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I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

claytonwramsey.com

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Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#51

Post by dwedge »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #49
dwedge wrote: post #27

> I used to argue with people on the internet, after about six replies, you realize that you’re speaking to someone incapable of thought He realises the current woe of things but doesn't realise he's been arguing with bot farms and teams of people hired just for this reason - to sow doom, arguments and engagement. Around 10 years ago I noticed this happening on trending topics of Twitter - it wasn't that the opponent…

I used to think that the people who could not apply any semblance of logical reasoning online were just bots or trolls, but then I started meeting them in real life.

Sure, they exist, but online they are simulatenously unable to apply any logic and then surprisingly coherent and intelligent in the next reply.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#52

Post by hypfer »

dwedge wrote: post #46
hypfer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. (I would love to say, but they still get me way too often) I can also highly encourage people to keep notes and do some basic OSINT. The effective internet is smaller than one might think, so that proves useful time and time again.

Can you elaborate on the OSINT suggestion? Do you mean on the people you engage with?

Yes, exactly. Though, not by default.

If something seems _odd_, I suggest looking up _why_ it might be odd. Gathering context, essentially.

Like "Okay, this guy is weird. Aah, okay, LinkedIn says that he works there. Okay _now_ that makes sense".

Based on that, you can then decide how to approach the (previously failing) interaction.

__

HN is a very easy place for that, because, to give somewhat concrete examples, if someone is shilling for something and seems unreachable for common sense, LinkedIn usually tells you that their salary depends on that.

And people play very open here, because this is treated as a business networking event.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#53

Post by beklein »

hobofan wrote: post #31
beklein wrote: post #24

A bit off topic, but I absolutely love the little robot on the author's main project's landing page ( https://rerun.io/ ). I normally condemn mouse hijacking, but this implementation will be allowed.

Rerun is pretty dope, but I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that it's the "author's main project"? There is a whole company backing it, with no affiliation that I could find, apart from the author being an occasional contributor?

They mentioned "... and my visualizer tool comes with an MCP server ...", with a link to the rerun project. I guess it makes more sense that his visualizer tool uses rerun...Sorry for the confusion from my side.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#54

Post by blauditore »

arjie wrote: post #34
dwedge wrote: post #27

> I used to argue with people on the internet, after about six replies, you realize that you’re speaking to someone incapable of thought He realises the current woe of things but doesn't realise he's been arguing with bot farms and teams of people hired just for this reason - to sow doom, arguments and engagement. Around 10 years ago I noticed this happening on trending topics of Twitter - it wasn't that the opponent…

Haha it’s just a foolish move made by those from the ‘90s. We all internalized a different lesson. The younger generations have learned to brush it off and stop responding. Even if the person is human, when you fail to move toward Aumann Agreement, there is no point in persisting. Us older ones are still fighting the last war. If only we explain it properly, maybe the bots will understand!

Arguing on the internet is not about convincing the other side. It's about winning the majority opinion and getting more votes. Almost like politics.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#55

Post by walrus01 »

novok wrote: post #45
walrus01 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found that the only way to deal with this these days is basically to only use my time to discuss things with people in private, invitation only forums. HN is a rare exception for "I am pretty sure you all are not bots (yet)" and yet anonymous. Everything else that I care about is in private Signal groups or an equivalent of same with anywhere from 15 to 200 people, and adding any new member means they need to…

That feels like the intellectual equivalent of limiting your career opportunities within a small tiny villages vs. a large city. There is so much more in the city.

It's not that I don't read a great deal from a wide variety of sources, but that I reserve the small amount of free time I have per day for back-and-forth discussions (like this one) with groups of people I am fairly sure are not sock puppets. The amount of oversight that dang exercises on HN to ensure that frequent and verbose commenters are authentic people should not go without notice.

I have a theory that a good part of the filtering for authentic humans has already been done here, which gives me a higher level of confidence that I'm not metaphorically shouting into the void by conversing with somebody's LLM or social media influence apparatus.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#56

Post by bratbag »

skrebbel wrote: post #43
arjie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha it’s just a foolish move made by those from the ‘90s. We all internalized a different lesson. The younger generations have learned to brush it off and stop responding. Even if the person is human, when you fail to move toward Aumann Agreement, there is no point in persisting. Us older ones are still fighting the last war. If only we explain it properly, maybe the bots will understand!

I googled Aumann Agreement and it’s all about agreeing about whether things are true/false/likely/unlikely. I don’t understand your point at all in this context. What’s “Aumann Agreement” in the context of a discussion about values?

The outcomes those values achieve.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#58

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

dwedge wrote: post #27

> I used to argue with people on the internet, after about six replies, you realize that you’re speaking to someone incapable of thought He realises the current woe of things but doesn't realise he's been arguing with bot farms and teams of people hired just for this reason - to sow doom, arguments and engagement. Around 10 years ago I noticed this happening on trending topics of Twitter - it wasn't that the opponent…

I'd love to know if there's a documentary or something that has been done about this, that I could point non-techie people in my life to.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#59

Post by walrus01 »

hypfer wrote: post #40
walrus01 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found that the only way to deal with this these days is basically to only use my time to discuss things with people in private, invitation only forums. HN is a rare exception for "I am pretty sure you all are not bots (yet)" and yet anonymous. Everything else that I care about is in private Signal groups or an equivalent of same with anywhere from 15 to 200 people, and adding any new member means they need to…

> And at least 55-75% of the people know each other face to face through industry vertical specific events, trade shows, conferences and similar. Tbh, my experience with _that_ has been worse than with a random sample of internet background radiation, as people seem to have no idea how to filter correctly and who to vouch for and why. _Especially_ with people they know via work, conferences, etc. Spaces that do not f…

Within this context it's specifically people in the ISP and telecom business, most of whom have been in the business 15, 20 or 25 years now. Some of us started out as junior NOC techs, junior sysadmin/Linux/BSD guys in the late 1990s at different dotcom 1.0 startups.

At a certain scale you know who the people are that have super-admin privileges at very specific ASNs and they are well known in the industry. Basically much as somebody in academia in a journalism school on the west coast would know who is the department head of the school of journalism at a major university in Boston or NY and recognize their name.

Now within a Signal group of 150 people adjacent to the neteng teams at large to medium sized US/Canadian ISPs, it's entirely possible that somebody let an uninvited rando in, but we don't discuss anything super sensitive (that's for more 1:1 messages). A person who has been lurking for weeks or months and suddenly starts chatting in an inauthentic way would be found out very quickly.

One of the things that ISP technical operations groups do very well is filter for non-authentic participant in something, because sales persons getting into groups of technical discussion with the angle of selling some new thing is a perpetual problem and is a well known factor to deal with.

Also sales people generally don't do well when a complex operational-related technical matter is put in front of them in a fast paced environment where they can't engage their engineering team to get an accurate reply. Ask anyone that's ever tried to get their direct cellphone number removed from a Cogent IP transit sales person's CRM system....

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#60

Post by ErroneousBosh »

walrus01 wrote: post #35
hliyan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've now completely stopped engaging with anyone on that platform that I can't reasonably traced back to a real person. If any non-real-name account says anything that remotely feels bad-faith in replies, I block them. Having been on the Internet since the mid 90's when it was the frontier, and everyone helped/trusted everyone else, the policy feels very wrong. But unfortunately Twitter has given no tools or alternat…

I have found that the only way to deal with this these days is basically to only use my time to discuss things with people in private, invitation only forums. HN is a rare exception for "I am pretty sure you all are not bots (yet)" and yet anonymous. Everything else that I care about is in private Signal groups or an equivalent of same with anywhere from 15 to 200 people, and adding any new member means they need to…

> discuss things with people in private, invitation only forums

One of the great things about not having ads on rangerovers.pub is that Google is just not interested in indexing it, because it doesn't make them any money. It shows up here and there in search results, sporadically, especially if you know a username or phrase specific to the site, but other than that if you want to know about it you need to be told about it.

I was never a fan of web forums but they are a nice compromise between really oldschool mailing lists and FAANG content-to-eyeball transformers.

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