US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9206

On November 10 2017 23:03 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

Why do scammers even bother with this whole I'm a prince from X country", just pretend to be a despicable/extremist candidate and give them a link to send you money.

Facebook’s founders knew they were creating something addictive that exploited “a vulnerability in human psychology” from the outset, according to the company’s founding president Sean Parker.

Parker, whose stake in Facebook made him a billionaire, criticized the social networking giant at an Axios event in Philadelphia this week. Now the founder and chair of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Parker was there to speak about advances in cancer therapies. However, he took the time to provide some insight into the early thinking at Facebook at a time when social media companies face intense scrutiny from lawmakers over their power and influence.

Parker described how in the early days of Facebook people would tell him they weren’t on social media because they valued their real-life interactions.

“And I would say, ‘OK. You know, you will be,’” he said.

“I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying,” he added, pointing to “unintended consequences” that arise when a network grows to have more than 2 billion users.

“It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” he said.

He explained that when Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset that led to the creation of features such as the “like” button that would give users “a little dopamine hit” to encourage them to upload more content.

“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

Parker, who previously founded the file-sharing site Napster, joined the Facebook team in 2004 five months after the site had launched as a student directory at Harvard. Parker saw the site’s potential and was, according to Zuckerberg, “pivotal in helping Facebook transform from a college project into a real company”.

In 2005, police found cocaine in a vacation home Parker was renting and he was arrested on suspicion of possession of a schedule 1 substance. He wasn’t charged, but the arrest rattled investors and he resigned shortly after.

Thanks mostly to his brief stint at Facebook, Parker’s net worth is estimated to be more than $2.6bn. He set up the Parker Foundation in June 2015 to use some of his wealth to support “large-scale systemic change” in life sciences, global public health and civic engagement.

Parker is not the only Silicon Valley entrepreneur to express regret over the technologies he helped to develop. The former Googler Tristan Harris is one of several techies interviewed by the Guardian in October to criticize the industry.

“All of us are jacked into this system,” he said. “All of our minds can be hijacked. Our choices are not as free as we think they are.”...

On November 10 2017 23:06 Ryzel wrote:
1) Last day of discussion

2) Less deep analysis of Shades of Grey lol

Although that being said, respecting this thread as a forum for debate and arguing appropriately when discussing an important topic and not settling for "well you know what I mean" would be nice. But there's no in-depth moderating of this thread, so what can you do.

On November 10 2017 23:06 Ryzel wrote:


1) Last day of discussion

2) Less deep analysis of Shades of Grey lol

Although that being said, respecting this thread as a forum for debate and arguing appropriately when discussing an important topic and not settling for "well you know what I mean" would be nice. But there's no in-depth moderating of this thread, so what can you do.

On November 10 2017 23:54 Uldridge wrote:

I've advocated for a separate meta-social thread where we can discuss societal issues (that are worldwide and have certain differences based on culture) to no end. This thread would be purged of all the endless revisiting of the same topics and we'd be able to fill something else with this stuff; it might be more productive, idk, but I don't know how much incentive there is for that.
This thread basically functions as that meta-compiled stuff either way at the moment.

On November 10 2017 15:25 mozoku wrote:

Does it matter if they're bartering in gold, wood, virgins, or dollars? It's a trade they both agree to and the principles are the same.

But I see the point that you're trying to make is that the efficient man's hour should, in principle, be worth no more than the inefficient man's hour if you don't care about productivity, and that productivity is independent of morality. However, the former statement is inherently incorrect because productivity and time are, by definition, linked, and a person's time has value in excess of that which can be determined monetarily.

To simplify, let's assume they're both chopping lumber. The efficient man can simply choose to work 1/2 hour, have the same productivity, and keep the other 1/2 hour to himself. By nature of being more efficient (and his own efficiency is surely not intrinsically amoral), he's advantaged no matter what. Suppose, regardless of compensation, he only wanted to work 1/2 hour, and wanted to spend the other 1/2 hour with his kids. Are you going to argue that society is justified in forcing him to work the full hour? Or that they should discriminate against his good fortune by paying less for his lumber in the name of "equality"?

That's certainly not a society I'd want to be a part of.

On November 10 2017 23:47 brian wrote:
how do these idiots STILL not have spokespeople to censor this stupidity? not that i’m complaining. but like when do you learn from your mistakes?

On November 11 2017 00:41 brian wrote:
i’m not a fan of pushing questions during photo ops. it’s no better than re-framing an argument. they know they can’t answer so you get to say what you want and have the silence look bad.

i’m also not a fan of putting McConnel in a photo op. he just looks like a snake.

On November 11 2017 01:06 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Just to be clear this is the deep South and I easily see Moore winning.

https://twitter.com/ClintSmithIII/status/928986813280202752

On November 11 2017 01:06 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Just to be clear this is the deep South and I easily see Moore winning.

https://twitter.com/ClintSmithIII/status/928986813280202752

On November 11 2017 01:29 Introvert wrote:
They know it's wrong, they just feel they have no choice. Real hard to vote for Jones esp given his abortion position.

Of course low-key strat here could be vote Moore, Moore wins, Moore resigns/leaves/forced out/forfeits spot --> gov appoints new Senator.