whybroke (u/whybroke)

whybroke commented on How do I permanently delete my account? facebook.com/help/2245628... · Posted by u/cVwEq

hnlmorg · 8 years ago

Deleted accounts could retain the comments but anonymise the accounts.

Also I don't think having the ability to delete your profile invites trolls. Usually one deletes their account because they post something wrong but which they genuinely believe is true then get downvoted and / or trolled into oblivion. These people we should probably be working to retain because while they might have been wrong, their contribution did improve the content on the site due to the corrections that followed. However sometimes the negative rep and / or harshness of the replies can make the corrections a bitter pill to swallow. So I think there should be a downvote cap for incorrect posts (or even disallowing downvoting for all but rudeness and spam) and working harder on improving forum etiquette.

whybroke · 8 years ago

I left after being hounded by trolls and sock puppets and, a year later, far from being deleted (as requested twice by email) my account was instead shadow banned.

Of course, likely as not this post itself is invisible. Likely as not the GDPR is as uninteresting as user's needs. Likely as not, Hanlon's razor applies. Although I would not brag about the last possibility.

whybroke commented on U.S. Election Agency Breached by Hackers After November Vote reuters.com/article/us-el... · Posted by u/bootload

PKop · 9 years ago

I just think it's very childlike and immature to blame others for your own mistakes.

The Democrats were unhappy embarrassing information they hid from voters was leaked to voters. They have no one to blame but themselves. If they didn't do the things talked about in the emails, there would be nothing to leak. How many people even viewed the emails, anyways?

I think both: [0] the info in the emails was bad and [1] not that many people knew about it, or needed the Wikileaks info to not want to vote for Hillary Clinton.

I think she just lost.

whybroke · 9 years ago

And I think a hostile nation affecting one's internal politics is an act of war, successful or not.

This didn't just damage Hillary, although the media you so deprecate made it into just that. The hack also serves to de-legitimatize Trump. It is also causing Trump to fight with and denounce all the intelligence agencies critical to US functioning. Beside refusing their intelligence, the demoralization affect alone is huge (who will risk their life for a president who calls them a liar?). It has also thrown the whole electoral process into doubt. etc.

And they hacked the RNC too. You can bet that will be used to to maximum damage at some point.

It is no doubt that most damaging and successful attack on the US in decades.

But even more shocking is that it is condoned because it furthers certain parties political ends. What happens if both political parties start using acts by hostile nations to help them win elections?

whybroke commented on U.S. Election Agency Breached by Hackers After November Vote reuters.com/article/us-el... · Posted by u/bootload

whybroke · 9 years ago

The logical extension of your statement means the Russians should be invited to hack the DNC or any enemies of Trump forever because in your opinion leaks about debate questions and Pizzerias are so very, very critical to democracy. Perhaps denying the hacks every time they happens because, after all, they serve such a 'noble' purpose.

And I imagine I am not remotely the first one to realize this.

(Edit) My goodness but this is earning a lot of down votes. How very odd.

whybroke commented on Why is Mail Online going after the fact checkers? theguardian.com/media/201... · Posted by u/CarolineW

crucini · 9 years ago

Applying the idea of "fact checking" to politically charged topics inherently raises problems. Snopes was a good site to find out if there were really alligators in the sewers. The Forbes article cited by rokosbasilisk here seems to demand a high standard of quality from fact checkers - but who is to pay for it?

Now, The Guardian chose some headlines to illustrate this story with. Presumably the Guardian considers them good examples of "fake news". One of them is about the Clintons "stealing $200K worth of furniture" etc. Politifact has a surprisingly detailed page on this allegation. The result is, typically, gray. It wasn't $200K (suspiciously round number); closer to $190K. And the Clintons paid for or returned the "stolen" items; which either makes them "not stolen" or "stolen and returned".

But the whole claim of "theft" rests on the items' designation as national property, which may not have been clear at the time.

Given that this headline is an example of what the media (including Facebook) wants to shield the masses from - what then do they want the masses to hear? Is it (a) nothing, (b) inoculation/discrediting by labelling the meme as "fake news"; (c) a less sensationalized headlines?

whybroke · 9 years ago

Authoritarians will do everything in their power to replace fact based journalism with messages that support their ideology with no concern to accuracy. The very definition of authoritarianism means the public doesn't need to know what's going on and all paths to victory are acceptable.

It is a problem we have not faced in free societies but do now. It is the suppression of information and its replacement by propaganda with no connection to reality. It is the world of Putin's Russia, a world we in the west have not experienced.

And it is not necessarily driven from the top down although casting doubt on what constitutes a fact is core to the maintenance of power in a dictatorship.

There is pretense that changing Facebook's algorithm from favoring profitable self confirming nonsense to being balanced with factual posts is some an obscene from of censorship rather than a fix for a broken algorithm. This as absurd as claiming Google is censoring when it changes it's search to give results the user wants because no user wants to be fed inaccuracies by either Google or Facebook.

Incredibly we're now saying it's censorship just to adjust a ranking such that propagandist nonsense (that the user didn't want) is no longer quite the top result.

Indeed the argument has now deteriorated into the surreal position that no-one (e.g. Snopes) should dare even post corrections to politically motivated lies because that is somehow censorship. And certainly no-one should promulgate those correction let alone use them. This is exactly the Kafkaesque logic that reveals the underling motivation is actually the exact opposite of free speech.

whybroke commented on IQ is only a minor factor in success bloomberg.com/view/articl... · Posted by u/tempw

spajus · 9 years ago

This is a common misconception. Most (balance sheet, not "appear to be") rich people are self made, and first generation rich. Kids of rich parents tend to just blow their inheritance away quickly.

whybroke · 9 years ago

No, only about 10% of billionaires are self made, as in not having inherited wealth or come from wealthy families. And even this is a record high up from a more typical 3%. (and remarkably, these are numbers that forbes feels excited about)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-a...

whybroke commented on The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation nytimes.com/2016/12/21/up... · Posted by u/petilon

edblarney · 9 years ago

"The period you describe was marked by revolutions, civil wars and world wars not stabilized until after WWII."

No - the late 19th century was relatively peaceful.

"But unfortunately we are just at the beginning"

Just at the beggining of the longest period of peace and economic prosperity in history.

Donald Trump, Brexit - this kind of 'nationalism' and 'demagoguery' is not even remotely in the league of anything in the past. Not even close.

whybroke · 9 years ago

In the 1800s after even after Napoleon there were sporadic uprisings scattered through Europe and around the world, especially in the 1830s and 40s. The Franco-Prussina war was a prelude to WWI. Brits fought Russians, Turks fought Russians, Spain had multiple civil wars, Germans fought each other constantly. Even the US had a civil war. And the seeds for 1914's WWI did not suddenly appear in the 14 years of the 20th century before it.

>...is not even remotely in the league of anything in the past. Not even close...

I wish this were the case. And while Brexit is only one referendum, possibly recoverable, the Front National, AfD, PVV and Trump use rhetoric that is completely indistinguishable for Eastern and Southern European fascism of the 1920s. Some of it is verbatim quotes translated. And the economic policies of these parties will only worsen the economic well being of the electorate angering them further.

We can keep making optimistic guesses about the next score years but there is also more realistic outcome:

We do not in fact live in a magic time at the end of history. The post WWII (relative) peace is not remotely an inevitable state of affairs. It is an incredibly delicate thing maintained by moderate democratic global nurturing. Inept leaders set on dissolving alliances and treaties combined with aggressive rhetoric and random hostilities executed solely to excite a demagogue's support base could break that peace in any of a dozen powder kegs world wide faster than the bullet that killed prince Ferdinand. Indeed, if NATO weakens enough, as many on the far-right wish, and Putin starts loosing popularity, god help the Baltic states.

whybroke commented on The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation nytimes.com/2016/12/21/up... · Posted by u/petilon

edblarney · 9 years ago

"We currently don't have a social understanding for navigating a world where little human labor is required"

Yes we do.

The industrial revolution had far greater impact on labour than any of this mysterious AI will ever have.

The first 'machines' powered by coal etc. instantly 'unemployed' hundreds of people per unit.

Go ahead and look at the productivity/capita charts for the early 19th century - UK citizens were multiple times more productive than citizens of any other nation. It was an astonishing explosion.

Imagine how many people a single train unemployed?

Or the weaving machines that did the work of hundreds.

The impact on labour was definite, direct and measurable - unlike a lot of the 'soft' impact that today's technology has (did MS Word really unemploy 'secretaries' - or was it a host of factors?)

But what happened during the industrial revolution?

Unemployment went down, wages went up. In fact the cost of human labour rose dramatically.

The surpluses from the machines went into the economy, basically providing the foundation for the modern consumer economy.

95% of folks back then worked on farms, mines - or did manual labour/service.

The industrial revolution created the middle class: lawyers, entertainers, restaurants, mass market clothing, design etc.. Electricity created massive new industries (think of what you could not do without electricity!).

The economy has been diversifying rapidly since the start of the 19th century in the UK, and everywhere else about 50 years later.

We will continue to do this.

In 1960 there were 3 channels. In the 1990's 50. Now it's 100's + online offerings.

There were no 'pro athletes' in 1930. Now we have massive industries around pro sports.

Working/middle class people did not travel much back in the day. Now they can travel around the world.

There were no consumer electronics past the radio in 1940. Now the are zillions of devices.

In the 1920's cars were made by people - now automated assembly lines.

And FYI - for the last 25 years and for at least the next little while - China (or rather, Mexico, China, India and other low-cost places) are by far and away bigger job killers than automation.

'Automation' as we understand it is not as fast a process as we think it is and the days of 'robot replaces x people' are long gone, it's a more complex and nuanced equation.

Try this one: tell me which people you know, in which industries, have outright 'lost their jobs' due to some AI or machine? Not so many. Customer service? Possibly. Some banker analysts? Possibly. But even in the later, there are other things for them to do, and the bulk of the staff on both sides have more to fear form India than Microsoft. In fact, this is happening right now all over North America: people training dudes in India to do their jobs, after they've been told they've been outsourced ... (train your replacement if you want your severance!) ...

Also - since 1900 - the size of government has expanded dramatically. I'm not 'against government' or anything, but many gov. agencies are abhorrently inefficient. I have a distant family member who's friend, a low-level thug dealer who was recently arrested. The RCMP (Can. police) spent zillions tracking, investigating this guy. Two years of surveillance, bureaucratic justice issues, lawyers - yada yada. So it's not so nice, but we find ways to 'distribute the surpluses' of the new economy in ways, even if they are not very efficient.

The trick is to 'find things for people to do' in a manner that is reasonably efficient and fair.

Check out GDP/capita during 19th century:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence#/media/File:B...

Were there was more automation, wealth exploded. (This chart does not address wages, but there are others that do :) )

whybroke · 9 years ago

The period you describe was marked by revolutions, civil wars and world wars not stabilized until after WWII.

Things did indeed come out well eventually but that better world most definitely did not emerge serenely and rationally. It took the utter annihilation of the pre-WWI world order through decades of enormous violence. Indeed, the egalitarian socialist plan and the response of populist fascist to crush it emerged exactly because of industrialization.

There can be no doubt that displaced workers are not going to smoothly transfer to become professional athletes: a 50 year old unemployed coal miner with no social safety net is not going to peaceable become a wedding planer in a big city even if he could.

Until then, there will be increasing political disruption and radicalization as the advantaged group holds the disadvantaged down believing it's their own fault for not changing careers. And just like last time, the fighting will continue until adequate social safety nets are in place.

It would be better to honestly face the events of the past and not try to convince ourselves that an idealized smooth economic shift is how it's going to work out. But unfortunately we are just at the beginning of this and likely most people in the advantaged group will ideological despise the level of social security that will solve the problem. Indeed, in many quarters, there is a fetishization of and desire to return to that pre-WWI unconstrained economy that caused the nightmares in the 20th century. So, polarization, demagoguery, extremism and eventually violence loom for now I fear.