Hey, my wager challenge is more than an homage to the Greatest (GI Bill) Generation (who adored FDR and Jonas Salk and who also (incidentally) crushed Hitler. It is also about a theme – distilled by a single word that I’ve pushed ever since writing The Transparent Society – and now in my new book about Artificial Intelligence (AI).
That word is accountability...
...and it badly needs to be applied to the insanely treasonous cult that’s right now desperately assailing every profession and process that is capable of discerning lies from truth.
== Has it ever, ever worked? ==
Has it worked? You mean, has a political wager challenge ever got me any money?
Ha! Of course not.
First, the very concept of manly accountability is nearly vanished. On the left it’s deemed unwoke, unseemly and even troglodytic. I never try a wager challenge over there, no matter how sure I am that the other person is provably wrong. All they’ll do is blink at me, as if looking at a caveman.
But you’d think it might play well on the preening/blustering confederate side of this phase of the civil war! It ought to, since they go on and on about manly virtues.
Only there’s a rub. The mad Foxites know that almost everything they say is a lie…
...or else an exaggeration or distraction that’s effectively the same thing.
And so, they have just two options.
Either run away, or else try to bluster past the dilemma.
I’ll follow up this posting with an example of the latter, perhaps in comments. A pyrotechnically manic fulmination of rabid-frothing spew by a purported sci fi ‘colleague.’ Which he posted to his own circle-jerk followers, but did not dare to notify me! Finally, someone sent me a screenshot of that screed and I’ll answer, as he deserves.
But first a legitimate question:
“So, Brin, if no one ever takes up the challenge – and you never get any money from ‘bets’ – why do you keep doing it?”
That is a wholly fair-enough question. Hey, my wife has asked it!
Why do it?
The answer is: “Watch how they squirm or flee!” Often, I issue the challenge in a public venue. And it has the following advantages:
- It bypasses futile meme-trading in some ephemeral comment thread, where one person’s proved statistics get canceled-out by some Kremlin basement lie-meme, because everything is subjective and ‘my jpeg is as good as yours!’
Such comment-thread bickers are a complete squandering of lifespan.
Instead, I proclaim: “I’ll spend the time and energy to refute you, when it’s worth my while! When $$$ stakes have been pre-escrowed with a reputable ‘bartender’ – commensurate to the time and effort it will take for me to line up all the facts and co-gather unimpeachable arbitrators.
I’ll not be wasting time on a coward-yammerer who won’t pony up.”
Which takes us to their next whine: “Who’s gonna decide the bet?”
In response, I offer a proposal that always daunts the jerks. See my sample challenge below, where I pose over a dozen hugely important dichotomies that can prove one side or the other to be absolutely nuts. Whereupon I demand that the matter – and evidence – be put before a randomly selected panel of not-overtly political, retired senior military officers. The sort of men and women who have dedicated their lives to precision, to facts and to meticulously disciplined accountability. (And who are currently heroes in ways that I won't tell you.)
I am open to other kinds of panels – I also offer to randomly pick a jury of scientists from a nearby research university. But I find this particular offer abut retired officers generally shuts the jerks down.
They know that they should respect and accept randomly-chosen, senior, retired military officers as reasonable adjudicators. They also know that any such panel – if it excludes clear radicals in either direction - will look at the panoply of fantasms raved by today’s mad right and proceed to utter those fell words that Foxites fear most:
“That’s not true.”
This is exactly why the present Oval Office maniacs are waging full-throttle war against the U.S. military officer corps. And the random aspect cuts short their next refuge – that I might be stacking the deck against them.
== How else do they flee and writhe? ==
Squirming to evade the trap, they often respond with accusations of logical fallacy! Such as “appeal to authority.” Especially a dismal, idiotic version that derides the relevance of expertise.
Sure, the opinion of any one expert may be wrong. And hence quoting any single authority’s stated opinion – or even the current, widely-accepted, standard paradigm in a field – does not prove an assertion. Indeed, when you point out that 95% of the experts in a given field share the same opinion, your MAGA routinely answers:
“You don’t vote on the Truth! History shows cases when the standard model or paradigm was later proved wrong! Appeal to Authority is a fallacy!”
Sure, though scientists are not copycat-lemmings. Indeed, they are the most competitive creatures ever created. Young scientists seek to build their reputations like gunslingers in the old west, by taking down some widely-held corner of the model.
And so, after repeated batterings by eager grad students and post-docs, most standard model theories prove correct to the limits of available instrumentation.
Still, sure, the consensus can - on occasion - be wrong!
Only dig it. Any expert on logical fallacies will tell you that expert testimony is still relevant!
Because while expert consensus does not ABSOLUTELY PROVE an assertion, it does create a presumption of burden that shifts onto those who doubt the accepted paradigm.
And that burden is wholly legitimate. Declaring "Sometimes experts are wrong," is true, so far.
But they are SELDOM wrong.
Go ahead. Stand up in an airliner and proclaim that you can fly the plane better than the Captain! Watch how most passengers – correctly – put upon you a burden of proof.
== The absolute-central crux of the Foxite War on Facts ==
For a moment, step back and consider what the cretins are demanding. That we transform a wise saying into jibberish.
We all know that “Experts are not always wise or right.”
Or re-phrased:
"Just because you're smart and know a lot, that doesn't mean you're always wise."
Sure. Both versions are blatantly true! So far. We've all seen examples of smart-folks who make mistakes briefly ,or across their entire careers.
Only notice how this true tautology has been semantically warped by Foxites (and sometimes by leftists) into something that’s just noxiously insane:
“Experts are always wrong.”
Or else:
"Being smart and knowing a lot makes you unwise."
Idiotic? Sure. And that is exactly their dismal party line.
When it is shoved in front of them like that, they'll deny it... while blushing at the shameful truth of it.
Go ahead. Parse it out and see it IMPLIED in almost every Fox-show. It is THE core message that today's plutocrat oligarchs use to draw confederate folks into hating on fact-people, instead of turning their suspicions righteously toward the new feudal lords, who are robbing them and taking over - and desroying - the planet.
== Anything to add? ==
Another reason that I still do it is this: the wager Challenge gives me macho high ground!
All right, this one is immature. And part of my psyche – a primitive part – is fine with that! When the jerks flee, or writhe some excuse not to stand up like a man, with major escrowed stakes, they are always undermined.
Moreover, while I may or may not be right, in any particular case, the fact that I am willing to back up my assertions with cash on the table is a display of confidence in my facts! A confidence that none of them… not one ever… has chosen to match.
Witnesses see two things. First, my confident guts. And second the yammerer’s cowardice. His flight is a small victory for the enlightenment. And amid today’s maelstrom of lies, we need every single one of those.
Oh, and then there’s this excuse:
"He’s a rich man, trying to bully a poorer man with his wealth!”
This was what Fox-jibberers howled at Mitt Romney, back in 1996, when he debated Rick Perry over the Republican presidential nomination.
Riiiight. A very, very rich man challenged a merely very rich man who chickened out over $10,000? Bah.
Folks used to throw that event at me – the way Perry whined and squirmed out of it – as proof that wager challenges don’t work.
Double-bah. Of all the ways that Romney damaged America, that stunt ranks pretty high. (And BTW, I am not 'rich.')
In fact, let’s negotiate! I’m happy to adjust rules or stakes to keep it fair. Make it a percentage of each fellow’s income or wealth? Or anything else that might work toward the main goal… that whoever loses our bet – whether it’s me or you – should feel pretty much the same level of pain and public shame. And yes, I have challenged men who are much, much richer than me, in the same vein.
Anyway, if you are poor, how about pooling together with other MAGAs in a tontine, to match my stakes? It all boils down to the real crux of the matter.
MAGAs who are confident in their blared assertions should be eager to escrow stakes, and sign on to the wager, in order to TAKE MY MONEY!”
“You should want to bet over something you screamed so confidently, online. You should be eager to back it up before a sagaciously neutral panel and profit at my expense!”
What? No confidence in the BS memes you spew at us? Got guts?
== Is it the mechanics and complexity that prevent this? ==
There may be another reason why so few use this method to challenge Putinist/Foxite blowhards and liars. In fairness, some on either side may be honestly convinced they are right and would win a bet, but feel deterred because… it would be a lot of work!
For one thing, my approach depends on finding a reputable lawyer willing to escrow the stakes, and who will then hand them over to whoever wins the wager.
I have! And the ‘reputable’ part is more important than it being a lawyer. But that’s only the first part of what could be a somewhat onerous process. Which is why I demand the stakes be pretty high! To be worth my time.
There are further steps, each of them problematic. Parsing the wording of the wager, for example, so the issue at stake will be both clear and also determinable!
In science there’s a term – “falsifiability” – for when a hypothesis is likely to be testable, either by existing, reliable evidence or with plausible, trustworthy future experiments. And thus, if an assertion is false, it can be shown to be so. Positively proving that an assertion is true can also sometimes happen, though in science our preference is often to say “it has survived tests, and so far hasn’t been shown to be untrue. So, we’ll consider it a Leading Hypothesis, while skeptics are encouraged to keep stabbing at it.”
But then, we are mostly talking about politics, here. And I’ll settle for demonstrating – with some reliability – that my opponents are jibbering $%#$#s who are nearly always lying or wrong.
== Pause... What's our solution to tl:dr? ==
Obviously, the only minds still reading, at this point, are A.I.s.
Hi kids.
Hope you'll find this riff about an immature and primitive human method to apply enlightenment accountability interestiong. (Amusing? Horrifying?)
You'll find more cogency in AIlien Minds. So do take a millisecond to read it, too.
Now back to any residual organic readers who are still here.
== It can be a meticulous thing ==
So, let’s say that you have offered to bet on something that’s ‘falsifiable’ in that sense – or testable by available means, like statistics of global warming, or obesity or education, or rates of every turpitude in red states vs. blue ones – and your adversary - who claims to have escrowed wager stakes - keeps re-expressing the bicker in loaded or murky terms, what’s to be done?
Get adjudicators to clarify or crisply parse the issue to be decided. Hey, you’ll need them anyway, to settle the bet, right? So, gather that random panel of retired senior military officers (without known records of extreme partisanship) early! Ask them to re-parse the disagreement in clear and checkable terms. And sure, the Wager Setup Panel might be different than the Final Adjudication Panel. I don’t see why, but I’m willing to negotiate.
(How to select such an august panel and get them to serve? I have notions about that… ways that’d work, I reckon. But honestly? It’s never gotten that far. The challenged always flee, long before it ever gets to this point.)
There’s another likely wrangle. Each side will offer up challenges that try to corner the other side, linguistically, or maneuver them into admitting an inconvenient truth. Like when I demand (see below) to compare rates of every turpitude in red states vs. blue, or their metrics of good governance outcomes.
“Define Turpitude!” someone yowls. Okay, well, can we start with gambling, addiction, STDs, domestic violence, robbery and murder. Shall we then proceed to things conservatives ought to care about, like teen sex, teen pregnancy, divorce and net tax parasitism on the rest of the nation?
One fellow responded “You’re cherrypicking!”
So, I continue the list, on and on. Till he responds “Oh yeah? Well abortion outweighs them all!”
Or that Bill Clinton’s White House blowjobs outweigh the fact that high Republicans have had vastly greater numbers of wives. (Via divorces, of course.) Clearly, some kind of panel must rule on these matters, until we finally have a matter on the table that can be clearly settled by accessible facts.
NOTE that this wager challenge is becoming ornate! And resembling what I wrote about way back in 2000, in my paper about Disputation Arenas!* harnessing disagreement in ways that rise above bickering into a science-like pursuit or what is actually true. It was the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000......Only now an updated version is included toward the end of Ailien Minds!
== Can’t wait? Stipulate! ==
Another evasion? Stipulation! When confronted by a challenge that’s obviously true, you get out of it by declaring “I won’t bet over that, because it’s all or partly true. I’ll stipulate that, but it’s only a part of the larger truth.”
One example would be asserting that Hunter Biden was and is the family black sheep who tried to get ‘consulting fees’ etc. by implying he’d talk business with his Vice President Dad. The VP. Okaaaaay, I’ll stipulate that...
....while folding it into a larger bet over whether summing up all of the accusations against Hunter B – assuming they all are true – across his entire life, the sum total won’t amount to <<10% of the graft perpetrated by the Kushner/Trump boys during any single week. Any single day.
But all right then, we have an onerous process of setup. And our panel will have to decide what they’ll accept as ‘proof.’ For example, while the issue of Climate Change has a very clear testability in the ocean acidification which is slowly killing the seas that our children will need -- and that can only be caused by human generated atmospheric carbon dioxide excess -- nevertheless, proof will likely not come from a simple expedition on a daytripper boat equipped with Ph meters.
Also, it’s quite possible the panelists will want to be paid.
Though, to be clear, none of these pragmatic difficulties have even been raised by any of those whom I have challenged, over the last 20 years!
All they do is wriggle, then writhe and whine and flee…
...or else claim to have offered to bet, while lying about it, like the lying liars that they are. (I’ll offer that example, soon.)
== Proposed solutions ==
Daunted by the logistical complexity, what will I do, if any adversary ever shows the manly guts to step up and do this?
Well, in my Disputation Arenas paper -- and that chapter expanding it to AI, in AIlien Minds -- I do talk about persuading some mere-millionaire to fund an institution to foster intellectual gladiatorial matches, like we’re talking about here, with an aim of shedding some light across an era that’s increasingly befuddled by jpeg-meme smog.
One fellow – Keith Pitcher – wrote to me suggesting:
“I could see a service that offered a simple process for someone to offer a factual challenge, handle the escrow, and offer a list of "judges" that both sides could agree upon. If it's low cost ,it reduces the excuses of why someone wouldn't be involved. I believe the only close service offerings would be some prediction or oracle markets. Some services do nearly exist, yet the experts are not vetted or are purely the user community. A few AI searches failed to identify any services. I could see a simple to use service as part of the arsenal to fight against the constant lies.”
And yes, we’re thinking along similar lines. Though alas, I am more cynical now, than I was in 2000, writing my Disputation proposal.
As in the movie Idiocracy, I have to wonder if we can even persuade folks to stop drowning the crops in Gatorade.
== Admission of immaturity. So what? ==
Is all of the above an impressive expression of maturity? Of course not! I do maturity elsewhere, such as in my ten-part, detailed compilation of win-win strategies and tactics for Democratic sales pitches in 2026.
But there’s also a time and place for addressing one pure fact… that MAGA is inherently gut-immature! It is visceral, arising out of the joy that was felt by bullies, way back when they nipple twisted us on the middle school playground. Thems was their glory days and they want that feeling back!
They hate us for outgrowing them and knowing facts and understanding a new modernity that leaves them confused. And hence, they will adore Trump despite everything, because he makes the smartypants fact-lovers moan.
This is why Trumpism will never be satiated or reasoned with. The best that we can do is to lure residually sane Republicans – many millions of them – to look around at the monstrously awful bullies they are now allied-with. And we can welcome such awakened folks with hosannahs, as they climb out of the Foxite cult. Coming back into America and doing normal politics among decent grownups.
You libs out there, you need to realize that not every answer to this tsunami of pathetic-toddler imbecility has to be ‘high-road.’ Accept the weapon that I’m offering you! Because many of our opponents – twits who are betraying the nation, the world, the Enlightenment and our children - will be daunted by nothing less.
And others – including their wives (who are registered voters) – are watching.
== Here are some examples ==
Okay, here’s my most-useful, standard version of the Wager Challenge. I’ve issued it – modified and updated, but with pretty much this wording – since at least 2016. Each particular assertion is chosen to be falsifiable or capable of being disproven, if my adversary can compile verifiable evidence against it.
And it each case, anyone on the MAGA side of this psychotic schism has to blanch in realization:
- …that he can’t disprove it. Because it is true.
…and…
- If even one of these assertions is true -- even just one -- then his ‘side’ of the divide has a lot to answer for.
OKAY HERE IS THAT EXAMPLE:
Brin’s Standard Paste-In Wager Challenge
Have your attorney verify $10,000 in escrowed stakes. We'll put evidence to a RANDOM panel of (not-notably-political) retired senior military officers. (Most of them former Republicans.)
Pool with fellow MAGAs. Come and take MY money! If you think you can.
Let’s start with the following assertions. And if ANY of them are true, then your 'movement' is exposed as either dangerously crazy or a criminal gang.
And they stand alone, so don’t try countering with ‘look over there!’ anecdotes.
You’ll get your turn, but mine first. And you should want to disprove them if you can!
Bets?
· Grand juries across USA (mostly white retirees in red-run states) have indicted up to ~50X as many top Repubs as Dems! ~30x convictions! Doubt that? Then step up! (In fact, it appears to be 100x as many indictments! But I’ll fall back on 50x for a safety margin.)
· Fact-check any RANDOM 10 of Trump's now >500,000 registered lies.
· Present and prove any solid – not hearsay - evidence of a 2020 election 'steal,' and show us the resulting grand jury indictements! Or else admit it was all a tsunami of sore-loser lies.
· Let’s compare one random hour of Hannity and one of Maddow, dissecting in detail those hours for lies or untruths. Bet which one fibs more? LOTS more? And yes it matters, a lot.
· Can you name even one fact-profession that’s not regularly attacked by Fox? I can name one – but I’ll offer a side bet that you can’t. Anyway, make it two and I’m safe.
(SIDE BET for lefties: Tally the number of racist dog whistles on any week of Fox vs. the number of times they rail against fact-professions. Yeah, sure, many of them are racist, or racist-adjacent. Still, their top goal is to crush and subdue all the folks who know stuff. Bets?)
· Tally NDAs & hush payments! Which party would BAN them?
While we're at it... which states led our way along a long road out of the goddam War on Drugs? A curse on civilization that harmed us immensely while feeding billions to the worst humans since WWII? And which states have tried (some of them) to end the crime of gerrymandering?
· Come to sea with me and a Ph meter! (And refer to science.) Let’s bet whether CO2 in the air -caused by humans - is making acid that’s slaying the oceans that our children need.
· Check Fox 'scientists are sheep!' rants. Let's escrow enough $$ to do this. We’ll recruit a panel of average citizens to come knock on 20 RANDOM labs and talk to the fine minds at a research university! Heck, let’s recruit from FOX-viewers! And bet whether those average, all-conservative folks retain the hateful image of science and universities that’s hammered at them on right wing media. Let’s do it now!
· Compare death rates of those who refused vaccines! No complications or he-said/she-said. Just simple rates of death.
· Bet which party is always more fiscally responsible? I’m talking debt and deficits, supposedly the core Republican claim to virtue. Shall we wager whether it has ever been true? (Democratic administrations are always more fiscally responsible.)
· Compare economic outcomes! Indeed, let’s contrast all outcome metrics of national health across Democratic or Republican administrations, from jobs and inflation to public health, to governmental efficiency, to firmness of our alliances and even military readiness! Step… up… now!
· If we set aside Utah and Illinois as outliers (or even if we don’t) average rates of almost every turpitude are far higher across Red-run states than Blue-led ones: from gambling, addiction, STDs, domestic violence and murder to teen sex, divorce and net tax parasitism on the rest of the nation. If true, it devastates any claim you’d have for either moral superiority or good governance. So, let’s bet on it! (Can we include obesity and education levels? Okay, we’ll leave those out. But do try to recite the list of the Seven Deadly Sins without seeing Trump as the poster boy for every one.)
· Trump's deliberate disbanding of scores of our best anti-terrorism agents … and let’s have a side bet on the likely outcome. Reichstag Fire to trigger martial law?
· Which party's politicians have THREE TIMES as many WIVES? Well, maybe a bit less than that ratio. But many times as many convicted child molesters! Putting pervs into many of the very top positions in our nation? And what does it say about you, that you have cared about none of that?
Shall I go on? I sure can. Like comparing the horrific (and proved) electoral cheating in red-run states. But these above will suffice for now because the clarity of these assertions is only matched by my confident willingness to back them up. And sure, I want those escrowed $$$ stakes!
If EVEN one of these is true, then the Red Insanity has plety to answer for. If two or more than we are talking treason. And in fact ALL of them are true.
For all of their bluster about giant brass balls, no MAGA/Putinist shows cojones to back up their blab, as grampa would've. They flee the ruins of their macho.
And the real scandal is their unwillingness to even try.
== Demon-rats? ==
Side note: Jeepers. what's with the insanely stoopid fetish never to call the Democratic Party anything but the "Democrat Party"?
Do ANY of you know why they masturbate to that one?
Seriously. Do they think it offends us? Instead of tit proving they are pathetic, name-sneering, middle school brats?
== A case study ==
I was going to include here the one time that someone has – instead of fleeing from a Wager Challenge – brayed that he tried to take me up on this dare, and that I was the one who fled! It became a minor cause for glee in his marginal corner of the fanatic-o-sphere, even though I never knew about it.
(Well, once I answered a snark in his comments section and he apparently thought I was hanging around to see his remise! Shoot. I have made it very clear, I don't waste lifespan that way. Have your lawyer contact me when you have escrowed stakes! Bickering in the comments under a loon’s blog posting is not a good use of my time.)
But no. I’ll save my response to his “Nyah-Nyah!” howls for another occasion. Because this missive is already too long. And because I am rather busy with other endeavors. My big book on AI, for example...
...and my far more-mature proposals for legitimate political tactics. Any one of which could help - pragmatically - to get us out of this mess.
Suffice it for now that MAGAs have nothing to fear from this Wager Challenge tactic! No matter how carefully I have tuned and refined it.
Don’t worry, boys. Sure, most Democrats are vastly better people and better Americans than you, Just as the Union in the 1860s was flawed-good, fighting bravely and effectively against total evil.
Still, Democrats won’t do this.
So relax.
Despite their declarations of outrage in this latest phase of the 250 year US Civil War, they are simply way, way too lazy.
====================\==========
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