hos234

> best plastic and tightest tolerances

What all stories people tell themselves to shell out wads of dough on bullshit no one asked for. Apple and every other luxury brand in the world makes use of this story telling subset of the population as an external evangelizing church to keep the dogma flowing.

I have a bunch of Lego from decades ago that I am slowly offloading to kids of family and friends. I never bought any of my sets with this bonus usecase in mind caring about plastic quality or lifespan . I bought them because I like building stuff.

It's easy if they are on social media everyday. You just have to encourage them to believe whatever bullshit they already do. Compliment them. Encourage their fan clubs. Give them stories about how their opponents are lying/cheating/dening their brilliance etc etc. The more it happens, the higher their social media counts climb, the further and faster they get disconnected from reality. It's what happened to Obama. Which is why he is in hiding unable to influence shit.

Ofcourse them too. They are more of less programmed as it is to chase likes/clicks/views of their respective fan clubs. Tweaking the counts of what their fan club likes automatically changes their behavior. They just don't know they are all deeply trapped.

Whats preventing the gaslighters from being gaslighted? It's not a bad thing if we can change Putin or the Saudi Head Looneys memory and behavior. These kind of Debates always get won by the Edward Teller's in the room.

How is it safe? I doubt its complicated to figure out which nodes are broadcasting/unicasting the most frequently, without looking at the content if you have cops at every block logging bluetooth traffic.

What's interesting is how quickly China has reacted to all this, in terms of pumping massive disinformation onto Twitter/Facebook/Youtube. There have to be upper limits on scaling that capability. And that is where China's weakness lies. The more they scale their Stasi bullshit the more likely we see a Chinese Snowden/Manning sooner or later.

This kind of confusion is constantly created when the underlying unstated assumption is we all share the same needs.

We don't.

We spend huge amounts of energy and time trying to convince each other that our needs are whats best for everyone else.

In reality, people and their needs are on as wide a spectrum, as the needs of a cactus and a banyan tree. And it doesn't end there, those needs change with time and context.

Optimization problems are for robots, not human beings.

Be a good human. And you will attract good humans.

"favored by the universe somehow"

With a large enough population, you are going to end up with the same representation (structure of neurons, glial cells etc) in some subset of brains.

As a painter, I am very aware that taste is not as universal as is constantly advertised. Some people like the shades of blue I use and some don't or are indifferent. Why I chose that blue and why they liked that blue is cause we probably share, in some small corner of a trillion brain cells, a small clump of structure that's exactly alike.

It gets boring. Hotels are full of airheads. Even Trump got bored of it.

Someone needs to tell Taleb there is a field called Social Psychology where everything he is raving about is formally studied under the heading of Conformism or Group Dynamics.

For those actually interested in this stuff, beyond Taleb's stand-up routines, look up the work of Kurt Lewin, Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch, Phil Zambrado or Mel Slater. It's much more thought provoking.

These are very interesting times, because we finally have tons of data on how groups form, grow, break, merge etc And the ongoing merger of social psychology, political science, network theory as seen in the emergence of computational social science depts, doesn't just tell us how things work, but how to change and regulate the behavior and actions of groups. Early days but full of promise.

Have you actually dealt with people on drugs? Do you know how it effects their families?

Good luck to protestors. Hard to see the reasons for China to compromise though.

No idea why this comment is getting downvoted. It's like an arms race out there, where every trick in the book is being used to manipulate people and capture their attention.

Few years back I had an option to work on a recommendation system for a large video hosting service used by most media companies. They allowed me to spend two weeks with their engineering and sales teams. It was scary to say the least. The number of companies and layers of infrastructure all just mindlessly optimizing for ad clicks, watching viewers being bought and sold in real time like some kind of mad fish market, targeting of specific groups purely because they are hooked to the content rather than a valid target for the ad etc etc etc. I got out of there as fast as I could.

There is a category of dumb people in the world, who don't have the capacity to understand how dumb they are, nor does humanity yet posses the skills to enlighten them in a timely and effective manner.

Historically this group's stupidity has had localized effects. Today thanks to a global network they are hooked into, the effects of their mindlessness is amplified to levels no one has ever imagined.

At the beginning they do what they are told to do or what people around them are doing. And if they get very good at it and you tell them to stop because its causing issues, they wont. They cant. There is nothing sophisticated, that can be done about them other than cutting access to the network. This will take decades to fix.

When people sit around wondering (and coming up with all kinds of reasons which further obscure things) why they see random, inexplicable events happening all over the world, ask them to take a peak behind the curtain, at the mindless mega machine that is the ad serving ecosystem.

Learning takes time.

I had an Indian coworker once who freaked out at the airport because the cab driver was black. This was his first trip ever out of his small town in India (late 90s). He was carrying a bit of cash and was worried he was going to have his throat slit. By the time I worked out the reasons for the panic attack, he had already cheesed of the cab guy. When there is a culture clash, these kind of misunderstandings can happen so easily and spiral out of control fast.

The regimented guided tours isn't a bad thing as a first step. I have a lot of Chinese friends who are way past that "first contact" phase who are well traveled and know much more about the world than I do. It just takes time.

Where is the CBP/state dept side to this story?

Facebook/Youtube/Twitter et al uses mass surveillance to place ads. Netflix uses it to decide what movies and shows to make. Google uses it to rank info. Insurance companies use it to decide prices. The more data we have the more everything is going to look like mass surveillance. Agree with your first para. Let it play out. Allow people/orgs to fuck up as they will and then regulate.

This is not Journalism. Journalism is what Julie Brown did since 2008. This is just Buzzfeed being buzzfeed getting some sure shot clicks.

"The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind"

We live in interesting times. Teachers of the Paglia calibre, have become visible to larger and larger numbers of students worldwide. And that raises the bar for all those who claim to Teach.

All of us have a baked in Negativity bias - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

And in the current environment of negative info overload, things are going to feel much worse than they really are.

We don't live in a static world. Things are always changing and the environment of negative info overload will change too. Even though most people can't imagine how that is going to happen, it will happen. Why? Because the number of people sick of this unnatural state of opinion overload is increasing everyday.

I sort of agree with this. Having been around hospitals a bit, I have watched quite a few people going through one procedure after another for years and years with no improvement in quality of life. Most of them just want to checkout, but either the family or the medical establishment drag it out just because the capability exists. It's sad to watch.

Agree. It's how they figured out Kurt Hendricks was in Dubai.

Guilt and shame are stone age tools to get people to be obedient and fit into domination based hierarchies. Lot of cavemen still use them. But this is not the stone age and there are better ways of getting things done. The Outcomes speak for themselves when you use guilt/shame/fear/duty/obligation and when you dont.

Marshall Rosenberg on the subject - "We all pay dearly when people respond to our values and needs, not out of their own desire, but out of fear, guilt, or shame. Sooner or later, we will experience the consequences of diminished goodwill on the part of those who comply with our values out of a sense of either external or internal coercion. They, too, pay emotionally, for they are likely to feel resentment and decreased self-esteem when they respond to us out of fear, guilt, or shame. Furthermore, each time others associate us in their minds with any of those feelings, we decrease the likelihood of their responding compassionately to our needs and values in the future."

The more productive way to do things is to just focus the conversation on your needs and values. And leave it at that. Don't bring judgement/blame/demands/guilt/shaming etc into the picture and then watch the difference in how people respond to your political positions.

Guilt tripping and shaming your friend isn't productive. He is just going to get defensive or feel bad. People when pushed into that state of mind don't exactly effect change or are open to change.

What's the suggestion? Hire Alex Jones?

The Fire movement is pretty harmful imho. I think it benefits the authors and podcasters much more than it helps actual people. It probably works for very specific personality types. And really shouldn't be sold to anyone and everyone.

I have friends in their 40s who retired early. And most of them are loosing their minds. It's sad and frustrating to watch. They have nothing much to focus on daily, and after a few years of it, you can see the cognitive decline compared to the rest of the peer group. Their people skills keep degenerating, from lack of constant challenges that the middle aged adult deals with at work or home. And that mounts over time, making lot of things harder and harder.

I get all the frustrations people (rightly) have with institutions, govt and corporate robot wonderland, but I have done more interesting and personally satisfying things being within those structures, than I have done anything outside them.

Financial independence is not just an emergency eject button when faced with difficult choices. It a big asset in the corporate world while competing with a cohort that is deep in debt (alimony/kids college/health expense/mortgages/golf club membership etc etc). Sooner or later everyone in any org knows who can be bought and who can't. Both kind of people have value to the org and impact on the org. People who misunderstand that, end up pushing the eject button prematurely.

There are different dumps. Text doesn't take much space. It's the images and videos. Usually about a 100GB. Check https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages

This is a good list of different type of issues being produced.

I think there is a need of tracking it the same way we track software bugs. I thought Tristan Harris's Ledger of Harm's was a good attempt. Looks like this author is doing a similar thing. Should all be merged into some kind master list that software architects can stay aware of.

The idea of a "9/11" Test, getting software devs to think about how their tools and features will be used during a 9/11 type event is a good suggestion.

I had a boss once who would ask the team, 'how would the most shadiest character you personally know, use this proposed feature?'.

You don't "jar" people into Learning anything.

That is why the late night comedian brigade and the bombastic news reader class (don't call them journalists) have never managed to change anyone's minds, irrespective of how many years of likes, laughs and claps they get from their own fan clubs. It's true of the left and the right.

Jaring (blaming/shaming/guilt triping) or shaking people up is not a teaching technique that works.

And you have to think of it as Teaching. Good teachers don't just shake people up. They know Learning takes Time, A LOT OF TIME. And different subjects require a deep understanding of how much time. Without a sense of that it easy to screw up the learning process and produce outcomes that don't make sense.

You can throw a baby into water, and some have an anti-drowning reflex, that can trigger some learning (about swimming). But many don't and you end up with dead babies. The tragic Story of misguided teaching practices, doesn't usually end there. Those who don't end up with dead babies, easily fool themselves into thinking that they have some great insight into teaching. And they apply it to other subjects, like throwing babies into metaphorical Tiger cages.

In this particular case involving China, you don't attack/blame/judge your friends or hold them accountable or guilt trip them or shame them. That won't produce any learning. Guaranteed. Expect only defensiveness and counter attacks.

It you really truly want to spark learning you just point at the articles and STOP. No blaming/shaming/guilt tripping/judgement passing/sarcasm/correcting/fact checking/finding logical holes etc. And then give it time. Learning how to handle Tigers takes time. Reset that expectation and watch the seeds planted grow.

True and the mind boggles how much they are spending on trash, and how much they are raking in.

Just Disney projected hitting 7 billion dollar blockbusters this year. Look at the titles - Aladdin, Lion King, Toy Story 4, Star Wars, Frozen 2, Avengers End Game, Capt Marvel. There is nothing new there.

Superficial debates. Superficial actions.

People as it is have a Negativity Bias. Facebook/Twitter/Youtube's biggest content producers use it and depend on it, to hit their engagement metrics. Elevating threat perception or a fight response doesn't require censored content. Once you build such a machine that operates at population scale, what does it matter which content is censored?

All the content is fucking everyone in someway everyday. And the effects of that accumulate over time. Just ask your friendly neighborhood shrink whether business is booming.