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generativist's profile
💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops 💫
💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops 💫
 💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫
@generativist

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 💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫

@generativist

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Palo Alto, CA
jbn.abreka.com
Joined May 2013

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     💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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     💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 Retweeted Paul Graham

    1/ I think PG is wrong. But, I think this take and his previous ones in the same vein illustrate an error that, i) everyone is prone to; ii) no one is trying to solve because it demands thinking 'intersubjectively' (very deliberate usage here), which is real damn hard to do.https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1201164712106434560 …

     💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 added,

    Paul GrahamVerified account @paulg
    Startup idea for whoever wants it: Now that formerly neutral(ish) "newspapers of record" have been forced to pick a side to avoid going out of business, there may be room for a new publication to serve that need. Can't say for sure it will work, but it's a beachhead.
    4:05 PM - 1 Dec 2019
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    • Eli Sennesh Glued2TheScreen +mastodon.social/@GluedToTheScreen JJ Josh Winters Michael T. Bacon Dan marls Colin Carroll Dr Angus Fisk
    2 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
      1. New conversation
      2.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 Retweeted Paul Graham

        2/ As to (i), in case it wasn't obvious, Paul Graham is asserting that the NYT is increasingly less neutral. To make it more explicit, see this previous tweets, herehttps://twitter.com/paulg/status/1196747587845574657 …

         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 added,

        Paul GrahamVerified account @paulg
        Replying to @joaquinlife @VitalikButerin
        One piece of quantifiable evidence of the decline in journalism is the word-frequency data showing the NYT's dramatic shift to the left over the past 5 years. You don't shift that fast simply because the truth did. Ergo it must have come at the expense of truth.
        1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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      3.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 Retweeted Paul Graham

        3/ and here,https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1196767257344593920 …

         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 added,

        Paul GrahamVerified account @paulg
        Replying to @joaquinlife
        pic.twitter.com/x8mTvoghnb
        2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      4.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        4/ The idea that a shift in vernacular comes at the expense of truth is fashionable nonsense *about* nonsense. Changes in language accompany both cultural shifts and scientific revolutions. His evidence is pitifully weak and merely exposes his own biases.pic.twitter.com/GOXXTQVq1w

        google ngrams for information theory showing a dramatic rise in the late 40s.
        google ngrams for "sokal afair" showing a dramatic rise in the early 90s
        1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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      5.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        5/ BUT, in doing so, he allows us to interrogate a few things in (what I hope is) a useful way. I'm going to assume that pg considers *objective* reporting useful, a concern we share. (He didn't use that word.)

        1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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      6.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        6/ The thing is, as anyone who has ever spent time doing any optimization knows, the specification of an objective function is... ...really important. And it's something people almost always leave unspecified when demanding objective news.

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      7.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        7/ One idealized objective function would demand stories sampled with respect to harm as a weight. A looming war is important; a fist fight at McDonalds is not. Trouble is, most events lie between these two extremes.

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      8.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        8/ (There's also the matter of applying some non-linear transformation to the weights prior to sampling because attention is finite and diffuse attention often precludes robust social signal detection — that's why attention-hijacking works so well for agenda setting.)

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      9.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        9/ Anyways, that objective function? It's well-characterized by ideology, the cognitive tool every one of us uses (whether we admit it or not) to navigate our socio-political information environment. It's a tool for judgment.

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      10.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        10/ Paul Graham's objective function as venture capitalist with a near religious following is probably quite different than yours and mind. That's not me saying he's wrong generally, but his beliefs are subject to very different selective pressures than mine and most yours.

        1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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      11.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        11/ Given OPs use of 'neutral' and the previous posts which mistakenly conflated evolving language with "a dramatic shift to the left," it seems like his prescribed objective function demands, i) an unbiased sample for attention allocation; ii) identity-less presentation.

        1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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      12.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        12/ The former I want desperately. (And am slowly working on.) But, it's a remarkably challenging socio-technical problem where good solutions are mostly less wrong ones with lots of uncertainty. (E.g. descriptive representation w.r.t. one trait isn't going to get the job done.)

        1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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      13.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        13/ The latter — identity-less presentation — is something I increasingly think *everyone* gets wrong.

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      14.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        14/ PG drew some pretty bad inferences because social cognition — being faster and more integrated — caused him to process certain words as identities and out-groups, coloring his downstream perceptions and resulting quality of deliberation.

        1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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      15.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        15/ And guess what? The same mechanisms cause you to make similar mistakes, as they do for me. And, that *is* a problem because identity cues are so terribly reliable now that careful deliberation affords little boosting. 🧠: "Just take the shortcut, it's fine."

        1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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      16.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        16/ Polarization begets segmentation; segmentation begs polarization. The set of shared beliefs vanishes rapidly. Perception of ideological bias becomes omnipresent.

        2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      17.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        17. I'm not sure what the solution to that is. I have some things I'm working on, but seriously — it's hard and, despite mediums of new scale, it's not a new problem.

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      18.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        18/ But, imagine if PG had said, "listen, I'm bad at processing information given identity cues [as is everyone]. I just start reading between non-existent lines and get terribly confused and angry [as does everyone]. Can you help me evaluate what's going on more effectively?"

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      19.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        19/ I would think this is a wonderful project (okay, I'm obviously biased), and I wouldn't care if PG had said it — I think that need does exist! But, because PG did say it my first instinct is some variant of, "shut up we don't need a Verrit by Peter Thiel" solution.

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      20.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        20/ And that's a problem because I'm almost sure technologists *not* in his particularly sycophantic orbit have the same reaction, which creates this weird deterrence space around the need.

        2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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      21.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        21/ I'm not saying we should strip identity from political discussion. That would be foolish. But, presentation does matter and if one presentation inhibits reception of important information (as it did for PG) while another facilitates it, wouldn't you want the latter?

        2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      22.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        22/ Or to put it differently, if I had written this thread under an alt in the vernacular of HackerNews bros — some boisterous mixture of NNT, PG, and Ayn Rand — would you have been as likely to listen to me?

        1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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      23.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        TL;DR(A): "If I owned a newspaper, I would simply report an unbiased sample of harms subject to correction by social intervention."

        1 reply 1 retweet 4 likes
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      24.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        TL;DR(B): I'm pretty sure PG just wants the "paper of record" to reflect his priors and identity, as do we all.

        1 reply 1 retweet 6 likes
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      25.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 Retweeted  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫

        P.S. To make this more concrete, consider a lot of the discourse around "white privilege." During 2016, there were a few clips interviewing some random white rural person reacting angrily to the premise of white privilege.https://twitter.com/generativist/status/1201291209563656192 …

         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 added,

         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 @generativist
        22/ Or to put it differently, if I had written this thread under an alt in the vernacular of HackerNews bros — some boisterous mixture of NNT, PG, and Ayn Rand — would you have been as likely to listen to me?
        Show this thread
        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      26.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        People used to thinking in that framework reacted by shitposted derisively and vitriolicly about the "rubes" reaction. You saw the same response to Hillbilly Elegy, too. (I hesitate to use the later as an example, because I didn't think it was good.)

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      27.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        Thing is, if you're talking about the unconditional expectation of white v black people in the US, it's hard to deny the disparity technically captured by the term white privilege. (Unless you're explicitly racist, as a fuckload of people are.)

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      28.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        But, the distributions are wide. No, not every black person is worse off than every white person. If you present everything as if they were, you're going to alien a lot of people who quickly learn to associate "white privilege" with "bullshit." Presentation matters.

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      29.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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        Oh, P.P.S., this *is* a problem I am working on from various angles, so if you're a technologist who wants to build or a VC/angel who doesn't want to create the next panopticon / prior confirmation engine, my DMs are open.

        1 reply 2 retweets 4 likes
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      30.  💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫‏ @generativist 1 Dec 2019
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         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 Retweeted Paul Musgrave 🍕

        P.P.P.S related for my #phdlife-heavy followers, https://twitter.com/profmusgrave/status/1201192398124191751?s=21 …https://twitter.com/profmusgrave/status/1201192398124191751 …

         💥 (wannabe) Ƀreaker of (the Bad) Loops  💫 added,

        Paul Musgrave 🍕Verified account @profmusgrave
        Another way of thinking about this is that academics shouldn’t treat knowledge as terra nullius or, worse, assume their own knowledge inherently preempt others’ claims
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      31. End of conversation

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