fozz
1yr ago
Pretty ironic to hear someone arguing a truly free speech platform—which Musk explicitly says is his most important goal with Twitter—is not that meaningful...on a website that had to be created because of fears of free speech limitations on the social media website from whence it escaped.
fozz
1yr ago
In case you spent the day under a rock, Trump has been reinstated on Twitter after winning a poll by Elon Musk. Not kidding.
I'd like to keep this open & not push the discussion in any direction, so I'll keep this short.
Predictions? What does this mean for Twitter? Elon? Trump? Social media? The country? The world?
For better or worse, I have a lot of dating experience. Some thoughts in this space:
- In online dating scenarios, many women are dating lots of people at once (sometimes even when they say/act like they are not). This explains a lot more ghosting than people realize. For an example: Even if you had an objectively very good & engaging date with somebody, you might be their 10th date that month. Were you the best date they had? If not, even if they actually liked you, it's possible you'll be ghosted, or at least not be given much focused, intentional attention as she carries on text conversations with multiple guys. (i.e. it will feel like she is just not that into you... because you aren't the Top Guy on her Recent Dates Radar.)
- Further context on this point, do some research into just how slanted in favor of women online dating sites/apps are. On average, women are being bombarded with new matches constantly, while men get very little inbound activity. With almost no exceptions, every attractive woman I've discussed the topic with has told me they have (or even showed me) an overflowing selection (inbox/match list) of men.
- One possible moral to this story: Don't take first dating too personally. If you let it get to your ego & emotions, it can destroy your ego & emotions. Have very low expectations on first dates. (This takes practice.) Treat it like a chance to get to know another person, and nothing more. If romantic feelings are to grow, they will do so organically, and not because you are putting effort into manifesting them.
- I suppose it comes down to preference & values, but persuading a woman to go out with you via additional attempts to contact her seems sub-optimal. If you are looking for someone with whom you are authentically drawn to/compatible with, why put extraordinary effort into trying to "get them to like/pay attention to you?" What is gained?
- As a caveat, I think it's important (it's effective, and it's good for your mental health as a dater) to be simple & clear about your interest in a woman at the end of a first date...if you have interest in that woman. Yes, playing hard to get can (and often does) work, but you always run the risk of someone you felt authentically drawn to/compatible with interpreting your game as genuine lack of interest. And as we discussed above, the online dating market is slanted heavily towards woman, so there will be other guys available to her if she thinks you're not interested.
- Further on this point, again it comes down to preference & values, but running a 'playing hard to get' game on a woman seems suboptimal. If you are looking for someone with whom you are authentically drawn to/compatible with, why set up these hoops or create a culture of deception within the relationship?
- As a caveat to this caveat, while playing hard to get is suboptimal (and may be a risky move for men in this dating market anyway), it is also a risk to be overly eager. It's unattractive for reasons that should be clear to the average user here, so I won't elaborate. It's best, in my experience, to just be simple & clear, smile, and say something like: "I had a great time & I'd sincerely like to see you again." If you communicate this clearly in person, it will help clear up any ambiguity in efforts to make a 2nd date. If, after you made it clear in person, she then doesn't respond when you ask for a second date later via text or phone call, move on.
- And one other consideration (that I mean genuinely, but is on the PUA fringes): Being clear & simple about your interest (vs. playing hard to get) may actually be a more effective seduction tactic in our culture. Essentially, you are admitting vulnerability, which is a form of courage & evidence of maturity. It communicates authenticity, which is refreshing when experienced in the wild. You are saying, essentially, "I'm going to show you my cards here, because I don't want to 'play games' anyway. I'm dating to find someone I'm authentically drawn to/compatible with, and though I have limited data 'cuz we've only been out once, I like you & I think it's worth investigating this more."
- One exercise that may be helpful is thinking back to when someone you'd gone out with clearly liked you, but you didn't have as strong a reciprocal romantic interest in them. What did it make you feel towards them when they were more persistent? Like texting you often and trying to get you to go out again? Did it increase whatever romantic interest you had? Or decrease it? In my experience, persistence decreases my interest in someone who I'm "on the fence" about.
It's not that meaningful to the people currently working at Twitter.
He was able to rid himself of 90% of them, so it's sort of immaterial.
Somewhat related...
What's interesting to me is all the flack he's getting about giving people the option to either (A) "get hardcore" and work a lot to make Twitter awesome or (B) quit and get severance.
We've gotten a bit nutty about "work-life" balance. Some people don't want that. They like to work a lot. It's not like Musk is enslaving people and forcing them to do manual labor for god's sake. They get to choose to work at a sweet ass campus doing shit they love for great pay.
I'm very certain Musk, literally one of the most recognizable people in the world, can find the people he needs to run a lean & mean ship at Twitter, and make it awesome. Because plenty of people would LOVE to work 60-80 hours a week on a free speech challenge like Twitter, when it is well-positioned to be The Center of the Internet (to the extent is isn't already).
Call me a cynic, but I'm familiar with enough people who do essentially nothing while getting paid (well) for it that I can empathize a lot with Musk here. In my career, I've seen departments with 20 people handling the workload of 2 or 3, and departments that were 90% automated years ago...but the fog of bureaucracy allowed 10 people to just draw a paycheck for standing around and watching a system.
Musk doesn't want dead weight, as no business owner does.
fozz
1yr ago
Interesting.
I'd put it above 99%. Unless Trump dies or Twitter disappeared, it's a near certainty.
From where I sit, the media has been boycotting Trump since he lost the election. I rarely hear anything about him, other than about indictments and charges I don't think will ever come to fruition.
Now that he's running for POTUS in 2024, his return to Twitter will force the same non-stop media coverage shitstorm that happened in 2016-2020. He feeds on that, as a person and as a candidate, and I don't know how he turns it down.
I actually Elon will be the big winner here. The traffic will be off the charts & I'm skeptical advertisers will stay away for long.
fozz
1yr ago
Yeah, he's better at rockets than NASA, but he'll fail at being a Reddit mod. Sure.
I take your point about some whisky being orders of magnitude more time-consuming & expensive to produce, but that's part of my point.
Some products may advertise being "handmade!", and it takes 10x more time & effort to make them, but a machine actually does a better job of producing that product. People will still often pay more for the handmade product if that characteristic is used as a selling point, because brand recognition and perceived value are examples of how the human brain is easily hacked. People have clustered together notions of "quality" with the concept of "handmade" and reality is hard-pressed to convince them otherwise.
From the essay:
Or consider the famous Pepsi Challenge: Pepsi asked consumers to blind-taste-test Pepsi vs. Coke; most preferred Pepsi. But Coke maintains its high market share partly because when people are asked to nonblindly taste Coke and Pepsi (as they always do in the real world) people prefer Coke. Think of it as the brain combining two sources of input to make a final taste perception: the actual taste of the two sodas and a preconceived notion (probably based on great marketing) that Coke should taste better.
This is truly remarkable data. People come to expect Product A is better than Product B, and that expectation drives their experience...even when they actually think Product B is better when branding is not available.
On signaling: I'd say it's much more influential than we realize. Further, there is a sort of "self-signaling" at play. It's a deeper discussion, but I believe people's choices are a part of a narrative they are telling about themselves, and it contributes to their experienced happiness/satisfaction (Kahneman) as they traverse life. We all want to be the kind of character in the story who "appreciates good whisky" and "spends more for quality." We don't want to be the guy who has undiscriminating tastes.
As someone who is very annoyed by what one might call the 'attitude of victimhood', I've come to be persuaded victimhood and privilege are the defining characteristics of any discussion about ethics, and by extension politics. I've done so reluctantly, using objective assessment.
While the manifestations of Wokeism are often clumsy and wrongheaded and outright ridiculous for some of the reasons you cite ('emotional bigotry' makes some sense), the beating heart of the movement seems to have the correct moral intuition that life isn't fair & there are things we can do to correct the most egregious outgrowths of this in order to alleviate suffering & expand flourishing.
@fozz appeals to sustainability in iterative games (an argument that's vulnerable to simple rug pulls)
One of the most common objections to consequentialism is based on a hypothetical situation in which a surgeon has to do a delicate brain operation on a patient who happens to be the ideal organ donor for four other patients in the hospital, each of whom will die shortly unless they receive, respectively, a heart, a liver, and – for two of them – a kidney. The doctor is highly skilled, and is confident of her ability to carry out the brain surgery successfully. If she does, her patient will lead a more or less normal life.
We agree that the consequentialist must accept that, in these circumstances, the right thing for the surgeon to do would be to kill the one to save the four, but we do not agree that this means that consequentialism should be rejected. We think, on the contrary, that the appearance of unacceptability here comes from the fact that this is one of those rare cases in which the action is right only if perfect secrecy can be expected. Moreover, it is not an action that should be recommended to others.
It's more than sustainability, as I said, though I think sustainability is at the heart of the issue and will be fine for this discussion.
I'm advocating for a sort of hybrid of utilitarianism & deontology. Ultimately, the ends are what matter. But it turns out the best way of ensuring sustainably good ends involves honoring certain non-strictly-utilitarian principles in certain circumstances.
In your thought experiment, I'd say a correct moral decision would be for the patient to choose to die in order to save the four people who would benefit from his organs. The logic is related non-directed organ donations, where the donor lives.
Deontologically, we'd need to normalize rational, voluntary personal sacrifice such that surgeons would never need to accidently kill patients on purpose to maximize life-saving organ availability. People ought to recognize suffering (regardless of proximity) & feel a very natural obligation to help—as in the child drowning in a shallow pond.
Yes, I am saying people should be willing to sacrifice their own lives to save the lives of others. If by your death you can save 10 other people, while I'm sure we can imagine lots of creative exceptions (e.g. they were 10 Hitlers), but it's generally, and obviously, the right thing to do.
EA recognizes this foundational principle of self-sacrifice.
Giving away all your wealth above subsistence is whack-a-doodle & flies in the face of all of economics. But people are doing it. They're also donating organs to strangers. This will grow to greater and greater levels of sacrifice. Because the logic is airtight. It feels super hard, but there is no escaping the logic.
The characteristic that makes this non-political is that the government (roughly in the same position as the surgeon) has no say in any of this. Your choice to sacrifice self for the sake of others is free and personal.
I think it's more complex than this.
I've little doubt experienced tasters can come to know what they are tasting with some high level of accuracy. The more interesting question is whether the more expensive product is "better" than the cheaper product, considering 'there is no accounting for tastes.'
When you're buying a piece of furniture, let's say a dresser, it's a bit more clear cut. Here's an example:
Let's say you are choosing between a $100 chipboard/cardboard dresser at Kmart or an $800 all real wood dresser with the same dimensions & function.
The real wood dresser is "better" in ways that are demonstrable. It will last much longer, it can be refinished, it will hold a heavier amount of clothes per drawer, the drawer bottoms won't buckle or bend, the drawers will slide as expected, etc. etc. It's objectively better in terms of it's utility. (Plus it carries better signaling value.)
But what if you're trying to choose between two real wood dressers within identical dimensions and materials...but they have different finishing stains with different colors. This is what wine/whisky differences are often about. Which stain is better? And why?
Unless there is a difference in the protection the different stains offer, it's all preference. Value will be dictated by the preferences of the buyer, and those preferences will be driven largely by things like trends, culture, and the maybe the rarity of each stain (which is just signaling if there is no added utility).
It may be, by the way, that whisky A takes 10x the time and effort and money to produce vs. whisky B, so it's much more expensive, but that is no guarantee the taste will actually be preferred on the merits of taste alone. People will say, "Whisky A is MUCH better! They use the best process! I can taste the difference!" But this all takes place in a world where brand preferences are strong partly because of the cognitive failings of human brains, such that people have tricked themselves into wanting things that are actually not as good.
Relatedly, I've had the experience a couple times in the last couple months where I went to a nice restaurant and paid a relatively large amount of money for a meal that I sincerely didn't enjoy as much as I enjoy meals from casual dining joints.
Why do I pay 5-10x the price for a meal I don't enjoy as much?
Mostly signaling. I was on dates, and the stigma attached to a first date at Panera Bread or Panda Express would be too much work to overcome, so I fork out the big bucks to sit in a socially acceptable place and eat socially acceptable food. I bow to convention and signal to my date I'm aware of the norms and capable of participating.
fozz
1yr ago
This strikes me as a weak moral argument.
There isn't any good ethical basis for privileging one human being over another based on their proximity—genetically or geographically—to you. Of course there is a biological basis for this, and it may be practically impossible for most people to overcome this bias. But that doesn't really have any effect on the ethical math.
You just have strong preferences that run counter to ethical concerns.
Better to focus positive efforts on the things close by, to which I am already bound. As for those things far away, the most effective thing I can contribute is a general promise to treat fairly and virtuously with strangers when they come into my life.
This is false.
You could, right now, give money directly to impoverished people across the globe to save/transform their lives.
If you want to participate in morality, you are just as ethically bound to them, you just don't feel it.
fozz
1yr ago
Asking people to choose to forgo unnecessary luxuries so that starving children can eat has nothing to do with being a sociopath.
A narcissistic sociopath might try to pretend this was an unreasonable request for whatever reasons a mind like that might manufacture.
Why do you personally think it's more important for a person to have unnecessary luxuries than for a starving child to eat?
fozz
1yr ago
If you're curtailing other people's flourishing to aviod suffering you're a sociopath.
What do you mean?
fozz
1yr ago
...Why do you think that an act being logical would make it moral? Or vice versa for that matter?
If you want to participate in "morality", which is inextricably meshed with the experience of conscious beings, then the logic is airtight. If you choose not to participate in morality, none of this will concern you.
Do you want to reduce suffering, or do you want to increase flourishing?
You can do both, though the reduction of gratuitous suffering is more urgent.
The objection is simple, regardless of whether it is logical or not, the sort of universalist utilitarianism espoused by Singer and others is fundamentally inimical to human flourishing due to it's tendency to promote sociopathic and self-destructive behavior
Yes, "self" destructive behavior is absolutely necessary. (Sociopathic behavior has nothing to do with it.)
Self-destructive behavior is a dramatic way of saying selflessness, or the lack of selfishness. And normalizing this is a way forward.
Addiction to self is a big part of the problem.
fozz
1yr ago
I'll bet he'll find people without much problem.
And I'll bet he can run a better Twitter with 10% of the staff.
fozz
1yr ago
Participating in morality, should you choose to do so, requires allowing yourself to be persuaded/compelled by rational moral arguments.
You could be compelled by Singer's argument & fail to fully align your actions with what you've been persuaded is right & true. (I'm in this camp.)
The conclusions of EA are hard to follow. They often require one to reorient their life significantly.
They require sacrifice for the welfare of others.
Singer, Caplan, and their apologists are exactly the sort of high IQ idiots I had in mind.
Petty insults aside, what is wrong with Singer's argument?
fozz
1yr ago
Semantics.
I'm persuaded by the ethical arguments. If, in practice, the ethical arguments are not honored, then the "social movement of EA" is uninteresting to me.
fozz
1yr ago
You seem to be confusing is/ought.
If you choose not to give your life to save 10 people, you are a selfish coward.
I don't mean that as harshly as it sounds, as we are all born selfish cowards, wired that way as a result of billions of years of evolution. And then it's reinforced by our culture. It's super hard not to be a selfish coward.
We don't like to think of ourselves as selfish cowards, so we imagine ourselves to be moral, even when the evidence is clear.
3 million children die of starvation each year. You can literally, truly, concretely, actually save a number of their lives. Say, 10 lives. Just by forgoing insanely lavish luxuries that we all treat "middle class" in the West. You wouldn't even have to forfeit your life, just a bunch of your stuff.
Now, I don't believe people should be forced to sacrifice themselves or sell their shit. It's a personal decision they should arrive at after doing the rational/ethical math.
But the math is clear.
fozz
1yr ago
Dear lord.
The concept of being "compelled" by a logical argument should not be this difficult to understand, such that I'm just assuming you're misunderstanding on purpose.
Of course you are free to act in any way you choose. Believing X is the right moral thing to do doesn't guarantee a person will do X.
fozz
1yr ago
...it's a "mugging". Singer's core thesis is that the core determinant of an act's morality is whether it is done with the goal of increasing global net utility. He uses the drowning child example of as a sort of high energy gotcha. "Oh you don't want to increase global net utility? I bet you're the sort of monster who would just stand by and watch a child drown".
The logic is airtight. The objections are some variation of "that's not realistic!" which isn't really an objection. It's just plain true there is no moral difference between a child drowning in front of you and a child starving across the globe, and all the objections I've heard are weak.
Calling a correct argument a "mugging" because you are compelled by reason and intellectual honesty to accept it doesn't really change anything.
I don't see any contradictions between Singer & Benatar. Both are trying to limit suffering. Antinatalism makes good sense to me.
Again, is/ought. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
"If by “equal moral value,” you mean some universalist abstraction like “in the eyes of God” or somesuch, then sure."
Roughly, yes. "God" being, similar to what you said, some kind of abstraction of a universal ethic.
Well, then I’d say it’s quite a daring assertion to call something “obviously morally true” when statistically zero people who have ever lived have believed it or acted upon it...and so on...
This is all false.
There are people who've given their lives for strangers. There are people who've donated organs to strangers. There are people who've sold all their possessions above subsistence and give it to strangers. People who give all their income above subsistence to strangers.
fozz
1yr ago
Robbing Peter to pay Paul buy bed-nets and donate to Democratic causes is not only acceptable but morally laudable if it increases net utility.
Robbing isn't the right thing, because, among other problems, it's not sustainable. It sows clear distrust & it won't ultimately help you win in pursuit of your value. It works once or twice, but falls apart in an iterative game. (But yes, robbing from the rich in order to feed impoverished children is obviously ethically solid in a vacuum.)
Instead, people ought to be compelled to freely give to the most effective charities via rational arguments & through the example of others. It needs to grow organically into a cultural norm. And, again, robbing is an unstainable norm.
See Singer's 'Child Drowning in a Shallow Pond' thought experiment for the key premise of EA.
EA contains the rational argument for why each person is morally responsible for every other person, regardless of geographic or relational/genetic proximity.
Elon's actions will lead directly to profits in a way that is easy to understand.
Twitter was bleeding money, losing $1.1 billion in 2020 alone.
They had a $13M meals program that was feeding less than 10% of the staff because no one showed up to HQ. It was costing hundreds of dollars per meal, with more people preparing food than eating it. It's laughably stupid.
My sense is Twitter was hyper-bloated, with ~10x more employees than they needed, so 90% layoffs seem about right. It's a microblogging website that grew to have a bunch of completely superfluous positions with people who literally contributed nothing.
Right-sizing the staff, cutting needless expenses, adding a revenue stream with a re-imagined Twitter Blue, reducing trolls/bots—these are all common sense. The advertisers will come back, as the only metric that matters is user engagement, and it's at an all time high & will continue to grow through 2024 with what will be the most "entertaining" election in U.S. history.
Elon will turn Twitter into the profitable Center of the Internet, and a certain tribe will be pretending the sky is falling the whole time.
#RIPTwitter & #Twitterisdown was trending during the highest engagement period in Twitter's existence. It's the fakest news that's ever been.
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