lariati

I think this partially a myopic view from young people.

I remember being a little kid and watching a week long show about the JFK conspiracy on either one of the big 3 networks or PBS. Area 51 alien conspiracy is so ubiquitous I don't even know how you would track it 30 years ago.

Alex Jones that is banned from youtube for all these crazy conspiracy theories he puts out use to be on practically nationally on AM radio stations for hours a day. The Art Bell show was broadcast nightly for decades and was maybe even more insane than Alex Jones.

It is telling that the people who are weaponizing this concept of "misinformation" do not point it at all at Bigfoot researchers. What is more "misinformation" than the idea of giant apes running around the US forest? Of course, that doesn't count because there is no political gain to be had.

The whole process is so transparent.

We basically have epistemological certainty as long as their is political gain to be had from the certainty. JFK assassination is probably the best example. The theta/time decay has all evaporated on the political gain from the conspiracy so that no longer matters.

Noise?

If we follow the science then what does "misinformation" mean in an information theory context?

It has no meaning at all. Since it basically has no meaning it does make it quite a good word in a propaganda context. We can make this word mean whatever we want.

It is a shame we don't use the concept of noise or a noisy channel in a wider context.

I suspect in reality all these narratives are basically fiction.

We know we are really bad at tracking knowledge work productivity but we will make up narratives based off bad data.

I imagine the real story is that the productive people are just as but not more productive at home vs the office and the slackers are walking their dog more instead of walking around the office.

"Office slackers waste time in different ways working from home, everything else basically the same"

I feel like any nytimes article I read is practically written by an algorithm.

"Since the pandemic began, Americans’ happiness has cratered"

As if this isn't mostly because of the disruption to normal life caused by the pandemic?

To me, there is this small group of very loud social media addicts/writers that would be perfectly happy for this pandemic experience to go on forever since it always provides content to write/post about while basically everyone I know in person is utterly burnt out on the whole experience.

Totally agree. At least on KDE I really don't notice any difference in performance and always have both installed.

I use Firefox 99% of the time though. I think it is something about the tabs that I like better but it is a minor difference and purely based on personal taste.

So he is basically going to get bored and binge watch shows on Netflix for 3 days.

The irony to me is I would think curating a website like that is as big a problem as anything. That is going to take up way too much time and space in your brain.

Get rid of the blog, Netflix and social media then most the problems will go away.

No one is doomscrolling arXiv.

Exactly and the vast majority of people were racists at the time who I am sure did not agree with the protests.

Something has gone wrong though with this trucker protest because people should have already been arrested. LBJ wasn't granting himself power to deal with civil rights protests.

IMO now it is going to turn into some kind of Canadian Reichstag fire.

Some headline like 2/3rds of Canadians want the government to make sure there is never another Reichstag fire is just a matter of time.

The irony is this is exactly why the US is a republic and not a democracy.

Direct democracy is 100% mob rule but no one really cares to read the Federalist Papers or the mountain of thought that was put into this at the start of the US.

These truckers did nothing other than grease the wheels of authoritarianism anyway.

This is the last real protest in Canada. Next time, these "emergency" powers will either be immediate or these new powers are just new permanent government powers.

2/3rds the citizens will practically be demanding that this never happens again.

A lesson in why Ben Franklin said that democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

I would just add Neil Postman's Technopoly as a much easier read.

I have never been able to get through either of those Ellul books and have tried several times. I am not even sure if it is Ellul himself or translated French thought in general I find so painful.

Because the cyberpunk values and predictions couldn't have been more wrong.

It didn't even take 25 years to make 1984 look like an improvement in privacy and surveillance compared to what we have now.

If the idea of happiness is never having to leave the house then the past 25 years have been great.