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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#121

Post by SuoDuanDao »

ForHackernews wrote: post #8
trabant00 wrote: post #5

> Mark Zuckerberg has faced criticism that Facebook is bad for democracy. > Employees want him to take a harder line against the Trump Administration. They employees want to support democracy by taking a stand against the democratic chosen president. I have a hard time coming up with words to describe my disbelief. Guess it's time for companies to enforce "absolutely no politics at work" rules. And you can add religi…

C'mon, if the concept of "democracy" means anything it has to include the notion that the guy who won the last election doesn't get to just do whatever he wants (especially if what he wants is to undermine or tamper with the next election!) You're not a democracy because you hold one legitimate election -- you have to keep on having fair elections ! Good luck, America.

But having the same ability to lie unhindered as everyone else is not tampering with the election. Enforcing the rules for only one side is taking a side, rewriting them in response to one side's activities even more so.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#122

Post by _qulr »

jhanschoo wrote: post #120
_qulr wrote: post #87

Politics aside, many Facebook employees come across as rather childish, incapable of taking care of themselves. The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Zuck has to scold them by asking rhetorically whether they joined the company for the free food. And one employee asks if they can go live on an island by themselves, apparently like Lord of the Flies. Of course one may fairly ask whether Facebook's hiring process…

> The big complaint is about lack of snacks! I don't think there's anything unusual about talking about that in a company-wide Q&A. It's minor, but people will want to know how they should adjust their budgets and how long. This is a good platform for such a question since it's something that affects everyone in the office.

> It's minor, but

"A major sell to candidates is our office perks include free food"

"with work from home, we’ve lost a huge financial part of our package"

https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

Perhaps they don't know how much food costs, having never gone to the grocery store. ("How much does a gallon of milk cost" is the classic political gotcha question.) Or they don't know how to cook. Those are possibilities.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#123

Post by SuoDuanDao »

charlesu wrote: post #110
verdverm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is off, people have switched camps to the right since last election, despite how hard this may seem to believe. They look at how childish the left has become and have decided the right is less evil.

> They look at how childish the left has become and have decided the right is less evil. The left is childish? President of the United States literally tweets gifs of himself beating up CNN on Twitter. We live in differently realities. I see one side that shows some semblance of decorum and another that is basically the political equivalent of the Joker but without the charisma and philosophical consistency.

>We live in differently realities.

That sums it up doesn't it? Both sides only see the worst the other side has to offer. It feeds the algorithm for it to be so.

But that illusion is actually quite fragile and hard to maintain, and the other side has an obvious incentive to shatter it by any means available. I would guess a lot of people, on both sides, will switch votes this time around.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#124

Post by pjc50 »

ThomPete wrote: post #114
pjc50 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of kids have grown up with "disagreement". The leading edge of this is trans people; if you're trans you'll find that basically everyone "disagrees" with that, sometimes to the point of violence. I think people are very used to dealing with that kind of "disagreement". What they would like is for it not to be based on prejudice, wrong assumptions, and cruelty, and to be able to get on with their lives without h…

Given that there aren't "a lot" of transpeople I am not sure I understand your point is, care to elaborate?

That was an example of people who receive "disagreement" simply by existing. My point is that a lot of people have recieved what you call "disagreement" and what I and they call "prejudice".

Re: Mark in the Middle

#125

Post by rswskg »

verdverm wrote: post #88
taylodl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW here's my take: - No one voting for Hillary in 2016 is voting for Trump in 2020 - People voting for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein in 2016 are either not voting or voting for Biden in 2020 - Democrats who didn't vote in 2016 out of protest for Bernie Sanders not getting the nomination are either not voting again or they're voting for Biden in 2020 - People who voted for Trump in 2016 fall into three camps: they're e…

Your first point is off, people have switched camps to the right since last election, despite how hard this may seem to believe. They look at how childish the left has become and have decided the right is less evil.

The burning of american cities by antifa could not have played into trumps hands any better. I almost wonder if right wing organisations are behind them sometimes.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#126

Post by charlesu »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #118
charlesu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "statistically high crime demographic"? Men? It's men, right? Statistically speaking the vast majority of violent crime is committed by men [0]. [0] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

>What is a "statistically high crime demographic"? Young black men This is drilled into the head of every cop before they leave the academy.

Interesting. According the FBI data in my previous reply, white men are far more likely to be driving drunk, statistically speaking. I guess we should teach cops to pull them over far more often than everyone else, right? That would be a similarly logical conclusion based on the statistics.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#127

Post by pjc50 »

mythrwy wrote: post #91
C1sc0cat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh I kind of groked that but when you get Cindy McCain and previous Republican Presidents endorsing Biden. I still maintain that business leaders and journalists have a lot to answer for the rise of far right demagogues that are damaging both Us citizens and pose a threat to world stability.

Seems like those folks endorsing Biden might be a signal that something is wrong with the Biden camp to people who actually want change.

Biden is the "things don't get worse" candidate. Positive change is simply not on the agenda.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#128

Post by ryandrake »

notacoward wrote: post #81
coldcode wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing remarkable in a company that makes lawnmowers. Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think because so many view it as a source of truth. Doing it for money, or doing it for power, is essentially the same thing. If you are in position to manipulate the truth for benefits to you or your friends in high places you will, and he is. If I worked at Facebook and felt the CEO was twisting tr…

> Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think I don't think that's a helpful way to look at it. Facebook is a platform that other people use to change what people think, and that's dangerous enough. Without any ill intent whatsoever from Facebook itself, that still creates serious issues with unintentional bias (e.g. via algorithms trained with poor data sets) and manipulation. Those are the…

> I don't think that's a helpful way to look at it. Facebook is a platform that other people use to change what people think, and that's dangerous enough.

I'm not sure there is a distinction. Intent doesn't matter. If your system is used by other people do X, then you are building a system that does X. The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does [1]. You can't just wipe your hands and say "hey it's just a platform, it's really other people doing this stuff!" Knowing what their system does, they wake up every day and with intent say "We are going to continue with this system".

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Re: Mark in the Middle

#129

Post by pjc50 »

rswskg wrote: post #125
verdverm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is off, people have switched camps to the right since last election, despite how hard this may seem to believe. They look at how childish the left has become and have decided the right is less evil.

The burning of american cities by antifa could not have played into trumps hands any better. I almost wonder if right wing organisations are behind them sometimes.

> I almost wonder if right wing organisations are behind them sometimes

There's extensive discussion of "provocateurs". Very little is ever proved, although at one point there was an attempt to build a crowdsourced facial recognition database of police to spot undercover agents.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#130

Post by pjc50 »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #123
charlesu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They look at how childish the left has become and have decided the right is less evil. The left is childish? President of the United States literally tweets gifs of himself beating up CNN on Twitter. We live in differently realities. I see one side that shows some semblance of decorum and another that is basically the political equivalent of the Joker but without the charisma and philosophical consistency.

>We live in differently realities. That sums it up doesn't it? Both sides only see the worst the other side has to offer. It feeds the algorithm for it to be so. But that illusion is actually quite fragile and hard to maintain, and the other side has an obvious incentive to shatter it by any means available. I would guess a lot of people, on both sides, will switch votes this time around.

You can generally see the worst the republican side has to offer directly from their own news media and the Presidential twitter account.
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