• 2 Posts
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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: May 17th, 2024

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  • I would argue that defining mental illness by the DSM-6 is a really bad way of defining mental illness.

    The same DSM previously said homosexuality and female hysteria were illnesses, and still causes black people to be diagnosed more frequently as anti-social because black children get labeled with conduct disorders more often that white children (quite likely due to racism), and still categories people as narcissistic based on a Greek myth. The DSM is so malleable and fluid because it was never based on science to begin with. Yes, these writers are oracles and soothsayers with Ph.D’s, but anyone with enough time and money can buy credits for such an unrigorous “scientific” discipline.

    It’s really mostly only useful as an insurance billing tool, and one day there will be universal health care and hopefully the whole glossary of tripe can be forgotten, stored in the rare books section next to the textbooks about phrenology.


  • In defense of insurance companies, medical costs are astronomical because doctor professional associations protect doctor wages. Why do I need a 400 an hour doctor to prescribe an antibiotic for a bladder infection? Many people want to doctors and don’t get admitted into medical school. Instead of delegating less difficult responsibilities to this interested group of people by creating a more tiered system of expertise, the AMA hoards all the decisions for the doctors, fleeces and extorts the public, then scapegoats the insurance industry which is trying to reduce unfair costs while taking a slice of the parasite pie. The gullible public eats the slop right up, blaming insurance companies, never batting an eye at the exploitation of the public by doctors.




  • If you give your ID to a 3rd party company in the US, it’s impossible to know if they will delete you ID or whether you’ll be added secretly to a facial recognition system.

    The US is allowed to issue secret orders to companies demanding they do things in the interest of “security.” They can also issue gag orders forcing companies to not talk about the secret orders. Therefore, any US company may be secretly forced to violate it’s supposed terms. A company that collects biometric information seems like it would be especially likely to be targeted.

    Facebook, Instagram, and other social media such as Linked In are likely the largest source of law enforcement information being fed to facial recognition systems. Given the dystopian “ideals” of some politicians, I consider it a risk and wouldn’t do it. Your country may not be sharing that information with the US already.

    Additionally, some of these companies have become the main way people get employed, rent things, or buy things. Because these companies serve a public function but are officially private, they can de-platform people for any reason, with no meaningful appeal, creating havoc and misery for an affected person. If you have been flagged to be banned, by giving them your ID, you will let them ban you based on a government document forever. Their system may have flagged you for verification, but it could have also flagged you to be banned forever based on TOS violations.

    If you abandon your account, you can always create a new account, then later claim a hacker got you or your forgot your email password. If you provide an ID, you may be linking a government record to biometric information to something they can ban.

    A company may also be claiming that they get rid of an ID but still keep a hash of some combination of biometric information.

    In theory, anyone in Facebook in California should be able to submit a CCPA request to delete all information, including ban information, and then go on Facebook again, even after a lifetime ban. Anyone in the EU should be able to do this too through GDPR. But this doesn’t happen, because Facebook lies and is also just a rebranding of Lifelog.


  • I would say this would make the DSM of mental illnesses arbitrary, but the DSM also contains at least 1 mental illness based on a Greek mythological character.

    Much of the mental health industry is an intersection of religion, new age mumbo gumbo, a dash of science, capitalism, and what society finds socially acceptable. It was only in recent decades that homosexuality and female hysteria (which required clitoral stimulation as the cure) were removed from the hocus pocus DSM, which pretends to have scientific rigor and never has and likely never will.






  • Your logic (“I can’t believe it so it’s likely untrue”) is flawed. “I can’t believe the world is round so Occam’s razor it must be flat because that I can understand.”

    Putin is very smart and the KGB were smart and they bested US intelligence, according to the now deleted article, not in those exact words. Why is that so implausible?

    There could just as easily be other bought or compromised US officials, not just Trump. The thinking “but this couldn’t really happen, it’s too sneaky and complicated!” is a pretty naive counterpoint.



  • The idea that intelligence has no impact on computer skills and the ability to quickly learn computer skills is magical thinking. Intelligence differences are real and the solution is to make easy explanation to help people learn. I am not among the most intelligent people on Lemmy, the intelligence of the average Lemmy person probably at least an IQ above 115. It’s not about elitism, it’s about accessibility. I have terrible coordination. If someone tries to teach me advanced tennis, it would be bad, but if someone recognizes my coordination limits and is like, the goal is to just hit the ball once, then perhaps I have fun with tennis.



  • New users get overwhelmed with decision fatigue, especially when they have average intelligence.

    When selecting a federation, new users should be told:

    “Because Lemmy isn’t run by a large corporation, lots of small volunteers run Lemmy and run different copies of Lemmy at the same time. These different copies are called instances. You can choose 1 or just click the large red button and we’ll randomly select one of the most popular instances for you. If you aren’t sure what to choose, just press the button!”


  • I remember being curious about the fediverse and when I first looked and saw “instances” I got decision fatigue.

    I didn’t know if an instance would limit me from interacting with others, could randomly disappear (ie hexbear domain), or if some instances would be a bad fit. I also didn’t know of it was unchangeable. Decision fatigue set in and I was less excited, but still registered.

    To overcome that, there should be a “randomly choose for me” button with notes next to it that say you can change later, it won’t impact things, and you can interact with any instance. For random selection, just make it the top 3 most popular instances. Use a fun icon to indicate random change so the on boarding user has to think less.

    Instances seem very confusing to an average user, as does federation. There could be an explanation like "Instead of 1 big company controlling everything, there are many copies of Lemmy that are in different places run by volunteers. These “instances” or copies are all Lemmy and can interact with each other, but having many copies means there isn’t ever 1 big company who can set all the rules and suddenly change thing in a bad way. " and then the random selection button which almost everyone would choose.

    The average user dosn’t want to RTFM and also has an IQ of around 100 which is really low. The average reading ability of someone in the USA is like 6th grade level or something atrocious. You can’t overestimate average intelligence in an in boarding process.



  • He may have made a calculation about this not based on money and can’t disclose it without altering the calculation.

    Example:

    Scenario 1: Tell Trump to fuck off for treatment of transgender people. Result: Trump using monopoly power to break up Facebook, truth social increases in power, no way to monitor hate groups effectively

    Scenario 2: Pretend to agree with Trump and move hard right, monitor hate groups, come back slowly center in subtle ways, no rise in Truth Social users, ability to shape acceptance over time

    Even with fuck you money, saying fuck you makes scenario 2 possible. Say what you want avout Zuckerberg, but he’s no idiot. If I as an indifferent person can do a simple decision tree example in 3 seconds in my head, imagine how much he analyzed such a big decision.

    My point is Facebook sucks because they make it almost impossible for users to use Facebook without submitting to surveillance capitalism and ban people without giving them recourse in a mean shitty way. He must be aware of that and for allowing that, he sucks. And as a US company that is likely in bed with surveillance capitalism and the intelligence community, their “private” ways of verifying individuals is unlikely to be private, and they offer no alternative. So he sucks for that, but I’m not sure he specifically sucks for this reason. He’s even heavily implying strategic thinking is requiring him to do things he otherwise wouldn’t and can’t discuss it without altering the outcome.

    Whether the end never justifies the means (same “we won’t vote for Kamala because of Gaza stance” mindset) is better ethically even if impractical is another debate.