2,909 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2022
    1. Nigg said it might help me grasp what’s happening if we compare our rising attention problems to our rising obesity rates. Fifty years ago there was very little obesity, but today it is endemic in the western world. This is not because we suddenly became greedy or self-indulgent. He said: “Obesity is not a medical epidemic – it’s a social epidemic. We have bad food, for example, and so people are getting fat.” The way we live changed dramatically – our food supply changed, and we built cities that are hard to walk or cycle around, and those changes in our environment led to changes in our bodies. We gained mass, en masse. Something similar, he said, might be happening with the changes in our attention.

      Obesity is a social epidemic and not a medical one. It's been caused by dramatic shifts in our surroundings in the past century. Food is cheaper and more abundant. It's also been heavily processed and designed to be fattier, saltier, and higher in carbohydrates. There is less encouragement to physically move our own bodies whether by walking, bicycling, running, etc. Our cities have become more driver focused. Our lives have become much more sedentary.

    1. Sit in your local coffee shop, and your laptop can tell you a lot. If you want deeper, more local knowledge, you will have to take the narrower path that leads between the lions and up the stairs.

      Grafton cleverly brings us back to his beginning with the New York Library, whose entrance famously has a set of stairs flanked by two majestic lions.

  2. Dec 2021
    1. Deepti Gurdasani. (2021, December 23). Some brief thoughts on the concerning relativism I’ve seen creeping into media, and scientific rhetoric over the past 20 months or so—The idea that things are ok because they’re better relative to a point where things got really really bad. 🧵 [Tweet]. @dgurdasani1. https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1474042179110772736

    1. Prof. Shane Crotty. (2021, November 2). Wow. COVID vaccine misinformation continues to be soooo horrible. This is incredible widespread and ABSOLUTELY made up. (Just like the insanity of implantable chips they continue to claim over and over) These fabrications are so damaging to the health of Americans. [Tweet]. @profshanecrotty. https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1455540502955241489

    1. 3. The fish farming story from my Non-Libertarian FAQ 2.0: As a thought experiment, let’s consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well. But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Let’s say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month. A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month – still a respectable sum. But one farmer (let’s call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit. Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because he’s not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too. Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month – less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300. Steve goes around to everyone, saying “Wait! We all need to make a voluntary pact to use filters! Otherwise, everyone’s productivity goes down.” Everyone agrees with him, and they all sign the Filter Pact, except one person who is sort of a jerk. Let’s call him Mike. Now everyone is back using filters again, except Mike. Mike earns $999/month, and everyone else earns $699/month. Slowly, people start thinking they too should be getting big bucks like Mike, and disconnect their filter for $300 extra profit… A self-interested person never has any incentive to use a filter. A self-interested person has some incentive to sign a pact to make everyone use a filter, but in many cases has a stronger incentive to wait for everyone else to sign such a pact but opt out himself. This can lead to an undesirable equilibrium in which no one will sign such a pact. The more I think about it, the more I feel like this is the core of my objection to libertarianism, and that Non-Libertarian FAQ 3.0 will just be this one example copy-pasted two hundred times. From a god’s-eye-view, we can say that polluting the lake leads to bad consequences. From within the system, no individual can prevent the lake from being polluted, and buying a filter might not be such a good idea.

      Wow, ok so he is telling me that basic free-rider problem with some probability of defection is why he gets libertarianism doesn't work ... Great, that was easy.

      Basically it's as simple as waving a big sign saying "public goods".

    1. shinydoc. (2021, December 12). I love how I, an actual GP...who was involved in the initial covid vaccination programme ...has to tune in at 8pm with the public to find out that apparently we are vaccinating the entire adult population with boosters by the end of the year [Tweet]. @irishayesha. https://twitter.com/irishayesha/status/1470123478221303810

    1. The second volume of the Bibliotheca Universalis , published in 1548 under the title Pandectarum sive Partitionum Universalium , contains a list of keywords, ordered not by authors ’ names, but thematically. This intro-duces a classifi cation of knowledge on the one hand, and on the other hand offers orientation for the novice about patterns and keywords (so-called loci communes ) that help organize knowledge to be acquired.

      Konrad Gessner's second edition of Bibliotheca Universalis in 1548 contains a list of keywords (loci communes) thus placing it into the tradition of the commonplace book, but as it is published for use by others, it accelerates the ability for others to find and learn about information in which they may have an interest.

      Was there a tradition of published or manuscript commonplace books prior to this?

    1. d’étudier la possibilité de mettre en place un cadre international concernant les exceptions et limitations au droit d’auteur à des fins pédagogiques et de recherche afin de faciliter les échanges et la coopération transfrontaliers en matière de REL ;

      Parfois bien utile de ne pas être trop puristes au sujet des licences. Il y a une grande diversité dans les usages «libres» de ressources qui ne le sont pas toujours.

  3. Nov 2021
    1. An exit determined by how much public good has been created by the project rather than quarterly profit.

      Yes! We could actually rehabilitate the concept of a corporation as a living body if compensation for public good was the foundation for economic currency.

    1. Schools in disadvantaged, rural ordeprived areas are especially likely to lack the appropriate digital capacity andinfrastructure required to deliver teaching remotely. Significant differences in the provisionof online teaching and learning resources may also exist between private and publicschools.

      Schools in disadvantaged, rural or deprived areas are especially likely to lack the appropriate digital capacity and infrastructure required to deliver teaching remotely. Significant differences in the provision of online teaching and learning resources may also exist between private and public schools.

    1. the number of dislikes on a video will only be available to creators in Studio and not visible to the public on the video’s page.

      you're withdrawing one of the few valuable signals we have to judge sentiment. and justifying that massive massive massive dollop of harm, that ignorance, with the cries of a very very few.

      you fucking suck egg you worthless anti-public dingbats.

    1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/10/new-puritans-mob-justice-canceled/619818/

      Anne Applebaum looks at the ideas of public humiliation and cancel culture as a potential slippery slope toward authoritarianism. She provides numerous examples of people experiencing forms of cancel culture without any arguments for or against them, but instead explores the cultural space around it and what its consequences might possibly be.

      Many of her examples focus on spaces related to academia rather than broader life, a space which needs further exploration as the scope and shape for those may differ dramatically.

      She also brings up the broad phenomenon of "university justice" (my descriptor) and generally secret tribunals and justice administered by them rather than traditional governmental means.

      This brings up some excellent avenues for thought about who we are as a country and a liberal democracy.

      Highly recommend.

    2. The censoriousness, the shunning, the ritualized apologies, the public sacrifices—these are rather typical behaviors in illiberal societies with rigid cultural codes, enforced by heavy peer pressure.

      I'd highlighted this from a pull quote earlier, but note that the full context also includes the phrase:

      enforced by heavy peer pressure.

    3. The censoriousness, the shunning, the ritualized apologies, the public sacrifices—these are typical behaviors in illiberal societies with rigid cultural codes.
    4. Many of these investigations involve anonymous reports or complaints, some of which can come as a total surprise to those being reported upon. By definition, social-media mobs involve anonymous accounts that amplify unverified stories with “likes” and shares. The “Shitty Media Men” list was an anonymous collection of unverified accusations that became public. Procedures at many universities actually mandate anonymity in the early stages of an investigation. Sometimes even the accused isn’t given any of the details. Chua’s husband, the Yale Law professor Jed Rubenfeld, who was suspended from teaching due to sexual-harassment allegations (which he denies), says he did not know the names of his accusers or the nature of the accusations against him for a year and a half.

      How are these cases being played out differently in the social (and social media) sphere without the ability to confront your accusers with an idea of due process?

      A confounding factor also seems to be the punishment of dragging the case out for extended period of time.

    5. Another person suspended from his job put it this way: “Someone who knows me, but maybe doesn’t know my soul or character, may be saying to themselves that prudence would dictate they keep their distance, lest they become collateral damage.”

      Putting people beyond the pale creates a social contagion of sorts. It would be interesting to look at these cases from the perspective of public health and view these as disease. What information falls out of doing this? How does this model change?

      From Applebaum's perspective that these cases may help sow the seeds of authoritarianism, could they be viewed as something like an initial case of untreated syphilis and authoritarianism becomes a version of festered stage three syphilis.

      What other things may stem from these effects as second and third order problems from a complexity theory perspective?

    1. Dr Nisreen Alwan 🌻. (2021, October 30). Mass infection of kids with a virus less than 2 years old is not ethical, not moral, not scientifically evidenced, not socially just & medically risky. There’s no good argument for this. And no, boosting population immunity to protect the adults is not a valid argument. #Childism [Tweet]. @Dr2NisreenAlwan. https://twitter.com/Dr2NisreenAlwan/status/1454498829403922440

    1. I watched Christian from Zettelkasten.de taking notes from a book. He’s a professional note-taker, and it still took him two hours to take four notes in the first video - it does take forever to make good permanent notes.

      An example of someone taking notes in public to model the process. Also an example of the time it takes to make notes.

      Has Dan Allosso (@danallosso) done something along these lines as an example on his YouTube channel?

  4. Oct 2021
    1. three concentric spheres: consensus, legitimate controversy, and deviance

      Hallin’s spheres

      Hallin divides the world of political discourse into three concentric spheres: consensus, legitimate controversy, and deviance. In the sphere of consensus, journalists assume everyone agrees. The sphere of legitimate controversy includes the standard political debates, and journalists are expected to remain neutral. The sphere of deviance falls outside the bounds of legitimate debate, and journalists can ignore it. These boundaries shift, as public opinion shifts.

    1. Neurons, synapses, electrochemical receptors, and a compromised immune system.

      I use the metaphor of a compromised immune system to describe the effects of propaganda, the polluted information ecology in which we are swimming.

      Ultimately, the cognitive distortions are the disease of modern life, where we can no longer understand ourselves or our world, because the disinformation campaigns have impaired our ability to think rationally when we are in a constant state of stress, anxiety, and fear. We become stuck in the lizard brain, the limbic system, where we make emotional decisions and subsequently justify our actions with rationalizations.

    1. As early as 1928, Edward Bernays recognized propaganda as a modern instrument to produce productive ends and "help bring order out of chaos".

      Amy Westervelt delves into the history of propaganda to uncover the deceit at the heart of public relations, marketing, advertising, and design in an analysis of the business strategies of oil and gas companies in the podcast, Drilled.

      Westervelt pays particular interest to Edward Bernays.

      “Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, coined the term ‘public relations’ when propaganda started to become a negative term. His specialty was using psychological know-how to manipulate the masses and orchestrate cultural shifts in his clients’ favor (clients like Standard Oil, the American Tobacco Company, and General Motors).”

  5. Sep 2021
    1. four building blocks and 14 signals for improving and inspiring the design of better digital public spaces
    1. Build pathways between communal and private work. Too often, we celebrate one or the other, but thinking actually works best when it has the opporunity to be done both in private and alongside other people. Proximity and ease of movement between the two modes matters. If a person can work on ideas alone and privately for a little while, then easily bring those ideas to a group, then move back to the private space, and continue this cycle as necessary, the thinking will be better.

      This is a model that is tacitly being used by the IndieWeb in slowly developing better social media and communication on the web.

    1. The tunnel far below represented Nevada’s latest salvo in a simmering water war: the construction of a $1.4 billion drainage hole to ensure that if the lake ever ran dry, Las Vegas could get the very last drop

      Deep Concept: Modern America is mostly corrupt from it's own creation of wealth. Wealth is power, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely! Money and wealth have completely changed the underlying foundation of America. Modern America is the corrupted result of wealth. Morality and ethics in modern American have been reshaped to "fit" European Aristocracy, ironically the same European aristocracy America fled in the Revolutionary War.

      Billions and billions of tax payer money is spent on projects that could never pass rigorous examination and best public ROI use. Political authoritative conditions rule public tax money for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. The public "cult-like" sheep have no clue how they are being abused.

      The authoritative abusers (politicians) follow the "mostly" corrupt American (fuck-you) form of government and individual power tactics that have been conveniently embedded in corrupt modern morality and ethics, used by corrupted lawyers and judges to codify the fundamental moral code that underpins the original American Constitution.

    1. What happens to this graph when we overlay pure capitalism instead of a mixed economy? What if this spectrum was put on a different axis altogether? What does the current climate of the United states look like when graphed out on it. Which parts have diminished over the past 50 years with the decrease in regulation?

      four quadrant diagram of market goods, club goods, common goods, and public goods graphed along the axes of excludability and rivalry

      Some of these areas benefit heavily by government intervention and regulation.

      We need the ability to better protect both common and public goods.

      definitions:

      • rivalry: does use by one person physically preclude use by others?
      • excludability: do laws prohibit access to these goods?
    1. The press is full of reports that President Biden screwed up the pullout from Afghanistan. But none of the people saying he did it wrong say what he should have done instead.

      I've noticed this phenomenon as well. When criticizing public policy, writers should be required to write down their alternate plans and then go at least one or two levels deep as to the knock on effects that their decisions are likely to have.

      It's easy to criticize, but it's much harder to do the actual work and thinking to actually do something else.

  6. Aug 2021
    1. (2) Dr Nicole E Basta on Twitter: “There is SO MUCH misunderstanding about what a #vaccine #mandate IS & what a vaccine mandate DOES. No one is calling for anyone to be banned. No one is calling for anyone to be forcibly vaccinated. Please, gather 'round and listen up, so you know what we’re talking about... 1/n” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved August 23, 2021, from https://twitter.com/IDEpiPhD/status/1428410251884302336?s=20

  7. Jul 2021
    1. Arel is a public API, or more precisely, it exposes one. Active Record just provides convenience methods that use it under the hood, It's completely valid to use it on it's own. It follows semantic versioning, so unless you are changing major versions (3.x.x => 4.x.x), there is no need to worry about breaking changes.
    1. Nick Holliman. (2021, May 30). @anthonybmasters @d_spiegel A quick visual summary of data on this week’s article by @anthonybmasters & @d_spiegel The outlook is uncertain, although we have survived a variant once already (B.1.1.7). The data on the effect of variants is analysed as fast as it (reliably) arrives. Https://t.co/vOKmCxYMGT https://t.co/3ZeJJTdRs3 [Tweet]. @binocularity. https://twitter.com/binocularity/status/1398957348492918784

    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘@Professologue @sciam well it also gives references to documented cases. Why do you think uncertainty means we should not clean? And how is this different from debate (until very recently) about “airborne” nature, in your view?’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 15 July 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1415357732446633984

    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘@ToddHorowitz3 I think that attribution is hard to make. I have no doubt they’re systematically promoted by bad faith actors, but I think it’s much harder to feel confident about all those who repeat them. But the rather extensive public discussion of efficacy does make this case seem unlikely’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 15 July 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1415364895046963205

    1. A stunning little essay on a small section of the massive problems we face in America viewed through the lens of our teeth.

    2. It’s a familiar trick in the privatisation-happy US – like, say, underfunding public education and then criticising the institution for struggling.

      This same thing is being seen in the U.S. Post Office now too. Underfund it into failure rather than provide a public good.

      Capitalism definitely hasn't solved the issue, and certainly without government regulation. See also the last mile problem for internet service, telephone service, and cable service.

      UPS and FedEx apparently rely on the USPS for last mile delivery in remote areas. (Source for this?)

      The poor and the remote are inordinately effected in almost all these cases. What other things do these examples have in common? How can we compare and contrast the public service/government versions with the private capitalistic ones to make the issues more apparent. Which might be the better solution: capitalism with tight government regulation to ensure service at the low end or a government monopoly of the area? or something in between?

    3. It was lack of insurance, lack of knowledge, lack of good nutrition – poverties into which much of the country was born.

      Poverty and thus lack of knowledge, lack of good nutrition, and lack of dental insurance are the cause of bad teeth in America. Apparently it's not drugs or sugar, though they surely don't help.

    1. Is it useful to the person writing to know that what’s written may be readable by others and that spurs deeper thought in reflection – or is that more blog-like than note-like?

      I often find that doing the work in public ups the quality and effort I put into the thing because I know there's at least the off-hand chance that someone else might read it.

      Generally this means a better contextualized product for myself when I come back to revisit it later, even if no one else saw it. Without it, sometimes my personal scribbles don't hold up when I revisit them, and I can't tell what I had originally intended because I didn't flesh out the idea enough.

  8. Jun 2021