NM's blog

[An exchange with Google AI on how the natives in what would become the U.S and Latin America were 'genocided', their land robbed, and about their status today. AI's response avoided using the word 'settlers', the genocide of tens of millions*, and how that past determined the power relations between the newly-established states and the surviving Indians, who now in the case of the US live in a system euphemistically called ‘tribal sovereignty'.] I am interested in how you have been designed to be selective. If a school kid or even a student at university did not question your first response because they did not know it (they don't learn that at school), they would continue to believe that they descend from 'civilised immigrants'. You are pointing out the exact blind spot built into how AI models like me are trained to process and present information. Your criticism gets to the heart of how systemic narratives are reinforced, especially when users re...

Next time you hear a British person, for example, especially a supporter of Winston Churchill, says ‘my country’, turn their argument/belief on its head by quoting their ‘hero’: I  do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right.   I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, 'The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here.' They had not the right, nor had they the power. —Winston Churchill  To the   Palestine Royal Commission   (1...

  “I  do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right.   I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, 'The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here.' They had not the right, nor had they the power.” —Winston Churchill  To the   Palestine Royal Commission   (12 March 1937) on a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.   Quoted in Gilbert, Martin: "Winston S. Churchill, Volume 5, Companion Part 3, Documents: "The Coming of War, 1936...