hustlegrinder
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User ID: 719
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Can anyone offer me an argument in favor of ad-blockers that doesn't amount to some kind of misanthropic "The system, man, it's broken; so whatever I do against the system is a-ok"? I really can't even create a steelman for the ad-block position.
First, tracking is in fact a big problem and ad blockers are a practical solution to it. The adoption of ad blockers, by crippling the ability to track users in browsers, incentivises the ad networks to develop other ways to deliver ads that don't rely on tracking to such extent. See for example https://www.ethicalads.io/ . Hopefully that reduces the amount of surveillance that's going on.
Second, ad-blockers may need to be discouraged, but definitely shouldn't be banned; the last thing we need are more regulations on what we are and aren't allowed to run on our hardware. If the content creators and other businesses want their users to engage with ads or otherwise bring revenue, that's great, and such businesses should ensure that by means of technology or by the choice of their business model. Consider what Apple is doing with iOS, they arguably imposed a greater restriction on the vast majority of their users (in that all the apps and purchases have to go through the App Store), meanwhile jailbreaking your iPhone is legal and always has been. Or, in fact, see the recent efforts by Google. No regulation is necessary here.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
I think it can be argued that being able to install an ad blocker is within the standard controls of a web browser as a medium.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
This is certainly true, as I nodded to in my original post advertising is actually excellent for a market, but similar to banking, needs some sort of strong regulatory framework to be best used. To be clear I'm not advocating for full eradication of advertising, I'm advocating the position that advertisements are currently highly effective, and they will become far more effective in the future. We need to have a discussion about where we draw the line, preferably before the line gets crossed. That may be at the level of advertisement we have today, it may be at a different spot. But too few people know or care about how effective ads are.
Consider that your opposition to ads, is in fact precisely due to the ads being not as effective as they might be. The average CTR rate for an ad is in the ballpark of 1%. Average conversion rate in e-commerce is about 3%. It means that for 10,000 ads you see there are like 3 products you are going to buy. 9997 of them end up useless. 9900 of them you wouldn't even click on. The average ad ends up just cluttering visual space for you.
And then imagine a world where say at least 1 out of 10 ads actually suggests something you might want to buy.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
That’s a different concern.
Fair enough, however you should also see that using adblockers in that capacity is not sustainable - essentially you are using something that was supposed to be paid for by ads for free. Eventually as the ad blockers gain adoption, content creators are going switch to some other revenue model, like directly charging you for content e.g. what the news websites started to do. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but YMMV
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Of course the indigenous people should have the right to prevent building power plants or anything else on their land - and so should everyone else. It’s called private property. Offer them enough money or other incentives and they’ll agree to let you build it, this is the only moral way to resolve the situation.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
As someone who generally enjoys your writing - please don’t fall into the trap of granting assent to Putin just because doing so runs contrary to the disingenuous mainstream narrative. He really is an enemy of freedom; almost a quintessential looter type out of Rand novels
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
That is also my perspective.
Except why condemn the cynical western backers in this particular case? For all we know they might have the same assessment; surely it’s unreasonable to expect them to broadcast it in their media right as they supply Ukraine with armaments and promises
The amount of otherwise reasonable people who seem to have drunk the coolaid in earnest gives me a pause too, though
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
All the non-authoritarian states are supporting Ukraine, that’s true, but the problem with the good vs. evil mindset is the Ukrainian state itself which isn’t good by any reasonable standard
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Regime change.. towards what? Alright, suppose Putin wins and suppose it triggers some regime changes in the West — a few European Putin LARPers might come to power — then what? Is your vision of the future a world littered with dysfunctional authoritarian states on the range from Putinist Russia to North Korea?
Then about the vaccinations… I made a Pfizer shot last year. It’s actual effect on my life is zero. Yes, I get it, it’s a bad precedent. Yes, I get it, the governments should stay the fuck out of regulating what you do to your body. Yes, I get it, it can and will get worse i the future. That said: trading a Western government for a Russian one is trading away a whole lot of your actual, important, substantial freedoms for something that is not (at least yet) a big deal.
John Galt had a hidden valley in the mountains, we the Russians have the western countries; where would you go if you achieved your stated ideal of dismantling the western regime? Don’t delude yourself thinking you’d fare well in Russia. That requires either doing nothing of importance (what kind of life is that), swearing fealty to degenerates, or indeed going against the govt and winning.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
True, Russia bad and must be stopped; Ukraine didn’t cross any red lines and will never be a credible threat to the West; supporting it is in best interests of the western countries.
That said, the Ukraine state is corrupt, authoritarian and highly nationalist; think twice before labelling it’s government morally good.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
If the government can unilaterally send you to die in the trenches then your freedom is already crushed
Likewise if a country cannot raise enough people who care about it enough to fight for it on their own volition, then perhaps it ceasing to exist as an independent entity is not such a bad thing
Right-Libertarian anti-racism policy.
I’m sure you’ve all seen a lot of awful anti-racism/diversity/etc policies put in place by leftists; every thread here features at least some examples.
That said, I really don’t like racism. It is one of the most disgusting instances of collectivist thinking: judging an individual for the actions of a group of people that ostensibly contains him; in this case people get lumped together by skin color.
Suppose you are a billionaire and want to decrease the amount of racism in the world; what decent options do you have?
Suppose you are a CEO of a corporation, what policies do you put in place to ensure there is no discrimination based on skin color in hiring, promotion, etc?
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
First, I’d appreciate if you pointed me towards a more detailed discussion of these regulations — what do they demand the CEO does; how is the compliance checked; what is the mechanism of enforcement?
Second, what do you think are the policies of the ideal world? Suppose you removed all the affirmative action laws — what do you propose to do next? Surely just doing that is not enough, the pre-affirmative action America wasn’t a place free of racism; in fact, quite the opposite.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Yeah, what I would like to see are the concrete stories, requirements, laws, court decisions, etc that would make me see red — it’s the specifics that interest me. I’m well aware of the general argument
Back to the intent of the original post, I don’t intend to argue against the principle of freedom of association — I support it wholeheartedly, and am interested in ideas that reduce racism and at the same time do not go against the spirit of such principle.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Fair enough; the first question better represents what I meant to ask.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
My comment is just about this bit. Imagine 5000 Koreans migrated to the Bronx. Through discipline, patience, and sacrifice they’ve made for themselves businesses and a safe community with low criminality. Everything they earned they worked for. Should they have to send their kids to a school filled with non-Koreans, say Dominicans or Haitians, who have average worse values and higher criminality? Should they be forced at threat of ruin to hire non-Koreans?
No, I don’t think we should infringe on their freedom of association.
However, when I hire a Korean to work for my company I don’t want him to promote or hire people based on them being or not being Korean. When my company is small I can ensure that personally. But when it gets big, then I must replace my own judgement (a limited resource) with some kind of a company policy. What options do I have here?
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
You see, I view all the HBD stuff as a motte and bailey thing. Obviously there might be some population level differences, but then still, one has a moral duty not to draw Bayesian inferences out of these statistics and instead evaluate every person on their own merits, disregarding traits like race, nationality or gender. As long as you do that any proportion you get is fine. That said, obsessing over genes or IQ differences or whatever is always sus. It’s a thoroughly uninteresting topic, unless when used to provide flimsy justifications for racist practices. I don’t care whether or not Blacks have better or worse IQ than Whites on average — I’m dealing with people, not with averages.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Equal opportunity
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
You still should be concerned about stopping your unscrupulous employees making hires and promotions based on race and not on competency
And you still should be concerned about not hiring talented people held back by racism in their previous history, someone might have worse GPA or worse employment history but actually be a better hire
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Putin has repeatedly used ethnic russians as pretexts to intervene, or threaten intervention, around the region. Much of the pre-February rhetoric from Moscow on multiple fronts could be leveraged against Russia's more northern neighbors, which was one of the reasons Europe reacted as strongly as it did when Putin followed through with his threats with actual invasion. Just from this angle, significantly increasing the Russian national population in the border states- who are almost certainly going to locate themselves to the ethnic russian enclaves- strengthens an ethnic-based framing of a future pre-conflict narrative.
I think this is a non-issue that gets propped up as a convenient justification for visa bans, and has no real significance whatsoever.
Wars are fought with soldiers, planes, tanks and missiles, not with flimsy excuses. Providing or withholding such excuses does nothing to help or harm the enemy. Suppose there were zero Russians or Russian-speaking people in Ukraine this February. Would it stop Putin from declaring the war? No. Would it make things harder for Russia on the international diplomacy angle? No. Would it stop Russian tanks from rolling into Ukraine? No. Would it make harder for Putin’s propaganda to boost support for the war among the Russian citizens? No; in fact it would make things easier because an important anti-war thesis is that the Russian army is essentially bombing Russian-speaking cities.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
I like this idea, but since I don’t believe the optics of this could survive for a minute in the US, a better solution came from 2cimirafa, who basically said “keep violent offenders in prison until they’re 60 and give them fast food and video games to keep them humanely fat and sedated.” If that could survive the inevitable Republican swipe of “Democrats want to buy Playstations for every felon in prison” it seems to be a good idea. Keeping violent offenders comfortable and sedated and off the streets should cut down on violence for prison guards, less hardened prisoners they would prey on, and of course the average person.
Well imagine if someone raped and killed your mother, wife and daughter, and then proceeded to laugh at you for the next thirty years, eating Big Macs and playing video games all the while
Would you be okay with this kind of "justice"?
Thing is, some crimes are in fact heinous and must be punished by long imprisonment with dismal conditions (and that only because we can't trust the state with the death penalty). The others probably shouldn't be jailable offences to begin with.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
How should we punish comparatively minor offenses? I think we should come down hard on crimes that don't produce a body like thievery and armed robbery since they lower trust and make people feel unsafe, even if the objective harm they have is minor compared to some white-collar crimes. Just because I don't want those people around doesn't mean I want them to face constant prison violence, though.
Well just fine the criminal, you generally wouldn’t mind if someone stole 1000$ from you and then had to return 2000$.
In case of failed serious violent crimes, maybe indeed the video game prison.
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Propaganda can manufacture any other cause and work with it, they’d just say the Ukrainians planned to retake Crimea and roll with that.
Or remember the time they invented an insane conspiracy theory about NATO plotting to attack Russia with biological weapons developed in secret bio labs in Ukraine? That would work too
Putin doesn’t need a proper casus belli to start a war. He doesn’t need democratic approval; international legitimacy is a lost cause for him, so not a factor too (contrary to Hitler w.r.t. Sudetenland, for instance)
hustlegrinder
1yr ago
Life imprisonment is partially reversible.
Web advertisement itself is a great thing. It solves a big, important problem - connecting businesses and customers, at low cost and awesome efficiency. Besides, the narrative about all-powerful, mind-controlling demonic ads really needs to go away, Dall-E or no Dall-E. I suggest anyone who takes this seriously to switch off the ad blocker for a few minutes and go watch some actual ads, "touch the grass" so to speak. What you'll most likely find is a picture of the product with a price sticker superimposed on it, and maybe some kind of a product description. If you're lucky you may stumble upon an ad that's a bit more creative. Either way, it's not a hypnotic pattern devised by a malicious AI superintelligence with the purpose of injecting irresistible desire to buy into your head.
The real value here is about matching the product ad with the people who actually want it to buy it. The ad networks collect all kinds of data from the user, then use it to decide what ads to show him. That kind of thing allows you to find a paying customer for a few dollars. It's a nice, valuable service that solves an important problem. Try it sometime. Build something useful and sell it on the internet - you'll grow to appreciate the ads. Improving ad network capabilities, that are by the way vastly overestimated by many people including yourself, would be awesome. It would mean that instead of garbage ads peddling things of no interest to you, you'd see ads for things you really need right now (also no, a facebook ad cannot make you buy something you don't want to buy). It would also mean that it'd be easier and cheaper to start or scale a business.
The sad thing about the advertisement industry, however, is that in all likelihood the ads aren't leading us into a capitalist paradise. The side effect of collecting user data for the purpose of serving better ads (the good), is that a whole lot of user data ends up centralised in an ad network's data centers (the bad), and then one way or another ends up in the hands of the state surveillance system (the ugly). The amount and nature of that data is such that it can be used to trace it back to you as a person. There isn't anything remotely "anarcho" about that.
Perhaps we can re-engineer the ad industry so that it doesn't have to collect that much data about the user. I don't think the ad companies would be against that, provided that the quality doesn't drop. That's not a problem that's going to be solved by regulation, though, for obvious reasons.
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