Forget Shadow Banning, Now Elon Is Shadow Boosting Accounts He Likes, While Trying To Drive Away Users Who Won’t Pay
from the fnords-and-pheasants dept
Elon Musk says he’s against a “lords and peasants” system on Twitter.
And he thinks celebrities on the platform should be treated equal:
And he’s really mad about shadowbanning:
Even as he uses the shadowban features all the time, mainly against accounts he dislikes.
But now it turns out that, all along, he’s set up a special “shadow boosting” system, that allows him to pump his own personal favorite accounts into your algorithmically generated “for you” feed all the time.
Now, we already know that Elon’s own tweets got the “max boost” treatment from engineers after Elon had a sad over a Joe Biden tweet getting more engagement. But we were told that was a special treatment just to keep the guy in charge happy.
However, it probably won’t surprise most of you to know that there’s also a special list of “VIPs” whose tweets are boosted to appear in people’s feeds basically all the time. And the folks at Platformer got their hands on the list.
But Twitter does have a different standard for celebrities – including Musk himself. For months, the platform has maintained a list of around 35 VIP users whose accounts it monitors and offers increased visibility alongside Elon Musk, according to documents obtained by Platformer. The list, which spans the political gamut and also includes several journalists and celebrities, includes:
- NBA All-Star LeBron James
- Daily Wire founder and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro
- Pseudonymous conservative commentator @catturd2
- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY
- President Joe Biden
- YouTube star MrBeast
- Venture capitalist and Twitter investor Marc Andreessen
- Weird Twitter pioneer @dril
- Comedian Jaboukie Young-White
- Tesla community account @teslaownerssv
- Journalists Matt Yglesias, Glenn Greenwald, Noah Smith, and Adrian Wojnarowski
(Platformer is not publishing the full list, whose makeup has changed slightly over time, to protect our sources’ identities. All the names above are still on the list.)
Menswear writer Derek Guy, aka @dieworkwear, is also on the list, which could explain why many of his posts went inexplicably viral earlier this year.
That sure seems to go against his “no lords and peasants” dual class system, or his Shatner spat about treating everyone equally, but since when has Elon ever been honest about anything?
I’ve seen some people surprised at who is on this list, but it primarily seems like a list of people that Elon thinks drive engagement.
In the meantime, there are some other changes happening at Twitter as well, including firing more of the remaining trust & safety team, and handing over more power to the very same AI that Musk seems to spend every day on Twitter mocking as dangerous. I’m sure that’ll work out great:
In an effort to save money, Twitter is scaling back its content moderation team even further, and relying more heavily on automated systems to police content than ever before.
Still, perhaps even bigger is Musk’s new plan, which is hilarious in just how much it demonstrates how little Musk understands about how Twitter works for everyone but himself. He announced that only people who pay (which he falsely calls “verified”) will show in the “for you” algorithmic feed that Elon’s Twitter now forces on every user when they open up Twitter, whether they like it or not:
I mean, almost all of this is hilarious. First, it makes the “for you” feed even more ridiculous and less valuable to users, meaning that it actually devalues the benefits of paying for Twitter Blue. Basically, it now means that appearing in the “for you” feed means you’re a chump.
But, once again, he’s creating a “lords and peasants” scenario, where the “lords” are simply those people gullible enough to pay Elon Musk a monthly fee.
Still, more importantly, the idea that he thinks this is the “only realistic way” of dealing with “AI bot swarms” really says a lot, and none of it good. First off, Elon had already claimed that he (1) took over Twitter to get rid of the bots and had such a good plan to do so that (2) he claimed the problem was already taken care of back in December, which he accomplished by… shutting off access to big telecom providers in India, Russia and Indonesia, and accidentally blocking a bunch of legit Twitter accounts.
Guess not.
Also, for scammers who are willing to pay $8, they’ll now have a clearer field to do their scamming, which could easily be worth more than $8 to the scammers.
And, yeah, the voting in polls thing: I mean, what? Most people are assuming that he’s still bitter about “losing” the poll about whether or not he should step down as CEO, which he promised to abide by even as it’s unclear that he’s taken any steps towards that end result. Even if it were true that “AI bot swarms” were polluting polls… so what? These polls mostly don’t matter.
To be fair, he also seems to be claiming that these new bots are “AI bot swarms” that have figured out how to bypass CAPTCHAs.
So, this seems to be his — I guess some might call it “strategy?” — for dealing with this. This is just one step short of saying that you can’t tweet unless you pay, which… will just drive a huge segment of the Twitter userbase away from Twitter.
If there’s one consistent thing we’ve seen with Elon is that he seems simply incapable of considering literally anyone else’s experience on his site beyond himself. Every single move has been about improving his personal experience on Twitter, usually at the expense of everyone else’s.
He bans accounts that make him feel uncomfortable.
He tweaks the algorithm to promote his own content.
He changes the rules to protect his friends and friends of friends while banning people his friends dislike.
He attacks and ridicules those who challenge him.
It’s just consistently about his own world. So now he’s promoting tweets of people he likes, while making sure that the “algorithm” that he sees every time he logs in is only filled with fans so obsessed with Musk they’re willing to pay him a monthly fee to tweet in his general direction.
That’s… one way to run a social media network. But it doesn’t seem like a very good one.
Filed Under: algorithms, elon musk, for you feed, shadow banning, shadow boosting, twitter blue
Companies: twitter
Comments on “Forget Shadow Banning, Now Elon Is Shadow Boosting Accounts He Likes, While Trying To Drive Away Users Who Won’t Pay”
From Elon and the rest of the Right, every accusation is projection.
At this point, I’m almost tempted to say that Truth Social seemed to have a better business plan than the current Twitter does.
At least Trump knew who his audience was. Musk doesn’t appear to have a clue.
Re:
Musk does know who the Twitter audience is.
What sucks for everyone else? That audience, at least in his mind, is him and him alone.
Elon is just another liar.
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We know you liked the censorship that the old management of Twitter offered you, and you resent Musk for taking that away. But posting endless numbers of articles disparaging Musk isn’t going to bring the censorship back.
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Translation: “I much prefer Musk’s personal censorship that’s halved the value of the company over the previous censorship of nazis and pedos.”
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Subhead for that comment:
from the that forcing-people-to-read-Techdirt script really does work dept.
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So? Posting endless numbers of comments like this isn’t going to give your life meaning or make Musk notice you either, but that doesn’t seem to dissuade you!
Re: Re:
Does Musk even read Techdirt?
Re: Re: Re:
Maybe he’s Matt!
Re: Re: Re:2
Maybe he’s Matt!
Hyperinflated sense of entitlement? check!
Inability to admit being wrong? check!
Idiot with condescending tendency? check!
Presumes mental superiority? check!
Doubles down on stupid decisions? check!
You might be onto something. Just need to find out if he has that trademark pasty-yet-reflective torso.
Re:
Here is a research study (like, actual research) that provides nuance to the perception of Conservative bias in Twitter account deplatforming. Keep in mind that (as obvious as this is to say), Twitter is not a public square controlled by a socialist government – it is a private company in a capitalist economy for the purpose of making money through advertising. Twitter has ZERO interest in promoting the public good.
https://psyarxiv.com/ay9q5
“Thus, among the politically active Twitter users in our study, Republicans and conservatives shared information from much lower quality sites than Democrats and liberals – even when quality was judged by a politically-balanced group of U.S. laypeople. This observation provides clear evidence for a political asymmetry in misinformation sharing in our dataset that cannot be attributed to liberal bias in what is considered misinformation or low quality news.”
“…we see a strong positive relationship between being more Republican / conservative and likelihood of being suspended (b = 0.45, z = 22.6, p < 0.001) when using political orientation as the sole independent variable in the probit regression. However, once low quality news sharing is added to the model, the association between suspension and political orientation is reduced by 56.2% (b = 0.20, z = 4.6, p < 0.001; see Figure 2b), and sharing low quality news is also strongly associated with suspension (b = 0.27, z = 6.6, p < 0.001).”
It may be true that Conservatives are deplatformed more than Liberals in pure number. But when controlling for misinformation / disinformation as a basis of suspension, that gap collapses. So, if Conservatives insist on feeding more crap into the system, you can expect a similar pattern of reaction from a privately held company concerned about its credibility as an advertising platform.
Of course, all this is moot since Elon took over, so who cares.
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Re: Re:
Oh, sure, there are NO examples of a sociology study (which overall have incredibly low reproducibility rates and therefore are not science) producing a biased result, right? (◔_◔)
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Re: Re: Re:
Elons STILL not gonna let you suck it…
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Re: Re: Re:2
That’s nice. Come back when you have an argument.
Re: Re: Re:3
A blanket criticism of sociology isn’t much of an argument either.
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Re: Re: Re:4
oh sure it is. It’s hand-wavey bullshit even for sociology.
“politically-balanced” according to who “U.S. laypeople.” assuming that’s important, according to who…..how large a sample size? Were they all college students? (they are, usually) Were they all from the same area? Urban, presumably?
Regardless of all that wild shit, they are now trying to pass an unvarnished opinion off as some sort of objective metric which it most definitely is not.
Oh, and peer review is in an atrocious state, particularly in the soft sciences, but this is a preprint, meaning it hasn’t even had that.
It’s just junk from top to bottom.
So yeah, I didn’t make all that “argument” initially, but I also feel like I really didn’t have to.
Re: Re: Re:5
You’re projecting about hand-waving. Did you not make even a half-hearted attempt to look for that information in the very study weevie833 linked to? Searching for “balanced” in the PDF and clicking an arrow a few times will bring you to the Supplemental Methods section. Here’s an excerpt:
YOU read it. YOU decide whether to read the rest of the paper. YOU decide for (only) yourself whether the sample is politically balanced. That’s the point of publishing the methods.
Where did they try to pass off their opinion (which, unlike you, they reached from some sort of evidence they provided) as an objective metric? A key feature of the scientific method is that other people examine your metrics. Go figure, this study’s metrics are there for you to examine. If you’re gonna complain about bias and make out that you don’t believe the paper’s conclusion, at least read a single non-introduction paragraph of the paper.
But is there a comparable, recent research paper (even a pre-print) which reaches a conclusion which opposes this paper’s conclusion? If so, please link it and cite some of the text.
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Re: Re: Re:6
I like this, because it doesn’t actually refute any of initial (very reasonable objections).
OK, so online “lay people” and ONLY those who shared partisan messages. My god, that is so much worse than I imagined. Half of them were probably bots. They definitely aren’t “balanced” WTF.
I like the empowering message here, but I want to be clear: I didn’t read beyond the summary in order to discount it because I absolutely did not need to. It was already indicted. Thanks for doing so for me though, it turns out it’s so much worse and the summary was actually misleading af.
I think this is a reading comp fail on your part: I didn’t say the author’s were passing off their opinion as a metric, I said they were passing off the opinions of their “balanced lay people” as an objective metric. This is a common feature of sociology and psychology papers and part of why their irreproducible junk, but it’s much worse in this case: They’re using the opinions of some people (some sizable % of whom could be foreign agents or bots, who the fuck knows?) to pretend they’re giving an objective rating to sites. Not that I would trust them based on objective measures of “weasel words” or claims “fact checked” (there’s hellacious intrinsic biases in all of that) but it would still be 1000x times more meaningful (and that’s a real measurement, accurate to 3 decimals) than this shit.
What part of my response makes you think that I would find this not only needful and worth my time, but even helpful, at all? This paper is trash. It gets trashier the more you tell me about it. You DO NOT accept a trash set of data just because it’s the only dataset available. It’s just trash data. Sociology is mostly trash. I highly doubt a reputable paper on this subject exists, I can basically guarantee you that none exist that have been replicated. (cuz that just doesn’t happen anymore)
Why would I spend time trying to contradict trash with more trash?
Addendum: oh gawd, I actually made the mistake of reading this and found table S1. “we follow most other researchers in this space (2-5)and use source quality as a proxy for article accuracy, ”
They list bias and “fact checker rating”. Well if you haven’t been keeping up “Fact checkers” are rather notoriously politically biased and left leaning, without exception, really only offering a liberal journalists opinion on whatever fact they’re supposedly checking. Also funnily enough WaPo ranks rather high on this, which is funny cuz they run one of the more hilariously biased yet prolific “fact checkers” and both CNN and WaPo scored “non partisan” ratings despite just straight lying for last 6 years.
Oh, and they cite Ad Fontes Media….which literally started as just a chart based on the author’s opinion and now, in version 6 or 7 is just….the same chart, now with manufactured metrics this to back it up.
OK, it’s not just that this “study” is trash, it is the epitome of why sociology is a failed discipline used only to give a fake scientific veneer to political posturing. I have seen some whoppers but this perhaps the platonic ideal of a leftist propaganda piece pretending to have even the slightest objective basis. It is a pre-print not just because it hasn’t been printed yet, but because it will never be printed, even the undisciplined socialist rags that pretend to be scientific sociology publications are too good for this fever dream of leftist FUD
“You’re projecting about hand-waving”, lol, get fucked.
Re: Re: Re:6
Regarding peer review: Peer review does not dispute the conclusions of a research study, nor is it ever intended to do so. To make any claim that peer review is “preaching to the choir” for a rubber stamp of approval is a misunderstanding of research methods.
Peer view is SOLELY for the purpose of validating the research methods, selection of population, data gathering, and calculations against the data such as statistical strategies. Flaws of these kinds invalidate the conclusions indirectly, which is why the writer of the paper I linked to included the statistical basis of their interpretations. (If you don’t understand the stats, then don’t argue about their validity!).
Non-academics often think that scientific research is about “what scientists believe is true.” This is not correct. Good scientific research is about following the data wherever the conclusions land. And yes – there is bad scientific research, which is why there is a difference between research studies published in open journals versus those published in peer reviewed journals, (like the one I cited, pending).
Fortunately, when science is wrong, it is self-corrective with better research.
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Re: Re: Re:7
You seem to be putting words in someone’s mouth here, not sure who’s, but I know quite well what peer review is.
It’s not “solely” for that, but this paper would in no way pass peer review. Not only did they try to manufacture a metric out of people’s opinions, but some of their foundational metrics that they extrapolated other metrics from are in fact, disguised opinions. (See Ad Fonte Media and graph S1)
I also come from a science background (physics, specifically). Let me tell you, this pre-print paper is shit. (please see my rant in the comment above) It is not science. It’s not anything like science. It is aping the motions of science the way cargo cults mimicked landing strips.
I generally make fun of Sociology precisely because almost none of it’s claims are reproducible (meaning, it’s really not science) but this is trash even in comparison to that field.
Re: Re: Re:8
I was referring to the blathering impression that “peer review is in an atrocious state” which is an indictment intended to invalidate the conclusions. It is a weak, hearsay argument for the sake of rhetoric.
Nonetheless, my reaction to this paper is solely on the basis of the evidence that refutes the belief that Twitter has a deliberate bias against Conservatives in terms of suspensions because it has a larger Liberal agenda =as a matter of policy=.
The evidence clearly shows that suspensions are based on the prevalence of spreading misinformation, suspensions occur to both Conservatives and Liberals, but that Conservatives tend to do this more than Liberals because they cite the worst misinformed crap in the world.
You can argue all you want that the criteria for these suspensions are flawed and you’d have a decent case. But that is not the focal point of the research – it is about explaining why suspensions occur in Twitter.
I argue that any “reasonable person” in the legal sense of it would realize that citing Breitbart as a basis of any kind of truth claim is mostly horseshit. For that matter, citing ANY form of news media as a basis of any truth claim is mostly horseshit, but some outlets are far more horshitty than others.
Last, this is not social science research. It does not examine human behavior and relationships qualitatively. This is data science, which in this case, would be highly reproducible.
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Re: Re: Re:9
Peer review IS in an atrocious state, tho I’m much more worried about reproducibility. And that IS and indictment that invalidates conclusions, actually.
It validates your preconceptions, yeah, I got that part.
It doesn’t show fucking anything because there is no evidence.
That opinion, right there, is actually the nucleus of this “paper”. They took the opinion of “conservative sites are bad info” (seriously, S1 is just based off of liberal academics opinion, nothing else) built fucking metrics off of that used it in the factor of an opinion poll, and then pretended that was an objective measure of some kind.
Peer review IS in a sorry state, but it still would have thrown this shit out.
“Reasonable person in a legal sense” mostly related to negligence claims and the like and has nothing to do with political opinions, but I wouldn’t. Briebart is very biased but also factually credible. Much more so than CNN, I’d say. (which is also very liberally slanted, and hilariously, this “paper” claims it is not). But arguing our opinions of various news sources has no point, none of that is fucking scientific.
Wow, so this where I realized you’re just an idiot. What you said is both meaningless, but also impressively wrong. Which seems hard to do.
This “paper”, is actual, flaming crap. Most sociology is pretty crap, but this is way worse than normal. It’s just someone’s opinion, wrapped up in some math to disguise that it’s just someone’s opinion. At every step the more you read the worse it gets.
They started with the idea of refuting that there was an ideological bias against conservatives, and worked back from there. To get a number they liked they went with the rock solid datapoint of conservative sites are bad (just as you did) and assigned numbers to justify that. (they actually outsourced this, and obviously this opinion pretending to be metrics are commonly used, which is part of why sociology is junk.)
Re: Re: Re:8
So, speaking physicist to physicist, why exactly do we take anything coming out of CERN as reproducible and valid results when no other lab exists that can perform those experiments with the necessary precision?
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Re: Re: Re:9
Physics has the advantage that it is all completely math based. So “reproducible” mostly means the equations balance out. Most of the results (by which we mean billions of collisions averaged out, since it is quantum and each event is random) fir within the standard model just fine — which is a bad thing, as it means we haven’t discovered “new physics” (but you can do things like add a few more decimal places to the rest weight of a tau particle or whatever).
All this is very boring until something doesn’t fit and then you get to argue for years about whether it was measurement error or real result and try to come up with new math to describe the new result.
Re: Re: Re:10
You know literally nothing about physics, I guess.
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Re: Re: Re:11
Oh, this is gonna be good. Please tell me how and why you think I “know nothing about physics” particularly in regards to my response.
Re: Re: Re:12
“Physics has the advantage that it is all completely math based.” would be the starting point. That ain’t the opinion of a physicist, that’s the opinion of someone who’s knowledge of science begins, and ends, with “List of Cool Things Science Did This Week” listicles.
If it were all completely math-based you wouldn’t be running experiments you ineluctable chucklefuck. Nobody’s spending a hundred billion to set up a Large Equation Collider to discover new and exotic forms of set theory.
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Re: Re: Re:13
Lol, the old joke is that physics is actually just applied mathematics. So yeah, it is. Not only can I tell you’re not a physicist, you don’t know any physicists, cuz we basically all make that joke, and you don’t know anything about physics, or you’d understand why your quip about experiments didn’t make nearly as much sense as you thought it did. (it did a little…there’s a sharp divide between experimental and theoretical physicists, but no, not in the way you think)
I’d ask you to try again, but it’s clear you have no basis to do so. You just said you were a physicist cuz you thought you could catch me out in an inconsistency which you only thought you did because you don’t understand it enough.
-Richard Feynman.
I was going to joke that you may have heard of him, but then I realized no, you probably haven’t.
Re: Re: Re:14
Sure Jan. You can’t even read.
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Re: Re: Re:15
Just take the L and move on.
Re: Re: Re:16
I don’t think AC wants your L.
Re: Re: Re:16
Feel free to demonstrate a level of knowledge beyond Google at any point, and, also, to show that you can actually read replies to you.
I said before I figure you’re twenty-three or so, and to that I will add, a classic example of the overconfident STEM undergrad asshole. I’d bet comp. sci, since it’s just enough science to make you think you know anything about the experimental ones and not enough to actually teach you jack shit.
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Re: Re: Re:17
I’m 45, with a physics degree.
Now, instead of talking smack you have in NO WAY earned, why don’t you explain why and how what I’ve said was wrong? Not “lol, no physicist would say that” (they would and do), actually explain yourself and show that YOU know what you’re talking about, cuz you in no way have demonstrated even passing familiarity with the subject.
Re: Re: Re:18
Sure you are and sure you did.
100% undergrad shithead at best. Probably a dropout, possibly a never-went and ‘self-educated’ via YouTube vids.
Re: Re: Re:18
It sure is annoying when other people assume your age and ignore you when you actually tell them they’re wrong, right?
Now, how old did you think I was again? Early 20s or younger? And didn’t I say you were wrong about that each time?
Seriously, you are in no position to criticize others over this.
Neither have you, really. I’m not an expert, but I do have, as you say, a “passing familiarity with the subject”, so I question your defense of CERN like you do. (And, incidentally, mentioning CERN as an example of physics could itself be a demonstration of at least passing familiarity with physics, and aside from mentioning a joke physicists tell (which only demonstrates a familiarity with physicists, not what they actually study), nothing else you said would support your claims of familiarity with it, but I digress.)
The same source you have used to attack sociology for not being reproducible (even though the studies often are reproducible) mentioned that this is an issue present in just about every field to some extent, and it didn’t single out sociology as being particularly prone to a lack of reproduction (it focused more on psychology and medicine). It also notes that the failure is more of a failure to try to reproduce the experiment rather than a lack of reproducibility of the experiment or its results. CERN is no more reproducible than most sociology or psychology studies, and reproducibility is a necessity for science no matter how much it relies on mathematics.
The fact is that this is a crisis for science, particularly public perception of science, not just sociology and psychology (though it is even more of an issue for psychology than for anything else besides medicine).
Your defense of CERN against claims that it is not reproducible is rather weak in this context and essentially dismisses CERN as being unnecessary, even though particle physicists would likely heartily disagree with you given what I’ve heard, in order for it to not apply in some form to fields like sociology, as there is no math exception to reproducibility. The only way it even works remotely as a defense without attacking CERN is the fact that reproducibility doesn’t require reproduction of the event but of the results, which math still doesn’t get you out of, and which also applies to sociology (since you absolutely can reproduce results).
Look, just stop attacking science you are no more than passingly familiar with.
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Re: Re: Re:19
I’ll take your word for otherwise, but you seem like a sophomoric idiot. Still do. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I mean, I’m not actually a practicing theorist (that is one of the few things I will say I’m not smart enough for and I only have a BS) but technically I am an expert compared to the average layman.
It would if you were smarter. No, seriously, Mr. Bari Weiss, it’s really not significant to me that you didn’t understand it, you haven’t understood many things that you really should have been expected to. I was describing the process of experimentally confirming predictions or finding gaps in the Standard Model in as simple of terms as possible. If it didn’t make sense to you or you didn’t find it convincing I really give no fucks.
So this is double wrong because I don’t think I’ve shared a “source” on the reproducibility crisis for weeks, and while I don’t remember what the link was the Crisis is absolutely without question HEAVILY weighted towards the soft sciences, psychology and sociology by far being the worst offenders (biology is surprisingly bad, even at the molecular end). That really is common knowledge and no, I won’t be providing a link, actually, you can go look it up on your own, it’s really not hard. Your assertion just means you know jack-all about the subject and need to do some reading anyway.
Every field has errors but the thing about physics is that an attempt at fraud (which absolutely happens a lot in the soft sciences) is apparent nearly immediately and observational errors actually get discovered pretty quickly, too.
Yeah, so that’s not true, at all, and just shows how little you know about it. You realize different groups get to run experiments there, right?
So that’s not true at all…it’s mostly a sociology, biomedical, and climatology problem…..all fields where the variables are numerous, sometimes unknown, and squishy, and also where there’s huge motivation to lie (mostly cuz things are squishy enough it’s harder to get caught). Maybe psychology is worse than sociology, I dunno, but it matters a lot less cuz it’s mostly the sociologists trying to tell you what your politics should be based on “The Science”.
I actually have no idea what you’re trying to say here and suspect you don’t either.
I dunno why I bothered breaking it down, that whoooooolllllleeee thing was basically nonsense.
Re: Re: Re:20
Okay. You’re still a hypocrite for making assumptions about me while complaining about others doing the same to you.
Well, I also have a BS in CSE, which required a lot of courses in physics and chemistry (and psychology, for that matter), so I’d also be an expert compared to the average layman. I still wouldn’t call myself an expert, but then I prefer not to call myself an expert in general just because that makes me uncomfortable, so take that as you will.
I did previously study physics for a BS, and only dropped out of that program due to outside circumstances (financial and familial, mostly) beyond my control. It was just easier for me to get to a college that offered CSE for a Bachelor’s program but not for Physics, even though physics was my real passion at the time.
I have grown to love programming as well, but I still study physics in my spare time because I enjoy it. I won’t pretend to know more than physicists, but I certainly understand it better than most laypeople.
Yeah, no. You literally just said, “It’s all math” and nothing else. That’s not an explanation. That’s an assertion. I don’t fully understand the Standard Model and such, but I understand that you are oversimplifying it to the point of error. In order to confirm that the Standard Model reflects the real world, experiments about the real world still need to occur, as happens with CERN, and those experiments must be reproducible.
I’m not saying there is no defense; you just failed to defend it very well.
It was weeks ago. I never said it happened in this thread; only that it was the same source that you yourself provided. It’s not my fault if you don’t remember it. And nothing in it said anything about soft sciences in general like you say.
And no, I’m not going to do a search to prove your claim. It’s your claim, so prove it yourself. I won’t do your homework for you. If you can’t prove it with evidence, then by Hitchen’s Razor, I am free to ignore it without evidence.
I’m just going from your own source. If you fail to back up your assertions, that’s on you.
As for sociologists trying to tell you what your politics should be based on science, I haven’t seen evidence of that. Political scientists, sure, but that’s not the same thing. And I have also heard sociologists—and many other scientists—speak on political topics. I have not seen a published, peer-reviewed paper that does so, which is the only thing that matters on this.
Simple. Your argument to justify CERN against claims that it is not reproducible could easily be used to argue that CERN is unnecessary and doesn’t really address the accusation to begin with.
Re: Re: Re:18
In IQ points.
Re: Re: Re:14
Yeah, it’s a joke. As in it is not meant to be taken seriously. You literally called it a joke, so you know this. Why are you using a joke as evidence for the truth of your claim?
Does physics involve a lot of math? Yes. However, it is not solely math as you claim. It involves performing real-world experiments to ensure that the math performs well IRL and to find new unexplained phenomena to explore.
Re: Re: Re:15
It’s a funny joke cuz it’s more than a little true. Like not literally true, but close.
For one, cuz physics peeps will recognize the gang sign. But mostly cuz explaining in detail would take a lot of time and basically none of the audience would understand it anyway.
Yeah, now you’re just angling for a definitional argument, but seriously, theoretical physics is literally just math. It’s anchored in real measurements, sure, but that’s just the starting point, and you can get decades of “work” done without the introduction of a new datapoint. No one knows if what the string theorist are working on is even related to the real universe anyone. (which is a real problem, bad example, but it’s funny) Experimentalists do a little bit of verifying a theorist prediction, but the vast majority of it just adding a few decimals to a measurement. (which you have to eliminate the possibility of observation error, with math). It’s a teeny tiny bit of discovering new phenomena but no basically none of that. And of course you have to verify that new phenomena with math. All science involves math but seriously even experimental physics is all math with a teeny tiny bit of engineering on top. Oh, an engineering is almost all math, too. Yeah, seriously, it’s all math.
I can tell you’ve never done any this work, cuz yeah, it’s a depressing amount of math.
Re: Re: Re:16
It may be a lot of maths, but experimental measurements rule, in that if the maths does not agree with the experimental results, the maths is wrong.
Re: Re: Re:17
Ultimately true, yes. Still almost nothing but math.
Re: Re: Re:5
The only hand-wavey bullshit here is yours.
Re: Re: Re:
This is not a sociology study. It is data science. There is no study of human behavior and relationships. Strawman argument.
Re: Re: Re:2
Maybe he thinks that “sociology” means “any science I don’t like that isn’t about mental illnesses or brain function”. He’s also called a neurological study “psychology”, even though those aren’t the same thing.
Re: Re: Re:3
Bari, you just agreed with a guy who thinks studying twitter opinions, sharing patterns, and bans isn’t “human behavior and relationships”
I know quite a bit about neurobiology, actually, and it has HUGE crossover with psychology, so that’s a funny thing to say.
But please, I’m curious to what you’re referring to. When did I get a neurological study confused with psychology? linky.
Re: Re: Re:4
Because it isn’t. Not in this case, at least. This wasn’t studying human behavior but answering a particular question about a specific entity. That’s not sociology.
Also, Bari isn’t here and didn’t say anything.
Congratulations. You just demonstrated you don’t know the difference between the two fields. That a crossover exists doesn’t mean every study in one field is in both.
Admittedly, I might be confusing you with someone else. It’s about transgender brains. Does that ring a bell? Or is it someone else?
Re: Re: Re:2
It is explicitly that, actually yes. How are you this stupid?
Also, please stop saying “Data Science” as if you have any idea what that means. You clearly do not. (Hint: it definitely does not mean Science, that has Data in it)
Re: Re: Re:
I held my nose and read a lot of your posts here. Most of your objections hinge on distrust of the fact checking with broad denouncements of their accuracy and honesty but without giving a single stat or citation to back up your disparaging, and their use of laypeople, you asked ‘how large a sample size’ as if that wasn’t in the paper [9000], nor did you mention their efforts to make their results as accurate as possible. You fail to address any of their actual methodology, the stats used and how they’re used, you don’t mention any of the usual critiques of such studies. The way you attack any studies of the sort lead me to ask if you know of a better way to do this? Or are you like a majority of rightwingers who just automatically distrust science? I mean, Science usually does give results that lean fairly heavily to the left, so it must all be junk, right? Or could it be that reality has a liberal bias?
Let me put it another way. Lets assume this study was done ‘perfectly’, like ALL of anything Trump does. What do you think it would show? The point of my initial post was that the paper’s results are exactly what one should expect given the reality of what’s been obvious to anyone half awake that peruses social media and is aware of what’s happening in politics. Consider that for decades one of the main goto’s in the GOP playbook is the instigation, fueling, and exploitation of moral panics. The list of examples would be v long, but just a few can be seen in todays news-drag, immigration whether drugs, disease, crime, etc, all lies, books that sexualize children if they normalize homosexuality in ANY way, Q’Anon baby meat pizzas cooked by Soros’ Jewish space lasers, the never ending ‘they’re coming to take your guns’, even just being a Democrat sets off moral panics for MTG who wants to ban them from voting if they move to a red state, that abortion rights folks want to kill babies right up until birth or even after as MTG or Boebert said who can tell those idiots apart, and so on, there’s a LOT of examples if you just go back a bit. Not to mention the massive birther BS which Trump was a serious player in.
Add to that you got Trump who has a really hard time not lying and the myriad sickophants [sic][heehee] that parrot everything he says and seem too stupid to realize it’s all nonsense.
So regardless of your objections to this paper, how could you not see it as likely being correct? I would be far more skeptical if it found the opposite. So I feel quite comfortable reiterating my comment that you’re just way too blinded by your ideology to have anything to say worth hearing.
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Re: Re: Re:2
I just read the summary to start., it really wasn’t necessary to read the whole thing, you morons dragged me into it.
I did, in great detail, actually. Try reading again.
Not sure what you think that is or why it’s important. I had my own criticisms. Maybe the “usual critiques” are wrong, I have no idea what you’re referring to.
The vast majority of studies of this sort are concocted to justify a political position and have no scientific basis. They are essentially just culture war salvos. This is actually a particularly egregious example. (again, as I detailed)
Again, I have a physics degree, I respect hard science a great deal. I do not respect bad science, nor an opinion disguised with scientific ornamentation, which is unfortunately an awful lot of sociology.
Ahaha, yes, I’m sure you would like to think that. “The Science” or “Science” with a capital “S”, maybe. Actual science not so much.
My general experience with people who say “The Science”, and you are fitting this mold perfectly, is that they do not actually understand science very well at all and in fact treat it much like a religion. “Science Guy said something I already agree with and their was a Methodology so if you disagree with You Are Wrong”. It doesn’t matter if someone has pointed out the methodology is wrong or the underlying data is trash (as I have, with this “paper”), “The Science” is on your side and everyone else is a heretic. Really quite explicitly, it has nothing to do with actual science nor reason.
Example: Actual science does not support and in fact refutes quite a lot of what I’m sure you believe about covid, covid vaccines, lockdowns and masks. You haven’t mentioned any such beliefs but I know you hold them, because you believe The Science, not what actual scientific research has said about it.
Yeah, OK, you hold a bunch of super awful opinions about republicans and are kinda hateful, I knew that already, but what does that have to do with how science works? Nothing, is the answer.
Yes, of course you would. The entire reason you are defending this paper is it feeds into your preconceived opinion.
It’s just a piece of opinion, with opinion as datasets, opinion treated as objective metrics, recycled through an equation, because you think if there’s math involved it must be science, and it is designed to generate a predetermined finding. But you LIKE that finding, and you like “The Science” so you’re going to defend that tooth and nail even tho you don’t understand it.
You can think whatever you want, but it’s an opinion, not science.
Re: Re: Re:3
This is nothing but mischaracterization after mischaracterization and lots of plain lies. Like sample size, YOU said ‘what’s the sample size’? Why ask that? Is it relevant? Of course, but without knowing what it was, asking that question sure looks like you’re implying it wasn’t adequate.
You DIDN’T address the methodologies, you simply attacked them without knowing anything about them. Your attacks on all sociological/psychological research is obviously ideological nonsense, obvious by dent of such claims as “The vast majority of studies of this sort are concocted to justify a political position and have no scientific basis”. That’s just wrong. Again, your ideological blindness couldn’t be more transparent. E.g., you just ignored my question asking how YOU think such studies should be conducted. You’re essentially implying that such studies can’t be done so don’t even try. Now, THAT is a serious distrust and ignorance of science fueled by your dislike of its conclusions.
More e.g., “.[random babbling about how much you hate conservatives, republicans, and Trump particular]” Those were examples of behaviors observed over the years. You can’t show any of it wrong or untrue because it’s all common knowledge. The source for my knowledge that Faux News is faux news is Faux News. The source for my knowledge that Trump constantly lies is Trump. Do you disagree with the Fox execs/personalities that admit their audience is highly misled? That you can’t refute any of the claims I made but just dismiss them with ‘babble babble’ is proof that “you are defending this paper is it feeds into your preconceived opinion.” is actually nothing but projection, something rightwingers are addicted to as SOP.
Re: Re: Re:4
Uh huh, OK. You have no idea what science IS, let alone how it works.
I don’t know if you missed it, or just can’t read, but I can’t say I care anymore.
Yes, I get it, you hate anyone who disagrees with you. Because you’re a hateful liberal. So? That’s an opinion, unsourced in anything.
So was the study.
Re: Re: Re:5
I think you’re far from a science illiterate, but trying to say I know nothing about it makes me wonder. What really makes me question it is the way you’ve characterized sociology and sociology studies. Claiming “The vast majority of studies of this sort are concocted to justify a political position and have no scientific basis.” really is just daft, as if virtually all of sociology is political or is tinged with politics. The way you address the methodologies in the paper, as I said, were really attacking their choices for fact checking or their characterization of certain news sources. OK, I’ll give that one to you, but what I was trying to get at was the modeling used for the results they got and the efforts went to in trying to ensure unbiased results, none of which you mentioned. The blanket attacks on fact checking and Ad Fortes were completely unsubstantiated, really nothing more than your biased opinion.
I also doubt how literate you are in science in how you completely ignored by question about how YOU think such studies should be done. And I’m guessing you think masks don’t work and vaccines kill more people than the virus, which is as true as liberals eating baby meat pizzas, or that Trump did great in handling the COVID crisis. So, if you had to get surgery, I bet you’d insist the surgeon not wear a mask, right?
And it could not be more clear how full of shit you are, and how blinded by ideology you have to be to describe “The source for my knowledge that Faux News is faux news is Faux News.” as me hating anyone who disagrees with me. Did you miss the bit about how Fox execs admit their audience being highly misled? And you once again ignored my so called “random babbling” which in reality was actually a very short list of the ways the right constantly spews nonsense, most of which is extremely hateful to all kinds of different groups of folks the right doesn’t deem acceptable, like minorities, women,, poor folk, gays, nonchristians, etc. You ignored them because you can’t refute them.
And I am so sick of rightwingers and their ignorant, hateful, vile bigotries, their constant demonizing of others. Do I hate rightwingers? Yep, and for good reason, because they not only hate others for nothing more than not being like them, they actively work to marginalize, diminish, or ruin their lives. It’s a profoundly different thing to hate someone for who they are vs hating someone for what they do to others. And just an example of how utterly full of shit rightwingers are, when they demonize folks, a good percentage of them, including a lot of the bigger names in politics and media, they do so literally FFS, they actually accuse others of being possessed by demons, and they’re never called out for being batshit crazy by the less delusional rightwingers, which just paints you all as nutters. If you can’t justify that last bit there, don’t even bother replying, it’s absolute proof you’re ideologically motivated and facts don’t matter.
Re: Re: Re:6
Yes, I said that, very clearly. And you very clearly don’t know anything about science.
I stopped reading then. Have fun!
Re: Re: Re:5
[Projects facts contrary to presented evidence]
Re: Re: Re:3
Dude, you asked the question. You could have easily figured out the answer by reading more of the paper. If you have questions about the study, just read the paper before presenting it as a question to us.
Which were then addressed by pointing to parts of the paper that you apparently didn’t read.
Which you have failed to demonstrate in this case.
I don’t respect the opinion of a singular scientist in one field on something in another field that has no relevance to their specialty. Nor should you. Show me evidence that most of sociology is objectively “bad science”. (And no, pointing to the reproducibility crisis doesn’t work as that also applies to physics and literally every field of science right now, so it doesn’t make sociology notable in that respect according to your own source.)
[citation needed]
Re: Re: Re:4
Oooo, I missed this one, tho it’s kinda useless.
Yes, it really does, actually.
This is the second or third time you’ve said this and it’s literally not true, at all. Firstly if it was true of all science the way it’s true of sociology the proper response would be to just ignore all science, it’s useless. For the other disciplines it varies wildly, but it’s way less in the hard sciences. In physics, errors happen but it’s miniscule compared to almost anything else. The crisis in particle physics is really that we haven’t hit “new physics” in a very long time, everything lines up too well, which is bad cuz fundamentally we know something is off with the standard model (it doesn’t include gravity). It actually would have been much more exciting had we NOT detected the Higgs. Ditto gravity waves.
No, I don’t think it is. First of all, my goal is not to talk pandemic policy with lunatics who think they get to tell you to wear a mask, but also if you didn’t know immediately what I was talking about you’re being ignorant on purpose anyway.
Re: Re: Re:5
There’s a great deal of ground that that is covered in “covid, covid vaccines,lockdowns and masks”, but lets name a number that are entirely too frequent on the right wing particularly in venues like the that the science has not in fact refuted.
Covid is worse than the flu
Viruses exist, and covid is caused by a virus
Covid is not caused by 5g
Covid and/or the vaccine is not part of a Bill Gate/WEF depopulation plan
Covid was not created in biolabs in North Carolina/Ukraine
The covid vaccine does not contain hydras, self assembling graphene oxide nanobots
Covid vaccines do not magnetize people or interface them with the internet of things
The covid vaccine does not “shed”
You cannot “detox” the vaccine
The claims made by Plandemic/Watch The Water/Died Suddenly are not supported by evidence.
Lockdowns were not deliberately imposed to cause economic harm
Lockdowns were not a cover for the arrests of a pedophile cabal, or rescuing mole children held in secret tunnels
Masks do not raise blood CO2 levels
Masks do not “activate” viruses
Masks do not contain morgellons
Masks can trap viruses despite the difference in viruses size and the weave of a mask because viruses travel in moisture droplets.
Claims like these circulate on the right wing, in disgustingly common frequency, and are in fact showcased, along side persecution fantasies about election fraud, jews and lizard people at events like the ReAwaken America Tour, which also features a who’s who of GOP/MAGA figures from Micheal Flynn, to Eric Trump, and Dan Patrick.
All in all, it seems that in terms of who belives things about “covid, covid vaccines, lockdowns and masks”, that there is quite a bit more that has been refuted by scientific evidence, circulating on the right, than on the left.
Re: Re: Re:6
Much of what the government said was true, was in fact “misinformation”, and likewise much of what government labeled “misinformation” turned out to be true. That does not mean that there was no actual false hoods being spread, just that neither you or government should get to declare which is, as if you know, and then suppress it.
That being the case, there’s frankly no point to your whole comment.
These two leapt out at me:
I dunno what the first two were, but there has been a noticeable increase in cardiac events (mostly but not all non-fatal) in young healthy adults, particularly males. It’s a very tiny %, but keep in mind the baseline is basically 0, so it’s still noticeable.
Yeah, that’s just true, actually, it’s basic airflow physics. Likewise O2 levels go down. Maybe what you mean is “it’s not enough to matter in adults at rest” which is largely true, but incontrovertibly masks affect the rate of gas exchange. And having worn one during crossfit classes I’ll tell you it’s pretty brutal.
So even on your list of “certifiably untrue things” you listed at least 2 that were true. (I’ll also note that some viruses, notably measles, are truly airborne)
Oh, that one’s fun. Since all lockdowns are imposed by politicians, and all have probably a long list of reasons, and there was a MARKED left-right bias in the duration and extent of lockdowns, how do you propose that be “proved” one way or the other? It hasn’t and probably can’t be. It’s just something you assert as true and would like to sneer at anyone who disagrees.
So 1) No one should be trying censor “misinformation” cuz no one is terribly good at determining what that is. 2) That you think the “otherside” shares more “misinformation” than yours does probably has more to do with your own biases than anything.
Re: Re: Re:7
You get one point and only one there. Much of the so called left wing misinformation about Covid comes down to people carelessly using “stop” instead of the truer but more nuanced “reduce” when talking about th effects of vaccines lockdown and masks, to help stem infection rates. Some other claims of government “misinformation” and how the other side was allegedly right are in themselves dubious, like claims that the goverment statements on the efficacy of HVQ and Ivermectin are false, we know they aren’t and we also have a good idea why. I may take the hit on the CO2 issue, but not the other two, Died Sudenly makes more than just a specific claim of an increase in cardiac events, it also ties in claims of wierd clots allegedly being found by embalmers and specifically lays them all at the feet of the vaccine, ignoring that both the clots and events started occurring before the vaccine became available, it also doesn’t help that a lot of the clips they show and cast as people dying suddenly neither died, nor had cardiac events. As for the lockdown, yes they were prolonged in left wing areas, but that doesn’t show intent to cause economic damage to do that you’d actually have to show the receipts that they were motivated by the desire to cause economic damage rather than continue measures for public health reasons, folks baselessly asserting it while fear mongering with talking points about socialist tyranny’s does’t make it so. All in all the misinformation on the right wing side of the ledger was qualitatively and qualitatively worse than on the left and those false claims are still being widely promoted on the right and no attempt at false balance changes by non specifically sayin the goverment was wrong changes that.
Re: Re: Re:8
P.s. I never actually brought up censorship or goverment statements in my initial reply -and neither did you- you just went on about SCIENCE, and made a broad claim about that science had refuted much of what the other poster believed about “Covid, Covid vaccines and lockdowns and masks” you never actually specified what those things were, you just asserted it on the basis of what you assumed he believed as a presumed liberal. My response was to specify things that I “believe” about the above that science has not refuted, I was wrong on one, having gotten the basic claim mixed up with the debunking of some dubious tests of CO2 concentration s you haven’t shown I was really wrong on any of the others or how they’ve gotten disturbing amounts of traction on the on the political right.
Re: Re:
All those dox from the Dominion lawsuit discovery go a long way to explaining these results. In quote after quote from the emails/texts/etc, one of the Faux News folks was discussing how their audience was grossly misled and would be very angry and possibly stop watching if they were to tell them the truth. And then consider the polls showing that Faux News viewers were the most misled. This all paints a consistent, easily understood picture. one even a Faux News viewer could understand, and then promptly deny.
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Re: Re: Re:
what “results”? You understand that this paper is completely made up, right?
Re: Re: Re:2
Completely made up? Like Sokal’s ” Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” paper? It sure doesn’t read like that. In fact, it would be a fantastic study to do. Or is it more that it doesn’t conform to your beliefs? Mind you, NO ONE could have any ‘beliefs’ about this, it could only be determined by some pretty massive data search/crunching. What I mentioned would provide pretty strong supporting evidence that what it said it found was true.
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Re: Re: Re:3
As in they were trying to repackage opinions as objective metrics and follows no scientific principals at all, though it pretends to.
Re: Re: Re:4
So, research involving the opinions of of folks is garbage. You can’t stop yourself from being blinded by ideological nonsense. Sure, there are problems with sociological research, but because almost all of it contradicts your most cherished delusions, you actually have to resort to calling all of it made up and that’s just breathtakinginanity. Of course, as I said, the results are exactly what you would expect from a grossly misled audience which is how Faux News sees its audience, and it should know since it’s the source of a lot of the misinformation its viewers latch onto, refusing to let go.
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Re: Re: Re:5
“Research into opinions” is called a poll.
Lol, oh, sure, I’m the one “blinded by ideological nonsense” here, clearly.
Re: Re: Re:6
Maybe I should have said turned into an ignorant moron by ideology, that would have been more accurate. That’s pretty obvious if you think research about people’s opinion implies nothing beyond a poll. You’re also, like all those Faux viewers, quite adamant about staying ignorant.
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Re: Re: Re:7
So you didn’t understand the methodology nor why it was junk.
Just say that, next time.
Re: Re: Re:8
Neither your post or my response was about this particular study. My post that you replied to was
clearly not about this particular study. Acting like that’s the issue is either desperate attempt to change the subject or a sign of your really poor ability to parse sentences and ascertain what’s being said.
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Re: Re: Re:9
You were responding to a chain of comments about the study and seemed to be trying to defend sociology (foolish in and of itself), which was part of the same topic. So not only was your comment clearly about “the study”, it would be expected to assume that, and if somehow you weren’t talking about “the study”, that’s entirely on you.
It literally was the subject, whether you realize it or not, but I suspect you do and now are just trying to shift the goalposts somehow after having been caught out. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Re: Re:10
Dude, this was only at the 3rd level of responses (so reply to reply to reply), and he specifically and explicitly said in that comment that he was talking about “the Dominion Lawsuit do[cs]” and “Faux News polls”. You just didn’t read.
Also, you are in no position to be making that accusation given that you have done the exact same thing. Heck, I once even used almost the exact same words you are using now to describe you, minus the assumption of bad faith.
Oh, and the paper you’re referring to isn’t even about studying sociology. You just asserted that it was and dismissed it because you have decided to dismiss all sociology as not scientific.
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Re: Re: Re:11
He was using that to attack the claim that the paper applied faux “credibility” ratings to various sources. He was basically voicing support for bad methodology through an unrelated third thing.
Do YOU read?
DAFUQ? What the fuck are you talking about?!? I’ve said a great deal about sociology, I’ve said a great deal about this “study”, I’ve said nothing about “studying sociology.”
Well, yes, that much is true. Sociology isn’t scientific, and I’ve shown you why. I suppose there could be an exception, but I haven’t seen one for a while I have no idea what that has to do with the other random nonsense you’re spewing.
Re: Re: Re:12
How the hell did you get that?
More than you, apparently.
That was a typo. It was supposed to be “the study of sociology”. Like you would say “the study of physics”. I’m referencing the field of sociology.
No. You’ve shown why the entirety of science, particularly but not solely psychology and medical science, are in the middle of a crisis right now in terms of people not even really trying to reproduce many results from every field, not that sociology in particular isn’t science or is impossible to reproduce. You haven’t done anything to demonstrate that. You’ve just asserted it without evidence that actually supports your claim.
Given your admitted prejudice against the field, that’s likely just your confirmation bias at work.
Simple:
I think the relevance is quite obvious.
Re: Re: Re:10
You more than me took it general.
First, you said:
“they were trying to repackage opinions as objective metrics and follows no scientific principals”
That’s a comment about use of opinions in that study, granted, but it clearly has general implications and that’s what I addressed in my reply, which started with restating what you said:
“So, research involving the opinions of of folks is garbage.”
Obviously general, and you responded with the quite general:
“Research into opinions” is called a poll.”
If you were still only discussing the cited article, you should have objected earlier instead of going along with the turn to the general. Plus, in earlier posts you were clearly attacking sociology research in general, e.g.:
“Oh, sure, there are NO examples of a sociology study (which overall have incredibly low reproducibility rates and therefore are not science) producing a biased result, right”
So who’s really trying to shift the goal posts? And you’re demonstrating the usual cowardice of rightwingers when they’re assertions are shown to be absurd–acting like it didn’t happen or otherwise trying to weasel their way out of admitting their error any way they can, and when that fails, disappearing. I’m hoping to get to that last phase soon.
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Re: Re: Re:11
Wut? Are you just babbling now?
Most sociology is nonsense, for similar and sadly predicable reasons, but this “study” is awful *in particular. None of criticisms were general, they were actually specific to why this article is made up nonsense.
Oh my, there was no “turn to the general”. Quite the opposite. I turned out being generally dismissive, and then once your whining led me to actually read it I realized it was so much worse than I initially assumed.
Sociology is, in general, quite bad, but this “study” is much worse.
Yes…..I had read the general summary and was dismissing it on general grounds of being sociology (fair) and having an obvious political goal. It just didn’t warrant further investigation. When you continued to defend the article, like an idiot, I was taunted into reading it and found it was **so much worse than I had assumed and transparently so*.
My general disdain was warranted, but I actually got a lot more precise with them over time, how do you not see that?!?
Re: Re: Re:12
You made general statements, still keep making them, and what I replied to is easily taken as a general statement and I replied as such and you replied as such, so everything you’re saying in this last post is simply BS, disingenuous at BEST. You’re proving to be just another rightwing weasel and that ain’t a surprise. For more specifics about why your objections are crap, see my previous reply to one of your earlier posts, search ‘held my nose’ if you have a hard time finding it, this format can make that a little difficult especially with so many of your comments getting hidden.
[For the record, in general, I don’t flag posts, or posters, I don’t complain to mods about rule-breaking, don’t complain about being ‘mistreated’ or whatever, let others see what every asshole says, let their and my words speak for themselves, that’s my take. In all forums or comments sections etc, in 13-14 years I’ve done so maybe 3 times and 2 of those were strategic to highlight a mods biased behavior and the third is just in case I forgot one]
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Re: Re: Re:13
Oh, I replied.
You’re just babbling. You’re a hateful liberal who worships “The Science” without understanding what that means or what it works.
And now someone has told you in detail how “The Science” is made up and not scientific at all and you’re Big Mad about it and I just don’t fucking care.
Re: Re: Re:14
Oh you replied, AFTER I posted that. I don’t know about Science? Try to explain what could justify that claim. I wonder about your physics knowledge since your defense of CERN experiments being reproducible involved other groups doing experiments but failed to mention there is more than one detector, I think there’s 3, could be more, but there are two main detectors and both were used in simultaneous, independent, different kinds of, tests in the initial confirmation of the Higgs. I’m not Big Mad, I’m just contemptuous.
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Re: Re: Re:15
….that wasn’t my “defense” (my “defense” was pointing out that things either fit into the standard model or don’t), I was just pointing out what Bhul said was silly and irrelevant….as is the idea that I should have mentioned the “3” detectors for that purpose (there’s 9, actually). Except for the two general purpose detectors the 9 all are designed to detect different things for different experiments.
Oh, and they only used one type of experiment to detect the higgs (proton collisions) and “simulataneus” is kinda meaningless, there’s 1 billion collisions a second.
What matters tho is poring through that enormous amount of data and finding a statistically significant number of events to feed into the model.
Basically, nothing you said makes sense the way you think it does. You can be contemptuous all you want, I guess, you don’t know enough to know.
You’re definitely Big Mad about sociology tho.
Re: Re: Re:16
bhull242: CERN is no more reproducible than most sociology or psychology studies,
You: Yeah, so that’s not true, at all, and just shows how little you know about it. You realize different groups get to run experiments there, right?
That’s what I was responding to, which IS a defense of reproducibility of CERN/LHC experiments.
I did not say the LHC had 3 detectors, I said at least 3, it does have more, 2 are for more specialized experiments and the rest are for highly specialized experiments. The 2 main general purpose detectors were both BOTH were used in detecting the Higgs, using independent testing methodologies with very different detectors. YOU even said “designed to detect different things for different experiments”. Yammering about them both using proton-proton collisions is meaningless, don’t you know what your own words mean? The vast majority of experiments on the LHC use proton-proton collisions, you think that implies ‘one type of experiment” or is it “designed to detect different things for different experiments”? Make up your mind.
Your attacking my saying the experiments were run simultaneously is just silly, like I’d actually think they were trying to collide individual protons at the same time. Maybe I should have said ‘concurrently’, but I thought it would have been clear to anyone that understood these things that if you’re discussing confirming experiments, it adds a little more certainty that the tests were run on the same machine and there wasn’t any diddling with the guts between tests.
Since you WERE defending reproducibility, it really would have made more sense to mention the use of the 2 detectors “designed to detect different things for different experiments” rather than the different groups you mentioned. Do you even know how large most of these groups are, have you seen any of the papers out of the LHC groups with multiple pages required just to list the authors?
So YOUR post makes no sense, you’re even wrong about what YOU said. And STILL not big mad, I’m still full of contempt.
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Each proton stream is composed of “clumps” of protons with I think about a trillion protons each. That’s still one experiment tho.
This is kinda what I’m talking about: You don’t know enough to even understand WHY your objections make no sense.
Point is you had no idea how many it had.
Actually, no, they fire ions (nuclei) also. (technically protons are also H+ but here we mean gold ions and the like)
It really would not have. The main reason we don’t worry about reproducibility is the math. Different groups involved matters in that there is more than one set of eyes for methodological reasons but again this is much less of an issue in physics, everything is very open and measurable and near impossible to fake. I’m sorry you don’t get that, kinda stopped caring.
I do, actually, but I have no idea why you think that matters. At all.
You’re pretty clearly Big Mad, but the more you talk the more it’s clear you have NO idea how any of this works. So if you’re “contemptuous” that’s some measure of funny/sad. I hate the term “Dunning-Kruger effect” (it’s usually used as just ad hominem) but this honestly seems as an excellent example. You have continuously displayed your ignorance and used that as a basis for why I don’t know what I’m talking about.
OK, buddy. Whatever you want to pretend I guess.
Re: Re: Re:18
More good evidence you really don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re getting desperate to try to prove me wrong. I’ll admit using ‘vast’ was an overstatement since the correct percentage is 80-90, still, mostly proton proton. And it’s lead ions they primarily use. It’s irrelevant I didn’t know the exact number of detectors the LHC has, I knew it was more than two and the two were the main ones.
“The main reason we don’t worry about reproducibility is the math”
That’s just daft, they seriously worry about reproducibility, FFS they use a 5 sigma to officially recognize a discovery, though I’m doubting you understand what that means. They’re constantly terrified of having some systematic error due to equipment design, outside influence, some source of bias not accounted for and lots more. The gold standard for confirmation is an independent, different type of test with different equipment and that’s what they did using both main detectors testing different types of particles going through different types of breakdowns to end with very close results on the Higgs mass.
The above is pretty much proof your understanding of physics and accelerator testing sucks, I don’t see how you could have a degree in physics and make such asinine claims, especially all that different groups different eyes and methodologies BS, that’s just ignorant and moronic.
You’ve definitely made me bigger contempt, still not big mad. I’ll gleefully pit my knowledge of science against yours, you have no idea who I am or my background so you’re only serving to make yourself look more the fool in thinking I have no idea what science is.
Huh?
I have no intention of paying Twitter. It’s a free service, making its money (?) out of showing me ads, just like ABC and CBS. I cannot imagine something like Facebook or Tiktok making people pay to get good content. Why would Twitter think it would work? If the “For You” is not relevant, then I guess I’m stuck with whomever I follow – which is probably then going to be an improvement.
Twitter needs to follow the lesson from Digg – changing things too radically to “make it work better” resulted in nobody liking it; it got popular being a certain type of service, and the new site wasn’t what people wanted.
Blue checks
At some point, the majority of the traffic will be paying bots trolling each other.
The color of the check will not matter, as long as Elmo can cash it.
At this point it seems like he’s a self-parody bot.
Why do stories coming out of Twitter make me think of the cartoon trope of running in mid air after crossing the cliff edge, but before the realization that nothing is supporting them.
One of the rules that Chuck Jones had for writing Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons went like this: “The coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.”
Replace “the coyote” with “Elon Musk” in that sentence and…well, it would certainly explain why he goes out of his way to make himself seem like a “winner” no matter what the cost.
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Speaking of WB cartoons, in my head, i keep hearing Daffy Duck say, “Peasant!”
Elon, you know that shadowboosting AOC isn’t gonna make her interested in you, stop simping for someone who’s diametrically opposed to you ideologically and once told you off publicly.
Unless you’re into public humiliation, I’m not gonna judge.
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OMG, you can't stop, can you?
First of all, your friend “Casey’s” blog likes to post stuff from single, anonymous sources with obvious suspect motivations that do not appear to be independently verified anywhere else, ever. So IS there a special list of 35 VIPs that includes people as diverse as AOC, Ben Shapiro, and “MrBeast”? It’s possible, there’s no laws of physics banning it, but it also seems really unfucking likely.
What can be said for sure is that 2-person band and friend of Masnick show Platformer claiming such 0% makes such a claim more likely. And it’s a pretty outlandish claim.
Yeah, so that sounds like something you’d say if you wrote something outlandish and unverifiable and wanted to make it harder to disprove.
The rest is all a sorta of all pink Mean Girls poison rumor campaign, stating things that either are not true, mischaracterizations, or just hearsay, citing either your own blog posts or…bonus, another Platformer article! Perfect, 10/10.
This is pathetic.
Then for some reason you try to associate all this with Musk’s “Subscription to fight bots” idea, which may or may not work but is actually the same as you “insider” program, if you think about it — and no giving subscribers privileges is not the same as shadow banning individuals based on what they’re saying or per government request, you fucking walnut.
No, you fucking moron. The problem is not human scammers, nor comedians thinking it’s funny to be “verified” as someone else including Musk, but massive bot networks operated for a fraction of a cent per bot. It is a real and persistent problem and yes a subscription fee of real money makes that completely untenable. What the fucking fuck? No one with any knowledge of spam problems would say something like that.
Hey, you catch the IRS paid Taibbi a “little visit”? Not over anything he’s done or money owed, mind you, but over supposed “identify theft”. No, that isn’t normal. Nor Subtle.
They wouldn’t be doing that (shouldn’t be doing it at all) if the Twitterfiles were a bunch of nothing like you keep on claiming.
Fuck you’re pathetic.
I can’t believe Musk hasn’t shadow boosted Mike. After all of the publicity Mike/Techdirt has given him. How ungrateful!
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This comment should be one of the funniest comments of the week.
'Now that I have the power flip everything I just said around!'
Elon: The lords and peasants system is terrible, down with the idea of treating users differently depending upon who they are!
Elon: Is forced to buy Twitter.
Elon: … And for just $8 or $1,000 a month depending upon who you are you too can join the new and improved ‘Who Cares What The Peasants Say, Only The Voices of Lords Matter’ system where yours are the only voices that matter on the platform and everyone will start their day being told how awesome you are.
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i haven’t seen it directly mentioned, so: There are literally millions of people out there who cannot possibly afford $8 a month (or the means by which to pay it if they did).
It’s amazing how he’s pulling this “there shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities” routine, what, six weeks after throwing a fucking tantrum because people were changing their names to “Elon Musk”.
It’s like, he doesn’t make any connection between verification and impersonation. Even after people have repeatedly explained it to him. And given him a demonstration of it.
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So long as it doesn’t personally affect him I doubt he cares even after having his faced shoved in the problem.
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But it did personally affect him. That’s why he got so pissed off about it.
And then learned absolutely nothing from it.
Much as with treating trolls on Techdirt, perhaps what is needed is a campaign to simply mute Musk.
And when the platform becomes untenable even so, leave. If twitter is not adding to your happiness, then perhaps you should not be engaging with it.
Re:
As soon as Elon took over, there was a heavy tsunami of racists using the N-word as well as Mike Masnick himself getting ratioed for good tweets whilst people replying to him getting liked for awful tweets.
It was at that point that I decided to delete my twitter account and I then executed that decision.
Reading through these comments, I get the feeling that those who oppose the study of society are most likely also racist.
Many conservatives dislike sociology because it has the potential of exposing the outrageous behavior of our ancestors. This exposure could jeopardize the feel good stories about our past that many promote.
Oh yeah, they are also liars
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Nice.
Pro-tip: Sociology is in theory a study of modern society (including very recent history), not historical.
And I don’t dislike it, I’m lampooning it, because I like science and sociology is not science.
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Recent history is not historical … interesting.
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I suppose there goes WW2 studies then!
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Meaning the modern era, dumbass. You said “ancestors”, which is usually referring to well before that and not sociology.
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Segregation is recent history in the US, and a major cause of the poverty of black communities. Is that something you want swept under the carper.
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Lucky for us it’s not you who gets to decide that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branches_of_science
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Yeah, wikipedia doesn’t decide that either, sorry.
Less than half of socilogy studies can be reproduced. It’s not science.
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Wikipedia didn’t decide it, people who understand it a lot better than you wrote it on Wikipedia. I’m sure you understand how Wikipedia works, but you just cannot admit there might be a source more knowledgeable than you.
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Sociology and psychology try to ferret out what people think and why they do what they do. That’s a lot harder and more variable and local and path-dependent than figuring out how fast a rock falls when you drop it. But sociologists and psychologists want the same imprimatur of certainty and prestige that the rock droppers have, so they do flimsy and uncertain and biased research, if not outright fraud, and rush it into publication. That’s why these so-called soft sciences are much less trustworthy. (That woke gender ideologues will call their false beliefs “settled science” should make this clear.)
Funny thing is, long ago, the term “Twit” was derogatory.
Guess that’s being recycled now.
Join Twitter.
Be a Twit.
Mutter
I think I’ll start calling it Mutter. It’s not twitter anymore, it’s Musk’s plaything… and it’s pretty much incoherent blabbering that doesn’t make much sense…
That way, when someone tells me they’re using Musks Twitter, I can turn around and say “I can’t hear you when you Mutter”
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