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We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

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Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#211

Post by Tempest1981 »

BeetleB wrote: post #184
ec109685 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the NPR passed judgement as to whether it should be bought or not. They are letting us decide. My value judgement is that this is a terrible way to make money and it is unfortunate blatant lies are not somehow slander, despite it being about a prominent individual. The rolling stone was held liable for their false article about sexual assault. I wish this guy could be as well. He duped millions of peopl…

>He duped millions of people. Yes and no. I suspect those people would have voted for Trump anyway. I just got done reading The Righteous Mind ( https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig... ). After reading it, my default view on all these things: The final outcome is set in their mind, and they are merely looking for any reason to justify it. (I mean, sure, things are elastic. His articles do play…

Didn't the election come down to only ~0.1 million votes out of 125 million? Just saying it doesn't take much.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#212

Post by intended »

jnbiche wrote: post #157
ryuker16 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's a techocracy.... unfortunately, many modern horrible regimes are techocracies since engineering/science majors are the norm outside the west. Communist governments were super big on STEM and still implemented the same horseshit policies and woo woo beliefs. >Most engineers also aren't inflicted with the lust for power and status like so many (most?) attorneys I know. In the west, engineering doesn't attract th…

> In the west, engineering doesn't attract those types. In other countries where its the quickest way to make buck? Hell yeah! This is an excellent counterpoint. You're totally right that in many countries (former communist countries, particularly, as you say), STEM educated elites often were the top officials. However, it doesn't detract from my point that in this country, we would benefit from more scientists and e…

Take this as a warning - I think your idea is too late.

I've been watching the various attempts at improving education in America and it smells Exactly like what india/china have.

There's many details but broadly there's 1 major forces that shape this

economics-jobs

1) as normal jobs dry up/stop paying a good wage, it puts a downward pressure on education in things like politics/English/arts/philosophy and so on. This means people shift to the only hope left - STEM

Talking to people on forums from America who were exposed to multiple streams (and not just STEM) I can say you guys have historically enjoyed a deep insulation/resilience to stupid ideas/half baked ideas. Because you had people with diverse information, you could always stop a neophyte engineer from executing a shortest path solution with costs not apparent to engineers.

Once you have no jobs left for those people, parents will force their kids into the only options left.

This saturates the system with posers - people who pretend to like engineering but would rather be psychologists, painters, marketers or any non technical job.

This overloads and blows the fuses in the higher education application process, which forces them to adapt by adding more criteria and stricter criteria to get in.

The kinds of engineers you produce tomorrow are going to be unconcerned with being engineers. They are engineers to finish their first job stint and get an MBA.

Ethics become a word and a course you waste your time on, because if ethics mattered you wouldn't be an engineer in the first place.

Any system proposed needs to build with this in mind. I think simply making it useful to have multi discipline knowledge will be a way to maintain Your cultural resistance.

Sorry if I'm rambling

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#213

Post by BeetleB »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #211
BeetleB wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He duped millions of people. Yes and no. I suspect those people would have voted for Trump anyway. I just got done reading The Righteous Mind ( https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig... ). After reading it, my default view on all these things: The final outcome is set in their mind, and they are merely looking for any reason to justify it. (I mean, sure, things are elastic. His articles do play…

Didn't the election come down to only ~0.1 million votes out of 125 million? Just saying it doesn't take much.

>Didn't the election come down to only ~0.1 million votes out of 125 million? Just saying it doesn't take much.

It doesn't take much either way.

In the key states, if only 1 out of 100 Trump voters went for Hilary, she would have won by a larger margin.

Had she won, we would have been talking about how sanity prevailed, etc.

But the reality is the race was close enough that it doesn't make sense to have a narrative about why either person won. It was close enough that you cannot say this person made a significant difference or not.

If that sounds counterintuitive, think of it this way: List all the reasons you think Hilary failed (and not just external factors - include her own party's shortcomings).

Any one of these being improved could have resulted in a win for her. To single out one entity and blame him is silly. She lost because the race was close and she did not do all she could to win. She didn't lose because one person was spreading fake news.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#214

Post by paganel »

ryuker16 wrote: post #205
paganel wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about that. For the last week or so I've been bombarded with Porsche ads in the YT videos I'm listening even though I will never have that much money in order to buy a new Porsche vehicle.

You probably viewed some Porsche stuff or did a search.

I sure did, as I looked at countless other car-related videos, just found it interesting that the system behind the Google ads couldn't "guess" that I don't really have the money to buy a Porsche (for starters I fly low-cost, which Google knows). But as the other commenter says, maybe I'm not meant to buy it, just to be envious of it, which I most certainly am.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#215

Post by meira »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #198
meira wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think HN has an agenda? Everyone has an agenda. You just agree with this one.

Sure, everyone and every group has a de facto agenda. But the agenda of HN feels to me like "have productive, civil discourse, in a generally pro-technological advancement vein". The agenda of, say, /pol/, is much more directional and polarized (propagating racist and fascist memes, basically, with the broader goal of propagating racism and fascism). There's a much tighter focus and intent to the latter, which makes…

To me, both HN and Silicon Valley also propagate racism and fascism. It wasn't yesterday that all news about tech was the lack of diversity? When did Silicon Valley switched place from cause of the problem to be the cure? There is a long road ahead.

> But the agenda of HN feels to me like "have productive, civil discourse, in a generally pro-technological advancement vein"

I agree with this. That is why I'm here. But here we also have a lot of censorship and imposed moral and behavior rules frequently unfair toward some types of discussions or arguments.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#216

Post by ryuker16 »

paganel wrote: post #214
ryuker16 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably viewed some Porsche stuff or did a search.

I sure did, as I looked at countless other car-related videos, just found it interesting that the system behind the Google ads couldn't "guess" that I don't really have the money to buy a Porsche (for starters I fly low-cost, which Google knows). But as the other commenter says, maybe I'm not meant to buy it, just to be envious of it, which I most certainly am.

Porsche probably pays more for ads due to much higher profit margins per each sale (way higher than Japanese cars). 1 Porsche buy might be worth 5 camera buyers in terms ofor profit.

DUI lawyers make bank on each DUI case (5k-20k+) so the price per click averages near $50!!!!!

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#217

Post by ryuker16 »

intended wrote: post #212
jnbiche wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the west, engineering doesn't attract those types. In other countries where its the quickest way to make buck? Hell yeah! This is an excellent counterpoint. You're totally right that in many countries (former communist countries, particularly, as you say), STEM educated elites often were the top officials. However, it doesn't detract from my point that in this country, we would benefit from more scientists and e…

Take this as a warning - I think your idea is too late. I've been watching the various attempts at improving education in America and it smells Exactly like what india/china have. There's many details but broadly there's 1 major forces that shape this economics-jobs 1) as normal jobs dry up/stop paying a good wage, it puts a downward pressure on education in things like politics/English/arts/philosophy and so on. Thi…

Your 100% right.

Although admittedly in america, our lack of stem focus partially comes from the cult of money. Brilliant would be scientists and inventors are financially pushed towards the business, law, & finance fields.

It helps keep keep engineering well paid which is nice....but I suspect we've could have advanced much further if half the traders and quants on Wall Street were in an innovation oriented field.

Reminds me of a guy from a top comp science program getting paid to be basically a secretary in a finance firm.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#219

Post by Pokepokalypse »

derrickdirge wrote: post #43
kordless wrote: post #4

> But, he says, dozens, maybe hundreds of entrepreneurs will be ready to take his place. This is one of many examples of the dialog where this individual is speaking for others while ironically indicating he's running a "business". The fabrication and willful spread of disinformation is a powerfully disruptive behavior.

This is a common "troll" mentality. Truly they just get a thrill from getting a rise out of someone (and/or there's an economic motive, as is the case here), but they're able to post-rationalize it as a helpful service to their victims. They're pointing out areas of weakness; or they're playing 'devil's advocate'; or they're demonstrating the folly in engaging with an unreasonable person. One of the things I find mos…

>This is a common "troll" mentality.

Also the justification for nuclear proliferation. . .

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#220

Post by j2kun »

CalChris wrote: post #191
j2kun wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, when every fake news story comes from a new fake news website, clicking hide doesn't help for the future.

I can't dictate what FB does with my hide clicks since I don't really have them right now. Literally it takes 30s to fight through their helpful screens. But they should use hide clicks to determine whether to show that entry to others. I can imagine there are sophisticated ways of doing that. But it starts with that vote and right now FB, Google, basically everyone, is saying: We don't want to give you that vote. We…

That being said, you're proposing introducing a dynamical system, and dynamical systems are freaking hard to get right. Extremely sensitive, with counterintuitive consequences. If you want the engineers to even understand why pages are served the way they are, or to improve the quality, you should not be advocating for user-submitted votes.
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