... or as the U.S. military calls it, degrading the enemy narrative. It's particularly amusing that, by using sock puppet systems where one person can pretend to be many (with very thorough work done to make sure that's undetectable), they aim to "follow the admonition we practiced in Iraq, that of trying to be 'first with the truth'." One's truthiness is a little compromised if you lie about who you are. (Guardian story. )

Persona management software is catching on more generally, and the idea of pretending to be someone you're not isn't new (recent example). I wonder, though, whether there's a tendency for square-eyes like myself who spend too much time on blogs to overplay the importance of online comments for actual opinion forming. The implicit idea behind one person managing many personas seems to be that heavy information assault can work just like any other artillery. To an extent, that must be the case, but I hold out a perhaps forlorn hope that in some things, reasonable people can shortcut hegemonic assault with, you know, reason and shizzle.

There's a lot I don't understand about it. I'd like to know more about how the U.S. got from democrats and republicans being equally accepting of climate science to where they are now: completely polarised. As Nature pointed out this week, in response to the EPA vote, "it is hard to escape the conclusion that the US Congress has entered the intellectual wilderness, a sad state of affairs in a country that has led the world in many scientific arenas for so long." Regardless of what one thinks of the science, it seems massively implausible to me that a whole political group should end up this way. How did it come to pass? There's a lot of obvious answers: Republicans are better at science and know something everyone else doesn't; they're in hock to big this-and-that; it's all about closed epistemic loops. There needs to be a good answer if any kind of response is to work.

I'm with Ben Goldacre in thinking that elected politicians are under no obligation to accept and act on evidence, as long as they're not claiming they are. But Republicans in the recent hearing did indeed trot out what they considered evidence and bought in sciencey people to back them up. If it's possible to show they're wrong with about one minute of google-time, how hard can it be to have that sort of check going on?

But is that the point? By the time we're in hearings, playing the massively-debunked-climate-skeptic-talking-point drinking game, are we looking at the tip of a huge hegemonic iceberg? (Hegemonic iceberg...? Yeah, why not?) Is there actually no way that the factanista can nimbly nip about and poke deflating holes in nonsense?

Not by using that kind of language, it occurs to me. Anyone wanting to colonise `truth' must repeat the same memes, clothe themselves in the garb of truthiness: we have facts on our side, we have to see through the lies of our opponents, truth will out. Operation Earnest Voice could hardly get away with saying "we may not be honest, but at least we're consistent." A bit like today's xkcd cartoon, I guess one should talk less about the truth, and just get on with telling it. Actually, that's something that scientists have always been very good at.

Ending on a nice Orwell quote nabbed from Johann Hari, in full here:

Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase into the dustbin where it belongs.