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You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#171

Post by redbell »

This is really an interesting article as well the blog itself, I admire it!

One interesting finding that I never seen in any blog is the notes part (https://notes.jim-nielsen.com/) where the author shows the notes he collected from various sources with his comments.

This one (https://notes.jim-nielsen.com/#2024-04-15T0822) from The Node.js Documentary, especially his comment, is outstanding:

  A big company is like a giant ship that has to start making its turn a mile before the actual turn itself. Whereas the community is comprised of thousands of small, distributed boats that can make (in contrast) hairpin turns.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#172

Post by komali2 »

verisimi wrote: post #111
pjerem wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Existence of mental illness or troubles makes me doubt that. What is free will when you are suffering from pathological procrastination, depression or addiction ? If you accept the fact that, like in addictions, your brain chemistry makes you smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol even when you know you’ll die from it and know it makes you miserable then how can you be convinced that you really control your normal behavio…

Could depression, or other mental illnesses, be the outcome of one's bad decisions (or failure to make decisions)?

> Could depression, or other mental illnesses, be the outcome of one's bad decisions (or failure to make decisions)?

Sometimes, the outcome of one's decisions (bad is an unnecessary value statement here. Was it a "bad" idea to start a restaurant that failed and made you sad? Cmon).

However, a huge swath of mental illness, including depression, is the result of environmental and genetic factors utterly outside your control. Your mom smoked crack when you were in her womb and somehow that's "the outcome of your bad decision?"

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#173

Post by somenameforme »

Ekaros wrote: post #117
shrubby wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The books I've read have a say in this. Rutger Bregman concluded in his Humankind - a Hopeful History that deep down human is pretty decent. So I'm thinking the turnout would be rather similar in different communities. I was kinda impressed with Bergman once the book came out so I took nine copies to Finnish MP's to share. Unfortunately they were not too interested in the humane message the book told

I would agree that humans are pretty decent in tiny communities. Scaling beyond that they are absolutely unquestionably horrific monsters. Without any doubt. And those communities are not ready to punish their own community for those horrific deeds they comitted.

I take a slightly different perspective (while sharing a similar final perspective) on the community issue. Rather I think individual choice drives people to communities that they, at least broadly, align with. So you end up with communities that are not only overly permissive towards their own, but also overly critical of those outside of it. But then as those communities grow large enough divisions start to form even within the like-minded community itself, and eventually you get a division there (that often ends in an internal conflict), and that community divides again, almost like a cell splitting into two new cells. And then the process starts to repeat once again in these new cells.

Add in cells merging every once in a while, and you have the abbreviated history of humanity in one paragraph.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#174

Post by pyinstallwoes »

y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

You are precisely the continuous difference of everything else.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#175

Post by pyinstallwoes »

redbell wrote: post #167
y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

> at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made I believe this is called subconscious mind

I prefer Logos personally.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#176

Post by blackbear_ »

vasco wrote: post #132
Terr_ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sure, we're trying to hack your brain to enrich ourselves at your expense, but it's traditional. "

Without advertising in the world, it'd be a much poorer place. Advertising exists for more than a thousand years and it's the only way for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.

I call what you are describing "informational" advertisement, and indeed it is totally fine. However most modern advertisement is not trying to inform but rather to convince, using a variety of psychological tricks to manipulate viewers into a specific position. This is totally not okay.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#177

Post by dennis_moore »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #84
NERD_ALERT wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free will hasn’t been proven. It’s up in the air how much is predetermined, and how to even define “free” in the context of free will. Even if we do have free will it’s still influenced to some degree by our biology.

My Diogenes answer would be to walk across the room and slap you: “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me.” That’s tongue and cheek sure, but the point I feel stands. Free will is certainly constrained, and our material and biological conditions do matter - there’s no amount I can will to make myself fly, but they are not necessarily as rigid of constraints as many would have you believe. We can overcom…

> “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me."

Yes I can, because I didn't choose to be angry either.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#178

Post by pyinstallwoes »

kromem wrote: post #15

I actually realized recently that this is probably the underlying phenomenon behind "how is my phone listening to my conversations to show me ads/articles?" The other day I was thinking about LLM aggregation and in my internal dialogue used the example of "aliens built the pyramids" as a fringe theory that would be picked up on if tuning for other associated fringe positions by LLMs at places like Gab. Later in the d…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#179

Post by pyinstallwoes »

Zambyte wrote: post #22
kromem wrote: post #15

I actually realized recently that this is probably the underlying phenomenon behind "how is my phone listening to my conversations to show me ads/articles?" The other day I was thinking about LLM aggregation and in my internal dialogue used the example of "aliens built the pyramids" as a fringe theory that would be picked up on if tuning for other associated fringe positions by LLMs at places like Gab. Later in the d…

This is why your attention is so insanely valuable. Everyone thinks they're immune to advertising, yet people keep paying billions and billions of dollars to show something on your screen for a few seconds... because like it or not, it works.

Words are literally spell(ings), you see, we've trivialized casting spells. In the past being enchanted was a negative semantic relation, now, everyone wants to be enchanted. What type of world is the world where everyone is a magic user casting spells without their awareness of such? Our world.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#180

Post by pyinstallwoes »

vasco wrote: post #132
Terr_ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sure, we're trying to hack your brain to enrich ourselves at your expense, but it's traditional. "

Without advertising in the world, it'd be a much poorer place. Advertising exists for more than a thousand years and it's the only way for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Advertising is carte blanche mind control.

Markets and products can easily exist without advertising. In fact, they're better. You go to markets, and you have curators. Advertising outside of a market should be not only illegal but culturally frowned upon as a root ethic.

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