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.

Yeah, it's all over my browser. It clicked through and filed my taxes a couple of days ago after preparing all the numbers. You have decisions to make along the way and want to ask some questions. Some of the clicks you have to do for yourself, but for the most part, you are doing something else while your taxes are prepared and filed.

There will be a "gap." Something about humans that you just can't duplicate in machines or animals. It will tell us a lot. Many people fear that and would prefer to level what it means to be human with machines and animals, even though they are human, too. They secretly see themselves as somehow above it.

To what extent would you want your clone to be handy, so to speak? I think that figures into the question.

It's raicist.

More likely, math mom will have to adjust to the new math writing style or do something else.

Yeah, it takes a different bs detector depending on the context.

A night of dinner and bowling. Meet us for dinner, then go bowling. Come for just dinner or just bowling. Late for dinner? Not a problem; order whatever; all separate checks. Show up and watch a little bowling, then leave; no problem, whatever you want. Smaller group goes for drinks after bowling? Have fun?

or

Dinner at my house. Starts at 6pm. Don't be late. What to wear? What to bring? Special diet restrictions? Can't be late. How long to stay? Smoking in back yard? Alcohol on site? So many questions and so much to clean up.

The Republicans continue to honor the democratic republic, but when the democrats and socialist get in power, they want to get rid of it.

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-violent-exhaustion...

Today's librarians are the ultimate gatekeepers working for publishers and corporate content creators. I'm not sure I know of a group that hates AI more. Most of them would have you borrowing PDFs to read. Lawmakers are going to move that way. The guardrails will not be put in place to protect jobs, they will be put in place to protect profits and power.

It is so funny. If it was Harris who released these, you'd be telling us how these show how inept Bush was. Your second point would be how refreshing it is to have this level of transparency from the government.

I have a friend who came out of his house to shoot and kill a guy who was inside his car attempting to steal it. Friend was literally a local celebrity for months.

Of course the public relations is all spin. Corporations do not have feelings. Individual managers may feel one way or the other. It is likely those feelings are highly rationalized by how the change affects them individually. Will they make more money? Will they take on added duties without an increase in money?

Some may wax la philosophie politique at times, but we tend to do that in the abstract when things are at an arms length.

At the end of the day, people made a choice between a corporation and a narrow group of stakeholders over employees and the downstream community influence of their buying power, likely a large group and certainly a different group.

You could argue in the long run it is better for society for companies to make these decisions, and many times that may actually be the case. But, in this one instance, when you place it all on the scales, they were not doing it to save a company or make its products and services more competitive in the market. There was nothing "existential" about it. They wanted to go from one profit level to a higher profit level for a certain group, and that is just what they did.

They lie to you constantly and they know it. You are being rage-baited to farm you votes, clicks, views, and likes:

According to internal Johnson County Sheriff's Office files released under the Texas Public Information Act, the entire "self-administered abortion" narrative was fabricated by a violent felon:

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/crime/article31451... https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/feb/04/eastern-wa-flo...

The Ex-Girlfriend's Account: The woman later informed investigators that she had actually suffered a natural miscarriage after her ex-boyfriend physically assaulted her.

The False Fetus Evidence: The ex-boyfriend—seeking to deflect blame for the assault—collected a blood clot from the miscarriage, presented it to the police, and lied by claiming his ex-girlfriend had intentionally taken illegal abortion pills to end a pregnancy.

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-police-cameras-us...

The Intent of the Search: The police reports later clarified that while the deputy typed "had an abortion" into the Flock Safety tracking system, they were actually attempting to locate the woman and her children because she was fleeing from this domestic violence situation.

Because the initial report was based on a malicious and fabricated claim by an abuser, an official clinical timeline of the pregnancy was never established or verified in the official "death investigation" file.

You boot tails to track your period?

Seems like sheriff was searching for missing person. Was concern about her welfare and mental health, thus the use of the cameras. You can buy Mifepristone at CVS, Target, Walgreen's and the like. I don't think they were trying to track which CVS she was going to.

The article is misleading, but that should never get in the way of righteous rage that helps a person form identity and purpose in an otherwise existential and empty vacuum of meaning.

"On appeal, his insurance agreed to cover $9,967 of the charge—better than nothing, but it still left him on the hook for about $3,000."

Tell the insurance company to wait to release the funds until you talk to the ambulance company or to release the funds directly to you.

Tell the ambulance company they can take the $9,967 or get zero.

Have you ever even Honey-Crisped, Bro?