> Advertisers cannot create demand out of thin air - they can only find out what (certain) people want, and present messaging that says, "X fills your existing want because of Y
Sure it can. Not only can advertising generate demand where there is none, it can also change people's opinions.
A prime example of this is the lobster. It was considered a sea roach that nobody ate. It was primarily used as fertilizer or food for prisoners and slaves. Advertising turned a sea roach into a luxury item.
There are plenty of examples of this. Take rockefeller. The guy went from being the most hated man in america into a lovable "philanthropist" with a well funded PR campaign in the early 1900s. He and the ad firm he hired revolutionized opinion making.
> Today, it's been democratised enough to allow your racist aunt to ramble on Facebook about how Obama is actually an alien born on Pluto, sent to America to destroy Christianity.
I was/am a liberal, competent tech worker. And the internet was just as racist and divisive in the 90s and the 00s as it is today and as it will be the next decade. And this is going to shock you, but us "liberal, competent tech workers", vociferously defended all speech. You might want to look up what liberal means. When entities wanted to stifle speech - whether it was hate speech, pornography, gay rights speech, you name it, us "liberal, competent tech workers" defended all of it. You can't have free speech while censoring some speech you disagree with.
But you are right. The problem with today's internet is the influx of a certain group of people. The childish leftists intent on pushing an agenda and censoring speech they disagree. Unfortunately, this group has gotten funding and corporate backing and are pushing censorship everywhere.
> We tend to worship democratising institutions without considering whether or not the people recieving these new powers are capable of handling them with the correct values, motivations, and competencies
Correct values? Who decides what correct values are? Christian fundamentalists? Leftists? It's amazing how our leftists anti-free speech rhetoric is so similar to the chinese, european, saudi and russian anti free speech rhetoric.
"Xi said the internet must be “clean” and vulgar content must be resisted in the field of culture."
"“Uphold a clean and righteous internet space,” the Xinhua news agency cited Xi as saying."
> Treat them with the same respect you would like to be shown when people are unhappy with you.
Why do you think everyone deserves respect?
I prefer the brutal honesty of the internet rather than the fake civility you advocate for. It cuts through the static and gets to the core issue. My experience has been that people dislike harsh comments because many times it contains the truth and they don't want to be confronted by the truth.
Also, instead of crying that the world is harsh, why not toughen up? When did it become fashionable to be so soft and weakminded? Especially over something so silly as github comments?
Personally, I feel the people who are turning the internet into a toxic mess are people like you who attack speech. If you don't like harsh comments, don't read them. What's so hard about that?
Besides, everyone has different levels on what they consider toxic. I and nobody I know considers "jerks" a toxic word. Why should everyone lower themselves to your definition of toxic?
The most "un-celebrity"? I'd say carter is the most "celebrity" ex-president we've had in a long time. He has used his celebrity to advocate for his charities ( habitat for humanity for example ) and for human rights ( same sex marriage, race equality, etc ) and political issues ( north korea, iran, etc ).
If you equate celebrity with making it rain in clubs, then I guess carter is "un-celebrity". But the guy has been the most visible ex-president in media. Think that makes him the most celebrity ex-president in history.
No. This is as silly as vegans saying animals deserve the same rights as humans because we are animals too. Does that mean we have to prosecute a lion that kills a wildebeest? Or what happens when my dog kills a rodent or a cat kills a bird? Should they be imprisoned?
If rivers have rights does it also has responsibility and culpability? What happens if a river overflows and few people drown? Do we punish the river?
A question in the title aside, I love the advocacy embedded in the title. "A growing movement"? From what to what? 2 to 3 people? The article is trying to grow the movement, it isn't reporting on a growing movement.
The only way to give rivers rights is to give it personhood rights in the same vein as corporations. But that means that rivers become privately owned entities. Do we want rivers to be owned by shareholders?
Rivers, like animals, are natural resources. Nations and states are stewards of it.
What about HN's addiction to news about facebook? I thought after a year of relentless facebook spam, we were past this. Now the top two posts are about facebook. We have to kick this habit.
Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Saladin, Tamerlane, almost an endless list of greater military leaders than napoleon. People who actually won and built empires.
I'd even put george washington and Vo Nguyen Giap above napoleon.
The amount of undeserved praise napoleon gets irks me. He was handed the largest empire ( french empire ) with the greatest army and destroyed it in a few years. He is the architect of a few of the military history's greatest follies. The invasion of egypt, the invasion of russia, the continental blockade, amongst others. Every major military endeavor of his was a colossal failure.
Were it not for the artificial propaganda and myth around the guy, he'd be viewed as one of history's greatest military laughingstocks.
Napoleon's greatness wasn't in the military sphere. His genius was in the bureaucratic and legal spheres.
It's funny how there are tons of negative musk articles lately along with tons of negative comments. If I was a cynical person, I'd say there is a targeted campaign against the guy. And it's not just with Musk. When the news supported censorship. And of suddenly the amount of comments supporting censorship skyrocketed all over social media. Maybe it's the russians ( though I doubt it ). But there definitely is manipulation.
> Nothing fundamental is stopping us from creating a synthetic one.
Ethical considerations are preventing us or at the very least limiting the speed of development. But mostly our lack of knowledge of the brain was what stopped us. Now that we are advancing on all fronts, I think we are going to be forced to deal with the ethics of neural/brain creation/destruction/experimentation.
If scientists are able to keep disembodied brains "alive", then it will open up avenues for experimentation and ethical issues.
There are even ethical issues of hybrid organ growth ( starting from the embryonic level ) where human organs are grown in pigs. The question is whether human cells can travel to pig's brains and cause pigs to be "more conscious".
Sigh. Here they go alternating from AI is a "super genius threat" to "it isn't that smart".
Maybe an objective, honest and non-clickbait "Current State of AI" would mean they wouldn't have to swing from one extreme to the other every few months.
However you define "smart", currently AI is mostly domain-specific "smart". Though there have been advances in general AI (non-domain specific AI), but we are nowhere close an autonomous generalized AI.
I'm well aware of the theory. I used to subscribe to it myself when I was younger. I won't go into why reduce population wouldn't affect farm yields since back then, farming was a very physical endeavor requiring many people. If yields did increase, it was most likely because of population increase in the countryside due to europeans fleeing disease ridden cities. Lets not forget that most of the attributed
population decline was due to cities being emptied because city dwellers moved to the countryside. Just like isaac newton did in the 1600s when disease struck england.
I would think that numbers, knowledge, technology and goods from the east had more to do with changing european society than a population decrease.
What do you think impacted korea more? The deaths during the korean war or trade with the west? What impacted european wages more? The deaths during WW2 or the american-led trade system?
Also, throughout history, there have been quite a few plagues ( not to mention mass killings ). Those didn't lift wages. China's wages didn't rise after tens of millions of people died during the taiping rebellion. But you are free to believe what you want.
Black death didn't kill feudalism ( even if we could come to a consensus on what feudalism is ). The societal structure wasn't affected by the black death. Feudalism died as european monarchs and elites got wealthy and used that wealth to centralize power. Feudalism is a result of weak or nonexistent central power. A classic example of this is japan during the meiji period. The emperor centralized power by overthrowing the feudal lords of japan. Which he was able to because he opened trade and gained investment and weapons from the west which gave him enough power to central japan's feudal estates under his direct rule.
The black death didn't cause rises in wages. What caused wages to rises was trade. There as something called the mongol empire ( you might have heard of it ) which allowed europe to trade directly with china, india and the rest of asia. The mongol empire ( particularly the golden horde ) was central to european wealth generation. So much so that when it finally fell in 1480, wealthy merchants were desperately seeking another trade route to the east. A few years later, you have columbus ( you might have heard of him as well ).
The idea that death caused wage rises is ludicrous when you think about it for a second. If population decline causes wage increases then japan would be seeing a huge rise in income. Russia in the 90s should have seen a ridiculous rise in income.
What increases wages are increasing population and increasing trade.
Why is the assumption always that AMZN, GOOG and MSFT doesn't want censorship? Especially when they have taken to censorship like duck to water.
Why is the assumption that when given a "binary choice", entities like China, EU, etc would give in to tech companies? Especially when these companies so easily succumbed to US government/media pressure at home where we have a strong tradition of free speech? When a binary choice is created, it's the companies that have given in, not the state.
Why are these tech companies being portrayed as being on the side of "good", while nations are portrayed as being on the side of "bad". The idea that AMZN, GOOG and MSFT have chinese, european or anyone else's best interest at heart while the PRC, EU or any other state doesn't. Did the british east india company have india's best interest at heart compared to mughal india? Considering how suspiciously we view foreign companies ( especially chinese tech companies ), it's odd that we view our own so highly.
Cybersecurity is something that I feel is best self-taught.
Set up a small network at home. Go crazy with nmap. Set up a few VMs. Go crazy with gdb or windbg. The best way to learn is to break things.
If you have an old application or game with serial #. Try to crack it.
Set up an webserver + sql backend, try injections or other exploits. Profile/audit it to see what is happening.
There are websites that document OS, Database, Webserver, etc vulnerabilities. Install older versions and try these vulnerabilities.
Then you can look into worms, trojans, etc. See their code and how they work. And see if you can come up with ways to stop it. Then see how you would bypass your fix.
You can also look at security ( white hate/black hat ) software that audit, pentest, etc. If it is open source, read the source.
The only reason to shell out the $10K is if you are looking for a job.
Why is it people need to attack the US at every turn? Also, if she was in england, she wouldn't have had this opportunity because we lead the world in medical care.
> That's only your opinion of what it means '[to be] bloomberg'.
No. It's a matter of fact. He works for bloomberg. He gets paid by bloomberg. Hence it is bloomberg. Now if it was an non-bloomberg employee wrote an op-ed piece for bloomberg, nytimes or any other publication, then you would be correct.
> But unless you do, I'll stick with the definition of an oped[1], and that Matt Levine himself took the job because Bloomberg gave him the creative freedom to write what he'd like to write in the manner that he likes to write.
Right. He works for bloomberg. He represents bloomberg. He is a bloomberg employee.
> [1]"An op-ed ... is a written prose piece typically published by a newspaper or magazine which expresses the opinion of a named author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board." (wiki)
That's my point. Matt Levine is affiliated with the editorial board. He is affiliated with the founder of bloomberg itself - michael bloomberg, who pretty much handpicked his op-ed staff. You do realize that michael bloomberg himself writes op-eds for bloombergview right? Are you saying that doesn't represent bloomberg?
Yes. If an op-ed is written by Dimon or Tim Cook or anyone not affiliated with bloomberg, then you are right. It isn't bloomberg. But someone who works for bloomberg writing an op-ed is bloomberg.
He's a bloomberg opinion writer. He is a bloomberg staff member. So it is bloomberg. There are people who highly regard matt levine. But there are also plenty of people who have a low opinion of him. Not sure why you attacked the guy for giving his opinion.
Sure it can. Not only can advertising generate demand where there is none, it can also change people's opinions.
A prime example of this is the lobster. It was considered a sea roach that nobody ate. It was primarily used as fertilizer or food for prisoners and slaves. Advertising turned a sea roach into a luxury item.
There are plenty of examples of this. Take rockefeller. The guy went from being the most hated man in america into a lovable "philanthropist" with a well funded PR campaign in the early 1900s. He and the ad firm he hired revolutionized opinion making.