Trump Thread

**Montmorency** · 05-12-2020, 00:13

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1259954909467869184

Philip Rucker: You appeared to accuse Obama of the biggest political crime in American history by far ... What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing...?

TRUMP: "Uh, Obamagate."

...

RUCKER: What is the crime exactly, that you're accusing him of?

TRUMP: "You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody."

There is a story in the annals of ethology about the research of Niko Tinbergen. He studied herring gull chicks, who evolved to peck the red spots on their mothers' bills, which triggered her regurgitation of food into their mouths. Tinbergen tested the limits of this behavior by presenting chicks with artificial beaks with red spots, which the chicks pecked. Then he presented them with plain sticks painted with red dots; the chicks reportedly gave these more of a response than even the real beaks.

(I may have misremembered some details)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

A supernormal stimulus or superstimulus is an exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency, or any stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved.

Tinbergen studied herring gulls, and found the chicks peck at the red spot located on their parent's bill. The offspring targets the red spot due to the contrast of color (stimulus).[4] They do this in order to receive food through regurgitation from the parent.[4] Tinbergen and colleagues developed an experiment that presented different models to chicks and determined their pecking rates.[4] They used different models including an adult herring gull's natural head, a standard wooden model of its head, the bill only, and a red stick with smaller white markings on it.[4] The pecking rate of the chicks were consistent with the natural head, standard head model, and the bill only model.[4] The pecking rate of the chicks increased when presented with the stick model.[4] This suggests that the chicks preferred the dramatic contrast of the red stick with the yellow markings, therefore the artificial stimulus of the stick model was favored over the basic herring gull head and bill models, proving that the artificial stimuli was favored over the naturally occurring stimuli. Following his extensive analysis of the stimulus features that elicited food-begging in the chick of the herring gull, constructed an artificial stimulus consisting of a red knitting needle with three white bands painted around it; this elicited a stronger response than an accurate three-dimensional model of the parent's head (white) and bill (yellow with a red spot).[4]

something something cognitive abstraction

**ReluctantSamurai** · 05-12-2020, 19:10

I found this article by the NY Times, published in Oct 2019, to be fascinating. Perhaps you've already seen it, but if you haven't, it's a hell of a read. How a penultimate con-man became president, and continues to con the American public today. This time, the con is costing the US not only money, but lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...red-trump.html

.....right in your own backyard, Monty

**Montmorency** · 05-13-2020, 01:05

Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai

I found this article by the NY Times, published in Oct 2019, to be fascinating. Perhaps you've already seen it, but if you haven't, it's a hell of a read. How a penultimate con-man became president, and continues to con the American public today. This time, the con is costing the US not only money, but lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...red-trump.html

.....right in your own backyard, Monty

2018, but yeah, we discussed it, this and the story about Trump's declared losses on his income taxes. Like with any number of stories that would end another administration, it dropped and immediately vanished into the void, never again to receive much media attention.

But the New York Times balances it out with stories like these (see if you can spot the tell).
https://www.mediaite.com/online/ny-t...e-experts-say/
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/202...ence-aide.html