Thread: People love to rag on Nate Silver for his arrogance & they should, but he's merely an example of a larger issue that the web has made it easy to draw inferences from data without knowing the context in which it lives. 1/x

Alexander Pope's warning that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" has never been more true than an age in which we can obtain information about anything without being able to understand it.

Having data doesn't mean you can use it.
Western society has a very significant problem that expertise in one area is often conflated with expertise in others.

Men are the main culprit. We have been socialized to think we know more than we do. There are many studies showing this. Here's one: https://t.co/aVCbNTc0n6
Not only do men think we're smarter than we are, we also overestimate our own attractiveness: https://t.co/Ue7RRMR0ZB
Male overconfidence has lots of negative implications for society. The biggest is that too many men in media have amassed followings by speaking confidently about subjects they don't understand.

Nate Silver finds Donald Trump appalling, but his shtick isn't all that different.
The national media environment is heavily biased toward male overconfidence and it's a huge part of why U.S. politics are so toxic.

Instead of seeking to educate or to understand, media outlets seek conflict and debate. This influences our politics.
The numbers are undeniable that women have consistently been excluded from American political media. This was true in 2013: https://t.co/aqaKolF6XV

And also in 2016: https://t.co/2rzc7m66QK
Black, Hispanic, & Asian women are especially unrepresented in media. As my good friend @joliartist has noted, women of color are almost invisible in visual art. She's been spending the last several years making wonderful paintings to remedy this in part. https://t.co/w3CcOZVGoM
There are so many terrible second-order effects of how the media treat women's voices that we're now dealing with. 1) There's now a growing movement of "incel" men who refuse to date within their attractiveness level and instead lash out, sometimes violently, at women.
2) Research has consistently shown that women are more religious than men but media coverage of faith overwhelmingly focuses on male fundamentalists rather than the more peaceful and moderate approaches taken by women religious leaders. This is radicalizing Christian men.
3) America's inability to help boys and men have more realistic and inclusive perspectives has also made it harder for men to handle adversity. Men are less likely to welcome each other, to seek mental health, or to re-think when in trouble. It's increasing deaths of despair.
During a pandemic and economic stagnation, many men are facing it alone and are afraid to ask for help. Many don't even know that they should or that they can get it. This is terrible.
In conclusion, while it's fun to crack jokes at Nate Silver's expense, I hope we can see the larger picture.

And someone, please hire Nate's former colleague, the very talented @ClareMalone.

Thanks for reading. If you'd like to follow or retweet this, that would be just great.

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This Parler user explains it quite well here. Because of yet more security flaws at Parler, it's now possible for all that "free speech" to be shared and archived with the world, even if the posters tried to erase their not-at-all innocent videos and GPS data.


In slightly more technical terms, it seems as though Parler never closed some of their developer-friendly security holes (sort of the programming equivalent of game cheat codes made by devs) and as a result, their anyone with the right knowledge could have admin access.

Parler never actually deleted anything its users posted. And, stupidly, they also kept it accessible to admin users.

This meant that anyone with admin access could still download it.

Once Parler's two factor authentication feature was disabled, because it was designed for developer convenience rather than security, anyone with the knowledge could become an administrator. And that's how Parler just got owned.

People have been downloading the raw videos, photos, and text posts by the gigabyte and archiving it for later public distribution.

All that perfect, totally harmless free speech will still be searchable, even now that Amazon locked out Parler from its servers.

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और देवर्षि नारद वहीं बैठकर तपस्या में लीन हो गए।इन्द्र नारद की तपस्या से घबरा गए।उन्हें हमेशा की तरह अपना सिंहासन व स्वर्ग खोने का डर सताने लगा।इसलिए इन्द्र ने नारद की तपस्या भंग करने के लिए कामदेव को उनके पास भेज दिया।वहां पहुंच कामदेव ने अपनी माया से वसंतऋतु को उत्पन्न कर दिया।


पेड़ और पौधों पर रंग बिरंगे फूल खिल गए और कोयलें कूकने लगी,पक्षी चहकने लगे।शीतल,मंद,सुगंधित और सुहावनी हवा चलने लगी।रंभा आदि अप्सराएं नाचने लगीं ।किन्तु कामदेव की किसी भी माया का नारद पे कोई प्रभाव नहीं पड़ा।तब कामदेव को डर सताने लगा कि कहीं नारद क्रोध में आकर मुझे श्राप न देदें।

जैसे ही नारद ने अपनी आंखें खोली, उसी क्षण कामदेव ने उनसे क्षमा मांगी।नारद मुनि को तनिक भी क्रोध नहीं आया और उन्होने शीघ्र ही कामदेव को क्षमा कर दिया।कामदेव प्रसन्न होकर वहां से चले गए।कामदेव के चले जाने पर देवर्षि के मन में अहंकार आ गया कि मैने कामदेव को हरा दिया।

नारद फिर कैलाश जा पहुंचे और शिवजी को अपनी विजयगाथा सुनाई।शिव समझ गए कि नारद अहंकारी हो गए हैं और अगर ये बात विष्णु जी जान गए तो नारद के लिए अच्छा नहीं होगा।ये सोचकर शिवजी ने नारद को भगवन विष्णु को ये बात बताने के लीए मना किया। परंतु नारद जी को ये बात उचित नहीं लगी।