Julesman

Just because I majored in Sociology doesn't mean my web coding is Marxist. :)

I'd like to point out that the history of social science is about as ugly as the history of medicine. It's been entirely a process of going from less to more scientific, and that is clearly still a work in progress.

I don't think liberalism is to blame, and I'd be perfectly willing. Liability is a more likely culprit.

How cringe-worthy is that tired racist joke about the Chinese eating dogs? It's like that one drunk great-uncle at Thanksgiving who just absolutely loves that joke and you know, every single year, you gotta hear it. And he can't tell you once single practical reason why he hates China. Really, he just likes the racism. That's it.

IT'S A TRAP! Seriously. I love the intent here. But in my view the whole premise is epistemologically wrong. (A word I'm almost educated enough to use.)

Truth by consensus is logical but not the point to which we have evolved. Here it seems like a retreat from our capacity into a pragmatic defensive stance. This is all we can manage.

This is essentially the Overton Window. Truth as managed by mainstream sensibility. And the mainstream is primarily a point of view that does not question our industrial imperialism. Things that subtract a lot from growth are not included.

And there is the potential disaster. Large parts of our history do not match our mainstream perception of national character at all. In fact, the mainstream view is one of intentional avoidance of facts. Dissent has never been mainstream. The forces of social change are not supported by the majority.

Example: The Overton Window does not include Chris Hedges. In fact, it doesn't really include any of the real investigative journalists or honest historians of our time. The most curious and informed people we should be promoting are too subversive to be mainstream. And so they will not be included in a truth consensus.

What then is that 'consensus' if it's too shallow to feature its experts?

Something like that. Sunday morning shouting into the void.

Bought. HN for the win.

Let me try again, since I was snotty and got flagged.

This is not a kosher industry. It reaches its influence into the academic realm and has an epic PR budget. It can take advantage of the obscurity of the tech to promote talking points that seem quite reasonable, but generally mask a desire by energy suppliers to maintain the current means of distribution.

And a good part of that PR budget certain goes into negative marketing against wind and solar, specifically because they are disruptive to the distribution model. Profit. There's no conspiracy theory in profit. We know that's what industries want. And historically, industries are not invested in public safety to the extent that it cuts into profits.

So then, why does anyone TRUST the nuclear industry. And even if we do, why would we EVER trust governments to regulate that technology, given that history of absolutely clear about the likelihood of self-regulation?

All I see is billions spent to keep power generation out of our homes. Wind and solar are ready to deploy and yet people seem to suggest that tech in development, which might not be ready of commercial application for a decade, are the solution to our problems?

I don't see it.

This was more or less my response as well. The 'academy as monolith of truth' is so 20th century. And, of course, disagreeing with Newton is very different that disagreeing with Freud. And we certainly aren't surprised that dupes got the Dunning Kruger.

But I worry about the impact of this line of thinking as we see it repeated in mainstream contexts. "Consensus as measure of truthiness" is incredibly problematic.

What he says ONLY applies for AAA games. Metrics and research push every game into the same few buckets. Just like web design best practices imply that every website should be roughly the same.

Chasing what 'works' the best has little to do with stickiness. Yeah, you can be addicted to Candy Crush and play it endlessly without any joy at all. But that kind of stickiness is a problem and not in the soul of gaming.

Real stickiness comes from some kind of authentic joy. And coders and marketers don't know how to put that on screen.

So, what if the truth and reality and what people should really be talking about is sad and difficult and opaque and hard to talk about?

I wish them all the luck in the world, but trackballs are bad for repetitive stress of the thumb joints and shouldn't be used by long term computer workers.

Regarding tables, don't use tables. :)

Because you want to modify it. Right? Tell me about all of your planned modifications. So many changes. So custom. So freedom.

Results may vary. Greatly.

What a crappy intro. No, deserts are NOT alive. Interesting stuff. Not the brightest writer in the bunch.

This is absolutely generic common practice, to one degree or another. Facebook is great at this crap. Clearly this example crosses some kind of line to people. But maybe more than anything because we got to see how the sausage is made. It's as open a secret as the fact that automated call handling is about intentional friction to limit needed call staff.

Yeah, if they upped the brightness. heh.

Oh, the difference between tech nerds and users. No. Users don't modify their phones (or their computers.) Users don't need Windows or some new phone OS so they can do obscure things only 1 in a 10,000 people care about. Industries don't serve tiny minorities of tech savvy users. Most people just want and need a cheap Mac / iPhone. Too bad that doesn't exist.

Which, of course, is some kind of undiscovered kraken kaiju monster. :)

For an industry centered on innovation it is possible to be in a dry period where there are just too many people trying to make the 'latest thing' using older things. New tech tends to show up and keep things interesting.

Zero CSS?