meekmind's comments

GP invoked the modern saying "Jack of all trades, master of none." The original saying was "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." In other words, if the choice was between average knowledge of many things OR having an incredible knowledge of one thing sans much else, the former was likely preferable.

I tend to think that everything I know represents a thousand things I don't. In other words, there is only so much time in the day or so much space in my brain. If the choice isn't simply binary, as is implied by that original saying, I think it would be preferable to be a "jack of all trades, master of ONE."

Western societies, and probably others, seemed to have this ingrained for quite some time. So much so that people would adopt a name that reflected their mastery (or profession): "Smith", "Cooper", "Fletcher", etc. Obviously, most people through-out history lived in incredible scarcity and consequently had to be somewhat skilled in a variety of things simply to survive. Specialization was the exception for quite some time. It wasn't until technological advancement, widespread usage of labor-saving devices, and later the industrial revolution, that specialization by large numbers of people was feasible (due to the abundance of resources from the efficient production of goods).

I do appreciate the consistency of that perspective, it is interesting. I must respectfully disagree with those definitions.

I think that consciousness ought to imply some element of choice. A rock cannot choose to get out of the way, nor in any way deliberately respond to sound waves. It is inert.

To me, the ability to establish relationships between things is a consequence ipso facto of the ethical framework required by the physical form. In other words, what we see is limited by evolutionary, genetic, and knowledge constraints. I'm defining intelligence as (g) factor in psychometrics [0] or roughly the upper-bound capacity of an entity to apply it's ethical framework consistently, and/or with any degree of accuracy, and/or across multiple potentially disparate domains of knowledge.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

Likely insufficient but here is a shot at a materialist answer.

Consciousness is defined as an entity that has an ethical framework that is subordinated to it's own physical existence, maintaining that existence, and interfacing with other conscious entities as if they also have an ethical framework with similar parameters who are fundamentally no more or less important/capable than itself.

Contrast with non-conscious super-intelligence that lacks physical body (likely distributed). Without a physical/atomic body and sense data it lacks the capacity to empathize/sympathize as conscious entities (that exist within an ethical framework that is subordinated to those limitations/senses) must. It lacks the perspective of a singular, subjective being and must extrapolate our moral/ethical considerations, rather than have them ingrained as key to it's own survival.

Now that I think about it, it's probably not much different than the relationship between a human and God, except that in this case it's: a machine consciousness and a machine god.

To me, the main problem is that humans (at large) have yet to establish/apply a consistent philosophy with which to understand our own moral, ethical, and physical limitations. For the lack of that, I question whether we're capable of programming a machine consciousness (much less a machine god) with a sufficient amount of ethical/moral understanding - since we lack it ourselves (in the aggregate). We can hardly agree on basic premises, or whether humanity itself is even worth having. How can we expect a machine that we make to do what we can't do ourselves? You might say "that's the whole point of making the machine, to do something we can't" but I would argue we have to understand the problem domain first (given we are to program the machine) before we can expect our creations to apply it properly or expand on it in any meaningful way.

That doesn't follow. The air is cleaner outside than inside. Usually there are more pollutants inside a household (cleaners/plastics/etc) than outside.

If the prescription of stimulants is strictly due to pollutants or "other problems of modern life" then why are boys over-represented compared to girls?

"6.4 MILLION CHILDREN BETWEEN THE AGES OF FOUR AND SEVENTEEN HAVE BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH ADHD. BY HIGH SCHOOL, NEARLY 20% OF ALL BOYS WILL HAVE BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH ADHD—A 37% INCREASE SINCE 2003" [0] (CAPS are from article)

"The number of children who have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—overwhelmingly boys—in the United States has climbed at an astonishing rate over a relatively short period of time." [0]

It is well-known that boys and girls have different tendencies when learning. Boys tend to be tactile/kinesthetic learners, compared to girls who do better with visual/auditory learning. For example, consider how you would teach a child to build a house. A boy would learn the process better by actually building a house, whereas a girl would do better reading about construction methods or seeing blueprints (on average).

I am inclined to to agree with GP and that it is schools. When faced with the aforementioned learning styles: parents, teachers, and administrators struggle to accommodate boys and instead opt to medicate them. It's easier to drug boys when they have difficulties for lack of tactile/kinesthetic learning options.

I will admit that pollutants and the flood of instantly-gratifying entertainment, movies, TV shows, music videos, and porn is not helpful. However, I don't think that is the most fundamental problem. I simply see an educational system that caters to girls at the expense of boys. Further, the boys are confronted by media that portrays them as "skirt-chasers", "metro-sexuals", and "macho-men" and not the "good-hearted, hard-working, and self-sacrificing just trying to take care of their friends and families" men that they really (often) become. [1]

[0] - https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32858/drugging-of-the...

[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/11/14/are-m...

A: Probably not for much longer, thus why we're pre-programming the population for genetically modified half-human half-lizard hybrids and genderless cyborgs.

It can't really be because less than 2% of the population isn't feeling included, though Palm Springs is piloting a novel way to solve that problem by incentivizing people to identify as transgender or non-binary. https://news.yahoo.com/california-city-universal-income-tran...

I think that intent matters. Misinformation is dissemination of information that may be misleading but wasn't necessarily intended to be misleading. Perhaps the author themselves lacked the pertinent data (or really believed what they were saying). That is distinct from disinformation, which would be intentionally deceptive. Regarding material omissions, it would only be misinformation if the person disseminating the information did so unknowingly. And hypothetically it would only take one person to inform the author of the material omission and naturally further publications with the same material omission then count as disinformation.

I think the hair-splitting is due to the fact that majority of memes associated with one side or the other are not outright false, but are conditioning people to a particular pre-determined conclusion. In other words, if you're interested in battling mis/dis-information, you have to recognize the over-arching agenda and attack that, not rebut/censor every meme and thought internet randos and robots see fit to post.

Regardless of how you feel about the objective truth, it exists. Naturally, it follows that people who engage with what exists ought to have better outcomes than those who engage in fantasy. Admittedly, when the majority of people engage in fantasy and even the mere mention of truth is seen as an existential threat, it takes on the opposite dimension. In particular, as mentioned above, the truth-tellers are reviled, feared, mocked, and made to suffer. It should be obvious that a value system that prioritizes fantasy over truth is unsustainable. As more people shift from truth to fantasy, whatever functional or pragmatic underpinnings civilization has erode until nothing fundamentally true remains. Civilization is subordinate to the truth and without it there is no civilization.

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” ― T.S. Eliot

I think perhaps they are insinuating that this is secure assuming Brave, 8x8, and/or your meeting participants are not compromised outside the scope of the application. Though I'd agree that phrase does a poor job of communicating that.

It's different because I identify and agree with the virtue signaling of holier-than-thou social climbers who claim to do journalism. Their views represent mine, and since I am mostly without purpose or depth, I don't make petty distinctions about the definition of journalism: I only want them to validate my position that everyone I do not like is <insert adjective here> and incapable of critical thinking. The irony of this position is totally lost on me.

> question is simply hand-waved away

I think you misunderstood me. Giving a handful of companies control over the credibility economy is not a solution and is in some ways worse than having no credibility economy at all. These "abuse detection" systems break down when they are perpetrating the abuse. In other words, as central authorities starts choosing who has access to what according to increasingly arbitrary, political, or cultural lines. The problem wasn't really solved because the free and open internet cannot continue to exist under those conditions.

Is it far fetched to assume that a bottom-up system can't also develop a decentralized credibility economy to complement the decentralized network? I think not, and one thing would likely follow the other in due course.

I'm a little confused by this sentiment. The internet is a distributed system that, over time, became centralized into fewer and fewer hands. The internet wouldn't really function any different on a mesh network, except the nodes are much more distributed. In other words, they are both largely the same.

You might ask, how was this problem solved for the normal internet?

The answer is: It was *not* fixed, we just centralized the problem into fewer and fewer hands. Then that created a new problem centralized internet being easily monitored, controlled, censored, etc.

No one needs to explain how to deal with bad actors with a mesh net because there is no basis of comparison for an internet where that problem was ever solved to begin with. The problem they are trying to solve is centralization. If you argue that the biggest risk to the internet is the central controllers _being_ the bad actors, then it's a win. If you argue that there are other bad actors and having a mesh net won't eliminate them, then you just have a really convenient excuse to do nothing while the same bad actors frolic through-out the existing internet fairly unimpeded anyway.

Passing around PHP files via email is functionally equivalent to passing out mix-tapes on street corners. Not a good tactic when a record label right around the corner will give you world-wide distribution for free. The only string attached is you'll have to rely on others of which you know very little, if anything.

I do not recommend being consistent with that position in other areas of your life otherwise you might quickly find yourself in a jungle, starving and naked. Given that relying on others for shelter, food, or clothing is clearly out of the question!

I think tech companies as a general rule have proven unreliable at understanding, much less implementing, "security" in software or hardware. It's fair to say the landscape is changing but human frailty has not. If I have been reminded of any idiom most often while scrolling through security bulletins, it's "when there is a will, there is a way." We may not have the same class of problem we had before, but I'll still likely be scrolling through security bulletins a decade from now.

Also consider: the fundamental parts of a computer are still analog. Hardware bypasses, 3d-printed micro-circuitry, modified components or distributables, who knows? In my estimation, the cat and mouse game will continue for quite some time.

Honestly I can't imagine any group of companies in the tech space being more resourceful than 10,000 neglected teenagers with nothing but a computer and a bad attitude. Especially after the former tells the latter that they can only do "approved" things with their computer.

Absolutely agree with a small nitpick. My read of (more recent) history leads me to the idea that the distinction between capitalist and communist nations incrementally eroded (think 1970s onward) until true fascism (merger of corp and state) re-emerged and became the dominant organizing principle for most of the world.

In my humble opinion it should be no surprise that the mere existence of a state itself establishes perverse incentives for corporations to leverage until their power is at least comparable. To that end the state becomes an arm of corporate hegemony and we are left with simple fascism.

What I think confuses the majority of people is that within the left-right paradigm, the current crop of fascists claim to be left-leaning where fascism was understood to be a right-wing ideology. No one asked, but if they did, I would tell them that it's still a far-right ideology, the powers that be are actually far-right, and they use pathological altruism, compassion and politeness (i.e. typical leftism) as a cover for their operations (e.g. "Think of the children")

I've run into a very similar issue, but it was bots - not the CDN provider.

Every day (to this day) we're getting thousands of requests for images that no longer exist on our CDN (because they were stale/deleted). The CDN normally does not hit the origin machine (where the images are hosted) unless it cannot find the images on the CDN, at which point it queries the origin for the image. Problem was, the image no longer existed on the origin. I didn't expect the origin would receive much traffic, but suddenly it's receiving a ton of traffic.

I was very confused because, at first glance, it looked like I was being attacked by my own CDN provider given the tremendous traffic and the fact that the CDN provider was the only thing allowed to access that box (the origin).

At any rate, I contacted the CDN provider and informed them that thousands of requests that resulted in 404's were taking down my website. They told me there was nothing they could do.

In any case, I managed to wrangle together some new infra to handle it. I don't think whoever was hitting the CDN for those images was malicious. However, it occurred to me that had they been malicious, then they could have just hit random non-existent file-names at a much higher rate and done a lot more damage.

They're both distributed. The fact that anyone _can_ archive anything forever reasonably excludes the assumption that it's not, accessibility/curation notwithstanding.

> The crypto community needs to address the other side of that coin

Do they? Nothing is ever _really_ deleted on the good old-fashioned internet either.

We can't have our cake and eat it too. Having a centralized arbiter of truth is more dangerous to the truth than bad people who do bad things.

Like it or not Western civilization is permeated with Christian mores. As practiced in the West, large chunks of law, philosophy, and science all have historical roots in Christian culture. You can choose whether or not to understand how the cultural, socio-economic and political environment affects you and your beliefs and the beliefs of those around you. You can "let" people be whatever they want, but you cannot occur in a vacuum and would presumably stand to gain from learning how much of what you may consider crazy and irrational was in-fact based in psychological and physiological reality that is just as relevant today as it ever was.