Grumble4681's recent activity
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Comment on Bricks & Minifigs corporate stole a man's $200,000 Lego collection and told him to get bent in ~hobbies
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Comment on Bricks & Minifigs corporate stole a man's $200,000 Lego collection and told him to get bent in ~hobbies
Grumble4681 Link ParentThat's not always how it works though. If someone burglarizes another's house, do people always have to wait for the courts to say they can have their stuff back? Perhaps there are some scenarios,...That's not always how it works though. If someone burglarizes another's house, do people always have to wait for the courts to say they can have their stuff back? Perhaps there are some scenarios, but that's not always the case. I think the thing here is that in America, commercial operations and commercial activity often are given more leeway to commit crimes, and their crimes are almost always a "civil" matter. There's an unwarranted veil of protection, and before you come at it by saying that's how the law is written and if you don't like it then change the laws, that doesn't negate the feeling that this is a completely unjust situation. Laws can be followed and produce unjust outcomes and it's well recognized that the law isn't always right or just.
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Comment on Bricks & Minifigs corporate stole a man's $200,000 Lego collection and told him to get bent in ~hobbies
Grumble4681 Link ParentWhat seems to be likely based on the reporting in this linked post is that a couple individuals within the company saw an opportunity to steal one specific elderly person's collection, and it is..."this company went out of their way to rob one specific elderly person, be extremely belligerent about it and weaponize law enforcement against the people helping him even when it became dubious whether it was in their best interest to do so."
What seems to be likely based on the reporting in this linked post is that a couple individuals within the company saw an opportunity to steal one specific elderly person's collection, and it is possible they had done it before for all any of us know at this point, but if we assume this was the first time they did it, it's far more believable to me that a few individuals saw an opportunity to enrich themselves. Everything else that follows is just people protecting 'their own', going by the reporting in the linked post, they're all part of the same religion/cult and I'm not saying cult as an alternative word for religion but because LDS in particular does do some things differently than the standard Christian religion that dominates the US. I don't think they are quite as strict about interactions between members and non-members and ex-members as some more well known cults like Scientology, but they do have some influences there that go beyond typical religion activity.
I worked for a company who was founded/owned by LDS members and many of the people that worked there were LDS members at some point, but this is much further outside Utah so I'm sure the power/influence they have doesn't carry the same weight but even then, little by little, it started coming out that the owner and his immediate family had started becoming more disillusioned with the organized religion component of it but was keeping it quiet and it was sort of a big deal to them the fallout of it being public when they stopped trying to hide they weren't part of the church anymore. Again, nothing as serious as being found out for leaving Scientology, but I do believe it did create some distance between them and some family members they had back in Utah and even what remained of the LDS members in the region they reside in now.
So this to me comes across more like people in their 'club' protecting each other, these guys made a move to enrich themselves and the leadership probably doesn't have very great morals to begin with, so they don't likely care about the theft more than they do about protecting people who already dug themselves into a position that could get ugly to get out of. They also can likely tell themselves lies, they didn't steal it, they didn't sign the contract, they didn't outright refuse the court's order to pay the lawsuit but instead filed bankruptcy which is a potential legal protection but of course they're simply just abusing the system to draw it out and possibly find other ways to weasel out of it, but all still within some potential framing that they didn't literally go to the guy's house at gunpoint and rob the set from them. People are funny like that, it's why white collar crime in the US often gets a slap on the wrist because too many people can justify these indirect crimes done through the veil of a corporation as being a "civil" matter. If the people involved had directly used violence themselves, then they would lose that public benefit of the doubt, so instead they leverage connections they have to people who have legal authority to use violence (the police) to do that work for them.
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Comment on Lifetime Plex Pass will cost $750 USD after July 1st in ~tv
Grumble4681 Link ParentThe user thing I guess I wouldn't anticipate being a big issue for me because I've already made Plex accounts for my Plex users. I don't do it for everyone but in some cases it makes sense for me....The user thing I guess I wouldn't anticipate being a big issue for me because I've already made Plex accounts for my Plex users. I don't do it for everyone but in some cases it makes sense for me. My parents I made an account for them using a plus address for my own email and set it up on their living room TV which is the only place they'd interact with it anyhow. They can't keep track of their own logins half the time and they have extremely bad password hygiene/management. Then my sister I invited her using her own account, and then she kept bothering me because she forgot her Apple login so she couldn't set up Plex on other devices. Then she said her son wanted access and because she didn't know her own Apple login she couldn't even sign into her account on another device for him, so then I just made a plex account for him with my email using a plus address. Then I just messaged him the email and password for that account I set up. Have had no issues with that or my parents account.
I use a password manager and I store all my passwords and accounts in there as a matter of habit, so it's trivial for me to make new accounts, new secure passwords, and store them in there. It's also easy for me because if someone can't log into their account, I can just send them the credentials again as that's literally the only reason they wouldn't be able to log in is they don't have the credentials. There will never be an issue with the accuracy of the credentials themselves because I made them. Now if Plex apps were bad at storing the credentials and people had to enter them constantly, that could be a problem, or if I transitioned to Jellyfin and had that issue, that could be a problem, but generally it seems to be that on Plex at least, they enter the credentials once and never have to enter them again.
As for network issues, yeah there can be a bit more work involved on that too, but not $70/yr worth of work as far as I'm concerned. I'm already probably more overextended than I would like when it comes to network security and Plex, because Plex is the only thing I port forward as it's the only service I share with anyone else and the relay service is too limited to use. I don't want my server transcoding stuff so it can be streamed at 2mbps. Everything else I self-host I access via Tailscale. Mostly I continue with this because as far as I know Plex has had no remote vulnerabilities abused that I'm aware of that I've been willing to continue with that setup, otherwise I'd prefer to have more control over the network side of it anyhow if I was actually doing it right in my book. I'm just doing it the lazy way as far as I consider it. I could perhaps see an issue for some users if I made a more complex setup, but I think most people I would have little to no issue with.
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Comment on Donald Trump’s deal to drop suit against US Internal Revenue Service creates $1.8b ‘anti-weaponization fund’ in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentI think there are probably more people than we know that do believe other types of protests have their places (likely still a small portion of overall populace), but you can't outright support...I think there are probably more people than we know that do believe other types of protests have their places (likely still a small portion of overall populace), but you can't outright support them in many cases. Sometimes it's a liability for the platform in which you voice support for them on (which of course I wouldn't want Tildes or similar platforms to suffer or become non-existent because of that liability), other times its because you can't control who receives that message or how they will choose to take it and run with it, and other times its personal liability and other consequences for saying such things.
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Comment on Lifetime Plex Pass will cost $750 USD after July 1st in ~tv
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentI'd say that's a bit of an extreme. If you start from nothing meaning you don't have Plex Pass, is it reasonable? So then if you have to pay, is the monthly/annual price that will likely go up at...I'd say that's a bit of an extreme. If you start from nothing meaning you don't have Plex Pass, is it reasonable? So then if you have to pay, is the monthly/annual price that will likely go up at some point in the future reasonable? I wouldn't call paying $70/year or more reasonable just to share media with friends and family.
At that point, I'm weighing the reasonableness of the cost versus the reasonableness of the technical hoops to jump through to get friends and family set up. To some those hoops are greater than to others. Arguably the price point is similarly a greater hoop to some than to others. Though I suspect if money is no concern then one would probably be less inclined to use Plex to begin with and they'd still be using paid streaming services.
You see, for me what makes the money a problem is that I can't charge people for access to my Plex server. I mean, I could, but I don't want the headache of that, because when people pay for it, then they expect professional service. If their shit doesn't work, I'm not going to drop what I'm doing to help them troubleshoot it. I'm not going to issue them a refund because it wasn't working for a few days. I could take it seriously, make it my mission to have 100% uptime or close to that, but I don't care that much and I don't want to care that much. Of course I can just cut them off whenever they act like a jerk and be done with them going forward, but again, that's just hassle I wouldn't want to deal with.
Anyone who has ever had access to my server has no expectations and I like it that way. Some stuff I have in shitty 480p quality because I don't watch it so I don't care. They can watch it if they want, or they can not watch it, or if they ask and I do it when I feel like I can change the quality if it matters that much to them. I could set it up so that they could do it themselves and with limitations to prevent them from using up all my storage but again, that's more work.
I can walk through some of the most incompetent tech people through many things. I did it for a living. Not saying I enjoy it, or that I'd want to do it, but then we're weighing what I think the work of doing that is, versus the work of trying to run some quasi-professional Plex setup and charge for it to recoup my costs or pay $70+ per year for it. The initial option starts to seem like the easier/more reasonable one to me. It would likely end up balancing out that the people I am willing to help set up are going to be the least trouble, and people who would be the most trouble I'd end up not bothering with.
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Comment on Lifetime Plex Pass will cost $750 USD after July 1st in ~tv
Grumble4681 Link ParentI think this is still less negative press than "Plex axes Lifetime Pass" or something like that. To people who already own the Lifetime pass, this headline is mostly a nothing. It doesn't really...I think this is still less negative press than "Plex axes Lifetime Pass" or something like that. To people who already own the Lifetime pass, this headline is mostly a nothing. It doesn't really impact them. If I saw a headline saying they got rid of lifetime pass entirely, with a lot of the vague headlines that come out these days, I'd definitely click just to see if it's going to affect me or not. Now more so I'm equating that to what I would expect to be a general audience reaction, not necessarily about me specifically.
I'm not saying they get no bad press from doing this, I just think it's less than if they got rid of the lifetime pass completely.
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Comment on Lifetime Plex Pass will cost $750 USD after July 1st in ~tv
Grumble4681 Link ParentI suspect they know people wouldn't value their software at $750 and this is just a way to pretend to still offer lifetime passes while actually trying to push people onto the monthly/annual...I suspect they know people wouldn't value their software at $750 and this is just a way to pretend to still offer lifetime passes while actually trying to push people onto the monthly/annual plans. If they just cut the lifetime offering altogether, I think they'd probably generate more negative headlines than even this will generate. It also makes it something people would likely only consider buying on sale and that's it. This also avoids any media from clickbaiting people into thinking they will lose their already purchased lifetime plans, like if they remove the lifetime offering that doesn't mean they are kicking people off the lifetime plex pass but it would be easy to generate clicks making an ambiguous headline that makes people wonder.
I don't think they're trying to compete with Netflix, they have just been using Plex server owners as bootstrappers to their FAST service, which is really more so where they're attempting to compete, not with subscription services. Plex server owners invite their friends and family in, and Plex was happy to adjust the interface of the software to make it harder for the friend/family member to find the family/friend's server content and easier to land on Plex's ad supported content. Suddenly, more revenue coming in from people that never would have known about Plex before, and cost them $0 in marketing.
Coupled with more people probably dipping their toes into piracy due to all the streaming services cracking down on password sharing, prices going up etc., it makes the timing of now more important to them to keep people off these lifetime passes and onto recurring revenue plans.
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Comment on Utah's shrinking lake: a scientific asset and a crisis in ~enviro
Grumble4681 Link ParentIt says God gave you failure that he knew you could handle. I don't believe that myself, and am not religious and god is nothing but a 3 letter word to me, but I could easily see someone taking it...It says God gave you failure that he knew you could handle.
I don't believe that myself, and am not religious and god is nothing but a 3 letter word to me, but I could easily see someone taking it that route.
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Comment on Smartphone recommendations? in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentI just want to concur strongly with this, this has been my experience as well. I bought a Moto X 2013 version and used that for 4ish years, and then I bought a Moto G5 around 2017 but it was a...I just want to concur strongly with this, this has been my experience as well. I bought a Moto X 2013 version and used that for 4ish years, and then I bought a Moto G5 around 2017 but it was a more budget SOC and that thing within 2-3 years was already feeling a bit slow occasionally, doing not intensive things on the phone. The Moto X on the other hand, I don't even think I switched because it was slow, I think I switched because of wireless carrier compatibility issues. I very much preferred my Moto X for form factor alone. I ended up buying a Galaxy S10e when that first came out in 2019 and I'm still using it now, though it's definitely showing its age in processing power at this point.
From what I see at a glance, it appears the performance of the Snapdragon 430 in the Moto G5 in 2017 was not much better than the Snapdragon S4 Pro in the Moto X released in 2013. So to me that tracks, hardware released in 2017 that offers similar or slightly better performance than the flagship line in 2013 isn't going to last that long, because you would expect to see some performance drop by that point even from the 2013 flagship line by 2019-2020 or so, just like I'm seeing now from my 2019 Galaxy S10e.
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Comment on ‘It’s shameful’: New York’s elite lash out at Zohran Mamdani’s second-home tax in ~finance
Grumble4681 Link ParentJust purely my assumptions here, for some of them I assume the behavior is inherited and much like other things people inherit, there are elements to what their parents understood that get lost as...What I can’t stand is the people who’ve somehow managed to convince themselves that they actually and uniquely deserve special treatment to an extent that they deny it’s special treatment at all. Those are the fuckers who are genuinely pissed off about this but are still willing to axe 1,000 jobs without feeling bad about it, and those are the ones whose mindset I’ve never been able to really get.
Just purely my assumptions here, for some of them I assume the behavior is inherited and much like other things people inherit, there are elements to what their parents understood that get lost as those things get passed down to the children. In that behavior in particular the lost element is the awareness of what the mentality is behind that behavior and what is meant to be achieved with it.
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Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentTo me, I think stereotypical philanthropy from a billionaire is not really even desirable. All existing billionaires should spend all their resources ending the one thing that they shouldn't have...Why don’t they choose differently? Why isn’t there a single billionaire in the world leveraging the same degree of wealth and influence to actually end world poverty? I’m talking about earnest, big project energy, not PR philanthropy or shady self-enrichment schemes disguised as altruism. They could choose good… they just don’t.
To me, I think stereotypical philanthropy from a billionaire is not really even desirable. All existing billionaires should spend all their resources ending the one thing that they shouldn't have to begin with, which is immense amount of resources that give them immense amounts of power.
I disagree with the base foundation that there should be people who have as much influence as the extremely wealthy have, and the only way I could support any of them leveraging any of that influence for anything is for the goal of ending that influence. Otherwise I can't support other actions because they're stealing from society as a whole. They're literally the biggest thieves in history, and the typical philanthropy they engage in is a bit of a reverse Robin Hood scenario so they can stroke their own ego and create a legacy for themselves.
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Comment on An insight into looksmaxxxing/blackpill "ideology" in ~life
Grumble4681 Link ParentI'm not really defending the idea that his life is better or worse, I'm not familiar with nor altogether too concerned with the influencer person himself, I just was correcting the record where...I'm not really defending the idea that his life is better or worse, I'm not familiar with nor altogether too concerned with the influencer person himself, I just was correcting the record where the prior comment was misquoting/mischaracterizing the statement.
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Comment on An insight into looksmaxxxing/blackpill "ideology" in ~life
Grumble4681 Link ParentYou conveniently cut off the last part of the quote and then responded to it as though it was saying his life is undeniably better than yours, even though it stated his life is undeniably better...You conveniently cut off the last part of the quote and then responded to it as though it was saying his life is undeniably better than yours, even though it stated his life is undeniably better than an alternative theoretical version of his own life. Sure the argument could still be made that it's not undeniably better than being homeless or whatever else that guy could have ended up being, but that doesn't appear to be the case you were making.
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Comment on Ilhan Omar says she isn’t a multimillionaire, blames accounting error in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentSo in effect one probably just needs to post the text to a pastebin style site and link that instead?So in effect one probably just needs to post the text to a pastebin style site and link that instead?
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Comment on Ring camera is getting more and more annoying in ~tech
Grumble4681 LinkThe way I related/look at it is through the Alexa Echo Dot speakers I bought years back. They were basically the cheapest game in town, and I was using them for voice controls of other smart...The way I related/look at it is through the Alexa Echo Dot speakers I bought years back. They were basically the cheapest game in town, and I was using them for voice controls of other smart devices I had, even once I set up HomeAssistant I was still using Alexa for voice controls. In that specific case I had turned on/off all security and privacy settings I could find as I would go through every nook and cranny of the settings I could find, minimized as much of the advertising or nuisance elements of it as I could, and then just tried to get as much value out of what I paid for it. Pretty sure they do similar things with those speakers as you mentioned with the Ring camera where they add new stuff you have to turn off.
I haven't taken my speakers out of storage for awhile to know what they are like nowadays but I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to using them again depending on how much shittier they may be now. The interesting thing about them before is they didn't have a good way to advertise, but now that they've baked in LLMs to Alexa I'm not sure if that's still the case anymore. I was just using it to turn off lights or turn on a TV or something so I really never needed it to tell me anything, I just wanted it to execute a command, so other than Amazon was able to collect my speech data or something like that I felt like I got decent value from it because they didn't have a good way to monetize it against me at the time.
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Comment on Medium term cold storage options? in ~comp
Grumble4681 Link ParentI don't use Syncthing, but on the website it says this That seems to indicate that it still port forwards, but through UPnP rather than through explicit port forwarding rules. There are other ways...I don't use Syncthing, but on the website it says this
Simple. Syncthing doesn’t need IP addresses or advanced configuration: it just works, over LAN and over the Internet. Every machine is identified by an ID. Give your ID to your friends, share a folder and watch: UPnP will do if you don’t want to port forward or you don’t know how.
That seems to indicate that it still port forwards, but through UPnP rather than through explicit port forwarding rules. There are other ways as well, looking at their docs, it links to a list of relays and if these are full relays, then they're transferring whatever data you're syncing in full (encrypted), and you can see on that list of relays the speeds at which some of them operate. It's not necessarily blazing fast, which is typical/common for relays. The other way around these options, which is what Tailscale and similar services do, is use a middle-man server to coordinate NAT hole punching in firewalls between different client devices to help them establish a direct connection.
So Tailscale likely still represents a better solution in some cases, because Tailscale can establish direct connections rather than being bottlenecked by whatever speeds a relay is capable of handling.
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Comment on AI populism's warning shots in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentI didn't know that term so thanks for enlightening me of that. You're correct, I agree that isn't what was happening here. My apologies for assuming you didn't vet it, I made an assumption that...You're totally right that the gish gallop is a real thing, but I think you'd agree that that's clearly not what's happening here.
I didn't know that term so thanks for enlightening me of that. You're correct, I agree that isn't what was happening here. My apologies for assuming you didn't vet it, I made an assumption that because there wasn't much of any extrapolation on that data within the comment that linked to it that you didn't vet it, so clearly that assumption was wrong.
To try to simplify what I saw, I saw a source that seemed presented as authoritative and comprehensive and not necessarily vetted (what I thought at the time). I did not see anyone responding to that data (other than the parent commenter you were refuting) or discussing the validity of it at all, no conversation about the validity of it, it was just sitting there as though it was the be-all-end-all of the argument. I found this to be inherently worse than a fully unsubstantiated claim presented as fact, because at least it was clear to everyone there was no source presented for that claim and reasonable to assume it was that person's belief that it was fact rather than assuming it was backed by good data.
So my perspective was that it accomplished what it was appearing to be designed to do, which was eliminate the opposing argument by being too difficult to investigate the validity of the source/data and establish a counter-narrative as fact, so rather than the prior comments unsubstantiated claim of violence being apart of most progressive movements being the final statement of fact on the matter, it replaced that with a new claim that was substantiated by data that was presented as more accurate and comprehensive than it was. It's "The actual data", the one and only authoritative set of data, so unless someone can prove it wrong with other data, and somehow prove that that data is better data, then obviously the conclusion must be right, nonviolence is more successful.
But what isn't inherently obvious about data like that from a distance is that the amount of simplifications that they make to make those claims are so great to not really be factual in any objective sense of the word. I literally picked out the very first example in the book, I didn't go cherry picking through it to find that. The very first thing I read was seemingly quite favorable conditions to their core contention, so it wouldn't necessarily be the most compelling one for me to use to disprove it, but even then I found it so flawed that I figured even that was good enough to use. I have no doubt that I could find issue with nearly every single one of the cases they go through based on that initial one. I felt confident that highlighting that one example would illuminate how simplifying the data in the way that they attempted to do just simply doesn't make sense and is fundamentally flawed to simplify it in that way.
So yes I agree, I don't believe that to be gish galloping at all, nor do I think it was necessarily malicious or anything of that sort. But that book is almost 300 pages long, and it's not nearly the same as looking up crime statistics or such which have way more research and authoritative sources with much less simplification so it's easier to digest the argument and refute it. To drop that as "The actual data" and not cover anything about what is within it or what that data actually is, I thought created a barrier too high that even if someone was inclined to debate it, they wouldn't because the cudgel of 'fact' made it so there was only a very high effort way to do so. Even if someone presented multiple notable examples that refuted it, those would only be considered as anecdotal cases rather than the much greater amount of data points covered in that book.
Yeah, it's a complex source, but it's a complex topic. I tried to link the website instead of the book specifically so that people could at least see something; what more could I reasonably have done? That's a serious question - this is important to me, I want to convince people, what more could I reasonably have done? Echoing your exact concerns about having to expend more work to disprove something than to prove it, I chose not to put in the effort to quote at length out of the book/website because what I was arguing against was no source whatsoever.
I agree with you that you were arguing against a claim that had no source whatsoever and therefore it isn't really fair that you should have to put in that much more effort to argue against it. I did mention this earlier in this comment, and perhaps this is unique to me and not something that applies to others, a claim stated as fact without any source at all is less concerning to me than a claim purported as fact with a source that is presented as authoritative but isn't as good as people may believe it is because I think that people are more willing to take in and believe the latter than they are the former. I simply view someone who makes that claim without any source as it being their belief that it is fact and I guess that is how I am able to find it less concerning as I presume that is what other people do when encountering such claims. It's probably more specific to the context of this site, claims stated as fact without substantiation in other contexts may be more concerning to me as I would be worried about the capability of the audience for those type of claims more than I am here.
Edit: having considered it more, I could have been nicer. I could have added a caveat that sociopolitical questions are always debatable. I'm not 100% convinced that would have been more compelling, more convincing, but it's worth giving more thought at the very least.
I really didn't see it as mean. I think it was incorrect of me to say that phrasing was disingenuous, I did think it at the time as I didn't reasonably believe that the data was all that strong but I understand now that you were trying to elevate the discussion. I just thought it shut down the conversation too easily in a way that wasn't befitting the veracity of the data.
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Comment on AI populism's warning shots in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentFact is better than vibes I agree, but rarely do we actually have fully agreed upon facts for things on a more complex level. This is going away from my original comment so I do not intend for the...Respectfully, I completely disagree. Fact is better than vibes. If I'm wrong, prove me wrong, right? If my data sucks, argue that too! But philosophically, I completely disagree that anecdotal experiences bear the same weight as a book from someone who's actually compiled a dataset to try to prove something. (Edit: Obviously, yes, it depends on the book and the authors. This one is from a Harvard professor, not some kook. You've been arguing in good faith so I don't expect such a facile argument from you, but adding this for posterity.)
Fact is better than vibes I agree, but rarely do we actually have fully agreed upon facts for things on a more complex level. This is going away from my original comment so I do not intend for the intricacies of the level at which I will go here to apply to the prior argument necessarily, because what prompted each response is different. Even simple 'facts' are easy to find contention. It's simple to say its a fact that X amount of burglaries occur, and cite an FBI source or local police department sources etc. if I want to constrain the argument to a locale, and even if you argue that their tally is 100% correct, that the police or FBI encountered or discovered that exact amount of burglaries, you still can't even fully agree on the facts of that number because there can be disputes as to how it comes across. Well the local police department puts more resources into patrolling neighborhoods with higher reports of burglaries, so now they've discovered more burglaries. If they put fewer resources into it, does that mean there are less burglaries, or less discovery of burglaries? This is also the basis of all varying kinds of conspiracies on the less factual side of facts surrounding autism. Factually, rates of autism are increasing. Or maybe they are not, we're just putting more resources into diagnosing them.
So the reason I want to disentangle this response from the others is because I believe that this response is more so going in the direction of saying 'nothing is fact' or some interpretation along those lines, and that's not really my intention either.
Claims like "nearly every successful progressive movement resorted to violence" need to be supported, because otherwise people will believe something that is probably not true. This wasn't a statement of opinion, it was a statement of fact. And unless I'm misunderstanding you, even your argument is more like "this data is imperfect" than "here's a competing analysis that shows violence is more effective."
You're right that it wasn't competing analysis saying it was, though I personally believe that violence and nonviolence work off each other in non-discrete ways and they amplify the success of the other, which was my motivation for looking into how that source defined things as I don't believe it can be distilled into something as simple as that. I do agree that claims on some level need to be supported, especially stated as strongly as a fact, but alternatively, sources provided such as yours have their own complications. I don't know that I would have invested as much into the reply if you hadn't attempted to use it the way you did, meaning its not the source itself that I had the most issue with, it's the way it was used.
For a source like that, the degree of effort required to cite it is substantially lower than the degree of effort required to vet it. Not only is the book not publicly available for free through official means, it's extremely lengthy, and the freely provided supporting material in your link is also lengthy and because of the concepts it is addressing, it uses overly complex descriptions that abstract away the simplifications and assumptions it makes which make it a more laborious read.
But philosophically, I completely disagree that anecdotal experiences bear the same weight as a book from someone who's actually compiled a dataset to try to prove something. (Edit: Obviously, yes, it depends on the book and the authors. This one is from a Harvard professor, not some kook. You've been arguing in good faith so I don't expect such a facile argument from you, but adding this for posterity.)
I don't know how I feel about this, if only because I almost fell for the same trap. I still don't know about the potential source I was going to cite, but there was a published critical response to the book you cited by a professor at Cambridge University, Christopher Finlay (now with Durham University), and my initial thought was, well he's a political science professor at Cambridge University, it must be reputable. I tried to look into him a little more and I read a little bit of something else by him and I just came away skeptical of him, not that I know for sure he doesn't have valid things to say, I just didn't know if I understood what I had read so I didn't want to just rely on him for his status.
So instead I set out on the more laborious process of downloading the book cited and illustrating with a specific example why I think that the data is flawed on a fundamental level. I could have simply argued against it without citing anything, but then your cudgel of 'actual data' wins out, because I would have no data. That's where I think the problem comes in with using 'data' as a cudgel, because you didn't vet it, but you made me vet it in order to respond. I personally think using data, science, and facts in this manner contributes to anti-science rhetoric, because its unrealistic to expect most people to be able to devote the energy and efforts needed to do what I did. I was only able to bring myself to do it because I'm unemployed and have no life. I recognize that your response was to someone claiming a fact without evidence, so I realize you didn't just say it unprompted or for no reason, but I don't know that it's the right type of response for that circumstance.
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Comment on AI populism's warning shots in ~society
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentHere's where I think it's disingenuous, and I don't mean it to be an attack on you, but it comes across as a cudgel of 'science' or 'fact'. But the data in this case is just made up by a few...- Exemplary
Here's where I think it's disingenuous, and I don't mean it to be an attack on you, but it comes across as a cudgel of 'science' or 'fact'. But the data in this case is just made up by a few people.
To be fair, all data is on some level just made up of course. If you are tallying points in a basketball game, the ball going through the hoop counts for points and was part of the design of the game but that also makes it universally recognized on some level. How to tally the data of scoring points in a basketball game is pretty straightforward subsequently, and it would be pretty straightforward to present it as 'actual data'. But then there's someone who passes the ball to the person who puts the ball through the basket, and that person gets an "assist". It's data, but it's more made up because of how it's defined and by who. The NBA counts assists differently than other leagues, or even over historical NBA. Even so, it's still a widely recognized stat that at least by context someone can often determine what definition of assist goes with the data, and the non-specific definitions are widely known on some level by people who follow the sport at least.
There could be a dataset for players who picks their nose on the court but no one is tracking that. But my point is, how you present what qualifies as 'actual data' matters. If I say 'the data shows the team that picks their nose on the court most wins', and then I go selectively looking through games, and then also choosing what counts as 'nose picking', and present it as 'actual data', in some sense it's true that it's data, it's bad data, but if not for the comical premise, I'm giving it more authority than it actually has by presenting it as 'actual data' because I'm the only one tracking the data. It's one guy (me) who selectively went through things and came up with my own criteria and judgements and chose 'nose picking', it's not a wide group of professionals in the NBA or basketball scene who defined a 'nose picking' stat.
I think on a 'data' level, that's similar to an anecdote. What makes an anecdote less useful in certain contexts is that it's one person's experience or one single event that isn't necessarily representative of all events. I do believe the book had two authors, and perhaps there would be more people involved than that, but on the scale of what we're talking about here, I think it deserves more than just a few people to have some level of agreement of definitions on the subject matter to have more weight behind it. It's not data to be used as a cudgel against philosophical arguments or anecdotal experiences. To be more widely recognized and accepted is where I would draw the line on presenting it more authoritatively.
I don't even know how you just typed all that out without seeing how ridiculous the foundation of your argument is. Because really the foundation of it is that the thief doesn't claim it's their stuff. You want to know why? Because they don't get to stay out of jail while the police and prosecutors claim "It's a civil matter". So lying thieving sleazebags with their corporate veil of legitimacy where in America that's what all of the systems are actually designed to protect is the almighty dollar, the wheels have to keep turning after all, are incentivized to lie because the system protects them. Literally the President of the United States is in the position he is in for the same reason, and you have the GALL to say it has nothing to do with the laws nor it being a systemic issue.
Don't you think perhaps, these thieving fuckers would have also "voluntarily" given up the stolen property if they got hauled off to jail like the petty thief?
The fact that you even act like justice was served is truly mind boggling. The petty thief goes to jail, and the corporate thief just has to follow the court order to pay back what they stole, justice is served, all is well that ends well.