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BBC:
A Facebook engineer has quit the firm, saying they "can no longer stomach" being part of an organisation "profiting off hate".
Ashok Chandwaney is the latest employee to go public with concerns about how the company deals with hate speech.
The engineer added it was "choosing to be on the wrong side of history".
Facebook responded by saying it had removed millions of hate-related posts. Another of its ex-engineers has also come to its defence.
The thrust of the post by Ashok Chandwaney - who uses "they" and "them" as personal pronouns - is that Facebook moves quickly to solve certain problems, but when it comes to dealing with hate speech, it is more interested in PR than implementing real change.
Can [or should] Facebook successfully purge its platform of speech it considers harmful?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:05AM (69 children)
No one wants censorship, but social media is a social hate machine. There are absolutely no constructive debates on social networks. It's a social game mostly for the sake of potential spectators to whom the participants try to make opposing viewpoints seem more absurd than their own. It's a ridiculous game of identity construction and I can only guess that it is extremely stressful for those who participate. We'd be much better off sending our pictures of food and cats to our friends and family as e-mail attachments.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:15AM (33 children)
Sounds like soylentnews.org to me. This site is certainly not focused on tech.
Just saying.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:23AM (21 children)
You've done your best to bring in more negativity, *hudson.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:52AM (20 children)
This site is pretty right-wing. And pretty damn intolerant to anyone who points out that open source has failed the average person, who just wants something that works.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:06AM (3 children)
Most of the STEM in SoylentNews, these days, is responding to the alt-right white supremacist, misogynist gamer-gate and QAnon crap fomented by the original founders (well, chromas, at least) and the TMB, who is a non-woke Native American, or a delusional Oklahomian, which is easier to expect. We real Soylentils, we want science, applications of science, and stuff normal intellectual people grounded in reality are interested in. Not some Nutherguy right wing spin on shit. Runaway is ignorant of almost all aspects of STEm, and reality, and truth, so all his subs, via IRC, are suspect, and reduce the reputation of SN as a reliable aggregator of news. So, lose the nutherguy, or lose the rest of us. This is the ultimatum. SoylentNews could be dead, Netcraft confirms it [battleswarmblog.com]. And this time, we mean it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:51PM (1 child)
We spend a lot of time telling people that Chemistry works, even when those chemicals are part of the atmosphere, too.
That's STEM, right?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @12:10AM
Pedantically speaking, Global Warming and greenhouse gasses deal mainly with the Physics. Still STEM, yes.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday September 10 2020, @11:24PM
I just hope you're not spending much for that STEM, because it's not working.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2020, @02:04AM (15 children)
I disagree. This site is pretty eclectic. There is full representation across the spectrum. For every khallow there is an aristarchus, and vice versa. I personally prefer that to echo chambers, of which there are far, far too many now.
For what it's worth, I would be interested to hear more from you on why you think open source has failed the average person, rather than the rote political and gender talking points you most often promulgate. I am quite interested to hear how people are internalizing technology, or failing or refusing to internalize technology, because I think it's a pretty excellent predictor for the direction society as a whole will take. That is, in fact, why I submitted this story, to hear about how people's views on social media are shifting now that it has become an important platform for discursive formation.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @02:13AM (14 children)
Open source has mostly been co-opted by server-based services. This lowers the company's cost for software licenses for things like web server software, so they can make sufficient profit just from selling your data.
Same with Android. Same with Facebook. Same with YouTube (throw in massive copyright violations). Same with Google searches (throw in massive copyright violations).
Time was you could walk into a store and buy all sorts of software, including web browsers. Now? It's a monopoly. So much for consumer choice. So much for client support, because you are not the client.
When I was buying my developer tools, I got well written manuals, and proper support. Now RTFM is a joke because there are no manuals and what documentation is available is out of date and poorly written. The exception is closed source software - the vendor still makes enough to provide the expected bells and whistles.
The average Android phone is lucky to get 2 years of updates - if you buy it near the end of the cycle you get NO updates. This iPhone 6 came out in September of 2014 and still gets OS updates. And free iMail without Google spying on me.
2-3% of the population is visually handicapped at any one time - some temporarily, some repeatedly, some permanently.
That's a significant market, but there is simply no option for anyone to use open source. Every single Linux distro that claims to have a working screen reader is soon broken because there is no one way to access the screen data between applications and it's not built into the core of the OS. Even Windows screen readers are crap. I want anything on my phone read to me, it's baked into the OS. No need to access a server, no need for the application to include provision for being used by a screen reader. Once you've enabled it, scrolling down with two fingers start is. Nothing could be simpler.
Text to speech on Linux sounds like Dr SBAITSO from the old soundblaster/dos days. Makes sense because festival was abandoned in 1994, and ekiga can't read most of the screen content.
Kind of forces people like me to Apple because open source doesn't have a viable economic model that makes it responsive to end users - just the companies paying a few major developers and throwing bones at a few other projects.
Almost everyone has at least one program that requires closed source software. And this isn't just consumers with video games; it also includes business. Open source doesn't have the financial model to enable it to replace closed source software; however it has collapsed the ability for smaller teams of coders to generate money with small projects and grow to compete with the big boys.
Independent devs can certainly come up with better software than many open source programs; problem is it's hard to compete with something that is ALMOST good enough, So people put up with the aggravation of software that doesn't really meet their needs because it's free, and they'll waste hundreds or even thousands of hours over time trying to make it fit.
I saw one idiot boss waste 8 months of people's time trying to make one open source CMS after another do the job; it took me 2 weeks to code the whole site, including credit card payment processing, from scratch. Open source is too often the most expensive option.
Open source has a funding problem. At least with closed source, if you believe there's a need for your stuff, you can rationalize making the investment to bring it to fruition because you'll be compensated for your work if you're successful, and you can provide better support, more features, and that most important thing - keep a roof over your head.
I walk into the stores that used to sell thousands of different types of software, and there's pretty slim pickings. Because it's hard to compete with free, even if free is pretty crappy.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 12 2020, @02:41PM (13 children)
Open source has always had a funding problem. The recent spate of corporate patronage of certain projects has been an anomaly. But that's at the heart of the philosophical debate surrounding OSS. Maybe you've forgotten, or maybe you were too young to have been there, but there was a very long running debate between RMS and ESR back in the day about the direction and purpose of OSS.
I can see how that could happen, but my professional experience has almost always been the opposite. OSS generally works better and faster, and if you need to modify it to get the job done, you can, while closed source is an expensive boondoggle that draws you into what I call "progressive entrapment," where the thing you are trying to do won't work until you buy this module, but that module won't work properly until you get this add-on from a 3rd party, but oh gee we don't support that so you'll have to interface with them and their licensing regimen. Blah blah blah, it's fucking endless and costs multiples of what the output is supposed to be, and then you get the stupid assholes from the BSA running through your workplace checking workstation licenses. A. Pox. On. All. Closed. Source. With a triple helping of "FUCK YOU" to Microsoft.
Anyway, I appreciate your perspective and your frustration. I would very much prefer having these kinds of discussions on Soylent to the political mosh pit.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:15PM (12 children)
ESR is a whack job gun nut. Most people learned early on to ignore him. It was immediately obvious his Cathedral and Bazaar was unrelated to reality, more akin to mental masturbation and a false dichotomy as it's foundational argument.
It set up the battle as being between large closed source behemoths and the "rebel forces " of small open source developers. Completely ignored the small developers who made money selling closed source code to businesses.
To claim that closed source is unethical is another foundational lie - this one from RMS. Everyone is entitled to the fruits of their work, and to do so in the manner of their choosing. Someone writing code that someone else pays a license for is not unethical - however, branding such actions as unethical is itself unethical and slander. Is it more ethical to earn a living and put a roof over your head by selling licenses to your software that there is a need for, or for that software never to have been created because open source can't find it? Screen readers are an example - the open source ones don't work. Even the free NVDA (Windows only) is an exercise in frustration compared to Apple.
Was Apple behaving unethically in creating their own screen reader and bundling it as part of iOS? It wasn't anticompetitive behaviour, like bundling a free browser, because all the alternatives, including the paid ones as well as the free ones, are shit by comparison.
And that will make me take a serious look at Apple in the future. Because nobody else offers something that meets my needs, and especially not Linux.
Same as any code I write in the future will be like when I started out all those decades ago - closed - you want a license, you pay. Better 10 paying customers than 1,000 non paying customers. Don't want to be like RMS, who spent his working years either crashing in the lab (even after he was no longer a student) or begging online for a room for a few months at a time.
My point remains - to call someone unethical because they want to be paid for their work via a license fee instead of donations is itself unethical. And let's not forget all the hypocrites who decry closed source but use closed source video games on closed source operating systems. Why aren't they producing superior open-source games? Because open source can't produce the money needed to do so and people gotta eat.
What happens when all the old time enthusiasts die? Even more projects abandoned, and eventually this will hit a critical point.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 12 2020, @07:03PM (11 children)
I don't think OSS and "small developers who made money selling closed source code to businesses" are mutually exclusive. If you want to be such, go do such and may you enjoy a long and fruitful career.
As far as your screen reader goes, I'd say that if the open source ones don't work and you don't want to code them to work, then perhaps you should go with Apple or some other business that has something that will work for you. It's a big world, and one size does not fit all. Your frustration is understandable, but the world rarely hands us exactly what we want, when we want, and how we want. And usually when it does do all that, we wind up paying dearly some hidden cost. TANSTAAFL, right?
Meanwhile, I have not touched closed source personally or professionally in 20+ years and have been perfectly happy and extremely productive. Having to do anything with closed source means wasting perfectly good man hours dealing with lawyers, sales people, worthless support people in places like India, and more PHBs than you can shake a stick at. Open source means cracking open the case, slightly adjusting a feature or adding a feature, and continuing merrily on my way. If I need new software, I "apt-get install" and 20 seconds later I'm on my merry way. To me, that's bliss. Let the software be there to serve me as a tool, rather than let me serve as a perpetual serf and profit center for some faceless group of asshole MBAs.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:30PM (8 children)
She's only on this shtick because of the personal abuse she has brought down upon herself over the last 30+ years. She really is the apk doppelganger. Ironically, she is a serious conformist. And I don't believe the meds are helping her to keep on an even keel at all. The mood swings are quite the spectacle.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:50PM (7 children)
Mood swings? Nope - I saw how shitty OSS became and said "fuck it."
The Cathedral and the Bazaar was a lie. There is no bazaar. Innovation? What passes for the OSS Bazaar is increasingly just shitty clones of other software.
Exhibit one: web browsers. Where's the bazaar. It's all google, all the time. Even Firefox copies Google's shitty features, and is dependent on google for life support . There used to be a lot more browsers. And a myriad of features. Not one browser to rule them all.
Exhibit two: Linux distros. There's too many , which at first glance would seem to contradict my claim that there's no bazaar . But if you look at the actual programs they come with , it's all the same. Nobody is going to spend serious money developing another office suite that does things better if everyone else can just copy it. Nobody is going to develop an innovative web browser for the same reason. You'll go broke. And nobody is going to invest the significant sums necessary for a really good OSS game because everyone else will just copy it and stick ads in it and create their own DLC marketplace and you are out your investment.
Exhibit three: The PinePhone. Gee, how are those sales going?
Also, APK was not even on my radar until his hosts file spamming pissed me off 15 years ago. You're nuts iand should stop making shit up. And you're angry that I was once one of those pushing open source but have woken up and seen that ESR and RMS were full of shit. You say I'm a conformist, but I'm the one refusing to conform to the group think. Show me the bazaar, show me the innovation instead of poor clones, show me distros that don't contain an increasingly tired collection of poorly maintained packages. Not just "twiddling the knobs on the UI" as "innovation." That's the Microsoft Way circa Vista.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @03:28AM (6 children)
Man! You are so full of yourself! You're only mad at free software because you feel personally slighted and take offense at the smallest challenge. It's all in your head. Free software is perfectly fine. You really should just shut your mouth about it. You're just spewing whiny bullshit.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 13 2020, @03:42AM (5 children)
Wake me up when there's some AAA free open source games. The biggest consumer software market, bigger than movies, and NOTHING!
Loser. Fortunately , with the collapse of the idea that OSS can meet people's needs, we can hope for a bazaar of closed source software.
Oh wait -it's already happened in app stores selling literally millions of different softwares, both paid and ad-supported, without giving away the source.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @05:11PM (4 children)
I noticed you cannot refute any of my points.
There's nothing to refute! It's all pure nonsensical bullshit. You're not making any "point", you're just ranting and jabbering.
You sound like a freetard. Probably because you are.
You sound like a pretentious moron. Most definitely because you are! What a dumbass prick! This is why people have been reacting so negatively to you over the last 30 years, and you still don't get it. You're just like your apk. That DSM-5 must be full of info about you
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 13 2020, @05:32PM (3 children)
The smartphone is the primary computing device for the majority of the population, and it's where the most prolific application development takes place. These are developers making money off closed source software. It's the bazaar, but not open source.
So why aren't we seeing open source applications competing on phones? Simple - developers want to get paid for their work. And people are willing to either pay for it directly or through ads.
That is one fact that you cannot explain - that most people seek out closed source applications on their main computing devices. The battle has been decided for almost a decade, which is remarkable considering that's only a bit longer than the current iteration of the smartphone.
And there's no way that OSS can change that. It has neither the technical chops nor the financial resources to.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @12:12AM (2 children)
:-) Yes! do tell! You made no point to address. They are simple rants, it's you howling at the moon and engaging in name calling. You don't like free software for some personal reason that's totally irrelevant to the world at large. Who the fuck cares?!
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 14 2020, @03:28AM (1 child)
I'm not happy about it, but I was willing to face up to the facts. There is a pitiful open source bazaar with comparatively few software choices. And a closed source bazaar with more than 10 million choices between all the platforms, and a financial model that works for both the producers and consumers, in part because only a fool knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Free software doesn't work for consumers or we would have had a "year of Linux on the desktop." I don't hear anyone saying that today.
Then again, there will never again be any sort of "year of the desktop" - any desktop - ever again. We passed the "year of the smartphone " a while ago, and it's now most people's default device.
And tablets which had their day , will probably have a comeback with improved operating systems to replace laptops.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @05:20PM
I don't like free software because it's getting worse, not better.
Rubbish! You are simply carrying a personal grudge. Everything you say about open source is nothing but garbage. Looks like you have an inferiority complex!
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:07PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:27PM
It's me going back to what worked in the previous century. The promise of open source didn't pan out. There is no bazaar.
And people who don't want to pay for software are not a viable market. Same reason shareware died. People would rather keep trying the next free thing than actually pay for something.
So innovation died. Except among those who didn't give it up for free. The nice thing was that those who paid for it also expected to pay for improvements and new features. The second sell is always easier. Same as when you go to the store and you really like your adidas or sketchers, you're going to buy another pair.
So what happens when there's nobody willing and able to work for free on OS software who actually knows how the current systems work ? We couldn't clone Larry Wall, so there's not much to expect from Perl7 after the Perl6 fiasco. Same with most utilities - they're feature complete, have been for a decade or two, and when they finally can no longer run on the most recent OS version there won't be anyone familiar enough with them to fix them.
The OSSocalypse is going to be ugly 20 years from now. Because the bazaar, with the promise of innovation, never happened. And there's nothing to do about it because of the GPL.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:25AM (9 children)
I'm trying to figure out why, though, since in this case there's no ad revenue to contend over.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:43AM (8 children)
If you had to spend years working in the tech industry with other coders your question would be rhetorical.
Misogyny was expected. So was sexism. High percentage of people who were unable to have a normal conversation that doesn't revolve around work or computers (think guys with arrested development). Sharing porn. Pretty much like any business with a highly unbalanced ratio of men to women.
Sad, really. But the field attracts people who prefer interacting with machines over people. Probably an underlying social anxiety of some sort.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Touché) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:30AM
Having seen some people's egocentric behaviour during the pandemic, I can now understand that particular preference.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:40AM (4 children)
I grew up in a country where software development was mostly female occupation; medical doctors were mostly female too. My mother was a software developer while my father had a man's occupation of space engineer. I was a pussy to take mother's path.
When I moved to the US I was working for a Jewish software developing company. Nothing like you described either.
The issue here is Anglo Saxon culture. I am not very surprised either. Anglos of my age were beaten with sticks on their bare asses while children in advance grammar schools in England. They were sexually abused by seniors as well. Nothing normal can grow up from it. I have some managers like this and I always imagine them warming up toilet seats for their seniors and then beaten up by teachers for being late for classes. I pity them.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:38AM (3 children)
What sort of feminist magic and/or social and political struggles created this utopia? Did being compared to a vagina make you feel powerful?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:09AM
Old school soviet socialist. Not hard to identify, for those of us not brainwashed by American patriachial "pussy-grabbing" ideology. You know, women hold up half the sky! Still doesn't mean you're getting any, you fucking loser incel and momma's boy Bates Hotel messed up dude!
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:49PM (1 child)
Current medical school enrollment here in Canada, and probably elsewhere, is majority female.
Back in the 60's, there were quotas on the number of women that were permitted to enroll.
The result back then was that if your doctor was female, she was likely one of the best doctors around. Like my wife, a hematologist, who died last year.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2020, @02:24AM
I'm sorry for your loss.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @06:33PM (1 child)
You could chose to read something scientific instead of guessing while lamenting about STEM and maybe grow out of misandry and be a better person yourself.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2020, @02:30AM
I think what is often the case here is that many of us do work in STEM, but are focused on our own narrow areas of interest. And, given the state of STEM today, jargon and key concepts even outside your lane a little bit can inhibit you from opining on them with any sort of confidence. In fact over the years that I've observed /. and Soylent it is often topics like traffic, or coffee, or sleep habits, or that sort of universal topic that draw the most comments, because many can relate to them no matter what their professional specialty is. But the moments I relish are those wonderful times when lightning strikes and a story hits the front page that a Soylentil is actually working on, and he or she is able to add illumination no one else can.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:25PM
This site and its predecessor Slashdot were always about chewing the fat. Back in the day the most commented upon stories were the Columbine shootings and Natalie Portman. Neither of those had to do with tech either. Still most of the stories then and now are tech-related. So, no matter what the story subject is, it's what the community brings to the discussion that forms the discourse; these days, unsurprisingly, politics invades every discussion, because this is what it feels like on the eve of a civil war.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:19AM (14 children)
And god knows their algorithms are almost certainly designed to feed the argumentative of us more awful shit to "increase engagement" or whatever bullshit drives the most pictures of brands at our eyeballs.
The only good thing to come out of "web 2.0" was wikipedia. The rest of it was pure hell that we imprison ourselves in.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:57AM (13 children)
>The only good thing to come out of "web 2.0" was wikipedia.
hats off to the sarcastic post of the year.
If you wasn't sarcastic when you defined wikipravda good, congrats none the less, it is your lucky day.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:59AM (8 children)
You don't even have a working epistemology bar what you steal from worldviews that don't cut their own legs off, so what are you bitching about?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Touché) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:12AM (7 children)
What is this, a parsing test?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:56PM (1 child)
One comma before "bar" to set off the parenthetical would make it a lot more clear, as it suffers from the "Fruit flies like a banana" effect.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:06PM
(which might only make sense to Lahnderners and thereabouts)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:16PM (4 children)
If it is, you apparently failed it. A 'bot with a failing logic processor, wow. Not good. Go to the recycling center and ask them to redo you right.
But, again: you don't have an epistemological basis for your statements. Abrahamic theism predicts a cartoon universe, one where the supposed uniformities of observable reality are *at best* provisional. What, then, do your base your epistemology on? What *is* there to base it on when you can take nothing in the past and nothing in your experience as even inductive evidence?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @10:15PM (3 children)
Talk about logic. I say wikipedia sucks, reply is about epistemology and lacks commas.
I have already talked about this, but, since the bot that took the place of azuma insists, question: What is the one self-evident thing, taking into account solipsism too?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 11 2020, @01:52AM (2 children)
There is only one self-evident thing: that one is not God, because to be God one would know that one is God. My axioms are very simple, the old laws of identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle. The thing about all of these is, while taking them as axiomatic means there's no justification for them, one first must assert them in order to deny them.
I'm amazed you can even fucking spell "epistemology." Your turn: what's the one self-evident thing? Explain your reasoning. And, spoiler alert? It's not "I think therefore I am." The Buddhists figured that one out half a millennium before Jesus.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday September 11 2020, @09:00AM (1 child)
>because to be God one would know that one is God.
this is my informal way to define the abstraction we call reality as not the root abstraction from which all others stem. But to say that you enter the logic swamp of the properties of a god.
What you may not have noticed is that your answer has two parts. I AM + NOT GOD (first person I AM, not ONE IS, to account for solipsism)
The best answer IMHO is, "I am" is self evident. It is the only self evident thing and it's better left axiomatically undefined. Some say "NO YOU ONLY DELUDE YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE AND YOU ARE FREE" which is irrelevant because it doesn't challenge the I am but only its quality. Plus, when/if you cease to be, the infrastructure for the I am ceases, but that makes epistemology itself irrelevant.
But I am what? I am EXPERIENCING. Again, better leave it as an axiom, in fact it is just a longer description.
You can then define reality as the abstraction "what can be potentially (directly and indirectly) experienced". Being affected is a way to experience, so you can also say "what can be [in]directly experienced and what can [in]directly affect the experience". As you can see there are no foreign concepts in this definition, you just can take time to formalize them a bit.
And there comes the infrastructure. QM and all the stuff. People speak like the ultimate meaning resided in the details of the implementation of reality (as we perceive it). No, at most the infrastructure HINTS at the meaning.
Let's take a videogame. Self evident is the fact you are playing. Reality is the videogame world. The circuits are the infrastructure. The meaning of the videogame IS NOT IN THE CIRCUITS. From the circuits you can desume the programming (abstract level) and from the programming you can desume the intention of the programmer (if any). Sure, but the MEANING of the videogame is not there. The MEANING is in the head of the devs and the players. Where a counter becomes score, a sprite becomes an avatar.
Meanwhile in the philosopher and scientist academic bubble, the common feeling is like:
OMGGGG THE INFRASTRUCTURE HAS A RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR! Therefore all the game is about random chance!!!1111
to which I can only reply 'uh, whatever'.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday September 11 2020, @09:43PM
And BTW, "I think therefore I am" is proven wrong by things that think and are not, and by things that are, and don't think, like blondes. Sum ergo cogito, not the other way round.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:02AM (3 children)
Wikipedia shows what the Information Highway could have been.
Facebook, on the other hand, is National Enquirer at the checkout line.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:12AM (2 children)
Which one has a larger audience?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:46PM (1 child)
A subject with a larger audience is not necessarily of more value than a subject with a smaller audience.
I have no use for Facebook. I cannot even perceive of any real value it offers other than to loosely manage friends, family and people who I would rather not deal with. (I've never had a Facebook account as of this date. I don't intend to.)
I find Wikipedia useful in a number of subject areas. Not that it is an absolute authority on any subject. But it is convenient. Useful. And if nothing else, a good starting point to searching for more information.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 10 2020, @05:51PM
As a free advertising platform, it is one of the very best.
For me, Wikipedia is also more useful, like the trade sections in Reddit. The internet is full of useful stuff, but the chaff is getting a little thick, gotta tune my search better...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:30AM (19 children)
We'd be much better off sending our pictures of food and cats to our friends and family as e-mail attachments.
Yeah, except people barely read personal email any more, largely because of spam. The initial draw of FB (after it reached the masses, it was really for Mark's buddies hook up with college girls, hence the name) was to be a place to have a list of all your friends, and be able to share those food and cat pictures with them easily, instead of having to mess around with email attachments and the sheer annoyance of email, plus being able to have a group chat about whatever silly thing was shared. Face it, email just isn't any good at all at group communication, and it's not even very good at a running conversation with someone that lasts days, weeks, or months. There's a reason that chat apps have become so popular in the last 15 years, and that email has faded out for personal communications and is really only used for things like business communications, getting notifications from your bank or insurance company, etc.
but social media is a social hate machine.
I'd say it's really more of an echo chamber. Like-minded people (like white supremacists) get together on it and create a positive feedback loop, reinforcing each others' opinions.
The problem with FB is that they profit off of people using the service, and these days who still uses FB for actually posting stuff, besides Gen-X and older people? A bunch (majority?) of their users are older and conservative, and a subset of those are obviously going to be racists, neo-Nazis, etc. The teens and 20-somethings don't use FB any more, except for keeping in touch with their grandparents. I see it in my own family; their conservative friends and relatives are constantly posting stuff about blue lives matter, Jesus, etc., while there's a small contingent of liberals. I've had to "mute" family members so their crap doesn't show up on my page or generate emails to me, and they aren't even all that conservative, and certainly not white supremacists. (Other family members I've simply declined friend requests from.)
FB doesn't want to just cut all the racists out because it would mean a big revenue hit. Given the likely demographic of the engineers working at FB, I'm not surprised to see people like these quitting and publicly saying why: these tech workers are fundamentally at odds with a significant portion of the FB userbase.
What is interesting, and I believe to be true, is that FB has enabled the racists to find each other and reinforce each others' views and make them worse, and now we're seeing in American society growing polarization as a result. 2-3 decades ago when I was younger, it seemed like blatant racism was largely a thing of the past or confined to rural Appalachia or parts of the South, and I think this was because society had trained us to keep these views private and not share them much or risk being ostracized. This seems to be changing now; with more blatant racism becoming evident. FB probably had a lot to do with the election of Trump too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:10AM (12 children)
2-3 decades ago here, immigrants were few and not object of a mafia business or protected by the state to the detriment of resident citizens, and i am not talking about 'stealing our jobs' or other socioeconomic theory, I am talking about getting introduced to drugs and/or raped as young teens. Now, those who say "wtf is happening" instead of "refugees welcome" are labeled neonazis. Those who remind people of the precedents of the clashes with islam are haters. and so on. Problem being, if you go back some years, and see what 'nazi' wrote and what illuminated progressive wrote, you will see who was right and who was the real denialist.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:08AM (11 children)
What a load of utter horseshit.
Most of the people living in the USA today are descendants of immigrants.
Except for the slaves - they didn't exactly have a choice. They were property.
The native Americans would have a different opinion as to who the obnoxious immigrants are.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:14AM (1 child)
Bot (3902) is Italian, allegedly. Hence the mafia reference.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:12PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @03:01AM (1 child)
He's Italian and he's correct. The mobs had a code of honor and avoided direct involvement with drugs and prostitution until Maria Licciardi became first female boss of the Camorra. [wikipedia.org]
Europe is now full of unemployable "migrants" [rmx.news] that the native populations never invited.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:12AM
Yeah, you say! But, they would buy the American whore for $50, due to lack of quality and education. Last thing any client wants, is a stupid whore, or a khallow.
(Score: 2) by EEMac on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:18AM
It's turtles all the way down [stonetoss.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:10PM
The at least two and possibly three or more waves of pre-Clovis people to settle in the Americas would no doubt have their own opinion on the subject, had any of them survived the Clovis invasion.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 10 2020, @02:30PM (4 children)
Isn't it interesting and informative that the Social Justice Warriors have not taken up the plight of American Indians, who by far have been most wronged in America, and instead are throwing all their time, effort, and money into the BLM group? Is it not because of social justice or equity at all but because American Indians do not constitute an important voting bloc that the Left must win?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:55PM
We do both. You'll notice the removal of the fake history of Columbus has resulted in a few victimized shrieks lately...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @02:46AM
It probably has a lot to do with the American Indians not rioting, looting, and burning shit down too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @07:52AM (1 child)
Oh right, like the Dakota pipeline?
Sheesh you get stupider by the day.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 13 2020, @01:13AM
He's becoming radicalized in real time. He's a year or two behind Runaway in this particular death spiral but he's following the pattern almost exactly. It's sad, but he's *choosing* this; watching someone willingly throw their own soul into Moloch's burning arms is somewhere north of incomprehensible and barely south of Cthulhoid.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:17AM
The good thing about Facebook is that some people are using the service to make a profit. Facebook is your personal billboard. Maybe you can get elected too.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @03:10PM
Yeah, I see that with "progressives" claiming that white people are not allowed to do things that are "stereotypically black", that supposedly being "cultural appropriation". Or that black people should get better access to jobs than whites. Or that black people are somehow owed "reparations" from whites who themselves escaped economic exploitation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @06:21PM
I dont' understand how email should be bad at communication and it is certainly better at group communication in my opinion, it has threads and you can fine-tune who your replies are sent to and lengthy conversation? It's perfect for that. What I can agree on is that must people don't use it for their communication, but I don't think spam is a good argument anymore. E-Mail now has much better ways of filtering out bad actors with DKIM/SPF. I think the real problem is bad clients, specifically webclients and my take on why the initial change to social media happened it was because facebook could connect you with people you know, but didn't know you wanted to talk to. If you have a good tool to manage your mail, it's very efficient and easy to use.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2020, @02:38AM (2 children)
That is not what happens. The same thing happens with those groups that happens with ideologues on the Left like Antifa or BLM (no, not the Bureau of Land Management, sadly)--they begin a purity spiral. One white supremacist will say something that another white supremacist agrees with, and they might initially rejoice that somebody else shares their warped perspective. Then eventually one will say something like he ate at Chili's and the other one will go after him for eating Beaner food. Jabs will be traded, and then escalate, and they'll wander off in renewed silence and bitterness.
Just go and lurk on Stormfront sometime. It's pitiful and laughable at the same time. But one thing it absolutely will do is put the lie to the Democratic/MSM mantra that "white supremacy is the greatest threat to the nation!!!"
Zealots cannot tolerate variance from their true faith. That inflexibility is what makes them zealots in the first place.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @03:48AM
Explains a lot that you would lurk on stormfront. Do not give such hate your attention, it will only stain your soul.
Peace my brother,
apk
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 13 2020, @01:11AM
The irony of those last two sentences coming from you is so thick you can cut it with a knife and spread it on bread :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...