co3d's recent activity

  1. Comment on Center For Humane Technology: A New Agenda for Tech (Tristan Harris) in ~comp

    co3d
    Link Parent
    I agree. However, he also says that it's not about the masses suddenly becoming enlightened. A lot of it can be tackled by "just around 1000 people in Silicon Valley" doing things differently.

    Any solution to anything that requires mass awareness is doomed IMHO, because the masses behave rather hedonistically and don't care.

    I agree. However, he also says that it's not about the masses suddenly becoming enlightened. A lot of it can be tackled by "just around 1000 people in Silicon Valley" doing things differently.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Center For Humane Technology: A New Agenda for Tech (Tristan Harris) in ~comp

    co3d
    Link Parent
    I fully agree, however I don't think at all that Tristan is naive about this. He's often spoken about the terrible incentives inherent in the ad-based revenue model of much of the internet. Even...

    I fully agree, however I don't think at all that Tristan is naive about this. He's often spoken about the terrible incentives inherent in the ad-based revenue model of much of the internet. Even in this very talk he says outright:

    "Free may be the most expensive model we've ever created."

    1 vote

  9. Comment on The zero-waste revolution: How a new wave of shops could end excess packaging in ~enviro

    co3d
    Link
    Here in Berlin we have Original Unverpackt, a grocery store dedicated to zero waste shopping. I've never been there but this article reminded me that I've wanted to check it out. I'll try and do...

    Here in Berlin we have Original Unverpackt, a grocery store dedicated to zero waste shopping. I've never been there but this article reminded me that I've wanted to check it out. I'll try and do that next week or so.

    3 votes

  10. Comment on The tyranny of convenience in ~life

    co3d
    Link Parent
    Both are true. I of course agree with you that people are naturally lazy but cultural influences also play a big role to what extent one will succumb to one's natural impulses versus to what...

    They aren't like that because of pop culture or advertising, but because people are naturally lazy.

    Both are true. I of course agree with you that people are naturally lazy but cultural influences also play a big role to what extent one will succumb to one's natural impulses versus to what extent one will engage in impulse control. People also naturally crave sugar and high calory foods, yet in cultures that encourage healthier diets and more active lifestyles you see considerably less obesity than in cultures where one gets overwhelmed by an overabundance of cheap and easily accessible amount of sugary, fatty fast food at every corner.

  11. Comment on Light themes or Dark themes? in ~tech

    co3d
    Link Parent
    So do I, which is why I'd love all websites and apps to have a simple, always accessible toggle switch where I can just switch between dark and light at a whim, depending on the time of day and/or...

    I prefer the theme depending on the time of day.

    So do I, which is why I'd love all websites and apps to have a simple, always accessible toggle switch where I can just switch between dark and light at a whim, depending on the time of day and/or the brightness in my environment. If Tilde had a little light bulb button in some corner that allowed me to toggle between light and dark themes, without having to go into the settings, that'd be awesome!

    1 vote

  12. Comment on The tyranny of convenience in ~life

    co3d
    Link Parent
    I didn't sent it as a logical fallacy but reductio ad absurdum is often used as a cheap trick to make an argument seem more extreme than intended by its author, and then refuting that - similarly...

    I feel like you are sending me that link because you think I used a logical fallacy, but if you were to check the link you would see that it is not.

    I didn't sent it as a logical fallacy but reductio ad absurdum is often used as a cheap trick to make an argument seem more extreme than intended by its author, and then refuting that - similarly to a straw man.

    If you want to understand why I find this insulting, here is the sentence I think best describes his thesis:

    You need not churn your own butter or hunt your own meat, but if you want to be someone, you cannot allow convenience to be the value that transcends all others.

    I'm sure you can see what the problem with this statement is. He is positing that people consider their laziness to be a virtue.

    He is positing that many people optimise their lives for (short-term) convenience because advertising and popular culture has elevated it to something akin to a virtue. Do you think that's wrong?

    1 vote

  13. Comment on The tyranny of convenience in ~life

    co3d
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    If you've never seen people choose short-term convenience over long-term gains which would lead to more happiness, you must live in a truly extraordinary environment. And it would stand to reason...

    I cannot imagine people being so weak-willed they will choose the easier path over what they know will make them happy.

    If you've never seen people choose short-term convenience over long-term gains which would lead to more happiness, you must live in a truly extraordinary environment. And it would stand to reason that the more seductive and ubiquitous various temptations of short-term convenience become in all walks of life, the more often people succumb to those easy 'quick fixes'.

    I honestly got the feeling that the basis behind all of the author's ideas is that he believes that most people are childlike, unwilling to do things simply because they are too hard. It's extremely condescending.

    I don't think there's anything contemptuous or misanthropic about the observation that humans prefer convenience and have a general tendency to avoid spending time and energy on hard things if possible (and convenient).

    The rest of your complain strikes me as basically reductio ad absurdum. Your experience may differ wildly, but I agree with the observations and assessments of the article to a large extent.

    14 votes

  14. Comment on Instead of ‘finding your passion,’ try developing it, Stanford scholars say in ~life

    co3d
    Link Parent
    Sure but that might be little more than a semantic/academic distinction. I might argue that finding motivation to do something hard makes doing that task a lot easier than if one weren't motivated...

    Sure but that might be little more than a semantic/academic distinction. I might argue that finding motivation to do something hard makes doing that task a lot easier than if one weren't motivated for it.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Don’t buy a 5G smartphone—at least, not for a while in ~tech

    co3d
    Link Parent
    Have there been any research findings on that yet? A couple of months ago I went through quite a bit of effort to try and find out about the state of research on this topic, and found shockingly...

    there is much controversy over the safety of 5G.

    Have there been any research findings on that yet? A couple of months ago I went through quite a bit of effort to try and find out about the state of research on this topic, and found shockingly little of substance - but all the more shilling one way or the other ("Conspiracy-theorists and antivaxxers are fear-mongering about 5G although it's perfectly safe!" vs. "5G is proven to cause cancer but the corporations want to silence this!").

    1 vote

  19. Comment on The 'debate of the century': What happened when Jordan Peterson debated Slavoj Žižek in ~humanities

    co3d
    (edited )
    Link
    I'm not a Jordan Peterson fan, rather the contrary, but isn't this pretty shoddy journalism? I could excuse this kind of sentence from an article in the opinion section, but that's not where this...

    The size and scope of his fame registers more or less exactly the loathing for identity politics in the general populace, because it certainly isn’t on the quality of his books that his reputation resides.

    I'm not a Jordan Peterson fan, rather the contrary, but isn't this pretty shoddy journalism? I could excuse this kind of sentence from an article in the opinion section, but that's not where this was published as far as I can see.

    [Zizek's] remarks were just as rambling as Peterson’s, veering from Trump and Sanders to Dostoevsky to the refugee crisis to the aesthetics of Nazism. If Peterson was an ill-prepared prof, Žižek was a columnist stitching together a bunch of 1,000-worders.

    Did anyone really think a debate between Zizek and Peterson of all people would be anything but a ramble fest? They're both notoriously verbose stream-of-consciousness ramblers.

    They needed enemies, needed combat, because in their solitudes, they had so little to offer. Peterson is neither a racist nor a misogynist. He is a conservative. He seemed, in person, quite gentle. But when you’ve said that, you’ve said everything. Somehow hectoring mobs have managed to turn him into an icon of all they are not. Remove him from his enemies and he is a very poor example of a very old thing – the type of writer whom (...) have promised simple answers to complex problems.

    I can indeed see very well how Peterson (and, to a lesser extent, Zizek) draws most of his appeal from his confrontation with his supposed enemies. Without a looming threat of 'social justice warriors' and 'postmodernists' taking over academia and plunging society into chaos, most of what he has to offer seems pretty stale - and at the very least undeserving of the celebrity status he currently enjoys.

    Both of these men know that they are explicitly throwbacks. They do not have an answer to the real problems that face us: the environment and the rise of China as a successful capitalist state without democracy. (China’s success makes a joke out of the whole premise of the debate: the old-fashioned distinction between communism and capitalism.) Neither can face the reality or the future. Therefore they retreat.

    That's why I find thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari much more intriguing than either of these two. They're obsessing over 20th century questions using 20th century terminology and 20th century frameworks.

    And that was the great irony of the debate: what it comes down to is that they believe they are the victims of a culture of victimization. They play the victim as much as their enemies. It’s all anyone can do at this point.

    I'm so utterly tired of this. David Fincher's film Gone Girl had some posters here in Germany with the subtitle "The Perfect Victim". The film is in large part about the dynamics of victimisation narratives in the media, their effects on notions of justice as well as culture at large. And it does feel to me that public debates around justice and values comprise their strategies almost entirely of contests in presenting oneself (or one's constituents) as the "perfect victim".

    10 votes

  20. Comment on Light themes or Dark themes? in ~tech

    co3d
    Link
    Aesthetically I generally much prefer dark themes. Just joined Tildes and finding it has a Darcula theme made me instantly love it way more than Reddit. However, in bright environments a light...

    Aesthetically I generally much prefer dark themes. Just joined Tildes and finding it has a Darcula theme made me instantly love it way more than Reddit. However, in bright environments a light theme is more practical and readable. I often think about how I'd love for every website and every application to have a single simple toggle light/dark button in some corner where you can toggle between two equally beautiful themes, one light, one dark. I'd use the light during the day and switch to dark at dusk.