“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
How You Know
271–276 of 276 posts
Re: How You Know
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one of the core principles of how propaganda works. And Russians are currently utilizing it perfectly.
The Russians are utilizing it alright. However glancing at todays headlines eg. "Russian rouble in free-fall despite shock 17% rate rise" I'm not sure how well that's working out for them.
Their propaganda is targeted mainly domestically. Despite economical difficulties, Putin's approval rating still skyrockets, so I say it does work really well.
Re: How You Know
#273I've been thinking about this very issue recently, and coincidentally started working on software two days ago to help manage the problem of remembering things that I've read. Obtaining information in 2015 is remarkably easy. Retaining it is damn near impossible, at least for me. I read books and bookmark links from hn and reddit on a daily basis, consuming constantly. But I find that I recall very little of it. I do…
Google's +1 is pretty cool in this respect. If you +1 articles you read, their search scores will be boosted for your subsequent searches, so you'll be more likely to stumble upon them if you are looking for something related (but have forgot about what you read).
Re: How You Know
#274"Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why."
Re: How You Know
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
People don't grasp exponential growth[1]. That pattern will be useful for a very short time, and then you are wrong again. And then, when you finally accept that you don't grasp it and start calculating with a formal growth rate, the growth rate suddenly changes. [1] Nobody does. Some people know they don't, some are completely naive, the others lie to themselves. The first group have a chance of dealing correctly wi…
wait, did you just cite yourself?
I think that's just meant to be a footnote.
Re: How You Know
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found that one to be one of the less dystopian episodes. My explanation is linked because I don't want to spoil the episode. (Also spoils 15 Million Merits.) http://paste.lisp.org/display/144706
To address your point about Fifteen Million Merits, the way I had the excercise bikes framed coming into it, the "system" being presented is a prison (a microcosm of the larger society outside), and riding the bikes is part of their punishment/sentence. This is what the episode all the more disturbing to me. This would be the far-west's answer to a demand for less retribution-oriented prison designs, like a virus bec…
My take on the role of excercise bikes in the Fifteen Million Merits episode is that they're more of an abstract representation of what is most likely a meaningless job.
It's possible that the bikes are used to generate electricity, but that would be very inefficient and, also, not a very creative interpretation. Maybe they're part of a fitness experiment - the participants have an exercise regiment that they keep and are being monitored for the effects the excercise has on them. In return, they are provided with lodgings and food. After all, people have been paid for weirder things in modern times. I can think of a few more scenarios where the bikes are a part of some data gathering/social experiment thing.
Overall, I think, Black Mirror has a trait that distinguishes good fiction from bad - it manages in each episode to create a world that is abstract and unfamiliar enough to play by its own rules, but at the same time, allows parrallels to be drawn between the fictional world and our reality.