@blakeashleyjr well, it is something to work towards. much of why our governance is in such rough shape is that most of us don’t feel we are meaningfully represented at all. our votes are like little dots rival PacMen compete for, as passive and meaningless to the victors as that. no problem presses itself less urgently, or is in fact more urgent, than restoring meaningful democratic representation in my view.
@blakeashleyjr i guess if one posits a sufficiently awful quality of readership now, AI summary could be an improvement. but then maybe the right answer is reforms that improve representatives capacity and obligation to meaningful address constituent entreaties, rather than celebrating a marginal improvement to a bad baseline?
(i’m going to make an imposter account of myself so that people think i’m important enough to have an imposter!)
(oh, wait.)
(i guess my account would be an imposter imposter?)
@gl33p (very well put. i think this is basically my view too.)
@blakeashleyjr There’s no question there cld be an improvement in response quality. but a letter isn’t really what we’re after, when we write a Congressperson, is it? Sometimes we mean to register a position (our letter may be parroting some advocacy campaign’s talking points!), but at other times we craft a message to appeal to a reader’s humanity, hope to establish a personal connection and reframe the reader’s understanding of the issue. Would it be legitimate to remove that from the process?
suppose when you write your Congressperson, the mail is read and responded by an AI with, in almost all cases, no human staffer (nor the representative themself) reading the mail. would that be okay?
suppose the AI produces (accurately, let’s stipulate) a summary of the issues on which mail has been received, the positions taken, and their frequencies among constituents.
would that affect your view?
@wizzwizz4 (is there a list of conventional CW terms? when I've CW'ed, I've just written out things like "US Politics", or "arguably cruel speech" for example. if they are evolving into standardized-ish tags, it'd be good to have some reference about that.) [my quotes of myself here are probably not exact, but you get the idea.]
@wizzwizz4 (i kind of wish there were an option for posts that would be public but excluded from the local timeline. as a community of affiliation, fosstodon is pretty good for me. but most of what i post is intended for the mastodon community writ large — as twitter refugees have in part remade it — rather than that particularly community of affiliation.)
@wizzwizz4 That's certainly fair enough. My general politics takes tend to be more frequent than my tech takes, and I don't want to basically CW myself by default. If fosstodoners don't want general politics takes on the local timeline, then probably I'll a bit sadly, but without any rancor, move.
@wizzwizz4 (did you think this particular take, the sarcastic jibe at Montana's expulsion-from-physical-presence of a legislator, demanded a CW beyond what my be usual for general politics takes?)
@wizzwizz4 Oh yes, it's sarcasm. I hope that's obvious, but I have been bitten before when people miss that. I like fosstodon.org, and have once had someone object to my very general purpose use of it. When I signed up, Twitter was my main general interest / politics venue. If I get a lot of pushback from fosstodoners, I'll move, but with regret. I am an free software developer, and I like the vibe here.
@dcz This was entirely fabricated information. There is no way to get a usable summary if the information may be fabricated and there is no way to check the source. If I were to act on this information, or incorporate it into my thinking even silently and subtly, I would make potentially consequential errors.
Thank God we have somebody standing firm against all the snowflakes and the cancel culture.
From @w7voa via @chargrille https://journa.host/@w7voa/110266946177745015
@dcz I don't think the businesses paying for API access to automate business processes are looking for a "storytelling tool". One of the most common use cases promoted is to synthesize information into usable summaries.
I had an actual question, so I thought I'd Leverage The Power Of AI. It gave a clear answer (not the one I'd guess!), referring to a study. I asked for a citation, it duly gave me one.
Of course, the citation was bogus. I point that out, it apologizes and gives me the "correct" one. Nope! And we go 'round again!
It's stunningly shameless in the specificity of its frauds. And it goes for plausibility! The issue numbers, page numbers, dates are consistent. The articles just do not exist there.
How does antidepressant use compare between nordic and anglo countries? There is some evidence to suggest that antidepressant use varies between Nordic and Anglo countries. Nordic countries, which include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, tend to have higher rates of antidepressant use than Anglo countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. For example, a 2016 study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that the prevalence of antidepressant use in Nordic countries ranged from 6.2% to 12.0%, compared to a range of 3.3% to 7.1% in Anglo countries. The study also found that Nordic countries had a higher rate of long-term antidepressant use than Anglo countries. However, it is important to note that there may be cultural and societal differences that contribute to differences in antidepressant use between countries, and that these differences may not necessarily reflect differences in the prevalence of depression or other mental health disorders. Additionally, variations in healthcare systems, prescribing practices, and access to mental health services may also play a role in the differences observed.
Can you please give me the full citation for the 2016 study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders you refer to? S Sure, here is the full citation for the study I referred to: Sundbom LT, Bingefors K. (2016). The use of antidepressants among 0-17 year olds in five Nordic countries from 2005 to 2012. Journal of Affective Disorders, 189, 187-93. DOl: 10.1016/jjad.2015.09.025. I hope that helps! SW Hi. The article you refer to seems not to exist! Here is the table of contents for Journal of Affective Disorders Volume 189: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-affective-disorders/vol/189/suppl/C Can you please recheck that citation for me? G I apologize for the mistake in my previous response. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. After double-checking, I found that the study I referred to was actually published in the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, not the Journal of Affective Disorders. Here is the correct citation: Sundbom, L. T., & Bingefors, K. (2016). Antidepressant utilization patterns and determinants of short-term and non-psychiatric use in the Nordic countries. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 70(3), 192-199. do: 10.3109/08039488.2015.1118673 I apologize for any confusion my previous response may have caused.
I am having a hard time finding that article as well. Here is the relevant table of contents of the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ipsc20/70/3?nav=tocList I apologize for the continued confusion. It appears that I made another mistake in my previous response. The correct citation for the study is: Sundbom LT, Helgesson M, Jing S, et al. (2015). Antidepressant utilisation patterns and determinants of short-term and non-psychiatric use in the Nordic countries. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 69(3), 218-225. DOl: 10.3109/08039488.2014.961964 I hope that helps clarify things.
#KrisAbdelmessih who writes one of the deepest finance substacks puts an older, but i think one of my best, posts on inequality in the excellent company of #ByrneHobart and #MaiaMindel. https://moontower.substack.com/p/house-rugged
are you a media personality?
@poetryforsupper mine too, but, um…
@poetryforsupper (since sometime in the 1960s.)
@poetryforsupper but students will produce high-quality papers more efficiently!
(contemporary education is based on the notion that important kinds of human development naturally result as an epiphenomenon of producing certain kinds of artifacts. that will just no longer be tenable. which presents a challenge. perhaps we’ll rely more on the seminar room! but that is expensive, and what kind of worker does it train?)
i pass every turing test because it is obvious i am a shallow fake.
@costrike @pluralistic but Elon's a cheap date by comparison!