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In the belly of the MrBeast

kevinmunger.substack.com

361–370 of 410 posts

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the Twitter joke. 'If I want an answer to a programming question, I post the question, and then an incorrect response from a different account.' No ones posting to help, but a lot will post to smugly correct the wrong answer.

This trick has been around forever, it's actually got a name, "goodhart's law"

Oh your comment is so clever because now I’ve gone to correct you that it’s actually Cunningham's Law.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#362
post #2

At the top of the heap (Mr Beast, Nastya, Ryan, etc), this is true: > The ideal creator has no distance between themselves and their persona. They have been interpellated by audience metrics; their subjective experience already takes audience reactions into account. > Or more simply, YouTubers are not “Creators” but Creations. Audiences, rationalized by the platform, and the vloggers who upload the videos those audie…

Youtube is also killing a lot of history channels because if there's any violence (eg war) they get demonetized, the algorithm avoids them, or they can even have their channels disabled. Most now blur out pictures of the holocaust, which negates a lot of the otherwise serious impact on a serious subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24QgMpvX3mw

I enjoy the occasional true crime documentary. It's been amazing to watch YouTube demonetization just drive censorship to an absurd degree.

No blood, no violence, no bad words. And the words YouTube deems bad are somehow much stricter than what I grew up with. Many words related to violence (abuse, assault, etc) words related to death (killed, executed, etc) words related to drugs (took me a while to figure out what a suspect was even saying when their speech was censored to "they drank and used s**d" I finally figured out it was speed aka meth)

It's amazing to see how sanitized things have become, almost to the point of absurdity. Does making it so that people can't say the word "abuse" somehow eliminate abuse from the world?

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#363
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do agree it has a very strong focus on suggesting more of what you've recently watched, I feel it's also managing to suggest new and interesting unrelated stuff from time to time. Some habits I have is to subscribe to channels which I truly enjoy, instead of marking as "not interested" I select "do not suggest channel", and be cautious of click-bait titles. If I get lured in, I remove them from my history. So…

I've found sometime in the last year or so YouTube has been suggesting random videos from very small channels much more, which I like a lot. Most of the videos are garbage, but every once in a while I'll find a gem that entertains me and my friends. Recently I found a video of a young kid doing a taste test of a sour soda, and then demanding his dad come over from the other room to try it too. At one point the kid do…

You’ll get a kick out of this if you haven’t already seen it - a collection of random slice of life videos uploaded during the time when iPhones had a built in “send to YouTube” button. So many fascinating moments that would otherwise be lost to time. https://walzr.com/IMG_0001

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#364
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no clue how to use YouTube. It seems like as soon as it latches on 3-4 interests of mine, the entire home page is exclusively filled with videos relating to that. I can mark videos as "not interesting" but it doesn't do much. I will see exactly the same videos on the home screen, ones that I'm not interested in and don't plan on watching, for weeks or months sometimes. I'm sure there's plenty of interesting co…

I made the mistake of clicking on a Jordan Peterson video several years back. I'd never heard of him before and the title seemed interesting, so I clicked. 15 seconds in my charlatan detector went off, so I exited the video. For the next couple weeks I was playing wack-a-mole with a never-ending supply of manoshpere and right wing nonsense. Easy to see how so many people get sucked into sphere of influence.

One of the best things I've learned is that you can go into your watch history and remove something and that seems to work pretty well to fixing the algorithm after clicking on something and realizing it's garbage.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#365
post #30
post #9

Not entirely related to MrBeast but related to YouTube. I genuinely miss the older algorithm where after watching a video you would go progressively further down a hole of videos somehow related to the one you just watched. It was quite entertaining and really uncovered fascinating videos.

I have no clue how to use YouTube. It seems like as soon as it latches on 3-4 interests of mine, the entire home page is exclusively filled with videos relating to that. I can mark videos as "not interesting" but it doesn't do much. I will see exactly the same videos on the home screen, ones that I'm not interested in and don't plan on watching, for weeks or months sometimes. I'm sure there's plenty of interesting co…

The homescreen recommendations seems to aggressively prioritize what you last searched for.

I missed the end of the recent Australia vs India cricket series so I searched for highlights from the final day of play. Since then for the past 2 weeks my homescreen has been an endless stream of cricket related videos. For some reason it has a particular focus on podcasts related to cricket.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you help me on the math between 8% and 11%? I'm showing that as .11/.08 = 1.375 or "37% higher" . I generalized this to #1/#2 = % difference between the #1 and #2. It's not so much logic as it is arithmetic, but let me know if you still disagree.

Nobody thinks the arithmetic is wrong, we're saying you're engaged in (really transparent and unconvincing) deception. If the approval rate was 0.1% and 0.2%, does it give someone the correct impression to say "Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to approve of the killing?" After saying that sentence, would someone draw a diagram that's even remotely close to the actual probabilities and support levels? No.…

>the positive reaction towards [the CEO's murder], seems rather associated with the left

So the question is, "of the population of folks who approve of the murder, how many are left leaning vs right?"

So your own data says that the population of murder-approvers is left leaning by a huge margin. you are the one using tricks to obfuscate that fact.

further, you are trying to malign the entire trump presidency based on his dining with a single person (and known troll) while dodging the fact that a significant contingent of Harris voters support that murder. you can't have it both ways

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What setting is this? I'd love to disable the home page but I haven't seen any setting for it

Turn off your watch history. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725

Ah, I wanted a setting explicitly. I'd like to preserve my watch history, i only want to disable the home and recommendations.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#368

First of all – the essay is phenomenal and his book is available online for free – https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/youtube-apparatus/36... > “Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning.” The rapid feedback loop between creators and audiences (as constructed by platform metrics) means that the system more and more responds to itself. Rather than trying to go somewhere (as is the case with politi…

Intensification is the aim and result of Google, specifically their "online ad services" racket.

It is not created merely by the sharing of videos over the internet.

Such sharing was happening long before Google Video or YouTube existed.

Some HN commenters want readers to believe that YouTube, with its ridiculous "recommendations", is synonymous with sharing videos over a computer network... and that it's impossible for internet subscribers to share videos with other subscribers without a YouTube middleman. They warn that YouTube must exist, that surveillance, advertising and recommendations are essential, otherwise sharing video over the internet will become impossible and terrible things will happen.

News flash. Terrible things are happening as a result of YouTube. More specifically as a result of Google's surveillance and advertising tactics.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I understand why numberphile has videos about infinity. I jest, but it seems like only certain content creators can get on the intensification train.

Seriously though, this is true. My YouTube feed has none of this "intensification" stuff. Perun, Blancolirio, everything Brady Haran has made (he's the guy behind Numberphile, Sixty Symbols, etc), Applied Science, etc. I think the idea that media aimed at education or sharing a passionate hobby is different from media that exists in the first place to just make money. If you start out with a goal that involves commun…

It's hard to realize just how unrepresentative that is and how much of a minority that makes you.

Just like it's easy for people into video games to think the latest Steam-chart topping indie hit is really popular.

And then you look up the numbers and it turns out something like FIFA (EAFC) makes more money than every single indie game on Steam combined.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#370
post #262
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's that direct of a connection. There's something to be said about the structuralist part of it: using large amounts of text as a rule set to return a semblance of truth seems to be a structuralist's wet dream. It's like drawing the map for the king: the real is being represented by reducing a huge number of data points to a mixture of randomness and hard rules that pretend to be real. At the very leas…

Indeed this is what I was aiming at, however the concern for (a semblance of) truth seems rooted in a view that locates meaning in what signs refer to. This view feels incomplete when faced with a dyadic model where the relationship between signifier and signified takes precedence over reference. The notion of simulacrum only emerges in a technical culture that has elevated 'reality' to a special status. After all, w…

What does that have to do with LLMs?
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