andrewclunn

At the turn of the millennium "internet skepticism" came down to trying to tell people not to trust their own pattern recognition. We were told that scientific controls, formalized in peer review and institutional authority were more rigorous and that hard proof in the form of collected data and evidence was the only true standard for empirically based discovery and truth (to be judged in the open and free discourse of science).

Now the institutions' corruption lays bare. The incentives of peer review are just as clearly malformed. Institutional authority is spent in a void of trust, the methodologies and discourse are often no longer open to the public, and we are even less likely to be free to discuss them online. Now the very "hard" evidence of recordings will be less than reliable and prone to falsification. I think I'll go back to "trusting my gut." This new technocratic rational skepticism seems to me a house of cards.

When societies will intervene to stop suicide while simultaneously allowing for government sanctioned assisted suicide, it means that the morality or "rightness" of an act is only now defined by whether the proper paperwork was filled out.

But if they're invisible only to those who blocked them...

All ideas that are true generally, when treated as axioms (and then devoid of the context from which they were derived) eventually lead to irrational thought and behavior. "Modern" economic theory and investor capitalism seem to have perverted, "a rising tide lifts all boats," into becoming accustomed to surfing on tidal waves.

3 possibilities:

1) Elon is trying to position himself as being "pro free speech" in the same way Jack Dorsey did (it's just marketing, and not a truly held principle).

2) Somebody in the organization is making decisions that Elon will reverse in the next 24 hours to prove that they did not come from him.

3) Some specific threat has been made against Elon that has him now paranoid about his security to the extent that he's rethinking his principles when faced with his own mortality.

The difference between 1 and 3 being whether he never had principles or is now giving them up. I'm guessing it's 3 because I've seen SO MANY public figures I once respected do the exact same thing once the danger of standing on principle became all too palpable.

With the amount of now entirely verified and true information that was initially labelled as misinformation, I welcome our new [lack of] data overlords, and will endeavor to become the fact checker I need or externalize it to other authority figures of MY choosing, instead of those deemed as such by institutions with power to suppress information.

I believe this hypothesis assumes some sort of metaphysical property to consciousness. Also, Permutation City did it first (consider this a book recommendation).

Mature films rarely require huge budgets anyways. And are we really lacking in good stories? Hell there's such a back catalog of entertainment I will never get to. We've saturated the market so now movies will be more like the fashion industry. Perhaps if they were to fill the gaps, with say historical dramas from perspectives that aren't usually shown, but that would require real research and work, and true creatives stay as far away from "the industry" as possible these days because that's not what it's about.

If the control group are men in long term marriages with active sex lives, then I dare say we don't have sufficient sample sizes for a real world study.

I've had the opposite assumption made around here when mentioning Ayn Rand. On any contentious issue, it seems people first wish to know if someone is "on the other team" so they can dismiss them out of hand. Nuance is the enemy of popularity. Reality the foe to marketing.

I recall a potentially apocryphal tale of a nation with green military uniforms back in the pre-WW1 days, and how this bestowed a camouflage benefit when fighting in the woods.

Ah yes, Grapatians chapter 3, verse 4.

> “Twitter was never a healthy ‘public square’ for most of us. Let’s not rewrite history while eulogizing the hellsite,” Loder wrote on Mastodon on Sunday. “Twitter was a frightening battleground where we managed barely to claw out an uneasy existence amidst the worst violent neo-Nazi extremists who constantly published our home addresses, threatened our kids’ lives, and sent hordes of racist trolls into our mentions.”

> On Mastodon, they added, “The same principles that allowed us to survive uneasily on Twitter will be required here. Community defense, thoughtful pressure on moderation policies, and eternal vigilance. There are no safe spaces but those we make safe through constant effort. We keep us safe.” Twitter, Loder says, will take a long time to die and disappear entirely, “like a rotting whale carcass.”

What if it doesn't? What if people didn't come to Twitter for the left-wing safe space, but instead twitter was turned into a left-wing safe space because it reached a critical mass of people? Then again, what if it was never financially viable and was propped up to maintain the safe space because that was its primary purpose? As somebody who doesn't use Twitter, it seems that #Goku trending is a sign that this "new" Twitter may just be the low brow "who gives a damn about politics" culture that people really want.

The CDC is so out of line with what European countries are recommending. I mean it's almost like our health care agencies have fallen pray to corporate capture. I'm sure academia (as a pure representation of the objective search for truth) is immune to this though, so Notre Dame adopting such a policy is proof that we should trust the science and comply.

More likely this was akin to the WMD reports and Iraq. There's a conclusion and and information that supports it is fast tracked and not given due diligence. Then the retraction and correction is far more muted. This isn't a bug, it's a feature of modern media propaganda.

> Everyone studying solar geoengineering seems to agree that it’s a terrible thing. “The idea is outlandish,” Parker told me. Mohammed Mofizur Rahman, a Bangladeshi scientist who is one of Degrees Initiatives’ grantees, noted, “It’s crazy stuff.” So did the veteran Hungarian diplomat Janos Pasztor, who runs the Carnegie initiative on geoengineering governance, and said, “People should be suspicious.”

The biggest threats from a slightly warmer planet are the unknowns. Such a drastic plan comes with perhaps more such unknowns. Sometimes I am comforted by human laziness and our default "do nothing" approach. At least then we will wait for tragedy to respond. This is not so horrific when an overzealous attitude might result in far more and greater tragedies.

During a brief stint at a hospital I coded some logic to check for medication interactions with procedures and anticoagulants. Then the head of the pharmacy department showed me a report showing me the number of times that catheter / anticoagulant interactions had been caught because of my code (apparently this is less intuitive to the system than base medication interactions). Was one of those, oh wow, I'm actually helping people moments.

Almost makes up for when some of my software was used to identify a manufacturing problem with a particular facility producing parts for missiles. Sometimes doing a good job helps people, sometimes it helps to harm them. Realizing the larger impact of your code can hit hard both ways.

Oh the Chinese are far worse at oppressing their own people, but the US seems to do a much better job of abusing foreign nations. It's not an apples to apples comparison.

Oh so our current owners are concerned that they might lose control of the culture to some new foreign owners? If I believed that the US security state was there to protect the American people I might be more concerned, as it stands this is just a changing of the guard for who will be our technocratic authoritarian overlords, and I can't be plotzed to care.

Now we call them "social influencers" convincing their followers that the latest crypto is going to the moon. The Judas goats are among us, and we are but sheep.

So how does castling, En Passant, and moving one's king into a checked (but wouldn't have been checked, but for the move of the opponent) position work?

Make an accusation. Hushed "whisper lists" protect no one and allow merely suspicion to serve as indictment. Again, if something happens, make an open public accusation.

You have the theoretical and the applied. Moderators are people. Algorithms are obtuse and bias can be built in. The solution? Various different sites and outlets with different approaches to moderation (or lack there of) allowing for freedom of expression as well as ideologically "safe" areas in the aggregate.

The real threat and conflation of moderation and censorship is when centralized sites like reddit or facebook put a standardize layer that is enforced across topics and domains. When taken to the point of infrastructure removing site's abilities to exist (such as the stormfront having their domain suspended) then we've clearly veered into censorship. People can complain about moderation on a site or forum (I mean I have), but when the moderation is not contained to the forum, and the site seeks to supplant the distributed world wide web itself, then the line is an arbitrary one.

Lots of pretty words that translate to "reduce population and living standards or die." If true this is the hardest warning that people refuse to hear. If false it is a way to co-op guilt and fear to sell control. How I wish I knew which it was.

This was likely done to keep Musk from being stock on the market at a reduced price prior to purchasing the remaining needed shares at the prior price, thus lowering his overall costs. It's a tragedy of the commons situation where any individual shareholder would be incentivized to sell early. It's understandable why they did it, but really insider trading (like most other rules) is over-enforced on the masses and selectively not-applicable to those who wield power.

There's plenty of areas to criticize Rand over (the fact that her rationality based / think for yourself movement became a cult of personality centered around her for example). That's why I tried the "Controversial views aside." In many ways Rand pioneered an effect that Trump would later turn into a strategy: have opponents who are so single-mindedly hateful and spiteful that they make you look better every time they attack you.

It makes it so very tough when Rand's writing could inform or elevate a topic. There's just no way to do so that won't inspire an attempt at a flame war. That said, this particular portion of Atlas Shrugged is perhaps the best illustration of what I referenced in my earlier post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCmJUobwKQk

Controversial views aside, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged really nailed the victimhood as cover for corruption narrative. The villains are that much more detestable because they're not competent people, they simply prevent others from out competing them through backroom deals, while claiming that it's to help the poor and downtrodden.

Free speech advocacy was trendy with the left when the right held more institutional power. Now it's embraced (at least as a slogan) by the right. In much the same way I don't trust Apple to give a damn about software freedom, but they backed Webkit and clang for their own self interested reasons. I accept that being "on the side of free expression" means that I will need to shift political allegiances now and then as power consolidation shifts. Along the way the tools for enabling and preserving free speech get better and better though. Long live the anti-establishment wingnut right... until they win, then I'll be hanging with Jimmy Dore.

I learned WAY more after school (but a lot of this could be tied to my graduating in the early 2000s, when the internet was exploding with new forms of self expression and had not yet become completely dominated by algorithms and corporate capture). The problem with learning broadly is that eventually all the easy to grasp and explain, but stimulating and powerful ideas eventually become known. Then you either become interested in learning more obscure trivia, delving deep into a particular field (which is fine, but you've got to pick where to specialize) or instead prioritize other things.

Many people who spent a lot of time focused on learning decide that spending a bit more time on physical health is more important. Many have far less time as they raise families. Others determine that putting forth effort to more clearly express the ideas and knowledge they value (whether through discussion or art) is their duty, to make it easier for others to follow, and then perhaps take the baton further.

I spent a lot of time changing my mind about things because I listened and learned so much. I'm still open to doing so, but sadly, after a point you are so much more informed than "the average person" that there's diminishing returns to seeking out alternative views and opinions. And don't even get me started on the "Just read this four thousand page book" recommendation that some people make.

Sure, but flagging comments (and not just downvoting) because one disagrees? I keep on the ability to see such posts precisely because more and more frequently the flagged / dead posts are the most interesting and informative ones. This mass flagging approach isn't exactly countering the argument that silencing opposition and censorship is the aim of stuff like this ruling.