745 karma · joined August 20, 2020
All the examples you gave involved sorting kids into good and bad categories. There were good kids who were victims caught up. And there were bad kids, who the good kids needed to be warned to stay away from.
So far as I know, no one has yet said that any kids who use TikTok need to be separated from any other kids. And I don't remember that happening with Facebook or MySpace before them. Everything earlier is before my time.
In a parallel universe, web browsers are called webitors, and they can edit websites as well as view them. People can suggest changes. People can publish annotations. Web hosting is like email--pick (or build) any service you like and pick (or build) any client you like. The protocols will sort it out.
That's your life and your choice, which I think should be respected.
And then there's need for accessibility, for users with physical or mental handicaps, and for users with limited computing and bandwidth resources.
This is it. Right now my work has to shrink down to fit on four monitors. Virtual desktops can help, but only so much. When I'm trying to puzzle something out over 20 windows--source code files, git history, documentation for two or three libraries, Wikipedia, Slack, StackOverflow, I spend a non-trivial amount of time just keeping all that organized and switching between things.
What I want is a room where I can spread out. And I need it for $1500 or less.
To oversimplify, as a society we have decided that a person shouldn't be able to earn a living doing less than ~35-40 hours of work a week. So if there isn't enough valuable work to go around filling up everyone's week, then some people are gonna have to make up performative work.
Make a list of jobs you think are very little benefit, no benefit, or detriment to society. Whatever value function you want. Maybe you hate advertisers, maybe you like advertisers. Reality television. Loan sharks. Health insurance. Lawyers. Fast food. Facebook. Everybody's got 'em, even if they don't agree.
Call these workers (whoever you decide they are) the fakeloaders. They're doing things that don't need to be done, but which the fakeloaders need to do in order to have money in order to buy things.
How big is the fake load? Sum the hours worked by fakeloaders, and the money they draw from the rest of the economy. Write it all off as wasted. That time could have been spent by those workers doing something more beneficial, or it could have been distributed over everyone to just rest and live in. That money expressed demand for important things like food, housing, or medicine but was earned by people who ultimately didn't do any work that actually produced those things or anything else that really improved life.
Now, enter some new technology that saves labor and costs people their jobs. Some number of those people may move on to other beneficial things. But some number are going to become fakeloaders. Maybe the fake load they do is easily-trained, low-paying work. Maybe it's credential- or network-demanding, high-paying work.
The key questions are: 1) Is the fake load growing and, if it is, 2) is that growth accelerating or jerking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_(physics)) too fast?
We could call a language a social illusion. There's nothing red about the word red. And the distinction we draw between "earth" and "sky" is not one that the universe appears to use in its operation. Language does, however, require us to negotiate symbols, their meanings, and the consequences stemming from them. Like in how I rejected your definition of "official" with a rationale which you may attempt to overcome, accommodate... or just walk away from. And like in how we have structured our interactions so far as a contest of truths with bold and uncompromising assertions, when the option remains available to switch to a search for truth with tentative and attackable statements.
It's exactly with the same with governments and other organizations, all based on language as they are. We make them up. We make up rules for making them up. Occasionally someone hits someone else with a big stick. But although the stick is real, the reasons why we do things, and the reasons why we believe we can do things with these consequences or those, are things we all work together or in opposition to establish. "Official" included.
"Work" is anything that must be done regardless of whether it is enjoyable. That includes things I do for myself as well as other people. Doing the dishes is work, even if I enjoy the zen of it. Automating a repetitive process at work is work, even if I enjoy the flow of it.
"Hard work" is anything that must be done even though mind and body say "this is bad for you, keep doing this only if it's really important" using the vocabulary of pain, exhaustion, boredom, resentment, anxiety, and so on. What's hard work for me might not be for someone else, and what's hard work for them might not be for me. What's hard work for both of us is likely to be a source of struggle to get the other person to do it.
"Play" is anything that doesn't need to be done, regardless of whether it is enjoyable. If you want a "hard work" equivalent of play, maybe striving play? Either way, it is worth distinguishing from work because the condition of not needing to succeed relaxes inhibitions on creativity, experimentation, and novel behavior.
There's a bunch of dimensions in all of these that I need to untangle. But one thing I really like is the detachment of enjoyability from whether or not something is work or play. I have to go to a party to bond with coworkers. I might enjoy it, it might involve games and feelings of connection, but it is work because I need to do it to maintain my security of food and shelter and yada yada, and I will be putting a face on.
It was heaven. I could write at my normal speed. If I made a mistake, one tap of a button erased it, faster than if I were using a pencil. Then I could select symbols by just drawing through them, then copypaste them a line below without worrying about copying errors like dropping a sign. If my writing started to get too messy or cramped, I could just drag things around. And I could change colors of things anytime I needed, which helped me reason through a lot of things.
At least when it comes to math and manipulating symbols (e.g. proofreading marks), it's not the screen that's the problem, it's just the keyboard and mouse.
The words "right" and "wrong" in that sentence could make light of the Ardblair stones.
So if you want to boost Godot and you haven't the skills or time, there's always donating.
But this isn't a debate, this is a decision. The agent is Meta. The field is their products. The goal is reduced teen mental health issues. And the buck stops with Zuckerberg.
"Correlation does not prove causation" alone is not an excuse to avoid an action. It is a principle that can be used to compare actions for how likely they are to achieve the goal, and so it must be combined with some other action and evidence that makes that other action appear more likely to work. Without that, then the action suggested by the correlation remains the action most likely to work, and so it must still be taken.
If, for whatever reason, Zuckerberg doesn't want these changes to be made, then he needs to either dole out resources to gather the evidence he demands and which may free him from them, or he needs to implement some other action which may turn out to work.
If he doles out the resources, and the evidence comes back and establishes causation, then he has to make the changes. It sucks for him, but the goal isn't to please Zuckerberg, it's to reduce teen mental health issues.
If he doles out the resources, and the evidence comes back failing to establish causation, then that's convenient for him. But he still has to try something else, because the goal is reduced teen mental health issues and it has not been achieved.
If he goes straight to implementing some other action, and it at least appears to work, then he doesn't have to make the changes he didn't want to make. That's great for him, and since teen mental health issues were reduced, he can put it behind him.
If he goes straight to implementing some other action, and it doesn't work, then still has to try something else, because the goal is reduced teen mental health issues and it has not been achieved.