In no way do the benefits outlined by OP even come close to outweighing the systemic risks posed by omnipresent surveillance coupled with precise targeting of individualized persuasive messaging with the intent of behavioral change.
The way targeted advertising is currently implemented is a mass violation of privacy and autonomy, a clear and present threat to democracy and liberty, and an indicator of the complete ethical collapse of the US tech sector.
The converse is also true -- a wide range of drugs are subject to metabolism by gut microbes. This can throw off plasma concentrations and reduce effectiveness, or cause unwanted side effects or unexpected toxicity in the worst cases.
Sorry I don't quite follow your comment. What does free speech have to do with unregulated, unconsented mass surveillance and violation of end user privacy?
That "new" social network already exists. It's called Snapchat. I think it's an open question whether social networks will even continue to exist in their current form. There was a time when people connected over Yahoo Chat and AIM...
Possibly naive question from a non-physicist... does this not follow from relativity as a natural a consequence of the effect gravity/mass has on spacetime?
By that I mean that the edges of galaxies experience a "reference" spacetime (e.g. constant period), while the interiors experience a stretched out version spacetime (i.e. inverse time dilation and length constriction)?
Not sure I agree. Inheritance refers to flow of influence on properties from parent to child. I think anything beyond that high level definition requires additional qualifiers (e.g. genetic heritability). Inheritance is typically not deterministic, even in the case of genetic heritability.
For example, the statement that tall parents will always have tall children is incorrect, though there is a strong bias. I would be curious to see how the probabilistic linkage between parent and child height compares to that for language. My guess is that parent language has a stronger effect than 99.9% of SNPs identified in GWAS.
If you really think about the difference between the two inheritance scenarios you outlined, it's that one mechanism of influence occurs at a scale that readily admits direct observation and perturbation while the other doesn't.
I don't think we (humans) know anywhere near enough about how genes compare and interact with other factors to support an argument either for or against your final statement.
What is this "free speech" on the net people that speak of? Has it ever existed?
With few exceptions the right to post in a forum has always been at the pleasure of the mods/sysop. In fact, the quality of discussion is usually proportional to how effectively the mods cull the off topic content and wield the ban hammer against the trolls. It has been this way since the days of the dial in BBS.
If the people who believe in X are unwelcome in a particular forum, then no one is stopping them from building their own. Maybe they don't benefit from the network effects of a Reddit, but a Reddit derives zero or even negative benefits from hosting them, so fair deal.
I don't see why this should be very surprising to people. It's not difficult to think of heritable traits that have nothing to do with genetics such as: social status, money/property, spoken language, etc. Biological phenomena exist on molecular, cellular, organismal, population, and planetary scales. The assumption that genetics would be the only mode of entanglement would seem to be overly reductionist.
A better term to use would be ancestry. There is a very strong social component to race and ethnicity. Case in point, I know a number of people who "pass" - meaning 99.9% of people incorrectly guess their race/ethnicity and they don't bother to correct anyone. Perhaps you have interacted with some of these types without ever knowing.
A manager can't follow each individual employee every moment of the day.
To be a little more abstract, I'm talking about the degree of privacy and autonomy that workers are afforded. The reason people find the idea of wristband tracking objectionable is because it provides a means to reduce the autonomy of large numbers of workers beyond what was previously feasible.
I think the underlying assumption that the "amazing transparency" enabled by crypto currencies will necessarily lead to a fairer more humane world is dangerously naive.
Does it not occur to people how an immutable, publicly inspectable ledger that records all your transactions might be abused by criminals and/or corrupt authoritarian governments?
Maybe HN is the wrong place to quote 90s rap songs, but these guys knew a thing or two about criminality and human nature.
"Rule Number Uno, never let no one know
How much dough you hold, cause you know
The cheddar breed jealousy, 'specially
If that man f---ed up, get yo' a-- stuck up" -Biggie Smalls (10 Crack Commandments)
Not leave things up to chance?! Is the universe not inherently probabilistic? I'm guessing you mean make things a little more deterministic than they are now in terms of human evolution? Maybe, but I think its important to ask whether or not we already exist in some sort of thermodynamic equilibrium with the rest of the universe (on an evolutionary spacetime scale).
I also think it's not totally accurate to say that most species have gone extinct vs have evolved into something else.
Unrestricted gene editing in humans is probably a bad idea. (1) Evolution has been pretty effective to this point, (2) decreasing genetic variability will make humans as a species more susceptible to extinction from a single event, and (3) it will probably backfire as humans do not possess the foresight to know what the world will be in 1-3 generations and what traits might predispose their descendants to success.
Hell what we think of as genetic "diseases" give an evolutionary advantage under the right circumstances (ex. sickle cell anemia + malaria, cystic fibrosis + cholera).
My tinfoil hat theory is that there is currently a giant transfer (or several transfers) of wealth going on outside of the purview of regulators (e.g. evasion of sanctions). The big uptick was the dark money moving into bitcoin and other cryptos. The bullish HODL propaganda is meant to pull in people to (a) provide camouflage, and (b) buttress/stabilize the price so the dark money can get out. And the suckers are the average Joes who are going to be left holding the bag once all the dark money moves out.
This is pure speculation, and I have absolutely no evidence to back this up.
I really don't like the authors shoehorning a linear model into this work. I perceive it as an attempt to give the article an undeserved veneer of statistical/mathematical rigor.[1]
I think their hypothesis would be much better supported by typical social science approaches, such as citation and quotation of primary sources and comparative study.
For example, how does the Sicilian Mafia compare with the Camorra (Naples) and 'Ndrangheta (Calabria)? Did these organizations undergo a similar expansion during the same time period? Were their origins and expansions rooted in similar phenomena?
The way targeted advertising is currently implemented is a mass violation of privacy and autonomy, a clear and present threat to democracy and liberty, and an indicator of the complete ethical collapse of the US tech sector.