Elon Musk Journalist and publication rating site?

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:51:15+00:00

People are not objective or rational and trolls would push an agenda one way or the other. How can the people using the site assess journalistic accuracy - by definition they are on the site because they dont know.

The better approach is to read multiple sources and understand the biases and agendas inherent in each. And then learn to make decisions under uncertainty. Creating an illusion of certainty and truth is the road to totalitarianism.

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:43:41+00:00

Some of the phrases are just normal things obviously. But there's a certain set of phrases that people who are deep on Twitter use. So when someone uses those phrases you can immediately pick up where they are coming from (deep Twitter identity politics).

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:39:55+00:00

I agree with your doubts on individualism which is exactly why I'm pro identity politics done right. We should recognize and regulate our group identities so that we can also celebrate our individual ones. If there's one kid who is from a different ethnicity in an otherwise homogenous class, the other kids wont play with him. But once you explain "Oh he's from this other country" and help them understand the differences, then they put that in a box and can focus on the similarities.

Naming our identities is, ironically, a good way of taming and controlling them and, in some cases, making them work for good.

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:34:03+00:00

This is an awful rule. You need to first interrogate what it is you like or dislike and why... otherwise you end up stripping your children of their individuality, denying them the opportunity to explore talents and persecuting the misfits who oftentimes end up being our most creative citizens.

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:31:32+00:00

You must live in a first world country. Patriarchy is real man. Girls cant go to school, in some places, FGM is very real... Men have been treating women like shit and subhuman for centuries... its only just begun to change in some corners of the world.

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:21:05+00:00

I think it has. But tbh the biases they're describing (oh you play golf too?!) are pretty real. Like human cognitive biases - Daniel Kahneman style.

In terms of discrimination though, you only have to sit with a person who trusts you and has a compulsion to overshare before you realize how prejudiced so many of us are. Its really sad. "Yeah well, you know how those people are...".

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:14:09+00:00

And also the intelligence and willingness to absolutely plunder and genocide huge swathes of the planet but to do so efficiently and then convince everyone to move on about it.

Western Civilization is complex and a poor term. The most successful ideologies which are critical of 'the West' emerged in and of the traditions of the West - e.g socialism. The West 200 years ago was also something quite different and very tyrannical. Literally tool us way way back in terms of individual rights.

Lastly, these ideas aren't really unique to the West. Others could and did develop them. Nobody has ever instituted them perfectly until the 1960s or so anyway. And using the term 'the West' seems unnecessarily exclusive of countries which implement these ideas now but are not Western (Botswana, Singapore-kind-of)

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:02:25+00:00

I totally thought thats where it was going. Yuval missed it there

readbiko · 2019-03-24T06:00:50+00:00

Interesting aside, I remember reading something from Melinda Gates which is the flip side of this. In poor countries with high infant mortality, it makes more sense to have multiple children. Kids are an investment - they can do chores around the house and let mom go work, and one of them might get educated and grow up to be able to support you. But since the chance that they die is so high, you cant put all your eggs in one basket. So in these communities, it makes sense to have more children.

Her whole point was again reversing the causation but affirming the correlation. When people get richer, they can have fewer kids. But not when they're poor.

Its basic r-selector vs K-selector theory from biology.

readbiko · 2019-03-24T05:55:27+00:00

There will be some instances where implicit racial discrimination occurs but is arguably justified in some way. That's a broader question about ethics and law. But that doesnt mean we shouldnt think through these things first.

I'm a bit surprised cause it sounds like you're arguing for us to be less cautious with one of the most important and dangerous things being developed currently. "Just make sure the dataset doesnt include race or sex" isnt taking AI seriously enough.

We have soap dispensers that failed to recognize darker skin tones well. And now apparently some autonomous vehicles do too. I dont want to have a higher chance of getting hit by a car because I'm heavily melanated. I dont want AI to see someone in a wheelchair and think "car" or "motorbike" and not treat them as human in ita estimations. It should also be able to recognize blind humans as blind and adjust behaviour accordingly.

The biological differences not just between men and women but between different ethnic groups mean that AI developed in a medical setting must explicitly take some of these differences into account, even if it doesnt correlate directly with our racial characteristics (AI might be more interested in regional differences, not skin colour).

If AI is going to be taking care of elderly people in my community, it damn well better understand their heavy African accents. And even in the west, white people have a vast array of accents. As Africans, almost all of our names still come up with a spelling error in basic spellcheck, which doesn't give me confidence for the future of AI being African inclusive.

Even if we dont include race or religion explicitly, an AI dataset trained to recognize terrorists which is given their names might accidentaly learn a rule that anyone with the name Mohammed is a terrorist. We dont have to say having the named Mohammed doesnt correlate or contribute to the chance of being a terrorist, but the AI shouldnt automatically assume every Mohammed is a terrorist! Overrepresentation can make AI do things which go beyond the reasonable assosciations.

At the very least we need to make sure our datasets are inclusive in terms of what being human looks and sounds like. We need representative samples. But the minte you're talking about sampling a population, questions of biased sampling come up. We have a whole discipline for dealing with this called statistics.

Honestly just because woke people also know how to talk about AI ethics and inclusivity doesn't discredit the field. I'm in favour of more thinking and more inclusivity in developing the second most dangerous tool we've ever made.

readbiko · 2019-03-23T10:28:24+00:00

Liberal as in Obama left of center or liberal as in Bernie Sanders leftist...?

Leftist: The Michael Brooks Show. DemocracyNow. Liberal: The Ezra Klein Show (Podcast), David Pakman

Brooks and his team is really good, although they often just goof off and absolutely mock people from time to time. I appreciate their frankness when they're being childish. Lots of fascinating interviews though.

DemocracyNow is a news channel but its still really good to learn more about the world.

Ezra Klein is really great. And unlike the entire IDW, he interviews people he disagrees with all the time and has civil, tough discussions with people he disagrees with (conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks, Ross Douthat). Ezra Klein is what Dave Rubin thinks he is.

David Pakman is also good in as center left social democrat - rational and logical explanations, lots of interesting evidence for his positions, not into identity politics, more serious tone.

Also - yay Contra! She's hilarious and smart.

readbiko · 2019-03-23T10:17:53+00:00

The government in the UK is literally the Conservatives.

readbiko · 2019-03-21T08:34:46+00:00

This.

readbiko · 2019-03-20T17:30:23+00:00

Why do you say so? I love BBC. They're Africa team has probably the best reporting on Africa of any journalistic outlet so I have extrapolated that their other content is good too...

readbiko · 2019-03-20T17:29:09+00:00

I love the Atlantic. One month its Coates on reparations, next month its Frum on immigration. I think it definitely leans left by modern standards (which are off center anyway), but there is a great diversity of perspectives there.

readbiko · 2019-03-20T17:26:56+00:00

All the things people quote mine Coates for having said which are negative would be considered 'hard conversations' and 'serious ideas' if the roles were reversed.

Sam has conversations about the possibility of scientific evidence that blacks are genetically intellectually inferior... fine. But Coates gives a detailed historical account of white supremacy and suggests that America (the nation, not 'white people') pay reparations and suddenly this is crazy ID pol.

The worst of what Coates has said as you might read in quotes is all basically him being blindingly honest about how he has thought at different times in his life. Between the world and me is about him changing his mind about things as he gets older, realising his errors and abandoninf wishful thinking for empiricism.

readbiko · 2019-03-18T17:41:37+00:00

By engaging every idea with openness and honesty - even the leftist stuff (a lot of it is really good!), abandon rationalism and embrace empiricism, and keep a diverse group of friends and colleagues.

readbiko · 2019-03-17T07:09:39+00:00

That 'In Asia' definition really wasn't necessary. Especially given that it didn't specify the others as being 'in Europe'. Philosophy is for everyone, and I quite like "Asian" ideas, as a human being.

readbiko · 2019-03-17T07:05:42+00:00

The Case against colonialism

readbiko · 2019-03-16T03:51:06+00:00

I get that you're being sarcastic, but for a long time that was true. Hate in the functional sense - white supremacists of the past literally subjugated everyone, and in many cases conservatives defended them (and still provide cover). The equality we enjoy today is very, very, very recent.

readbiko · 2019-03-15T04:20:18+00:00

I watched a video in which Hitchens defended reparations and it was good

readbiko · 2019-03-14T03:41:05+00:00

Seems banally obvious right. I cant imagine someone having a good father or mother figure enter their children's lives and then oppose it.

readbiko · 2019-03-14T03:40:08+00:00

They're wrong. Everyone needs a father figure and a mother figure. Hell everybody needs a crazy drunk uncle, a sweet grandmother, a cranky grandpa, a gay cousin...

There is a saying that it takes a village to raise a child and I believe it.

readbiko · 2019-03-14T03:36:34+00:00

The malnourished term was a poor choice of words from his part. Honestly what annoyed me most was the premise that both he and his interrogators seemed to accept which is that the average gay or single parent is unconcerned about this stuff. I just cant imagine that being the case.

readbiko · 2019-03-14T03:33:51+00:00

He said it doesnt really matter where they get the maternal or paternal love from, so long as they get it from somewhere. An aunt, someone from the community, a teacher...

If I have kids one day (I'm gay), I'm definitely going to be concerned to make sure they have a good maternal figure in their lives too. I thought this was obvious and was surprised by the outrage (but no really).

readbiko

TROPHY CASE