231–240 of 332 posts
Social media has really proven that phrase that "the medium is the message", which I remember long ago thinking was a little odd and not obviously true. With all the new stuff coming out in the LLM field, I've taken a cynically mechanistic view to this: We're basically being conditioned by (the currently popular crop of) social media to work in very short context windows, which aren't sufficient for advanced reasonin…
I haven't been on any kind of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter social network for several years now, I also encourage people to try giving it up for 2-3 months, and I wager that it will feel distinctly odd and uncomfortable if/when you return. From a naive person's perspective, social media is flat out strange. It's got its own culture, lingo, and social constructs that feel a little odd. It's easy to see how it might be manipulative in a lot of subtle ways. But I do admit I lost touch with some people whom I miss. Each person should find their own balance with algorithmically determined content feeds, but I am a firm believer it should be, on balance, less.
`We don’t all have the freedom, interest or willpower to delete social media from our lives entirely.` i am really against this notion. why do we have to surrender ourselves to this forced reality. i really don't find any other beneficial use of social media except of advertise and making profit. (personally i see it immoral to feed this evil machine and run away). so the only real solution is to delete social media…
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I was definitely influenced to write this by Alec's excellent video which I recommend everyone watch. I'd hoped it would be a way to share my own opinions on it, summarise my own personal concerns, as well as adding my own recommendations - but totally appreciate if you feel it is derivative, and I appreciate the call out. As a big Technology Connections fan I certainly don't intend to steal his work. It's also inten…
>by Alec's excellent video which I recommend everyone watch. I get what your advice is about but to add some nuance which didn't cover... you should consider that I learned of Alec's Technology Connections channel 9 years ago because the Youtube algorithm suggested it to me . Why did Youtube do that? It was because I had watched Ben's Applied Science excellent video showing vinyl grooves under an electron microscope:…
The author sort of (but not really) acknowledges this midway through, but this is basically a summary of the most recent Technology Connections video, Algorithms are breaking how we think : https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to i…
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>by Alec's excellent video which I recommend everyone watch. I get what your advice is about but to add some nuance which didn't cover... you should consider that I learned of Alec's Technology Connections channel 9 years ago because the Youtube algorithm suggested it to me . Why did Youtube do that? It was because I had watched Ben's Applied Science excellent video showing vinyl grooves under an electron microscope:…
I dislike any politics or clickbait too and it doesn’t come back. I have no complaints about my Instagram and YouTube feeds. They give good recommendations.
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You can’t, however stop it from suggestion huge blocks of shorts or crappy free to play games.
Yes you can, with something like uBlock Origin, or even a simple stylesheet override.
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> I dislike any politics TikTok in particular sneaks politics into everything. Even if it's not explicitly political. I asked Deepseek once to walk me through what it knows about TikTok and it claimed the Chinese version uses an RL approach to sprinkle socialist core values into your feed even if you explicitly don't want politics. It also claimed TikTok absolutely promises it doesn't do this in the US. I'm not reall…
good, they should sprinkle socialist values in. what's the other option, passive acceptance of capitalist exploitation? people need to be educated.
People in the US tend to think it refers to things that are actually mixed economies or primarily market economies with strong social guarantees. Think things like the Nordic model or the European model.
Mixed economies with social welfare guarantees are mainstream economics. Actual socialism in the style practiced in reality by countries implementing socialism is mainly characterized by the absence of human rights (including zero worker rights), mass murder, poverty, and a ruling elite that are functionally oligarchs who have enslaved the rest of the population. And on top of this, all socialist states that I'm aware of have re-introduced markets in some form but retaining the dictatorship structure.
Socialism in the past (e.g. in the 18th century) has referred to other ideas, but it doesn't really anymore.
But even if you were to believe somehow that there's some morally redeemable version of socialism that has somehow just managed to hide all this time, the actual version of socialism embraced by China and promoted on TikTok is fully authoritarian, anti-democratic, and does nothing to improve economic equality in the US.
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It's also common to think that you should only read non-fiction and that fiction is a waste of time, but I absolutely don't agree. Fiction is amazing and it'll help your reasoning, creativity, helps give perspective on things, and improves your outlook on life in a way that non-fiction has a very hard time to do. Non-fiction is very good for other reasons and it's good to aim for a healthy mix of the too I think.
I agree, but struggle to find fiction books to read. Most of my reading just consists of a historical period / event that I find interesting and read more about. From that I sometimes come across an "alternate history" type fiction book, but not much else. What do you do for discovery?
Walk into a library or bookstore. Pick up something that looks interesting (LITERALLY judge a book by its cover for this) and start reading right then and there. If the book doesn't capture your interest immediately, maybe skim a little bit, or just move on to the next book. Also, ask trusted friends that know you well for suggestions.
You have to first know what your own particular tastes are, and afterwards, do the harder steps of understanding why you like what you like, and expanding your horizons. Once you get to the point where you both know what you like and start to know why you like it, discovery just solves itself. Eventually, you'll be able to tune into any random discussion about a book or author, and discern from context whether or not the works in question are for you, even if you don't share the opinions of those you're listening to.