Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election • Hacker News Board

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#191

Post by andybak » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #148

djtriptych wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

racial comments from throwaway accounts really ought to be disallowed. I recommend well-meaning people just flag and move on.

It's just a username. I'm probably every bit as active on this forum as you are. Is there something in this thread that makes you think I'm posting in bad faith?

Well. Your username didn't help for a start!

EDIT - in hindsight would you like to change your username (leaving aside whether that's even possible or allowed)?

Genuinely curious.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#192

Post by andybak » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #183

djtriptych wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

racial comments from throwaway accounts really ought to be disallowed. I recommend well-meaning people just flag and move on.

Despite the account name, that particular user has been here for over three years, and has 3900 karma. They're not just some drive-by troller. Also, you should judge their comments by the comments, not by the username. Those were some fairly thoughtful comments, even if you don't agree with them.

> Also, you should judge their comments by the comments, not by the username.

Partly yes and partly no. I spotted what appeared to be a throwaway. That led me to believe the poster had less "skin in the game" and that influenced me to some degree. Was that unreasonable?

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#193

Post by idrios » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #68

pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been audits of the voting system. They didn't believe them, and they were reported falsely in the media they follow. It's a cult. It's like trying to convince them that aliens don't exist. (Epstein would have been prosecuted .. if he hadn't died in extremely mysterious circumstances. Now that's a situation where absence of evidence where evidence should be expected - the security cameras - drives paranoia.…

The “cult” (if you insist) was once much smaller, so something must be driving this phenomenon, which means there is hope that we can stop or even reverse it. What makes people go from believing the media, science, etc to unwarranted skepticism? Specifically, what changed in the last couple of decades that might’ve yielded this result? My pet theory is that our institutions increasingly pivoted from truth-seeking to…

There was a really cool article a few months ago that tried to model polarization on the political spectrum [1] -- on the premise that most people will start off moderate on issues and then update their weakly-held views to align with people they like, and against people they hate, until they converge.

Through this lens, my own theory of what's happened is that a few conservative news outlets -- conservative talk radio, Fox News, etc -- made themselves into an anchor on the political spectrum by strongly holding opinions that would capture a large audience. Christian/pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-free-market, and all the other stances ossociated with conservatives. The left is much less organized because it's trying to capture all voters who don't fit the mold of what is conservative, and there is a ton of diversity outside of conservativism a la LGBT rights, the role of police, the role of unions, how to help minorities, how to help foreigners, the state of US jobs, the importance of the environment, etc. Conserviatives are probably much more unified in their views on these issues than liberals are.

However, as time moves forward the conservative values haven't changed while liberal values have been updating much more quickly, and there's no path for conservatives to come back to the center. If you're pro-life but sympathetic to minorities, you have to choose between the side you see as murdering babies, vs the side you see as not offering help to minorities. You probably side with anti-abortion, then after a while convince yourself that not helping minorities is the right thing to do anyway.

I think a way out is to have more than 2 anchors, e.g. a way to vote pro-gun but also pro-environmental regulation. And I think a way to achieve that is to switch to ranked voting -- it makes 3rd parties more viable so you can vote for the candidate that most aligns with all of your views, which gives people more flexibility for changing their views.

[1]https://phys.org/news/2020-06-theory-political-polarization....

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#194

Post by scarmig » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #190

throwaway894345 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has never been the goal at any step of the way otherwise we would have been in massive and prolonged lockdowns from day 1. The goal is to weigh the need to save lives with the need to let society continue functioning. I agree with you so far... > That is where the essential worker argument comes into play. This is where you lose me. As I understand it, essential workers can continue working whether or not they…

>This is where you lose me. As I understand it, essential workers can continue working whether or not they're vaccinated (yes, some will get seriously sick, but it won't significantly impact the economy). Rather, we want to vaccinate them earlier than non-essential workers because they're more vulnerable by the riskier nature of their work. However, they're not more vulnerable than the elderly The key point here is t…

> Diversity factored into 1 of 3 subcategories in 1 of 3 top level categories. It isn't fair to say the "CDC recommends prioritizing [essential workers] over the elderly because the elderly are disproportionately white" when it is just one piece of a much larger and more nuanced discussion.

For the two top level categories in the rubric, Science and Implementation, the elderly-first approach had achieved a score of 6/6, while the essential workers-first approach had achieved a score of 5/6. Elderly-first was favored at that point.

For the third top level category, Ethics, elderly-first was given a score of 1/3, while essential workers-first was given a score of 3/3, which brought essential workers-first to 8/9 as opposed to the elderly-first score of 7/9, driving the decision.

As part of the subcategories of Ethics, essential workers-first netted 2 points from the subcategory "Mitigate Health inequities," the first a positive point for it because "Racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately represented in many essential industries" and the second against the elderly-first because "Racial and ethnic minority groups under-represented among adults >65." That is what drove the outsize result in Ethics.

Here's a direct question for you: diversity considerations netted the essential workers-first approach 2 points. Would you say that "significantly greater number of lives saved" should be worth the same as diversity (2 points), a bit less (1), or a bit more (3)? Or do you go with the rubric and say the number of lives saved merits no consideration at all, because it's not an ethical concern on par with diversity?

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#195

Post by djtriptych » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

beckingz wrote: post #57

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people need to see with their own two eyes that the things they think are true are not true. There is probably no bringing back some of the people who have gone really far down that road if corporations and government act with transparency and consistency going forward I think it will bring many people back and prevent more from doing down that road.

These people can stay crazy longer than the country can last. For instance, if some people reevaluate their beliefs and come to a more generally accepted understanding of truth in the near future, the capital will still have been rioted.

I agree. The idea that we can quell this mob with truth, evidence, and reason should have been long ago abandoned.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#196

Post by djtriptych » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

thakoppno wrote: post #137

lkxijlewlf wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be difficult. I personally believe Q is an organization of trolls. They exploit/prey upon people's desire to be a part of something larger than themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if there's merely a couple handfuls of people all trying to outdo each other developing these conspiracies that keep to the Q lore/universe while spreading like fire. I don't think these people actually believe any of these consp…

Is it surprising to anyone that Q hasn’t been unmasked at this point? Presumably there’s an FBI investigation into it and it seems unfathomable to me that intelligence agencies can’t figure out who is behind it.

What makes you think a single person or organized group is behind it? It's just a loose collection of unsubstantiated conspiracies.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#197

Post by djtriptych » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #192

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the account name, that particular user has been here for over three years, and has 3900 karma. They're not just some drive-by troller. Also, you should judge their comments by the comments, not by the username. Those were some fairly thoughtful comments, even if you don't agree with them.

> Also, you should judge their comments by the comments, not by the username. Partly yes and partly no. I spotted what appeared to be a throwaway. That led me to believe the poster had less "skin in the game" and that influenced me to some degree. Was that unreasonable?

No, of course it wasn't. If you can't put your internet handle behind your thoughts, it doesn't say much for your argument. Period.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#198

Post by slg » Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 11:40 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #194

slg wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is where you lose me. As I understand it, essential workers can continue working whether or not they're vaccinated (yes, some will get seriously sick, but it won't significantly impact the economy). Rather, we want to vaccinate them earlier than non-essential workers because they're more vulnerable by the riskier nature of their work. However, they're not more vulnerable than the elderly The key point here is t…

> Diversity factored into 1 of 3 subcategories in 1 of 3 top level categories. It isn't fair to say the "CDC recommends prioritizing [essential workers] over the elderly because the elderly are disproportionately white" when it is just one piece of a much larger and more nuanced discussion. For the two top level categories in the rubric, Science and Implementation, the elderly-first approach had achieved a score of 6…

You can remove the "Mitigate health inequities" subcategory and the essential workers approach still comes out ahead in the ethics category due to the "Promote Justice" category which is the fairness of controlling exposure reason I detailed in my last comment.

Minimizing deaths isn't being ignored, it plays a factor in every single one of the top level categories. It simply isn't a line item itself. It also needs to be weighed with other health considerations. For example, the essential worker approach reduces the number of infections and we should all know by now that COVID shouldn't be judged in a purely binary way with deaths versus recoveries.

Also I am not putting a value judgement on these approaches. I am explaining the way I interpret the judging criteria.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#199

Post by spamizbad » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 12:18 AM UTC

kodah wrote: post #140

spamizbad wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you Peter Norvig had nothing to do with anyone's radicalization.

I have no idea who that person is. There's a number of posts on here about NeurIPS with some links to archive.org that features a Twitter feed where a number of people were encouraging harassment of each other. Watching how they postulate against each other using their various ideologies is shocking to say the least.

This is such a fascinating take to me.

I feel like the problem here is the modern right has an untenable political coalition. And it needs to moderate in certain issues to regain majority support. One way would be by eschewing hard-line right wing economics. Tax cuts for corporations and wealthy elites arent going to make a dent in the left’s cultural hegemony. Why not tax the wealthy elite and pour that tax money into the hands of every day Americans through better infrastructure, schooling, and healthcare? Then use that as political leverage to stop things you don’t like.

It sounds a lot like one side is too attached to corporate hegemony.

Re: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election

#200

Post by philh » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 12:28 AM UTC

andybak wrote: post #192

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the account name, that particular user has been here for over three years, and has 3900 karma. They're not just some drive-by troller. Also, you should judge their comments by the comments, not by the username. Those were some fairly thoughtful comments, even if you don't agree with them.

> Also, you should judge their comments by the comments, not by the username. Partly yes and partly no. I spotted what appeared to be a throwaway. That led me to believe the poster had less "skin in the game" and that influenced me to some degree. Was that unreasonable?

"To some degree"? Surely. It could have influenced you to spend a few seconds checking whether the account was a throwaway. I think that would have been entirely reasonable.

But it didn't influence you "to some degree". We can be more specific than that. It influenced you to accuse the account of being a throwaway without spending a few seconds to check.

I do think that was mildly unreasonable. Not super unreasonable, but mildly.