Tag: society

Infotopia

new research on GFN, information markets and bias amplification. a lot of it seems applicable to ed’s argumentarium, if it ever leaves the utopia it is at now.

if we can choose our own media, it’s possible we will use this power to insulate ourselves in an information cocoon, where we systematically avoid dissenting voices and have increasingly less common experience with our fellow citizens. Sunstein worries that a society of these isolated individuals will have difficulty participating in a democracy because citizens need a) some exposure to materials they would not have sought out and b) some common experience as a precursor for joint decision making.

The View From the Top

an aa-like confessional from a recovering WoW player

I just left WoW permanently. I was a leader in one of the largest and most respected guilds in the world, a well-equipped and well-versed mage, and considered myself to have many close friends in my guild. Why did I leave? Simple: Blizzard has created an alternate universe where we don’t have to be ourselves when we don’t want to be. From my vantage point as a guild decision maker, I’ve seen it destroy more families and friendships and take a huge toll on individuals than any drug on the market today, and that means a lot coming from an ex-club DJ.

It took a huge personal toll on me. To illustrate the impact it had, let’s look at me one year later. When I started playing, I was working towards getting into the best shape of my life (and making good progress, too). Now a year later, I’m 15 kg heavier that I was back then, and it is not muscle. I had a lot of hobbies including DJing (which I was pretty accomplished at) and music as well as writing and martial arts. I haven’t touched a record or my guitar for over a year and I think if I tried any Kung Fu my gut would throw my back out. Finally, and most significantly, I had a very satisfying social life before. My friends and I would go out and there were things to do every night of the week. Now a year later, I realize my true friends are the greatest people in the world because the fact I came out of my room, turned the lights on, and watched a movie with them still means something. They still are having a great time teasing me at my expense, however, which shows they still love me and they haven’t changed.

Against Smoking

Meanwhile, Switzerland is still a shithole when it comes to being molested by smoking. 1 of many areas where Europe is the laggard.

Belmont is the first city in the nation to ban smoking on its streets and almost everywhere else.

2007-07-22: What’s not to love about an artist (Adriana Salazar) who creates machines that smoke or try to tie shoes?

2007-10-18: Oxygen Smoker

A 90-year-old Ypsilanti woman was critically injured when the oxygen system she was using to breathe caught on fire while she was smoking.

2008-02-01: The scale of the epidemic

Vile indeed, but habit-forming and therefore lethally dangerous: it cuts short the lives of 33-50% of its practitioners. Perhaps 100m people died prematurely during the 20th century as a result of tobacco, making it the leading preventable cause of death and one of the top killers overall. Another 1b more may die from it in this century if current trends continue unchecked.

2008-03-13: Lung ashtray for the fatalistic smoker in your life.

2008-07-24: Fighting the smoking epidemic

Bill Gates and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on that they would spend $500m to stop people around the world from smoking.

2008-05-08: Second-hand smoke is terrible.

a 30-minute exposure to the level of secondhand smoke that one might normally inhale in an average bar setting was enough to result in blood vessel injury in young and otherwise healthy lifelong nonsmokers. Compounding the injury to the blood vessels themselves, the exposure to smoke impedes the function of the body’s natural repair mechanisms that are activated in the face of the blood vessels’ injury. Many of these effects persisted 24 hours later.

2014-12-11: China is far behind developed nations when it comes to smoking. Turns out, the government makes 7% of its revenue from tobacco, so little incentive to make the population healthier.
2017-06-25: The $10K life

Cigarette companies make about $10K for every 1M cigarettes purchased. Since there is 1 death for every 1M cigarettes sold (or smoked), a tobacco manufacturer will make about $10K for every death caused by their products. The value of a human life to a cigarette manufacturer is therefore about $10K

2018-04-20: Smoking decline

From the 1920s to the 1980s, the United States was the most smoking country in the developed world. In the 1960s, consumption peaked over 10 a day, per capita. But now it’s near the bottom of the chart—only Britain smokes less, among rich western countries.


2019-06-19: Corporate absolution

Philip Morris is pivoting to smoke-free cigarettes, because “society expects us to act responsibly, and we are doing just that by designing a smoke-free future”. Also, KFC “promises not to let vegans down” with their new meatless chicken-like nuggets. They’ll have to compete with factory-farming mega-conglomerate Tyson Foods, who are coming out with their own vegetarian chicken option. If evil companies want to do good, you should let them. If they have a line of retreat, they won’t fight so hard against change. If Tyson Foods wants to use its lobbyists to support meat substitutes instead of sabotaging them, that’s good for everybody. If they want to use their research budget to push plant-based meats forward, so much the better. After companies have started doing evil, we might want to break our previous precommitment and switch to “let evil companies avoid punishment if they stop doing evil”. And after companies have stopped doing evil, we might want (if only for the sake of our own sense of justice) to break both of our previous precommitments and go with “punish them after all”. What is the right action? I’m not sure, but I lean toward “buy the meatless chicken from KFC”, for a few reasons.

2023-08-31: An update on smoking in Europe. Switzerland is still at 25.5%.

The overall smoking rate in Germany was 34% in July 2023. In March 2020, the rate was 26.5%. The smoking rate for US adults in 2021 dropped to 11.5%.

Against Diamonds

Stupid kills. In this case, being uneducated about the various states of carbon

Adding to the pot-stirring that De Beers and others incited, a single page ad appeared in Variety a few months ago, paid for by the Kalahari Bushmen of Botswana, who were driven from their land by the government to make way for diamond mining. Their ad directly addressed DiCaprio, asking for help which then came in the form of several Survival International advocacy efforts.

2008-02-20: Finally a situation where the diamondoid surfaces warning sign makes sense.

Designer Wong makes engagement rings that can kill you. The razor-sharp diamond point is set into the ring so it can’t get knocked out when you smash someone’s face in, and the edges of the ring are really soft so it won’t cut into your skin during the pounding. It’s romantic because it means, “Will you marry me” but it also means, “I can’t always be there to protect you so if some jerk won’t stop bothering you, puncture him with this.” The diamond sharp edge will also cut skin down to the bone (with a minimum 1 karat stone – but the larger the better). Or it may simply be used to tag hard surfaces, like cars and windows for S.O.S. messages or that last will and estimate when pen or paper (or lawyers) aren’t conveniently around.


2008-06-16: Extremely cheap diamonds will hopefully do away with the “diamonds are forever” crap this country’s brides are infatuated with.

“This is a virtual diamond mine. If we were in Africa, we’d have barbed wire, security guards and watch towers. We can’t do that in Massachusetts.”

2008-10-27: Can’t wait for those to be done in volume, and the retarded engagement ring industry to die.

The most exciting aspect of this new annealing process is the unlimited size of the crystals that can be treated. The breakthrough will allow kilocarat diamonds of high optical quality

2012-09-18: That’s a lot of engagement rings. Diamond rings are now even more broadcasting your status as an idiot to the world.

Russia has just declassified news that will shake world gem markets to their core: the discovery of a vast new diamond field containing “trillions of carats,” enough to supply global markets for another 3 ka.

2015-01-07: No more Diamonds, with the exception of the engagement ring nonsense, of course.

Even my own diamond-business owning, non-millennial father is turning away from jewelry when it comes to gift giving. Sure, he’s made my mom a handful of statement pieces over the years, but at the same price point, he’s more likely to gift something that has actual purpose, aside from aesthetic value. The last few birthdays and Christmases have yielded vacation getaways, iPhones of every generation, even a smart home thermostat. What hasn’t shown up under the Christmas tree in the last 5 years? Diamond anything.

2015-03-18: Diamond scams

We were called hip-pocketers, because we lived from one deal to the next: Your business could fit in the wallet in your pocket. You bought a used Rolex at a pawnshop for $1000 from the kid who’s just paid $500 for it, hurried it over to your watch guy to hit it on the wheel and make it look new, replaced the old worn buckle with a South American counterfeit for $50, and resold it to your friend who owned the jewelry store a few blocks over for $2200, $2275 if she wanted a counterfeit leather box. She could retail it the same day for $3500. We “worked the float” back then, in the ’80s and ’90s—that meant the few days you had between when you paid for something with a check and the check actually hit your bank account. If you flipped the gold you’d bought with a check the same day, you had a few days of free money. Of course, you tried to make money on every deal, but often you were moving so fast that you had to lose money here and there, waiting for the bigger score that ought to come if you just kept hustling fast enough.

On the icky details of this criminal hustle

I’ll tell you how it’s done. Let’s say you have a 14-karat gold ring that weighs 15 grams. First you weigh it and show the customer that it’s 15 grams. “Now we multiply that by 14 for 14 karat and divide it by 24 for 24 karat, which is what it would be if it were 100% gold,” you explain to the seller. “That gives us the price for your 14-karat gold. Multiply that by 15, for 15 grams. Now, 14 karat is 56% gold and 44% base metal, which burns off at the smelter, so we multiply that by 0.56. Finally, we deduct 10% for the smelter, and 15% for my profit. Most gold buyers will charge you 20 or 25%, which is a reasonable profit margin, but we do such high quantity of gold-buying here that we can afford very low margins. That gives us a final figure of…” You get the picture. The customer’s ring is worth $280 in real gold value. But you just offered $120, with a seemingly sound mathematical justification. And you’ve left yourself plenty of wiggle room if they want to haggle your profit down from 15% to 10% or even 7.5%. The real key to this scam is that you’ve deducted for the impurity of 14 karat not 1x but 2x: first, when you calculated the per-gram price and again when you “deduct for the base metal.”

2016-06-07: Time for a 1M carat synthetic diamond to end this silliness

Lesedi La Rona could, if skillfully cut, yield an even larger stone—the largest polished diamond in history. He described the Lesedi La Rona, a single piece of rough some 3 ga old, as “almost ungraspable.”

2023-05-06: It’s happening. Too slowly because people are dumb, but still.

33% of all engagement rings with center stones purchased last year were created in a lab. That’s 2x the number from 2020. As the technology to make lab-grown diamonds has improved, production has increased and retail prices are falling. Their growing popularity, especially among younger consumers, has caught the attention of jewelers and watchmakers — and is challenging traditional diamonds that are mined from the earth.

Robot lab

Until now, people haven’t had the chance to meet robots. Social patterns between man and machines do not exist. Instead there are only images from science fiction literature and films. This is where robot lab comes in.

very thoughtful contemplation on robots.

Deep Brain Stimulation

Electrical brain stimulation rouses people from deep coma sometimes and is bound to wreak havoc with ethics and braindead determinations. Terri Schiavo was nothing.

For someone left for dead 12 years ago, Candice Ivey seems to be doing pretty well. She’s still got her homecoming queen looks and A-student smarts. She has earned a college degree and holds a job as a recreational therapist in a retirement community. She has, however, lost her ballerina grace and now walks a bit like her feet are asleep. She slurs her words a little, too, which sometimes leads to trouble. “One time I got pulled over. The cop looked at me and said, ‘What have you been drinking?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ He said, ‘Get out here and walk the line.’ I was staggering all over the place. He said, ‘All right, blow into this.’ Of course I blew a 0, and he had to let me go.”

2008-09-15: Wireheads

Soon after insertion of the nVPL electrode, the patient noted that stimulation also produced erotic sensations. This pleasurable response was heightened by continuous stimulation at 75% maximal amplitude, frequently augmented by short bursts at maximal amplitude. Though sexual arousal was prominent, no orgasm occurred with these brief increases in stimulation intensity. Despite several episodes of paroxysmal atrial tachycardia and development of adverse behavioral and neurological symptoms during maximal stimulation, compulsive use of the stimulator developed. At its most frequent, the patient self-stimulated throughout the day, neglecting personal hygiene and family commitments. A chronic ulceration developed at the tip of the finger used to adjust the amplitude dial and she frequently tampered with the device in an effort to increase the stimulation amplitude.

2013-06-25: Consider: brain computer interfaces. Without this, this poor guy would have a pretty miserable life.

2015-06-14: Neurophilic implants

But with our injectable electronics, it’s as if it’s not there at all. They are 1m times more flexible than any state-of-the-art flexible electronics and have subcellular feature sizes. They’re what I call ‘neurophilic’ — they actually like to interact with neurons.

2015-11-09: Self-experimentation

Last year, Kennedy, a 67-year-old neurologist and inventor, did something unprecedented in the annals of self-experimentation. He paid a surgeon in Central America $25K to implant electrodes into his brain in order to establish a connection between his motor cortex and a computer.

2016-05-14: Brainjacking

A group of neurosurgeons round up a set of dire, terrifying warnings about the way that neural implants are vulnerable to networked attacks. Most of the article turns on deep brain stimulation devices, which can be used to stimulate or suppress activity in different parts of the brain, already used to treat some forms of mental illness, chronic pain and other disorders. The researchers round up a whole dystopia’s worth of potential attacks on these implants, including tampering with the victim’s reward system “to exert substantial control over a patient’s behavior”; pain attacks that induce “severe pain in these patients”; and attacks on impulse control that could induce “Mania, hypersexuality, and pathological gambling.”

2021-07-06: Perhaps everyone could lead better lives with a bit of DBS.

Why is Deep Brain Stimulation so transformative – not just eliminating OCD symptoms, but increasing self-confidence and openness to the world? And how can we make sense of self-confidence in the context of electrically induced changes in the brain? It could be that changes in the brain and an increase in self-confidence are both needed to set the sick person right. Understanding the effects of DBS on the brain might therefore be only a part of the explanation of how DBS changes the person.

It is the whole person who responds to DBS, and not only the parts of their brain where the electrodes are implanted. DBS changes many aspects of how a person engages with the world. Their social interactions, tendency to reflect and ruminate, mood, interests and, more generally, their self-confidence in life. Even for those without a pathology, the experience of over- and under-confidence can be common throughout life. Think of going into an interview where your dream job is at stake. In this kind of situation, many might experience a lack of self-confidence. Overconfidence on the job, on the other hand, can lead to precipitous calculations and risks. Too much self-confidence can tip over into impulsive acts that appear pathological; too little self-confidence can lead to anxiety and lack of trust in oneself and the world.

being native

There are 100s of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out your email (or having your secretary print it out for you – an even “thicker” accent); needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting website (rather than just sending them the URL). I’m sure you can think of 1 or 2 examples of your own without much effort. My own favorite example is the “Did you get my email?” phone call.

excellent. (via rich bowen)

English

Germish, also referred to as Denglisch, Engleutsch, Genglish or Ginglish is a jumble of English terms embedded within a grammatically German sentence (or vice versa). It is spoken in all German-speaking countries and owes its existence in part to the cultural predominance of English language pop music and international computer slang.

How can you not love a free encyclopedia?
2008-04-19: Nerdic catches on

~100 new words are added to the language of technology, dubbed ‘Nerdic‘, every year – 3x as many as make it into the Oxford English Dictionary.

2008-09-14: France learning English

I’ve had enough of hearing that the French do not learn English. It’s a big disadvantage for international competition. Yet in the globalized, internet age, the French seem to realize that the losers from a refusal to learn English are themselves—and that speaking it need not make them less French.

2009-05-30: Wow. 1000s of Chinese school kids shouting english in a stadium, to learn.

2010-03-30: The world language is coming, globish

More than a lingua franca, the rapid adoption of ‘decaffeinated English’ makes it the world’s most widely spoken language.

2014-02-04: Other languages may exist

The Coca-Cola Company ignited a firestorm of controversy on Sunday with a Super Bowl ad that appeared to make the inflammatory claim that other languages besides English exist. “Last night, Coke assaulted millions of Americans with its misguided and inappropriate view that other languages exist. In the future, we strongly hope that Coke will keep its crazy theories to itself.”

2015-07-19: Everything is becoming english. Many languages borrow not just words but grammar from english.

GERMANS joke about their bad English. In Berlin, you can buy fridge magnets with German expressions over-literally translated into English, like “It is me sausage”—a word-for-word rendering of Es ist mir Wurst, or “it’s all the same to me”. “German Quatsch” on Twitter has many more. But educated Germans usually speak English quite well. The reality is that, to a deeper extent than commonly realized, German is changing under constant influence from English.

2017-01-07: Many countries would benefit from this. I’m always embarrassed for companies that can’t communicate.

Japan continues to work inside a linguistic bubble – not least because many firms in Japan are oriented towards the domestic market and pay little heed to global trends. But this approach is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. Switching to English makes Japanese firms more competitive, while opening employees’ eyes to the outside world. There is another benefit to using English in business: The language has few power markers. Its use can therefore help to break down the hierarchical, bureaucratic barriers that are entrenched in Japanese society and reflected in Japanese conversation, which could boost efficiency.

Also, Education Ministry to begin using English. Reminds me of the lonely guy in the us government who has been responsible for metrication since 1970.

the Japanese Ministry of Education will soon begin conducting their meetings in the language. As using English in meetings is highly unusual in the country, the ministry will start implementing it slowly, beginning with high-level officials in their department.

2023-05-04: LLMs will accelerate the winner takes all dynamics. The proposed countermeasures are ineffective and weak.

A tool like ChatGPT has yet to be trained on a massive amount of high-quality, diverse and representative Arabic written data. Its lack of data makes the tool’s results in Arabic unable to distinguish the nuances, accuracy and depth needed to generate quality content. Arabic-speaking users of AI tools face profound consequences of the language divide. At the top of the list is the limited access to information, as the vast majority of references and big data these tools scan to generate their results are mainly available in English.

This discrepancy hinders the ability of Arabic-speaking users to leverage AI for professional and personal growth and perpetuates a digital divide with long-lasting repercussions.