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Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

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Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#181

Post by marnett »

dao- wrote: post #108
Slansitartop wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the mistake of equating the law with morality. Greatly simplified, the a law is just an attempt to roughly codify some moral principles and give them some teeth. We still expect people to act morally, even in the absence of laws to force them to do so.

> You're making the mistake of equating the law with morality. Greatly simplified, the a law is just an attempt to roughly codify some moral principles and give them some teeth. I didn't mean to equate them and I don't think I did. I was implicitly making the same connection that you just made explicitly. > We still expect people to act morally, even in the absence of laws force them to do so. Who really expects inve…

Are you suggesting we stop 'hoping' (I don't hope investors act morally, I expect the regulatory apparatus to force them to, or penalize accordingly) altogether?

Sure, I hope HSBC won't launder money for Mexican Cartels. And when they do, I hope that some world government decides to toss the executives in jail and fine the company out of existence. And yes, when the settlement is just a slap-on-the-wrist-fine, a low VP getting canned, and the execs sitting pretty I hope for a return in the guillotine. And they all hope that I get fed up with hoping and become hopeless.

Is that what you hope as well?

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#182

Post by Shivetya »

jordigh wrote: post #8

I'm rather bothered that I know nothing about Soros except a bunch of vague, negative feelings about him that have pop-culturally osmosed to me through constant usage of his name in 4channish/the_donaldish media. He's some kind of evil mastermind destroying civilisation with his vast wealth. I know this is almost certainly not true, but I'm so bothered that this is my immediate thought. I feel like the alt-right has…

Soros and his ilk; he likes strife and hides behind his philanthropy to misdirect his exploitation of markets and people's fears; are simply upset they don't control social media as they used too. If they had not lost their recent political bets we would hear nothing of this issue and instead have heaps of praise about how these now vilified outlets actually saved democracy.

never believe anyone on the political stage let alone those who manipulated it from behind the curtains. these people know how to tailor the image and views they want you to have and prey of petty jealously to simple irrational dislikes.

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#183

Post by DangBruhWtf »

George Soros is a self-appointed alchemist and currency trader.

Powerful and wealthy currency traders, going back since the very invention of moneychanging, have routinely made their fortunes by either waiting and hoping they're lucky enough to have the surfboard ready for massive geopolitical tsunamis... or by being proactive and intentionally creating geopolitical volatility with social engineering, cultural destabilization, and semantic apocalypse.

Pathological altruists often whine about war profiteering, but even that sordid business is downstream of and part of a brilliant and comprehensive currency traders arsenal.

HackerNews is so goddamned disingenuously oblivious to the realities of currency trading and the thousands of years of misery it makes possible.

Soros did break the Bank of England and is finally citing my work almost by name in this article, so... I guess I'm a forex princeling nao? :D

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#184

Post by elipsey »

reaperducer wrote: post #173
quadrangle wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kochs are widely misunderstood. They are typically seen as effectively a free-money-pit for generic Republican views that promote Capitalist exploitation, laying waste to the environment, and destroying any real grassroots movement to bring democratic power to the people. From my understanding, the reality is more like: The Kochs are typical dogmatic Libertarians who aren't anti-environment but have this simplist…

Half of the science-heave PBS shows that are such a favorite of the SV crowd wouldn't be possible without Koch donations. So even if the Kochs really do end up killing all of the polar bears, it'll be well documented on TV.

Up vote for "science-heave", did you say that on purpose?

"What happens when one scientist goes head to head with EXTREME SHARK ATTACKS!!!11???" heave

Am I the only one who thinks pop-science shows have gone down hill a bit since reality tv came in to fashion? When I was younger Nova seemed like a dignified scholarly affair, but these days it seems like something always has to be exploding or attacking. Maybe it's just nostalgia...

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#185

Post by xenadu02 »

jerf wrote: post #154
spinchange wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen people claim the Koch's literally aided and abetted the Nazis (this is something that's actually claimed about Soros in spite of fleeing Europe with his parents as an adolescent). There's a hatred and fear of Soros that surpasses his political activities. He's pretty active with bonafide "do gooder" stuff and it's equated with Pizzagate-style conspiracies and worse that you don't see on the opposite s…

"stuff and it's equated with Pizzagate-style conspiracies and worse that you don't see on the opposite side of the fence." "Koch brothers". There is nothing one side's fever swamp does that the other can't match, which is why wise people attempting to discern truths ignore both, but most especially, ignore the one on the "other side".

Except the left/liberal side (as defined in US terms) mostly rejects the extremes.

The right/conservatives have turned a blind eye toward (and in some cases wholly embraced) their "fever swamp".

The truth is not in the middle.

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#186

Post by jnordwick »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #54
jnordwick wrote: post #31

Can we stop calling this addiction? The DSM V doesnt recognize process addictions, with the exception of Gambling Disorder, and many of the symptoms don't apply to social media use. Even Internet addiction wasn't included for lack of proof. Substance Use Disorder (the new category for chemical addictions) has specifics such as withdrawal and physical dependency that you don't get from turning off your Facebook accoun…

DSM was last updated in 2013. When companies are employing psychologists to analyze user behavior and employ techniques that exploit the same mental vunlerabilities that addictive drugs utilize with the goal of attaining a similar outcome, I think we can call that "optimizing for addiction".

These new techs do not "exploit the same mental vunlerabilities that addictive drugs utilize" in any meaningful sense. Everything positive from learning to driving to reading a book has a similar effect and it is going beyond rational discussion to try to argue FB and drugs are the same or even similar.

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#187

Post by pawelk »

wmeredith wrote: post #180
lakechfoma wrote: post #177

Can someone explain why FB can't become a paid service that engineers itself for the good of users? I don't know anything about corporate financing but naive napkin math says if their 2 billion user base pays $1/month they would be pulling $24 billion a year. Wikipedia says their revenue is $24b/year. Now if they removed their entire advertising aspect (the human labor, infrastructure) their operating costs would go…

The gulf between free and $1 is vast . Do not underestimate it. I'd be surprised if the could convert 10% of their current user base to paying customers at any price.

Also $1 does not hold the same purchasing power everywhere in the world. There are places where it is a considerably larger expense than in the US.

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#188

Post by briandear »

spinchange wrote: post #91
kbenson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you press people (like in person, not on the internet) why they think he's the devil incarnate, you usually get some really wild ad hominem not rooted in reality or a realization that they don't really know why they hate him so much other than he's a benefactor of their political opposition and they were told to. Sure, but we could probably say the same of the Koch brothers. They both occupy similar positions…

I've never seen people claim the Koch's literally aided and abetted the Nazis (this is something that's actually claimed about Soros in spite of fleeing Europe with his parents as an adolescent). There's a hatred and fear of Soros that surpasses his political activities. He's pretty active with bonafide "do gooder" stuff and it's equated with Pizzagate-style conspiracies and worse that you don't see on the opposite s…

This is where that aiding the Nazis claim originated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Id0-Lsyr0

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#189

Post by elipsey »

quadrangle wrote: post #125
kbenson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you press people (like in person, not on the internet) why they think he's the devil incarnate, you usually get some really wild ad hominem not rooted in reality or a realization that they don't really know why they hate him so much other than he's a benefactor of their political opposition and they were told to. Sure, but we could probably say the same of the Koch brothers. They both occupy similar positions…

The Kochs are widely misunderstood. They are typically seen as effectively a free-money-pit for generic Republican views that promote Capitalist exploitation, laying waste to the environment, and destroying any real grassroots movement to bring democratic power to the people. From my understanding, the reality is more like: The Kochs are typical dogmatic Libertarians who aren't anti-environment but have this simplist…

I highly recommend the two part Freakonomics episode "Why Hate the Koch Brothers?" which includes lengthy interviews with Charles Koch. He seemed to me a well meaning but somewhat naive libertarian.

Re: Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen

#190

Post by DangBruhWtf »

For those who don't know, George Soros is a self-appointed alchemist and currency trader.

Powerful and wealthy currency traders, going back since the very invention of moneychanging, have routinely made their fortunes by either waiting and hoping they're lucky enough to have the surfboard ready for massive geopolitical tsunamis... or by being proactive and intentionally creating geopolitical volatility with social engineering, cultural destabilization, and semantic apocalypse.

Pathological altruists often whine about war profiteering, but even that sordid business is downstream of and part of a brilliant and comprehensive currency traders arsenal.

HackerNews is so goddamned disingenuously oblivious to the realities of currency trading and the thousands of years of misery it makes possible.

Ask yourself: Why is HackerNews erasing comments revealing this 100% provable history of forex?

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