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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#541

Post by rorykoehler »

samatman wrote: post #457
montagg wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a non-splippery-slope way to position the worldview you're describing that might be more palatable to the values of a worldview based on limiting discourse based on content. I believe the hardcore freedom of speech view has a few important underlying assumptions: 1) More information is better, and shining a light on something is better than trying to selectively hide it, because eventually the real tr…

It seems to me that you're still ignoring the tail risk of authoritarian control of the concept of truth, namely, gulags. It's a justified fear, since it's happened repeatedly in living memory, and is happening still: you're welcome to go hand out pamphlets about the June Fourth Incident on Tiananmen Square if you don't believe me. If you want to discount that risk, ignoring it or glossing it as some sort of slippery…

As we are discovering there is a similar tail risk to allowing people lie. Facebook goes a step further and targets the people especially susceptible to specific less of the same type of lie. TBH my problem with Facebook is that it is a bullshit funnel into an echo chamber. If they removed those algos and showed people a varying mix of opinions and positions the problem would largely go away.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#542

Post by scsilver »

_qulr wrote: post #478
scsilver wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't worried about facebook, mostly just commenting that its unfair to assume these individuals who creat 400k+ in value to their companies a year aren't able to cook for themselves if they have to because they are young. I think its more likely that they are taking advantage of economic incentives. I dont really have an opinion about facebooks agism in their hiring. I just think you are making an unfounded assum…

> I think its more likely that they are taking advantage of economic incentives. My question is, who is taking advantage of whom? As I said originally, "one may fairly ask whether Facebook's hiring process produced this result." It seems like Facebook specifically targets people who are amenable to Facebook's "caretaker" benefits, and then encourages those people to become dependent on those benefits. If you work for…

I dont know why you dragging me into a different conversation, I have not comment about who facebook hires, I don't really care.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#543

Post by crocodiletears »

krapp wrote: post #538
crocodiletears wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Want police reform' and, 'want leftist-espoused police reform' are two very different things. Just because the majority of a population support a given policy abstract doesn't mean that the gamut of their potential demands doesn't span the entirety of the political spectrum.

> 'Want police reform' and, 'want leftist-espoused police reform' are two very different things. Not really. The reform that most Americans want is premised on the belief that racism and violence against African Americans are systemic issues in policing which need drastic measures to solve at best, or a complete dismantling of the system at worst. The right either refuses to accept that such problems exist, dismissin…

You've clearly not heard a conservative or a libertarian rail about no-knocks, mandatory minimum sentencing, drug laws, or civil asset forfeiture.

Large elements of the right often refuse to accept systemic racism, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its own critiques against policing that make the abstract statement 'I support police reform' valid for them.

Outside the left and the far right, although moderate liberals acknowledge the existence of systemic biases in policing, I've heard proposals ranging from 'remove qualified immunity', to 'more training', to 'expand social services', but typically with the caveat that 'my poufs Dept is fine', or 'I don't want social workers to replace any of the police, I just want them in addition to the police'. There's usually a big fat asterisk alongside the suggestion that requires a positive sum outcome where nothing really changes in their lives, but everything is abstractly better.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#544

Post by crocodiletears »

sjg007 wrote: post #532
crocodiletears wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Want police reform' and, 'want leftist-espoused police reform' are two very different things. Just because the majority of a population support a given policy abstract doesn't mean that the gamut of their potential demands doesn't span the entirety of the political spectrum.

I don't really get your point. People need to vote and all of this pedantry will go away.

My point is that police reform isn't exclusively a Lefty issue. It's the domain of every political interest group suspicious of the state's use of power.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#545

Post by tqi »

sjg007 wrote: post #529
tqi wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years ago the concern was filter bubbles. Now we want invisible walls?

Yep, increase friction. Instagram is a good example.. You have to post a photo and you can't retweet.

I think we would just be trading one set of problems for another, people are already physically self sorting so it's not clear to me that enhancing digital echo chambers would make things better.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#546

Post by Tainnor »

jarpadat wrote: post #356
grawprog wrote: post #203

So, facebook employees are mad they're not allowed to censor things they disagree with that people post on facebook? I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway. In fact, I don't understand why employees at tech companies believe they have the right to police people's opinions period. I see it amongst commenters here too. What gives any of these people the right to po…

It's pretty simple, although it may not be obvious. There are 2 different views about "what freedom/democracy is" that are presently doing battle in america, at least among inteligentsia One, the worldview embedded into your comment, is that freedom is about the limits of discourse. Under this system, limiting discourse is inherently undemocratic, so if facebook "censor(s) things they disagree with" this is bad and w…

While the "should all discourse be free vs. should it all be regulated" axis exists and people can be in different places on that scale (and almost all people are somewhere in between the extremes), there's also an orthogonal question, namely, who should be the party that makes and/or enforces the regulations.

Personally, I am very much in favour of regulating some forms of speech (regulating doesn't necessarily have to mean prohibiting btw), but I am very wary if big, quasi-monopolistic private companies are being tasked to do so, because their incentive structure now will lead them to over-restrict in order to avoid potential legal issues. If it's just a newspaper comment section, that's fine because there is enough competition, but for things like Twitter/FB/YouTube, I find it problematic, and this is why I find some of the more recent laws in the EU to be somewhat dangerous; we're basically asking unelected, unsupervised people from Facebook et al. to intransparently enforce laws.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#547

Post by thu2111 »

sagichmal wrote: post #139
thu2111 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go down that road forever though. There are plenty of intellectual contortions on the left. It's a question of choosing which ones are worse. I'm not a US citizen but if I were I'd be voting Republican because there's cynical opportunism, which is bad, and then there's open and hateful daily rhetoric against white men, which to me is worse. Pick your poison.

There is absolutely no meaningful equivalence on this axis between the American right and left. Your projection about white men is totally incoherent, laughable.

It can't be projection when it's so easy to find quotes or decisions that demonstrate it's the truth.

Hillary Clinton: "women are the primary victims of war" ... "the more we support women, the more we support democracy"

Joe Biden: next justice must be a black woman

Obama: "Men have been getting on my nerves lately. Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you're better than us. I’m absolutely confident that for two years, if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see significant improvement across the board on just about everything … living standards and outcomes."

The American left is typified by absolutely overt and open sexism against men. They don't try to hide it, they revel in it. Literally the last Democrat President has said women are better than men, full stop. To claim that this belief is projection shows a deep level of denial about the truth - the American Left hates men, wants them gone from any kind of position of prosperity or power and talks about it all the time.

To me that's worse than opportunism. You can disagree, but you can't say it's not a coherent choice.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#548

Post by smsm42 »

sjg007 wrote: post #528
retox wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the answer is that the US population is much less "lefty" that people in that milieu would like to believe.

I think you are wrong. Almost all Americans want police reform for example.

"Police reform" means very different things to different people. To some, it means replacing cops with social workers, to others, it means giving them enough manpower and training budgets to be more efficient. Both are reforms, but very different ones.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#549

Post by smsm42 »

themacguffinman wrote: post #391
_vertigo wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind the fact that Facebook probably pays better than 80% of tech companies Never mind the fact that tech salaries are already insane Never mind the fact that there is a global pandemic and corresponding economic uncertainty Never mind the fact that millions of people are out of work, can't afford to feed their families, and facing one of the biggest eviction crises of all time while being completely abandoned…

What are you saying, exactly? People can't complain if others have it worse? It's hard for me to think of a more charitable interpretation of your comment, which seems to plainly chastise Facebook employees for voicing complaints during the existence of other big problems in the world.

They can complain about anything, it's just their complaints, in context, sound so trivial and entitled than it's hard to take them seriously. Oh the hardships! Oh the terrors! Now they only have a secure job in their own home while earning mid-six-figures! And also getting $1000 bonus! How can a human being be expected to survive on that?! Buying their own La Croix, like some kind of peasants!

Re: Mark in the Middle

#550

Post by ben_w »

ThomPete wrote: post #147
pjc50 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

You are talking about two very different things. I am talking about our upbringing I am fairly sure most parents aren't prejudice against their children and I am pretty sure most kids aren't trans although it's certainly in vogue to call yourself to something of that effect in many youth circles. So it's not a good example it's missing the point as most people we are talking about here aren't trans.

I’ve had someone openly claim I must be lying when I say I’m vegetarian; I’m just young enough to avoid my left-handedness being problematic (Latin: sinister); I don’t believe in any god, and some people think that is impossible; I’m bi and people deny that exists; I know people who are ace and the position of some Catholics is “Question: What do you call a person who is asexual? Answer: Not a person. Asexual people do not exist.” [Vision, David Nantais, S.J. and Scott Opperman, S.J., 2002]; there are people who say black lives don’t matter; likewise refuges, gypsies, Muslims, Jews, Wiccans, Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, the disabled, communists, and billionaires; and for every successful woman you can find a man who thinks their place is the kitchen, for every lesbian a man who thinks they can be “turned straight”.

The trans people I became friends with around 2008 have gone from being open about it then to being in the closet about it now. The category “trans” a valid example of the violent-denial-of-existence that some groups face. And yes, some of those trans people have their existence denied by their parents, just as some gays and lesbians are sent to “straight conversation therapy” by their parents. How prevalent that is I can’t say, but I can say that overall trans people have a surprisingly high rate of violent-existence-denial compared to all the other groups I’ve listed.

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