hey wookie, since you know how to train an AI to distinguish between Republican politicians and nazis, you should offer your services to Twitter and Facebook. They were able to train AIs to ban ISIS, but for some reason they just can’t figure out how to tell Republicans and Nazis apart. I bet they’d pay you a lot of money to help them, like millions or tens of millions of dollars. It’s a pretty big problem. I know I certainly don’t want to talk to people indistinguishable from Nazis.

Completely unrelated to the thread but I wanted to share the dumbest thing made by a human being:

https://old.reddit.com/r/DiWHY/comments/bdi265/please_just_go_buy_one/

I won't spoil it but when you figure out what he's building you'll sacrifice an arm and a leg for it. BTW, the chain goes the wrong direction and he shoves the tip of a moving chainsaw straight into the log. Everything about this video is horrid

"just go buy one" but his build quality is better than some I've used

I guess I wouldn't be surprised if some are cheap. Husqvarna is the only brand I've used/will use.

Why would twitter even care if a Republican's tweet was censored if it actually met the criteria of white nationalism? I doubt they would and, in fact, if that happened that would be a bigger story than some dude claiming that's why they can't do it. And, yes, they would run into the same problem with the opposition party if this is a real issue. Personally, I'm all for letting people out themselves publicly. I don't know why twitter is overly concerned with any of this.

It’s a law enforcement issue? Social media when left unmoderated make it easy for individuals to join networks that promote radical political views and that incentivize acts of violence.

I haven’t read the article, but I assume that when Twitter was tackling ISIS they adopted a no tolerance policy, and focused on nodes of networks that had a lot of followers, because that’s more efficient. It makes sense that, if applied to white supremacy, a similar strategy would include GOP representatives, and that Twitter would be more hesitant to delete their accounts than they would accounts of internet famous people associated with ISIS. An account with a lot of followers isn’t necessarily putting out the most radical content as nodes it’s associated with, but it’s still a conduit holding the network together, which I suspect is at least partially why GOP politicians would be targeted (alternatively, there’ve obviously been examples of GOP politicians retweeting Nazi/alt-right memes).

I explained to a friend of mine how absurd Bezos' net worth is today, and came to some interesting facts.

Jeff Bezos could afford to buy every Ferrari ever made, and would only lose about a third of his net worth.

Jeff Bezos could buy every house in the city of Charlottesville, 25 times over.

He could build 40 of these.

Something you easily understood from context, and all of which Wookie06 would know if he read the ****ing article.

Honestly though, like 90% of what Republican voters believe is adorable sincerity about the repugnant and racist projects of their donor class. Like believing that “tax cuts” is actual economic policy, when it all started as code for “hurting black people” after even Republican voters stopped thinking racism is fun.

So maybe deplatforming Republican politicians is a good idea?

Speaking of idiots, polls indicate that Canadian voters, stoked by concerns over how much influence corporations and the wealthy have over the Liberal Party of Canada, are prepared to vote Conservative.

:getin:

I read it. Another thing that makes the dubious claim dumb is that even if they can't train an AI to distinguish white supremacists from Republican politicians they could easily filter them out of the results. The more I think about it the claim in the article sounds exactly like a snarky comment on Massassi. Which, of course, is why it was posted in the first place.

or maybe ∀ people who matter, Republican = white supremacist, and Twitter doesn't put it past the party that repealed the fairness doctrine for their own benefit to institute a new one for their own benefit.

Because whether you think it's a dubious claim or not (based on what understanding of statistics and machine learning, I don't know), filtering out Republican politicians isn't good enough. You'd also have to filter out following and retweeting Republican politicians, and people who independently discuss the same issues using the same terms, all transitively. Including the white supremacists and white supremacist memes those politicians follow or retweet. And then suddenly for some weird reason you aren't banning white supremacists anymore.

As a German I think we should just use this to ban everyone not being a white supremacist. Don't care if some republicans still get through. That's the price you pay for supremacy...

Apparently Mueller said the report did not reflect the context, nature, or substance of the probe.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

It may be what you meant, but it was Barr's four-page memo to Congress that Mueller was criticizing, and not his own report. Which would make for a much thicker plot, though.

ahh, typical day of psychotics continuing to blow up a nothing story

****'s exhausting.

The WashPo article that this controversy is based on is infuriatingly ambiguous, too.

You’ve got this, which suggests that Mueller took issue with how Barr represented the report in his summary:



Then you’ve got this, which suggests that he didn’t:



Ironically, that last quote also suggests that Mueller’s frustration was not that Barr misrepresented the report, but that he didn’t do enough to cat herd the media and anticipate ways it would misinterpret Barr.

Or, "ML isn't good enough to distinguish one group of people from another when one group must do everything they can to pretend to be a part of that other group, because they know their actual beliefs are considered too universally reprehensible to openly advocate."

My guess is that ML also can't distinguish a Democrat from a crypto-Maoist who has enough self-awareness to realize that advocating for union rights is probably going to get more traction than demanding that we massacre intellectuals and program the ignorant with a uniform ideology.

This is really a socially crappy attitude to have. Society is 100% going to get worse unless we can find a way to have empathy for people who see things differently than us. Associating only with people who see things your way, and then trying to convince yourself that everyone who believes the other way is as reprehensible as possible is just masturbatory hate. Real people see only parts of the world, and they don't always interpret what they do see correctly. If we want to see positive social change without spilling blood, we need to look for ways to find common ground instead of ways to feel smug. There's a lot more opportunity for that than we want to admit, but it comes at the cost of a little personal humility.

you mean like all of the ISIS members and supporters that twitter actually did, in fact, successfully use ML to ban, despite many of those people advocating for ISIS while pretending not to be a part of it?

Like I’m sure you felt like you were making some profound point about togetherness or whatever (as if white supremacism is a reasonable position that we should tolerate), but you obviously lack important context from TFA and you’ve missed the point.

This discussion happened at a twitter company meeting. An employee asked the CEO why they can’t use ML to ban white supremacists the way they banned ISIS. The answer was that they can’t, because their bots would ban Republican politicians and supporters.

i.e. they are not talking about hunting down closet white supremacists who post like Republicans because they’re in hiding. They are talking about Republican politicians who post like white supremacists.

Posts? Same. Retweets? Same. Social graph? Same.

They are worried about a public backlash from people (no doubt “enlightened” folks, c.f. your previous post) who can’t/won’t understand why twitter automatically flagging accounts for retweeting racist **** is not a witch hunt for “normal” Republicans.

Did you literally just compare union rights to Maoism like there's no reasonable distinction rofl

If someone made that charge in the Bush era, I'd agree with Obi_Kwiet more. But today we have a president who thinks that shooting migrants would be very effective, but we just can't do it because reasons, but if we only could it would reaaaally help the problem. And in the wake of this guy's obvious racism many Republicans have begun doing the same thing.

Did any of you not note the article said "some" Republicans, not all?

Again, Silicon Valley is art which imitates life:



It's as if Mike Judge wrote Trump's script.

MasterCard banned antifa because they’re a “hate group”, but also sued their own shareholders (owners) to prevent them from voting on a white supremacist ban. Makes me wonder if obikwiet works there.

I doubt anyone here cares much about this, but here’s Mueller’s letter:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/special-counsel-mueller-s-letter-to-attorney-general-barr/e32695eb-c379-4696-845a-1b45ad32fff1/?utm_term=.0b3caec88dc0

One thing that’s notable about it is how most of the pertinent parts of the letter actually made it into the WashPo article.

The other is how Mueller avoids using causal language in a relevant passage.

After he says the summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” he then says, “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.” He doesn’t directly attribute the confusion to the failure to capture of context, nature and substance. I think one can certainly infer that he believes there’s a connection and he’s just using lawyerly language to avoid making a direct accusation against Barr, but it still goes to show how this letter isn’t really deserving of the dramatic media attention that it’s received. I suspect that the letter was leaked before yesterday so that Barr’s congressional hearing today would occur against the background of a scandal.

It's really concerning how hellbent some people are on it. I believe Trump is guilty and I believe he could easily be found guilty. But there's these people on like Twitter who name themselves like "truth warrior" and spend all their time trying to get to the bottom of Trump's collusion, etc. They read far too much into every little thing which comes out. It's like this perpetual system of outrage against Trump and only Trump, as though it's just him and him alone which is the problem. There's something weird about it. They've lost the forest for the tree on this one.

In any case, if Mueller believes Trump to be guilty, then he's doing a good job not revealing his hand.

You’d think that whether or not the summary accurately summarized the conclusions of the report is something that the media could have definitively established by now, now that we actually have the report. But — how surprising! — no, that’s not the case. So instead you have a climate where people are continuing to assume that eventually facts will emerge that will justify their hunches and their convictions.

You think that people from a very different foreign culture might have a much harder time blending in than people who've grown up in that same culture and have to practice fitting in every day?

I mean, you want to take that one statement from a Twitter employee to drive the idea that Republicans as a group are white supremacists. But Twitter said that the real reason is basically that type two error affecting Arabs is more acceptable than type two error that affects US politicians.




No, obviously I didn't. I made the point that if you were an actual Maoist, pushing union rights is a much more reasonable way to push society in the direction you ultimately want than going full Maoist right out of the gate.




Trump is the enemy. Not of the left, but of civilization. More than any other person, he has used and encouraged division for his own personal interest. He's making people on both side worse, but it's not yet as bad as he's made it seem. If you actually sit down and talk to real people, most of them aren't as horrible as we tend to think when we view them as the dehumanized "other". A lot of them are really wired out about a very distorted view of the other side, but I think if we could actually sit down and hear the other side, we'd realize that there are a lot more things we could compromise on that we think.

People manipulating facts to arrive at the conclusion they believe in - how human! Yeah, I'd accept at this point if Mueller said he didn't find Trump guilty. It may be. We should see what really happens, not preform the conclusion.

In other news, I saw this Reddit thread and was disappointed: https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/bjtuq3/a_chinese_cheating_ring_at_ucla_reveals_an/

I won't say I don't think there's evidence that international students cheat more. I think it's kinda obvious. What disappoints me is the attitude people take. Reddit seems to make these really stereotypical claims about how all Chinese people are cheating everything or whatever.

Having, you know, a bit of experience dealing with these things, anyone who doesn't see that a huge amount of international students are legitimately very smart, work hard and understand the material is wrong. I have international students who are easy A students, and perform at this level even when I'm working with them one on one. Usually there is a bit of a language barrier and so they struggle with poorly-worded word problems, but besides that it's clear they know their ****.

So when a bunch of white Americans dog on them, I have to suspect part of it is a kind of racial resentment. It strikes me as being in the same vein of people who take a fact which points to something real (for instance, drugs coming over the US-Mexico border), and turns it into one of race (Mexicans are criminal MS-13 gang members). Similarly, cheating happens (also pretty common with fraternities and sororities, btw) and it's something to deal with, but that doesn't stop the internet from pulling out their calipers and phrenologizing the situation.

Moral of the story: Chinese students are fine. The bigger issue is the faculty willing to bend rules to allow the super rich children who don't deserve to be there to stay.

“type two error”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/ron-paul-racist-caricature-tweet-republican-pattern.html


But I’m glad to see your desperate grapple with understanding the problem hasn’t stopped you from almost figuring out what’s funny about it.

What's the point in saying this unless you're trying to make associations in people's minds? Is AOC a Maoist?



Yeah, I found sympathy for Nazis after reading Mein Kampf and Hitler's Table Talks as well. /s

Of course dialoguing helps, and I love to do it. I have a friend who was a self-professed far right libertarian (I've mentioned him before). After years of dialoguing over politics, economics, etc, he professes to be moderate. Naturally I've conceded points to him as well. Sometimes meeting people in the middle of the road and dialoguing is helpful to find common ground with each other.

I also often find values common ground with right-leaning people. I do value hard work, and in practice have an individualist bent. And I believe people can often work their way into a higher social strata in America. It's not always easy, but compared to many other places it is real here and I think many people on the left do tend to discount that sort of thing. Some values I disagree with, but in some areas I can find plenty of common ground.

But, on the other hand, where I disagree with Republicans are in specific beliefs about the arrangement of the world. This quote is relevant: "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." When someone begins mentioning the crime immigrants bring, there is no "common ground" to be found. Immigrants are not especially criminal. The Trumpian perspective is simply the wrong one, and needs to lose out.

And this is where the highfalutin' compromise talk can fail. Sometimes an idea is just the wrong one. Trump and his ilk have more than a few wrong ideas that need to just fail.

FWIW, I also think Maoism and Marxism-Leninism fall into the category of ideas which largely should not be compromised with. But I also have no idea who in this country is a goddamn Maoist.

Since I'm pointing out that 'sometimes political ideas should be compromised on, and some should not with one side taking a clear victory', what I'm really suggesting is the world can't be reduced to short quips which only sound like wisdom.

Is Trump really a threat to civilization? That seems like a gross exaggeration to me. It’s almost a cliche, but here it goes anyway: is he actually a greater threat to civilization than Bush 43’s administration was? Of course Trump doesn’t have to be as great a threat as Bush 43 to still be a considerable threat, but somehow we made it through Bush 43. (Or most of us did, anyway. Our “civilization” certainly did.)

To my mind, one of the most terrible things about our age is that white supremacists have certain concerns that, despite being rooted to the root justifications for the most abhorrent of their beliefs and worldview, are actually grounded in reality. In earlier decades, panicked rants about low white fertility rates and high suicide rates would’ve seemed paranoid and utterly unjustifiable. But now those things are actual realities, that even many on the left acknowledge it as an issue, although of course they take a very difference stance on why it is a problem, to the extent that they do: that is, they are concerned because people are having a hard time, not because white people are having a hard time (that is they make an appeal to universal humanity rather than racial solidarity). It seems, to my mind, really bad that certain demographic trends that some on the left celebrate (many of which are not inevitable but are the result of policy) actually agitate, not just the right, but specifically the very worst sections of the right, and instigate conflict with them in a way that confirms their ****ed up worldview in their own minds.

Genius trolling.

Trump is a threat to civilization foremost because he is a billionaire. As a public servant he is ultimately accountable to the public. As a billionaire he is accountable to nobody.

Agreed about the right, disagreed about associating those people with the left (even in part). Thoughts and prayers, generalizing the problem so you don’t have to deal with actual people, saying that you shouldn’t address the individual but focus on raising the tide that will lift all boats is some purestrain radical centrist liberal stuff. People on the left overwhelmingly recognize both the problem and, unlike the right, a solution that doesn’t involve putting people in ovens.

If the right has their way, they'll take women out of the workplace and give them awards for having more children for the reich. I mean country.

Yeah, real talk though it's definitely a problem when people stop getting married or having babies. The right is right about that being a problem. Liberals don't even seem to acknowledge it.

That’s cute and all, but to “actually” this, while our numerical system is based on a number system that was invented in the India and came to the West through Arabic mediation, the way that Arabic writing represents the numbers isn’t the same as how we do it. (None of that is inconsistent with or invalidates the tweet.)

What do you mean by that?

Edit: Oh, never mind, I got what you meant now.

Second edit: actually, I take it back. I don't think I do know what you mean.

Or make college debt relief contingent on having a certain number of children (as Ross Douthat argued for in a recent tweet).