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Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

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Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#241

Post by notahacker »

WalterBright wrote: post #192
notahacker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw plenty of far out posts under the previous owners too... But X banned accounts for non-spam content violations at a much higher rate than Twitter and approved content censorship requests from authoritarian states at a higher rate

Twitter banned the President, and also throttled Scott Adams. In any case, what social media platform do you assert censors less?

I assert that Twitter censored less than X, based on the evidence provided by X of how many million more accounts it banned for non-spam policy violations and how much higher its censorship requests compliance was.

And that's the formal policies, never mind the arbitrariness of Elon getting so ban-happy for petulant personal reasons even Paul Graham got a suspension for mentioning Mastodon.

You might prefer mass throttling of any links to news sources the CEO disagrees with over throttling of Scott Adams, but that says more about your personal tastes than the latter moderation policy being a more censorious one

Similarly, it is impossible to argue with a straight face that accounts that reference the existence of an ADS-B feed are somehow a more egregious violation than any of Trump's (remember, the guys in the West Wing he was shouting out to were attempting to violently subvert the democratic process), particularly when you know exactly what an ADS-B feed is, what it does and doesn't show, and how many other websites publish this data.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#242

Post by jacquesm »

WalterBright wrote: post #190
selimthegrim wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what was your considered alternative to Fauci Covid policy I wonder

Fauci was given a blanket pardon for what he did, and pled the 5th on any questions about his role.

You evaded the question.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#243

Post by jfengel »

lisper wrote: post #239
KPGv2 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it has no criterion for separating the wheat from the chaff This comment does nothing but make you look ignorant.

Then by all means please do enlighten me: what is that criterion?

Academic argument, same as any other field.

The problem is that you're citing people known for their popularisation, not academic work. None of that is subject to the kind of critique that happens between academics.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#244

Post by mlrtime »

kelnos wrote: post #223
Recurecur wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue with private, for-profit organizations is their major focus is “creating shareholder value”, which is apparently the modern way of saying “making money”. That, along with competition (if applicable, see below), drives them towards minimizing costs, increasing efficiency, and innovating. Government has the major focus of taking money, and largely spending it arbitrarily. It’s inarguable that the US Federal G…

Often "minimizing costs" for a for-profit organization means providing worse services to their customers, though. > would you characterize Amazon as bloated, corrupt, and inefficient, despite being an effective monopoly? It's funny you should bring this up in the context of healthcare. Amazon acquired One Medical a few years ago. Within no more a year, One Medical got so much worse. Harder to book appointments, wait…

Amazon also owns whole foods and it seems to be doing just fine. Maybe not the exact same as when it launched, but in many places it is one of the best places around to buy groceries.

One Medical, I had before/after Amazon and was never that impressed. They had nice offices and a good booking system, but the GPs were a couple notches above webmd IMO.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#245

Post by mlrtime »

crote wrote: post #218
mancerayder wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like this comment. Yes, it's the worst of both worlds: the right says that government is inefficient, I told you so; the left says it's the only solution to solve many social issues. Unfortunately they're both right and wrong. I'm very familiar with New York politics, and I watch in slow motion while enormous amounts of money disappear into government salaries and pensions, programs that go nowhere, and corr…

> building subway/metro infrastructure costs 3-4 times in New York what it costs in Tokyo, London or Paris. Why is that The NYC subway is one of the few (the only one?) to run 24/7, and it is one of the largest in the world. Construction is expensive because the operators choose to make it expensive. Digging giant new tunnels under existing skyscrapers also isn't exactly easy. Yeah there's corruption and waste, but n…

The 24/7 thing on the NYC subway costing so much has always been the tagline... I don't buy it.

The costs of running the NYC subway are no more unique than any other large city, some argue shutting down/starting up would be just as expensive.

The subway daddy[1] was my last straw at having any hope that it would be fixed in my lifetime, it is clear the people running it do not want any part of NYC subway "fixed".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Byford#New_York_City_Tran...

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#247

Post by beloch »

techblueberry wrote: post #117
steveBK123 wrote: post #3

I don’t even think most of it is deeply philosophical. They just got uberrich and now worry more about the concerns of the uberrich than the concerns they had when they were normies. Rule of law, functioning government providing services, functioning public commons, free press, freedom of speech for all, any social safety net, etc don’t matter when they are so far removed from the public they can just go buy yourself…

I listened to a few Marc Andreesen interviews and occasioned some Thiel talks, and one thing I realized is the difference between philosophy as obligation or compass and philosophy as tool. I realized that when Marc Andreesen said things - specifically he was talking about the political realignment after the 2024 election. He wasn’t making an observation. He was manifesting - to borrow a new age term. It wasn’t propa…

This is simply speaking of something you wish to be true as though it already were. It's a very old trick of con artists.

People make bad assumptions about the ultra-rich. e.g. "We should listen carefully to whatever Elon Musk says because he had to be really smart and wise to have become the world's richest man!" No. He was unethical, opportunistic, and very, very lucky. What he says is frequently imbecilic. Every billionaire out there is a grifter who got lucky beyond their wildest dreams and is desperately afraid of being revealed as the criminal shams they are. Remember that, and the cults surrounding them become ridiculous.

This is the real reason why an artificial state would fail. Billionaires just aren't that bright and LLM's won't be able to hide that. AGI might, but who knows when that will actually be developed? Also, the first act of real AGI could well be to place the billionaires who claim to own them in cages.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#248

Post by tremon »

lisper wrote: post #228
demilicious wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mind defending that? I suspect that opinion would only come from one who took philosophy 101 and stopped there. If all you took was philosophy 101, this sounds a lot more reasonable and runs right into the point made by the pos you just responded to

How would you expect me to defend it? It's my opinion. I could give you a long list of things in philosophy that I consider BS, but what good would that do? Do you really doubt that I could provide such a list? The most likely outcome of that exercise would be for you to invoke the no-true-scotsman fallacy and say, "Oh, of course those things are bullshit, but that's not real philosophy." And the fact that I can make…

> a lot of philosophy is actually bullshit

> How would you expect me to defend it? It's my opinion

One of the first useful things that philosophy teaches you is how to construct a well-rounded argument in support of any position. Following up "philosophy is useless" with "I don't know how to argue my own opinion" demonstrates quite a lack of awareness.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#249

Post by mbmbn »

RunSet wrote: post #121

> “But what’s funny about Musk is, the stuff he likes actually completely defeats and defies all of his political beliefs,” she said. Musk is only the most recent in a long line of semiliterates to have latched on to the lingo of Stranger in a Strange Land while apparently never having read a sentence of Heinlein's prose. As a rule of thumb, those who say "grok" do not. And it's always Stranger in a Strange Land for…

> “ Musk is only the most recent in a long line of semiliterates”

Jesus Christ. You people, smelling your own farts. It’s just ridiculous.

A bunch of nobodies, pending they are some sort of intellectual powerhouse, reining down on a guy that revolutionized, electric vehicles, space communications and space travel, like THEY are actually his mental superiors.

Re: Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

#250

Post by hamper653 »

epgui wrote: post #47
swiftcoder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t even think most of it is deeply philosophical. Part of the problem is that a lot of it is shallowly philosophical. I used to attend Zuckerberg town halls, and as smart as the guy may be, it's pretty evident that he dropped out of Harvard after 1st-year philosophy

A lot of “shallow philosophy” seems more like “pseudo-philosophy”. I feel like a lot of people just take “thoughts” and label that philosophy.

> I feel like a lot of people just take “thoughts” and label that philosophy.

Isn’t that just philosophy?

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