511–520 of 548 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a great many people are actually stupid and easily lead astray. There are large numbers of people who won’t vaccinate their children (not talking about Covid vaccine). Such a person is either stupid or a victim of misinformation. Humans are easily persuadable. This is particularly true with a group of people echoing who feel slighted or are angry about some perceived injustice. The mob mentality is real and i…
[flagged]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Humans need real human connection Right. Ask any pickup artist, or any Aspie who has learned how to mask, how "real" or "deep" human connections are. Hint: they aren't. The ridiculous concept of "connection" is superficial communication that has been enhanced by our own brains by seratonin and dopamine such that we are able to pretend it's meaningful.
Right, because the kind of connections we want and need in life is those that you would get from a pickup artist, not from a loyal friend and an affectionate spouse. /s
Earlier quoted context omitted.
dunno what "TFA" refers to here, but it seems like we're heading into a argument regarding epistemology, which is not a discussion that HN handles well. IMO "truth" is distraction here because what is at stake here are people's values, not their understanding of math and physics. When people worry about "post-truth", they're worried about liberal values no longer being the unquestioned default. It is absolutely a mar…
TFA = the f'ing article, something quite commonly understood on HN for time immemorial. Its snark is borne of the community's distaste of the kind of people who dive into comment sections without engaging with the very subject of and reason the comment thread exists in the first place. The fact you don't recognize this acronym calls into question your authority on what HN can or can't handle. But anyway, that's besid…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No hasty conclusions. We switched to this always connected world only 10-15 years ago and I think we are far from having seen all the consequences. Algorithmic bubbles, mass surveillance, addictive algorithms and applications are fairly recent and we can already see really disgusting consequences. Our civilization is resilient so it takes time to erode but since a few years, I have hard time imagining a positive tech…
The sum of all human knowledge in every pocket and all we use it for is to view fake photos of fake people living their fake lifestyles. We were gonna cure cancer and explore space. It’s shameful.
Unfortunately we are offsetting those medical gains with higher incidence of some types of cancer. This is due to exposure to carcinogens (toxic chemicals) and unhealthy lifestyles (mainly obesity).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was never going to pay for therapy, this gave me some insight and actually made me interested in therapy. ChatGPT could never be as bad as most human therapists, at least if it tells lies they're believable and it won't try to insult, belittle, or infantalize you. Medical usage is perhaps the single most interesting use of ChatGPT to me, the problem will be solving the liability issue should it get something wron…
WebMD seems to get by okay in regards to liability.
Its doesn't replace a physician, it recommends them.
Counter point: sure they are. Humans are highly adaptable and like other changes to information availability in the past they will adapt. This is what societal norms and cultural memes are for. “Don’t believe everything you hear” “Don’t believe what you see on TV” “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” These are all ways that the human species uses memes and cultural norms to teach ourselves how not to f…
Absolutely. Lots of humans live in a post-truth world. They learn not to trust anything they read or hear. Think totalitarian regimes wi try tight controls over media. A more painful and pertinent question might be: Can democracy adapt to a post-truth world, and the answer to that I fear is probably no. How can a democracy function if it’s citizenry can’t remain informed?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It feels weird that you can state something so obvious so far down a thread and it’s literally the only mention of it. We haven’t adapted successfully, we aren’t adapting successfully and we won’t adapt successfully. We were way better off before smartphones. Looking back on it now, we may have been even better off before the Internet. By any conceivable perspective you would care to measure we’re failing abysmally a…
It's difficult to separate the effects of smartphones and wildly increasing wealth inequality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until recently, it was costly to fake a video of someone talking. Recent advances in generative AI have changed that. One definition for disinformation is "deliberately misleading or biased information; manipulated narrative or facts; propaganda". The ad I viewed meets that qualification. This was not your typical advertisement trying to persuade the viewer that their product is better than others. It used a generate…
I agree that the AI generated stuff is fucked up. What I'm pointing out is that an advertisement is expected to be biased and not necessarily tethered to "facts." It's why magazines and social media platforms require (or are supposed to) ads and paid content to be marked as such. GM doesn't claim that Ford is spreading "disinformation" -- but newspapers, TV stations, politicians, etc do constantly claim that people w…
Free speech comes with the obligation of responsibility. You can't go around yelling "Fire!" in a theatre because of the clearly obvious possible negative consequences of that action. Legacy mainstream media appear to understand that better than big tech platforms do. Big tech wants to profit off the illegal and unethical content without having any responsibility for doing so. This is wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It feels weird that you can state something so obvious so far down a thread and it’s literally the only mention of it. We haven’t adapted successfully, we aren’t adapting successfully and we won’t adapt successfully. We were way better off before smartphones. Looking back on it now, we may have been even better off before the Internet. By any conceivable perspective you would care to measure we’re failing abysmally a…
>We were way better off before smartphones. Looking back on it now, we may have been even better off before the Internet. Not to contradict myself, but I have to disagree. Smartphones and the internet have improved the quality of life for a significant fraction of humanity. Given the choice between going back to a pre-internet technological paradigm of landline phones and total corporate control over media and commun…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
50 years ago humans weren't prepared for a smartphone, internet "post-connected" world and here we are. We adapt and grow.
We CAN’T adapt. There are no biological mechanisms inside your head to adapt to Tiktok. There are plenty of mechanisms which make you an addict to it, though.