dodger-dog

So that was a mouse in your pocket, you weren't just glad to see me.

At the same time, you can't argue that everything in our society has similarly improved. There is still a long way to go in providing more diverse access to the wealth generating markets.

"I was taught to gut a squirrel by the son of a freed slave who lived behind the home in Virginia where my family retired to, he had worked alongside my grandfather as a sharecropper on my paternal grandmother's father's farm."

Sounds bucolic.

Agency is not granted. It is an inherent human atttribute, though its practical expression is heavily influenced, restricted, or enabled by social, political, and material conditions.

If in the exercise of your agency you create or release a generalized machine and allow it to become a meta-optimizer, then you are responsible for it, because it has not agency.

Even if I tell it to work on its own, it is always a tool in my hand. I grant it agency for my purposes. I'm the Meta-Master.

The question for mathematicians is: what can a mathematician do with these new tools that no one else can?

Waxing nostalgic about the sound of pencil on paper or the beauty of your abacas is a different conversation, as is the complaining about who moved my math cheese.

I understand. The same arguments have been with us for a long time. See Conrad Gessner's arguments against the printing press.

Since rolling back to at least the pre-radio days is unlikely, we might focus on educating consumers in a way that empowers them rather taking a top-down approach to control what people are allowed to do because we know what is best for everyone.

You are distinguishing between my one example of an almost entirely pleasant, life-affirming TikTok feed and a model of a large-scale TikTok feed experience at a societal level. Ok, yes, those two things are not the same. Good luck in your vocation.

You know that the TikTok feeds are superior at giving the user what engages them and keeps them logged in. I think that is part of your point. You then introduce a "firms don't bet on a single human making a reasonable choice," and that they bet that "enough will be in the right circumstances to make the choices that benefit the firm." This is a conflation that you are making that you might think is necessary to support your hypothesis that the evil scientist, engineers, and researchers are twisting minds.

You can criticize them for making the product too responsive and addicting—sort of like you could criticize Frito Lay for the same thing. What you cannot argue is that the software engineers are trying to make the users bad, stupid, or fat.

Which returns to the original part of this discussion. I said that TikTok was replacing legacy media. When using TikTok was morally questioned, I responded that the output that is consumed is largely determined by the user, and I citied my experience of that.

If you are not saying that TikTok is purposively altering "normal" people in a negative way, but that simply the addictive nature of the software is leading to "normal" people to affect themselves in a negative way because of their choices and tastes, and that it is your job to help force TikTok to change the approach to maximizing engagement in order to protect the users from their bad choices and tastes, then you've got another argument on your hands entirely—one that has many levels that are open to attack.

Let's start with one: who are you to tell us who the "normal" people are, what they should be watching and how much of it, and how do you determine that? Maybe you work in a data role in this "field". What do you call that field? User experience? Information control? "Normal" individual taste and media consumption formation? All very interesting questions.

To go from working with the data to making the claims you have made, you are going to have to button those arguments up a lot.

In the alternative: you do it to yourself, lack the emotional maturity, responsibility, and fortitude to even begin to do anything about it, and to protect your fragile sense of self worth and self-deceptive identity from the cognitive dissonance, blame evil scientists, engineers, and researchers for controlling you beyond what any human agency could possibly be expected to resist. Poor fellow.

I see it. In a discussion about entertainment sources loosing market share, I suggested that TikTok was a likely reason. When someone's "scruples" were inferred to be poor by merely using the TikTok platform, I pointed out that "scruples" have more to do with what shows up in your feed (suggesting the user bears responsibility) and described my experience as humanizing, entertaining, less of a demand on my time, and provided a sense of global community through dancing and singing. It was then that you introduced the "hive mind" concept.

One tell of a hive minded thinker is when they have knee jerk reactions to things and shoot from the lip.

Scruples likely has something to do with it, but not in the way you suggest. My feed is full of dancing and singing. Seeing a dance trend go viral and with 48 hours people all over the world are posting their rendition of it is remarkable.

This is my thinking. TikTok is very entertaining. I can’t do hours, but 30 minutes to an hour is great. Compare it to an unswipable hours long sporting event, 30 minutes looking for the right movie you quit 30 minutes in or have to pause till another day because something comes up, or tv shows with unresolved endings that leave you feeling like you are in a toxic relationship-hating the commitment but afraid of the sense of loss.

How much is TikTok?

90 minutes. Trump was kicked off social media for how long?

It can't be only wrong when it is done to your interests. It has to be either right or wrong across the board.

The more you dislike someone and their views, the more your principles and values are tested.

I"m assuming you value things like freedom of speech, liberty, freedom, democracy, progressive liberal ideas, and that sort of thing. If all you can about is power and winning, then never mind.