cybernautique

It's a multibillion dollar corporation that wants to track me wherever I go, whatever I do, whenever I want to connect. Facebook is a maniacal stalker. Their website is merely an innocuous facade that hides a nest of ugly, venomous, snakes.

This is a bit extreme, but I'm of the opinion that it's literally impossible to act immorally against Facebook. It would be unfortunate if this were to happen. Ultimately, whatever is good for the goose is good for the gander, and there's no worthier goose than the razing of Facebook et al.

Very disappointing.

Hopefully some enterprising ransomware gang can do the world a service and encrypt all of FB's data for them, possibly upgrade all of their servers and backups to being /dev/null hosts entirely.

A man can dream.

Unfortunately, I'm not given the option about whether I interact with Facebook.

Their aggressive insinuation into the fabric of most websites ensures that there are very few places I can go without Mark Zuckerberg personally stalking me, along with a legion of inhuman advertisers.

Facebook and its sites can't stay down long enough; if they were offline forever, it wouldn't be enough. Even if this doesn't affect their advertising services, any hit to the FB ecosystem is a societal good.

I highly recommend the books "Octopus and Squid: the Soft Intelligence" by Jacques Yves-Costeau and "Other Minds: the Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Minds:_The_Octopus,_the_...

Appreciate it! Downloading and seeding on a few different trackers :)

You might like the Nooniverse series by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, also known for their terrific work "Roadside Picnic."

I think Jan 6 was a problem in its origin, not in its means or ends. As an American, I truly do not care about people attacking Congress, or the White House, or any politician, because they are not symbols of my power anymore than my local carwash or plumber is a symbol of my power. They are public servants, worthy of no more respect than the pizza delivery person (a lot less, actually, since the pizza delivery person is working to make a living).

If they were attempting to overthrow actual despots, about whom everyone agreed something Must Be Done, the popular reaction would be much different. I think the current reaction is on the money: they are violent, idiotic, hooligans.

But the ability to storm the capitol is a necessity.

Good catch! I wonder how access to DAISY format can be made more accessible. Perhaps a service that automatically fills out the necessary paperwork?

Thanks for the recommendations! I'll put them on the top of my reading list. I generally consider A Fire Upon the Deep to be one of the great achievements of human imagination.

Reading this book and discovering Vinge's unique vision of a variable physics universe was akin to reading Tolkien and discovering his vision of a divine universe.

Skriders! Entities cut from this very cloth appear in Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep," one of the great achievements of human imagination.

https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving

I'm not asking you to convince me. I do study decision making. Your contention that it's to your advantage for others to not have as good of a decision making process seems like a pretty strikingly perspectiveless position; if you study game theory, it's pretty clear that being in a coalition with sub-optimal players reduces your ability to perform.

If you don't already value other people making good decisions, I can only say: perhaps you should.

I disagree that this is a representative parable. Putting eight blind men in a room to touch an elephant is a very controlled, very well-defined, problem; the insinuation is that if the blind people could merely collect the correct data, they'd arrive at the correct solution. Very few things in life exhibit these niceties, and the parable absolutely fails to generalize.

What about for the actual day-to-day of our lives? If I do not already value perspective, then why should I?

Honest question: why do I need more perspective than mine to make statements about my experience of the universe? Regardless of how broad or limited a statement I wish to make, the experience I have as an individual is the sum total of my reality. Unless I already value mitigating the pitfalls of undue generalization, why shouldn't I measure the universe by the yard stick of myself?

I'm not defending the original statement. I happen to agree with you, but for different reasons. If it isn't already crucial to me that I have a lot of perspective, then why is it crucial?

Devil;s advocacy: then why so much ad spend to push pro-vaxx media? Also vaccinated, not remorseful at all. Wouldn't the responsible messaging be a huge ad wave of "talk to your doctor?"

My opinion: this isn't actually a feasible solution. There are not enough doctors for all millions of Americans, let alone all billions of humans, to consult with their doctor. It's also largely unnecessary. I did not consult my doctor. I looked at the situation, assessed my values, did my own cost-benefit analysis, and mediated all of this with a healthy amount of dialogue between my confidantes. As most people do.

I think this almost necessarily has to be litigated largely through public engagement. You know your situation, your risks, and you know if a serious consultation is prudential for you.

Even still, if the position is "don't make decisions based on biased media," why is the pro-vaxx media more valuable than anti-vaxx or vaxx-hesitant? I believe it resolves entirely to your individual values.

The argument should be: why is it profitable to the individual to value one over the other? I can only make this argument from my previously-established values, and I'm already pro-vaxx.

Unless Google fucks things up, or citizens start making bureaucrats' lives much harder.

I'm 100% in favor of people going directly to teachers, principals, counselors, on and on up until enough additional busywork is piled on top of these civil servants that their choice is a perpetual drowning in outrage or a removal of abusive technology.

It shouldn't be that hard to accomplish; possibly even just ten to fifteen people per school, applying pressure wisely, ought to make for effective burnout.

They shouldn't be widespread. I will continue to hope that schools which mandate their use fall ever further out of favor. May the management be ever engaged in fights for public funding, and their allotments continue to shrivel.

I'd love to see a wholesale turnover in all establishments that cozy up to the likes of Google and Microsoft.

They're not free. They're certainly not "free" as in they respect my freedoms, nor the freedoms of any child or parent that has to dirty themselves with it. It might not be a cabal with the schools, but surveillance capitalists are certainly a cabal unto themselves; a nasty and greedy cabal which has no place near public institutions.

As schools attach themselves to these incredibly abusive products, I sincerely hope the publics' opinion of schools drops with exponential relation.

No, I actually rescind what I said about you not granting me charity. With this further elaboration, I can better read your first response and see that you did indeed engage with me as I asked. I talked past you. Thank you for your engagement!

Just to be clear, I'm not saying Instagram the app is directly responsible. I'm saying Instagram the organization is directly responsible for killing people, by leveraging their app into a toxic cesspool so as to realize the most gains from it. From my perspective, Facebook chose to ratchet the dial on Instagram's (the app) addictive and harmful powers to a full 11. Teenagers seem to be paying the price. This, to me, is unacceptable. I'm not blaming the app for doing what it does, I'm blaming the people that make and deploy it.

Going to your planter's nuts example: if their salty nuts presented a significant health risk, on the merit of what it is, and Planters' reasonably discloses that to the customers, then I'm fine with it.

If Planter's intentionally makes their product more harmful to get greater profits, but still reasonably discloses the risk of their product, then I'm angry but I understand.

If Planter's chooses to create an extremely addictive product, hides their research which acknowledges fatal risk, deceives Congress by way of technical half truths, dedicates their platform to spreading propaganda about how good they are, and puts out PR spin to placate the seething masses... then all I can say is that they deserve Kaczynski.

Well, I explicitly asked for your charity. If you're unwilling to grant me that, then we're already at an impasse.

Yes, what if what if what if, a hundred times over. Imagine whatever mitigations you deem appropriate to obviate this corporation. We obviously disagree. I'm not trying to argue you into my position, but can you understand where my ire comes from?

It's not that I've done the cost-benefit analyses and rationally found Facebook deficient. I'm saying that in this specific circumstance, with these specific actors, I find Facebook directly responsible for every suicide that any teenager wishes to blame on Instagram.

I value Instagram and their sniveling PR bureaucrats far less than I value the absence of any harm they've wrought from their profit motive.

I'm not stating that you hold the contrary opinion; I believe that there is a set of morals you can hold that allows you to not blame Facebook, while not precluding the goodness of your character. In fact, I'm willing to give you the charity of assuming that you hold some such set of morals; if I didn't think you were engaging in good faith, I wouldn't engage you at all.

I believe I understand what you're saying. I don't agree with your values, such as I understand them. So I'll ask again: will you grant me the charity of assuming, just this once and solely for the purpose of my argument, that Facebook is directly responsible, without mitigation? And, under this assumption, can you relate to me what value you find in delineating between "directly responsible" and "literally killing"?

If you can't grant me this charity, then that's entirely fine. I'll still believe we're engaging in good faith, with good humor; and, in fact, I'll enjoy our engagement all the same. But if you can't grant me this charity, may I ask: why?

> Why would you as a company need to defend yourself of accusations like this if they aren't true?

I'm wildly against Kafka traps like this. However, after reading the rest of your comment, I fully agree with the spirit of your post. I feel that this rhetorical question is superfluous and weakens the strength of your following rhetoric.

I _only_ mention this _because_ I like your rhetoric (in fact, I plan to steal much of it); my apologies if it seems as tone policing, which is the opposite of my intention.

I quibble with your notion that this argument needs be logically sound in the first place. Logic is about consequence; this is a question of values.

It is my value judgment that Facebook is disgusting, and my arbitrary desideratum for this judgment is that Facebook (allegedly) spun a narrative to cover their suicide machine.

You'd be right in saying that this line of thought is decidedly not sound; nor could it ever have been sound in the first place, because it's irrational and arbitrary. Does its irrationality and arbitrariness make it less valuable than logically sound arguments? If so, why?

I'm a fan of your delivery; "Unless I'm grossly mistaken about the feature set of Instagram" gave me a hearty chuckle.

Anyway, if you could spare me a moment of charity and suppose that Instagram _is_ directly responsible for teen suicides, why shouldn't we consider that equivalent to "literally killing"? I'm unsure if there's real value to be preserved in splitting these hairs.

If I'm "directly responsible" for fatally hitting someone with a car, then I've "literally killed" that person.

If it's not part of any service that's marketed to me, I won't. However, if some vendor wants to run code on my machine, I _will_ be inspecting it.

Friend, I'd love to come to an agreement that your code won't end up on my machine. I'm buying beers when we get together.

I'll make you a promise: if your code never ends up on my machine, I will never try to reverse it.

Otherwise, all bets are off.

I agree with the spirit of your post; however, I don't understand why it needs to be drive-by, browser-delivered-and-run apps. It almost seems like you're proposing a cross-platform sandbox and app store, which I'm all for! but I'd like it to stay as far away from modern web browsers as possible.

I'll compare them to a BBForum/Wikipedia.

I disagree that these features are inherently valuable; in fact, I disagree that they have any value at all.

As far as I'm concerned, the basis of any media enterprise is the generation, dissemination, and moderation of content. The smallest, most well-known, prototype of an enterprise that accomplishes all three is Wikipedia. Aside from these features, anything extra is cruft.

Yes, this is overly-reductionist, weirdly neo-ludditic, and speaks past your points without paying your arguments the proper dues. We're cross-talking because we have different values; I do not value the things that you value.

The games, filters, marketplace, and messenger you mention are not features. They are deficiently complicated ways to achieve the core features of media enterprise; further, I don't think they're valuable media to deliver in the first place.

As to how I disambiguate complexity vs complicatedness, the first relates to the variety of interactions in a system while complicatedness relates to the sum total state of a system. A system with one node whose only input is its output, which outputs a TB of data to itself every second, and which stores all data it generates, is complicated. A system with two nodes, whose only inputs are each others' outputs, where one generates a byte of data every century and neither saves state, is more complex than the first but less complicated, and the converse is true.

I only consider the complicatedness vs complexity of features that _I_ deem worthwhile; if I don't consider a feature worthwhile, then all of its complexity is just cruft, which gets lumped into the less-granular metric of complicatedness.

I don't deem any of the features you mention (which differentiate FB, etc., from Wikipedia) to be worthwhile; therefore, they're all just more complicated versions of Wikipedia, without any meaningful improvements in the base complexity.

Also, how inherently complex are these features? Can you give me a best-case complexity? How are you measuring this 'inherent complexity'?

I've read through your replies to this thread. If I had your values, I'd agree heartily with you. What you say makes sense, your arguments are well-reasoned, and you present yourself well. I sincerely appreciate that you've taken the time to engage.

I hope I've confirmed the suspicion that seems to be built into your replies: our disagreement is not logical. It's entirely based on a difference in our values.

The comparison to the Dropbox comment is very fair. I maintain that I paid the piper his dues; it's complicated, but not complex, and I would never dare charge that I could make an equivalent service. However, I do charge that it's extremely overblown.

And yet you did reply, with apparent incredulity. Wikipedia is a method by which users generate, disseminate, and moderate content of a specific media type. Facebook, et al., don't innovate on the content being produced, because they do not produce it. They innovate on removing friction to the first two, or producing new methods for the third.

Yeah, they really aren't that much more complex. More complicated, I'll grant you, simply owing to the vast amount of cruft and legacy that such privacy-eating titans inherently accrue. But the actual media type is pretty irrelevant as far as I care.