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Goodbye Facebook.

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Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#131

Post by Wilya »

peterwwillis wrote: post #111

For all of you wondering "Can I really give up Facebook?" the answer is an emphatic "Of course, stupid." You got along fine before it existed and you'll forget about it once you're not refreshing your feed every 10 minutes. The other day someone sent me an e-mail or text (I forget) to invite me to an event. They knew I had abandoned Facebook and wanted to make sure I was included. I felt slightly honored that they wo…

> The other day someone sent me an e-mail or text (I forget) to invite me to an event.

On the other hand, maybe you've missed a dozen of other events, where you could have had your share of "real" communication.

I despise Facebook as a company, and its many shady schemes, but I have to admit, it's a very efficient tool for connecting people.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#132

Post by andreasvc »

cs702 wrote: post #128
andreasvc wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just like to say that that has absolutely nothing to do with anything by Gödel or Turing. There definitely can exist machine learning algorithms which continually adapt, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't try and model human agency as well. The work by Gödel and Turing you're thinking of is about _formal_ systems such as logic or computer programs, and while it is very common for people to turn (i…

andreasvc: AFAIK, there is no program in existence today that can successfully model "human agency" (as you put it). Wouldn't that require major breakthroughs in AI? And my understanding from chatting with friends in the fraud-detection space is that, while current state-of-the-art machine-learning systems can successfully adapt to the data they obtain from users, they cannot adapt to users learning to game or 'route…

Yes I see the superficial resemblance with Gödel and Turing, but it's not more than that. The reason I insist on that is because the value of their theorems lies in the fact that they have been mathematically proven, and the proof only holds in very particular conditions. Basically, a system that is strong enough to prove statements about arithmetic cannot prove its own consistency. This hypothesis about the difficulty of certain machine learning tasks is a conjecture, at best. I don't think you could prove it, and if you could, it would look very different from the incompleteness proof. I think it has to do with certain AI problems being hard, but this is a rather vague notion; perhaps we simply lack certain concepts or mathematical tools. The important thing about the incompleteness proofs is that that is completely ruled out: given the right formal conditions, certain things are absolutely impossible to do.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#133

Post by otterley »

richardv wrote: post #5

Aside from the fact that this post is mostly pointless, it's also totally misinformed. The OP started off by stating his reasons for dropping FB in this "experiment".. namely losing touch with the people for which he originally signed up under. But he clearly doesn't engage with them if he's not seeing their updates. Your social graph needs fine tuning. It's like any good bayesian filter, it learns over time what int…

In the early days, the News Feed was a full feed of all updates, much like LiveJournal's friends page. Why can't they return to its previous behavior, subject to the restrictions you specify? (e.g. unsubscribe from app activities).

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#134

Post by rhizome »

andreasvc wrote: post #122
cs702 wrote: post #55

As I see it, the seeds of this user's disappointment were planted as soon as she starting gaming the system: "my posts became more and more filtered as the 'Friend' list increased. Now, they were getting the facade, the highlights because I donned the 'happy' mask. My closer friends were still catching the true story through instant messaging, text messaging and phone calls..." The faint echoes of Gödel and Turing in…

I would just like to say that that has absolutely nothing to do with anything by Gödel or Turing. There definitely can exist machine learning algorithms which continually adapt, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't try and model human agency as well. The work by Gödel and Turing you're thinking of is about _formal_ systems such as logic or computer programs, and while it is very common for people to turn (i…

The trajectories of adaptation then become second-and-beyond-order problems that in turn fall out of sync with reality.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#135

Post by gonehome »

Afal wrote: post #19

Oh boy another internet "experiment" when someone gives up $technology and ends up saying absolutely nothing in their post. I sure do love reading these pretentious pieces of "intellectual" prose. In fact I shall start an "experiment" myself to see if replacing every instance of "experiment" in these kind of articles with "controversial decision" to see if they read better. I mean it's as if people use the word "expe…

Another week another post about someone leaving facebook.

There is nothing interesting or novel in these posts. All that happens is that the people who have also left facebook find validation in seeing someone else do it so they up vote their story to the front page.

I don't know if it's about individuality or some perceived minority of 'non-facebook' users wanting to band together, but the fact that someone has left facebook is uninteresting.

In addition to this it's made worse by the articles acting as if it's some crowning achievement when all they're doing is limiting their methods of interacting with other people.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#136

Post by kin »

These posts are pretty common I feel in HN. Every time it just comes down to FB gets harder to use. I have a Close Friends tab and I put my close friends in it. That's it.

I "Like" some pages but you can easily click on that drop down to unsubscribe.

FB is pretty flexible on what content you want to appear in your feed and sometimes there are surprises but you can pretty easily scold it with a few button clicks and it'll fix right back up. Works for me. I understand there's a need for it to just work without the use of any interaction but then you'd lose a lot of features if you had that.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#137

Post by Karunamon »

peterwwillis wrote: post #120
Karunamon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When instead of sharing, laughing, and crying together, we take, laugh, and cry in a room, alone, our thumbs and index fingers hurriedly typing out replies to communication, missing vital clues and skipping over the common human courtesies we learn and use in the course of physical interaction. You say "human courtesies", I (and others) say impediments to effective communication. Think of the average phone call. Thi…

I'd like to continue this discussion but it's verging on pointlessness. I don't know how to describe the immense value that talking to someone has over making a comment on a status update. I guess, try to imagine yourself in a state where you cannot move any part of your body but your eyes. Your body is slumped into a mattress for so long that there's a permanent dent in it. You can not hear, you can not talk, but lu…

I fail to see how this contrived situation applies to the majority of the world who are not paralyzed, deaf, and bedridden.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#138

Post by Karunamon »

I've really never seen a "facebook sucks" post that wasn't based on one of the following tired arguments:

   - Ludditism
     Usually of the form:
     Technology is *TEARING US APART* don't you see?! (Response: No, not really, perhaps you just suck at communicating?)

   - Ignorance of use
     Usually of the form:
     WTF I got fired for posting all those pictures of me using drugs?! (Response: Learn to use the privacy settings!)
     or: It's too noisy, all of these stupid game requests.. (Response: Block the offending apps and ask your friends to knock it off)
   
   - Bad connections
     Usually of the form:
     or: [annoying/offensive] $person keeps appearing in my news feed (Response: Block the offending person!)
     or: All of my friends post pointless, boring minuate of their lives! (I.e. the Twitter argument) (Response: Don't friend those people!)
     or: I don't want to turn down my Boss' friend request and look bad! I'm $sociallyUnfasionableThing! (Response: Use lists.)
It was refreshing to see one that actually lays out with an actual example what the problem is, in this case, algorithmic changes which ruined his experience. He veered toward #1 above at the very end, but still this was interesting to read.

Every single one of these things above, though, traces back to ignorance (usually) or cirucmstance. Could Facebook do a better job of making these things obvious? Absolutely. Facebook is not an intuitive site to use, and even when you have your head around it, they usually change something arbitrarily (the recent email thing comes to mind).

However, that said, you really shouldn't dump on the site wholesale just because it doesn't work for you. It works for millions of other people just fine.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#139

Post by donniezazen »

I have taken about 2 weeks of Facebook fast. It was great. You are more peaceful. Their is no guilt about not being able to do all the things that you should to be doing. You save time. You have more intense face to face or phone conversation with your friends.

I am back on Facebook because it is easier to connect to future-to-be-friends. You connect on Facebook and may be become good friends.

I plan to slowly wind Facebook down and eventually leave it for good.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#140

Post by [deleted] »

andreasvc wrote: post #132
cs702 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

andreasvc: AFAIK, there is no program in existence today that can successfully model "human agency" (as you put it). Wouldn't that require major breakthroughs in AI? And my understanding from chatting with friends in the fraud-detection space is that, while current state-of-the-art machine-learning systems can successfully adapt to the data they obtain from users, they cannot adapt to users learning to game or 'route…

Yes I see the superficial resemblance with Gödel and Turing, but it's not more than that. The reason I insist on that is because the value of their theorems lies in the fact that they have been mathematically proven, and the proof only holds in very particular conditions. Basically, a system that is strong enough to prove statements about arithmetic cannot prove its own consistency. This hypothesis about the difficul…

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