
Jerks, Asshats, and the Unstable Politics of Civility [video] - Dowwie
https://www.stolaf.edu/multimedia/play/?e=1540
======
MarkPNeyer
i've built an algorithmic system to help people who are civil connect to each
other.

it's like pagerank, but personalized. Rather than have a top score for the
'most civil person', you use the system to record who you find civil and who
you don't.

When you interact with a stranger, you can quickly find out "should i bother
talking to this person, or are they just going to troll me?"

if a bunch of your friends say "hey this guy is worth talking to", then maybe
you will.

if a bunch of your friends say "this guy is a troll", you'll probably think
the same thing.

[https://github.com/neyer/respect](https://github.com/neyer/respect)

~~~
jacobush
Wow, I see this as inevitably, extremely useful, but at the same time as the
ultimate filter bubble. Much like Facebook, but more controlled by peoples own
prejudice and less by FB advertising. Frightening, and cool.

~~~
wjagodfrey
I have a lower than average Uber rating for this exact reason. I've never been
anything but polite. If anything, a little quiet, and untalkative if I'm
tired. You're right - these systems generally select for the wrong things.

~~~
woah
I'm sorry to hear that, but I think in this case you can't blame the
algorithm. If the customers want a gregarious driver, this is what they select
for. It's similar to if you were in any service profession. For example, a
bartender would be expected to be even friendlier.

~~~
geofft
Passengers also have Uber ratings. I read wjagodfrey's comment as talking
about their passenger rating, not their driver rating.

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gizmo
I apologize for being offtopic, but this is a horrendously bad video player.
If you pause the video for more than a minute or so it loses its play
position. Scrubbing through the video to find where you got disconnected is
painful and glitchy. There is no way to adjust the playback speed to 1.3x or
1.5x. This video player sucks. I'm glad flash is dead.

~~~
voltagex_
Interestingly, I got redirected to rtsp://stolaf-
flash.streamguys.net/vod/academic/academic/2016-03-31_ifc_symposium_one-1

rtmpdump or VLC should help you there.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Actually, dumping this (or rather, the high quality link Adaptive mentions)
with VLC/mplayer/openrtsp has been a pain in the ass. I'll provide an Internet
Archive link when I'm done downloading, transcoding, and QAing the resulting
file.

~~~
voltagex_
I'd be interested to know what trouble you've had.

~~~
toomuchtodo
openrtmp wouldn't dump the stream (because it was an rtsp stream). Perhaps I
was doing something wrong?

Then openRTSP wouldn't output an MP4 file properly.

So I used ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -rtsp_transport tcp -i "rtsp://stolaf-
flash.streamguys.net/vod/academic/academic/2016-03-31_ifc_symposium_one-4"
-acodec copy -vcodec copy -f mp4 2016-03-31_ifc_symposium_one.mp4

Note the "rtsp_transport" option; without that, I was getting UDP packet
drops. Not good for archival purposes. Used the option for TCP to prevent said
drops.

------
Dowwie
Definitely check out Jonathan Haidt's talk at the symposium. If you don't want
to or cannot watch the entire talk, start at around 50 minutes.

------
linhchi
Sorry but what does the video say in tl;dr? Anyone with background in this
field?

~~~
dub
The main bullet point is that civility is when we agree it's essential to
ensure that the "game" of discourse does not come to an end.

Because we want to play the game, we must protect the game from being
subverted. That includes protecting the game from subversion by ourselves in
the pursuit of our own, individual goals.

Civilization can tolerate cheats: people who agree that we're playing a game
of discourse with a goal of cooperation (being truthful, adequately
informative, relevant, and clear), although cheats try to break the rules
without being caught.

It cannot tolerate "asshats": people with no regard whatsoever for the values
(rules?) of the game of discourse

~~~
brashrat
You have restated the stated goal of the talk, but personally I didn't find
him convincing. Behind his stated argument was a lot of snobbery directed
against those he clearly dislikes.

I prefer if the tone of a insult matches the content, I don't like politely
worded sneers which he comes across as advocating in favor of. This whole
business of "civilization can tolerate well educated cunning self interested
liars better than it can rabble" is not a super familiar argument because it's
not convincing or polite to make it.

