Daily Archives: March 11, 2021

Quantum Mechanics, the Chinese Room Experiment and the Limits of Understanding – Scientific American

Posted: March 11, 2021 at 12:19 pm

Like great art, great thought experiments have implications unintended by their creators. Take philosopher John Searles Chinese room experiment. Searle concocted it to convince us that computers dont really think as we do; they manipulate symbols mindlessly, without understanding what they are doing.

Searle meant to make a point about the limits of machine cognition. Recently, however, the Chinese room experiment has goaded me into dwelling on the limits of human cognition. We humans can be pretty mindless too, even when engaged in a pursuit as lofty as quantum physics.

Some background. Searle first proposed the Chinese room experiment in 1980. At the time, artificial intelligence researchers, who have always been prone to mood swings, were cocky. Some claimed that machines would soon pass the Turing test, a means of determining whether a machine thinks.

Computer pioneer Alan Turing proposed in 1950 that questions be fed to a machine and a human. If we cannot distinguish the machines answers from the humans, then we must grant that the machine does indeed think. Thinking, after all, is just the manipulation of symbols, such as numbers or words, toward a certain end.

Some AI enthusiasts insisted that thinking, whether carried out by neurons or transistors, entails conscious understanding. Marvin Minsky espoused this strong AI viewpoint when I interviewed him in 1993. After defining consciousness as a record-keeping system, Minsky asserted that LISP software, which tracks its own computations, is extremely conscious, much more so than humans. When I expressed skepticism, Minsky called me racist.

Back to Searle, who found strong AI annoying and wanted to rebut it. He asks us to imagine a man who doesnt understand Chinese sitting in a room. The room contains a manual that tells the man how to respond to a string of Chinese characters with another string of characters. Someone outside the room slips a sheet of paper with Chinese characters on it under the door. The man finds the right response in the manual, copies it onto a sheet of paper and slips it back under the door.

Unknown to the man, he is replying to a question, like What is your favorite color?, with an appropriate answer, like Blue. In this way, he mimics someone who understands Chinese even though he doesnt know a word. Thats what computers do, too, according to Searle. They process symbols in ways that simulate human thinking, but they are actually mindless automatons.

Searles thought experiment has provoked countless objections. Heres mine. The Chinese room experiment is a splendid case of begging the question (not in the sense of raising a question, which is what most people mean by the phrase nowadays, but in the original sense of circular reasoning). The meta-question posed by the Chinese Room Experiment is this: How do we know whether any entity, biological or non-biological, has a subjective, conscious experience?

When you ask this question, you are bumping into what I call the solipsism problem. No conscious being has direct access to the conscious experience of any other conscious being. I cannot be absolutely sure that you or any other person is conscious, let alone that a jellyfish or smartphone is conscious. I can only make inferences based on the behavior of the person, jellyfish or smartphone.

Now, I assume that most humans, including those of you reading these words, are conscious, as I am. I also suspect that Searle is probably right, and that an intelligent program like Siri only mimics understanding of English. It doesnt feel like anything to be Siri, which manipulates bits mindlessly. Thats my guess, but I cant know for sure, because of the solipsism problem.

Nor can I know what its like to be the man in the Chinese room. He may or may not understand Chinese; he may or may not be conscious. There is no way of knowing, again, because of the solipsism problem. Searles argument assumes that we can know whats going on, or not going on, in the mans mind, and hence, by implication, whats going on or not in a machine. His flawed initial assumption leads to his flawed, question-begging conclusion.

That doesnt mean the Chinese room experiment has no value. Far from it. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls it the most widely discussed philosophical argument in cognitive science to appear since the Turing Test. Searles thought experiment continues to pop up in my thoughts. Recently, for example, it nudged me toward a disturbing conclusion about quantum mechanics, which Ive been struggling to learn over the last year or so.

Physicists emphasize that you cannot understand quantum mechanics without understanding its underlying mathematics. You should have, at a minimum, a grounding in logarithms, trigonometry, calculus (differential and integral) and linear algebra. Knowing Fourier transforms wouldnt hurt.

Thats a lot of math, especially for a geezer and former literature major like me. I was thus relieved to discover Q Is for Quantum by physicist Terry Rudolph. He explains superposition, entanglement and other key quantum concepts with a relatively simple mathematical system, which involves arithmetic, a little algebra and lots of diagrams with black and white balls falling into and out of boxes.

Rudolph emphasizes, however, that some math is essential. Trying to grasp quantum mechanics without any math, he says, is like having van Goghs Starry Night described in words to you by someone who has only seen a black and white photograph. One that a dog chewed.

But heres the irony. Mastering the mathematics of quantum mechanics doesnt make it easier to understand and might even make it harder. Rudolph, who teaches quantum mechanics and co-founded a quantum-computer company, says he feels cognitive dissonance when he tries to connect quantum formulas to sensible physical phenomena.

Indeed, some physicists and philosophers worry that physics education focuses too narrowly on formulas and not enough on what they mean. Philosopher Tim Maudlin complains in Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory that most physics textbooks and courses do not present quantum mechanics as a theory, that is, a description of the world; instead, they present it as a recipe, or set of mathematical procedures, for accomplishing certain tasks.

Learning the recipe can help you predict the results of experiments and design microchips, Maudlin acknowledges. But if a physics student happens to be unsatisfied with just learning these mathematical techniques for making predictions and asks instead what the theory claims about the physical world, she or he is likely to be met with a canonical response: Shut up and calculate!

In his book, Maudlin presents several attempts to make sense of quantum mechanics, including the pilot-wave and many-worlds models. His goal is to show that we can translate the Schrdinger equation and other formulas into intelligible accounts of whats happening in, say, the double-slit experiment. But to my mind, Maudlins ruthless examination of the quantum models subverts his intention. Each model seems preposterous in its own way.

Pondering the plight of physicists, Im reminded of an argument advanced by philosopher Daniel Dennett in From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. Dennett elaborates on his long-standing claim that consciousness is overrated, at least when it comes to doing what we need to do to get through a typical day. We carry out most tasks with little or no conscious attention.

Dennett calls this competence without comprehension. Adding insult to injury, Dennett suggests that we are virtual zombies. When philosophers refer to zombies, they mean not the clumsy, grunting cannibals of The Walking Dead but creatures that walk and talk like sentient humans but lack inner awareness.

When I reviewed Dennetts book, I slammed him for downplaying consciousness and overstating the significance of unconscious cognition. Competence without comprehension may apply to menial tasks like brushing your teeth or driving a car but certainly not to science and other lofty intellectual pursuits. Maybe Dennett is a zombie, but Im not! That, more or less, was my reaction.

But lately Ive been haunted by the ubiquity of competence without comprehension. Quantum physicists, for example, manipulate differential equations and matrices with impressive competenceenough to build quantum computers!but no real understanding of what the math means. If physicists end up like information-processing automatons, what hope is there for the rest of us? After all, our minds are habituation machines, designed to turn even complex taskslike being a parent, husband or teacherinto routines that we perform by rote, with minimal cognitive effort.

The Chinese room experiment serves as a metaphor not only for physics but also for the human condition. Each of us sits alone within the cell of our subjective awareness. Now and then we receive cryptic messages from the outside world. Only dimly comprehending what we are doing, we compose responses, which we slip under the door. In this way, we manage to survive, even though we never really know what the hell is happening.

Further Reading:

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Quantum Mechanics, the Chinese Room Experiment and the Limits of Understanding - Scientific American

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Quantum Mischief Rewrites the Laws of Cause and Effect – Quanta Magazine

Posted: at 12:19 pm

Alice and Bob, the stars of so many thought experiments, are cooking dinner when mishaps ensue. Alice accidentally drops a plate; the sound startles Bob, who burns himself on the stove and cries out. In another version of events, Bob burns himself and cries out, causing Alice to drop a plate.

Over the last decade, quantum physicists have been exploring the implications of a strange realization: In principle, both versions of the story can happen at once. That is, events can occur in an indefinite causal order, where both A causes B and B causes A are simultaneously true.

It sounds outrageous, admitted aslav Brukner, a physicist at the University of Vienna.

The possibility follows from the quantum phenomenon known as superposition, where particles maintain all possible realities simultaneously until the moment theyre measured. In labs in Austria, China, Australia and elsewhere, physicists observe indefinite causal order by putting a particle of light (called a photon) in a superposition of two states. They then subject one branch of the superposition to process A followed by process B, and subject the other branch to B followed by A. In this procedure, known as the quantum switch, As outcome influences what happens in B, and vice versa; the photon experiences both causal orders simultaneously.

Over the last five years, a growing community of quantum physicists has been implementing the quantum switch in tabletop experiments and exploring the advantages that indefinite causal order offers for quantum computing and communication. Its really something that could be useful in everyday life, said Giulia Rubino, a researcher at the University of Bristol who led the first experimental demonstration of the quantum switch in 2017.

But the practical uses of the phenomenon only make the deep implications more acute.

Physicists have long sensed that the usual picture of events unfolding as a sequence of causes and effects doesnt capture the fundamental nature of things. They say this causal perspective probably has to go if were ever to figure out the quantum origin of gravity, space and time. But until recently, there werent many ideas about how post-causal physics might work. Many people think that causality is so basic in our understanding of the world that if we weaken this notion we would not be able to make coherent, meaningful theories, said Brukner, who is one of the leaders in the study of indefinite causality.

Thats changing as physicists contemplate the new quantum switch experiments, as well as related thought experiments in which Alice and Bob face causal indefiniteness created by the quantum nature of gravity. Accounting for these scenarios has forced researchers to develop new mathematical formalisms and ways of thinking. With the emerging frameworks, we can make predictions without having well-defined causality, Brukner said.

Progress has grown swifter recently, but many practitioners trace the origin of this line of attack on the quantum gravity problem to work 16 years ago by Lucien Hardy, a British-Canadian theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. In my case, said Brukner, everything started with Lucien Hardys paper.

Hardy was best known at the time for taking a conceptual approach made famous by Albert Einstein and applying it to quantum mechanics.

Einstein revolutionized physics not by thinking about what exists in the world, but by considering what individuals can possibly measure. In particular, he imagined people on moving trains making measurements with rulers and clocks. By using this operational approach, he was able to conclude that space and time must be relative.

In 2001, Hardy applied this same approach to quantum mechanics. He reconstructed all of quantum theory starting from five operational axioms.

He then set out to apply it to an even bigger problem: the 80-year-old problem of how to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity, Einsteins epic theory of gravity. Im driven by this idea that perhaps the operational way of thinking about quantum theory may be applied to quantum gravity, Hardy told me over Zoom this winter.

The operational question is: In quantum gravity, what can we, in principle, observe? Hardy thought about the fact that quantum mechanics and general relativity each have a radical feature. Quantum mechanics is famously indeterministic; its superpositions allow for simultaneous possibilities. General relativity, meanwhile, suggests that space and time are malleable. In Einsteins theory, massive objects like Earth stretch the space-time metric essentially the distance between hash marks on a ruler, and the duration between ticks of clocks. The nearer you are to a massive object, for instance, the slower your clock ticks. The metric then determines the light cone of a nearby event the region of space-time that the event can causally influence.

When you combine these two radical features, Hardy said, two simultaneous quantum possibilities will stretch the metric in different ways. The light cones of events become indefinite and thus, so does causality itself.

Most work on quantum gravity elides one of these features. Some researchers, for instance, attempt to characterize the behavior of gravitons, quantum units of gravity. But the researchers have the gravitons interact against a fixed background time. Were so used to thinking about the world evolving in time, Hardy noted. He reasons, though, that quantum gravity will surely inherit general relativitys radical feature and lack fixed time and fixed causality. So the idea is really to throw caution to the wind, said the calm, serious physicist, and really embrace this wild situation where you have no definite causal structure.

Over Zoom, Hardy used a special projector to film a whiteboard, where he sketched out various thought experiments, starting with one that helped him see how to describe data entirely without reference to the causal order of events.

He imagined an array of probesdrifting in space. Theyre taking data recording, say, the polarized light spewing out of a nearby exploding star, or supernova. Every second, each probe logs its location, the orientation of its polarizer (a device like polarized sunglasses that either lets a photon through or blocks it depending on its polarization), and whether a detector, located behind the polarizer, detects a photon or not. The probe transmits this data to aman in a room, who prints it on a card. After some time, the experimentalrunends; the man in the room shuffles all the cards from all the probes and forms a stack.

The probes then rotate their polarizers and make a newseries of measurements, producing a new stack of cards, and repeat the process, so thatthe man in the roomultimately has many shuffled stacks of out-of-order measurements.His job is to try to make some sense of the cards, Hardy said. The man wantsto devise a theory that accounts for all the statistical correlations in the data(and, in this way, describes the supernova) without any information about the datas causal relationships or temporal order, since those might not be fundamental aspects of reality.

How might the man do this? He could first arrange the cards by location, dealing out cards from each stack so that those pertaining to spacecraft in a certain region of space go in the same pile. In doing this for each stack, he could start to notice correlations between piles.He might note that whenever a photon is detected in one region, theres a high detection probability in another region, so long as the polarizers are angled the same way in both places. (Such a correlation would mean that the light passing through these regions tends to share a common polarization.)He could then combine probabilities into expressions pertaining to larger composite regions, and in this way, he could build up mathematical objects for bigger and bigger regions from smaller regions, Hardy said.

What we normally think of as causalrelationships such as photons traveling from one region of the sky to another, correlating measurements made in the first region with measurements made laterinthe second region act, in Hardys formalism, like data compression. Theresa reduction in the amount of information needed todescribe the whole system, sinceone set of probabilities determines another.

Hardy called his new formalism the causaloid framework, where the causaloid is the mathematical object used to calculate the probabilities of outcomes of any measurement in any region. He introduced the general framework in a dense 68-page paper in 2005, which showed how to formulate quantum theory in the framework (essentially by reducing its general probability expressions to the specific case of interacting quantum bits).

Hardy thought it should be possible to formulate general relativity in the causaloid framework too, but he couldnt quite see how to proceed. If he could manage that, then, he wrote in another paper, the framework might be used to construct a theory of quantum gravity.

A few years later, in Pavia, Italy, the quantum information theorist Giulio Chiribella and three colleagues were mulling over a different question: What kinds of computations are possible? They had in mind the canonical work of the theoretical computer scientist Alonzo Church. Church developed a set of formal rules for building functions mathematical machines that take an input and yield an output. A striking feature of Churchs rulebook is that the input of a function can be another function.

The four Italian physicists asked themselves: What kinds of functions of functions might be possible in general, beyond what computers were currently capable of? They came up with a procedure that involves two functions, A and B, that get assembled into a new function. This new function what they called the quantum switch is a superposition of two options. In one branch of the superposition, the functions input passes through A, then B. In the other, it passes through B, then A. They hoped that the quantum switch could be the basis of a new model of computation, inspired by the one of Church, Chiribella told me.

At first, the revolution sputtered. Physicists couldnt decide whether the quantum switch was deep or trivial, or if it was realizable or merely hypothetical. Their paper took four years to get published.

By the time it finally came out in 2013, researchers were starting to see how they might build quantum switches.

They might, for instance, shoot a photon toward an optical device called a beam splitter. According to quantum mechanics, the photon has a 50-50 chance of being transmitted or reflected, and so it does both.

The transmitted version of the photon hurtles toward an optical device that rotates the polarization direction of the light in some well-defined way. The photon next encounters a similar device that rotates it a different way. Lets call these devices A and B, respectively.

Meanwhile, the reflected version of the photon encounters B first, then A. The end result of the polarization in this case is different.

We can think of these two possibilities A before B, or B before A as indefinite causal order. In the first branch, A causally influences B in the sense that if A hadnt occurred, Bs input and output would be totally different. Likewise, in the second branch, B causally influences A in that the latter process couldnt have happened otherwise.

After these alternative causal events have occurred, another beam splitter reunites the two versions of the photon. Measuring its polarization (and that of many other photons) yields a statistical spread of outcomes.

Brukner and two collaborators devised ways to quantitatively test whether these photons are really experiencing an indefinite causal order. In 2012, the researchers calculated a ceiling on how statistically correlated the polarization results can be with the rotations performed at A and B if the rotations occurred in a fixed causal order. If the value exceeds this causal inequality, then causal influences must go in both directions; causal order must have been indefinite.

The idea of the causal inequality was really cool, and a lot of people decided to jump in the field, said Rubino, who jumped in herself in 2015. She and her colleagues produced a landmark demonstration of the quantum switch in 2017 that worked roughly like the one above. Using a simpler test devised by Brukner and company, they confirmed that causal order was indefinite.

Attention turned to what could be done with the indefiniteness. Chiribella and co-authors argued that far more information could be transmitted over noisy channels when sent through the channels in an indefinite order. Experimentalists at the University of Queensland and elsewhere have since demonstrated this communication advantage.

In the most beautiful experiment done so far, according to Rubino, Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei demonstrated in 2019 that two parties can compare long strings of bits exponentially more efficiently when transmitting bits in both directions at once rather than in a fixed causal order an advantage proposed by Brukner and co-authors in 2016. A different group in Hefei reported in January that, whereas engines normally need a hot and cold reservoir to work, with a quantum switch they could extract heat from reservoirs of equal temperature a surprising use suggested a year ago by Oxford theorists.

Its not immediately clear how to extend this experimental work to investigate quantum gravity. All the papers about the quantum switch nod at the link between quantum gravity and indefinite causality. But superpositions of massive objects which stretch the space-time metric in multiple ways at once collapse so quickly that no one has thought of how to detect the resulting fuzziness of causal relationships. So instead researchers turn to thought experiments.

Youll recall Alice and Bob. Imagine theyre stationed in separate laboratory spaceships near Earth. Bizarrely (but not impossibly), Earth is in a quantum superposition of two different places. You dont need a whole planet to be in superposition for gravity to create causal indefiniteness: Even a single atom, when its in a superposition of two places, defines the metric in two ways simultaneously. But when youre talking about whats measurable in principle, you might as well go big.

In one branch of the superposition, Earth is nearer to Alices lab, and so her clock ticks slower. In the other branch, Earth is nearer to Bob, so his clock ticks slower. When Alice and Bob communicate, causal order gets all switched up.

In a key paper in 2019, Magdalena Zych, Brukner and collaborators proved that this situation would allow Alice and Bob to achieve indefinite causal order.

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Welcome To The Future: Navigating The Rich, Intertwined Quantum Software Ecosystem – Forbes

Posted: at 12:19 pm

Paul Lipman is an experienced cybersecurity CEO. He's passionate about the intersection of quantum computing and cybersecurity.

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As a software CEO, Ive witnessed the transformative impact of advanced technologies like machine learning. Quantum computing is poised to have a similar impact in the coming years, as Ive previously opined. While fault-tolerant quantum computers are still several years away, a well-funded vibrant quantum software industry is rapidly emerging to enable near-term devices to deliver value.

Quantum computers utilize quantum effects such as superposition and entanglement to solve classes of problems that are intractable to classical computers. Quantum advantage, in which a quantum computer solves a useful problem significantly faster than a classical computer, has yet to be achieved. Its unlikely to for at least the next few years. The level of investment in quantum computing, however, is a testament to the profound impact this technology will have once that milestone is reached. Early movers like JPMorgan Chase, BMW and Airbus are building quantum teams and making significant investments now to climb the quantum learning curve and be ready the moment the technology matures to the point where it will disrupt their industries.

Developing quantum computing software is hard, arguably significantly more so than developing software for classical computers. For example, the concept of phase kickback is fundamental to many quantum algorithms. It requires a deep understanding of linear algebra, plus a combination of physics and algorithmic intuition. Furthermore, quantum applications attempt to solve complex world-changing problems, which inherently require sophisticated solutions. As a result, the pool of quantum software talent is extremely limited.

Quantum Computing Platforms

Each of the major hardware vendors has developed its own platform: IBM Qiskit is arguably the furthest along, with a rich community, compelling road map and application modules. Other offerings include Amazon Braket, Google Cirq and Microsoft Azure Quantum. These platforms are all open source, and vendors are enabling their offerings to interoperate with competitors devices, lifting all boats and helping each vendor maximize its reach and potential as the various hardware modalities mature. Quantum computing will largely be utilized as a cloud-based service: QCaaS. The value of QCaaS will be accelerated by developments that enable quantum applications and workloads to operate in a device-agnostic fashion that utilizes the unique advantages of each platform. Early cross-device services, from Zapata Orquestra and Riverlane Deltaflow.OS, are promising.

Quantum System Controls

The main challenge in scaling todays quantum devices is qubit noise and errors. Software companies such as Q-CTRL and Quantum Benchmark are developing solutions to algorithmically mitigate these effects. Again, given the cost and complexity of quantum devices, its expected that QCaaS will dominate commercial usage. Like conventional cloud computing, a range of services will evolve to ensure secure usage and protect users data and code. A notable early example is Agnostiq.

Quantum Finance And Quantum Machine Learning

Many aspects of modern finance, such as complex securities pricing, portfolio optimization and forecasting, rely on algorithms that are susceptible to potential quadratic or exponential speedup using quantum computers. Companies such as Multiverse Computing are developing quantum applications for the finance industry. Last year, they published compelling results from a joint study with BBVA. Standard Chartered Bank announced a research project to explore quantum applications, including machine learning.

Machine learning and quantum computing are two of the most buzzworthy topics in computing. The emerging field of quantum machine learning (QML) unites them, incorporating a parameterized quantum circuit into a larger classical ML model to speed up learning and improve its efficacy by leveraging unique quantum computational benefits. QML can also be used to enhance and optimize quantum algorithms. Xanadus PennyLane and Googles Tensorflow Quantum are two of the early leading packages in this field.

Quantum Chemistry

Physicist Richard Feynman famously said, Nature isn't classical ... and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical. One of the most exciting applications of quantum computing is the simulation of chemical reactions, which are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. Modeling anything but the simplest of molecules is intractable for classical computers. Algorithms such as VQE enable the simulation of chemical reactions on a quantum computer, which may ultimately enable us to identify new materials and more efficient chemical processes. For example, the HaberBosch process used to manufacture fertilizer accounts for over 1% of the worlds carbon dioxide emissions and energy usage. If quantum computing can deliver even small improvements to this process, the benefit would be enormous.

Beyond The Valley

The classical software industry is concentrated in Silicon Valley. However, quantum software is far more globally distributed, tapping into academic centers of excellence and large-scale government funding. Cambridge (UK) is home to Cambridge Quantum Computing and Riverlane, which between them have raised almost $100 million. Other well-funded start-ups include Qubit Pharmaceuticals (France), Multiverse Computing (Spain), Q-CTRL (Australia), 1QBit (Canada) and Classiq (Israel). The industry will benefit tremendously from this scale and diversity.

Path To Commercial Success

Quantum computing is experiencing a virtuous cycle. Continued progress in improving qubit counts, fidelity and applications is driving interest from early commercial and government adopters who want to get ahead of the learning curve and their competitors as the technology matures. Its also driving substantial increases in venture investment. Governments, which view quantum as a strategic national priority, are following suit with multibillion-dollar funding programs.

Software startups are raising large funding rounds, driven by a land-grab for limited talent, the need to build deep defensible IP portfolios, a desire to position themselves as leading players in the emerging quantum software space and the likely long path to break even. One could argue that investment is far ahead of current commercial demand; however, the potentially transformative impact of quantum computing is so profound investors are willing to place substantial bets today for the promise of outsize returns tomorrow.

Quantum computing promises to revolutionize many industries. The rich evolving ecosystem of quantum software providers will enable early movers to quickly climb the learning curve, differentiate from their competition and achieve exponential benefits to their business.

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Physicists have measured gravity on the smallest scale ever – New Scientist News

Posted: at 12:19 pm

By Leah Crane

Gravity is measured between two gold masses that are brought close to each other

Tobias Westphal, University of Vienna

Physicists have measured the gravitational field of a smaller object than ever before, a gold sphere with a mass of about 90 milligrams. This could help us understand how gravity fits together with quantum mechanics on the smallest scales.

We have long known that our understanding of gravity is missing something it doesnt explain how dark energyaccelerates the expansion of the universe, nor does it fit with quantum mechanics, which describes how objects behave on very small scales. One way to try to fit the pieces together is to observe how small objects interact with gravity.

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Markus Aspelmeyer at the University of Vienna in Austria and his colleagues have taken this to the smallest extreme yet. They used a specialised horizontal pendulum to measure the gravitational field of a tiny gold sphere with a radius of about 1 millimetre.

They wiggled the gold sphere back and forth by 1.6 millimetres while it was near a similar gold sphere attached to the pendulum. The gravity of the first sphere moved the second one by just a few nanometres, which then swung the pendulum.

Measuring how much the pendulum moved allowed them to calculate the gravitational field of the first gold sphere, the least massive object whose gravity has ever been measured.

To measure these tiny gravitational effects, their experiment had to be extraordinarily sensitive. The researchers shielded it from electromagnetic forces using a Faraday cage between the gold spheres, and they performed the experiment in the middle of the night during the least seismically active time of year around Christmas in a vacuum so that gas molecules bouncing off one another wouldnt affect the results.

We even detected the first finisher at the Vienna marathon, which ends 2 kilometres outside our lab thats how sensitive the experiment is, says Aspelmeyer. To test the most fundamental properties of gravity, it will need to be even more sensitive; the researchers are already working on that, including a proposed experimental set-up where the spheres and pendulum levitate.

It turns out that when you do experiments that test gravity on very small scales with very small masses, you can, in theory, probe both dark energy and quantum physics, says Aspelmeyer. This experiment is a door-opener. Someday, we may even be able to directly measure the gravitational forces at work in a quantum system in an attempt to unify gravity and the quantum world, he says.

Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03250-7

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After A Year Of Lockdowns, The Labor Market Is ‘Worse Than Predicted’ – The Federalist

Posted: at 12:18 pm

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Sean Higgins, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute specializing in labor and employment issues, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to talk about what the labor market looks like after a year of government-mandated lockdowns.

I think the impact is going to be worse than predicted, Higgins said. Theres still a lot of stuff we havent dealt with like the enormous amount of debt the federal government has racked up in terms of paying out relief to people that hasnt been reckoned with.

The move towards automation which is going to cut off some jobs that some people simply had to do mental health issues that havent been gotten the time to be properly treated for people being stuck at home or forced to do things other than they would, Higgins continued. The time, the amount of education which will be lost.

Unions, Higgins said, also play a large role in the labor market and affect how it will recover.

The unions are very good at sort of promoting this idea and talking about how whats good for them is good for everybody, Higgins said. Theyrepolitically savvy and well-organized. They know how to leverage things, how to use their power, and theyre able to get their way a lot of time.

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Congress Passes Massive COVID Bailout Bill Which Costs Taxpayers More Money Than They Will Receive – The Federalist

Posted: at 12:18 pm

Democrats in Congress passed President Joe Bidens $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending bill on Wednesday without any votes from Republicans, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars more than they could potentially receive in a stimulus check.

The legislation, which Biden is expected to sign into law on Friday, contains a myriad of provisions ranging from extending unemployment benefits through September, expanding the child tax credit, allocating billions of dollars for small business loans through the paycheck protection program, designating billions more for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, expansions on Obamacare insurance subsidies even for those who may not need the financial help, paying the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) billions to help facilitate vaccine distribution and administration, grants for restaurants, money for schools which may or may not reopen, tax hikes, and much more.

Less than 9 percent of the total spending bill goes directly to combatting COVID-19 or vaccine distribution.

If this bill was about direct payments to people and putting shots in the arms and vaccines, you would have strong bipartisan support across this Congress and across this country, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., said on NPR Wednesday morning.

One of the most popular measures included in the bill is direct payments of $1,400 to Americans who fall below a yearly income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples who file jointly. An extra $1,400 will be distributed for each dependent an individual claims on their tax returns. Most of these payments, however, will not outnumber the price of the legislative spending that will eventually have to be paid by taxpayers, which amounts to approximately more than $5,000 each.

While at least $1 trillion sits unspent from the round of stimulus packages shoved through the legislature in previous months, other provisions unrelated to the pandemic were also tucked into the more than 600-page bill. It includes millions of dollars for libraries, public broadcasting, pollution mitigation, and abortion programs not subject to the Hyde Amendment, which is supposed to prevent taxpayer-funded abortions.

Republicans, all of whom voted against the bill, argue that it merely racks up the national debt and seeks to serve the people in power.

If you are a member of the swamp, you do pretty well under this bill, said House Minority Leader Republican Kevin McCarthy of California.

Others suggest it was a deliberate political move initiated by Democrat leadership and fed by Bidens rejection of a cheaper, Republican proposal last month.

This should be a targeted relief bill, but instead, this is an attempt by Speaker Pelosi to further promote her socialist agenda, said House Minority Whip Republican Steve Scalise of Lousiana.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Congress Passes Massive COVID Bailout Bill Which Costs Taxpayers More Money Than They Will Receive - The Federalist

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Illinois Teachers Shamed For Color Of Their Skin In ‘Antiracist’ Training – The Federalist

Posted: at 12:18 pm

Educators at a public high school in Illinois were astonished to learn when they showed up for work one day that everything from the color of their skin to snow shoveling indicates systemic racism.

On Feb. 26, Naperville 203 Community Unit School District hosted a systemic racism training for faculty and staff, bringing in antiracist coach Dena Simmons for a keynote speech. The Countywide Equity Institute featured 10 speakers lecturing on equity and inclusion practices for marginalized and/or underrepresented students, as well as implicit bias and microaggressions.

A whistleblower who reached out to The Federalist, a teacher at Naperville Central High School, claims Simmons told attendees that our education is based on a foundation of whiteness and that Americans are spiritually murdering students. Simmons also reportedly said that if you are not an antiracist you are a racist, even if you believe you are treating people with respect.

Simmons has delivered two TEDx talks on institutional racism. In one speech to educators that has more than 230,000 views on YouTube, the Yale University graduate said white supremacy is the outcome in all schools that do not embrace racial justice and antiracism training for students.

In an article titled How to Be an Antiracist Educator published in Oct. 2019, Simmons praises The New York Times 1619 Project as a comprehensive opportunity to learn and discuss history and race with colleagues and students. The 1619 Project claimed America is systemically racist and that all of modern society and injustices are directly linked to slavery. It has been the target of much criticism by scholars for inaccuracy.

The whistleblower said Simmons lecture was all over the place and hard to follow content-wise. Simmons reportedly said snow removal indicates systemic racism, presumably referencing a viral Feb. 3 column published by the Los Angeles Times in which the author condemned her Republican neighbor for plowing her driveway.

At one point she was talking even about how snow removal is affected by systemic racism. She totally lost me on that one. I even texted that to my [partner], said the whistleblower.

Its almost time for an amazing day of learning in @Naperville203! So excited for our lineup, discussions, reflections, and ACTIONS that will make us better together. #BeTheSpark @brightmorningtm @DenaSimmons @SaraKAhmed @pgorski @chrisemdin, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction at Naperville, Jayne Willard, who organized the Feb. 26 antiracist training, tweeted that morning.

The Federalist contacted the district for a transcript or video of the training. An employee at the district office claimed Simmons did not permit any recording or redistribution of her discussion that day.

The Naperville Community School District 203 has given a platform to the toxic and divisive ideology of critical race theory. Ms. Dena Simmons is one of the many prophets of this cult-like ideology that looks at children by the color of their skin, not the content of their character, Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter investigating critical race theory in education, told The Federalist. As parents, we need to ask the bottom line questions. How much was Ms. Simmons paid? Was there a competitive bidding process to get speakers on the topic?

Simmons is the founder of LiberatED, a group focused on developing school-based resources at the intersection of social and emotional learning (SEL), racial justice, and healing. She posts a reported speaking fee of $10,000 to $20,000 to essentially discuss the redistribution of wealth and social prestige by race.

A teacher at Naperville Central sent The Federalist several PowerPoint slides from the virtual training hosted by speaker Valda Valbrun, who presented on the topic Leading for Equity: Efficacy and Action in Schools. The PowerPoint image below obtained by The Federalist alludes to a broad conspiratorial network of interconnected systems of structural and institutional racism.

Below are additional pictures that teachers in the Valbrun training took, one of which depicts a pyramid graph that differentiates between examples of covert and overt white supremacy. Among the overt examples, the graph claims the phrase Make America Great Again is covert white supremacist language, nearly equivalent in context to the N-word and the Ku Klux Klan. Also, it claims denying the existence of white privilege makes you a racist. So does the celebration of Columbus Day, as depicted in the right-hand corner.

Another slide, depicted under the white supremacy graph, deceptively equates equal access with a vision of society in which the distribution of resources and power is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. Once more, equality of outcome is represented by the antiracist educators as synonymous with equality of opportunity.

Valbrun is the CEO of Valbrum Consulting Group, an organization that provides training and leadership development for schools and districts. In 2019, Valbrun presented at The Harvey B. Gantt Museum, Equity and Innovation Teacher Institute on equity and systemic racism in education. Valbrums lecture at Naperville overwhelmingly used identity politics to explain all disparities in society, according to sources.

Lets look at the children as individuals, a teacher said. They are saying that if you are white you are racist and have white privilege. Even if you say you are not racist, you are told you are.

On March 2, school district coordinator Sue Jim Striedl sent an email to all attendees at the Feb. 26 Valbrun training to provide a link to the Intercultural Development Inventory website. IDI identifies itself as the premier cross-cultural competence that is used by thousands of individuals and organizations to build intercultural competence to achieve international and domestic diversity and inclusion goals and outcomes.

Striedl forwarded a Google Drive link from Valbrun that contains documents she used in her lecture. One document called the Leading For Racial Equity glossary defines the terms white privilege, white fragility, white culture, whiteness, and systemic racism, among others. It also says that reverse racism does not exist, claiming white people cannot be discriminated against.

Another document is a Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist, Multicultural Institution, a six-step guide to becoming an antiracist based on the notion that everyone is implicitly bigoted. The third document included below is called the School Culture Equity Rubric and outlines various scenarios of racism, such as if a minority student is not greeted upon entering a classroom. Additionally, suspensions, detentions, and all zero-tolerance discipline policies are said to be racist.

In a tweet prior to the 2020 presidential election in November, now-Vice President Kamala Harris called for equity, saying equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place. Schools and companies are now ramping up partnerships with speakers espousing dangerous ideas, such as the elimination of meritocracy and the idea of judging people as racist or non-racist based on their biology.

In this intersectionality hierarchy, a white man is inherently racist simply because he is a white man; a transgender black pansexual person with the pronouns it/they remains oppressed because of his sectarian status in societys impermeable hegemony.

In February, a whistleblower said Coca-Cola was hosting antiracist training on LinkedIn for employees, which was subsequently removed from the website. The training videos instructed employees to try to be less white.

Brigham Young University, as reported by The Daily Wire, is developing a race-conscious curriculum. The BYU task force said the school should establish a dedicated, visible space on campus for underrepresented students and those who serve this population. In other words, segregation.

Were facing a national crisis in America today with a multimillion-dollar industry that I call Woke Inc., infiltrating our schools with hired guns, weaponizing our children, and indoctrinating them with toxic, divisive ideas that segregate, shame, and denigrate, Nomani said. As a parent, it breaks my heart. We have to stand up with moral courage and challenge and expose this nightmare.

According to teachers, Naperville Central had a building institute training a week prior on Feb. 22 where district learning coaches lectured on implicit bias and microaggressions. The topic of discussion was also equity and racism in educationand America at large. The whistleblower says that he believes the next session is scheduled for April 6.

The antiracist training at the high school comes on the heels of Illinois formally approving Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards. According to the new rules, teachers are required to embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives, as well as assess how their biasesaffecthow they access tools to mitigate their own behavior (racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege, Eurocentrism, etc).

In Illinois, the semi-official civics website tied to the implementation of the states civics law, illinoiscivics.org, has been heavily promoting critical race theory, the culturally responsive teaching philosophy that grows out of critical race theory, and the white fragility-style training sessions connected to culturally responsive teaching. I say semi-official because the illinoiscivics.org website is funded and run by a private entity, the McCormick Foundation, Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Federalist.

The new rules in Illinois include an article on white fragility and form the basis for training sessionslike that at Napervillefor teachers to move past their whiteness. Educators are required to admit that there is systemic racism or that there are systems in our society that create and reinforce inequities, thereby creating oppressive conditions.

We need to oppose antiracism training because the training itself is more like racism than its opposite. This training attributes guilt and innocence, insight and blindness, to individuals because of their race. This training, and the critical race theory that inspires it, is fundamentally at odds with the classically liberal principles that form the foundation of our constitutional system, Kurtz added.

He noted that Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed the nation he leads is beset with systemic racism, a critical race theory concept, and one of his first acts as president was to reinstate critical race theory trainings for federal employees and contractors.

Ive had enough of this, the whistleblower said. Somebody needed to say something. I was raised with the idea that you try to see people as human beings and individuals. Instead of trying to create a society that works together, a society that has the values that our country was founded on, all systemic racism is doing is drawing attention to peoples races and differences. Instead of a society that works together, this is totally the opposite.

Assistant Superintendent Jayne Willard did not return several calls from The Federalist requesting for comment, nor did Assistant Principal Angela Ginnan from Naperville Central High School. Valbrun Consulting Group did not return any calls.An individual who handles inquiries for Dena Simmons responded to an email preliminarily but did not answer a follow-up with questions.

Update:A teacher who wishes to remain anonymous contacted the Federalist on March 6 and said the Naperville union representative, Dan Iverson, sent a letter to faculty and staff after the publishing of this article. Iverson said that it is vital America fosters a more equitable district and a more equitable society.

I appreciate your article as I too work at District 203. Sadly it is falling on deaf ears and they are ramping up pressure on us even more as conservatives. We just got this letter from our union rep (Dan Iverson). The thing he doesnt get is if we speak out we will get punished. Read below. [link], the anonymous educator messaged to the Federalist.

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Vaccines Should Mean A Return To Normal, But Blue States And Bureaucrats Are Ensuring That Doesn’t Happen – The Federalist

Posted: at 12:18 pm

News last week of a third approved COVID-19 vaccine should signal a move toward normalcy. But thanks to blue state and bureaucratic screwups and this weeks Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, giving the vaccinated masses limited freedom which is to say limiting their freedom there is little cause for excitement.

At the close of February, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the new single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine, meaning tens of millions more doses will soon be pouring out into the population. Setting aside for a moment that this new vaccine is morally problematic for many Americans since it was developed using fetal line cells from aborted babies, it has proved to be very effective against COVID-19.

FDA scientists said the shot is 66 percent effective at preventing moderate to severe cases of the virus and 85 percent effective at warding off the most serious cases, and these rates account for new variants of the virus, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials. Also unlike the other two vaccines, this one requires only a single shot instead of two.

For everyone unbothered by how the vaccine was developed, this should be incredible news. Getting your vulnerable loved ones and maybe eventually yourself moved faster through the vaccine line should be an exciting development. After a year of lockdowns, economic hardship, declining mental health, scarce education, deteriorating relationships, and stifled worship, many Americans are beyond ready to get back to normal.

Excitement about this new shot, however, depends on Americans confidence in the vaccine. And confidence in the vaccine is only possible when Americans are convinced of their governments competence and willingness to move forward as more of the population is vaccinated which is all to say, this news can only conjure up so much enthusiasm.

Consider first the governments demonstrable lack of competence during the vaccine rollout, particularly among blue states such as California.

While the media lambasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for disregarding federal guidelines in order to prioritize vaccinating his states vulnerable elderly, doubtless saving many lives, blue states were embroiled in their own rollout disasters. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the same man whose nursing home policy contributed to the deaths of nearly 10,000 residents, instituted confusing rules and eligibility requirements that left precious doses of the drug thrown away, spoiled amid the failure. Under Cuomo, who is now embroiled in two separate scandals, prisoners were permitted to jump the vaccine line ahead of vulnerable populations.

Of the top four most successful states in the early days of vaccine rollout and administration, three were red: North Dakota, West Virginia, and South Dakota. Now North Dakotas mask mandate has expired and West Virginia has lifted its capacity limits on restaurants and other businesses. These types of actions instill confidence in a vaccine and move Americans toward normalcy but theyre few and far between and confined mostly to red states.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsoms vaccine failures, which mirrored New Yorks, have added fuel to the fire of his opponents recall efforts. Consider that while nearly 13 percent of the West Virginia population has received both doses of a two-dose vaccine, only 8.5 percent of Californians have been so fortunate.

But even if every state in the union were able to ramp up efficiency in distribution to look more like West Virginia or the Dakotas, will that change anything? While states like Texas and Mississippi have decided to reopen their businesses and stop requiring masks, most states havent shown nearly even that degree of commitment to freedom.

The Johnson and Johnson shot is 66 percent effective, they say? Well, thats not 100 percent, the COVID kings will say when they decide it serves their interests. Weve done this dance before. The same people who said you should double-mask because two are better than one will not be satisfied when you get a shot that is only 66 percent effective. So on the one-year anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread, do get your vaccine but also please remain six feet apart and make sure your mask is tight around your nose and chin.

Mondays much-anticipated CDC guidelines for people who are vaccinated say as much. According to the guidelines, vaccinated people should still wear masks and socially distance in public and do the same when theyre with at-risk people or with unvaccinated people from more than one household. The guidelines also say vaccinated people should avoid undefined medium and large gatherings and keep heeding CDC and health department travel requirements meaning even after youre vaccinated, dont travel if you can avoid it.

It isnt just the CDC. Lawmakers and bureaucrats have been sending the message for months that a vaccine does basically nothing in the way of helping us achieve any semblance of normalcy. Just as now-Vice President Kamala Harris turned the vaccine into a political football before winning the election, the opportunism continues.

Even after COVID-19 case numbers plummeted and vaccines began ramping up, so-called infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said it is possible well still be wearing masks in 2022. Likewise, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last month, Even after youre vaccinated, social distancing, wearing masks are going to be essential.

Meanwhile, the president of the United States is instilling no confidence either. Commenting on when America might return to normal, Biden said, My hope is by this time next year but that theres a lot we have to do yet. Despite being fully vaccinated, the commander in chief is also doubling-masking, something the CDC began recommending as case numbers continued to plummet.

This terrified mentality will never propel America toward anything resembling normal. A rejection of this fearmongering, however, leads blue states and blue checks to lose their minds, declaring anyone who discards fear and bureaucratic orthodoxy to be murderous and selfish.

Just look at what happened when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced last week he was lifting his mask mandate and opening the state to 100 percent, and Mississippi followed suit. Abbotts actions were deemed criminal, absolutely reckless, and a racist death sentence.

Our ruling class has no desire to resume normal life. Our personal decisions are now perpetually decided for us, according to the fears and desires of the most risk-averse among us, sometimes for nothing more than political capital.

If the vaccine is effective and we should all get it, as our political leaders insist, there is no reason not to pursue normalcy as shots are increasingly administered and cases plummet. The ruling class can keep pretending as they have for a year that there are no costs associated with social distance, lockdowns, and masking in perpetuity, but that doesnt make those costs go away.

As long as our leaders continue to drop the ball on vaccine administration or undermine the drugs effectiveness altogether, theres no reason to believe our country will begin dusting itself off. COVID cases arent keeping Americans in a state of perpetual limbo; those are plunging. Its blue states and bureaucrats.

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Vaccines Should Mean A Return To Normal, But Blue States And Bureaucrats Are Ensuring That Doesn't Happen - The Federalist

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Stopping The Next Cultural Revolution Starts With Your Home Library – The Federalist

Posted: at 12:18 pm

It broke my heart to hear about Dr. Seuss Enterprises decision to stop printing some of his classic childrens books at the behest of outraged leftists. It was even more horrifying to witness so many people in power, from President Joe Biden to the executives at eBay, willingly comply with a small mobs demands. Maybe it is easy to obliterate something valuable when you have never lived without it before.

The first time I read Dr. Seusss books was when I was pregnant with my son. Ever since I knew his existence, I began to read to him every night. I bought Dr. Seusss books in both English and Chinese to read each story to him in two different languages. I wanted him to become familiar with my voice. Like all mothers, I wanted him to have a much better childhood than mine, including having things I never had, such as great childrens literature.

I grew up in China. At the time, adults had nothing else to read other than books written by Mao Zedong. A collection of Maos books was a typical wedding gift for the newlyweds. Naturally, there werent many choices for childrens books either. The few childrens books I read had no adorable characters, nor did any convey a sense of humor or wit. There wasnt much color in the books either. Most of the drawings were black and white, just like our colorless, dull life under socialism.

One story I still remember was The Rooster Crows at Midnight. It was about an evil landowner, Zhou, who was very cruel to laborers who worked for him. The story said the Chinese Communist Party liberated laborers and distributed land and livestock formerly owned by Zhou to these poor laborers.

One night, children patrolling the village caught Zhou as he was trying to steal a chicken. I still remember the picture in the book that depicts the scene when Zhou got caught: he knelt on the floor, head dropped, back bent, and hands tied back; the children who surrounded him all pointed their shining spears at him, with an indignant look on their faces.

The author of the book disclosed in an interview later that this book was based on a true story. In real life, Zhou confessed his crime in a struggle session and was beaten to death.

Thats the story I remember from my childhood. I had many nightmares after reading it. The Chinese Communist Party even turned this story into a movie. The CCP wanted people to believe owning private property and having more wealth than other people is evil. This propaganda campaign was effective. Zhou, the demonized landowner, soon became synonymous with evil.

In a totalitarian regime, childrens books arent meant to bring any joy or inspire a healthy imagination. Instead, their sole purpose is to instill the correct political ideology in young minds so we would be prepared to become devoted soldiers of Communism.

Like everyone else, I despised Zhou, the evil landowner, until years later I learned that my great-grandfather had been a landowner also. My great-grandfather was always kind, generous, and hardworking. He earned his land inch by inch through sweat, tears, and even blood.

The CCP took all his land and livestock away in the name of land reform. He had to endure many cruel struggle sessions, but miraculously, he survived. Learning the truth about my great-grandfather made me feel that the CCP had cheated me out of my childhood twice. Not only did I not have a normal childhood, but also I fell for the CCPs lie that landowners like my great-grandfather were terrible people.

When I was reading Dr. Seusss books to my unborn son, I was not only introducing him to my voice, but also filling in a missing chapter in my own life. I learned that it was never too late to read great childrens literature.

Green Eggs and Ham may sound like nonsense, but Dr. Seuss reminded us that nonsense wakes up the brain cell. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. If more of us think like children, if more of us are willing to open our eyes and explore different things and ideas, the world would be a much better and happier place. As Dr. Seuss said: Youll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.

Just like the zealous Chinese Communists in the 1960s to 1970s, todays leftist mob is bent on smashing the old world so it can build an ideologically purified new world on the carnage of the old. Their destruction usually begins with annihilating the most problematic aspect of our society. Few people can find reasons to object to it.

The initial acceptance then empowers the mob to target more for elimination, no matter the historical context. Within three years, we went from removing Confederate statues, which most Americans supported, to pulling down statues of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and renaming their namesake schools and buildings.

But todays leftist mob wont stop their destruction of our world until it gets all of us. No one is safe because none of us are flawless. They can always find faults with everyone and in everything. In an extreme circumstance, as we learned from Chinas Cultural Revolution, some sin of ideological impurity eventually may be washed away by blood.

Such ideology-driven destruction will only stop when there is nothing valuable left to be eliminated: all the statues of flawed historical figures have been pulled down; all the problematic books have been burned; all the history has been rewritten; all dissenting voices have been silenced, and people who survive tremble in fear.

In such a new world where ignorance is power, future generations of Americans probably will have a childhood like mine: they may never read any books by Dr. Seuss nor hear of Beethovens music.

If thats not the kind of world you want to see your children and grandchildren live in, you need to act now. Let the cancellation of Dr. Seuss become a call to action. Refuse to comply with the woke mobs demand.

Here is something all of us can do: build a freedom library in your home or among friends. Let the cancel cultures demand become your shopping list.

Since Big Tech companies like Amazon have sided with woke mobs and used their market power to help enforce the cancel culture, do not rely on their services or servers to fill your shelves (and childrens minds). Stock your freedom library with physical copies of books, movies, music, even statues (if you have enough space) that have been or about to be deemed problematic. As T.S. Eliot said, The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.

The more each of us can do to preserve truth, beauty, wisdom, and diverse ideas of our civilization, the better hope there is that our future generations wont have to live in a colorless, dull, ignorant, and illiberal world.

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These 5 States Are Cracking Down On Big Tech Censorship And Overreach – The Federalist

Posted: at 12:18 pm

Big tech overreach is growing by the day. Not only is the former president of the United States banned from using social media platforms but businesses, nonprofits, and other individuals are also subject to censorship of all kinds daily on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and more.

While Republican lawmakers toyed with the idea of reforming regulations such as Section 230 to curb some of these blatant partisan blackouts while they still had control of the Senate, the 2020 election and other distractors occupied their time. Instead of waiting for Congress to act, states are now making plans to act on their own, introducing and passing legislation aimed at Big Techs power-grabbing and authoritarian suppression of certain speech.

The first state to pursue holding Big Tech liable for its blatant censorship was North Dakota, where lawmakers introduced a bill that would allow users whose speech is curbed by Silicon Valley giants to seek civil action and damages. The bill, which passed the statehouse and awaits action in the state senate, specifically states that the law would only apply to websites with over 1 million users but would ensure liability to the person whose speech is restricted, censored, or suppressed, and to any person who reasonably otherwise would have received the writing, speech, or publication.

Shortly after, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican state legislators announced in early February the introduction of theTransparency in Technology Act which condemns and penalizes big tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, and Apple for their power abuses including censorship, de-platforming, and election interference. In addition to enacting more transparency and privacy mandates, the proposal suggests imposing a daily $100,000 fine on any tech company that chooses to deplatform a candidate running for office in Florida during an election cycle. It also would ensure that tech oligarchs record their promotions of certain candidates as campaign contributions with the Florida Elections Commission.

Big Tech has long since abdicated the protection of consumers for the pursuit of profit, DeSantis said. We cant allow Floridians privacy to be violated, their voices and even their livelihoods diminished, and their elections interfered with.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who recently followed in DeSantiss footsteps lifting his own COVID-19 mandates in the state, took another hint from the fellow Republican governor and announced a bill prohibiting Big Tech companies from censoring Texans based on the viewpoints they express. Joined by Republican state legislators, Abbott explained the bill will allow any users in the state who are banned from platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for their political or religious views to sue those companies.

Too many social media sites silence conservative speech and ideas and trample free speech. Its un-American, Un-Texan, & soon to be illegal, Abbott stated.

Just last week, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed the Consumer Data Protection Act, meant to give users the choice to opt-out and be notified of Big Techs plans to sell their personal data to advertisers. Similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act passed in 2018, the legislation applies to all businesses that control or process the proposal data of at least 100,000 consumers, derive more than 50 percent gross revenue from the sale of personal data or process the personal data of at least 25,000 consumers. The law, however, wont go into effect until 2023 and leaves the option for legal action up to the states attorney general, not the affected users.

In Utah, Republican legislators introduced the Electronic Free Speech Amendments Bill with the hope of curbing Big Tech companies censorship and provide users with more transparency. If passed, the bill would require Silicon Valley giants to notify users of their moderation practices, announce when they ban or censor a user in Utah, provide access and opportunity for users to appeal the decision, be subject to an independent review of their moderation policies, and allow people to file complaints against social media companies with the Utah Division of Consumer Protection. These complaints will be subject to action by Utah Attorney General if necessary.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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