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Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

washingtonpost.com

471–480 of 551 posts

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#471

People forget that private universities are for profit businesses.

So, coming from a country where universities are either non-profit or owned by the state… how does this work? Like, surely Harvard isn’t paying anyone dividends? It’s not actually a literal for-profit entity, is it?

Basically the only thing a US nonprofit can't do is give dividends to investors. The nonprofit has to funnel any unspent profit to itself as an endowment, but can also have obscenely high salaries for administrative staff.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#472

"prestigious team of online disinformation experts" Not being the devil's advocate here, but "online disinformation" is not a credentialed field. That's like calling yourself a "truth expert". Also the prestigious part is bogus at best. If they are then they sure don't make the headlines often.

Software engineering is also not a credentialed field, at least in the way other engineering fields are.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#475
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lawyers surely have something like this Not a lawyer and not familiar with their systems but based on my knowledge of other industries I’d say it’s not guaranteed they have a solution. Could be good ol sticky notes and manual calendar events.

This is really really naive.

I do love it when people say "I am not familiar with this situation at all but" and then proceed to speculate about it having made clear they have no basis for their speculation.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern world is a utopia by any reasonable historical standard, yes.

I cannot see how that could be true. I don't know what world you live in if you deem our current society as a perfect place. Maybe you're a billionaire?

It could be true in the sense that you don't live in a cave, weren't murdered because of ever-marginally losing your physical edge at age 35, haven't died of a tooth infection, defecate indoors in a climate controlled structure, and can summon light as if by magic at any time of the day. Ignoring the rest, and acknowledging that this sounds like an aggressive answer. I don't mean it in that way. But there should be some POV on this incredibly rare era, even if it is imperfect strictly speaking. Maybe perfect is also the enemy of happy.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#477

I just read that this morning. I'm interested enough in the outcome that I put a calendar reminder 6 months out to check what happened. Doing so made me wonder if there's a service that would email me updates about legal cases like this that I would like to follow.

Who would pay for this? Random people like you and me wouldn't pay for something they're gonna use twice in their lifetime, and lawyers surely have something like this, possibly integrate with all the other tools they use.

I would pay for a comprehensive AI-driven service that delivers alerting on any topic. Google alerts SUCKS for so many reasons.

I might not be aware of other services though so if anyone is – please enlighten me!

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern world is a utopia by any reasonable historical standard, yes.

I cannot see how that could be true. I don't know what world you live in if you deem our current society as a perfect place. Maybe you're a billionaire?

How many people you personally know have died of hunger? Have been killed in a robbery? How many of your brothers and sisters died before reaching the age of 10? How many of your own teeth did you have (or expect to have) at the age of 30? Have you been able to afford sugar more than 10 times in your life? How many times per year do you afford to wash yourself in hot water? How many people sleep in the same room in you? In your bed? How many fleas, ticks, mites and other insects to you usually scratch out of yourself? How many times have you been physically assaulted by someone in the last year?

Just coming from an assumption that you're an average HN reader, your answers to this question are radically different from what most of humanity would have answered before 20th century (first world) or the second half of 20th century.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#479

I'm hesitant to share this because it's completely unverifiable in any way I'd be comfortable documenting. Not my life, not my secrets to tell. I had a close friend who did undergraduate research in a fisheries department. They had been researching plant selection for aquaponics to increase the yield of tilapia. They had a filtration system that pushed tank water through a bed of plant roots. The plants would be harv…

[deleted]

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#480

I'm hesitant to share this because it's completely unverifiable in any way I'd be comfortable documenting. Not my life, not my secrets to tell. I had a close friend who did undergraduate research in a fisheries department. They had been researching plant selection for aquaponics to increase the yield of tilapia. They had a filtration system that pushed tank water through a bed of plant roots. The plants would be harv…

Well isn't that a similar story behind OpenAI drama? Big money suppressing innovation.
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