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Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

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Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#181

Post by xelxebar »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #95
Sevii wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is science reporting. Normal people can only understand what is reported. If you want to read the actual papers, prepare to spend a couple hours to barely understand what is going on. Most people aren’t able to do that for all of the hundreds of papers published each year that could be relevant to their lives.

I wish scientific journals would start encouraging “human language”, as opposed to impenetrable thickets of mathematical gobbledygook. When I was still in academia, reading papers germane to my field was a chore. It would take considerable time to decipher a complex looking mathematical equation, only to go, “oh, they just mean X.” Basically as soon as I saw a \Sum sign, I knew the equation was pointless peacocking.…

I completely understand your frustration, but let me offer somewhat of a different view.

Try reading Euclid's Elements. It was written before equations had been invented and is for the most part "plain language". However, it reads as vastly more obtuse than an equivalent modern formulation of the same facts with symbols and algebra.

The nice thing about mathematical notation is that a simple, one line equation can express relationships and detail that what would otherwise take a full paragraph to unpack. Personally, once I'm familiar with the symbols and underlying concepts, an equation is much easier to hold in my head than a long jumble of plain language explication.

I think most researchers aren't simply pomping up their paper with obtuse symbols. Mathematical notation is both compact as well as a common language, so why not use it? As a side benefit, we also get to lean on the vast background of mathematical research which offers potential precision that would otherwise be completely lost.

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#182

Post by dosycorp »

dosycorp wrote: post #179
dosycorp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but we vote with majority of uninformed voters. So democracy has to relegate information to second place, and rely on emotion and narrative to motivate voters. This doesn't mean democratic leaders can't separate campaign from implementation ( campaign on emotive issues, deliver substantive ones ), but it does make the whole trajectory subject to the gravitational downward pull of fickle/merit-less but emotional…

Okay, I confess. I have spoken against the true way of HN and am guilty of advancing ideas counter to the good of the glorious community. I am deeply sorry for how my ideas have damaged the eternal forum. All I can do is submit my useless self to beg for your mercy and surrender to reeducation!!!

Yes, yes, reeducate me! Help me censor my ideas more completely! Thank you, kind guides, your wisdom in the protection of the glorious community from harm is undeniable! All I can do is submit my stupid and pathetic self more fully to your teachings. Show me the glorious way of True HN Thought!

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#183

Post by dosycorp »

dosycorp wrote: post #182
dosycorp wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I confess. I have spoken against the true way of HN and am guilty of advancing ideas counter to the good of the glorious community. I am deeply sorry for how my ideas have damaged the eternal forum. All I can do is submit my useless self to beg for your mercy and surrender to reeducation!!!

Yes, yes, reeducate me! Help me censor my ideas more completely! Thank you, kind guides, your wisdom in the protection of the glorious community from harm is undeniable! All I can do is submit my stupid and pathetic self more fully to your teachings. Show me the glorious way of True HN Thought!

Yes, more, more, more reeducation. I need it! Preserve the unquestionable rightness of True HN Thought!

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#184

Post by mleonhard »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #69

I think it's important to note that the truth has never been widely available, to the point where it might be useless to think of truth as being a real concept to begin with. One could say that for a blip of time, we lived in a world where a large percentage of human were pushed largely accurate (if incomplete) information by mass media, allowing for something resembling consensual reality and informed democracy. We…

> the more fundamental question remains how can we achieve human welfare in a world where informed democracy is an illusion?

I think the way is to change the incentives. People in our society have various skills and abilities. Some of them are highly skilled at accumulating influence. They use that influence to get wealth. Then they leverage the wealth for more influence. Our society is structured to move those people into positions of greater and greater influence and wealth. And those without such skills are marginalized and suffer.

I think a democratic society with pure socialism would not suffer from this problem. It would contain people who are good at accumulating influence, but they could not use that influence to gain more money (to leverage for more influence). Without the power-multiplying effects of wealth accumulation, influencers would be limited in their reach. That society would be less likely to develop an upper class with disproportionate power, nor marginalized middle and lower classes.

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#185

Post by acjohnson55 »

mleonhard wrote: post #184
acjohnson55 wrote: post #69

I think it's important to note that the truth has never been widely available, to the point where it might be useless to think of truth as being a real concept to begin with. One could say that for a blip of time, we lived in a world where a large percentage of human were pushed largely accurate (if incomplete) information by mass media, allowing for something resembling consensual reality and informed democracy. We…

> the more fundamental question remains how can we achieve human welfare in a world where informed democracy is an illusion? I think the way is to change the incentives. People in our society have various skills and abilities. Some of them are highly skilled at accumulating influence. They use that influence to get wealth. Then they leverage the wealth for more influence. Our society is structured to move those peopl…

I feel pretty similarly.

I recommend this book so much that I feel like a shill, but if you haven't read Twilight of the Elites, you'd probably like it even more than I did :)

One point it makes that resonates strongly with me is that our society is structured to heap extra resources on those who already have in abundance and neglect those with unrealized potential. To say nothing of those who we think lack potential in the first place, we we often treat as subhuman.

When it comes to democracy, I actually don't think a paramount principle. I think human rights, accountability, some form of consent, and private enterprise are critical, but these don't strictly imply literal democracy.

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#186

Post by testname123 »

CM30 wrote: post #109
acjohnson55 wrote: post #69

I think it's important to note that the truth has never been widely available, to the point where it might be useless to think of truth as being a real concept to begin with. One could say that for a blip of time, we lived in a world where a large percentage of human were pushed largely accurate (if incomplete) information by mass media, allowing for something resembling consensual reality and informed democracy. We…

Similarly, it's also worth noting that the means of verifying a story or claim weren't widely available for a long time either. Seriously, go back to before photographs became a thing in 1839 or so. How did you verify any claims at all? You usually just took people's word for it, or assumed their writings/paintings/memories were accurate. Unless you had the means to actively verify a claim yourself and the claim was…

While not applicable for all claims, some can be verified by consistency. For example, claims a and b cannot both be true if a is inconsistent with b, and this hold regardless of who claims a or b.

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#187

Post by testname123 »

uptown wrote: post #41

There's a relevant and insightful thread on Twitter posted by David Roberts here: https://twitter.com/drvox/status/988144274720964608 His thread references the "debate" over climate change, and his point is that the debate most people participate in isn't truly a debate over facts, but rather a debate over trust. That matters of complexity are too distant from any one individual to have direct exposure-to, so in orde…

This assumes that there is indeed no difference between fact and fiction. However, facts need to be consistent among themselves. In such a case where a fact can be disproved by a lack of consistency with directly observable phenomema, no appeal to trust is required. For eg. the earth is not flat, etc.

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#188

Post by dosycorp »

dosycorp wrote: post #183
dosycorp wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, yes, reeducate me! Help me censor my ideas more completely! Thank you, kind guides, your wisdom in the protection of the glorious community from harm is undeniable! All I can do is submit my stupid and pathetic self more fully to your teachings. Show me the glorious way of True HN Thought!

Yes, more, more, more reeducation. I need it! Preserve the unquestionable rightness of True HN Thought!

Yes! Keep going! you are approaching levels of True HN Thought that shouldn't even be possible!!

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#189

Post by throwaway5752 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #159
throwaway5752 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, sorry I didn't pick up on that. My fault for not paying better attention. I agree, but I guess I'm both pushing a bit back on people to have some common sense when ascribing credibility to a source and also push some blame on deliberate bad actors (muddling what is true, and also reducing peoples' trust in the system overall).

What's "common sense" to you undoubtedly relies on your culture, and core assumptions you make. The things you value, and the things you discredit. Your world view. I have bought lottery tickets, even though I know it's a "Stupid Tax." And apparently many other people do, too: "Americans Spend More On Lottery Tickets Than On Movies, Video Games, Music, Sports Tix And Books Combined" [1] Even though there's ample evid…

We'll have to agree to disagree. Perhaps both of our approaches have merits in different situations, but in the case where something is concretely falsifiable then people can be wrong not different. Perhaps convincing them otherwise is a job best left to kinder people than me.

Re: Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video

#190

Post by dbasedweeb »

VikingCoder wrote: post #159
throwaway5752 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, sorry I didn't pick up on that. My fault for not paying better attention. I agree, but I guess I'm both pushing a bit back on people to have some common sense when ascribing credibility to a source and also push some blame on deliberate bad actors (muddling what is true, and also reducing peoples' trust in the system overall).

What's "common sense" to you undoubtedly relies on your culture, and core assumptions you make. The things you value, and the things you discredit. Your world view. I have bought lottery tickets, even though I know it's a "Stupid Tax." And apparently many other people do, too: "Americans Spend More On Lottery Tickets Than On Movies, Video Games, Music, Sports Tix And Books Combined" [1] Even though there's ample evid…

In the specific example of the lottery, if people could intuitively grasp what the odds really meant, few would play. It may not be a tax on stupidity, but a tax on how many people fail to understand how probability works. It’s also a tax on the impulsive, the desperate, the uneducated and people who have a predisposition to gamble.

Then difficulty in explaining to people these facts, or convincing people of them doesn’t imply some broader cultural relativism. The lottery is stupid, it’s just very challenging to get people to understand that consistently.

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