I’ve noticed the same thing and this creates such a negative user experience. Every short is a reaction test and if I fail, I get slop. Makes the whole experience very jarring (for better or for worse).
For better or worse with regards to my addiction, my subscriptions are all either science channels or high effort / high production comedy skits (e.g. DropoutTV). I still get slop, but I never subscribe and it mostly remains background noise
That’s the point though. It may seem as if you’re not in control when scrolling, but you can adjust your behavior to get the content you’re looking for almost intuitively. That’s actually something good in my honest opinion.
Why is it good that you need self control to not get slop? Its much better if you can just turn that off and relax rather than having to stay alert to avoid certain content that it tries to trick you to serve you more slop.
Distancing yourself from temptations is an effective and proven way to get rid of addictions, the programs constantly trying to get you to relapse is not a good feature. Like imagine a fridge that constantly puts in beer, that would be very bad for alcoholics and people would just say "just don't drink the beer?" even though this is a real problem with an easy fix.
Basically, I want to set boundaries in a healthy frame of mind, and have that default respected when my self control is lower because I’m tired, depressed, bored, etc.
It’s because content curation is inherently impossible to reach the same level of relevance as direct feedback from user behavior. You mix in all kinds of biases, commercial interests, ideology of the curator, etc, and you inevitably get irrelevant slop. The algorithm puts you in control a little bit more.
> The algorithm puts you in control a little bit more.
Why not let you choose to get a less addictive algorithm? Older algorithms were less addictive, so its not at all impossible to do this, many users would want this.
And that is why these algorithms needs to be regulated. People don't want to pick the algorithm that makes them spend the most time possible on their phones, many would want an algorithm that optimizes for quality rather than quantity on the app so they get more time to do other things. But corporations doesn't want to provide that because they don't earn anything from it.
I have YouTube Premium. They should be doing the opposite. Getting me off the platform as quickly as possible so they get to keep a bigger cut of my fixed payment.
I just don’t think that the addiction is exclusively due to the algorithm. There’s really a lack of affordable varied options for learning trade and entertainment. We say in Portuguese: You shouldn’t throw the baby away along with the water you used to bathe.
I don't see any harm that could come from saying "a less addictive algorithm needs to be available to users"? For example, lets say there is an option to only recommend videos from channels you subscribe to, that would be much less addictive, why isn't that an option? A regulation that forces these companies to add such a feature would only make the world a better place.
>I don't see any harm that could come from saying "a less addictive algorithm needs to be available to users"?
consider air travel in the present day. ticketing at essentially all airlines breaks down as: premium tickets that are dramatically expensive but offer comfortable seats, and economy tickets that are cramped and seem to impose new indignities every new season. what could be the harm from legislation that would change that menu?
the harm would be fewer people able to travel, fewer young people taking their first trip to experiencing the other side of the world, fewer families visiting grandma, etc.
As much as people hate the air travel experience, the tickets get snapped up, and most of them strictly on the basis of price, and next most taking into account nonstops. This gives us a gauge as to how much people hate air travel: they don't.
this doesn't mean airlines should have no regulation, it doesn't mean monopoly practices are not harmful to happiness, it doesn't mean that addictions don't drive people to make bad choices, it doesn't mean a lot of things.
I'm just trying to get you to see that subtle but significant harm to human thriving can easily come from regulations.
I agree, but what would be the actual mechanism that would allow that? I believe we’re out of ideas. TikTok’s crime was just be firmly successful because of good engineering. There’s no evil sauce apart from promotional content and occasional manipulation, which has nothing to do with the algorithm per se.
And about whitelisting, I honestly don’t think you’re comparing apples to apples. The point of the algorithm is dynamically recommending new content. It’s about discovery.
> I agree, but what would be the actual mechanism that would allow that?
Governments saying "if you are a social content platform with more than XX million users you have to provide these options on recommendation algorithms: X Y Z". It is that easy.
> And about whitelisting, I honestly don’t think you’re comparing apples to apples. The point of the algorithm is dynamically recommending new content. It’s about discovery.
And some people want to turn off that pushed discovery and just get recommended videos from a set of channels that they subscribed to. They still want to watch some tiktok videos, they just don't want the algorithm to try to push bad content on them.
You are right that you can't avoid such algorithm when searching for new content, but I don't see why it has to be there in content it pushes onto you without you asking for new content.
I don’t agree tbh. This is part of how people wind up down extremist rabbit holes. If you’re just lazily scrolling it can easily trap you in its gravity well.
But you can get into extremist rabbit holes independently of control surface. Remember 4chan? Dangerous content is a matter of moderation regardless of interfacing.
4chan has a lot less extremism than people imagine, rspecially compared to platforms like Instagram or Facebook. It's mostly concentrated on certain boards. The reputation of being extremist did more 'in favour' of its extremism than the original userbase and design ever did.
4chan is only outdone by 8chan. “It’s only concentrated on certain boards” is the same lame excuse Reddit used to ignore /r/thedonald and now /r/conservative.
4chan doesn't use algorithms to push users to certain boards afaik, makes it better than the others in its design. I'm not arguing 4chan is great but it's not nearly as impactful as Facebook, Twitter or TikTok in creating extremism.
Facebook and Twitter are far worse sources of extremism. There are entire groups dedicated to genetic comparisons between races, 'who would you do' groups that do nothing but photos of young women in bikinis farmed FROM facebook/ig.
4chan is where you go too far. 4chan users typically don't foster extremism, they are the extreme. They don't post pictures of young women, they post addresses and walkthroughs of their apartments.
Yes, I feel like it's far less harmful than the other sites for this reason. These bad parts of 4chan aren't the majority of the site either, a large minority maybe, but the site in general is much smaller. Users are also attracted to the image of 'extremism', 4chan in the far past didn't have this as its main audience of newcomers in its early stages.
It's easy to control for governments compared to facebook/reddit/... because it's just some boards, way better than massive amounts of posts creating a personal zone for everyone.
>I'm not arguing 4chan is great but it's not nearly as impactful as Facebook, Twitter or TikTok in creating extremism.
4chan has /pol/. 4chan inspired Gamergate, Pizzagate, QAnon and numerous incidents of extremist violence. Those other platforms mostly just spread and accelerate the toxic culture that originated on 4chan.
I'm not sure if most of 4chan was actually so on board with the whole gamergate thing and all the things which followed. pre-/pol/ 4chan was a whole different thing. It was outsiders joining 4chan which did most of the posting, twitter and facebook were the ones which allowed this to happen.
Internet starting with a 1000 4chans wouldn't create what we have today (you'll just get lots of small fringe groups), internet starting with a 1000 facebooks/twitters/... will always end in extremism of a big portion of the population.
And — this is really shocking — Jeffrey Epstein caused /pol/ to exist, which makes him indirectly responsible for almost all stupid internet politics of the last decade.
I try to react as “violently” as possible to any slop and low-quality crap (e.g. stupid “life hacks” purposely bad to ragebait the comments). On YouTube it’s called “Don’t recommend this channel” and on Facebook it’s multiple taps but you can “Hide All From…”
Basically, I don’t trust that thumbs down is sufficient. It is of course silly, since there are no doubt millions of bad channels and I probably can’t mute them all.
At the risk of going off on a tangent about that maxim; I feel like it's just misusing the word "purpose".
Maybe it would be cleaner to state that a system has no purpose (at least not until it is sentient), instead it has behaviors. Then one can observe that the purpose of the designers or maintainers of a system simply happens to be at odds (or as AI safety researchers would say, are "out of alignment with") the behavior of the system.
That all of course presupposes that one can accurately deduce the purposes of the designers/maintainers.. In the case of TikTok, I'd bet that we are all in agreement that their purpose is nothing more nor less than maximal value-extraction from people wishing to express themselves with videos multiplied against an audience of people who wish to view videos multiplied again against advertisers who want to insert propaganda into eyeballs.
A use case I’ve been working through is learning a language (not programming). You can use LLMs to translate and write for you in another language but you will not be able to say, I know that language, no matter how much you use the LLM.
Now compare this to using the LLM with a grammar book and real world study mechanisms. This creates friction which actually causes your mind to learn. The LLM can serve as a tool to get specialized insight into the grammar book and accelerate physical processes (like generating all forms of a word for writing flashcards). At the end of day, you need to make an intelligent separation where the LLM ends and your learning begins.
I really like this contrast because it highlights the gap between using an LLM and actually learning. You may be able to use the LLM to pass college level courses in learning the language but unless you create friction, you actually won’t learn anything! There is definitely more nuance here but it’s food for thought
I once approached an Israeli tech company (Gloat) when I was doing market research for a product I was building. The response was… interesting to say the least. It led me to do more digging behind the actual product they were building, what kind of positions they were hiring, and what customers they actually had.
All engineering positions were based out of Israel (nothing wrong with that), they had numerous high-profile clients and seemed very connected, but honestly the tech and their vision was pretty disappointing. At first I was shocked how, with such a rudimentary system, they could be so widely in use by these huge, reputable companies! I was naive. All in all, what disappointed me the most was the amount of resources that obviously went into this company and the presumptions that reeked from it; but in my opinion, there was no deserved substance to back things up. You can argue this is the case for many American VC companies but at least to their credit, they need to put the money where their mouth is a some point or another (whether that means making a viable product or generating more hype). With this company, the vibe I got from resources I interacted with, was that they were almost “owed” this market penetration in the industry and it was very discordant to me growing up in the US tech industry where you really needed to prove yourself, at least initially, and stay growing, open-minded, always hustling.
I think reflecting on it there is probably a lot of state protection of this company and state connections between private US and Israeli individuals that guarantee clients as long as the work is as at a certain level (and yes not saying they have developed some horrible suite of software, just… small-minded). And maybe with this breathing room, it allows the role play of being a cutting-edge tech company without the risk which makes it a dream job and therefore a political asset in the polarized state. And maybe at the end of the day it’s less about building a tech company that is the best but developing Israeli institutional knowledge and collecting data, building connections, everything that isn’t software and above my pay-grade. I’m not sure.
To contrast this, I met with an Irish tech company in the same space a couple weeks later called Teamwork, I believe. The CEO himself met with me, discussed my work, even jokingly offered to hire me. Despite this guy founding a successful company, at no point did I feel “erased” or made to feel beneath him. To take a step back, I’m not making the point that “non-Israeli tech company” better than Israeli tech company. Thinking it through, I’ll say that, it seems like Gloat and the other Israeli tech companies I’ve read about, are more existentially-driven. Like doing their work, building their business, and developing their tech is predicated on surviving… which makes sense when you think it through. At the same time, from a tech focus, I think it holds them back since it’s a form of egocentrism and if you’re not the best, you need diversity of opinions to be the best.
Here is my tech angle: AI disinfo is already out in full force but the non-techies cannot even conceptualize. This is not some superiority complex but the fact that even navigating the UI of a simple app like Reddit can be daunting for newer users, let alone understanding the level of manipulation that goes on at even the smallest level in these programs (many, multiple full-time smart people on this stuff). I feel that this is one of the few places on the English-speaking internet (public that is) that really understands how far-reaching AI disinfo is and why discussion is important to happen here. Despite as you mention with, maybe some tampering by HN (though I truly believe HN does a good job walking that line) but look at places like Reddit with institutional moves after moves to push towards a low-trust environment that fundamentally fragments the socialsphere and makes people more scared and confused (with botting, algorithms, government oversight, etc. [where is your transparency report now?]). Call a spade a spade.
To add a more personal opinion here which I also think is correct, all of this is intentional and deliberate and I'm sure there are people "in the know" who this is so obvious to but I'm only 25 and I only start wrapping my head around this stuff by the day. The admin clearly shaped conditions for something like this to happen but also create plausible deniability. You take people who aren't properly-vetted, and want this job, you know what will happen. Especially when you do it at scale, for a long enough time, it's an inevitability. What's the reason? Well the most scary thing I've noticed is how it's drawn a line. The other side, they're human and maybe find themselves trapped in a position but the chips are coming down. This is forcing people to take a stand that they might not agree with to remain in their community, their families, and even keep their careers, to take the step themselves of being ok with cold-blooded murder.
All this to say, for the "bad thing" to happen, it doesn't just happen, it needs to be tested and proved and honestly, no one knows exactly how to get there (though we have some historical examples to look at). So the administration is testing, proving, prodding, deliberately to shape things so the conditions for the "bad system" can arise. A bit the breaking the seals in revelation except the seals are our moral composure as a society and the rule of law. This is a big step in that direction of badness and viewing r/conservative on Reddit (very botted), you can see how dire the party line has become. That's my theory at least.
The militia that DHS has deployed in search of immigration law violators has spilled over into confrontations with US citizens partly because of the lack of accountability, transparency, and training. By making these newbie teams of gung ho militia anonymous and independent of any oversight, the DHS administration has lit a fuse for an inevitable explosion.
I don't know what was said between the agents in the moments before events unfolded that lead to Renee Nicole Good's death on camera(s). I do suspect (and speculate) that a spontaneous decision was made, inside the cab of the officer's vehicle, by one of the three officers involved (who was in charge?), to exit the pickup, move forward to demand immediate compliance, to exert force under a sudden assertion of authority.
To me, watching the videos, it appeared that in that critical moment of deciding to prosecute the Good woman, the agents had exhausted their patience with the scattered crowd of citizen 'observers', annoyed by the entire exercise of locals with their camera phones and their ignorant application of so-called civil rights. The impatience and aggression is clear and visible in one of the videos, which show the sudden exit from the pickup, the aggressive approach to the driver's side door, the three commands from one officer to "Get out of the car!" (with the third command adding an emphatic expletive).
This emotional behavior exhibits the result of explicit psychological conditioning, the development of mistrust and hostility towards citizenry which imho is purposefully encouraged to unify the team. The team is coached to make the militia into a cohesive unit that will hold itself elite, empowered, enabled to enforce retribution for whatever slight a team or team leader may perceive.
They have been told they are righteous in their mission. They have been told that they bear the full authority of the federal government, and that they have the right to detain and/or arrest anyone who they perceive is obstructing them in performing their duties. They have been coached and prepared for battle, not just focused on the criminal illegal immigrants that are their purvue, but for anyone who appears to be in their way.
Without accountability, and without interview access to the agents involved, we'll never know what was said and decided between those three officers. Only they know how and why and when they decided to take down the Good woman, instead of moving on to the next task in their team's agenda. Only they can speak to their intentions, what they thought their probable cause was, or even if they considered probable cause, arrest, prosecution.
Maybe they only wanted payback. Maybe they were just frustrated and thus determined that the team's morale needed lifting with a good old application of force under the auspices of authority. Maybe yanking a woman out of her vehicle and taking her into custody in full view of all these citizen journalists would help spread the word that ICE is not to be messed with.
But we'll never know, because the entire apparatus of the federal government is no longer to be trusted, not to investigate and report on itself.
Donald Trump wants a national police force accountable to no one but himself.
Well here in Chicago we learned that you CAN interview the agents and they'll just deny saying and doing the things their own cameras proved them to have done and said.
I agree strongly with this. My neurodivergence is a result of trauma. In some ways, I’m a broken person and my affinity with computers is a coping mechanism. Outsiders might see me as a successful person (and in some ways I am) but I will be saddled with this emotional debt for many years to come. When I was younger, I used to think so strongly of my condition, that it elevated me because it gave me the chance to achieve my dreams. Then I discovered the trap of covert narcissism.
It turns out that trauma unresolved doesn’t just get better because you make yourself stronger, smarter, and less approachable. Instead you make yourself an island, keep pushing others away, and you become miserable. A red flag is the idea of being “better” than someone, even if you are! A covert narcissist might to themselves think they are a better engineer than their coworker but because they are so “self-aware” be kind and accommodating. This is a tricky spot because that line of thinking still maintains an idea of inherent superiority and it festers.. all this to say is I think our field has a lot of traumatized engineers and I think being on computers and in your head playing God can be a breeding ground for narcissism, especially the covert form. I even think this is encouraged directly in the field with the way engineers get treated as unimpeachable and as superhuman in some companies (easier to manipulate and less qualms about exploiting their fellow man). Of course you have really smart people that are genuinely empathetic and humble but I think this is a dying breed in the field. And with these people, they can be very unassuming and go unnoticed on online discourse because they are so humble and self-aware.
I just do light weight nowadays with my strength training. It’s easier mentally. Rather than push myself to go higher on bench, squat, and deadlift, I stick to 1 plate for bench and squat and 2 plates for deadlift. Every single time. Instead of increasing load, I increase rep amount and focus on my form. Honestly, I still find myself sore after most workouts and the simplicity is nice. I’m 25 for reference.
You won't see any progress if you won't push yourself. It shapes your mentality, and running away from work is what will keep you at the same place. Soreness is not a sign of progression most of the time. Bump up the weights, don't run away.
I find the goal of perpetual progress in resistance training strange. Yet it seems to be almost universal. If you are not lifting more today than you lifted yesterday, you are a failure. Gains, gains, gains. It is rather obvious that there are genetic limits on strength and size. Everyone is somewhere on their own spectrum of potential. Someone who doesn’t resistance train at all is likely near the bottom of their potential. Someone who works out 5 days a week, never misses leg day, eats enough protein (1g per kg in Europe, 1g per lb in the US) is likely near the top of their potential. Living in higher and higher ranges of your potential requires exponentially more ongoing effort, dedication/discipline/sacrifice, blood/sweat/tears/pain. Say my absolute maximum genetic potential in exercise X is to lift 100kg. Say I never do exercise X, so my current maximum is 40k. With some effort, like training 3 days a week for 4 months, I might get this to 60kg. Perhaps I could maintain that gain for decades by continuing to train 2 days a week. Or, I could keep pushing and maybe I could get it to 80kg in a few years. With an absolute all out effort, applying all the knowledge of the latest studies and perfect discipline, I could temporarily push it into the high 90s. Everybody can do what they want to do, but it seems to me that seeking the minimum effective dose of resistance training to look and feel good, and be strong enough to do what you like or need to do, is a reasonable approach. No need to push for more gains after that.
They're increasing reps and therefore total load. That's still a form of progression ('pushing yourself'). This style will slightly favor hypertrophy gains over strength gains.
At 40 I recently made this switch in style as well. The weight was getting so high that my anxiety was causing a mental aversion to working out altogether. Consistency is really 95% of exercise so I think this is a reasonable trade-off.
That said, I understand where you are coming from. There's something to be said about facing the fear of the weight head on. I've already done that in my younger years though. I'd much rather avoid injury and get 80% of the benefits.
You shouldn't be stressed of what's in front of you. Training also trains you for that other than muscle/power building. If you don't compete, you have no reason to be anxious. You should maybe dig into what's causing you that anxiety, if it's "I worry I won't make this weight", remind yourself that nothing will happen if you do, and if you do, it's part of the progression. I get this anxiousness also, but I always remind myself that.
I think that what you do in the gym will reflect on yourself.
I got to 425 max on deadlift. My ego isn’t tied to being stronger, just strong enough to be healthy and fit. I think it’s unhealthy to view this as “running away” and honestly I look good and by putting less focus on it, I have more focus for other things in life I can optimize.
But you are putting focus on it, just doing it less efficiently (imo and what other people say as well). Why not use the same time and use it more efficiently.
"I will go to the gym, but will not even break sweat, will be fakingly training, just jumping from one machine to another, without plan, execution or dedication" - is the MO of a lot of people in a commercial gym. They are there, but they are definitely running away from hardness. Don't know how well this applies to you.
In life, you need to run to keep the same place. In order to advance, one has to sprint, to put effort. Purposefully slacking and easing often means that practically you are regressing, being left behind.
I understand if you were strong enough, put effort, got the results, and want to scale training down in order to maintain and to concentrate on other more important things. But:
1. You are not that strong. You can definitely build a better strength/muscle foundation that will last the rest of your life. The health retirement fund. It is the easiest to do now, while you are still young. You can do much better.
2. But even if you think that the current level is enough and are only interested in maintaining, the way you do it is clearly suboptimal. Both gaining and maintaining would be easier, faster and more efficient with highter weights and fewer reps. You can also save time because you can do fewer sets in order to get the same maintenance effect. Alternatively, you can keep the same sets/time, but actually progress (or do it faster) instead of staying at the same place. Same cost, bigger psyout. This is the result of doing the right things the right way, instead of giving up and doing something that feels nicer.
I do minimal weight training but in climbing the current consensus is that too many reps increases likely hood of developing an overuse injuries in the tendons. Probably depends on the exercises (climbing is hard on the elbows), but maybe keep an eye for tendonitis
Good call out. I’m pretty lazy so I keep the rep ranges low. And not too many sets. Generally I start with a compound lift to hit everything in the muscle group I’m working then move onto accessory lifts to target more granularly. I think I’m lazy enough my risk of injury is low.
I don't intend to convince you, but for onlookers:
1. As a young male, 1 plate bench/squat and 2 plate deadlift is extremely weak. Please strive higher than this. Anyone can achieve this in 6 months of intelligent training max. Many men start this strong untrained. The majority of young men can squat 1 plate untrained.
1. Soreness is not an indication of anything other than that you did a lot of eccentric loading. It doesn't correlate to progress. It is also a sign that your programming is not intelligent; you generally should not be sore after the first few workouts ever again.
1. Yes it is easier mentally, in the sense that doing easy things is easy. This is not a benefit, because doing hard things results in mental strength as much as physical.
My max used to be 425 on deadlift back when I was taking it more seriously. Doing 5x8 of 225 on deadlift is enough to be strong to be healthy and active. You can only push yourself on a limited number of things in life so some things are just good enough.
Sure, and 400 deadlift is decent intermediate for the average man, but let me suggest a counterpoint. Strength is the greatest indication of health among the elderly. A strong old man doesn't break his hip when he falls, he doesn't fall at all actually because strength is balance, and he doesn't have trouble getting off the toilet, and he doesn't need a cane. These are serious QOL issues.
It's a mindset issue. If you're 25 and have already declined from 425 to 225 deadlift, that doesn't bode well for your decline into old age. Strength slowly tapers off once you stop lifting, as most eventually do. You want to be as strong as possible while entering middle age so that you can be a strong old man. Strength is like a retirement account in this sense, and in this sense you are advocating for working minimum wage throughout life because it's easier. For a young man, whose training is most efficacious of all age groups, I recommend getting as strong as possible, at least 400 deadlift and symmetrical equivalent in other lifts (but most can achieve 500), and then maintaining that strength as long as possible, not cutting it in half immediately. If you can lift 350 at age 55 you're pretty much guaranteed to never break your hip or have a bad fall; that entire class of osteo related issues vanishes.
I’ve been a longtime competitive athlete and my best deadlift was 545 lb. I’ve been in many gyms in my life and I’ve only met maybe a dozen men lifting more than say 350 or so.
Expecting the “average” man to get to a 400 or even 300 lb deadlift is absurd. Sure, most people could be in better shape but a 4 plate deadlift is much more strength than most people need… and more than most people’s bodies can safely handle regularly. The risk of serious injury rises exponentially when you put on weight like that.
Building and maintaining strength, especially into the older ages, is certainly important but not to the levels you describe here. I suspect your comments here are based on neither personal experience nor proper education and training.
The average male 20-29 in USA is 85KG. A deadlift of barely over 2x bodyweight is not remarkable at all! The average young man does not train and when they do they train stupidly; this has no bearing on the fact that they could achieve a 400 deadlift within a few years of intelligent training.
Most gyms are not serious. You'll find no one lifting heavy at Planet Fitness, and you'll find that a 350 deadlift is one of the weakest in a dirty powerlifting gym. Among people who actually do the activity, it's not impressive. The thing is you just have to actually do the activity. My metrics are only "absurd" if you think I'm saying that the average man has the willpower and interest to achieve this; of course they don't; the average man is obese and lazy. My claim is that the average man has the physical capacity to achieve this.
Please don't misconstrue my claim of what is possible for what is likely. The average man can easily learn to cook well, read a few books per year, get their chess elo into the top 30%, run a 5k, learn to draw basic portraits, deadlift 400 pounds, and many other things that the average man will never do because they don't want to train for it.
If I said the average man could practice drawing for a few years and end up drawing basic portraits, or study chess or cooking for a few years and end up better than almost anyone they know, this is mostly uncontroversial. When I say the same for strength training, it seems to anger a lot of people for some reason. My experiences tell me that these are comparable levels of goals.
To the original point, seriously, my 102lb wife squats more than 1 plate and she's been training for 4 months.
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