Or maybe he's working for a blockchain startup. Which as with any startup requires a leap of faith. But as we all know, sometimes that leap pays off, in money or other ways.
Though if he really bought bitcoin he can only hope it pays off with money.
You didn't take into account that *all* places have become like that. People are so consumed with Trump and anti-Trump things, that when the two sides are at the same place every normal discussion is annihilated.
Which in my view is not something to lament: obviously something huuge is happening at the level of individual and collective minds. At the level of humanity even: people in other countries appear just as motivated. These collisions and explosions are an attempt for the collective human mind to resolve it. Kind of like Gollum fighting with himself. (Which side you'll see as evil one depends on your position.)
That reminds me of quote from Taleb quoting that French guy who said "Logic excludes -- by definition -- nuances, and Truth resides exclusively in nuances."
She wants him to hug her and say I'm sorry, I'm bitterly sorry Trump was elected, let us both pretend that it was because of fake news put up by Russians on Facebook, I will do everything I can to make sure it doesn't happen again, but yes for now we are stuck with him, so let us get drunk together and drown our sorrows in this excellent gin I keep in my file cabinet.
Which is nonsense because Russia is very weak compared to the US, both economically and militarily. Still it's good for Russia that the left pushes the story how Russians have the power to influence the US elections. Just as it was for Cambridge Analytica founders and employees.
Perhaps Facebook is just trying to appear more relevant than it is. They could have just silently "fixed" it if it is a problem, or report it to FBI if what was supposedly done is a crime. Instead they chose to make a press release.
On a related note, now that we all know that some news are are supposedly fake and some supposedly real, as if we hadn't before, and that it is difficult to make a distinction (every two views are complementary, goes one law of general systems theory), isn't that enough? If I like what I read and it's not very important I'll go with it even if I'm aware that it may not be true. If it is important for me in any way I'll make sure to look deeper. That's what people do anyway.
Cleverness aside, what you fail to understand is this: "Because what he is saying and doing are actually terrible things." (Emphasis added.) *You* think the reality is those are terrible things, and roughly 40% of the rest population does. Another 40% of the population believes those are not at all terrible things, to say the least. There is no consensus on which version of the two realities is "true." The only reason why someone might believe that your estimation is superior to that of the rest is if you have a great track record of correctly predicting the future outcome of the things that were said. Baring that, your guess is no better than anyone else's.
is can they embed some sort of position-tracking chip in the ball so when players kick it high the video stream is augmented to show the vertical projection of the ball on the grass in real time? Not knowing in which direction the ball is going always bothered me when watching the game on the 2D screen.
Back in 1910 most intellectuals of the time believed because the countries are so connected by trade, war was impossible. And even if it did happen, they reasoned, it would end quickly because people would not tolerate the losses on the stock market.
Just because I consider far left views harmful it doesn't mean I am on the opposite side. I am against big corporations as much as I am against big government. What I consider harmful in the far left is not the humanity of it, on the contrary any decent social system has an obligation to protect the weak. What I'm arguing against is the left's worldview of what I see as a blind faith in pseudo science and "experts" and mental models -- something I've grappled with in myself for much of my life. Applied beyond its usefulness I believe such worldview leads to misery inside.
All that said, I wrote the post as I felt for your situation and know that anyone can find themselves in it. I reasoned that by pointing out that there may be some good sides of living in the redneck country which may be taken for granted, it might serve to lessen the suffering. Of course that never works.
It would seem that you would consider San Francisco for example a slice of heaven compared to all the redneckness you are surrounded with. And yet if you actually lived in SF or visited long enough you'd realize that people in such a place often feel isolated, lonely and depressed, and I guess that is in large part to their ultraliberal worldviews. In my limited experience this crushing soul-from-soul isolation happens less in rural and conservative areas, even if they have other problems.
I don't think there's anything carefully designed about it, Trump is a creature of instincts, but the rest I agree with. It's similar to the wife who enrages the husband by saying outrageous things about him that drive him crazy because they point to his flaws.
Sadly I agree with you. My judgement is he's had a difficult life, and in a way his professional success only made his life harder. He is very intelligent and observant but seems to be sliding into an unhealthy state of mind. It is my wild guess that deep inside he craves what true faith has to offer, but he has an outer shell of extreme rationality he's built for himself to survive and that shell is preventing him for relaxing into that depth his being craves so much. That friction is what is pushing him into that lala land.
Psychobabble I know. Still reminds me of Nietzsche's fate to a degree.
I too buy into Adam's theory of parallel movies but I am not convinced that looking at what we call evidence can make a person drop their movie. The choice of the movie is rooted in psychological forces few people can control. They would either need a long time to drop their habit of playing the movie -- unlikely to happen with Trump and media as they are! -- or an emotional shock. As the extreme example you have a paranoid person: no external evidence can convince him they are not out to get him.
Me, I think the anti-Trump side is an emotional wreck and they are the farthest from reality.
Best argument I've heard on the topic. If ISPs are not allowed to control information flow as they see fit to stay in business, neither should be Facebook, Google et al. Google is (in)arguably a greater utility than Netflix.
If my provider, AT&T, reduced video streaming to my phone to 480p I wouldn't care. I don't see HD on mobile as an essential service. Though I imagine there may be cases where it is.
I was there once too -- what I didn't expect is that craving for that visceral feeling would over time grow so strong that it would eventually outweigh the hassle. Far outweigh, in fact. At the height of my love with Kindle I loathed the idea moving with all the books and was even considering replacing them with digital wherever I could. (I didn't.) Fast forward to two years later -- I just moved and even the sensation of packing the books in boxes and carrying the boxes and unpacking them again and sorting them on the shelves and the looking at the full shelves in the new home was very pleasant.
Also as the AC below said, I remember what I read better than on Kindle. When I go out of town, I bring one real book and the Kindle, and usually end up only reading the book.
Responding to an AC again! It could be a form of virtue signaling to say that I'm in the middle of the road. I'm not quite -- I consider myself a Green Conservative Independent Libertarian. I guess I'm about the middle on the average.
I'm breaking the rule not to respond to AC to say that's not what Jack said. He never said that rules are bad, but that *too many* rules are bad. Rules should be added with caution, knowing that each rule has a real material and human cost and that too many rules compromise system flexibility. Kind of like unit tests.;-)
To the other coward: Learn to read without letting your emotions overwhelm you. I'm not left. And I think that unnecessary moralizing, virtue signaling rules from the right are just as bad as unnecessary social justice, virtue signaling rules from the left.
This kind of thing reminds me of what Jack Tramiel said to his assistant when asked how he could do business with Germans after having been through Holocaust:
"You know," he once told me, "it's hard to believe it really happened. But it can happen again. In America. Americans like to make rules, and that scares me. If you have too many rules you get locked in a system. It's the system that says this one dies and that one doesn't, not the people. That's why I don't hate the German people. Individuals, yes. Rules, yes. But not all Germans." He shrugged. "They just obeyed the rules. But that's why we need more Commodores. We need more mavericks, just so the rules don't take over."
But how do you *know* that a "fact" is right or wrong? Knowing is by definition subjective. And you can only act on what you know.
This is why Nietzsche said, "there are no facts, only interpretations." You hear/read a statement and you over time decide it to be true or false based on endless subjective criteria:
- are you sure you heard it/saw it correctly? - who do you believe is the source? - what do you believe about the reputation of the source? - how sure you are the claim has been correctly relayed from the source? How correctly? - what do you believe other people -- who you believe are smart and/or reputable -- think about that claim? - how sure you are *they* saw/read it well?
and so on, to infinity. Practically -- I believe -- we arrive to the decision whether something is true or false statistically, and weighed by how much we think the "fact" is important for us -- whether it's a curiosity or a matter or life or death.
It gives people a scientific-looking excuse to dream, that's all. As such, my view on that is let them. I don't see a harm in it, even though I think it's BS for exactly the reasons you mention.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone said here earlier, it is better to give FB bad data than to delete the account with good data.
Or maybe he's working for a blockchain startup. Which as with any startup requires a leap of faith. But as we all know, sometimes that leap pays off, in money or other ways.
Though if he really bought bitcoin he can only hope it pays off with money.
... assuming repealing Net Neutrality will lead to less high speed internet use, which is not at all certain.
You didn't take into account that *all* places have become like that. People are so consumed with Trump and anti-Trump things, that when the two sides are at the same place every normal discussion is annihilated.
Which in my view is not something to lament: obviously something huuge is happening at the level of individual and collective minds. At the level of humanity even: people in other countries appear just as motivated. These collisions and explosions are an attempt for the collective human mind to resolve it. Kind of like Gollum fighting with himself. (Which side you'll see as evil one depends on your position.)
> where things like 'nuance' can reside
That reminds me of quote from Taleb quoting that French guy who said "Logic excludes -- by definition -- nuances, and Truth resides exclusively in nuances."
She wants him to hug her and say I'm sorry, I'm bitterly sorry Trump was elected, let us both pretend that it was because of fake news put up by Russians on Facebook, I will do everything I can to make sure it doesn't happen again, but yes for now we are stuck with him, so let us get drunk together and drown our sorrows in this excellent gin I keep in my file cabinet.
Which is nonsense because Russia is very weak compared to the US, both economically and militarily. Still it's good for Russia that the left pushes the story how Russians have the power to influence the US elections. Just as it was for Cambridge Analytica founders and employees.
Perhaps Facebook is just trying to appear more relevant than it is. They could have just silently "fixed" it if it is a problem, or report it to FBI if what was supposedly done is a crime. Instead they chose to make a press release.
On a related note, now that we all know that some news are are supposedly fake and some supposedly real, as if we hadn't before, and that it is difficult to make a distinction (every two views are complementary, goes one law of general systems theory), isn't that enough? If I like what I read and it's not very important I'll go with it even if I'm aware that it may not be true. If it is important for me in any way I'll make sure to look deeper. That's what people do anyway.
Cleverness aside, what you fail to understand is this: "Because what he is saying and doing are actually terrible things." (Emphasis added.) *You* think the reality is those are terrible things, and roughly 40% of the rest population does. Another 40% of the population believes those are not at all terrible things, to say the least. There is no consensus on which version of the two realities is "true." The only reason why someone might believe that your estimation is superior to that of the rest is if you have a great track record of correctly predicting the future outcome of the things that were said. Baring that, your guess is no better than anyone else's.
is can they embed some sort of position-tracking chip in the ball so when players kick it high the video stream is augmented to show the vertical projection of the ball on the grass in real time? Not knowing in which direction the ball is going always bothered me when watching the game on the 2D screen.
Back in 1910 most intellectuals of the time believed because the countries are so connected by trade, war was impossible. And even if it did happen, they reasoned, it would end quickly because people would not tolerate the losses on the stock market.
We all know how that turned out.
Just because I consider far left views harmful it doesn't mean I am on the opposite side. I am against big corporations as much as I am against big government. What I consider harmful in the far left is not the humanity of it, on the contrary any decent social system has an obligation to protect the weak. What I'm arguing against is the left's worldview of what I see as a blind faith in pseudo science and "experts" and mental models -- something I've grappled with in myself for much of my life. Applied beyond its usefulness I believe such worldview leads to misery inside.
All that said, I wrote the post as I felt for your situation and know that anyone can find themselves in it. I reasoned that by pointing out that there may be some good sides of living in the redneck country which may be taken for granted, it might serve to lessen the suffering. Of course that never works.
It would seem that you would consider San Francisco for example a slice of heaven compared to all the redneckness you are surrounded with. And yet if you actually lived in SF or visited long enough you'd realize that people in such a place often feel isolated, lonely and depressed, and I guess that is in large part to their ultraliberal worldviews. In my limited experience this crushing soul-from-soul isolation happens less in rural and conservative areas, even if they have other problems.
I don't think there's anything carefully designed about it, Trump is a creature of instincts, but the rest I agree with. It's similar to the wife who enrages the husband by saying outrageous things about him that drive him crazy because they point to his flaws.
Sadly I agree with you. My judgement is he's had a difficult life, and in a way his professional success only made his life harder. He is very intelligent and observant but seems to be sliding into an unhealthy state of mind. It is my wild guess that deep inside he craves what true faith has to offer, but he has an outer shell of extreme rationality he's built for himself to survive and that shell is preventing him for relaxing into that depth his being craves so much. That friction is what is pushing him into that lala land.
Psychobabble I know. Still reminds me of Nietzsche's fate to a degree.
I too buy into Adam's theory of parallel movies but I am not convinced that looking at what we call evidence can make a person drop their movie. The choice of the movie is rooted in psychological forces few people can control. They would either need a long time to drop their habit of playing the movie -- unlikely to happen with Trump and media as they are! -- or an emotional shock. As the extreme example you have a paranoid person: no external evidence can convince him they are not out to get him.
Me, I think the anti-Trump side is an emotional wreck and they are the farthest from reality.
Best argument I've heard on the topic. If ISPs are not allowed to control information flow as they see fit to stay in business, neither should be Facebook, Google et al. Google is (in)arguably a greater utility than Netflix.
If my provider, AT&T, reduced video streaming to my phone to 480p I wouldn't care. I don't see HD on mobile as an essential service. Though I imagine there may be cases where it is.
I was there once too -- what I didn't expect is that craving for that visceral feeling would over time grow so strong that it would eventually outweigh the hassle. Far outweigh, in fact. At the height of my love with Kindle I loathed the idea moving with all the books and was even considering replacing them with digital wherever I could. (I didn't.) Fast forward to two years later -- I just moved and even the sensation of packing the books in boxes and carrying the boxes and unpacking them again and sorting them on the shelves and the looking at the full shelves in the new home was very pleasant.
Also as the AC below said, I remember what I read better than on Kindle. When I go out of town, I bring one real book and the Kindle, and usually end up only reading the book.
True. I used to swear by my Kindle and in the last year and a half I've been reading -- and have bought -- almost entirely only paper books.
Responding to an AC again! It could be a form of virtue signaling to say that I'm in the middle of the road. I'm not quite -- I consider myself a Green Conservative Independent Libertarian. I guess I'm about the middle on the average.
I'm breaking the rule not to respond to AC to say that's not what Jack said. He never said that rules are bad, but that *too many* rules are bad. Rules should be added with caution, knowing that each rule has a real material and human cost and that too many rules compromise system flexibility. Kind of like unit tests. ;-)
To the other coward: Learn to read without letting your emotions overwhelm you. I'm not left. And I think that unnecessary moralizing, virtue signaling rules from the right are just as bad as unnecessary social justice, virtue signaling rules from the left.
This kind of thing reminds me of what Jack Tramiel said to his assistant when asked how he could do business with Germans after having been through Holocaust:
"You know," he once told me, "it's hard to believe it really happened. But it can happen again. In America. Americans like to make rules, and that scares me. If you have too many rules you get locked in a system. It's the system that says this one dies and that one doesn't, not the people. That's why I don't hate the German people. Individuals, yes. Rules, yes. But not all Germans." He shrugged. "They just obeyed the rules. But that's why we need more Commodores. We need more mavericks, just so the rules don't take over."
But how do you *know* that a "fact" is right or wrong? Knowing is by definition subjective. And you can only act on what you know.
This is why Nietzsche said, "there are no facts, only interpretations." You hear/read a statement and you over time decide it to be true or false based on endless subjective criteria:
- are you sure you heard it/saw it correctly?
- who do you believe is the source?
- what do you believe about the reputation of the source?
- how sure you are the claim has been correctly relayed from the source? How correctly?
- what do you believe other people -- who you believe are smart and/or reputable -- think about that claim?
- how sure you are *they* saw/read it well?
and so on, to infinity. Practically -- I believe -- we arrive to the decision whether something is true or false statistically, and weighed by how much we think the "fact" is important for us -- whether it's a curiosity or a matter or life or death.
It gives people a scientific-looking excuse to dream, that's all. As such, my view on that is let them. I don't see a harm in it, even though I think it's BS for exactly the reasons you mention.