I think you bring up interesting points, but in Neri Oxman’s case the answer seems to be that the science is essentially absent in its entirety. I won’t pretend to have a good answer to “what is art,” but the question “what is science” is much easier to answer. Her work may be art, but it utterly fails the test of science insofar as it doesn’t adhere to the scientific method. She’s a scientist in the same way that a color therapist is a medical doctor.
Better examples of the intersection of science and art might be found in the work of someone like Buckminster Fuller. The nature of science being what it is, the science probably has to come first, with the art emerging from it
Observation and exploration are part of science, but only when mated with the rest of the scientific method. On its own “observation and exploration” can be equally applied to playing in beach sand. If you’re not forming and testing hypotheses, analyzing data from experiment, and attempting to replicate results, you’re not engaged in science. You can’t pick one or two elements of the scientific method and call it science, anymore than you can claim that buying running shoes and standing at the start of a marathon is racing.
It's still an interesting problem of division. Let's say the end result (bees in space!) is not science. However, in the process of getting those bees to space, her lab invents a novel 3D printing method [1]. Science in service of art?
"Although some scientific research is applied research into specific problems, a great deal of our understanding comes from the curiosity-driven undertaking of basic research."
The funny thing is that people who feel like Brexit, Trump and so on are crazy would say yes, and people who think that Brexit and Trump are the best things to happen in long time will say yes for opposite reasons.
If you had a childhood full of physical abuse, and your right leg was frequently broken until it became malformed, then the solution might involve crutches. All of which is to say, just because the damage done is in the past, doesn’t mean that it can’t have lasting effects you can’t just wish away. The developing human brain, it has been shown time and again, undergoes permanent changes associated with abusive environments. Those are real, physical changes that may require interventions beyond talking or therapy. It’s not just learned insecurity, it’s the biochemical changes wrought by years of stress during a formative period.
The thing you're missing is that it is learned insecurity that is associated with the biochemical changes, and that by doing the work to unlearn the insecurity as the author did you can reverse the biochemical changes. You can't make the statement that the biochemical changes are the cause of the insecurity, only that they are associated with it. And that's very important, because an "if-then" statement does not imply the converse. That is, if you reverse the biochemical changes you do not necessarily make the learned insecurity go away.
A broken leg is way less complicated than the synapses that form your perception of yourself, and far better understood. You can't really conflate the two without committing a logical fallacy. Treating the broken leg and the brain changes as identical in complexity is akin to treating the construction of a rivet the same as the construction of a Boeing 737.
The fact is that you can change, and you can feel better, but you also have to put in the work to change yourself. It's the hardest thing you will ever do if you grew up in a dysfunctional family because it requires you to deny years of your experience in favor of the received wisdom of how the world really works, and not everyone can do this. But if you do the work the reward in the end is that you're not permanently crippled by addiction to psychiatric medication.
Some people can change to some degree, some can’t. Some people for example can recover from PTSD with time and talk therapy, and if you insist on others doing that they’ll end up killing themselves. Not taking medication is just as much of a fallacious “one-size-fits-all” solution as insisting that everyone take medication.
Parent was originally dismissing the complexity of the situation mentally and emotionally by insisting that there's just a simple biochemical thing that needs to be changed, like adding more gasoline or oil to a car engine to make it run longer. The reality is way more complex than that.
Change is really fucking hard and there's no silver bullet solution.
Sci-Hub is pretty amazing for any paper that has been out for as long as most sources on Wikipedia have been, so in truth you can almost always read them in full.
You should try with Library Genesis first. Both projects cooperate (so if LG doesn't have something, it gets added when downloaded from SH, and SH gives you a link from LG when it's already on their DB), but I find the LibGen search engine to be far more powerful, throwing me the article I need when SH can't.
Not that I read the article that was removed, but in this he said he wasn't even that critical himself, just pointing towards all the other critical articles and noting they need to fix whatever is causing them to be written.
This is the actual article: http://archive.is/aCge1 It's mostly fearmongering about 5G affecting people's health which doesn't even seem to be that founded in the one other article he linked to, which contained different fearmongering about the potential health effects of 5G.
Opting-in by default is refreshing to see, and offering to share some portion of the spoils more equitably is too. Still, I fundamentally dislike advertising and find that content supported by it is often grossly inferior to other content. I’m not convinced that the middle path here is the right one, rather than evangelizing ad-blocking and forcing the internet to adopt alternative revenue streams. Slapping an ICO on the problem is certainly a good way to get people invested in defending Brave, but I’m not convinced that it has any lasting value.
Cutting advertisers off at the knees does, and as a stance it isn’t subject to being degraded through its relationship to advertisers and their money.
If you dislike ads, then don't opt in. You are welcome to use baseline Brave and just block. But why comment as if you mean to tell others what to do?
If you think the web can do without $100B in US on digital this year, ~$250B globally that goes through ads, then please demonstrate replacement funding models, or just show some evidence of any that could scale that big.
We can't count ads out, but by lifting 3rd party to 1st ad context (avoids brand safety and reverse: bad ads on good content), aligning interests, and cutting out all the trackers and other intermediaries that evolved because browsers were passive slaves to the system, we hope to more than replace the value of our users to publishers that was "lost" via our users blocking by default.
I think the web as it exists today is bloated with “content” that could never survive without that money, and the loss of that “content” would be a gain for the web. I’m hard-presses to think of many worthwhile examples of ad-supported content; certainly HN here doesn’t take that path.
You could argue HN being an advertising platform for YC and certain YC posts being inserted early on like hiring posts are ads. So using HN isn’t a good example at all.
Absolutely. And the idea that he’s trying to convince us that as users we would like to support this “economy”, is preposterous. I want it to go away. If it needs ad revenue to exist, it’s very unlikely to be of value to me.
I’ll stick with Firefox, as Mozilla is the only organization users can truly trust today for their privacy
I am among the founders of Mozilla, and I'll speak only about what is public and happened or at least started while I was there:
1. We rejected 3rd party cookie blocking patches, three times. Safari has had a blocker from birth.
2. We got too dependent on Google revenue shares while Google turned from search (1st party ads) to full surveillance (1st and 3rd) superpower.
3. Tracking protection work that started while I was there was delayed for years, then allowed only in private tabs, then a pref was added. Now, after Safari and Brave have taken the lead, Mozilla is turning on tracking protection in some form by default (which is good).
The claim that Mozilla is the only organization users can truly trust for privacy is belied by these facts.
I tried my best to get the tracking protection patch shipped after you left. There were no realistic technical concerns with it. The entire engineering team wanted to enable it. The patch was ready for prime time. I was overruled for non-technical reasons. I left not too long after.
Second point: I don't have to convince anyone that ads are necessary to fund most of the visible web. They obviously are doing it, poorly, and if the hundreds of billions gross spend per annum globally (rising to a trillion in a few years) went away, many sites would shut down -- including newspapers and other homes for journalists.
You may not care; I care about some but not others so do not take this as me twisting your arm. But "I'm all right Jack" is a bad attitude in view of the fact that ad-funding is required for millions of sites today.
Second point: I don't have to convince anyone that ads are necessary to fund most of the visible web.
You’re selling an ICO based on that premise, I’d argue that yes you do very much need to convince at least some people of that. In addition I’d argue that you need to convince people (against the evidence of their own experience) that the majority of the “visible web” isn’t a dumpster fire that would be better off dead.
Our token sale is over, it ended in 24 seconds. I'm not selling anything, least of all to you who are free to use Brave as a baseline ad blocker. Publishers working with us call that "free-riding".
It's great you don't like most content. Who does? Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is shit) has not been repealed. But we do not all agree on which 90%, and even the top 10% by many measures needs ads. Why are you trying to make your animus against ads into a universal? Seems cultish.
I think given what the advertising industry has been for years, it’s arguable that attempts to sustain them are fairly evil. Being able to opt-in to it is still far less laudable than promoting ad-blocking (but of course that doesn’t allow for you to go ICO and rake it in). It’s not as bad as opt-out, but it’s still wretched, and no amount of “for the content creators” hand-wringing or tokenizing changes that. I do see how blending an ICO with this has the potential to make the people behind Brave richer regardless of long-term success or adherence to current ethics.
Nobody at Brave is getting richer right now, we are a startup. My salary walked back to late 1990s level. The tokens locked up for the team and advisors are nothing compared to years of RSUs at Google or FB.
Anyway, as the last sentence reminds, attacking us based on compensation shows a strange double standard. The huge super-surveillance companies pay people way more than we make, and they do it by raiding user privacy, page load time, radio and so battery life and data plan, and safety from malvertising.
We are out to transplant -- with user consent always, creator too if they are involved -- the necessary minimum viable ads components into a clean ecosystem, to capture some of the huge funding from ad spend ($100B in US on digital this year) and give 70% or 85% to user or user+creator. See other replies on how our ad model preserves privacy.
My Mozilla vow of poverty (look at form 990s to see what top person makes; hardly poverty but more than I ever made) is over. Anyway, the ad hominem with a double standard vs. the huge tracking-dependent businesses is a bad look. Change it.
Random Brave annoyance: when I look at the Mozilla form 990 in Brave, it prompts me to download the PDF. When I look at it in Chrome, in views it inline. I'm fairly certain Brave is capable of viewing PDFs inline; I could swear I've had some load. What gives?
Something throws off our Muon (fork of Electron) browser, but it isn't lack of content-type: or funky content-disposition: or whatever. Good news is it works the way you expect and the way it presents in Chrome (but still via PDF.js, we are not using the 0day factory known as pdfium that Chrome uses) in brave-core. Dev channel: https://brave.com/download-dev, beta channel: https://brave.com/download-beta.
It’s hard to take image advice from someone who seriously goes from accusations of personal attacks to “Change it” in the same sentence. I’ll file that next to taking conflict de-escalation tips from Linus Torvalds. More topically, I have no problem with you trying to strike it rich down the line, only with the thin veneer of altruism you seem driven to coat those motives with.
You picked up the ad hominem axe. Are you really upset with me for my imperative-mode verb use? Ok, don't do better, if that helps. (Reverse psychology :-P.)
The question you seem to be avoiding by tone-policing in wake of attacking my motives is whether ad spend can be replaced quickly enough to save the "good" content. Perhaps it is time to let the ad-funded world burn, and rebuild afterward. I'm not yet convinced, so excuse me for trying to reform ad-spend rather than just go for baseline blocking + optional voluntary anonymous token contributions, and no other option.
Did I really? Looking back over our brief exchange I’m not seeing it, you just seemed to use my supposed impropriety as a justification to turn this into a fight. It’s a pattern that seems to hold throughout comments on this thread when you’re questioned on the ethics or wisdom of BAT. A more cynical person would suspect that your position is sufficiently untenable that you’re employing a bit of the dead cat strategy.
Why is your only recourse, on the question of how to replace ad funding and keep even just the top 10% of the web alive, to attack our motives or ethics? Better to give a plausible version of how our rejecting ads, even skipping tokens for anonymous donations it seems, and just blocking to burn the ad-funded world down a little faster, leads to a better wider world later.
You seem to be conflating criticism of your actions with criticism of you personally. That’s not a game worth playing. As you said I’m questioning your motives in the context I already laid out, of existing solutions which are superior for the consumer. I’ll leave it to others who have already commented extensively to question the technical means.
It’s also worth pointing out that I’ve explained the core issue I have with your plan have nothing to do with your motives or ethics. I’m not sure how many times I need to repeat the idea that something like uBlock Origin is a superior performer, and “but the ad-supported content!” argument is unmoving for reasons I’ve already stated. It’s not that I’ve failed offered a broader perspective, it’s just that you’ve focused a lot on what you perceive as a personal attack, despite it being nothing of the sort.
"Nothing personal", you attacked the team, not just me. If you want to do that all day long, go for it.
But what I'm asking you to do, as a better course of action, or on top if you prefer, is say what "existing solutions" are superior and why they win. We started with baseline ad blocking and some of our users, who see the ecosystem problem of free-riding (which you still dismiss), asked us to build an option for giving back. So we prototyped with Bitcoin, and when that got expensive and cut off users who could not buy it, we created the Basic Attention Token instead.
Again if you dislike our ethics, no need to rehash. But I'm still interested in how you think pure blocking, AKA "free riding", will result in a superior outcome for anyone in the long run. Publisher revenues have been falling for years, decades if you look at newspapers. How do your top ten sites keep their lights on?
"Nothing personal", you attacked the team, not just me. If you want to do that all day long, go for it.
I’m done with attempts to frame yourself or your “team” as a wronged party.
But what I'm asking you to do, as a better course of action, or on top if you prefer, is say what "existing solutions" are superior and why they win. We started with baseline ad blocking and some of our users, who see the ecosystem problem of free-riding (which you still dismiss)
I don’t dismiss it, I encourage it. I’ve actively stated several times that it’s a model in need of a bullet in the neck. I’ve pointed out that much ad-supported content and “journalism” exists on a scale between useless and toxic. Moreover, the ad industry itself is inseparable from the industry of information brokering, creating demand for crap, and the subsequent environmental catastrophe of modern consumer culture. The death of it, and the noisy bollocks which exists to draw attention to it would be a good thing. Given their history they don’t deserve more chances, and it’s reasonable to suspect that even if they started off allowing for good intentions, over time the envelope would be pushed until we were back where we are now.
I understand that you disagree with what I’m saying on several levels, but the good news is that ad blocking is free and easy, not to mention popular compared to what you’re attempting.
asked us to build an option for giving back. So we prototyped with Bitcoin, and when that got expensive and cut off users who could not buy it, we created the Basic Attention Token instead.
Again if you dislike our ethics, no need to rehash. But I'm still interested in how you think pure blocking, AKA "free riding", will result in a superior outcome for anyone in the long run. Publisher revenues have been falling for years, decades if you look at newspapers. How do your top ten sites keep their lights on?
Less noise, more signal. Will “free riding” kill loads of clickbait, outrage factories, and “journalism” that is really a collection of affiliate links? Yes, and it’s a feature, not a bug. As a bonus it could even encourage a more functional and less societally destructive means of remuneration for content creators that isn’t mediated by profiteering sociopaths who call themselves advertisers.
Yes, just below is a comment where you said you "already explained that the majority of ad-supported content is hot garbage, more clutter than content." I won't quibble!
But in the interest of greater knowledge, I'll try one more time to get something less broad that addresses risk. Here is a top-by-revenue-and-subscriptions publisher trade group. They get 80% in aggregate of revenue from ads, are shifting away from ads, but cannot drop ads. Ideas other than high dose rad & chemotherapy (to use your "cancerous" trope) welcome.
How is offering a completely voluntary option to subject yourself to a more benign version of advertising than the standard, in order to fund the content you use, "wretched"?
“More benign” yet still cancerous, is the answer to your question. I’ve already explained that the majority of ad-supported content is hot garbage, more clutter than content. I’ve pointed out that the ad industry has decades of questionable-at-best track record, so “wretched” naturally follows. I’ll grant that it’s less wretched than the current state of advertising affairs, yet more wretched than currently available ad blockers.
> the majority of ad-supported content is hot garbage
I cannot argue with that, I very much agree. But plenty of people not only like consuming what I deem hot garbage, they're more than comfortable supporting it via ads; something I would never subject myself to if given a chance.
But I don't believe I should be able to dictate how other people experience their content or how they fund it, and there are still mountains of ad-supported content that is actually good and that would likely be non-viable on a patronage/subscription system due to things such as their target demographics.
So, Brave seems to tick our own boxes of "no ads" and provides the option for others to subject themselves to them. Unless we're arguing for going back to the old "pre-mainstream" Internet (to which I say, there are many places for that, and the Tor network is particularly fertile for fostering such a culture) then I say the Brave model improves the situation on every front.
When has DRM ever worked as more than a temporary measure? Also if car DRM is like games and software DRM, it will punish the honest user while not even remotely harming the thief!
ESR rethoric aside iPhones Activation Lock works pretty well and phones are hardly as regulated as cars. If you jailbreak your cars onboard computer it’s no longer road legal.
Better examples of the intersection of science and art might be found in the work of someone like Buckminster Fuller. The nature of science being what it is, the science probably has to come first, with the art emerging from it