Corvos
8hr ago
I read you as saying that the talented encourage the talentless to enter their field as a gambit to emphasise their own relative superiority.
My theory is that they don’t want to generate bad PR by discouraging their fans and emphasising the gap between them.
If I misunderstood your argument I apologise.
Corvos
8hr ago
Agreed. I'm just saying I think you're overthinking it in that quoted passage. They're just trying to be nice in public even if the long-term effect is anti-social.
Corvos
8hr ago
I'm a little confused. Does Ireland not give birthright citizenship though the father's line? Or is it that he had the option to pass on citizenship rights as the father but refused, and claimed to be the mother which wasn't accepted?
Corvos
8hr ago
From that post:
one would naively expect that successful actors, musicians etc. would be incentivised to discourage others from pursuing careers in their domain, or engage in rent-seeking behaviour like guilds and so on. But there may be an alternative dynamic at play, in which moderately talented actors, musicians etc. are savvy enough to know that flooding the market with talentless hacks will make the legitimately talented stand out all the more — tall poppies look all the taller when surrounded by short ones
Surely they are simply smart enough to know that:
- They are already established and can't easily be threatened by people only now beginning a career (similar to those advocating DEI).
- They know that their fans will respond much better to "we've all been there, keep plugging," than to "dude, sorry, chances are you can't do what I can do".
I don't know how to say this but you're the richest and most powerful people in the world. This kind of discussion always turns into a Bravery Debate but regulation like GDPR is more about clawing back some agency from America than it is trying to tax US industry.
As the Right discovered five years ago, and the Left discovered when Musk bought X, network effects and the overall stack just don't allow for 'make-your-own' social media.
(I don't actually like or agree with the vast majority of this regulation, though I think that GDPR specifically was a step in the right direction of forcing companies to give more than absolutely zero shits about the privacy of their customers).
Normally I wouldn't be quite so thin-skinned but the Greenland fiasco drove home for me just how worrying it is that half of the most powerful country in the world thinks of us as being essentially a pantomime villain from a Mel Gibson movie.
That is the same thing that I said, in much more polemical language, but it's only part of the story. Yes, various European and non-American (Aussie, UK, Canada) governments are very upset that, from their perspective, unfortunate dirty laundry is being aired in public. Some of them surely have things they would like to hide, others rightly or wrongly believe that the country would be better off and less febrile if matters weren't presented in a maximally inflammatory way and optimised for engagement.
But there are also lots of other things that people are concerned about. They really don't like the effect that addictive Instagram and TikTok etc. are having on the ability of young people to concentrate or socialise, they don't like Grok in general and the nudifying features in particular, etc.
Ultimately, both voters and governments generally prefer for regulation to be possible, even if they decide not to do it. Having a big part of life subject to the whims of Washington and Silicon Valley rubs people the wrong way.
No, the obvious answer is the true one here. Europe and the UK really really hate that the fundamental, society-altering technology that all of their citizens are using >5hrs a day is completely out of their control, as is the AI that they are hoping will become the new basis of their economy. And they are fundamentally incapable of conceiving that the answer might be less regulation rather than more. The closest American example is when America legislated the sale of TikTok (did that ever go through?).
I personally have mixed feelings about this. Having your public places under the control of another country is in some ways safer than having them under the control of your own country - broadly I like that Musk can tell Starmer to take a long walk off a short pier. But this cuts both ways, and I don't blame the various governments involved for being antsy around it.
Thanks, misunderstanding cleared up. Personally I disagree, I think that once you are seriously giving life advice to anyone except that handsome devil in the mirror, you are broadly out of the part of your career where young people are competing with you directly. I think that what you consider the 'cloaking' motivation is broadly the true motivation.
Yasslighting for e.g. writers certainly happens but it happens in the peer group of young losers + young one-day-maybe-not-losers. I guess maybe your talented 20-somethings are still encouraging their less talented friends but this is more to prevent social awkwardness than anything.
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