Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

But places like China and elsewhere in SE Asia that tried saw it go away until they were reinfected by others that didn't. (Of course, this is not an endorsement of everything China has done).

What does that prove? Since we do not live in a world where every government could do what China did even if it wanted to, wasn't that inevitable?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

There was no reality, ever, in which any nation (other than an island that intended to shut itself off from the rest of the world forever) could have locked down, waited for a vaccine, and then reopened and avoided spread of the virus. The endeavor is so flawed I find it amazing to be even having this discussion.

A country that shuts down and gets vaccinated saves a lot of lives, which is the real point. Yes, no one can indefinitely avoid the spread of the virus. But that doesn't mean so many people need to die. People are dying right now in China because so many old people didn't want to get vaccinated. They did a great job of buying time, but didn't use that time as well as they might have.

The only viruses we've managed to contain in the fashion you are advocating were MERS and Ebola. Why? Because they are very difficult to transmit from person to person. The virus most like Covid, SARS, spread significantly but had a limited lifespan in part because it was also far more difficult to transit than Covid.

Are you kidding? Ebola is *not* hard to transmit. But it is much more lethal and generally scares the shit out of people, so they take it quite seriously. All of the conservatives who have discovered principled reasons that the government shouldn't have public-health powers to combat COVID felt exactly the opposite when Obama was the President and Ebola was a thing. They did not give a single shit about individual civil rights -- they wanted everyone who might spread Ebola to be locked up.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Being irritated at something dumb is thoughtful. You're pointing out the dumb, which is an insistence on higher thought. An insistence on logic over emoting.

Would you say Lewis black is emoting in his routine? No. The frustration is not personal. The frustration is general, at a lack of competent, rational thinking.

I am not above emoting, but that's limited to things like our pernicious justice system. There, at the unfairness of that shitshow, yes I get offended. But again, it's not personal. You'll never hear me say, "That upsets me," or "that makes me feel [insert]" without offering a valid factual basis for the reaction. Without that, who cares how I feel? If I don't have a concrete critique of that to which I'm responding, I've nothing to say. If all I have is to say "That upsets me," I see no reason to speak.

Being emotional does not preclude being thoughtful. In your world, when people with whom you disagree (and invariably to your left) say they are offended about something, you say they are emotional in a way that means they are incapable of rational thought, and that gives you license to disregarded whatever they are saying. When you disagree with someone, you are emotional about it, but of course you are always capable of rational thought, definitionally it would seem. When someone to you right with whom you disagree says something, emotional or otherwise, you describe them as stupid, and so it doesn't matter whether they are emotional or not.

All sorts of people get emotional, but when people to your left do it, that's when you call it out, as a way to avoid engaging with their views.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What does that prove? Since we do not live in a world where every government could do what China did even if it wanted to, wasn't that inevitable?

I mean, no? There was no way of knowing for sure how the thing would mutate or whether vaccines or other treatments or practices would be developed to stop the spread.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

I mean, no? There was no way of knowing for sure how the thing would mutate or whether vaccines or other treatments or practices would be developed to stop the spread.

(1) Without the benefit of hindsight, do those things make it any *more* likely that China's lockdowns were going to be able to work indefinitely? No.

(2) With the benefit of what we know now, re-infection from other countries was inevitable, and pretending to forget what we've learned doesn't change that.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

I am curious as to whether a one whole-earth three weekend lockdown would have ended it.

Probably but since no one did it … here we are.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Maybe you want to read that thread again, because you're missing the point. You and Elon both think Twitter should just let anything go because so what if a few people are offended. The issue is not that a few people get offended. The problem is that lots of people get hot and bothered and start doing things IRL that have real-world consequences.

That's not Twitter's responsibility. That's not anyone's responsibility except for the nuts doing crazy things IRL.

The duty to "Combat misinformation" should not belong to platforms. They should be allowed to ban what they deem abhorrent or with which they do not desire to be associated. But they should not be compelled to act as "information quality control" for some ever shifting definition of society's best interests.

If people want to believe nonsense, that's on them. If they act badly as a result, we have law enforcement to address that.

This idea of pre-emptive avoidance of bad behavior via manipulation has a Huxley/Orwell stink to it. A kissing cousin intellectually to China's "Social Credit" policy. I think invoking Orwell is a Godwin's Law violation of sorts (not Huxley, who I think isn't appreciated enough), but here, that smell is so pungent its apt.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Being emotional does not preclude being thoughtful. In your world, when people with whom you disagree (and invariably to your left) say they are offended about something, you say they are emotional in a way that means they are incapable of rational thought, and that gives you license to disregarded whatever they are saying. When you disagree with someone, you are emotional about it, but of course you are always capable of rational thought, definitionally it would seem. When someone to you right with whom you disagree says something, emotional or otherwise, you describe them as stupid, and so it doesn't matter whether they are emotional or not.

All sorts of people get emotional, but when people to your left do it, that's when you call it out, as a way to avoid engaging with their views.

Their views are rarely rooted in circumspect thought. Often, they are driven by and entirely derive from feelings.

Feelings are fine for relationships. But one's feelings, which are inherently subjective and frequently not tested via rigorous application of logic and assessment of whether such feelings should be foist upon society at large, are not the stuff on which sane, sober policy decisions should be made.

And this is not aimed at the left. The right is every bit as emotive. They've been whining about "losing their country and culture" for years now. And it's simply not true. Things change. That's constant. Their culture is a throwback. And historically the country was and has always been more a melting pot than a lily white Mayberry.

Their feelings made them gullible targets for Trump who then ran the country in complete unreality for four years and split the damn place down the middle. All based on myths, on feelings.

ETA: I suspect you would assert that we can stop people from being rubes, being slaves to their feelings, by moderating the content to which they are exposed on places like Twitter. That is a facially credible solution. It’s also authoritarianism lite. That is manipulation of the crowd.

Of course, certain actors (states, corps, etc.) have manipulated the crowd for as long as there have been crowds to manipulate. But to advocate for it so nakedly as is being done today is both scary and counterproductive. It is scary because it is an arrogant and dystopian concept. It is counterproductive because, as we can see, the people sought to be manipulated will simply lose trust in the platforms and instead follow even more aggressively the messages of people like Trump.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

That's not Twitter's responsibility. That's not anyone's responsibility except for the nuts doing crazy things IRL.

The duty to "Combat misinformation" should not belong to platforms. They should be allowed to ban what they deem abhorrent or with which they do not desire to be associated. But they should not be compelled to act as "information quality control" for some ever shifting definition of society's best interests.

If people want to believe nonsense, that's on them. If they act badly as a result, we have law enforcement to address that.

This idea of pre-emptive avoidance of bad behavior via manipulation has a Huxley/Orwell stink to it. A kissing cousin intellectually to China's "Social Credit" policy. I think invoking Orwell is a Godwin's Law violation of sorts (not Huxley, who I think isn't appreciated enough), but here, that smell is so pungent its apt.

Which Orwell book are you referencing? Coming Up For Air? Keep the Aspidistra Flying? Down and Out In Paris and London?

I can’t think of a single thread that will tie those three.

Or do you mean Animal Farm and 1984? Because if that is what you mean than you are as poorly read as Ty himself.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Their views are rarely rooted in circumspect thought. Often, they are driven by and entirely derive from feelings.

Feelings are fine for relationships. But one's feelings, which are inherently subjective and frequently not tested via rigorous application of logic and assessment of whether such feelings should be foist upon society at large, are not the stuff on which sane, sober policy decisions should be made.

And this is not aimed at the left. The right is every bit as emotive. They've been whining about "losing their country and culture" for years now. And it's simply not true. Things change. That's constant. Their culture is a throwback. And historically the country was and has always been more a melting pot than a lily white Mayberry.

Their feelings made them gullible targets for Trump who then ran the country in complete unreality for four years and split the damn place down the middle. All based on myths, on feelings.

ETA: I suspect you would assert that we can stop people from being rubes, being slaves to their feelings, by moderating the content to which they are exposed on places like Twitter. That is a facially credible solution. It’s also authoritarianism lite. That is manipulation of the crowd.

Of course, certain actors (states, corps, etc.) have manipulated the crowd for as long as there have been crowds to manipulate. But to advocate for it so nakedly as is being done today is both scary and counterproductive. It is scary because it is an arrogant and dystopian concept. It is counterproductive because, as we can see, the people sought to be manipulated will simply lose trust in the platforms and instead follow even more aggressively the messages of people like Trump.

What policy decisions are made on Twitter?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Which Orwell book are you referencing? Coming Up For Air? Keep the Aspidistra Flying? Down and Out In Paris and London?

I can’t think of a single thread that will tie those three.

Or do you mean Animal Farm and 1984? Because if that is what you mean than you are as poorly read as Ty himself.

Why I Write Some editions include “A Hanging.” You’ll get everything I said in one place perhaps, in under 100 pages.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

What policy decisions are made on Twitter?

Most.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Why I Write Some editions include “A Hanging.” You’ll get everything I said in one place perhaps, in under 100 pages.

So when you say “Orwell” you mean 100 pages of provably 10,000 he wrote, and none of what the mob (hi Ty!) thinks of as Orwellian?

Do you not see how you are either poorly read, or not a good advocate for your point?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

That's not Twitter's responsibility. That's not anyone's responsibility except for the nuts doing crazy things IRL.

It's cute that you have your own ideas about who should be responsible for such things, but so do governments, and what Twitter and other internet companies have found is that they need to do some policing or the governments decide to step in.

eta: BTW, that idea is core to the Twitter thread I shared that kicked off this exchange, and then I repeated it, but you still seem to have missed it completely, so I am repeating it again. Each time shorter, to help you follow. Maybe you got emotional on this topic and had a hard time dealing with the logical arguments being made?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Their views are rarely rooted in circumspect thought. Often, they are driven by and entirely derive from feelings.

Feelings are fine for relationships. But one's feelings, which are inherently subjective and frequently not tested via rigorous application of logic and assessment of whether such feelings should be foist upon society at large, are not the stuff on which sane, sober policy decisions should be made.

And this is not aimed at the left. The right is every bit as emotive. They've been whining about "losing their country and culture" for years now. And it's simply not true. Things change. That's constant. Their culture is a throwback. And historically the country was and has always been more a melting pot than a lily white Mayberry.

Their feelings made them gullible targets for Trump who then ran the country in complete unreality for four years and split the damn place down the middle. All based on myths, on feelings.

ETA: I suspect you would assert that we can stop people from being rubes, being slaves to their feelings, by moderating the content to which they are exposed on places like Twitter. That is a facially credible solution. It’s also authoritarianism lite. That is manipulation of the crowd.

Of course, certain actors (states, corps, etc.) have manipulated the crowd for as long as there have been crowds to manipulate. But to advocate for it so nakedly as is being done today is both scary and counterproductive. It is scary because it is an arrogant and dystopian concept. It is counterproductive because, as we can see, the people sought to be manipulated will simply lose trust in the platforms and instead follow even more aggressively the messages of people like Trump.

I was describing the stuff you say, not the stuff other people say. Lots of people have feelings and emotions. Very few people don't. The way you react to them has everything to do with the substance of their political views, relative to yours.