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schalab commented on California appeals court rules Uber, Lyft must reclassify drivers as employees   reuters.com/article/us-ub... · Posted by u/BigBalli
schalab · 5 years ago
Lets say I have a club I own, but I need to keep the riff raff out.

I cant openly ban poor or low society people from entering which would be considered "evil". But what if I mandated every service from a staff must be tipped with atleast 100$, because we value our workers more here.

This achieves the same purpose and I get to pretend to be egalitarian.

If this law is passed, ride sharing apps will still exist. They will have a smaller roster of higher quality of drivers and be more expensive to use. It will be perfectly fine for most of the people commenting here.

Who it will destroy is the "riff raff", the people at the lowest rungs of the ladder on both ends. Those who cannot contribute work of sufficient quality to be paid for full time work and benefits. And those who cant afford more expensive ride sharing.

Basically a way to ask people of a certain level to leave the state because they cant participate in the economy anymore and appear compassionate at the same time. Insidiously genius.

schalab commented on The Art of Debating for Software Developers   thevaluable.dev/guide-deb... · Posted by u/thanato0s
asdfman123 · 6 years ago
I'm not sure how much verbal IQ has to do with it. Everything in life is a matter of practice and study. For instance, there's difference in musical ability between people, but the guy who practices guitar every day is going to be better than the guy who doesn't, 100 times out of 100.

I actually have a considerably higher test verbal IQ than mathematical and have perfect verbal section test scores to show it. However, I used to really suck at debates because I was naïve and unpracticed.

I went through a few years of spending too much time on reddit, though, and now I can wallop most average people. The most important thing BY FAR is to immediately establish definitions and frame the debate. You force your opponent to operate in the tiny amount of air space that you've given them, and constrain them to talk about things that you've chosen so you probably know more about them.

schalab · 6 years ago
You have natural talent which becomes exponentially better with training. But a guy who struggles to even find words will be trounced by you 9 times out of 10. Regardless of who is right.

Interestingly those type of people will rarely venture on message boards, because this requires a lot of reading and writing and they would rather spend their time on other pursuits(maybe more visual?). Its interesting to imagine the section of viewpoints that dont even get represented at this level.

schalab commented on Humankind neither nasty nor brutish   thelancet.com/journals/la... · Posted by u/well_i_never
schalab · 6 years ago
The deepest separation of labor is female and male. The female energy is associated with empathy for the child. Male energy is protecting territory.

Some combination of both these energies exist in all of us.

You can say humans have the capacity for love, and also acknowledge there are people out there who gain pleasure from power over others.

You cant say one is natural and the other is learned.

Even the people who gain pleasure in causing pain, are useful in the right situations. Hence the trope in fiction of the jailed entity being released to combat an even greater foe in a dire situation.

schalab commented on The Art of Debating for Software Developers   thevaluable.dev/guide-deb... · Posted by u/thanato0s
schalab · 6 years ago
The allure of free speech and debate is that the best ideas win.

But what I have often found is that the best debater wins.

And some debaters are so good they can win both sides of a debate.

This wouldnt be that much of a problem if you assume verbal iq is an independent variable uniformly distributed through the population. But I have often found verbal iq is highly co-related with other biological traits and markers. This creates a biased situation where debates often lead to erroneous conclusions and bad results.

schalab commented on Amazon is filled with fake reviews and it’s getting harder to spot them   cnbc.com/2020/09/06/amazo... · Posted by u/admiralspoo
ilamont · 6 years ago
I'd like to know how it's possible for third-party sites such as https://www.fakespot.com to more effectively identify fake Amazon reviews while Amazon (with presumably better data) fails so miserably.

Same question applies to Twitter. Regularly we see researchers uncovering evidence of fake accounts and bot networks pushing spam, conspiracy theories, and misinformation (https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...) while Twitter struggles to identify the fakes.

ETA: Regarding comments along the lines of, "it's in their best interest to let fake reviews continue as it boosts Amazon's sales."

I think this argument is getting a bit old, as Amazon's growing reputation for fake reviews (and fake products) is turning off even mainstream shoppers and giving a huge boost to big & small competitors.

Amazon now has a very big financial incentive to move beyond whack-a-mole and truly tackle these problems, which requires A) doing at least as good as Fakespot at identifying the bad actors and B) implementing technologies and policies that discourage buying or posting fake reviews.

schalab · 6 years ago
I am guessing its because the hackers are not gaming fakespot's detection systems.

If amazon adopted fakespot's algorithm, the hackers would circumvent it within a week. This would also happen if fakespot reaches a critical mass of audience.

schalab commented on Code for The Economist's election model for 2020   github.com/TheEconomist/u... · Posted by u/person_of_color
schalab · 6 years ago
I am reminded of a story in Three men in a boat.

A couple go out on a picnic with a young man. The moment they set out, the young man begins predicting rain. The couple begin to hate him for his gloomy disposition. They meet an old man on the road. He scrounges up his face, looks up at the sky, and says there wont be any rain. He has seen many days like this in his long life and it usually clears up. The couple cheer up at once and praise him for his wisdom.

No sooner had they set up their picnic, then it begins raining heavily. On the drive back completely drenched, they look at the young man with anger. Like somehow he was responsible for the rain. They think of the old man fondly, "well atleast he tried".

Thats human psychology.

schalab commented on Uber CEO says its service will probably shut down temporarily in California   cnbc.com/2020/08/12/uber-... · Posted by u/dionmanu
schalab · 6 years ago
Just make the whole service distributed. Cut out Uber. Connect me directly to a driver through open source software.

Person A exists who is willing to drive from point a to point b for x price. I am willing to pay x price. An open source software exists to connect us both in real time.

Who will the government regulate in this scenario?

schalab commented on The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility   rankscience.com/blog/why-... · Posted by u/abhivyas5
auganov · 6 years ago
I love how few actual proposal there are out there as to what the government should actually do. That is - not just "regulate" or "break them up". I'm talking specifics.

Once you start making concrete proposals it becomes increasingly obvious just how hard it is to come up with something that won't make everything worse.

schalab · 6 years ago
Imagine if the internet was started by one corporation.

Instead, the internet is an open source set of protocols.

The answer lies in converting companies which abuse becoming the standard due to network effect, to an open source set of protocols.

Maybe give them a period of 10-20 years to profit. Then they have to expose a public set of standards and protocols which can be used by everyone else.

For instance microsoft windows after 15 years, would be forced to release a freeware version of code, which contained all functionality they had at that time.

Other companies and users could build on this code and thus microsoft are no longer the standard. Just a version of it.

schalab commented on Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation   npr.org/2020/06/01/867137... · Posted by u/headalgorithm
schalab · 6 years ago
I have found if you have nothing constructive to do, then twitter sucks you in and is very addictive.

But after a few years or so of constant nonsense, you become adapted to the addiction and just ignore everything on it. Atleast thats what happened to me.

I went from constantly checking twitter to deleting my account and just going to the feed of one or two people once a day to keep informed.

I now laugh at how worked up everyone gets, and all the play acting and rival factions involved. Its almost like an iq test, where you pass if you dont play the game.

The problem is a lot of people are staying indoors right now with nothing to do and are discovering twitter/reddit for the first time.

Imagine a person not only new to social media, but new to the internet as a whole with no bs filters built in. He/she would be such a mark.

The real herd immunity is people understanding over time how emotionally manipulative social media is and learning to ignore it like we do 99% of advertisements.

schalab commented on Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'   theguardian.com/technolog... · Posted by u/mnem
schalab · 6 years ago
Explanation 1:

Lauren Sanchez(bezos' new girfiend) along with her brother Michael(who is also her agent), leaked the story to force Bezos to divorce his wife and get along with her.

Explanation 2:

The crown prince of Saudi Arabia personally sent a trojan file, downloaded all the data, distributed it through a gossip rag he happens to be friends with, for some kind of revenge/message

I get why Bezos has to go with explanation 2 because explanation 1 would indicate the girl he wants to have sex with or her brother is manipulative. I dont see why the rest of us have to go along with this. Even this anonymous source says he has "high confidence" not anywhere near certainty.

u/schalab

KarmaCake day187September 6, 2014View Original