The Internet of Beefs • Hacker News Board

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#81

Post by piaste » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #51

quacker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Out of context, this takes a ton of effort to understand. Some examples - Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird - underground Internet that I’ve previously called the CozyWeb - unflattened Hobbesian honor-society conflict - Mookcoins are mined by knights through acts of senpai-notice-me - retreat into what I call waldenponding or to the CozyWeb Several of these link to other essays which, in turn, use ever…

It reads LessWrong's cooler brother.

More heavily watered down than cooler, I suspect.

The only other Ribbonfarm article I've read was the "premium mediocre" one, in which they described themselves as a premium mediocre blog, adding "the actual upper-class readers read SSC or Marginal Revolution". On the limited basis of these two articles, I am leaning towards the idea that it was an accurate assessment.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#82

Post by gist » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #3

At some point people will realize that Twitter doesn't matter. The sooner that happens the better. For whatever reason, our elites and media are convinced Twitter is very important . Nothing is worse than getting criticized by the peanut gallery. Twitter can end careers, cancel television shows, bring down elected officials. That power quickly turned from, "complain about lost baggage on Twitter and get an airline ti…

> and media are convinced Twitter is very important

> Nothing is worse than getting criticized by the peanut gallery. Twitter can end careers, cancel television shows, bring down elected officials.

Twitter is in a way like a street protest that gets covered on the nightly news. As an example you can have 1000 people (or even less) protesting in NYC (a region with what 20 million people?) and the media will entirely blow the significance out of that protest proportion. Not that there are 19,999,000 people who aren't protesting but that there are 1000 that are.

> Ask your aunt or brother-in-law about what's trending on Twitter and you'll get a blank stare

Exactly true as a general rule.

But better ask anyone what they think is important (and this is the sad part) and they will probably mention something they received from a traditional media source who got what they did from twitter or social media (if not placed by a PR firm etc.)

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#83

Post by mc3 » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

kick wrote: post #17

I hesitate to criticize this person, because they're presumably writing for an audience that already knows them, and probably are following for this style of writing, but I have to ask: What is it with think-pieces that state obvious and widespread conclusions while using jargon and jokes to obscure how basic of conclusions they really are? I can't fault people who do this because they're paid by the word and taking…

My initial thoughts when reading were cynical - along the lines of "this person is trying to look clever and sell freakonomic / pop-science type books, but are the statements and conclusions based in fact, likely to be correct or are they useful to me?". Since I can't answer I didn't read on.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#84

Post by gist » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #20

nostromo wrote: post #3

At some point people will realize that Twitter doesn't matter. The sooner that happens the better. For whatever reason, our elites and media are convinced Twitter is very important . Nothing is worse than getting criticized by the peanut gallery. Twitter can end careers, cancel television shows, bring down elected officials. That power quickly turned from, "complain about lost baggage on Twitter and get an airline ti…

The truth is Twitter already doesn't matter, like, at all to almost everyone. Ask your aunt or brother-in-law about what's trending on Twitter and you'll get a blank stare. Except they might have read an article on CNBC or Fox that was based on a twitter thread. That's where it actually makes a difference, when it spills over into other media and picks up steam. See: Twitter Revolutions [1] A few years ago I got call…

> Except they might have read an article on CNBC or Fox that was based on a twitter thread. That's where it actually makes a difference, when it spills over into other media and picks up steam.

Exactly (and what I said in my comment). But it goes further. Take the NYT widely regarded as 'the Paper of Record'. What they say has a great amplifier impact. Ditto for shows like 60 Minutes or even the nightly news in some cases. Most people in media (say in small towns or in less than impressive in any way newspapers) very generally think that is what you aspire to to work for - a major media outlet (in other words some small station person in Idaho is envious of the people who work at the networks like some high school football coach is probably envious of NFL coaches, right?).

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#85

Post by mc3 » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

thebiglebrewski wrote: post #37

Man was I really hoping this was an API for cows in a field and sensor data attached to each beef. BaaS, or Bovine as a Service.

I know you are joking but there is probably a good case to have a sensor on every piece of livestock, given how cheap the sensors would be and how it would help to manage things. The govt. could even carbon-tax the methane emissions.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#86

Post by mrspeaker » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #63

mrspeaker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is now my last un-deleted social media account... and even here I end up removing 50% of my posts, and regretting another 30-odd% after realizing they were low-value emotional negative "beef" post. Why is "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" so hard in practice? Why do I just NEED to throw in my 2 cents?!

> if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all Because pleasantness isn't a virtue in every context? Some unpleasant things need to be done and said sometimes. In fact, saying no in certain contexts is good , though it can often be unpleasant. That being said, some people find it pleasant to be unpleasant. Certainly self-censor if you sense that urge arising. Getting drunk on anger or righteousness isn'…

Unpleasant things very rarely need to be done or said, but people (me included) are addicted to doing and saying them. We all feel the need to desperately type the first thing that pops into our head (like the sentence I just typed, and I'd argue the reply you gave). If I wasn't allowed to reply to your response for, say, 24 hours - then I might write something useful and interesting. But the internet of beefs doesn't reward that.

EDIT: FUCK! 20 minutes and I've already failed.

EDIT EDIT: Does anyone have any strategies to cope with this? I generally make sure to log out of HN (and have deleted Reddit/Twitter/Facebook etc), and my passwords are always random key-mashing that I forget so that commenting is pain... but still, if "someone is wrong on the internet" - even if it's low (or zero!) stakes... I'm compelled to type some crap back. Logically I know I shouldn't give a shit - but I do. I'm a mook! Is there an escape?!

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#87

Post by kick » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

virtuous_signal wrote: post #56

kick wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rapid changes have we seen lately? The change in that person's comment has been in the making for over a hundred years. The first thing I personally can think of (in the context of America, as one of the last Western countries to accept GLBT people, not in the context of the wider world, which has been accepting for much longer than America) is American GLBT communes in the 1780s. Given where we are in GLBT acce…

Albeit I didn't know about those communes, but I think LGBT acceptance was extremely rapid. The only other change I'm ready to compare it to was slavery and black civil rights: consider that the first state to legalize same sex marriage was Massachusetts in 2004. Over the next 11 years, we reached 37/50 states total, and then in 2015 with the supreme court decision we reach all 50/50. For civil rights: we had slavery…

That's framing things from a legal perspective, but even then there are some key legal steps you're missing (and this isn't conclusive at all):

Beating someone based on sexual orientation was recognized as a hate crime first in 1984 at the state level. 1995 and 1998 were when Clinton banned discriminating against gays at the Federal level via Executive Order.

1996 was when Clinton signed DOMA, which is the reason legislation stopped for so many years. Though lately he's tried to conceal that, it prevented GLB rights from advancing for many years. It was in response to states legalizing same-sex marriage.

1993 was when GLB people were first allowed to serve in the military.

1993 was also when Hawaii found bans on GLB marriage unconstitutional (at the state level).

1992 Colorado passed Amendment 2 which specifically forbade Colorado state, county or municipal governments from recognizing homosexuals as a protected class.

1998 Oregon makes GLB people a protected class, preventing people from discriminating against them on the basis of sexual orientation.

1984's National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education partially gutted a law that allowed schools to fire teachers on the basis of sexuality. (NGTF was founded in 1972.)

1977: GLB allowed to work for the IRS and foreign service, GLB activists for the first time invited to the White House.

1960s-1970s: Gerald Ford, for all of his faults, being the first 1900s President to really be pro-GLB.

1970 featured my favorite Nixon quote: "I can't go that far; that's the year 2000! Negroes [and whites], okay. But that's too far!" By 2000, as you can see, things were not much better.

1950s, 1960s & 1970s saw it come into general awareness; lots of protests, including Stonewall.

1901 saw DC make it harsh again; no felony, but a lot larger a fine, no imprisonment.

1892 basically decriminalized it in DC; you get a fine and you pay bail.

1807 saw Indiana make legislation to lessen the punishment for it (although it was the first to be for both genders); 4 years max, a fine, and a felony.

1801 had Maryland making perhaps the laxest law on sodomy ever: Jefferson failed in 1779 to liberalize his state's punishment for sodomy, but that's probably the first act of legislation trying to go easier on homosexuals. Virginia later passed (I think before 1800) a law that limited the punishment to 10 years.

George Washington brought in a general who was being persecuted in Germany for being homosexual shortly after we won the Revolutionary War, he was never punished, got pension, etc.

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#88

Post by claudiawerner » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #74

Kaze404 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't consumerism caused by capitalism?

No?

Consumerism, at the least, is dependent on capitalism's core feature, generalized commodity production. So far, that seems true - was there any consumerism in pre-capitalist societies? I'd hazard a guess and say no. If consumerism is further driven by advertising, it depends on capitalism even more. This paper[0] persausively argues that consumerism is a consequence of specifically capitalist society, considered in its historical development.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978047067059...

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#89

Post by kick » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

mc3 wrote: post #83

kick wrote: post #17

I hesitate to criticize this person, because they're presumably writing for an audience that already knows them, and probably are following for this style of writing, but I have to ask: What is it with think-pieces that state obvious and widespread conclusions while using jargon and jokes to obscure how basic of conclusions they really are? I can't fault people who do this because they're paid by the word and taking…

My initial thoughts when reading were cynical - along the lines of "this person is trying to look clever and sell freakonomic / pop-science type books, but are the statements and conclusions based in fact, likely to be correct or are they useful to me?". Since I can't answer I didn't read on.

They do seem to sell freakonomic/pop-sci books. Nice eye!

Re: The Internet of Beefs

#90

Post by claudiawerner » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #28

danharaj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're taking for granted how twitter is used as a global cafe by communities that would otherwise be disjointed and isolated. For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama, theres thousands of enriching conversations happening that could otherwise not occur. I think it's ironic that negative takes on the twitter model tend to be as shallow and polarizing as they claim the platform to be. As for me, I think…

>>For every controversial tweet or tweet of drama, theres thousands of enriching conversations happening that could otherwise not occur. I don't believe that this actually happens. Definitely not on twitter anyway.

It absolutely does; I've had civil conversations on Twitter many times, and I've been introduced to new information because of it. I've met people of similar beliefs, convictions and knowledge on Twitter. Ultimately, however, I left Twitter because of the problem pointed out by GP.