Chad is one of the most high-integrity persons I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. He is not fucking around for clicks in any shallow sense. I agree with the sibling comment that your cynicism is deeply misplaced imho.
I mean, you can be cynical for whatever reasons, but I just think you'd be assuming (and participating in and perpetuating) a game Chad isn't playing.
> He is not fucking around for clicks in any shallow sense.
He is undeniably "fucking around for clicks." When you don't want clicks, you don't cross-post to YouTube, BlueSky, LinkedIn, your blog, etc. Clearly a lot of effort went into making this announcement social media friendly and click-worthy. He has analytics on his blog to track how many clicks he gets.
Whether it's in a "shallow sense" or not is subjective and there's no way to really argue against that. Do I think he's karma-obsessed and drooling over engagement dashboards? No. And maybe that's what you mean.
But you have to be willfully naive to deny the irony in deploying numerous completely unnecessary layers of tech, over numerous social media channels, to let everyone know that you no longer want tech and social media in your life.
>He is undeniably "fucking around for clicks." When you don't want clicks, you don't cross-post to YouTube, BlueSky, LinkedIn, your blog, etc.
Is he? I realize your comment is 2 hours old at the time of my response, but go to his webpage now, and click through to Bluesky. Then do LinkedIn. Then Twitter. Those accounts all appear to have been nuked from orbit. The argument that someone's "fucking around for clicks" falls apart when there's nothing to click on.
If someone was a frequent blogger with a big following, I won't fault them all that much for saying, "I'm out," to their audience. It's easier to answer, "Where'd you go?" in a public fashion right up front than it is to, potentially, field that question in private more than you'd like to after you bail.
Indeed, it appears that he's now deleted his social profiles. Good on him! That is exactly the right thing to do at this point to follow through, so kudos to him.
TFA was published a day ago, the corresponding YT video was published 3 months ago. He had cross posted the blog (not sure about the YT) across multiple social media channels in that time, up until an hour ago (or thereabouts) when he finally deleted his socials. That was the state of things when I wrote my original comments and follow-ups. So I stand by the assertion that he was clearly interested in promoting the content, at least initially.
Unfortunately I can't edit any of those comments any longer.
If you are somewhat of a public figure and working in a leadership role at a company, I think it's more sensible to put out a widely-seen public announcement about where you are going next, than to just disappear.
Well, at least the way he handless the typewriter and scribbles seems somewhat performative. If it's just a draft version, he seems capable of handling the typing hammers very professionally, adding online corrections staying within margins.
Seems way more seasoned in typing, than most typist of those days. And yet, he can't find the time or patience to retype the piece without typos as a final version?
I don't know the man and don't doubt his sincerity. I even agree with most of what he's saying. But it's pretty obvious imo that this is all somewhat performative.
Doing performative things is not in conflict with expressing ourselves publicly.
People create art and write in various ways and they are free to do so. If he wants to announce to the world that he's leaving the Internet (which is more of a meaningful expression than doing it quietly, for sure) then he can be creative about it without it invalidating his purpose. He could have even posted a photo or a poem along with the message and I don't think that would make it less meaningful.
I would hope that creative expression doesn't die just because we now have tools that lets us express ourselves flawlessly, if we choose to use those tool.
Sorry, but I also think you are complacent. This is generational destruction of reputation.
As a Canadian, we regularly talk about "fuck American companies" in a way we never did. I still actively avoid buying anything from USA in grocery stores. City of Toronto is spinning up a nonprofit grocery store pilot, and they sure as hell are going to be trying not to stock USA goods -- the mayor herself passed an anti-USA procurement bylaw last year. Related: I just helped run a weekly community speaker series[1], where we had 60 ppl (many public servants) signed up to hear a presentation on a supply chain app to help people avoid American products.
And just 30 min ago, coming home at 1am, I was talking to the service guy for my city's bikeshare program. He mentioned new bike models were coming. He was like "fuck Lyft" and I said "I don't trust American companies anymore" and he agreed (Lyft acquired the Montreal bikeshare company we used to deal with). A friend who used to work for Deloitte is actively working to convince city officials to sever the bikeshare contract, and diversify the network for similar reasons.
PRAGMATIC anti-americanism is literally a new hobby for a sizable cohort of the citizenry. It's the only rational choice, and many perceive it as literally a matter of sovereign survival.
People I know will google that information when they care. Or are already aware for product categories they care about like buying a SkiDoo vs Polaris.
But also there’s an app for that:
https://www.oscanadaapp.ca/
> Also, when taking its square root you get a distance
Easy conversion into a distance metric is hugely valuable to making the property amenable to KNN-based dimensionality reduction algos (and I'm sure other things I don't understand, as a non-mathematician)
No, it would be a waste to spend countless millions (nevermind the human capital of "attention") on the campaigning, without first validating that a true quorom of people even want to think about this, rather than a very vocal minority. It's a governance equivalent of saying "step up or shut up", and it's not stupid or wasteful
You're too eager to label legit "governance" as bureaucracy imho
I think it's the fivethirtyeight of of historical significance, and Disney is one of the largest and wealthiest companies on the planet. So it's just kinda like "whoa, this is stratospheric negligence" or "whoa, what is the reason for this... assuming they are not idiots?"
Also, they don’t any plans for the IP, and Nate would’ve paid above-market rate just to take over and preserve the content for posterity. He estimates that they deleted 200,000 hours of human labor.
This is just some Disney suits being extraordinarily petty.
Yes, just to add to this: in the article by Nate [0] he says that he tried to buy the IP but Disney refused because they were unhappy with some of his prior comments.
"I did approach Disney a year or two ago, through my agent, about acquiring the remaining IP. ...
We were told to basically get lost: ABC was annoyed with my critical public comments about their management of FiveThirtyEight. It apparently wasn’t a long conversation, so I don’t have a lot more color to report than that."
I feel that part of the insight is that many people reading this story may want it to be true as stated. All the upvotes and it's propagation in networks may lossily lay this claim (of course debatable)
The beauty of surveillance is that it mutes the ability to cover the distance between desire and action. Which is another way to state "it has a chilling effect"
As I understand, part of any story being shared is that its propagation is part of the story, in a McLuhan medium-is-the-message sense.
Totally. Like, for example, the so-called throngs of roaming domestic terrorists setting Teslas on fire across the US. My dad still asks me if anyone has vandalized mine. (No, and I’m personally unaware of anyone who has had theirs vandalized. At least 1/3 of vehicles in my area are teslas)
> I feel that part of the insight is that many people reading this story may want it to be true as stated.
People that are writing this story surely would. They, of course, wouldn't do it themselves - I mean, you could be arrested and lose your job and go to jail... but if somebody else would bear those consequences, then of course it's fine!
> Which is another way to state "it has a chilling effect"
Yes, that's kind of the point. The question is what does it chill. If it is chilling criminal activities, it's good, if it's chilling legal activities, it's bad.
Activities such as public disobedience to fight unjust laws are unlikely to be affected by surveillance because their whole point is to publicly violate unjust law to attract attention to its unjustness. MLK did not march in secret and avoid surveillance, he marched in public and welcomed attention. That was the whole point of it.
But there's different dangers and responsibilities by those leading and those joining.
The surveillance affects those in the march. Those who might lose their jobs or get arrested. Which did happen at that time. Surveillance increases that scale.
A weird thing is that as groups scale they become anonymous. Small groups have no anonymity, but big groups do. There's safety in numbers. This is why people protest differently now. Why they wear masks. Why people leave their phones at home. The way you protest evolves, but we should ensure that protesting is easy and safe
> This is why people protest differently now. Why they wear masks
No, they wear masks to commit criminal acts, which we witness a lot and for which they definitely should be prosecuted. I am wholeheartedly for peaceful protests, but sorry, black block masked crowds torching businesses and beating up people is not peaceful protests. That's where our ways part. Anarchy and democracy are very different things, and I do not want the former, and I do not want the latter to be confused with the former. And no, it should not be easy and safe to wear a mask and riot - not individually and not with a mob. It should be very dangerous and land one in jail, preferable for a good long time. The fact that it is not happening today is one of the very profound problem that we have in our society - that breaking the laws is tolerated under the thin guise of "protest". And I am not talking about Jim Crow laws, I am talking about common sense laws like "don't torch your neighbor's business" and "don't loot your local Target" and "don't beat up random people walking on the street because you felt like they think wrong thoughts". This has to stop.
Unless you are considering protesting a criminal act, then I'm going to disagree. This is America, we have the right to protest.
I've worn a mask at a protest and committed no crime while protesting. I, and many others, do it for exactly the reasons I have said above.
I won't defend looters nor deny their existence. But I'll also tell you I've been to protests where I get home and turn on the TV and see it painted as something very different from the thing I experienced. I've gone to parks where people spoke, where a bunch of hippies played drums, where people marched down the street, but then on the news saw only scenes of trash cans burning on the other side of town. I've seen people get gassed and arrested while holding up signs and shouting, then get home, turn on the TV and only see images of some brawl that I never saw. I would have never known had I turned on news. But the news also never showed the things I saw and experienced. I don't think these are fake, I'm sure they're things that happened, but it certainly feels misleading as it's certainly misrepresenting reality.
It doesn't matter if it's Fox or CNN, they show what gets them views. They show what makes you scared. They show what makes you angry. But what they don't show is people. In any big group you can find at least someone doing anything. But one person isn't the group just like one action doesn't define your whole life.
So I welcome you to go to protests. To counter protest if you want. That is your right and I'll defend that right too. It's your God given right and I'll defend it even if I hate you for it. You have the right to be a saint. You have the right to be an asshole. You can't have the right to but one without the right to be the other. I've done it in the past and I'll do it again. Because, first they come for the people who are easy to hate...
> And no, it should not be easy and safe to wear a mask and riot
You've gravely misunderstood.
First, I agree, it should not be easy to riot. I don't want to condone rioting. Let's get that straight.
Second, I want to live in a world where wearing masks isn't seen as self defense for people exercising their rights. I want a system where people feel safe protesting and showing their faces. But it's not uncommon to go to protests and find a Cessna circling above it for hours. It's not uncommon to go to a protest with a rayhunter and see a lot of imsi catchers. It's not uncommon to go to protests and see police set up cameras and license plate detectors all throughout the neighborhoods. So help take down the surveillance state and I'll take off my mask. Deal? Because no matter which side of the isle you're on I'm sure we can agree there. I don't want to be ruled by communists, fascist, dictators, monarchs, plutocrats, nor any of the like. I'm not an anarchistic, I'm even more accepting of authority than our founding fathers. But authority needs to be kept in check, because power creeps
Of course, and I agree. But wearing masks to protest is strongly correlated with "protests" that aren't protests but riots - not in theory, but in practice. That's like if you see someone marching with clean-shaved head and swastika on the sleeve - maybe it's a buddhist marching band, but in practice we know it's probably not.
> I've gone to parks where people spoke, where a bunch of hippies played drums,
And those hippies don't need to wear masks, and usually do not. I am all for hippies playing drums. It's the masked guys that hide behind them, waiting for the chance to set stuff on fire, that I am worrying about.
> So I welcome you to go to protests. To counter protest if you want.
No thank you. I have no particular desire to be beaten within an inch of my life, as it happened to many people already. Yes, I know not everybody would attack me, just a tiny minority, while the hippies will keep playing drums. Somehow it doesn't make me feel better about staying the next couple of months in the hospital. If I am lucky.
> In any big group you can find at least someone doing anything. But one person isn't the group
Unfortunately, it's not one person. It's a lot of persons. It's not all the persons, true, but that's not helping - it's like saying we shouldn't investigate murders because most people aren't murderers. True, they aren't - that's the minority that are that we worry about. And again, practice shows those are exactly the one that wear masks and other gear specially designed to make them hard to identify and prosecute. They are not stupid, they know that blending in the crowd of innocent people makes them harder to find and catch.
> But authority needs to be kept in check, because power creeps
Again, I agree, it needs to be. But not by means of mayhem, which is right now seems to be a very popular mode of doing it, for some reason. Yes, not everybody. Enough to be a huge problem.
They do. Go look up Portland ICE protests and you'll see tons of people wearing inflatable costumes. Guess what, those cover your face and make it hard to get you on film. Thats a mask.
> No thank you. I have no particular desire to be beaten within an inch of my life,
Suppose this is true, why would someone beat you up? Are you arguing? You could literally go there, just walk around like a normal person, and be fine. They aren't beating up each other, right? There's no secret handshake. People aren't being interrogated before being allowed to join a protest. The only way they would know you're on the opposite side is if you tell them. Normal people aren't the government, they don't have access to mass surveillance technologies and can instantly know you're political beliefs by pointing a camera at your face and using facial recognition. Sorry, that technology isn't in the hands of everyday people.
So supposing you're right, that it is that dangerous: something doesn't add up. It's pretty trivial to act "undercover", if you will.
> Go look up Portland ICE protests and you'll see tons of people wearing inflatable costumes
Some of them do not need to wear costumes, they do it because they want to. Others are criminals that intend to attack the police and interfere with lawful law enforcement activities. That's why they need masking - to avoid being prosecuted for their criminal activities. I agree that criminals indeed derive many benefits from not being prosecuted - but I don't see how it should make me sympathize, when I am not a criminal.
> Suppose this is true, why would someone beat you up?
Because in some parts of our political culture, wrong views are violence, and must be met with violence. Protesting (or counter-protesting) only makes sense if I disagree with something important, which automatically makes my views "wrong" to a sizable number of people, many of whom are members of that culture, and are proudly announcing it in public.
> They aren't beating up each other, right?
Sometimes they do. Sometimes they are also raping each other. Sometimes they even are killing each other. Look up Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr.
> The only way they would know you're on the opposite side is if you tell them.
Or if they think I am looking suspicious or wearing wrong clothes or not chant enthusiastically enough or look like somebody they hate. Once violence is legitimized, there are thousands of reasons for violence. Why would I go to a place where there's a high chance this random violence would be turned against me? Why would I go there if the precondition is I can't even express my views - what's the point of going to a protest then? What would be the benefit of this action for me?
> It's pretty trivial to act "undercover", if you will.
Does the name Andy Ngo tell anything to you? How about Savanah Hernandez?
No those aren't. ICE is not going around setting stuff on fire. People who call them "thugs", surprisingly, often do. I'd rather sympathize with the non-setting-stuff-on-fire category.
The idea that this is an important trend story is infinity times more fun to talk about than the corrective that this isn't really a thing at all, which means online forums will sharply bias towards the notion that this is important.
This whole thread is pretty powerful evidence for that proposition: it's sprawling commentary on what pretty clearly seems to be LLM slop writing. You could build a novel operating system and get flagged off the front page for having a README with Claude tells in it, but that preference is obviously contingent.
That's not really the contradiction you seem to be implying. The belief that one is being watched and the knowledge that if caught there will be extremely high consequences are two completely different things, not to mention that the chilling effects of surveillance may impact a mostly different set of criminal and non-criminal behaviors.
I say this with respect and appreciation for your thoughtful framing, as I also feel for the author:
I'm not a young man, but I believe your this-has-always-been-the-way-ism, is equally clueless, in shared lineage with all the old-dog elders of past who've been helpless to stop what's happening, as the naive fools do the work of imagining it might be otherwise
Blindness goes both ways (a certain type from the end, as from the beginning), and truth is likely somewhere in the middle
In what way is understanding the historical context in which we live "blindness"?
Correcting someone who believes an old phenomenon is a new phenomenon, is not the same as giving up and saying we should do nothing about said phenomenon. In fact, understanding something is the first and most important step to changing it, especially a pattern or a habit.
I get into the this conversation a lot, when you point out the obvious historical context to "all this change", the response is always "Oh so you want to do nothing?" or "helpless to stop what's happening". That's not the implication of historical context. But it screams for a change in narrative, we aren't helpless, we live in the greatest time, and it can be even greater.
If we are to continue the march of civilization our algorithmic feed driven mania would just be just a blip. But if we give into the hysteria, I am afraid this is the beginning of the end. Our birth rate is dwindling because people are anxious [1], posts like this are not helping.
A citation is where you derived knowledge... If you haven't checked it and you are submitting something that should represent a ton of labour (and which will consume labour to review), you don't understand what you're doing. It is not just crossing T's and dotting I'd.
Your being set behind is less important than the fact that your publishing is setting everyone else behind.
Such a banned person is being helped to "step out of the way", and someone more competent will assuredly step forward to consume the limited maintenance labour more thoughtfully
> Your being set behind is less important than the fact that your publishing is setting everyone else behind
One hallucinated citation does not in any way imply anyone is being left behind. All it means nobody is checked that particular line of the manuscript after it was written. The rest of the paper could still be solid and treated accordingly. If you find evidence of the contrary, of course treat it accordingly, but this is so obviously not that.
> One hallucinated citation does not in any way imply anyone is being left behind.
The parent said “setting” others behind, which refers to lost time.
Being “left” behind implies a degraded trajectory, which is defined not by time lost, but by the final destination.
Different but related things (e.g. lost time can indeed affect your final destination, for instance, after growing old correcting a scourge of hallucinated citations - which should have been table stakes all along).
That was literally just a typo, I was walking and messed up while typing. Pretend I wrote "set behind." It makes no difference to my point and I fully stand behind the comment with that correction.
If all you're genuinely worried about is the collective human time spent on tracing down one stupid hallucinated citation in a paper, may I remind you of the ludicrous amounts of time and effort readers waste trying to wade through the sea fluff, jargon, and complexity frequently added to papers in a completely deliberate fashion. If wasting even a little bit of readers' time is what you see as the crime here, you have orders of magnitude bigger fish to fry.
The fact is that, for one hallucinated citation to be the noteworthy bit that "sets others behind" in any meaningful way, the actual substance of your paper has to be utterly worthless (or worse); otherwise, you're contributing far more than you're taking away, and thus your paper is very much not setting others behind. OTOH, if your paper really is worthless or harmful enough for this part of it to be a big deal, that would be the basis for punishment, not this. A single hallucinated citation is simply not a bleep on that metaphorical radar.
You clearly misunderstand. You cite a work in your paper because you have read that work, and build upon it or want to refer to it to back up a specific claim. Generating references is fraud period, because you are implying that you have read a work when in fact you just asked an AI "please insert some reference-shaped text here" to make it look like a proper paper. It is sadly not a necessary, but certainly a VERY sufficient, reason to conclude a paper is fraudulent.
This is so true, but I've never heard it framed so clearly. Thank you!
As as Maritimer who moved to Toronto (but who came of age as an adult outside the Maritimes), your comment def wakes me up to the moral imperative of resisting the Toronto-centric framing in whatever ways I can
In case anyone else is wondering if others feel this: yes, i can feel the risk of dopamine overshoot while using AI. As context, I've historically had ADHD that is crippling to a certain normal lifestyle. and I def feel the risk of mania or manic episodes when using these tools, in ways that I used to associate with the drug state of certain ADHD drugs.
Now I am recontextualizing the past experiences as the feeling of moving toward my goals at a speed I am not accustomed to, rather than being exclusively a drug effect
I mean, you can be cynical for whatever reasons, but I just think you'd be assuming (and participating in and perpetuating) a game Chad isn't playing.
reply