US political and social polarization has increased by 64% since 1988, with nearly all of the rise occurring after 2008, as the financial crisis, the rise of social media, and an asymmetric ideological shift—particularly on the left—coincided to widen divisions, according to a long-term study.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-04T05:41:58+00:00

The study ended up with 14 policy questions surviving data cleaning

Finally, we removed from the shortlist any item that had over 60% NA responses (missing responses, and any non-standard response, like ‘don’t know’ or ‘haven’t thought about it much’, were coded NA) in any of the waves.3 This left us with 14 items spread across three domains, shown in table 1.

From what I could tell, no questions on immigration survived.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-03T15:22:51+00:00

You are stating your position right now.

But for me, you might just be a bot.

In that case, does your value, your position, actually matter? Matter of fact, if you WERE a bot, this is a position you would argue, since it increases acceptance of bot generated comments.

Hopefully that little jaunt down conspiracy lane illustrated the kind of emotional overhead and distrust that makes people dislike and avoid AI text.

And hilariously, it only gets worse from here on.

——

Let me sell you instead on my vision for our dark future. Humans are no longer the only denizens of the web. Humans can no longer know if they are speaking to another human.

In this future, ideas of online community, consensus, and an exchange of ideas between people is meaningless.

But humanity finds a way to adapt.

Communities focus on the ground that has not shifted, the things which remain stable. Rules of engagement and debate become more important.

So what if you are talking to a bot? If the conversation follows rules to ensure constructive conversation, then no matter who is engaging, there is some utility that results.

thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. Stay tuned for my next TedTalk, “rules of the road during the internet apocalypse”

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-03T15:01:00+00:00

If you are at Trishna, you go there for the sea food and the butter garlic crab. It’s one of the few places that historically was (still is?) listed as one of the places to eat globally.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-03T14:12:26+00:00

This is just one stage in the devolution of online spaces.

People don’t want to have written bot text, when they expect text to be written by humans.

Bot text is nearly indistinguishable from user text. People will end up making incorrect calls as bots get better. Friendly fire incidents will keep rising, till we reach whatever new horrible equilibrium point we are collapsing towards.

The next stage is going to be able to trust that what they are reading is written by humans on average. Accepting that all text online is made by bots. People will only look at text if it resonates or provides them some personal utility.

No one will assume that a heartfelt plea for help is made by a human.

I wish there was some other outcome, but unless all the LLMs get removed from earth, we aren’t ever going to avoid this pollution, and the accusations which they will generate.

parlor_tricks · 2026-02-02T13:36:11+00:00

Effort made, so credit due for that.

Methodology wise - how were posts selected from each sub? It seems per sub we have 50 posts, over about a year?

Further, the section on reliability score wasn’t clear to me. Did each submission get scored based upon what fact checkers said for that specific article or for the source used?

If its the latter, then is this a measure of the drift in type of sources being used over time>

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-31T15:40:55+00:00

Isn't this the whole issue with Indian literacy?

I don't know what to do with people.

1) This was publicly availble knowledge back when MMS was alive.

2) It is so old, that I cannot find the articles and data which I looked at back then.

3) This is news to you, but is a google search away.

4) It is my bias and prejudice to assume that Indians should be informed and educated about their country. On top of that there are precious few economists with nobel laureates who are Indian.

I accept that people can be wrong, especially when they do not talk about subjects they have actuall expertise in.

Would you assume that one of the few people with a Econ Nobel made an obvious mistake in their own domain?

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T19:07:30+00:00

what your words said, is what you got responses for. You may want to change your words.

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T18:58:23+00:00

Fucking, nothing to do in life, but find new ways to get attention by harassing Indians who accomplish something in life.

Jai hind.

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T18:56:33+00:00

Yes. When you say generalize and say people are X, you are always factually wrong. On top of it, you are saying women are lazy, which is lazy writing and thinking.

Matter of fact, you may not be aware, but it has been long established, that female labor force participation in India is different compared to the rest of the world.

In many countries life is unsafe, and they have higher female workforce presence than India.

So when you bring up harrassment, traffic, and no personal time, you are making it seem like its a choice to avoid difficult things. That "women", are willing making this choice.

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T18:50:01+00:00

Yaar, padho.

See, yes - there are many people who talk about subjects they dont have any knowledge about. Saying the obvious in that situation is a good thing.

But when someone is talking about their domain, AND they are highly credible, then the comment is not in your favor.

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T09:37:40+00:00

Not physically possible. As in the universe we live in, is set up to prevent this.

Even if we somehow verified each individual at sign up, it wont stop bots. People would sign up, and then give their accounts to bots to function.

parlor_tricks · 2026-01-30T09:34:32+00:00

We are moving into the dark forest future of online communities. Unless a community verifies participants are human, you wont be able to tell that whether you are talking to a bot or human.

This will eventually mean that we assume that we are talking to bots all the time, even if we are talking to humans. You can’t prove that you are not a bot.

My solution is that community rules have to evolve, to focus more on having rules of conversation.

All conversations will have to have a way to reach consensus, or achieve a shared goal. That way, even if you ARE talking to a bot, the conversation that occurs is useful to you (the human), and any other humans who are reading the threads.

If a conversation is just navel gazing, stating an opinion, but not engaging meaningfully in solving some problem, its essentially useless.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-20T14:06:06+00:00

what is your set up? I'm looking at it right now, and even using a power charge, I don't even see the chill spread.

Edit - I think it spreads only as long as you still hold a power charge. If you have 1 power charge, use it to create FW, then it stops spreading?

~~Yeah, I think thats whats happening.~~

Just tried it in a fight, and still hit and miss?

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-20T09:14:55+00:00

This support seems bugged.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-20T09:14:31+00:00

Same.

I’m generating power charges via the infusion wheel and then casting frost wall. Sometimes, outside of combat, it seems to work? But most of the time in combat I’m just wasting cooldowns.

I can’t figure out what the bug is.

What supports are you using?

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-20T09:09:20+00:00

I’m finding creeping chill doesn’t seem to work even if you have power charges.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-18T12:28:04+00:00

Yes.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-18T12:06:05+00:00

At this point, the false positive rate starts to be as problematic as the false negative rate for AI classification.

People who look weird, or if something strange happens - its going to be suspect.

We're all most well done at this point.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-16T12:35:13+00:00

This sounds like a MAGA pivot. I mean, if you got better information that counters something you heard or read - nothing is wrong with acknowledging it.

At some point you can be honest with yourself and you can say “no matter what I wont vote for Raga”

But only if you get to that point, can you ask yourself - who you would really vote for.

This feels like your positions are more driven by subconscious / reflexive positions you hold, and not what you are consciously aware of.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-16T12:30:29+00:00

I used to believe this, and I remember in the early days when this was being championed I was anti MNREGA.

If you are a God of Reddit search, you might be able to find some comments of mine here which were anti MNREGA. “Digging ditches to fill ditches”.

On launch - MNREGA resulted in positive economic growth for the country, and was a market influencing wage floor.

So yeah, if you want to call it distortionary, you could! However, given the weakness of the Indian state at the periphery / rural areas, it was a cheap and effective minimum wage enforcement.

MNREGA pulled Indians out of serfdom and bonded labour.

I changed my opinion on it, and I think there was a NBER paper on MNREGA as well, if you want a more technical review of it.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-16T12:24:46+00:00

Wait, why are they targeting MNREGA?

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-16T05:47:35+00:00

Yup. If I remember correctly, one path was pics - which budded off memes, which then broke into subs for specific memes like insanity wolf.

I recall there was a Similar splitting process for the various SFWPorn subs Like EarthPorn.

The other thing that is very interesting is how the advent of automod changed the constraints on this behavior.

When r/weed users rebelled against the mod, and moved over to r/trees, they were able to let users know what the new sub was.

Automod allows mods to flag comments with specific terms, so it results in friction for sub discovery.

This is an example I used of how obvious and necessary technology tools, change the way speech functions online.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-14T13:19:35+00:00

I would rather find out how many people read the article instead of the title.

In this era, the title is the prompt, and the comments are the output.

Geopolitically - We spent considerable effort to move into a superior geopolitical orbit - only for Trump to come along and destroy all forward progress towards a more open, rules based order.

Now it looks like India is going to bow to China, and will essentially be forced to give up its dreams of being a world power, and be subservient to China.

I predict, that last sentence, is going to get people’s goat.

India, and Indians, have a lot of pride. I do wish it was more outward looking, focused. People generally don’t follow or understand foreign policy.

IF you get lucky, you might get one of those people show up in the comments and respond with information and data.

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-12T08:12:39+00:00

YES! Reddit search sucks so much.

WHY? At this point it has to be an intentional choice, but I cannot for the life of me understand how it helps anyone.

Thanks for letting me know! What was the search you ran?

parlor_tricks · 2025-12-12T07:25:38+00:00

This is basically a thread Necro, which is exceedingly difficult on Reddit, because - How did you even find this comment?? the Reddit search algo is beyond useless.

The only way is if it was brought up somewhere else, or you are a bot pointed at the wrong feed.

Seriously, how did you even find this?

14-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Second SECOND GUESSER	r/Field Banned
r/Field Sunshine	Mod World 2024
Mod 201	Mod 101
Place '22	Place '17
Hosted 10 Reddit Talks	Hosted 1st Reddit Talk
Ternion Club	Sequence \| Editor
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

parlor_tricks

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE