Every social media platform is manipulated by it's owners and elites. There's no way to get around it, not when your KPIs are user engagement and advertising dollars.
Twitter has become a particularly nasty version of it. In the before times, Google, Twitter, Reddit, etc. usually spent their efforts trying to manipulate things in a mostly benign way.
If you like free markets, then you must be opposed to Twitter. This is a market controlled by a few. Competition is rigorously hunted down. Lies and fake social proof packaged into "free speech." Only the chosen ones are allowed audience.
This is the opposite of capitalism. This is the worst of cronyism.
Force switching all accounts to unfollow Democracts and follow Republicans and Elon, signal boosting right wing conspiracy theorists, blocking or suspending left or liberal accounts, it's just naked power centralization all the way down...
This is the only comment you made so far that made sense, with clear assertions and references. Everything else was unfounded or inflammatory without any concrete assertion, which is why it vibed like "Fox News talking points."
While I do think what you describe under the label of "liberal universalism" mostly makes sense, I do challenge it's consistency. By all measures, some countries are trending towards becoming liberal democracies. Why shouldn't we help them?
Ukraine being a viable liberal democracy, a useful geopolitical ally, and in opposition to a destabilizing and dehumanizing autocracy, makes for a perfect candidate for support beyond naive global liberalism. It is in our interests in many practical terms, separate from ideology.
Fraud sucks and is ever evolving. Everyone gets hit in increasingly elaborate scams, and companies with degrading services makes it easier.
Some things I'm surprised weren't in the article, given that the author describes extensive background in security:
1. Suspiciously well timed fraud attempts happen when you are vulnerable, because the attacker is tipped off. Travelling and visiting unfamiliar locations raises a lot of smoke, information wise. Relying on secrets doesn't work, because information is leaked in an uncountable number of ways. You should no longer be thinking "did my card number, phone number, PID, or other secret get stolen?" It should instead be "given that my info was stolen, did anything bad happen and who do I need to securely talk to?"
2. Always blow off incoming calls, you can always get a callback or fix later, and check email, text, or other comms to see if something important is going on. Saying anything is information. As little as a few seconds of your voice being recorded can be used to generate a usable AI voice clone, and at worse it only takes a few minutes. The act of answering a phone call is information, confirming that your phone number is active and belongs to you.
Ironically, the reliance on a local CU also seems to be a miss. IME, big evil banks are more reliable in this area. They get scammed way more often, and as a result are much more resistant to these attacks via pure attrition.
This fits what I've read. Data driven decision making is the way to go, but good data is hard to come by in these fields. We have no baseline for many parts of physical health, let alone mental health. Every time a pop culture scientist tries to justify their world perspective without taking the source of data seriously, it does the field as a whole serious harm.
Not a big fan of Heidt. Way too much political, unsubstantiated and handwavy rhetoric from him. And his track record has been entirely unconvincing.
The only reasonable way I can interpret his work is that of a ideologically driven puritan, trying to make the data fit his perception. In doing so, he often misses the forest for the trees.
In particular, this interpretation of teenage mental illness is predicated on data. But the data sucks. Why should we assume we have accurate data on mental illness? It's ridiculous when you consider our society's terrible history in dealing with this stigma. Sexist notions like female hysteria, gross misuse of sedatives and psychoactive drugs by medical charlatans, repression of discussion about mental illness, bias/inexperience/abuse by governmental and health care institutions, horrible conditions at sanitoriums, the list goes on. Give it another 100 years and maybe we can draw some better patterns.
In no particular order, here are some highlights on medical data and institutions in history...
1. The consensus on normal heart rate is still erroneously assumed to be 60-100 bpm. For over 100 years, this myth was predicated on poor data and grossly misinterpreted literature. Our current, best consensus based on better data is 50-90 bpm, though virtually all textbooks and educational programs have failed to update themselves. If we can't even get statistics on heart rates right, how are we supposed to get statistics on mental illness correct?
2. There is no consensus on average breaths per minute. Textbooks often contradict themselves, quoting different fabricated ranges for respiratory rates within the same page. Data in this area is sparse and and lacks adjustment for demographics. The most comprehensive data is from a study done in 1846... We just don't know because we haven't put in the rigorous effort to definitively identify this range. Again, this basic measurement is much easier than mental illness, and we haven't done it yet.
3. The most established field of medicine is considered to be Obstetrics. That is to say, this is the medical field with the oldest depth of knowledge that we consider to be accurate or useful. Which makes sense given the significance of managing childbirth for societies. And yet there are still severe deficiencies in this field. We have a long way to go in the most mature field of medical science, and an even longer way to go in every other field. In comparison, mental health was not even mentioned in writing until 1946.
4. Prior to the gross misuse of opioids perpetuated by the Sackler family, was the gross misuse of benzodiazepines (Xanax, Valium). Prior was of Barbiturates. Prior to that was alcohol. And countless more medications in between those broad categories. Humanity has abused substances to numb itself from crippling anxiety for centuries, and in the modern sense has almost always sought to mass market these drugs before careful consideration of their appropriate use. Each medication was so abused that each generation has their own idioms and memes regarding their misuse.
I'm certain that we can do better. It's just going to take time, and Heidt's work just seems like reading tea leaves and putting people in arbitrary pigeon holes.
I think the answer is that ECS isn't supposed to solve those problems directly. It's just a framework that makes a certain class of problems very easy to solve. But big picture complexity is still up to the developer's skill and wisdom. Knowing which parts of the game should go into ECS, and which parts go somewhere else. Which systems flow from another system. Which system is allowed to manipulate the data directly and which systems are only able to read data reasonably, but not write. And how your design of the game may need to change to suit the limitations of your computer and your ability to program.
ECS is like any other framework. It is a tool or system, for organizing your efforts. Be very liberal with using it in its intended scope. Be judicious when its at the edge of its scope. Be very skeptical when its outside of its scope.
I'm not really into Twitter, so I'm guessing there's some drama you are referencing that is topical.
But, I'm not talking about any society wide issue or philosophical treatise about trust and breakdowns in communication. Just talking about day to day interactions, where the stakes are completely different.
Trivial Example: If the sign on a mailbox says "Last pickup 5:00pm," what exactly does that mean? Will it be picked up, processed, and sent out of town that same day? Or just merely picked up, to be processed and sent the next day. This piece of written communication isn't a purely useful truth - it's ambiguous.
Pretend that this is an important behavior to know for your business, like if you were mailing huge checks for some obscure financial process. So you call up the local post office and ask. The worker who picks up the phone might know exactly what you are talking about and helpfully tell you the right answer. Or they might not, and tell you honestly that they don't know. Or they ask their supervisor, transfer you, make something up, tell you it doesn't matter, mail will get where it goes, or that you shouldn't worry about it, it's just mail.
ChatGPT could give you same distribution of answers as that worker did: helpful truth, meaningless equivocation, reassurance, redirection, confabulation, or lie to you. ChatGPT can be just as useful as talking to people in spite of those flaws, because people do the same thing.
This is reliant on the prior assumption that you gracefully handle unreliable communication, and that communication with people is useful. While this might seem a bit farfetched to some people, remember that we have a ready analog in computer science - networking TCP over UDP.
I'm not sure if confabulate is exactly what LLMs do (though it seems closer than the implications of hallucinate).
But neurotypical, neurodiverse, perfectly functional people, etc. all confabulate or do something similar on a regular basis, in verbal and written mediums, and often do so in good faith. It's human instinct to communicate, even if you are uncertain and unaware of the full context of the discussion.
Teachers, customer service reps, executives, shop keepers, doctors, nurses, domain experts, authors of textbooks, it doesn't matter who it is, they'll probably confabulate or equivocate or do some other type of communication that isn't immediately useful. Yet it's still a useful activity to just talk to someone or read a less than rigorous book for the purposes of learning (discounting the relationship forming part, which is also useful). And so is using LLMs, even for casual users. So long as they understand that limitation, whether its with a chatbot or a real person. Not everything they say will be useful or truthful, but we are already capable of adjusting to that.
It's trivial that nice communities exist on Facebook. Positive, engaged people build good communities, regardless of platform or technology.
The same distributions of haves and have-nots exist on any platform. Reddit/Facebook/Instagram/TikTok/everything else are composed of an ever changing and uncountable number of communities, a few of which are bound to be good because of the continuous efforts of their members, and everything else is varying degrees of toxicity, narcissism, hatred, and every other negative trait you can think of.
If someone stereotypes you as a "toxic racist Karen" because you mainly use Facebook, it seems to follow the same reasoning behind why you might perceive Reddit as "horribly toxic and depressing." You get out of X what you put in.
Love the final explanation for how ivermectin can be incidentally good for COVID-19 patients, even if it does nothing to COVID-19 directly.
In fact, as the author cites from another researcher, the trials are a strong piece of evidence for "add[ing] ivermectin to mass drug administration programs." In other words, global medical welfare, where we just give everyone a bunch of a cheap and effective medications to counteract the most prolific diseases. In addition to reducing mortality from diseases targeted by the medication, it will probably reduce incidental mortality when people contract multiple conditions at once. I.e. getting ivermectin for a detected COVID-19 infection has a 10% chance of helping you, because you have a 10% chance of having an undetected worm infection that will kill you if your immune system is suppressed by drugs that are used to prevent COVID-19 from killing you.
I do think the ending political metaphor doesn't quite fit, however. I see more parallels with workplace politics than an alien invasion, for why our societies have become so divided on relatively meaningless issues. Uniting disparate factions to work towards a common goal is an uphill battle that sees more failure than success, most often in our workplaces. To me, the ivermectin drama was just another example of an emergent situation that wasn't optimally handled by a collection of random individuals, who despite the best intentions, were unable to unite a group. Doesn't make them bad people, or mean they have the wrong approach. Just means they weren't ready to tackle such a difficult challenge. Positive outcomes take dedicated effort, they don't come automatically because we assume the status quo is good enough to us immune to random chance.
Going over the background of who did the study, the abstract, and their assertions, it appears they've made the classic mistake of correlation = causation. Nothing in their study supports their assertion of a casual link.
Based on their alarmist and projective tone, they probably made this error on purpose in order to push an agenda for their own benefit. The fact that Rupert Murdoch's disreputable name is attached is only 1 of numerous red flags. Disappointing.
Title of Article: Long-term study reveals harm in regular cannabis use
Original Paper: Young-adult compared to adolescent onset of regular cannabis use: A 20-year prospective cohort study of later consequences
Lead Author Dr Gary Chan, excerpt from Bio: "Dr. Gary Chan is a NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. His principal research interest lies in the field of substance misuse prevention and the application of cutting-edge statistical method for longitudinal analysis and causal inference."
Methods: "A state-representative sample in Victoria, Australia (n = 1792) participated in a 10-wave longitudinal study and was followed from age 15 to 35 years. Exposure variable: Patterns of cannabis use across 20-years. Outcomes at age 35: Alcohol use, smoking, illicit drug use, relationship status, financial hardship, depression, anxiety and employment status."
Results: "Substantially more participants (13.6%) initiated regular use after high school (young-adult onset) than in adolescence (7.7%, adolescent onset). By the mid-30s, both young-adult and adolescent-onset regular users were more likely than minimal/non-users (63.5%) to have used other illicit drugs (odds ratio [OR] > 20.4), be a high-risk alcohol drinker (OR > 3.7), smoked daily (OR > 7.2) and less likely to be in relationships (OR < 0.4). As the prevalence of the young-adult-onset group was nearly double of the adolescent-onset group, it accounted for a higher proportion of adverse consequences than the adolescent-onset group"
Dr Chan says: "Overall, regular use of cannabis – more than weekly and especially daily use – was found to have harmful consequences, regardless of the age people began using it."
"The study was conducted in collaboration with Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the University of Melbourne."
Freedom of Association: An individual's right to join or leave groups voluntarily, the right of the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of its members, and the right of an association to accept or decline membership based on certain criteria.
There is clear conflict with how our society views the roles of private companies vs. individuals, the technology driven communication platforms they provide, and how individuals and groups use those platforms.
However, it is not a forgone conclusion that censorship by private organizations and individuals via platforms they control is a violation of freedom of speech.
No one has the right to forcibly silence someone else, with governments being only one of many traditional perpetrators with means and motives to do so. But individuals and groups cannot forcibly enlist others to help spread their message. My local church can't force me to espouse my love for their god, nor am I forced to listen to a random passerby on the street.
These 2 principals can be easily agreed with in theory, as requirements for a well functioning society. But with technology, comes the ability to convert capital into speech, and those 2 principals come into natural conflict. The written language, the printing press, the internet, etc. are all tools that can be used in conjunction with capital to amplify speech, and drown out the speech of others via shear volume. It isn't necessary to silence someone else, if yelling over them achieves the same effect.
Thus continues the ever-lasting compromise and conflict between our rights as individuals. There is no free lunch, no easy solution.
The original report only analyzes successful exonerations. There are many times more cases out there of false convictions, victims who have not seen the light of day. Those without exculpatory evidence have basically no hope. Some of them have actual exculpatory evidence, but their appeals do not succeed.
Exculpatory evidence (evidence that proves innocence) brought up after a criminal trial was concluded often does not lead to exoneration. The burden of proof that is required to sustain the validity of said evidence is high, in order to disincentivize hiding evidence until after a trial is over in order to overturn the result. Exculpatory evidence is often thrown out on procedural grounds, even when the evidence itself is valid. Moreover, the criminal justice system as it operates today has little to no incentive to reopen cases, for a multitude of reasons.
Most successful exonerations require immense amounts of legal leg work on the part of lawyers, witnesses, and LEOs. Evidence loses value as time goes on. Most falsely convicted criminals have no resources to pursue their innocence. Even cases that seem like simple slam ducks, where a DNA test is all that is logically necessary to overturn the original conviction, take years or decades to complete.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." - William Blackstone
"Plagiarism detection software" can most certainly be misused and abused - it's quite a slippery slope, difficult to administer fairly, and likely to create unwarranted chilling effects. The author was almost certainly referring to its ease and accessibility for misuse by educational authorities.
For example - citing inconclusive results from a plagiarism detection suite as a reason to have a meeting with a student or group, would induce large amounts of anxiety and stress is most people, even if the professors intention is that 90% of cases would be thrown out after the student/group testifies. It can lead to infighting in groups in particular, even when no cheating occurs. And the in person meeting is almost certainly rather stressful for most students.
And how many educational authorities are quick to jump to judgement and words like "just admit you did it, and we'll punish you less?" Presumption of guilt is the most reliable way to sow distrust and discord, and yet it is often done by lay people, whose negative actions are amplified by their positions of authority.
Underage students in particular should not be expected to react reasonably under such adversarial circumstances.
And even if the law and society expects it, I'd argue that most adults cannot handle novel adversarial circumstances well. Police interactions, and interactions with educational authorities over matters of discipline and cheating are most certainly novel, adversarial, and hugely stressful for most people, and it is done for remarkably little gain in terms of actually catching cheating, practically speaking.
To tie it off - I've been accused of cheating twice in my academic career.
Once when I was in 6th grade, when the assistant principle and a police officer pulled me into an isolated meeting and gaslighted me to confess to my guilt for 30 minutes. In the end, they "realized" they had pulled aside the wrong student. And then, that 2nd student they pulled aside had also turned out to have not been cheating. Such gross incompetence and psychological abuse should never be allowed to happen to children going through the most formative experiences in their life.
The 2nd time, my undergrad group was called to a meeting with one week's worth of notice, that our code had been flagged by plagiarism software, and that we would have to testify if we had cheated or not, or risk having a 0. My partner was a miserable wreck for that entire week. Turns out, when we got there, the code had just flagged some unimportant boiler plate code as having been copied from somewhere else. Not even the part of the code that actually solves for the problem, just the code that initialize variables and classes. The professor was apologetic, but that week of torment was for naught.
Both of these instances were in well regarded, well funded public schools, in the heart of the California Bay Area. I imagine it would be even worse in less well off areas, and geographies where education is not taken seriously.
The article is most certainly referring to instances of it being sloppily and maliciously used in ways to intimidate students, even if plagiarism detection tech can be used in a responsible manner. If the technology requires rigorous ethical training and screening to be used by authorities properly, which is often not provided to any reasonable degree, then it should not be used at all. I would rather every cheater be let go, than have 10 innocent kids be tormented and punished for a wrong they never committed.
Understanding the factors behind video gaming as a problematic behavior separate from addiction is quite useful. Oftentimes, video games and other behaviors are driven by needs satisfaction, rather than physiological dependence. The needs for community, social activity, for achievement, purpose, and other commonly recognized human needs are often partially or fully satisfied incidentally by maladaptive behaviors. Moreover, even in cases of physiological dependence or behavioral addiction, other factors still come into play that encourage the behavior.
We constantly hear from drug addicts and alcoholics, that part of their push-pull factor is the community of other users that they identify with and receive support from, social aspects of their negative behavior, etc. It's not enough to counter their physiological dependence on the stimulation itself - their other needs that were previously satisfied by the activity, must be satisfied by other means, or relapse becomes much more likely.
Spending too much time on the phone, computer, internet, video games, drugs, social media, news, books, etc. There are a myriad of behaviors that can be excessively performed by individuals, to the harmful neglect of their other needs. Today’s world is more full than ever of dangerous and maladaptive behaviors - this is one ail that technology has almost certainly contributed to, with or without ill intent. Though education and institutions to help maladaptive individuals are certainly ways to help, it is difficult to say if they can completely solve this problem, or if it is a price we have to pay in order to continue the upwards progress of technology as a whole. To be clear, technology has only lowered the barrier to people neglecting themselves. The root causes have always been there to some degree.
Twitter has become a particularly nasty version of it. In the before times, Google, Twitter, Reddit, etc. usually spent their efforts trying to manipulate things in a mostly benign way.
If you like free markets, then you must be opposed to Twitter. This is a market controlled by a few. Competition is rigorously hunted down. Lies and fake social proof packaged into "free speech." Only the chosen ones are allowed audience.
This is the opposite of capitalism. This is the worst of cronyism.
Force switching all accounts to unfollow Democracts and follow Republicans and Elon, signal boosting right wing conspiracy theorists, blocking or suspending left or liberal accounts, it's just naked power centralization all the way down...