Abridged Dictionary, right?

Sounds more like regular ToS that gives Twitter the right to cancel paid services, not a magic method to fix the issue. I know a ton of verified politicians that lied weekly on Twitter pre Musk. It's an unsolvable issue.

TOS only get used if you're a fly in the ointment in most cases.

If you're running an article on how Elon is changing twitter into a disinformation machine, the fact that they're verifying deceptive accounts would be relevant.

If you're running an article on how the India ruling party used AI to paint protestors in a false light, it isn't relevant. Worse bringing attention to it like this could give less-informed readers the false impression that "verified" actually meant something like "verified by the government".

I have seen so many pro-Russian bot accounts with blue verified symbol. These accounts also get priority on their replies, which are positioned at the start of the tweet conversation compared to non-blue / non paying twitter handles, giving them a bigger amplification.

Whenever I see blue tick accounts now, I notice most of them have <1000 followers and have no authority in the subject matter and I ignore most of them. I have noticed a lot of right-wing handles, all having the blue tick and getting priority on spreading their misinformation as it was in this case.

Elon has broken the verified system on purpose to fit his new anti-government / anti-"woke" agenda.

This is wrong on most every level

Agreed. There's a lot of claims that are unsubstantiated as well as full of anecodes. It's hard to discern how this can lead to 'curious' discussion.

Also, twitter shows the comments from "verified" handles on the top of other comments. Government sponsored trolls have unlimited flow of money to buy verified status and dominate the general public accounts.

This is how BJP government uses public money to run troll campaigns on social media against opposition leaders. [1]

Possibly hundreds or thousands of persons or "journalists" are getting funds from government to abuse the opposition leaders.

[1] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/exclusive-silver-touch-behin...

> Also, twitter shows the comments from "verified" handles on the top of other comments.

This is the exact main problem with paid Verification. Blue tweets surface to the top, disproportionate to the attention they actually receive, meaning you're more likely to see them. You're effectively paying for attention.

The problem isn’t money, it’s unique phone numbers and credit card numbers. Over time there is much easier ways to detect and mass ban platform manipulation accounts.

I’m sure the government of India can make as many numbers and cards as they want, but the problem is still that Twitter can know who issued both and a lot of information about them, including if they’re burner numbers. It still helps tremendously

That’s the promise. Whether they do anything with it is questionable.

https://imgur.com/a/6blpTqF shows my recent advertiser blocks from about 10 mins of browsing. Clearly inauthentic accounts, some paying the $1k gold check fees.

"Verified" is now an anti-signal. It's more likely than not to indicate that the poster is a crank who's paying money to have their opinions disseminated.

I would agree with this, except verified account posts still get shown first.

So cranks and people trying to promote something.

It was never a signal for 99% of verified users. It as a game.

It was an anti-signal before.

It was at least a reliable signal that the person is who they say they are. They are shifting away from actual verification towards attempting to sell status, which rarely works.

Not true of the organisation verification.

Yea. the moment Elon started charging for the blue tick, it became useless and I wouldn't pay for it anymore unless I really want to use the extra goodies that it provides which I don't need personally.

Such a weird comment. Yes, what is wrong with emptying the label of any meaning and letting any misinformation trash account buy it for a few bucks? You might be terminally online but then not everyone is.

Isn’t Verified a feature to (supposedly) attest someone identity instead of attesting the trueness of their tweets?

For my understanding the purpose was to help newcomers to distinguish @realDonaldTrump with @veryRealTrump. It is supposed to prevent impersonating, but that’s just a shift of trust from your own judgement to the Twitter chosen fraud algorithm or whatever method they choose. Can’t see how 10$ add more credibility.

They got rid of the identity part. Now all it indicates is that you pay Twitter.

Why do people care about Twitter at all?

It doesn't matter what people say on 4chan or fox "news", why is twitter any different?

It's all just opinions, not worth anyone's time. Ignore it.

The media we ignore still can have a huge impact on society, on elections, on basic human civility. Ignoring Fox News hasn’t made it any less damaging.

yeah verified only means you either gave your credit card name/number to them or someone gave them a stolen one. It's basically useless. However in this case I'm more apt to believe the government is manipulating photos than randos on twitter given the recent drive towards religious and ethnic minority discrimination by the Indian government.

I am amazed that the title is allowed to stand despite the original title and the content.

The origin of the image is unclear. Sure, one can speculate that "India ruling party's IT cell" is behind the morphed image. This is what this comment section is for. But without hard proof the title is as much of an propaganda as are the morphed image.

Are we going to tag everything a Democrat does as "US ruling party's" doing?

this, @dang please review the title

Do you think it is possible for one side to doctor images and make it viral by planting it in the opposition's filter bubble (possibly by your embedded twitter agents) only to be easily outed like Alan Sokal did. We live in interesting times.

They just shared the pictures right? We aren’t sure if they actually created the pictures, or who they obtained the altered pictures from.

Exactly. Only recently we had this fiasco (less than a year ago):

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/23/23419366/the-wire-meta-i...

HN was fooled multiple times during that episode. It looks like HN likes being gullible when simple common sense would have prevented that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thewire.in

HN has an inherent bias against India and Indians. Just open any of the H1B related posts and you will see how open minded the liberal tech worker of USA is about India and Indians. Of course, they are all for immigration just the H1B brings up debate about 'Quality of Work. Hypocrites.

I think the American Narrow Minded view of the World is due to they growing up in a 2 party system that only looks at things as Black and White ( Not the race ), as Right and Wrong ( that's better ).

They are basically fed what they are supposed to think by CNNs, NYTs, Guardians etc etc

Like Uncle Soros they believe they understand India better than Indians. Uncle Soros wants to bring 'Democracy' to World's largest Democracy, because 1 Billion Indians don't know what they should vote for - They need a White Man to tell them that. .

In their own Country they created False Accusations against their President - Published in all 'respected' mainstream Newspapers.

United States of Gaslighting is where they are at.

Let's see if @dang is open minded enough to do something about the title after 400 upvotes are already made.

This has devolved into a political discussion unfit for HN. The OP's submission history[1] is almost entirely political, and promoting a specific viewpoint.

While I believe it's ok to discuss politics on HN, my view is that accounts that exist solely for political propaganda should be discouraged.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=throwaway384629

If politics emergent from SV technology can’t be discussed on HN, then I’d call this community an abject failure.

My point was that submitters who only submit political articles (in line with their biases) are detrimental to the site. Such articles attract more politically charged engagement, and over time draw in people who care more about politics than tech.

The article btw is of questionable newsworthiness; and is a link to a propoganda blog. It's not really an accredited news organization.

That may be true, but most of OP’s posts did not get any traction at all. This one did because it’s relevant to the community.

Community prefers to be misled on Topics as long as it goes along with their inherent biases.

Why? “This community” worked extremely hard to bring this technology to fruition, and got handsomely rewarded for doing so. The “success” already happened. At least Mr. Altman had the decency to wait until his product had been released before getting up on his moral high horse about the risks of what he’d built, whereas poor Google did the hard work of firing all their AI ethicists and making their priorities clear a while ago, only for them to get scooped on their own technology.

Also the post has been editorialised. Sure parties have IT cells doing all kind of things to build narratives, but I am not so sure if there are basis for the inference in this case.

Even if political, I personally expect better on HN.

I think this is relevant to HN because this is technology that many of us are working on and having an real life example of misuse should make us pause and think how to address the issue.

In your opinion...

I think AI manipulation of public opinion is a great topic for HN, IMNSHO

It might be great or not, the title is NOT correct and is blaming the government without having any proofs. Posts like these should not even be allowed here. This is actually propaganda.

I agree but posting this article is looks good for me.

HN has a tendency to see India from a certain Viewpoint and promote such articles.

This is among many that I have seen gain traction that are politicized.

I believe the moderator sees no issues when the articles pertain to India.

I’m wondering if someone can comment on the cultural aspect here. It seems like adding the smiles was intended to discredit the protesters, by somehow suggesting the protest was insincere. But I feel like you could interpret this the other way too: even in the face of brutal treatment, they maintain a positive and peaceful attitude and don’t let their opponents break their spirits.

“Turn the other cheek” and “love your enemy” are very old philosophies, after all. So is there something different about this situation or about Indian politics in general that makes this a damaging attack?

Think to yourself, would a captor modify the images of the imprisoned for a benevolent purpose?

Obviously not, that’s not what I’m trying to suggest. Only that it seemed to me — as a non-Indian western observer - like an odd way to discredit them.

> I’m wondering if someone can comment on the cultural aspect here. It seems like adding the smiles was intended to discredit the protesters, by somehow suggesting the protest was insincere.

This was to paint them as insincere and implying that protestors are on the payroll of <insert boogeyman here>.

It's just "they're laughing at you". This is actually interesting to me: possibly the thing that is most annoying to most people, though not all, in most societies is to be suckered. Maybe the next highest is hypocrisy.

I wonder if these are universal or if different societies have different "greatest sin". Like, does Japan, unbeknownst to me, have shamelessness as its?

As an NRI, I continue to be disappointed by the country I called home for most of my life.

Between the politics and the pollution in Delhi, I fear I can never really return home.

The last time I was home, I was struggling every day to breathe because Delhi has crazy air in the winter. While high school friends were telling me about how they don’t believe in equal rights, justifying any means to achieving a Hindu country. This is just one more nail in the coffin of a potentially great, secular country that once dared to v̵o̵t̵e̵ place a g̵r̵e̵a̵t̵ scientist as president. How far we’ve fallen since.

I’m just heartbroken over what my country has become.

Edit: for the countless fans of India that will show up to tell me how to feel about the country, please don’t. I really don’t care to hear the latest talking point on why Infrastructure is worth human rights abuses or whatever lets you sleep at night. My opinion is my own and you can please pound sand. You are part of what makes me mourn my country.

I agree. And unfortunately, I think we have reached an inflection point in India from which we cannot go back to the way things were just about 12-15 years ago.

It is a conundrum, because the same NRIs oppose bills that would solve India's problems.

The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's pollution) was central to the farm bill. But protesting farmers (widely supported in the west) opposed it, and the bill died despite having democratic approval (both national opinion and sufficient votes)

> dared to vote a great scientist to president

We do not vote for Presidents in India. The president was selected by the ruling party (The same BJP as Modi) to be the ceremonial president. The same one that has now elected a tribal woman to President, to signify secular allegiances.

> believe in equal rights

If we are to use leaders as a yardstick to measure equality opportunities and rights, then the incompetent ~6th generation heir of the Nehru/Gandhi family leading the opposition is hardly a good look.

> disappointed by the country I called home for most of my life

As a fellow NRI, this is counter to what I hear from my fellow Indians. There is a ton of optimism around jobs, infrastructure growth and economic policies that are finally opening up the nation, as India embraces the US after decades spent close to the Russia.

> potentially great, secular country

Even as a big supporter of liberal (as in valuing liberty, low authoritarianism) democracies, the evidence for free-democracies industrializing is exactly zero. Every big nation that has successfully escaped poverty has done so through suffocatingly authoritarian means (SK, Japan, Taiwan, Chile, China, Thailand, Malaysia). Every single one of them only transitioned to a proper liberal democracy (if at all) AFTER industrialization had been achieved.

It is depressing. But, the numbers don't lie.

I corrected the means by which the president is chosen (it’s a vote by the electoral college so it wasn’t completely incorrect to say vote though). Thanks for mentioning that.

I don’t think I agree with your other points. But I do hope your optimism pans out because right now things feel bleak.

The reality on ground is different from what you read in the press or even online. We see the work being done. When work wasn't being done (recent example of Karnataka), people voted BJP out. The alternative (Congress) came to power promising loads of freebies. Now voters on the ground are pissed off (plenty of videos where people are not willing to pay electricity bills or public transport fares because Congress said it'll make all of that free but never did so till date). So this hyperbole on BJP being "evil" is largely overblown and it is quite persistent in the Hacker News circles. Ultimately the voter decides based on whether the Party in power delivers or not. BJP has been doing great work on the infrastructure/development front as well as attracting investment. That is visible on the ground. What BJP is lacking severely is in State level leadership/politics which needs to be fixed. Congress on the other hand has given up its National ambitions and pursuing weaknesses it sees in BJP's state level politics. This is vibrancy of democracy. Nothing to feel "bleak" about unless you are drowning yourself in anti-India Western media reports and thinking that is the truth. Maybe you need to ask yourself if you are also part of a misinformation bubble yourself without even realizing it?

I absolutely hate the way fellow Indians will just try and deflect negative stories about India as western propaganda.

You do a disservice to your country by following that tired playbook.

Did you ever stop to consider that I am actually well informed and genuinely disappointed with my country.

Criticism of the country and party doesn’t mean I’m simply misinformed. I was critical of things when I lived there, I consume my news directly from Indian news sites.

Maybe you need to ask yourself why you feel the need to assume it’s western propaganda?

Sadly this is the line that the BJP and their followers have taken. Any criticism from outside India is "western propaganda". Any criticism from within India is "anti-nationalism", "pakistani" or "tukde-tukde gang".

Because we see the same actors coming out of the woodworks every time an issue breaks out. I mean, is the Opposition so bereft of people that it has to project the same faces every time? Some of these actors play multiple roles. Sometimes they don the hat of psephologists, sometimes lawyers, sometimes politicians, sometimes journalists and sometimes even give lectures on religion and philosophy. Such multi-talented actors cannot be so easily switched out every time right? Which is why Opposition has such a tough time winning General Elections in India. We see through this BS.

I won't name names but I am pretty sure you have already guessed who I am talking about. Even in these wrestlers protests we clearly see who is the puppet master who is controlling the marionette. The same puppet master active during farmer protests. The same puppet master active during CAA protests. That face is pretty much constant.

Right now let us just accept this basic fact that there is no one, in the Opposition at least, who is a serious contender to Modi at the National Level. Or even Yogi or any of the other BJP leaders. This is sad truth for Opposition parties that it has to accept first before it can work on finding the right candidate for the job. But doing that is easier said than done. When the Opposition is fragmented and bickering amongst itself, there is no way it can put on a United front. It tried it multiple times and failed miserably every single time. And being just anti-Modi/anti-BJP won't win votes. You need to present a viable alternative that is actually capable of taking on not just Modi but also be able to represent India on an International level. I don't find anyone in the Opposition fit enough for that position. Sorry.

I'm sorry, I don't understand why the other commenter thinks they are write and you are wrong? We live in a representative democracy. The Prime Minister is elected by proving a majority in the Lok Sabha, and the President is elected by electoral college, that doesn't mean that the President isn't elected? You are absolutely right to say that the President is elected.

Funny you are being downvoted because you are speaking the truth. I have already said in another comment that people like the current party because they actually get shit done in various areas like infrastructure etc which was hugely neglected for decades. We all know that but some people wouldn't want to accept.

May be you are on same page with the parent poster. But I answered to the parent comment mentioning most of the claims are wrong.

Btw, selling government assets to private companies, or getting the new roads constructed and charging tolls on them does not exactly considered as a government achievement.

The methodology for measuring highways built was changed in 2018 [1]. Read about it yourself.

[1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/now-new-concept-to...

Wow! Most of what you mentioned is plain wrong. Not sure if you are mistaken or lying knowingly.

>> The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's pollution) was central to the farm bill.

Crop burning is already outlawed in India and enforced with fines. Why you need to make a new law for something which is already illegal? Below was the actual central idea of the farm bill:

"The laws would have deregulated a system of government-run wholesale markets, allowing farmers to sell directly to food processors, but farmers feared that this would result in the end of government-guaranteed price floors, thereby reducing the prices they would receive for their crops."[1]

>> We do not vote for Presidents in India.

Again, wrong. The 2022 Indian presidential election was held on 18 July 2022 to elect the president of India. The election was the 16th presidential election in India since the Partition. [2]

>> incompetent ~6th generation heir of the Nehru/Gandhi family

Source please?

>> There is a ton of optimism around jobs, infrastructure growth and economic policies

Source please? You must be living in an alternate world.

>> Every single one of them only transitioned to a proper liberal democracy

So, China is a "proper liberal democracy" as per you? Also can you please share a source to support your claims?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Indian_agriculture_acts

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Indian_presidential_elect...

Stubble burning was long banned but it's still being practiced and contributes to Delhi's pollution. In fact, one of the demands of the farm protests was to release those who were arrested for stubble burning[1].

> Again, wrong. The 2022 Indian presidential election was held on 18 July 2022 to elect the president of India.

It's not a general election. Only MPs and MLAs get to vote for the president.

> Source please? You must be living in an alternate world.

There are indeed concerns on job growth but infrastructure growth and economic policies have caught pace in the last decade. There's a reason why Meta, Google and Aramco want to pour money into the country.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farme...

Looks like you are trying to respond to be without understanding the topic first and your above comment does not relate.

My reply was to this comment which said:

1. "The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's pollution) was central to the farm bill"

2. "We do not vote for Presidents in India. The president was selected by the ruling party"

Can you please let me know how any of above 2 statements are correct?

Also, to your other comment: >> There's a reason why Meta, Google and Aramco want to pour money into the country.

Companies like Meta, Google and Aramco invest and try to invest in all the counties for their own growth. This is also to target the huge population of India. These companies also invested in China, that does not make China any better. Can you please share a source for "infrastructure growth and economic policies have caught pace"?

> "We do not vote for Presidents in India. The president was selected by the ruling party"

The President of India is voted by electoral college. We live in a representative democracy. Just because the President is voted by electoral college doesn't mean they are not elected. Keep in mind that the Prime Minister of India is also not directly elected, they are chosen by the Lok Sabha.

Exactly my point!

Banning doesn't take care of the problem completely unless there is a mechanism to take stubble away from the farmers. If there is no mechanism, people will burn it to get rid.

Did you even read my post ?

> China is a "proper liberal democracy" as per you?

The exact line you quoted, literally ends with an "if at all" in brackets right after.

> Source please?

That Rahul Gandhi is the 6th generation heir ?

Motilal -> Jawaharlal -> Indira -> Rajiv -> Sonia -> Rahul. What's disputable here ?

That he is incompetent ? I mean, even the most ardent congress fan won't deny that Rahul Gandhi is incompetent at best and a BJP plant at worst. He oversaw the downfall of the freest of wins in world politics anywhere.

>> He oversaw the downfall of the freest of wins in world politics anywhere.

BJP under Modi-Shah lost 8 states, 218 by-elections in last two years [1]

Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh are the two states where the BJP has lost to Congress in the last six months. The BJP lost deposits in 38.4% of the seats it contested in Southern Karnataka. [2] [3]

Modi was the face of election campaign and spent whole centre government money and machinery to campaign. Modi speaks a script written by someone else by using a teleprompter and has never given an open & live unscripted press conference in last 8 years ([4] [5] [6]). By your logic, are you trying to say Modi is also incompetent?

>> The exact line you quoted, literally ends with an "if at all" in brackets right after.

Got it. So you are hoping some day China will transition to democracy AFTER industrialization had been achieved, and you think India might need to convert to an authoritarian state in order to successfully escaped poverty? Is my understanding correct?

Also, you haven's still answered my 2 questions:

1. How is "The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's pollution) was central to the farm bill."?

2. What do you mean about this: "We do not vote for Presidents in India. The president was selected by the ruling party"?

[1] https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/bjp-under-modi-sha...

[2] https://time.com/6280139/india-modi-bjp-congress-karnataka-e...

[3] https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-how-significant-is-bjps-d...

[4] https://www.reuters.com/article/india-election-modi/at-his-f...

[5] https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/rti-pmo-pm-narendra-mo...

[6] https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/why-hasnt-pm-mod...

Motilal -> Jawaharlal -> Indira -> Rajiv -> Rahul

Sonia is not the child of Rajiv, it's his spouse.

You added a generation there. Sonia was Rajiv's wife - not his daughter.

> We do not vote for Presidents in India.

The fact that they are elected by electoral college does not make them non-democratic or non-elected. We live in a representative democracy.

> As a fellow NRI, this is counter to what I hear from my fellow Indians. There is a ton of optimism around jobs, infrastructure growth and economic policies that are finally opening up the nation

One wouldn't rely on anecdotal evidence to justify policy. For example my own experience is the opposite of yours. I hear complains about unemployment, lack of safety for women, cost of living crisis, lack of safety of Muslims.

> Every big nation that has successfully escaped poverty has done so through suffocatingly authoritarian means

Just because others failed doesn't mean we should too. Keep in Mind that the Republic of India has survived until now, and people at it's inception said it wouldn't.

> The ban on crop burning (main cause of Delhi's pollution) was central to the farm bill. But protesting farmers (widely supported in the west) opposed it, and the bill died despite having democratic approval (both national opinion and sufficient votes)

Then why is Delhi's air quality consistently poor, unhealthy, severe and hazardous even when there is no crop burning? https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/india/delhi/new-delhi

Of course we need to do something about crop burning, but is it the "main" reason? Nope.

For non Indians, NRI = Non Resident Indian i.e. an Indian who lives outside India. In case someone wondered.

It is easy to shit on the party in office which is BJP right now but show me a country that can have hundreds of languages, all religions and still survive for centuries as one country. Europe couldn't do it. They broke into EU (for better or worse). There are flaws but India is a complex country of various cultures and you have to understand the nuances.

Congress party ruled India for decades after Independence in 1947 and all they could do was to keep India as a 3rd world country while other similar countries progressed economically. Fun fact: Until the early 1980s, India and China were same econonically when COngress ruled India for decades. And talk about authoritarianism ? Who was the one who declared emergency in 1974 and suspended all "civil rights". That was Indira Gandhi from Congress, the so called "secular" party.

My point is that there is no saint and people in india like BJP because they are at least doing some work in various areas including infrastructure, economy and areas that have been neglected for decades. So yea, people wanted change and they got change with Modi as a strong leader.

Source: Also an NRI who is a naturalized US Citizen and I see a lot of positives among all the negatives that Media loves to portray.

All I see is a lot of whataboutism to justify some truly heinous actions that have been committed in the past several years.

Yeah, Indira Gandhi wasn’t great either. Congress has its flaws.

None of that justifies the actions of today. Yes, the BJP has done some good things, but that’s true of many heinous authoritarians in the past as well.

No number of good things simply wash their hands of the bad stuff along the way.

The right word would be 'Abuse of power', if every center-right politician is labeled Authoritarian -- it will become a meaningless word.

Is "Congress party also bad!" still a primary defence of Mr. Modi who is in power for about 10 years now?

I think NRIs are praising Modi because he is helping with the fall of Rupee as compared to other currencies so NRIs get maximum return when they send home USD.

Will you be able to share some examples of "at least doing some work in various areas"?

1. I see BJP government as expert in data manipulator and creating smoke screens through their network of social media cell and mainstream TV channels. [1]

2. As per Govt data, over 80 crore people in India currently depend upon government for free food. [2]

3. Modi government manipulated the GDP calculation method to show higher GDP growth. [3]

4. Modi government changed the calculation method to measure the length of highways. Going by lane km, the total length of highways constructed during 2017-18 fiscal comes to 34,378 km as against 9829 km if counted linearly. [4]

[1] https://zeenews.india.com/india/get-maths-lessons-bjp-faces-...

[2] https://www.livemint.com/news/india/over-80-crore-people-to-...

[3] https://scroll.in/article/954986/the-daily-fix-is-modi-gover...

[4] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/now-new-concept-to...

Ok I will bite. I travel to India once or twice a year for both pleasure and business. I can only tell you what I feel and see. I see incredible infrastructure changes even though India still has long way to go compared to other developed or even developing nations. Tons of airports being built and improved. Many highways being built and even completed in last few years.

"changed the calculation method to measure the length of highways."

Do I think Modi Govt doesn't manipulate some data ? Oh you bet they do. But I see real progress regardless and you cannot just throw some stats to change my mind. I see progress and I commend it and welcome it. Most people who live there don't care that Govt is manipulating how they measure the length of highways. They see that highways are being built. Congress didn't do shit for decades when my parents grew up in real shit 3rd world infrastructure. We are much better off in last decade or so.

I will agree with you that India has a long way to go but change is happening no matter how slow.

As per govt, out of 140 crore Indians, 80 crore rely on government for free food. That is 57% of Indians need government help for free food. [1]

If You Earn Rs 25,000 (USD 300) Per Month, You're Among India's Top 10% Income Earners [2]

>> I travel to India once or twice a year for both pleasure and business. I can only tell you what I feel and see.

You may be able to travel to India and got 1 USD converted to INR 80, then may be its a win for you, but not for other Indians. I am not sure, but you might have been able to afford somewhat better way to travel/stay/eat than most of the Indians can. So what you feel and see might not be closer to reality for most of Indians.

>> I see incredible infrastructure changes...

So if a few private companies own most of India's infra, and building shopping malls, or if few politically connected builders building high rise buildings, or if roads/flyovers being built by private companies for which public will pay toll through their noses for years to come, then in my humble opinion, this is is not real development that you should give credit to the government. This is indeed the failure of the government.

>> Tons of airports being built and improved.

Government did sell a number of already built airports to Adani. Now Adani may make it a shiny new airpot and start charging fees for everything in airport but I don't see it as an achievement of Government. [3]

[1] https://news.abplive.com/news/india/cabinet-decision-80-cror...

[2] https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/if-you-earn-rs-25000-p...

[3] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation...

The government changed the highway measuring methodology in 2018 [1].

Under new methodology, highway stretch built = Number of lanes * kilometer stretch.

This is actually the international standard. However, when the current government compares itself with prior government, it compares apples with oranges: new methodology numbers versus old methodology numbers.

[1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/now-new-concept-to...

Indian highway engineers still can't figure out how to design exists and have consistent road markings/safety signs. Let them come up with a standard or enforce the already existing one first.

Very rare to see slip lanes even in normal roads of Tier 1 cities.

Just laying down asphalt isn't building highways.

The rupee is falling until it doesn’t and reverses course. The rupee falls because of numerous reasons primary among them being increased imports of oil and gas due to high growth. Increased exports have just started showing up in the numbers as India exported $750bn in exports for the first time ever. With the work on solar (go read about the progress of international solar alliance and the work done in Gujarat etc), hydrogen, EVs, flex petrol, etc the demand for oil and gas will only go down in 5 years.

India’s economy is getting a push as is clearly visible from some indisputable numbers like the digital transactions, sales of cars, homeowners count, etc. It’s just that all sources of income are not yet formalized in the huge country that is India so there is some extrapolation that needs to be done.

The Guinness book has recognized the Indian govt’s work for the most kilometers of roads constructed in a day and the new methodology is in use in other countries like the US as per the Minister, then it means the foreigners must be okay with manipulated numbers.

> Europe couldn't do it

When was Europe one country?

> It is easy to shit on the party in office which is BJP right now but show me a country that can have hundreds of languages, all religions and still survive for centuries as one country. Europe couldn't do it. They broke into EU (for better or worse).

I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Europe has never been one country, and will likely never be. Having smaller countries isn’t something bad, nobody would consider multiple Europeans countries to be a failure, or the result of a broken Europe. Even proponents of a United States of Europe (I am one) don’t see having multiple European countries as a failure.

The Balkans, Africa & the sub-continent are proven examples of the kind of blood that's shed during partition, secession and civil wars.

If you're a proponent of the balkanization of India, then you're by default a proponent of of the biggest as-of-yet-unrealized genocide of the 21st century.

Who talked about the balkanisation of India? The OP is pointing out an inaccurate fact — Europe did not break up on religion.

We could all use a little drama to support our points here.

> still survive for centuries as one country

You have drunk the koolaid, my friend.

India became 'India' in 1947. Before that (and even now) it was exactly like Europe ... many languages and cultures and food very very different from each other (ask a Naga what he has in common with Tamilians or Kashmiris), a large shared Hindu ethos similar to how Christianity was a common factor for Europe) and lots of warring kings with their own territories. There was no "Indian" identity.

About Congress ... no defence about their fuckups. But don't be so dismissive about what they accomplished. I say this as no fan of Indira Gandhi.

Remember that India had become free after 200 years of enslavement and harm to our self-image, from being one of the world's richest areas to the poorest, and millions of lives had been torn asunder under partition.

In Congress's era, esp. Jawaharlal Nehru's time, we got a beautiful constitution, the premier institutions and facilities (TIFR, IISc, IITs, FTII, BARC, AIIMS), developed a massive power infrastructure with hydel and nuclear, became a nuclear strong power, developed an in-house rocket and satellite program etc. It had a strong court system; recall that Indra Gandhi was thrown out by the Allahabad supreme court on electoral fixing.

Manmohan Singh was (and is) a learned economist who righted many of IG's fuckups. He led the 1991 reforms. A large large portion of the projects that Modi has lent his beaming face to were fully funded and started in the Manmohan era (Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan, Atal tunnel, UPI, Aadhar, so many airports and highways). The Modi govt has been successful in rebranding all of them in his image, but don't be fooled.

I can give you a huge laundry list of things that are terrible under Modi. The COVID response, the complete takeover of august institutions by deranged Hindus, the complete submission of the media, the complete takeover of massive projects by a few crony friends (a profitable and well-run Mumbai airport was taken over by Adani, who literally had zero experience in running airports, with no formal publicly transparent process). The "PM Cares" fund, which every single govt employee and every corporate was FORCED to hand over money too, apparently is not a fund of the govt; there is no transparency about how much money has been collected, let alone spent where. I could go on about how every minority (Dalits, Muslims, tribals) have been rogered.

We are looking at a ruling government who uses AI to demean olympic winning athlete to protect a serial molester. Somehow even after all this heinous acts I can see bunch of so called educated techies defending that ruling class. Is the hate for "other" religion so strong?

I'm an NRI/US citizen, have worked/traveled in the country extensively, and have shared my thoughts on HN many times regarding my country of origin. There is a prevalent "Indian apologist" mentality both inside and outside the country, which applauds anyone spinning the "happy people living with less" or "beautiful ancient culture" montage and shouting down anyone trying to put the preponderance of societal problems into perspective.

No it’s just the Indian voter telling the West/white guy to shut up and mind one’s own business. He knows problems exist and have always existed but they are being magnified more to demean the leadership that is trying to solve more problems per unit time. Regime change is what the West excels at.

Regarding human rights abuses if you live in the USA I wonder what makes it better.

People are crying all over every conceivable media about how racial, sexual, financial discrimination is taking place.

Millionaire celebrities are 'Victims' of a variety of abuse - Racial, Sexual etc etc

People getting randomly shot in a shootout every other day.

Stores can't stay open due to getting robbed as it's 'legally' allowed.

Kids can't pay loans for college, people are barely living thanks to shtty minimum wage.

Seems like it's common for people to sh*t on the roads in San Francisco.

Kids education becoming sub standard thanks to politicians.

Most of the West seems to be heading in the same direction.

Since you see are obviously comfortable in that environment. Please don't come back.

You can remain heartbroken in the West.

Delhi Police arrested the protesting Indian women wrestlers.

Various social media handles of IT cell of ruling party shared morphed picture of protesters to show that they were smiling in the police van.

https://twitter.com/SakshiMalik/status/1662729269532065792

Is that an all female police squad?

> Is that an all female police squad?

Not to assume anyone's gender here, but does it look like a all female police squad? https://i.imgur.com/OSnyrFH.jpg

Unless some AI has doctored the images

shit on a stick we really can't trust anything

Journalism will have to go back to trusting individual creators. If Joe Bloggs signs an image then at least I know Joe Bloggs asserts that image was correct. If that's a trustworthy person (someone I find trustworthy), that's one way.

Of course how well that scales is another matter, but if Joe Bloggs loses my trust then I remove him from my "trusted sources" list.

The chain of integrity will be there, defined by more than just a byline. I may trust say Steve Rosenburg to tell me the truth if he posts a picture of something in Moscow, but if he misleads me then he loses that trust.

Ultimately it's of no difference to trusting what someone writes or says. I might trust a story with a byline on www.cnn.com, that's one thing. I won't however trust a screen capture of something implying it was shown on CNN.

Of course the main stream view for the last 15 years is to believe that journalists are always lying to you and always wrong, which is fine, you just have to accept that if you want to "do your own research" on say what's happening in Turkey with the election, you need to go to Turkey, spend a few years there getting to know and trust many different sources with many different world views.

A squad can exist within a larger group of officers.

I didn’t ask if “there only female law enforcement at this event”.

There is a law (maybe a Supreme Court judgement) that only lady officers can arrest women.

And in these cases, a high powered officer, like the SP/DSP calls out for every lady police officers in all local police station to be present.

It doesn't need to be a "all female squad".

India is a fine specimen for anyone wanting to observe 1930s-40s first hand.

A far right party with a popular/charismatic leader is using religion as a basis to all the problems India faces. We have extra-legal forces acting as vigilantes against people of a community. They have a very strong support in the majority. Media is in totality controlled by ruling party and social media is saturated with noise and false discourse. No other nation will speak against them because of geo-politics and honestly same religion is hated almost everywhere. Though lot more pragmatic and not a globe-capturing maniac, but rest of the world is complimenting for that.

I believe we are on a strong path to revisit that event in late 30s though hopeful against it as now 6 million and 2 nukes are rookie numbers.

The world has gotten well along with dictatorships like China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia (till they directly threatened the West). I am sure they can work with an authoritarian India.

Some of us are Indian and aren't too happy about the authoritarianism...

I would also like to share examples on how Modi Government Jails every honest opposition leader who does development work for general public and gets popular.

2 leaders of Aam Aadmi Party (a primary opponent to PM Modi) are lodged in Jail for months without trial. Same judge appointment by Modi government somehow gets all the cases related to Aam Aadmi Party and orders to extend the judicial custody month after month.

Satyendra Jain, the man behind world famous Delhi Mohalla Clinic (Neighbourhood Clinic) is in jail awaiting trial since May 2022 on allegations of money laundering. [1] [2] [3]

Manish Sisodia, the man behind public education revolution in New Delhi is in jail awaiting trial since Feb 2023 on allegations of corruption in creating Delhi Excise Policy. [4] [5] [6]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Kumar_Jain

[2] https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/former-un-chief-ban-ki...

[3] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/even-kasab-got-a-fair-trial-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manish_Sisodia

[5] https://www.timesnownews.com/delhi/nyt-report-lauds-delhi-go...

[6] https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/delhi/2023/mar/21/if...

All the leaders you mentioned have accumulated and hoarded cash which was disclosed in IT raids. There is an ongoing investigation on how they sold liquor licenses for cash. They are jailed as per court orders after investigation.

[1] - https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/policy/story/liquor-scam...

Pardon my language. But this is utter bull**t. Have you even read the link that you shared? It says:

>> "Special CBI court allows ED to question Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain"

>> "The ED is now probing the money-laundering angle"

>> "Jain is currently in Delhi's Tihar jail in connection with a money-laundering case, which is also being probed by the ED."

Do you know the difference between "jailed after investigation." and "jailed while being probed"?

If tomorrow CBI arrests you on allegation of money laundering and then keeps you in jail for one year while investigating, are you fine with that?

Can you please point me to a single news article which says they recovered any cash? And how much was it?

Can you please also point me to a single BJP leader in whole country who has been jailed while being investigated?

The SA accused BJP leader against whom women wrestlers are protesting was a BJP guest in yesterdays parliament event.

I am just amazed at the analytical abilities of some of today's "engineers" and "entrepreneurs". :(

What's with India and the shift towards the right? I thought it had too many religions and different cultures to pull this off.

India’s promise of secularism has always been fragile.

The current party, the BJP, has strong roots in Hindu nationalism. It’s basically taken over a decade but they’ve successfully distorted the promise enshrined in our national anthem of an India for all.

I think it's similar to the US. There's some kind of global push towards a flavor of fascism occurring in most democratic countries.

https://fpif.org/fascisms-global-spread-is-real-as-real-as-t...

Ever since Partition (and indeed before) the Hindu vs Muslim conflict has been a powerful driver of both local violence and national politics.

BJP in India does not fight elections based on any development agendas like education/healthcare or social security.

They pretends to the majority Hindu public that "Hindus are in danger from Muslims" and only BJP can protect them. They also project themselves as true nationalists and anyone having anti-government views is declared a "Pakistani" or anti-national.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/7/spike-in-anti-muslim...

Ok, this is not entirely true.

- India is the fastest growing large economy in the world

- inflation is under control

- The infrastructure spend is the largest ever. There's construction everywhere.

- life expectancy is significantly up

Of course there are issues, but it's a mixed bag. Not all religion.

>> India is the fastest growing large economy in the world

Source please?

>> inflation is under control

Cooking Gas cylinder price: [1] June 2017: 552.50 May 2023: 1103.00

Petrol price (Even when India is importing dirt cheap crude oil from Russia): [2] Dec 2015: 60.00/litre May 2023: 100.00/litre

>> - The infrastructure spend is the largest ever. There's construction everywhere.

If certain companies and politically linked builders are building then that does not mean country is progressing.

[1] https://www.bankbazaar.com/gas-connection/lpg-price-delhi.ht...

[2] https://www.mypetrolprice.com/petrol-price-chart.aspx

>> India is the fastest growing large economy in the world >Source please?

For a journalist you seem to be incapable of finding basic information.

Also, you are too misinformed to be a journalist. Are you sure you are not some frustrated kid grounded by his parents ?

https://www.hindustantimes.com/business/at-6-1-india-to-be-f...

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2023/04/04/i...

>>If certain companies and politically linked builders are building then that does not mean country is progressing.

You nincompoop they are generating employment, building infrastructure and it is for growth of the country.

If you have money create a business and give jobs instead of sh!tt!ng on HN with your AAM AADMI Party wh0ring.

Which political party in India primarily fights elections "based on any development agendas like education/healthcare or social security"?

If there was one, how much "development" has that party achieved when in power?

Aam Aadmi Party is one such party. Here is their 70 points action plan that they promised in 2015:

https://aamaadmiparty.org/delhi-government-2/aap-manifesto-2...

And here is the public status check of each promise:

https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/aap-s-5-year-report-card...

Despite giving free electricity up to 200 Units/month, free water up to 20KL/month, free bus travel for women, the state budget is still surplus.

The 2 leaders who made it possible are currently put in Jail by Modi Government. [1]

[1] https://www.outlookindia.com/national/sisodia-jain-arrested-...

As terrible as the government is, i want the foreigners here to understand that op also has his own agenda, this above reply shows their intentions. All indian political parties are low quality trash in their own ways.

I am playing a role that any well functioning journalist should play. Question the government and point out any wrong doings. Isn't is a core aspect of democracy? Do you see anything wrong in that?

>> All indian political parties are low quality trash in their own ways. Agree. But the one having power currently is the focus. Be it any party.

You are not a journalist, you are a hack. You are not presenting a balanced opinion.

You are biased and presenting a distorted view which you know is an easy sell here. From your posts you seem like a Typical Indian Redditor / Twitter activist.

Who believes they have great potential in life, have nothing to show for it.

So come here to sh!t on your country to get validation of Western people. Few HN karma points to make yourself feel like you have some value in this world.

The typical Slave Mentality liberal that exists in India and Pakistan. A sad gift of the colonialism. You should work for Al jazeera, BBC, NYT etc They like to keep pets like you to parrot their talking points.

India has developed under the current Govt.

When the entire Left bootlickers like Al Jazeera, CNN, NYT were criticizing the Indian Govt in 2020 onwards - They laid the foundation for growth.

When your America is going broke and again increasing it's Debt Ceiling to pay for the survival of the populace, India is the fastest growing Economy in the world.

A Billion Indians can decide who to vote for. Don't need some entitles White guys and their brown lackeys in BBC, Al Jazeera to come and tell us how to lead their lives.

If your White Intellectuals had any capability your entire Western Economies wouldn't be in doldrums.

The wisest thing Western Economists are capable of is increasing the Debt Ceiling repeatedly and printing money.

Then bribe the dumb populace with welfare to vote for the same govt again.

BTW Democrat Party does fear mongering among Blacks and LGBT minorities and keeps them in perpetual fear and anxiety.

They use this strategy to stay in power. And that's supposed to be approved by the Very Ethical Western Media and White Intellectuals.

What hypocrites you lot are.

Next year the Trump fear mongering will start again.

And the Liberal Sheep on HN will get their panties in a bunch crying about how unsafe they are while earning a few 100k $ per year.

Religion is a force that pulls people in a conservative direction, particularly when there has been a history of inter-religion conflict like in India

Why would diversity necessarily be associated with leftism?

There is no "necessarily" about it, but it's obviously how history ended up unfolding. The big cultural-media-pop conflict in the west this very moment is centered around acceptance of diversity regarding gay and trans folks.

People are bad with labels; diversity is associated with liberalism, which often gets conflated with a whole spectrum of other positions from social-democrat to actual Marxists (who tend not to be all that pro-diversity, depending on how "tankie" they are)

these days lots of Indian twitter accounts that shown on my feed are itching for Hindutva.

P.S Not an Indian so Idk how they appeared on my feed.

Here's the definition of Hindutva according to the Supreme Court, if anyone's curious

“Hindutva is understood as a way of life of state of mind and is not to be equated with or understood as religious Hindu fundamentalism…it is a fallacy and error of law to proceed on the assumption…that the use of words Hindutva or Hinduism per se depicts an attitude hostile to all persons practicing any religion other than the Hindu religion.”

> the definition of Hindutva according to the Supreme Court

Legal definitions aren’t relevant to Twitter accounts. What matters is what’s animating the author.

All the same, imo it's imperative people know what the actual definition is rather than misconstruing it for something else

> it's imperative people know what the actual definition

This reminds me of the hacker/cracker and crypto qua -currency/-tography debates. Or, more pointedly, the Daughters of the Confederacy.

Legal definitions aren’t “actual definitions.” Nobody likes a term they’ve adopted to be coöpted. But it happens, and it’s happened with hindutva in English.

It has lots of religions and cultures, yeah. But there is a dominant one. And like the US is a Christian nation de-facto, India is a Hindu nation de-facto.

The bigger driving thing is that the party in power has two massive things in their favour: widespread economic growth and prosperity.

While India mostly runs through coalition politics, there are two broad bands: the nationalist religious-fundamentalist market-economics band and the high-regulation nominally-secular band.

It's quite nuanced, but ultimately, India has raised 400 million out of poverty in the last 20 years, electrified vastly, and built rail and road infrastructure at a crucial moment in their demographic transition.

The resulting goodwill is of the "it's about the economy, stupid" sense but also a national feeling that perhaps the "others" were, after all, "holding us back" because the current opposition presided over a period of administration over many decades where setting up businesses required paying off the right guy, etc.

To make it worse, the opposition coalition head is a dynastic scion who is not very smart.

So, the shift to the right is natural because the right is the only one giving them anything.

World has moved towards authoritarian governments. Haven't seen a good reason why this push but there seems to be correlated to the amount information people have access to(eg: social networks, digital media etc).

Wasn't there plenty of authoritarian governments before the internet?

> What's with India and the shift towards the right?

Successful republics appear to waver between stable liberalism and dynamic authoritarianism. We were relatively authoritarian in the Pinkerton and New Deal eras. Modi is delivering on a proven enthnonationalism liberal-economic playbook. It’s hard to argue against fattening pocketbooks and rising living standards.

>> It’s hard to argue against fattening pocketbooks and rising living standards.

You mean Adani's? [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/gautam-s-ada...

How will we verify photos and videos without dissolving in to endless speculation? I’m genuinely asking as this is something I’ve been worried about for a while.

The only thing I can think of is storing a hash or “phash” with a trusted third party that can then be used to later verify which image is the original. For video, store the hash/phash of the frames with timestamps. But would that even work? How do you back-verify that something was captured at a specific time when the device was offline during capture?

No, that would not work. You can apply a filter and immediately after compute a hash. For now, the fake pictures are rather easy to spot to a trained eye.

> You can apply a filter and immediately after compute a hash.

Can you expand on that? I’m not sure what wouldn’t work

>> For video, store the hash/phash of the frames with timestamps. But would that even work?

That would not work, because how do you prove that hash has been computed before video manipulation? Already, the imaging chips do some processing, so you never get the original raw image from the CMOS sensor.

>> For video, store the hash/phash of the frames with timestamps. But would that even work?

That would not work, because how do you prove that hash has been computed before video manipulation? Already, the imaging chips do some processing, so you never get the true raw image from the CMOS sensor.

Yes, I agree. I don’t think that method could be used if the manipulator was the person taking the photo or the one doing the initial processing. I’m (personally) less concerned about the true raw image vs lossy compression (i.e. JPG), and more concerned with things like the OP where an existing image was changed to show detainees smiling and that image was then used to manipulate the public.

The way it is now, it could easily have turned in to a “he said, she said” situation with each side claiming that their pic is the real one and the other’s was manipulated. In a case like that we could (theoretically) look back in the record to see which hash was recorded first.

You can't. All photos may be fake or manipulated. You can't trust a photo. You need to decide if you trust those who are vouching for a particular photo.

Imagine for example that you’re a high-ranking politician. You have staff and PR departments and the whole entourage. You take photos regularly and you want those photos to be public to keep building your brand. It’s just a fact that the public won’t fully trust you if there’s a smear campaign, but you have the originals of everything and that’s very powerful if the public can validate them as original.

I’m sure we already have the technology needed to build the tools do that validation, I just don’t know what the winning choices are yet.

Stop trying to verify photos and ask the people that were there when the photo was taken?

I don’t think that’s going to be enough. How do you verify that it’s them who is responding, or that they are not being coerced? (before anyone comments, yes I know I’m taking this to the extreme, but if we handle the extreme cases we handle the easier ones too)

BJP is proper Authoritarian.

This is coming from a right leaning person.

The sad thing is they will probably win again in 2024. The damage that 15 years of BJP has done to the social fabric of India, and the undermining of the core founding principles of the republic will last for generations. It's hard to imagine it going away :(

I sadly don’t see any true way to move past the BJP. They’ve really captured the minds of the majority.

I don’t think any other party has anywhere near the might to stand up to the sheer might the BJP has created, not without compromising their morals.

How do you compete with a government that will distort reality like this, where the majority of people won’t listen to the actual truth?

It's not like other parties have any morals in the first place.

Well none of my state parties have morals and sure as hell Congress doesn't have any morals

> It's not like other parties have any morals in the first place.

This is the line of thinking that has led to the BJPs success. The fact that people have been convinced that the opposition is not a viable alternative is a shame.

While it's true that the opposition has many faults, no other party has undermined the core founding principles of the republic the way the BJP has, except for perhaps Indira Gandhi.

While Congress and other parties have many faults, they’re still a damn sight better than the party that is trying to degrade human rights for non-Hindus.

Sometimes you just need to hold your nose and vote for the best option, even if they’re flawed. The road to a better tomorrow is paved with compromises that get us there.

>While Congress and other parties have many faults, they’re still a damn sight better

This is clearly an inflammatory opinion with no substantial backing provided, I'd love to hear your reasoning for coming to this conclusion. Indian politics isn't as black and white as you're making it out to be.

I'm sorry, but OPs comment is not an inflammatory opinion. Congress does not stand opposed to the core founding principles of the republic.

I think that any "Tom, Dick, and Harry" party is better than the Nazi party.

Unfortunately BJP has compromised most of the pillars of democracy. Almost all the mainstream "journalist" openly support the BJP Government. You will find them insulting and fighting with opposition leaders in TV debates everyday. They will hold special TV shows to justify all the actions of government. They will show BJP as winning in most of the elections right till the last moment.

The judges of courts are getting post retirement posts from the government. For example, Ranjan Gogoi, served as Chief Justice of India and gave many decisions in favour of ruling party and he got nominated to Rajaya Sabha by president after his retirement. [1] He was also accused of sexual harassment, and the lady was found to be a target of snooping by BJP government through her mobile phone by using pegasus spyware. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranjan_Gogoi

[2] https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/pegasus-proje...

Most Indians were never secular. Before, they hadn’t got a voice or representation. BJP came into power by tapping into the latent sentiment in majority of Indians.

It's much like how Trump was elected.

If you think that majority of Indians were ever secular, I think that you never left the bubble of upper middle class, city based society.

Hindus are, generally much more advanced than Muslim in terms of education, finances, etc. and couldn’t be bothered to cause communal violence because they have much more to lose. And the ones that are left behind, didn't have a uniting force. BJP/RSS has accomplished that.

The people lynching Muslim for eating beef are very rural, very uneducated Hindus with much less to lose. And the rest of them openly support them.

I will say, 80-95% of Hindus were never ever secular. BJP is creating new zealots now, but they didn't need to do so to come to power.

BJP is also hard at work at creating a single, homogeneous Hindu and Indian identity, where something more of a cultural sphere existed, to create fanatics to their cause. They're re-engineering Indian society in a way that we've seen end up in tears for everyone in the past, in other places.

>BJP is also hard at work at creating a single, homogeneous Hindu and Indian identity

can you give particular examples of actions or legislation you think they've taken that exemplifies this?

BJP brought the Citizenship Act and the National Register of Citizens to act against the minority.

>> "Will remove every single infiltrator, except Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs: Amit Shah" [1]

Archive.org snapshot of now deleted tweet from BJP official account [2]

[1] https://indianexpress.com/elections/will-remove-every-single...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20190520193044/https://twitter.c...

I'm not Indian, but I heard that there is also a rift between south Indians (Tamil) and the northerners. Are Tamils Hindu as well? Where do they play into this?

Tamil Nadu is also a majority Hindu state.

Calling it rift is a bit of a stretch.

We are used to a time when constitutional rights were suspended and state governments were dismissed on the whim. Regardless of what happens to BJP, India will continue to move ahead.

We also used to a time in Germany in 1940s. We should not let that happen again anywhere in the world.

India has its own examples. Foreign examples only leads to whataboutism.

Someone should make a movie on an alternate history of the civil rights movement failing because of technology like this.

The problem with all civil rights movements is, any ground gained can be easily removed later. Technology like this is almost the perfect tool for doing so. Buckle up it's not going to be pretty.

India, under its current leadership of Modi's Hindutva government is a near-term threat to its minorities, opposition and dissenting voices. If it goes unchecked, it won't be long before a global threat emerges. Modi himself is one of the propagators of fake news and hate speech. He dog-whistles his social media army to systematically spread communal division and consolidate Hindu votes. Most of the mainstream media is already under his cronies like Adani. The most recent one to fall is NDTV, which used to be an independent voice. If there is one country to watch out for the misuse of AI for political gains, it would be India especially with elections happening in the next year.

India slowly joining China, Russia and Turkey as a dictatorship...

Here are two high quality The Economist pieces on India's state of democracy

- https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/02/12/the-organs-of-indi...

- https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/03/27/the-worlds-biggest...

Italy silently following. Quietly and slowly, so that frogs won't notice the temperature difference.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/23/italy-governme...

The 1st step in turning a seemingly democratic country in a dictatorship is to control the media. Not the 1st time it happens, but this time it is way more serious. Of course the new dictatorship needs to be soft enough to be palatable for other EU members and NATO allies, therefore I don't expect black shirt patrols with batons attacking people unfriendly to the regime down the street or at their home, at least not in a systematic way like a century ago, yet things are going to suck badly over here if nobody stops those bastards in power ASAP.

Hold your horses, this is false equivalence. India is no where near China or Russia, Turkey may be closest thing but that is also kind of false. State governments in India are powerful and that complicates many things.

Exactly this, The ruling party has literally lost elections in Karnataka, they're very far from exerting unilateral influence on the entire country, much less becoming a dictatorship

1. BJP still control most of the mainstream media.

2. BJP has in past offered plum post retirement positions to judges after they delivered some controversial decisions in favour of BJP.

3. BJP has full control on Election commission, and the electronic voting machines. Despite multiple reposts of voting machines found in cars of BJP candidates, or videos of faulty machines showing votes in favour of BJP, and despite calls for letting opposition parties inspect machines, Election commission has never let them inspect the machines.

4. A large number of bigots are in various positions in various administrative services and in recent years they have started showing their hate in open.

India is very much like Turkey, though perhaps no where as close to China or Russia.

State governments in India are not powerful, and they never have been! The constitution of India grants much more power to the Central Government than it does to the State Governments. The BJP government has pushed the boundary of federalism again and again. Here are some concrete examples:

1. Denial of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.

2. Using the Centre-appointed governor to take down the Govt. of Maharashtra.

3. Constant pushback on policies and appointments made by the Govt. of Delhi.

>> State governments in India are not powerful, and they never have been!

Time to time center was able to disrupt state governments but the states have enormous latitude on taxation, duties and policies. For much of India's existence each state is its own parallel system. The whole GST is trying to harmonize the taxing in India across States and that came what 75 years after Independence.

Wait. It's shared here as a matter of fact, is it proven that it was done by some 'IT Cell' of the ruling party? It's HN, not Reddit, Twitter, Facebook or Whatsapp. I'm not denying their existence, but unless it's official or proven information please don't share it here.

Context: The day this happened was the inauguration of new Parliament building of India.

The inauguration of the new Parliament building where:

- None of the major opposition parties attended

- The President and other constitutional heads were not invited

- The protesting athletes were arrested

- One religion was in the spotlight, as opposed to the Indian brand of secularism where ceremonies of all religions should have been conducted

- On the day of Savarkar's (Hindu nationalist) birth anniversary

- The PM treating it as a vanity project/personal PR photoshoot

- Using a symbol of Monarchy as the center piece of this inauguration.

Why is that relevant? People should not get arrested for protesting sexual harassment, even if others are inaugurating a new Taj Mahal.

It is relevant because the PM is touting the new parliament building as ushering Indian into a new age of democracy, calling the building a temple of democracy; while dissenting voices outside are being stifled as the wrestlers are being arrested.

PM Modi was literally giving a speech on "how we are the coolest democracy in the world" few kilo-meters away from where the protesters were arrested.

The news is accurate, but not particularly newsworthy. This was posted by an unofficial, loosely defined group of accounts called the "IT cell" - not very different from MAGA folks or far-left account clusters. The linked news source (alt news) is an opposition news source/blog.

Alt news also reported on the propaganda and falsehoods of Congress and AAP.

Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha are Indian journalists and the co-founders of Alt News, an Indian non-profit fact-checking website. They were nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. They have fact checked the claims from all political parties. [1]

>> Zubair was arrested and incarcerated by the Delhi Police for a month. His detention raised further concerns about the state of India's press freedom under Narendra Modi's premiership and was widely criticized by journalistic bodies, human rights organizations and the political opposition who allege that the arrest was an act of revenge against his role in Alt News' work of combating disinformation.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Zubair_(journalist)

Flashback to The Laughing Man of Ghost in the Shell. Guess, we're getting there.

The intriguing part of such stuff is how the impact of these things is both short and long, such asymmetry of the individual vs the state. At the (population) scale of India, this is particularly heinous.

In the near term, it is designed to mislead the public perception. In the long term, it both creates a chilling effect of what consequences protesting may have… and will anyone remember that these pictures were manipulated “for effect” decades from now? Will they fuel other echo chambers?

I very much doubt the public understands the precipice (and precedents) that these malicious actions lead us all down.

Deep fakes were always a huge concern for me in AI. That's just one way AI can be weaponized, and this example is very clear on the damage caused. Thankfully Twitter quickly corrects the issue, but sadly only because it became viral. Sadly, Twitter won't be able to correct all of the little cases of AI misuse that don't go viral.

To give more context to outsiders these are olympic medal winning athletes protesting against a serial molester who happens to be part of ruling government. To discredit these athletes ruling government's "IT Cell" is using AI to show they are not sincere enough even after police brutally stopped their protest. No media entity reported on this gross in justice as all of them have already sold their soul.

Every time I think Modi's RW government can't go any lower they prove me wrong. World should be worried that soon to be third largest economy is going to ruled by a political force who are inspired by Nazi. These are some of the quotes from Golwalkar who was the brain behind the current militia Golwalkar https://twitter.com/jaskaransandhu_/status/10569508194997534...

How do we know that the non-smiling images are not the fakes? part of an operation to foment discontent with the ruling party by making a false accusation of dystopian manipulation of photographic evidence?

No, I don't think it likely. It's just we live in a world where this kind of stuff is just so easy to do now.

The article includes a video showing they were able to use FaceApp on the non-smiling photo to reproduce the smiling photo exactly.

They also include analysis comparing the smiling photo to other existing photos of those people smiling and note that in the smiling photo some people are depicted with dimples that the person doesn't actually have.

Regardless of the title or whatever, I noticed the same way how this was conducted (creating a fake image, then a group is used to spread such news, then the sabotage/attack starts), same approach been used in different political tweets, in India, Saudi, Tukey, and even in US, the only difference is in English speaking ones it was quickly to find they were fake and in return who spread it had a credibility issue later, it doesn’t seem to be the case in a non-english ones for some reason. And that approach happened before Musk takeover and after, is it something had to do with the user base mentality or tech literacy, or the way how twitter works, or maybe something else, but I never saw such “swarm” behavior except in Twitter.

Just the beginning, what happens when it becomes impossible to parse fact and fiction?

I mean rsa 2048 can be currently broken in 104 days, and we'll be at quantum levels sooner than we realize.

How we validating anything after that? Biometric?

Need a source on RSA 2048 being breakable. QC like that is still quite far off and it can’t be conventionally breakable unless there has been some kind of mathematical breakthrough.

https://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-re...

We're good! It's a risk assessment - nothing has been broken, but they propose that with a computer with these specs it could be done.

I wouldn't worry too much about encryption being easily broken soon.

For those who worry about it, it isn't that it's broken soon, but that it will be broken within a timeframe that the data is still useful.

Veritasium : How Quantum Computers Break The Internet... Starting Now - https://youtu.be/-UrdExQW0cs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_now,_decrypt_later

I'm not sure what encrypted data produced today would be relevant in 40 years time? Thinking about how some cases can't be prosecuted since it's been too long since the offence

> I mean rsa 2048 can be currently broken in 104 days

Only if one has a sufficiently-large fault-tolerant quantum computer with 10,000 qubits and 2.23 trillion quantum gates [0]. Which is currently an unachivium.

[0] https://www.itnews.com.au/news/quantum-computers-wont-break-...

With this whole AI push, there have been pretty serious advancements in technology. I wouldn't doubt in 5 to 10 years will have a vastly different threat landscape. Nation states can afford supercomputers, so can some private corporations.

How is AI related to this? Did LLMs figure how crack encryptions?

That doesn't seem too unbelievable. Maybe a sufficiently large LLM will be able to find a flaw in the algorithms or logic behind some encryption schemes which even our greatest monkey brains overlooked.

No, they cannot. LLMs are LANGUAGE models, not KNOWLDEGE models. They do not "know" what algorithms mean any more than they know what everything else they "talk about" mean.

What they are more than capable of is to produce really convincing hype, which claims that LLMs can do anything and everything.

Some skepticism is healthy, but I think you have a misconception about what an LLM is. Neural networks use machine learning to automagically find connections between data. Handwriting recognition is an example of this, as it's trivial to build a model that can recognize the differences between characters/digits, whereas writing an algorithm to do that effectively would be very difficult. You can train a model on sample data, and it will "learn" the patterns that make up a '7', 'G', 'O', etc with the same or better accuracy than a person.

Language models are more or less the same thing, except they're trained on human language. Since human language is an encoding of human thought processes, then the model learns the patterns of human thought which are embedded in text, and can both generate and recognize them.

This is why LLMs can "understand" and answer complicated questions that don't exist in their training set, and do things like debug code. Even though it never saw that exact question, it recognizes the high level/abstract concepts that make up the question (since those abstract concepts exist in various different forms in the training set).

So giving an LLM a textual description of an algorithm, and having it detect logical errors in it, is not that unbelievable. Whether current models are good enough to do it well is the question to ask.

I think you're accidentally making a jump in meta-levels:

The equivalent of an existing handwriting recognizer for e.g. RSA wouldn't be a model that tells you how to crack RSA, it'd be a model that _does_ crack it (maybe by returning a probability distribution over the plaintext that's better than uniform). That feels pretty unlikely to me personally, but maybe that's doable, who knows.

For the standard of "the LLM tells us how to crack RSA," it feels like the equivalent for handwriting recognition would be the LLM outputting a description of a novel algorithm for handwriting recognition (and probably one that isn't just an existing one with some hyperparameters tweaked).

My understanding of the weaknesses of current LLMs is that they're actually pretty bad at that, since they tend to regurgitating existing content when they're able to.

> The equivalent of an existing handwriting recognizer for e.g. RSA wouldn't be a model that tells you how to crack RSA, it'd be a model that _does_ crack it (maybe by returning a probability distribution over the plaintext that's better than uniform). That feels pretty unlikely to me personally, but maybe that's doable, who knows.

Well, my point was based on the assumption that there is a flaw/backdoor in RSA, but nobody has discovered it yet. So you'd just need a model that can take a textual description of the algorithm as input, and spit out a list of logical errors/flaws.

I'm not saying there is a flaw or backdoor, but if there were, then a LLM would potentially be able to find it, while a team of human experts could miss it.

A model that receives an RSA encrypted payload and outputs the decrypted version would of course be impossible unless the above assumption is true... or you give it access to some compute power so it can either try to brute-force it, or try to track down and hack the servers with the keys :P

> So you'd just need a model that can take a textual description of the algorithm as input, and spit out a list of logical errors/flaws.

Right, I'm saying that this is the thing that's dissimilar from handwriting recognition -- the nearer equivalent would an LLM creating a textual description of a novel approach to handwriting recognition, which as far as I'm aware, is beyond current models.

I wonder if we'll see analogue methods as the only reliable ones left.

>I mean rsa 2048 can be currently broken in 104 days

With what hardware? I've been CONSTANTLY trying to break Hermes2 ransomware (which uses RSA2048) for almost a solid decade.

Most people think information is transmitted from source to receiver. This is actually wrong.

What happens is the information is creatively formed in the mind of the receiver, by the receiver, in all cases.

In other words, people form an explanation for the observation in their minds and judge it compared to other competing explanations.

So instead of the post-truth, doom-and-gloom world that you fear, another possible outcome is that people get better at forming or identifying good explanatory knowledge. In other words, the bar for what you call truth actually goes up and people get smarter.

An example of this happening would be door-to-door sales people. They basically no longer exist. Because people learned not to answer the door when a random person knocks.

The old explanation “someone I want to talk to is here to see me” got replaced with a new better explanation of “some time wasting stranger is probably at the door.”

That is an optimistic view, which I appreciate. The only issue I have is that I think we will need to mobilize as a culture to embrace it, in order for it to succeed.

I don't think it is as simple as replacing one explanation with another (like your door-to-door salesman example) because it is such an open-ended problem. I think it is more like completing the Enlightenment as conceived by Kant and others.

I think we could do it (i.e., philosophy classes beginning in elementary school, etc), but it would be tough to convince people to participate. It is hard, mind-bending, solitary work that is inherently alienating, which most people avoid.

Additionally, there is also the inherent contradiction in developing your own independent mind by order of the government or teachers, as well as a host of other paradoxes.

Maybe the best route is to try to make philosophy popular? Use social behavior for people to be attracted to it for the wrong reasons, but hope that a sizeable part of the population end up taking it seriously? And that sizeable chunk is enough to influence the group?

I have no idea, but I like your comment and hope there is a silver-lining that we become deeper and more thoughtful people.

AI-assisted media manipulation will have an interesting effect on evidence becoming subject to reasonable doubt. Ten years ago, showing a video in court was damning evidence. I expect it to become less so.

> Ten years ago, showing a video in court was damning evidence.

Courts have dealt with issues of manipulation of content and falsification of provenance of video and photographic evidence for a long time, actually.

There is no mention of the ruling party (why not simply say BJP?) or IT cell in the news. It seems you are here on Hacker News with only political motivations from your comments and submissions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=throwaway384629

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=throwaway384629

We really need counter research to the commercial AI. Ability to identify or protect against AI modifications is a must have today, or well even yesterday.

Misleading title, it says the ruling partys IT cell used AI, but no evidence they created it. The article says the image was shared then later deleted by some government ministers. Also altnews.in is zoobear who is known to have edited a clip of Nupur Sharma making remarks against the Islamic prophet and sharing them out of context which put her life at risk.

Who fact checks the fact checkers and titles like this?

We're either going to improve our collective critical thinking, or we are... not.

I saw this a few weeks ago and I keep coming back to it when I hear about news like this: https://youtu.be/zdlBFOp-jxE

If we consider this to be true, then this is a reprehensible act. To prevent this, it is necessary to have a completed legislation for AI (Artificial Intelligence)

"Hey, we're just trying to democratize art.."

Now you'll see how the unabashed right supporters will contort how they got caught as well...

There was video too, could that be edited as well? What can current AI do?

What software was used?

The title is wrong.

Long before A.I. becomes an existential threat, it will thrive in three domains; porn, plagiarism, and this, politically motivated misinformation.

Why is the Title Modified to give a Political angle ?

@dang

Are you allowed to write that Democrat Party threatened to Blow up Target ?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/05/26/target-store...

I am sure that will be downvoted into oblivion.

But that threat does come from a Democrat Party voter right ?

I think the American Narrow Minded view of the World is due to they growing up in a 2 party system that only looks at things as Black and White ( Not the race ), as Right and Wrong ( that's better ).

They are basically fed what they are supposed to think by CNNs, NYTs, Guardians etc etc

In their own Country they created False Accusations against their President - Published in all 'respected' mainstream Newspapers.

United States of Gaslighting is where they are at.

Let's see if @dang is open minded enough to do something about the title after 400 upvotes are already made.

You will be happy. :)

Why would anyone be happy with atrocities being committed at people by the government? Do you like such stuff?

It's a play on the phrase, ‘You'll own nothing and be happy” [^1]. Looks like it wasn't especially well received.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_ha...

This is not the first time they used AI. In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbrpkxIfb0M they made their Delhi president speak a language he doesn't know.

This account has been constantly submitting anti ruling party articles to demean India. Nothing in the article or proof otherwise which indicates that this was done by the rulling party. A lot of other articles submitted by this "throwaway" account are also questionable.

I have backed everything with sources in my posts? Can you point out if anything is not correct? Or do you have a general issue when something is said against ruling party?

If you really care about reputation of India, how about advising someone in BJP to prevent this type of things from happening at first place?

Sure let’s start from your post title itself. What “authentic” source do you have that the origin of this is BJP IT cell?

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