From EPO to "MAGA Regime": A Shift Away From Reality to Fake News and False Metrics
Last month: What Fake News Looks Like (IBM)
This week: In the First 3 Months of 2025 GAFAM Debt Rose by More Than $14.4 Billion
January: Don't Worry, They Say There's 7 Trillion Dollars Waiting at the Top | TRILLIONS! And TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS! Invest today!
Today around morning time we saw this new article ("Sunday Night at the Circus: The Architecture of Truth") which explains "why epistemology isn't abstract theory, but survival practice," alluding to this profound term:
The term “epistemology” comes from the Greek words “episteme” and “logos”. “Episteme” can be translated as “knowledge” or “understanding” or “acquaintance”, while “logos” can be translated as “account” or “argument” or “reason”. Just as each of these different translations captures some facet of the meaning of these Greek terms, so too does each translation capture a different facet of epistemology itself. Although the term “epistemology” is no more than a couple of centuries old, the field of epistemology is at least as old as any in philosophy.[1] In different parts of its extensive history, different facets of epistemology have attracted attention. Plato’s epistemology was an attempt to understand what it was to know, and how knowledge (unlike mere true opinion) is good for the knower. Locke’s epistemology was an attempt to understand the operations of human understanding, Kant’s epistemology was an attempt to understand the conditions of the possibility of human understanding, and Russell’s epistemology was an attempt to understand how modern science could be justified by appeal to sensory experience. Much recent work in formal epistemology is an attempt to understand how our degrees of confidence are rationally constrained by our evidence, and much recent work in feminist epistemology is an attempt to understand the ways in which interests affect our evidence, and affect our rational constraints more generally. In all these cases, epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure). This entry surveys the varieties of cognitive success, and some recent efforts to understand some of those varieties.
An associate says that this is related to Andy's (Andy Farnell's) warning about LLM slop and the spread of disinformation (i.e. deliberate falsehoods). This associate refers to "Radical disbelief and its causes", an article by Dr. Andy Farnell and Dr. Kate Brown published at cybershow.uk in October 2024. Quoting the doctors' 'thesis' on this: "Not with a bang but with a whimper. The "Western" world we know is rotting. The disease is "epistemic mistrust". Right now, it can't be cured. Its root is in the technology, systems and organisations we created to make life "easy"."
This is applicable to a lot of what we cover in relation to Free software and supposedly "benign" monopolies. Or, to name some other myths, misinformation machines (e.g. LLMs) sold to us as "efficiency" and patents sold as "innovation". Speaking of "efficiency", hours ago Dr. Andy Farnell et al published a new episode (direct link to MP3), which said in the outline: "Under the guide of 'efficiency' US America is destroying its own government. But, efficiency is a lie! Ruthless, radical and reckless actions of DOGE show all the hallmarks of a cyberattack, according to experts Kate and Milo, who say it's designed to be destructive, and worse, it will all need rebuilding again at great cost. Maybe this is an opportunity to rebuild better, immune to another top-down 'decapitation attack'."
Sounds a lot like EPO mismanagement/maladministration. They drove out many of their best people. They lowered quality and compliance and then boasted about money they netted by breaking rules and laws. What would be the total cost? How much was lost and how was anything "gained"?
A lot of that nonsense boils down to patently false metrics, as notoriously leveraged by the EPO's Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos to justify awful and sometimes illegal positions (revisit the latest: 1) Leak: The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Does Not Consult Staff on Crucial Matters and Bypasses the Administrative Council (AC) to Do Illegal Things; 2) EPO Likely Breaking the Law Yet Again, This Time by Using Slop for Patents (to Lower Costs While Producing Monopolies That Cause Ruinous Lawsuits)).
The EPO does this all the time. Its social control media accounts are like a stochastic machine, a generator of lies. Repeat and repeat the lie much like some sort of gospel.
SUEPO is meanwhile sharing a new article with translations for SUEPO members. Well, a person leaked the document to us (it's just a translation of this original in French) and it uses Microsoft terminology, it cites Microsoft's LLMs etc.
For those interested in learning how managers lie to us all, even to shareholders (to whom there's a legal obligation not to lie, not just some implicit/contractual promise), please take a look.
Having read what we published 2 days ago, one reader wrote to say: "Have you read any documents on how companies manipulate accounts? [1, 2] In fact it is quite easy. It is especially so with sales of software for it is hard to observe how many units are actually shipped out. You don't need AI/LLM for this. Try searching online for "financial manipulation inflate revenue" "accounting fraud" "accounting cook the books" or some similar term."
The EPO does this and so does its buddy, Microsoft. A few years ago we published: Microsoft “Azure” (or “Cloud”) Results Are Most Likely an Elaborate Fraud | Azure Apparently Losing Money and Microsoft Lies to Shareholders, in Effect Breaking the Law | Poorly Redacted Documents From the Court Reveal That Microsoft Has Indeed Defrauded Shareholders About Azure
Disbelief in and of itself isn't a bad thing; but the problem is that people are taught to believe rich people in suits more than they believe others (as if credibility is derived from costumes almost everyone can afford). People who have nothing to gain from lying typically don't wear suits or hire spokespeople, who basically know how to manipulate and play with words. █