I thought the secret sauce for Rebol was that the syntax is so flexible that you can express things like email addresses etc. as seeming “literals”. I.e. you don’t have to wrap everything in strings (and enums and).
4,323 karma · joined September 27, 2021
But it’s not like the small-town social bubble of West Coast software development is a stranger to collusion. What was that thing again? Apple and some other giant tech companies colluding on wages? Well, it was on HN a few times at least. I don’t remember the details.
The context is that the OP complained about one business colluding with others by way of informal no-hire lists for employees that don’t tolerate this wage theft. The response to that is to focus on how other businesses that don’t collude will get out-competed…
And yeah I’m pretty sick of this framing. It’s an anecdote where employees are direct victims, and then the focus gets shifted to hypothetical and indirect victims (businesses). Even in my own social democratic place of residence there seems to be dominant narrative of “job creators” and how we need to “create jobs”, the outcome of which is to sacrifice things in order to directly benefit businesses in order to (ostensibly, in rhetoric) benefit workers. This was concretely demonstrated when, during the pandemic, the right-wing government was very insistent on giving handouts to failing businesses that obviously were going to have a hard time (like the travel industry) under the guise of “protecting jobs”. Meanwhile, the government proposed that we should temporarily make it easier for employers to put employees on temporary leave (whatever the English/American term is) in order for them to not just die. Which is fine in itself… except they wanted tax payers and workers to dis-proportionally pay for this temporary measure. What’s the only thing that made them “change their minds”? Labor groups and other such organizations.
And then there was inflation, a predictable outcome of the spending-spree during the pandemic. So the central bank raised the rent. And again. And again. And the acknowledged consequence of that was that the poorest among us would struggle to make ends meet. But that’s not a problem at all—that a predictable outcome of a previous spending spree on businesses would impact regular people and make some people have to choose between mortgage/rent or food; not a problem. That’s just Economics.
What’s the problem with corrupt politicians? On one hand you can simply say that the problem is that corrupt politicians corrupt the political system. On the other hand you can frame it as the outing of corrupt politicians causes “political distrust” and a “crisis of legitimacy” among the (stupid) voters. So you re-frame the issue as a few bad apples (politicians) which causes the real problem of voters/regular people becoming (justifiably) cynical and distrustful of the whole system. That’s the power of framing.
And that’s why I don’t buy into the framing of helping businesses in order to (pinky swear) really helping workers. Yeah, those hand-out to businesses? Oh would you look at that—a “profit party” half a year later for the shareholders. Who woulda thunk it. But too bad about that inflation, though. Guess you should rethink owning a car or having hobbies other than taking walks in the park.
It’s pretty clear what you think though.
The true crime is as always the impact on businesses.
So like a much-dreaded union for employers except it’s underhanded and illegal.
A child would also be a liability for a monk.
For some reason it grinds my gears when people in formal positions of authority insist on talking about being a leader instead of a boss.
[1] I’m all for pleasantries and being nice even though there really is no choice (ask/order). Don’t get me wrong. But not to the point where either party starts getting delusional about what’s going on.
Did his stature make him more intimidating through the Internet shadows?
> Here, disinformation refers to false, inaccurate or misleading information designed, presented and promoted intentionally to cause public harm or make a profit.
Is campaigning on lies a form of profit? You might win. These hypocrites really dare to present this as novel? Lying in politics?
What’s really the practical difference between this ostensibly oh-so clearly demarcated “disinformation” and less outright other-information? The difference is having a discourse fog which makes it practically impossible to conclude anything without sinking into a quagmire of rhetoric.
Here’s a “Beijing” statement, hypothetical:
> We the people of China
Ah! the eggheads exclaim. Propaganda! Clear disinformation since China is an authoritarian state (sorry, regime)—it can’t be a state “of the people”.
Here’s a “Washington” statement:
> The President does not suffer symptoms of senility
What is this? This is twenty different articles and op-eds back and forth on this topic:
- Well he went to the doctor 15 years ago and he said he was fine
- My good friend Joe Biden would never become demented—he would rather [redacted]
- I respect the President but it’s time for some young blood in leadership
- As a close aide to the President, blah blah
- He might not seem as sharp as 12 years ago but [diversion tactic]
Isn’t it amazing—you cannot peddle outright disinformation if you are sufficiently powerful, almost by definition; there is always some clown who will bat for you. And the result? A discourse fog. No one is a liar. No one is peddling “disinformation for profit.”
In conclusion: what we do are varying levels of information. But what these foreign forces do (because they are not here to defend themselves, and anyone who defends them (or just has a nuanced point of view) is just <regime>-puppet anyway) is disinformation because they clearly are X while they claim to be Y.
Like almost 2 years of election circus in the US federal election.
> I think your point (that people ought to be smart and strong enough to withstand all and any malign influence(?))
That’s absurd. I don’t conceptualize “people” as some not-me group.
Well I’m not Indian^W Pakistani but the principle is universal.
What does the irrelevant adjective “blatant” have to do with anything? And why is “ad hominem” significant when 95% of politics is about technically fallacious argumentation such as that?
Oh, a 10KUSD FB ad campaign bought by Kremlin and targeted at the US population? Obvious psyop, yes. Also completely irrelevant noise in the scheme of things, just like this apparent “amateur hour” operation.
It’s about having an appropriate response to “bad things”. There is no need to freak out about a few ants in the backyard.
> It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people.
Of course. As “highly educated people” we are supposed to circle the wagons and irrationally blow apparent low-effort (again according to the OP) psyops out of proportion because it’s an enemy regime. That’s after all the primary ideological role of the “highly educated people” (loose source: Chomsky).
This is clearly a mistake since EVERYONE THINKS FOR THEMSELVES WITHOUT BEING SPOON-FED IT.
A person needs to be socialized enough to develop language. As long as you’re more human-sociable than a chimpanzee-raised jungle child, that base is covered. You don’t need much more beyond that in order to “think”.
> I think people who avoid scams, cults, and pseudoscience largely does it through general knowledge and heuristics, not by thinking hard.
Everyone has built-in heuristics. Why do you think “rationalists” complain about “cognitive biases” so much? We need heuristics to survive. Something which we did prior to Prussian-inspired schooling.
Ignorance doesn’t excuse “us”. So much of the modern world is just a giant experiment—exposing ourselves to an environment which is completely novel wrt. existing data, generational experience, and science. Just winging it! It’s a travesty, really.
Showing some context per commit makes all the difference when I decide to do a first commit which fixes all formatting in the file that I’m visiting (for the real/substantive change).
Of course you won’t be convinced either way so there is no point pursuing this.
[1] The mind is not like a vessel that you fill up with knowledge and facts.
I could make a manifesto about being the greatest person to have ever lived. People are not going to believe it just because there doesn’t exist a counter-manifesto about me.