#yonatan-zunger — Public Fediverse posts

@jerry This is the best treatment of this idea I've encountered; I have cited it countless times; probably worth a read. Yonatan Zunger #yonatanzunger describes "tolerance," but I suspect you could replace it with "kindness" with the same message.

"[Tolerance] is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact."

https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376

The Paradox of Tolerance vis à vis freedom of expression

Just as we can’t effectively fight intolerance with tolerance, we can’t effectively fight bad speech with more speech.

#FreeSpeech #KarlPopper #KenWhite #ParadoxOfIntolerance #Popehat #Substack #YonatanZunger

https://blog.kamens.us/2023/12/21/the-paradox-of-tolerance-vis-a-vis-freedom-of-expression/

(I thought that the original was lost, it actually is archived.)

From my Dreddit comments:

So, we get communications, class, wealth, status, and complexity of thought, in one package.

I'd run across an item at Nautilus (fantastic online source, by the way, and they're actively soliciting support currently), "How Your Brain Decides Without You":

The structure of the brain [Lisa Feldman Barrett] notes, is such that there are many more intrinsic connections between neurons than there are connections that bring sensory information from the world. From that incomplete picture, she says, the brain is “filling in the details, making sense out of ambiguous sensory input.” The brain, she says, is an “inference generating organ.” She describes an increasingly well-supported working hypothesis called predictive coding, according to which perceptions are driven by your own brain and corrected by input from the world. There would otherwise simple be too much sensory input to take in. “It’s not efficient,” she says. “The brain has to find other ways to work.” So it constantly predicts. When “the sensory information that comes in does not match your prediction,” she says, “you either change your prediction—or you change the sensory information that you receive.”

http://nautil.us/issue/19/illusions/how-your-brain-decides-without-you

To which I observed on the Inevitability of the Eighth Hand, by the Emperor, that is, the decisionmaking centre of society:

Thus: the emperor must always have the eighth hand, and proper interpretation and framing of the Universe requires more processing power then sensing power, and/or the obligation to discard information which cannot be integrated into the receiving frame.

As I believe I'd commented on Yonatan's original thread, another consequence of this is that the Emperor can therefore always understand, and communicate, at a level greater than that of any other entity. That's both a blessing and a curse --- clearer vision, but also an inability to communicate that in its entirety to anyone else.

All of this is of course fiction-on-fiction. But it's a beautiful little allegory in my view.

@johnwehrle @woozle @CadeJohnson #YonatanZunger #EmperorsEightHand #StarWars #VaporatorDroids #Parable #Communications

When Owen asked C-3PO if he spoke the binary language of moisture vaporators, the proper answer for him to give (in binary) would have been "with neither too many hands nor too few," that being the idiom for speaking politely and properly. Moisture vaporators use their hands as communication ports, each finger transmitting or receiving a single channel, and touch hands to one another in order to speak; if you were to speak with more hands than the listener had available, they would miss part of what you were saying, and (especially if that were crucial metadata) they would not be able to understand you. Conversely, if you spoke with fewer hands than they listened with, your transmissions would be slow, stilted, taking far too much time. Speaking with the appropriate number of hands is a key aspect of their culture.

But as with many societies, etiquette conceals notions of class: the number of hands a moisture vaporator has is largely determined by wealth and their role. As a result, a common worker with only two or three hands will always seem slow-witted and foolish when trying to speak to a five-handed member of their bourgeoisie, and that burgher would in turn feel profoundly uncomfortable in "seven-handed society."

-- Yonatan Zunger @ G+ https://plus.google.com/103389452828130864950/posts/1spcaDjGZUE?hl=en (archived)

@johnwehrle @woozle @CadeJohnson

#YonatanZunger #EmperorsEightHand #StarWars #VaporatorDroids #Parable #Communications

I've just learned that Xoogler #YonatanZunger, chief architect of #GooglePlus and subsequently at both #Humu and #Birbsite, is now CTO and corporate vice president of identity and network access at Microsoft, as of this past December.

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/microsoft-recruits-top-twitter-google-engineer-for-security-role

He's apparently written of this at LinkedIn though ... reading that requires an account and signing in to the site, neither of which I have or wish to do:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yonatanzunger_im-pretty-stoked-to-share-that-im-starting-activity-7003093732430405632-wQHd

Edits: whi tesp ace

Forced revelation of information makes individual privilege more important (2014)

In practice, the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable. People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment.

-- Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google+

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27858439

#RealNames #anonymity #pseudonymity #identity #power #PowerRelationships #YonatanZunger #GooglePlus #DavidBrin #TransparentSociety

Tolerance is not a moral precept (2017)

Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.

https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376?gi=4c30ad1493c9

#tolerance #PeaceTreaty #NotASuicidePact #ParadoxOfTolerance #morality #ethics #values #YonatanZunger

@craigmaloney
and it was good seeing some of them, most notably its chief architect #YonatanZunger, eat their own dog food and actually use the product extensively.
@thegibson

@dredmorbius I haven't watched it yet myself, but I thought you might like to know that #YonatanZunger recently posted a new video about #Privacy: https://youtu.be/9HQBCEW9odU

Welcome to #Norway

A #dailyPhoto taken recently during a trip to #Saltdal, #Nordland, here in Norway. A #farm house painted with the typical Norwegian red paint can be seen in the background: https://mastodon.social/media/2CwhpxX5Hrk0rP0Aoa4

If you want to learn a bit more about why the #paint so often is red, you might like this article former #GooglePlus chief architect #YonatanZunger once wrote about that: https://web.archive.org/web/20180116213841/https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/EfmdR6VWvRM

#landscapePhotography #ruralPhotography #landscapes