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At this point I despair at anyone who doesn’t understand that the problem isn’t the specific architecture, it’s social media as a scaled up, algorithmically driven concept. Stick so many people on one social graph that can’t possibly be effectively moderated by humans and it will turn into the same pit every time.

Absolutely, although dark orange seems to work well enough. If you can put them on and still tell the difference between most colors, they aren't working. I use my pair for one purpose: reading in bed with a backlit e-reader. I can't imagine trying to do much else with them on, they have plastic wings to block light from the side and they're not light.

But they work.


There's also really nothing to a community beyond its mods, its users, and maybe some bots. Reddit creates a record of EVERYTHING and in many ways those years of discussion are the sub more than the current users or mods alone. Discord is nothing like that, if you could get everyone on the same page a Discord clone would work just as well, and relatively seamlessly.

tl;dr Discord has a moat, but it's not very wide or deep.


That's not true. Plenty of Discord communities have dozens of channels with long-running post histories, pictures, FAQ content, beginner guides; server roles and titles, permissions, custom emoji, stickers, etc.

Migrating all of that stuff to a new service (which may not even support it all) would be a huge pain.


My first reflexive thought, and I suspect possibly yours too, was "Oh wow it's the same pattern I've seen here for years every time the new get-rich-quick career path drops!" Remember when people would look you dead in the eye and swear to God that you'd have your OS "running on the chain" and PoW would solve the energy hogging problems of crypto? It would be the new money, goodbye fiat, everything would change!

Well a lot of the same players are cashing in on AI, but I'm sure the UFO will show up any day now.


There’s a reason that the Musks and Thiels of the world invested in luxury doomsday bunkers, because it won’t just be property people want to burn.

The Soviets used the "iron broom" (i.e. murder) on the wealthy people.

It didn't make anyone better off.


The Soviets history is not so simple. ;)

The Soviets aren't the only country that tried that. It's never worked out anywhere it was tried.

It seems to have worked out alright for the French.

It worked out very badly for them. See "Reign of Terror". The Revolution ended when Napoleon declared himself a hereditary monarch. Things went full circle.

Consider also the American Revolution. Nobody went on a rampage to kill the wealthy. Things went very well for America.

I’m not arguing in favor of it, I’m just aware of how the world works.

You also seem to have forgotten France among other places where the history wasn’t as grim as Russia. Frankly nothing Russia has ever done seems to make their lot better.


You're overlooking the Reign of Terror.

Consider Pol Pot (Cambodia). How'd that work out? Cuba? How'd that go? Venezuela, anyone?

For a counter-example, the US. The greatest rise in the standard of living in history, with free markets where paupers could get rich.


I'm not overlooking anything, including the desperate circumstances that led things like the French revolution and ensuing violence. The US went through a war to be free, plenty of people died and it could have easily gone another way. If everyone followed your advice India would still belong to the UK.

I also think it's unhelpful to compare utter madness like the killing fields of Cambodia with a typical (even failed) revolution. More typical outcomes can be seen in the wake of the "Arab Spring", which arguably achieved nothing at great cost. That doesn't mean that people won't try again though, drowning people are dangerous and irrational, and I'd argue that's why leaders and people with power should work very hard to prevent those circumstances from emerging.

In a country like the US it isn't that hard.


And people wonder why we’re all locked in a race to the bottom.

That's only a good argument if you think they're bound to be a detriment in those "demands", or that basic dignity is too much to ask for hard labor in return for crap wages and no job security.

Putting that aside even if you do accept the premise that people working and living in your country are a risk rather than an opportunity, it's a poor argument in favor of something that's necessitated by demographic change in the West (and places like Japan).


It generally works just fine if immigrants come to country for a job, not to benefit from immigrant support programs from the govt.

Because then there is actual reason to integrate, you need to be nice to locals to get a job.


If you want to see where the discussion on privacy and tech has gone since, suffer through the recent “film” Mercy. A sane reading of the premise would suggest a profoundly anti-surveillance and AI message, but it’s quite the opposite.

In an way it’s best paired with the Amazon mess War of The Worlds, which is so thematically empty that it ultimately seems to suggest that while you can’t trust the government with your data, Amazon is a great custodian!


They can be detrimental too, especially if they're linked to beneficial traits. The test is ultimately whether or not the harm done is sufficiently disadvantageous that it interferes with reproductive fitness. Baldness is arguably detrimental, but it's linked to a bunch of recessive genes that function in other ways, and it doesn't impact us until we're likely to have already reproduced.

That's a simplification, but you get the idea.


Peacocks with their giant tail feathers are my favorite example. They make flying really difficult, but they make attracting female mates much easier. The reproduction need wins.


I don't know if I would consider it especially difficult for them. It is obviously not convenient but when I had peacocks they would still fly way up in some tall pine trees to roost even with a full tail without too much trouble. That said these were domestic peacocks so they didn't have to fly very far at all for everything they ever wanted, wild peacocks might have to go farther.


And that, my friends, is why I bought a Pontiac...


So, how many kids?


At some point you're forced to either believe that people have never heard of the concept of a force multiplier, or to return to Upton Sinclair's observation about getting people to believe in things that hurt their bottom line.


I don’t see why people keep blaming cars for road safety problems; people got into buggy crashes for centuries before automobiles even existed


Because a difference in scale can become a difference in category. A handful of buggy crashes can be reduced to operator error, but as the car becomes widely adopted and analysis matures, it becomes clear that the fundamental design of the machine and its available use cases has fundamental flaws that cause a higher rate of operator error than desired. Therefore, cars are redesigned to be safer, laws and regulations are put in place, license systems are issued, and traffic calming and road design is considered.

Hope that helps you understand.


Is the sarcasm really that opaque? Who would unironically equate buggy accidents and automobile accidents?


I’d like to introduce you to the internet.

There’s a reason /s was a big thing, one persons obvious sarcasm is (almost tautologically) another persons true statement of opinion.


Thanks. I wasn’t aware of that.


It took me a minute to realise you were joking too! :)


How much time have you spent around developers?


I got my first tech job in 1998. Some of the most sarcastic people I’ve ever met.


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