lollol
6d ago
a quick search (and also IANAL) shows me that the reason why it is illegal for restaurants to ban people based on skin color because of the following:
- banning people from your business establishment is commercial conduct and not protected speech (there is an artistic/creative intent carve out based on the recent ruling but that's not the case here)
- commercial conduct has often been broadly regulated based on the commerce clause (which has its own can of worms but I'm not well versed in this)
- it's been made illegal with the civil rights act of 1964 for discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin.
And like many before, it's pointed out that you can discriminate based on political speech, YMMV lol.
Personally, I think it is immoral to ban people based on their skin color. I think for the good of a multi-racial society (because that's what the US is whether one likes it or not), that should not be a thing because it just leads to segregation/disintegration and would in the long term lead to a fractured and balkanized US. Now I have reservations about upgrading from legal to constitutional, maybe race won't be a concern in the far future and "race" might mean something different and the law needs an upgrade (or maybe not, supreme court justices have been reasonably intelligent so far). So yeah, I think it's good that restaurants cannot ban people for their skin color.
lollol
6d ago
how many persecution campaigns did this community have to endure, how many posters did it lose
I discovered TheMotte on reddit because I chanced upon one of the Quality Contribution thread and thought these ideas weren't my cup of tea at face value but they're sound and reasonable and I want to keep reading in case I change my mind. I think the problem TheMotte faces is lost opportunity for new mottizens, but not all sites need more audience (especially if it's the wrong audience), https://lobste.rs is just a smaller version of hackernews for example. I am not sure of what persecution campaign this community endured, I'm sure the mods and long term members of the site can speak more, and I am thankful for the work of those who made this site continually available. Personally, I make sure to not bring this site to too much attention and only share things from this site that is within the window of acceptability of the target audience I'm sharing to.
To make a more nuanced take, if the government is stepping in to suppress speech, I think there is a bar, a very complicated bar I hope, where they can do that. But if society/majority is making a call on you, there isn't much you can do than play the game (hide it), convert (if you can't beat them join them), take it (suffer the consequences), leave/get around it (find ways to make your own platform). And the beautiful thing about America I find is that I do think if one keeps speaking truth, yes there will be persecution, but reality will unfold in such a way that your truth can't be denied. And Americans are willful and passionate and brilliant and they have the constitution (assuming that is still respect) to protect them to find a way around suppression while waiting for the long archhammer of history to smite the censors.
Of course, there can be many pendulum swings along the way, much has been said about how the tech-right came to be because of how tech moguls were feeling the squeeze of the left and came running into the open arms of conservatives.
Opposition to gay marriage, disgust with fat people, support for Donald Trump, even opposition to immigration could get posters deplatformed. The pandemic was censored! If you believed the pandemic came from the Wuhan coronovirus research laboratory and not Chinese people eating bats, you could be banned. If you didn't want to take a novel mRNA vaccine, you could be banned.
Yeah, from a private website, it's like being banned from a restaurant. And look, a rich man bought out a big square (Twitter/X), and Trump got his own (Truth Social). To me, this feels more like complaining about the consequences. You can be a moon landing denier but don't be surprised if you get punched in the face by an astronaut. Also, specifically about the wuhan coronavirus lab leak theory, I always get annoyed because Jon Stewart went on Colbert and literally just talk about it. I'm here to say that I don't think the stuff with the internet is markedly different if the example is not-internet. Even the case with payment processing, look, if you're a business owner that has only one supplier with monopoly power, and you piss them off because of your political views, well, yeah, good luck with that.
There were government agencies on tax dollars paying employees to scour social media and report "misinformation" to twitter HQ. The website you are posting on right now exists because of threats that the conversations that we have here were too "dangerous" for reddit to continue to host them.
Yeah, i agree that if the government is doing the pressure then it's not good (because it's unconstitutional), but if pressed, I don't think I'm a freedom of speech absolutist in daily life. I personally think that just like how all the Biden pressure campaign stuff came out once Trump is in office, then all the Trump pressure campaign stuff will come out once Trump isn't in office. Though I do think Trump and his admin is more likely to just demand the results directly instead of doing things opaquely like Biden. I think if someone comes from the position of defending free speech, they'll find problems with every administration. And thankfully, America has a vibrant market and populace that is always vigilant on these things (Musk buying Twitter/X, Trump launching Truth Social, this site splitting off from Reddit, I'm hearing about Gab/Parler, watchpeopledie has their own site).
This is a problem if you want to pursue truth and not status.
To me, this is equivalent to if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?.
lollol
6d ago
Why is it both not news and unknown?
Cause this is a problem for online people, not for the "touch grass" offline crowd.
internet being a free-speech zone to its current state as a censored environment
In the real world, there also aren't many free-speech zones for people to truly unleash their most radical, dark, unsavory thoughts. The real reason free speech flourished in the internet is because of anonymity. If people can speak their mind anonymously in real life, you'll hear them much more often too. In the real world, unless you're crazy and just speaking to no one, you're speaking to an audience, and therefore, they know you. They can judge you, they can laugh at you, they can raise their eyebrows or makes visible that they think you're disgusting, they can think twice about doing business with you, and on and on and on.
I would like to add a second point about the internet is that people who champion it being a "free speech zone" is because not only of the anonymity, which protects them from retaliation, but also reach. If you're the guy shunned by the local community, it's unlikely that they would repeat or share your words with others. Yeah you still got free speech, alright, your speech just isn't landing. On the internet, be dark and edgy and you can go viral, and of course "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes".
lollol
6d ago
And to be fair, norms isn't the constitution. The same arguments can be pointing the other way, if Obama/Biden was a better president, their judicial picks wouldn't be blocked by a Republican senate. As much as Trump is a stressor of political norms, I think with matters like this there is a silver lining as it really brings into public consciousness of what people are willing to do away with, and what people want to have instead.
lollol
10d ago
So based on just surface level observations on the differences between how I use AI and my colleagues use AI, the differences between non-programmers, ok programmers, and great programmers remain the same before and after AI:
- ability to navigate uncertainty
- experience and taste
- ability to context switch
- ability to manage priorities and communicate up and down and sideways the corporate structure
- high demand for rigor, precision, attention to detail
- be responsible
Unlike many people, I am definitely on the AI-train: this is a revolutionary technology that will transform the way we live. I do think that people and companies that learn to make use of this technology most effectively will gain compounding benefits over time, just like how it seems households that has a computer 30-40 years ago (either through wealthy parents and/or educated parents) really helped prepare their children for big and better things (although obviously having wealthy and/or educated parents already help a lot too).
If one looks at the AI Index of Ramp (corporate spend management platform), one will find that in monthly AI spend, the top 1% of companies are now hovering close to $10k/month/employee, with a big drop off that follows where top 10% of companies are only spending $800/month/employee, and the median company is only spending $15.70/month/employee. In short, being AI-pilled shows up on the balance sheets. In an interview with Derek Thompson (btw, the other author of Abundance) on his podcast Plain English, Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian says: "All of the companies in that top 1% are extremely technically advanced. They are concentrated in the information sector, so software and media or finance or technical services." I do believe these companies are on to something, these are evidentially smart collective of people with clear objectives (increase productivity, reduce cost, maximize profit, etc.)
On a personal level, after 1 year ish of using Claude/Codex as a software engineer, I've noticed many benefits of AI usage (though . I've shared before that it has freed up time, for example, to engage with this forum. I've also been on and know of multiple projects with which would have never even been greenlit if not for AI-use, such as integrating with an external partner on a legacy platform in a computer language no one in my company knows (tbf, it is a C-family language). There has been many complaints about software reliability in the AI-era, with one poster child being GitHub that got bad enough where prominent projects left for supposedly greener pastures. My company did the opposite in that we are migrating from Atlassian's bitbucket to github, I think in part because of what I summed up in an internal message at the time when asked of should we or not: "a migration to GitHub is essentially a bet on AI, because Microsoft/GitHub for sure will be at the frontier of AI features compared to Atlassian/Bitbucket." Regarding the perception of reduced software reliability in the AI-era, I fondly remember early Q2 this year, when the VP of Support and Operations came to my team and the CEO to complain about the increasing amount of outages; I sat down for about a day, counting up number of changes-features-fixes per release and number of incidents caused by each release before presenting to everyone in a meeting my findings: the rate of errors (number of incident / number of changes-features-fixes) actually reduced per release, but because we were releasing so often due to increased cadence and productivity, the raw number of errors increased. The aforementioned VP btw has come to learn to appreciate AI a lot, even if he doesn't quite understand the terminal still.
This brings me to the thread down low between @RandomRanger and @MaiqTheTrue which provoked this chain of thought, bolded mine:
The suicide rate of 15–19 year olds tripled between 1950 and 1990. It wasn't that mental health professionals were really good back in 1950, there just doesn't seem to have been such severe stress and suffering among young people back in the day.
I found a source for the stat btw.
Why is there more stress and suffering now that would lead to the tripling of teenage suicides? Ask the random person on the street, they'll just point everywhere and tell you to look around and say: "everything is so hard now". I think what is so hard about life in the US, and I guess the modern age, is complexity. Life these days are too complext. It's simple enough (heh) to look at computers as a technology that drives societal complexity. Computers makes certain problems extremely simple ("find the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile using this column of data in Excel"), but then it leads to new problems that are more complex ("now that we know the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile, what does that mean to us?"). Fifty years ago, it was simple enough to understand your own finances, at most you had a bank account, paper checks for the monthly payments on car and your house, and pay in cash for everything else. Now consumers look at managing multiple credit cards, point rewards and loyalty programs for various companies, managing their own IRA/401K/brokerage, etc. Fifty years ago, you marry the person you met in school or the person you met at work, now gotta navigate dating apps, hookup culture, shifting and varied interpersonal relationship expectations, etc. The following statement from @FCfromSSC points to it well:
a homogenous group can build high-complexity society built on cooperation, and then values-drift into incompatible values that make it impossible to maintain that high-complexity society as more and more value drains into zero-sum or negative-sum competition with the outgroup.
And of course btw, complexity is a subsidy for the rich, because only the rich can afford to navigate all the complexities.
So what will AI do to/for us? Personally again, I think AI has greatly simplified my life. There are many questions that I wouldn't even know where to begin to ask, now I just ask. But a colleague has recently confided in me that he thinks of quitting before the year ends, "the rate at which we're going, it's just too fast". I was perplexed at that because I thought AI would have made his life easier like AI did mine. But maybe it wont? what do you think?
lollol
20d ago
Hollywood hates the idea that two imperfect people could be in a loving relationship with each other despite their flaws.
I'm going to disagree on this, there are plenty of movies that shows "two imperfect people could be in a loving relationship with each other despite their flaws". We've got Bonnie and Clyde, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Silver Lining Playbooks. On TV, oh my the examples abound. I think the difference is that Hollywood, and I think normal people, doesn't want to encourage unhealthy co-dependence behaviors, especially when it might affect others. The story that Hollywood likes to tell, because people like to listen to, are two imperfect people who are with each other despite their flaws and are better people for it.
Amanda Seyfried flat-out admits that she wants to break Liz and Billy up. Why?
lollol
21d ago
Completely agreed, this movie should be nominated for Best Picture (and at least Best Editing).
I think one way to model Holmes is the classic "liar vs bullshitter" paradigm.
There are so many questions that come out of this doc:
On the filmmaking side of thing. I noticed today that I am actively trying not to spoil a doccumentary to my coworkers. That's deeply intriguing. I do echo what others already say that this documentary changes the genre of documentary. Documentaries are often just dramatic retelling of facts, this feels like a true exploration, we are being manipulated, we know we are being manipulated, Nathan Fielder knows he is manipulating us, Nathan Fielder knows you the audience knows they're being manipulated, Holmes and Billy knows, etc.. But I suppose you need such a strange and bizarre confluence of factors that could lead to the creation of this piece of captured reality.
lollol
27d ago
Feels like every major tech news should have the accompanying HackerNews thread just for more industry context or related info.
HN threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055304 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50058569
This is an interesting connection for essentially the same hack in the past: https://signalandsilence.substack.com/p/i-think-someone-hacked-the-commissary
Near-simultaneous refrigeration failures or significant issues impacting at least six [US] military installations have now been confirmed through official sources during the last few days, with additional independent confirmation of multiple other incidents.
Self-aware enough to know this sounds insane, but I need you to stick with me.
I suppose the nuance of what I'm saying isn't that I'm against free speech online. I just recognize that because online is an extension of real life, the same things that make real life hard for truly free crazy speech (lack of anonymity, lack of reach if others don't help you spread it) will be imposed on the online environment at some point, that's why it's an online people problem. I was primarily answering "Why is it both not news and unknown?"
I am in favor of applying laws fairly, digital space is different from meat space, but there are overlaps and equivalents. If there should be differences, it should be made clear. TheMotte has the mods and people can pre-filter that opinions by voting on comments/report them. I personally think it's fine, I haven't seen any mod action that I disagree with or thinks that it makes the discussion worse.
Ok, fine, I'll extend the analogy. You can be a moon landing denier but don't be surprised if you get punched in the face by an astronaut. And yes, the astronaut should expect that the punchee will seek assault charges. If we look at the detail of the incident btw, charges were never filed.
Jun 15, 2021, that was still in the midst of Covid, not even 2 years.
Yeah, I already said "I don't think I'm a freedom of speech absolutist in daily life". Like many things, I do think there is a gradation of how much free speech do we expect for certain things. Maybe the higher standard here is what is good and what is necessary. In the US, it's norms and culture first, law next, then constitution last. I suppose since I live here, I like to believe the higher idea is the constitution, and it only protects my speech from the government, not protection of speech from private actions.
I believe this should be Murthy v. Missouri (June 2024) and I suppose your summary is correct but uhh no it was struck down because of standing. as at least one person points out: "A reminder that kicking the case on standing should not be regarded as an opinion on the merits of the case. Should only be regarded as an opinion that they do not have standing to sue."
And yes, there is a reason why I am sympathetic to the tech-right, I think that there is some level of subterfuge here so that the Biden government can hide behind and have plausible deniability on first amendment rights. I don't think you're wrong to point that out. It's just that what I say is: "Though I do think Trump and his admin is more likely to just demand the results directly instead of doing things opaquely like Biden. I think if someone comes from the position of defending free speech, they'll find problems with every administration." It's just very natural for people in position of power to want to shut down the speech of others that criticize them.
Ok, and I never use twitter (certainly because of the lack of nuanced discussion), and I go to this site. People go to places that serve them and their needs. And the owners of the site can do whatever they wish, that's just how businesses work. Forcing a business to serve any political view is itself forcing a political view on them.
I already wrote elsewhere so I'll put it here again:
I can benefit from the work of others, that's just natural of daily life. Of course I thank you all for it, and yeah, I'm here after all. Yet it's just as much that I think the censor work is futile. I'll do things to get around the censor just as much as you, especially when I think my speech might somehow lead to me back in real life and lead to some kind of unwanted attention/retaliation. But I suppose what I want to really get is that online can be thought of as different, but just an extension of real life. In real life, also feel free to write political screeds and nail them anonymously to electrical poles (though Flock cameras is probably gonna get around that). If the truth one speak is important, it will come out in the long term. Of course in the short term, you might be persecuted.
Yeah, and the censors sometime succeed. People couldn't drink alcohol for a while. People couldn't make movies where the bad guy wins or show some nudity. But thankfully there are always reactions against tyrannic actions, and the American people has a way to express their dissatisfaction. The tech people turns right because Biden made it hard (I would argue more because of money but the speech thing must be infuriating). Hispanics will turn on Trump because Trump made it hard (I would argue more because of money but the immigration thing must be infuriating). And so the pendulum swings. And I disagree that the internet will be closed, as long as there is anonymity and shared discussion space, the internet will always be open.
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