I never had a single assignment in college where the only point was to write pages.

I feel the same way. This style of thinking can have pretty serious consequences for decision makers.

But, on the other hand, all my bosses think in bullet points, and I am usually the one that writes the bullets. . .

CEOs think in bullet points. LLMs can spit out bulleted lists of confident-sounding utterances with ease.

It is not too surprising that people who see the world through overly simplified disconnected summaries are impressed by LLMs

I saw someone do this in teaching program evaluation materials once. Except the teacher did it with the word brown and stretched it into three syllables.

Br 👏 ow 👏 uh 👏 n.

I remember thinking to myself “America is doomed.” Sometimes I still think about that teacher when I see people get tilted over dumb, made-up shit on social media and turn into reactionary morons around election time. Br 👏 ow 👏 uh 👏 n. America is doomed.

The average of all the serious guesses in this thread.

This has largely been my experience as well. I work as a statistician and it seems like the folks who arrived at data science through a CS background are less equipped to think through data analysis. Though I suppose to be fair, their coding skills are better than mine. But if OP wants to do data journalism, of the sort Pro Publica is gearing up for, then a stats background would be better.

Probably statistics. A lot of journalists seem to struggle with stats so that could give you an advantage. You can pick up a lot of programming skills in a stats program. You can even lean into statistical programming if you want. I think you’d have to seek out the more advanced programming side of a statistical degree but it is there and I think stats is harder to learn than the coding skills you need for data science.

They are hard to read because they are written to explain concepts to people who already understand them. Handy if you just need them for reference. Useless if you are trying to learn. Which is why RTFM is often bad advice

Prenda law. A legal outfit that would seed porn and then sue downloaders for copyright violations. The idea being that people would settle to avoid being publicly humiliated by their porn viewing habits.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law

I think when most people say something like “technology is making the world worse” they mean the technology as it actually exists and as it is actually developing, not the abstract sense of possible futures that technology could feasibly deliver.

That is clearly what the author of the piece meant.

If the main focus of people who develop most technology is getting people more addicted to their devices so they are easier to exploit then technology sucks. If the main focus is to generate immoral levels of waste to scam venture capitalists and idiots on the internet then technology sucks. If the main focus is to use technology to monetize every aspect of someone’s existence, then I think it is fair to say that technology, at this point in history, sucks.

Saying “technology is neutral” is not super insightful if, in the present moment, the trend in technological development and its central applications are mostly evil.

Saying “technology is neutral” is worse than unhelpful if, in the present moment, the people who want to use technology to harm others are also using that cliche to justify their antisocial behavior.

I’m no economist, but this seems like a really bad idea.

Federal Agencies make their own rules. That is how the Federal government works. Congress makes a law, usually with enough ambiguity that the federal agency charged with enforcing the law has to make specific interpretations. They make those interpretations, usually under some process that requires public notice and comment, and that interpretation becomes the law in effect. That interpretation can be challenged through a lawsuit, at which point a Judge could overrule the interpretation establishing a new interpretation through judicial review. Until recently, the courts gave a lot of deference to the agency’s rule making process because rules are usually written by a combination of lawyers at the agency, and subject matter experts. So, for example if a new law regulating factory safety was passed, and the enforcement of the law was delegated to OSHA, then OSHA lawyers and subject matter experts (like doctors or engineers working for the agency) would make a rule and solicit public comment.

Nothing about this EO can, or pretends to. usurp the power of the judicial system. The AG can make any interpretation they like, it can still be challenged in a Court. And after the Chevron court case, these rulings are easier than ever to challenge.

This does not extend to the Judicial branch. It only applies to the Executive branch. You can read the EO yourself to see that fact.

This is bad because it is trying to exert control over independent agencies, and pretty stupid because there is something like 5000 final rules and proposed rules in the Federal Register last year, so if this were seriously implemented, the AG and POTUS would just sit in teams meetings for the rest of their terms while potential rules get discussed.

This is bad because it undermines the independence of federal agencies, it does not actually impact the Judicial system however.

1. You should generally be skeptical of news that comes by way of image macros. They often omit important information or distort facts.

2. You know you can read the decision judges issue, they are public records. In the case of high profile cases, they are often quite easy to obtain. Here is Chutkan’s decision about the TRO

3. Chutkan’s analysis seems reasonable to me. It seems like she applied the law correctly.

TROs are orders that can be issued prior to or during litigate to preserve the status quo. They are used to keep something irreversible and harmful from happening. They are not a final ruling, they are a stop gap to prevent harm. The T in TRO does not stand for Permanent. By their very nature, TROs can be issued without informing the opposing party to a case, and may not provide the opposing party a chance to respond to them before the order goes into effect. TROs not granted in the federal court system unless there are specific facts showing irreparable injure, loss or damage. In fact, Federal Courts treat them as extraordinary actions because they can be used to circumvent due process. In general, Federal courts issue preliminary injunctions, rather than TROs, to preserve the status quo. That is because preliminary injunctions provide opportunity for both parties of a dispute to argue for or against the injunction and are, unlike TROs- appealable. In effect, they give both parties the due process rights that are the backbone of the American justice system.

In this particular case a group of 14 US states are challenging Musk and his fake department, arguing that Musk’s position violates the appointment clause of the constitution, because he was not nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The plaintiffs wanted a TRO that would prevent Musk from doing the following:

(a) Accessing or continuing to access any data systems and the information and code contained within those systems, including but not limited to systems containing sensitive or confidential agency and personnel data, at the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Commerce, or any components of any of those agencies, or copying, transferring, or in any way disseminating any data from any of the agencies identified in this paragraph; and

(b) Terminating, furloughing, or otherwise placing on involuntary leave—whether paid or unpaid—any officers or employees of the federal government working within any of the Departments and agencies identified in paragraph (a), other than officers or employees of the Defendant entities, or directing any federal department or agency, not including the Defendant entities, to take the prohibited actions described in this paragraph

To grant a TRO, plaintiffs would need to show immediate irreparable injury, that is, they would have to show how in the absence of the TRO they would suffer harms that the court would be unable to correct if they won their case. Critically, the standard for a TRO is that the party must show evidence of actual irreparable injury, not simply the possibility of harm. Here is Chutkan quoting the legal standard:

To show irreparable harm, the “injury alleged must be ‘both certain and great, actual and not theoretical, beyond remediation, and of such imminence that there is a clear and present need for equitable relief.’” Church v. Biden, 573 F. Supp. 3d 118, 138 (D.D.C. 2021) (quoting Mexichem Specialty Resins, Inc. v. EPA, 787 F.3d 544, 555 (D.C. Cir. 2015)). The “‘possibility of irreparable harm’ is not enough.” Id.

Chutkan ruled that, the plaintiffs in the case failed to show immediate irreparable injury, noting that most of their attestations of harm were hypothetical:

Plaintiffs’ declarations are replete with attestations that if Musk and DOGE Defendants cancel, pause, or significantly reduce federal funding or eliminate federal-state contracts, Plaintiff States will suffer extreme financial and programmatic harm

[. . .]

The court is aware that DOGE’s unpredictable actions have resulted in considerable uncertainty and confusion for Plaintiffs and many of their agencies and residents. See, e.g., Decl. of Ben Henderson ¶ 11, ECF No. 6-7; Decl. of Kimberly Bush-Koleszar ¶¶ 4-6, ECF No. 6-9. But the “possibility” that Defendants may take actions that irreparably harm Plaintiffs “is not enough.” See Church, 573 F. Supp. 3d at 138 (citation omitted); Beattie, 663 F. Supp. 2d at 9 (“[F]eared possibilities fall short of the imminent threat of injury required to grant a TRO.”). It remains “uncertain” when and how the catalog of state programs that Plaintiffs identify will suffer.

Chutkan goes on to point out that the plaintiff’s case is actually quite strong, perhaps signalling that a temporary injunction is in the near future, it is just that the did not meet the standards for a TRO:

That said, Plaintiffs raise a colorable Appointments Clause claim with serious implications. Musk has not been nominated by the President nor confirmed by the U.S. Senate, as constitutionally required for officers who exercise “significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States.” [. . .] Bypassing this “significant structural safeguard of the constitutional scheme” [. . .] Musk has rapidly taken steps to fundamentally reshape the Executive Branch [. . .] Even Defendants concede there is no apparent “source of legal authority granting [DOGE] the power” to take some of the actions challenged here. [. . .] Accepting Plaintiffs’ allegations as true, Defendants’ actions are thus precisely the “Executive abuses” that the Appointments [. . .] But even a strong merits argument cannot secure a temporary restraining order at this juncture.

This seems like the correct decision to me given the plaintiff’s argument.

Really, what you are asking about is called metamemory. Knowing the jargon in the domain might help you find more useful information. Neuroscientists have examined how the brain monitors and corrects error. For example, here is a paper that examines what regions of the brain appear to be responsible for error correction in a semantic recall task. In some sense, you are right, there are multiple parts of the brain working on recall and error correction at once, but you should really think of the brain as a larger system whose components work together in the same way the fuel injectors and pistons of an engine are part of a larger whole.

I wish they’d offer an llm free version with no cap on searches. Their products are too expensive and it feels like it is mostly to pay for the llms. I can’t justify paying that much for a product I am never going to use.

Not a youtube channel, but there is a podcast called serious trouble that covers legal events and provides a sober, detailed analysis of the law that is relevant to the cases they cover. They mostly focus on legal cases surrounding politics, but are also following the Drake/Lamar defamation case. I like it because a lot of the coverage of Trump’s legal troubles is characterized by hand wringing or wild speculation and serious trouble stays focused more on the facts and likely outcomes of cases.

Political hobbyists are people who consume political content, but don’t do anything substantive with it. There probably are MAGA types who are political hobbyists, but the movement in general is extremely politically active, organized, motivated, and effective across all levels of public life. They influence conservative politics through those organizational efforts. The MAGA movement came to power by leveraging networks of activists and voters to build political infrastructure that could be used to drive voters to the polls, fund candidates, coordinate campaigns and set the scope of policy, which they do very effectively. If you want to be effective you should be building political networks too.

Also, this is an aside, but political messaging is way less effective at persuasion than your comments here suggest. In practice this type of messaging tends to only reach people who already agree with it, and the persuasive effects of media on political attitudes have very weak effects that are attenuated quickly (Look up something called the hypodermic model of mass communication if you want to know more). Benkler, Faris, and Robberts offer really good illustrations of this in practice. By analyzing the spread of political messaging in news and social media networks, they show that most of the misinformation, lies, and propaganda that circulate through conservative media spaces do so because conservative media consumers want that content and punish outlets that criticize it. Creating ‘counter messaging’ is unlikely to be effective because conservatives would just reject the messaging.

I am writing this with the assumption that you are tacitly asking about US politics because of the moment in history. What I have to say will make people mad, but here goes:

A lot of the people on this webzone are what Eitan Hersh called “political hobbyists”. These are people who do not really take political action in their daily life despite voting or occasionally attending a rally. They may be well informed about politics, but being well-informed in itself is not really effective at changing politics. You can get on your phone and “rub the glass” to complain about politics, or to find people who agree with you. But outrage on social media won’t change anything, and if rubbing the glass and occasionally voting is all you do, then you are a political hobbyist.

Political hobbyism mostly functions as a consumerist approach to political engagement. A political hobbyist will passively receive news and information about politics, but will never really try to change anything, because to them engaging in a news feed is all they really do. That consumerism is painfully apparent here when, for example, posters denounce a Democratic candidate as being “not exciting” or someone they are “not passionate about” as if the candidate was the newest model in a brand of laptops that failed to zazzle in Q3. We see signs of political hobbyism again when political parties are treated as entities that are somehow completely separate from the public. For example when a lemmy user denounces the Democratic party for not doing what they want. “The Democrats need to do X!” Why are you complaining about that on the internet? You know the DNC isn’t reading these threads right?

If you really wanted to influence the Democratic party (which I think is the best bet for resisting fascism right now) why aren’t you lobbying the party? Why aren’t you mobilizing voter bases? Why aren’t you building political power in your local community so you can influence larger political organizations? Because its hard, because you don’t know where to start, because you are busy? Ok, but fascism is coming, and you are too busy to do anything about it. Or too overwhelmed to even try?

The truth is, if you wanted your ideas (and I am including here opposition to fascism as an idea) to influence policy, or what candidates gain traction in nomination races, then you should have been working on that LOOOOONNNNNG before the national candidate was nominated. Treating the Democratic party as a vendor that offers political products is a losing strategy for gaining influence. There will be an endless parade of glass rubbers ready to denounce the various political parties, but by and large, they didn’t do anything to gain influence with those parties. Their denouncements are ignored, they are irrelevant. My advice is to ignore the glass-rubbers. Identify one or two local issues in your physical area and try to improve them. What you should do is find a little slice of America (or your own country if you are not American) and try to make it better. Use those efforts to build up influence at higher levels. My goal here was to convince you not to listen to the glass rubbers. But my advice for resisting fascism is: Try to build political networks, try to mobilize local voters in local issue elections. Doing this will make your network an invaluable asset to larger (state and national) organizations. If you have a network of voters, of issue conscious citizens, or donors, larger organizations are going to want to leverage that network when it comes time for lager races. That gives you leverage. That gives you power. The glass-rubbers are going to tell you that is impossible. Its not. People do it all the time. The book I cited has examples of people doing it. Fascist conservative groups do it all the time. So why not you?

I will admit, this is hard. When I first read Hersh’s book I was offended, because when he was describing political hobbyists, he was describing me. But it did give me some motivation to think about politics from the perspective of power. And set me down the road of trying to do all things I wrote about here. It is early days for me yet, and I have only seen limited success. My work complicates things. I am busy, and often overwhelmed. But fascism is coming.

Not the op, but an obvious example is that in any post covering current events, there are always half a dozen comments complaining about “late stage capitalism” or denouncing the elites. Those comments don’t really add anything to the discussion and kinda just reduce a thread to a boring whinge-fest.