Altared State

But to me, the thing that I take out of that is that there are gamblers who, for whom sports betting is their religion, right. They equate their sports betting communities and behaviors to kind of religious, a religious experience. Like, it is part of; it is their community, their identity, it's who they are. And I think that's a social catastrophe in the making, right. Like, sports betting, whatever you think of it: maybe it's a vice that needs to be much more heavily regulated, maybe if you have a more Libertarian approach, it's a fun hobby that a few people will, you know, turn into a bad thing in their lives, but for most of them it's, you know, a source of enjoyment. Um, it should not be central to who you are. It should not be a religious experience. And if it is, I think that it's that much more dangerous as a phenomenon.

McKay Coppins. Plain English With Derek Thompson; "The Casino-ification of America"

As someone who isn't religious, and has little use for concepts of meaning, the immediate question that this raises for me is why one source of community and identity is necessarily better or worse than any others. After all, one could make the point that religion can be either a vice or something enjoyable that a few people will turn into a bad thing in their lives. What is it about sports gambling, in and of itself, that means that when people make it central to who they are, that it's more dangerous than religion, when people make that central to who they are? I've seen people neglect things they claim are important to them, like family, friends or career, in the service of becoming closer to their idea of the Divine. I've seen people give away their money until they were impoverished, tolerate remarkable levels of what would otherwise be considered abuse and even kill in the name of their faith. Why is that no dangerous?

It strikes me that anything can become important enough to a person that it becomes dangerous; that it becomes something that they, and some number of the people around them, would be much better off had it never entered that person's life. And it's the effects that it has on the person's live, not the thing in itself, that is the dangerous phenomenon. The person who is willing to trade their material well-being for community and identity has a problem, regardless of the specific thing that they've latched onto while seeking community and identity. Whether that's a connection to the Divine or an expensive hobby is beside the point.

Derek Thompson, the host of Plain English, is fond of saying that dystopias don't come from bad ideas, they come from good ideas taken too far. I believe he makes the point twice in just this one episode. Giving the things that are important to one a pass may be a good idea, but it's one that's easily taken too far. Because it prompts one to stop looking at the actual things that are being done, and the effects that they have, and instead to focus on what's doing it. It's prejudicial in the same way that judging a person guilty on innocent based on who they are, rather than what acts they have committed, is. And it doesn't take much for it to be just as corrosive.

So I don't see the rationale for why some things "should" be religious experiences and other things "should not." If a career can be central to who a person is, why can't a hobby be, as well? Now, to be sure, gambling on sporting events strikes me as much more likely to lead a person to places that they will find both highly unpleasant and extremely difficult to extricate themselves from, than something like say, being a Certified Public Accountant. But that has little to do with one's ability to build one's community and identity around them.

But it's easier to decide that the downsides aren't worth the benefits for activities than it is to sort out who will, or will not take something and go off the rails with it. And it's easier to see the downsides, and to decide that they outweigh the benefits, for things that the person doing the judging does not find to be important. For my part, I don't really care which altar someone worships at, if it brings them what they're seeking from it. And when it doesn't, when it demands more than it can give, all altars are equally dysfunctional.

Literacy

There was a post on LinkedIn about the cancellation of the U.S. launch the revenge horror novel "Shy Girl" and it being withdrawn in markets where it was already available. In the LinkedIn post, the author made the following observation:

Use no AI and you're mocked for not being innovative. Use too much and you get cancelled.

Which may be true, but I would note that it wouldn't be by the same people. And that makes the answer relatively simple: know your market and your target audience.

The problem with using generative automation on a revenge horror novel, it seems to me, is that it's the sort of thing that relatively affluent young people read, and, as I understand it, middle-class young people are very opposed to generative automation, especially in the arts. Not that this will stop anyone. Because generative automation will make the process of producing a novel shorter and easier, people are going to keep searching for ways to get around any public distaste. And eventually, someone will succeed, and it won't be until after the book becomes a best seller that word gets out, at which point that damage will have been done. A publisher may be able to claw back the author's part of the proceeds, but the understanding that there's money to be made will push more efforts to repeat trick.

And eventually, people will be faced with a choice. And if history is any indication, they're going to make the one that makes life less expensive for them in the short term. But for the time being, the best things that authors and publishers to do is read the room.

Uninstall

 

While the fact that Facebook is a privacy disaster has been understood for some time, I don't think that this sticker, which I found on the back of a parking sign, will influence all that many people to leave the platform. Facebook's network effects have lead to a high level of lock-in for their users, many of whom have made the site the primary, if not the only, way to find them online. The fact that constant digital surveillance is the price of that had become understood at this point.

Differentiated

It's been some time since I've used a graphic for The Short Form, mainly because, as I've mentioned before, it's hard for machines to read the text in a picture. But I was talking with an acquaintance earlier this week, and this part of our conversation stuck with me.

There is a difference between preventing bad outcomes, and preventing them from happening to oneself.

I suppose that it's an obvious sentiment, but I don't know that it's thought about all that much. In a lot of ways, it's like the difference between using The Club, and installing a Lojack, or other locator system, in a car. The Club is an obvious theft deterrent; it's goal is to not only make it more difficult to take the car, but to be obvious about that fact, so that the would-be thief moves on. But it doesn't really change their incentives; they simply look for a car that doesn't have such a device, and attempt to steal that one.

LoJack, and other locator systems, on the other hand, while being inobvious, carry a much greater risk to the thief if they do, in fact, steal the car... after all, it can be tracked by law enforcement, and that leads to a higher chance of being caught in a stolen car. But the fact that one cannot tell by looking if a car is equipped with a locator means that taking any car in a neighborhood where they're known to be in use carries higher risk. And this is why these systems often carry discounts in insurance premiums, they lower costs of insurers more broadly, and it's worth passing some of that savings on to those to have the systems installed.

This all came up in the context of the supposed generative automation apocalypse that's coming for certain sectors of the knowledge workforce. While a lot of people are offering various advice, from learning how to supervise automated systems to dumping the industry entirely and shifting to skilled trades, the general viewpoint is the same: This is going to happen, here's how you take care of you. It's modeled on The Club... a car is going to be stolen; this is how you ensure that it isn't yours. But maybe a LoJack model, trying to head off the worst of the transition in general, for everyone, would be better for all involved.

This Side, That Side

"Long term, you tend to remember that kind of negative branding," [University of Alabama Marketing Professor Karen Anne] Wallach said. "And negative language then becomes part of what you associate with the brand."

The tech startups NPR spoke with for this story said they understand the risks of alienating large numbers of people with their cryptic ads. But the upside is too great.
Do you understand this billboard? If not, that's the whole point

While this might seem to be just another story about tech, and how it divides people into groups, the above points to something important about in-group and out-group signalling. Sometimes, alienating the out-group is what the in-group demands. Groups, in general, are defined both by who is a member of the group, and who is not. And for groups that want to maintain some sort of claim to exclusivity, who is kept out can be much more important that who is let in. And hurt feelings on the part of those kept out be damned.

For technology startups who are not attempting to sell themselves to the general public, the idea that the general public is unwelcome can be just the sort of thing that their intended customers want; because it not only sorts, but stratifies. And sometimes, nothing sells a product or service like the idea that being a member of the target audience is proof of one's own superiority.

If an advertiser is willing to accede to an expectation of flattery, even at the expense of others, on the part of the in-the-know, clearly neither the advertiser, nor their audience, expects that any hard feelings on the part of the out-group will be a problem for them. And this is nothing new. I would submit that it's been a facet of human history for as long as there has been history. That said, it doesn't make the practice any less toxic, especially in its more strident forms. But perhaps that's the problem; toxicity has become such a common part of people's everyday lives that it goes unnoticed.