>The whole business of linking truth or lack therefore with political ideology in the first place rather than it existing exclusively as an independent entity is fatally flawed.

And this is a fatally flawed understanding of what "reality has a liberal bias" means. While a tongue-in-cheek statement, it's a recognition that if you go over major societal issues and stack up all the scientific, economic, and historical data about each one, they tend to align with what we currently call liberal values. And the main tool conservatives use to refute most of this is evidence-free claims of "bias".

What's old and tired is your "both sides" enlightened centrism.

Do you mind sharing what those useful things are? If one likes collecting digital claims to virtual goods, good on them or whatever. But I get my news from a variety of sources and I've yet to see anything that isn't either a scam, hypothetical promises, or pure financial speculation.

>Rouch insisted that the sheer number of crypto ads in the Super Bowl was "yet another signal that crypto is bursting into the mainstream, and at the center of the cultural zeitgeist."

You mean unlike the dotcom bubble? And the Beanie Babies bubble? And every other bubble where millions got hyped on imaginary value just because everybody else is doing it?

Yeah, totally different this time.

Right but it could be that the CCP is just "cleaning house", so to speak. They might want Evergrande and crappy companies to fail now rather than keep inflating the balloon and then they will try to shore up the damage with some central banking policy voodoo I don't really understand. My understanding is the CCP takes the long view and they DO want stability, but they want long-term stability/dominance, not just a short-term appearance of stability.

You misunderstand and are presenting a false choice - it's not all or nothing and has nothing to do with religion. The bottom line is we need heuristics that make the most reliable decisions given the available information. That ONLY rational heuristic for laypeople is "what do the majority of actual experts think right now"? That says NOTHING about infallibility or that what experts think won't change in the future - that's not a flaw, that's just how science works. But any other heuristic is pure hubris for laypeople - they (myself included) literally don't have the knowledge or tools to evaluate anything else. It's when they think they DO that they become vulnerable to misinformation and spread bullshit.

To be clear, trusting experts is itself NOT binary - there are things for which the science is just about AS settled as possible, such as evolution and vaccines. Then there are things where lots of experts (/global health authorities) think meaningfully different things and there's more leeway for personal judgment, just because the answer is very much not clear to anybody. I had this same debate at the height of the mask debates early on in the pandemic - I know somebody who was insisting people NOT where masks simply because the CDC said not to at the time. But he was ignoring that plenty of health authorities in Asian countries WERE advocating masks. The expert/global health opinion was unclear and he was making the mistake of trusting just a specific, single one.

I can understand your frustration at people thinking scientific knowledge is complete or insulting you for calling out where it's incomplete. But that doesn't change the core issue that, even though it's guaranteed to be wrong some percentage of the time, the best *bet* we have at any given moment is to act in accordance with the opinion of the majority of experts. People want certainty that just doesn't exist and we have to figure out how to make the best decisions available, knowing that they'll be wrong some percentage of the time.

That's such a bad argument. This isn't a matter of political opinion - it's a matter of scientific knowledge. You don't have to believe the corporation because you can crosscheck their policies with actual public health authorities, who are making decisions according to the best science we have. Scientific knowledge is hardly infallible but the ONLY rational choice laypeople have, *by the very definition of layperson*, is to follow the advice of the actual health authorities.

>The operators of YouTube have just pronounced themselves the proper authority on truth.

Ugh, this is so misleading. If you actually read the policy update blog, they've spent a lot of time working with actual public health authorities to craft this policy. They aren't making things up according to their whims - they're following the best science we have to date. That's literally the best possible authority and the ONLY one you (or they) should trust.

Issues of science are never solved by public debate or unfettered speech - they're solved by doing more science. If these wackos had any integrity or interest in real truth, they would be doing real scientific research instead of publishing sensationalist non$en$e to scare laypeople. Good riddance.

>"..it must be because they're too dumb to understand my words."

The piece is about direct evidence that the *general public* has trouble understanding specific words:

>For example, participants in the study mixed up the word "mitigation," which commonly refers to efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the word "mediation," which is a way to resolve disputes. And even simple terms such as "carbon" can be misleading, the study found.

This isn't some theory made up to insult a demographic; it's just the result of the study. And it's totally apolitical; in fact, here's a quote from the study itself that specifically went out of its way to NOT make a claim about political beliefs:

>Another limitation is that our qualitative interview study did not provide the sample sizes needed to test for significant differences between participants with varying views about climate change.

The gnashing of teeth is about claiming fraud and undermining the legitimacy of the incoming president without presenting evidence; this is obvious to anybody who's not an idiot or not arguing in bad faith.

And how did you feel about LOST? This is how I'll know the compatibility of our opinions.

I'm not sure why you're phrasing this in terms of rights. Facebook doesn't have a "right" to track you, but it is part of their business model and user agreement. You agree to be tracked when you use their service. By extension, you don't have a "right" not to be tracked.

Dude, the issues here aside, I'm *asking* you to correct my perspective and you're still an asshole to me. That doesn't convey care for your neighbor or the best for your countryman. If your words generally fall on deaf ears, maybe it's because your wrap them in insults and condescension.

I get the feeling that I've pissed you off. I'm sorry if I'm done something wrong; I'm honestly just trying to understand why everybody's so angry.

-wall street does *not* exist for the purposes of making money for those who play there

But that's a side effect of any sufficiently-liquid market, isn't it? The *purpose* of the market seems not too relevant to me; you can't realistically expect to control everybody's motivations for participating in the market.

Going another step, why shouldn't "arbitrage" (quotes for the pedantic) be a part of the market? This is a real question; I'm not trying to push a philosophy here. What's so bad about that? Either you want to participate in that kind of market and you do. Or you dislike what it does to the market and you opt out. Who's the victim here?

Maybe the real issue that has people so worked up is that we've put our financial security into the hands of greedy people who make high-risk bets with our money. Well... maybe we shouldn't do that if we don't like it? Maybe those who are comfortable with that can participate in the market and those who aren't should skip it?

It's not that I'm arguing that the market *should* be the way it is, because I don't really know. I just really don't understand the vitriol. I look at HFT and think "they're making a ton of money playing within the rules... um, ok; why is that bad for me?". Really, if it's bad for me and I don't get it, please explain it to me, because I'd like to understand what I'm missing.

I don't particularly *like* HFT but I have a lot of trouble understanding the hate. It's not Wall Street's job to make the world a "better place." It's a *market*. That's it. Trading stocks is speculation, no matter how long you hold the stock.

If you place your entire financial future in the hands of trading algorithms, you live or die by them, regardless of how fast they execute. If you deploy a poor algorithm and your business goes bankrupt... oh well, guess you took a huge risk, didn't have appropriate failsafes in place, and now you're out of business. Why is this a tragedy for everybody else?

If you're curious, you can actually read the Valve Employee Handbook at their site:

http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf

From the handbook and other things I've read, I think nobody at Valve is told what to work on... period. They work on whatever they want / think will be valuable. Valve sets the hiring bar so high that this hasn't been a problem. And, even if it was, they do periodic peer reviews that would expose the truly weak links.

It's a really, *really* interesting model. Valve, having had the huge success that is Steam, is in the relatively unique position of having loads of cash and operating in an open-ended market that rewards creativity. I sometimes wonder if it could work in more traditional companies / businesses. I imagine it could work at some place like Microsoft or Goole that's flush with cash (if they weren't public companies, that is). I doubt it would work well at a smaller company whose life depends on executing well on a very narrow strategy.