As Parler disappears from the Android and Ios app stores and faces being kicked off of Amazon's (and other) clouds, people who worry about monopolized corporate control over speech are divided over What It Means.

1/

There's an obvious, trivial point to be made here: Twitter, Apple and Google are private companies. When they remove speech on the basis of its content, it's censorship, but it's not GOVERNMENT censorship. It doesn't violate the First Amendment.

2/

And yes, of course it's censorship. They have made a decision about the type and quality of speech they'll permit, and they enforce that decision using the economic, legal and technical tools at their disposal.

3/

If I invited you to my house for dinner and said, "Just so you know, no one is allowed to talk about racism at the table," it would be censorship. If I said "no one is allowed to say racist things at the table," it would also be censorship.

4/

I censor my daughter when I tell her not to swear. I censor other Twitter users when I hide their replies to my posts. I censor commenters on my blog when I delete their replies.

Dress is up as "content removal" or "moderation" if you'd like, but it's obviously censorship.

5/

Thread. Out of Twitmo, convenient was it not? That the week of 6 Jan 2020 this account was twitmo'd?
First I want to thank God for utilizing @joyinliberty to crowd source my historic adventure in the Communist District formerly known as Washington D.C.

The narratives coming out of the "Storm the Capital" march are wildly insane. On all sides
1. @GOP @GOPLeader @senatemajldr @SenateGOP @JohnCornyn showed their colors. They betrayed us, again, as expected. We see all of them now.

2. Media, of course taking the Chyna money, has been more than happy to gleefully spin their demons upon us. An early victory lap. I had my run ins with them. Running into one, I said to one of the guys, "Look at that face diaper on her face! Showing off to her CCP masters?"

She glared her hate at me, I gave her my winsome smile. *smile*

3. Democrats, libturds, and resisturds all lost their minds. Grabbing mics, phones, computers etc.. To virtue signal their fear and "outrage" its beautiful.

Narcissistic rage is one of the darkest and deadliest forces known to mankind. Before it erupts, it usually simmers and percolates for a long time, fueled by resentment, envy and entitlement, the latter always aggrieved as the narcissist's need for...

...adulation and glory is insatiable and he can see the world populated by the undeserving, inferior people who nevertheless dare to be happier and/or more successful than he is.

It thus creates enemies out of the innocent and often weak who become vessels for the narcissist’s hateful and envious projections.

These sustained projections form a basis of an attitude called the narcissism of minor differences, first described by Freud, where we exaggerate..

...small differences in people who are our neighbors (...) in order to feel superior to them and exclude them from our group. This attitude, like anything else based on fear and hatred, easily infects others, already narcissistically predisposed; and the sharing makes...

...the hateful projections grow and spread.

The co-existent phenomenon of collective narcissism, which intensifies the in-group ties (and which is unsurprisingly associated with authoritarianism) at the expense of excluding and demonizing those who do not belong to our group...

1/

Get a cup of coffee.

Let's talk about the Birthday Paradox.

This is a simple exercise in probability.

But from it, we can learn so much about life.

About strategic problem solving.

About non-linear thinking -- convexity, concavity, S curves, etc.

So let's dive in!

2/

Suppose we came across a "30 under 30" Forbes list.

The list features 30 highly accomplished people.

What are the chances that at least 2 of these 30 share the same birthday?

Same birthday means they were born on the same day (eg, Jan 5). But not necessarily the same year.

3/

What if it was a "40 under 40" list?

Or a "50 under 50" list?

Or in general: if we put M people on a list, what are the chances that *some* 2 of them will share the same birthday?

4/

Clearly, this is an exercise in probability.

To solve it, we'll assume 3 things:

1. No Feb 29 birthdays,

2. Each person on our list is *equally likely* to be born on any one of the other 365 days (Jan 1 to Dec 31), and

3. The birthdays are all independent of each other.

5/

Another way to state the problem:

We have M people, and a 365-sided fair die.

Each person is allowed to roll the die once -- and is thereby assigned a number between 1 and 365 (both inclusive).

What are the chances that *some* 2 people will get assigned the same number?

The health-wealth tradeoff of lockdowns is still hotly debated. Here are some thoughts that may help untangle the issues. 1/17 #EconTwitter #EpiTwitter
Figure courtesy of @luismbcabral

Let's start with concept of tradeoffs. With aggregate societal wealth and health on the axes, we can show all combinations that we can achieve though different policies. All points in purple region are feasible, those outside it are not. Which point should we choose? 2/17

Since society values both health and wealth, from any starting point, we want to move in North-East direction. When making a move, we say that there is a tradeoff if gaining more health necessarily means giving up some wealth. 3/17

It can never be optimal to stay at an interior point like E, because we can get both more wealth AND more health by moving to points like G or F on the frontier. So at an interior point like E, there may be no tradeoffs at all. We can find policies to improve BOTH. 4/17

At extremes with 100% or 0% lockdown (like points A and C or nearby points), we're on frontier but again may be able to get both richer and healthier. But in intermediate cases, like G and F, there is necessarily a tradeoff. 5/17

Bear with me here for a moment.

There are acceptable "censorships" and censorships which you should stand up against - because sooner or later the latter will bite you in the ass too.

So, on the top of the acceptable so called "censorship" - it's basically platforms and media moderating content published there. It is better when they have their own criteria, more conservative than the legal framework, in order to keep content in line with their goals/agendas.

Under this fall, e. g., news portals moderating comments under their articles and hand-picking their staff and guest authors who are being published on it.

It also applies to fringe portals; Breitbart has a full authority to censor me if I go nuts and decide to comment there.

I will mention here free market for the first time. Free market provides and private media (unlike one owned by the state) are not expected to be unbiased. There are obviously issues with that too, but it's less of a problem than not having them like that.

So, you get it. You run a platform where you publish your content and you want to try and benefit from your consumers' engagement. Please, by all means, do moderate it. I don't care where you are on the political or social spectrum - moderate the hell out of it.

To add to the excitement of your Saturday evening, the focal S:N501 build is now updated with data from 8th Jan, including 48 new seqs in 501Y.V1 (B.1.1.7 #b117) & 501Y.V2.

1/12

https://t.co/AbdhO1rqpw

There are 46 new non-UK sequences in 501Y.V1, from the Netherlands, Italy, Israel, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the USA, and Luxembourg.
And 2 new non-South African sequences in 501Y.V2, from Australia for the first time.

2/12

In 501Y.V1:

Ireland has 4 new sequences (orange). 2 sit separately but are identical, indicating an additional introduction. 2 link to a previous sequence (green), 1 mutation away each. This could indicate location transmission, unsampled diversity, or a common exposure.

3/12

The Netherlands has 10 new seqs (orange). Many sit apart on the tree, indicating additional introductions. 3 cluster together separated by a few mutations. 2 are identical to an older seq. 1 falls in a cluster of older seqs. Some of these could indicate local transmission.

4/12

Israel has 22 new sequences (orange). 1 links to an older sequence, but is separated by 3 mutations, so may be separate introductions. Another is identical to an older sequence. But most new sequences cluster together (blue), clearly indicating local transmission.

5/12

1. I've had second thoughts about the value of the extensive weasel words the @adndotcom published from the lips of @SenDanSullivan the other day. Thanks to @AK_OK for offering this profile in evasion. I've added annotation.
#aksen

2. Sullivan covers for Trump, the inciter-in-chief with a deflection, never admitting that Trump lit the fuse. "I think had the president accepted the election results earlier and repudiated the mob violence earlier and more forcefully, it could have had an impact yesterday.”

3. As late as Monday Jan. 4, Sullivan's office refused comment on the GOP coup proposed by members of Congress. On Jan. 7, Sullivan said he had "decided a number of days ago" to oppose the coup. So he stayed silent in the corner, avoiding triggering Trump or Trump voters.

4. Embarrassed by the rioters, Trump defenders like Sarah Palin started the lie—rejected by the FBI—that the terrorists were Antifa. Sullivan won't call it a lie.

5. Sullivan and other Republicans refused to denounce the torrent of lies from Trump about the election, setting the stage for the GOP terrorists. Sullivan still excuses himself and refuses to call out Trump's lies, knowing that Trump is popular with Sullivan voters.

Starting to collect important questions for 2021 and beyond in this thread.

Please send questions you are interested in too!

1. Will demand for compute continue to double every few months? Tons of implications for semiconductor design and manufacture.

2. What will be the next major use of mRNA vaccines? What will our new understanding of protein folding lead to?

3. How will better data and workflows improve our health care system (prediction, prevention, price of care, outcomes, compliance)?

4. Will we fully unbundle undergrad and graduate school into the information/learning component (which should be a fraction the cost for multiples the quality) and the networking component?

5. Digital art creation and collection make sense to me, but how will digital art be displayed?

The faces of the insurrectionist, anti-American mob that attacked the country have inspired me to re-read George Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier".

One of his lesser known, but IMHO best books. Thread.

First, so many right wing extremists tweeting Orwell quotes right now, as if he would have supported an attack on democracy. Read his work. Here's what HE believed, in his own words:

Orwell was a socialist. In fact, he was fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War when the book was published in 1937. He took a bullet in the

I'm re-reading the book because of what Orwell writes about class.

Buying plane tickets, purchasing weapons of war and body armor, taking time off from work, that takes time and money.

This is why Orwell is so interesting. Who are the people most prone to fascism?

It is possible to believe that Twitter and Facebook did the right thing to block Trump, and that, having done so, it lays bear a real problem for American democracy. The Biden Administration and the incoming Congress need urgently to address the power of online social media.

/1

First, Twitter’s cancellation of Trump is NOT a First Amendment violation. Twitter has a right to moderate the speech distributed on its network, and a responsibility to take the public interest into account.

/2

Moreover, Trump has not been deprived of the ability to speak. He has merely been deprived of the ability to speak on Twitter and Facebook. I am not overly troubled by the ability of private corporations to decide how consumers use those corporations’ resources.

/3

I am, however, troubled by the fact that depriving someone of access to Facebook and Twitter has an effect roughly equal to government censorship. It has that effect because we have allowed these two networks to become public goods, rather than merely private interests.

/4

In other words, the impact of Facebook and Twitter is not limited to the private benefit enjoyed by their users, employees and shareholders. As we have seen, these and other networks can unintentionally become a powerful force for liberation - or for fascism.

/5

Am I concerned about Twitter banning the President? No, because I've been online since I was 17 years old. Any venue too haphazardly moderated—either too strictly or too loosely—grows unstable and collapses.

So what if Twitter is Too Big. So was MySpace, Livejournal, Usenet...

Did Twitter make a mistake? I don't think so. Its primary concern is that its HQ is here in the US and frankly the Reps are more likely to drop the hammer on social media than the Dems, especially if the Reps can ignore election results.

The irony is that the recent conservative rage over Section 230 is so misplaced. If you want to turn social media into publishers responsible for the user-base's content, you're going to have giant swaths of users banned to avoid lawsuits.

Every town and city newspaper gets letters from their subscribers reading, "Jesus told me in a dream that we should go down to City Hall and string up the mayor! This Monday, at 3pm...."

They don't publish them. Think for two seconds as to why.

Same with printing. Years ago I edited the book SAVING PRIVATE POWER by Mickey Z which included images of a Nazi swastika. Printer wouldn't run the plate, and yes it was an anti-Nazi book.

Didn't want to have a worker traumatized by seeing 10000 swastikas go by.

1. I think that the ban of Donald Trump on Twitter is an unacceptable act of censorship (THREAD)

2. Of course, during his time in the office, Trump has been writing and saying very irresponsible things. And paid for it by not getting re-elected for a second term.

3. The election is a straightforward and competitive process. You can participate in it, you can appeal against the results, they're being monitored by millions of people. The ban on Twitter is a decision of people we don't know in accordance with a procedure we don't know.

4. In my opinion, the decision to ban Trump was based on emotions and personal political preferences.

5. Don't tell me he was banned for violating Twitter rules. I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn't ban anyone (not that I ask for it).

An important part of growing as a researcher is developing research taste. But it can be hard to explicitly work on. So I wanted to share some concrete exercises for developing research taste.

(Take my advice with a grain of salt! Note version: https://t.co/2BhyxOKy3q )

Exercise 1: Write down a list of research ideas. Have a mentor you respect rate each idea 1-10. Discuss ideas where you disagree with them after reflection.

It often takes several months of work to truly test an idea. Asking a mentor is a cheap proxy.

Exercise 2: Pay attention when other people try ideas you’ve had. How did the results compare with your expectations?

If you’re investing in brainstorming, you’ll have tens or hundreds of research ideas for each one you try. It can be emotionally uncomfortable when someone publishes an idea you had, but it’s an opportunity to get precious feedback for free.

Exercise 3: Interview researchers around you on their taste. Why do they work on the problems they do? How do they pick problems? What’s their “big picture” of research?

Bonus: If you have a great interview, you might consider writing it up with their permission.