> With a search paradigm this wasn't an issue as much, because the answers were presented as "here's a bunch of websites that appear to deal with the question you asked". It was then up to the reader to decide which of those sites they wanted to visit, and therefore which viewpoints they got to see.
It is very similar. Google decides what to present to you on the front page. I'm sure there are metrics on how few people get past the front page. Heck, isn't this just Google Search's business model? Determining what you see (i.e. what is "true") via ads?
In much the same way that the Councils of Carthage chose to omit the acts of Paul and Thecla in the New Testament, all modern technology providers have some say in what is presented to the global information network, more or less manipulating what we all perceive to be true.
Recently advancements have just made this problem much more apparent to us. But look at history and see how few women priests there are in various Christian churches and you'll notice even a small omission can have broad impacts to society.
This is true of the feeds and everything else where there are abundant choices. Amazon putting its inhouse brands before others. Anything which has to be narrowed down is an algorithmic choice, either data driven or top-down.
We have a faulty information network to begin with, and have for millenia. There's no such thing as "reliable" answers in a world full of unreliable humans.
Depending on how much money you have, the US experience varies from utopian socialism for the top brackets all the way to ruthless savage capitalism for the disenfranchised.
Admitting to it is the first step towards fixing it.
Then why is there such a gigantic welfare state for the poor in the US?
Why do the top 50% fund nearly all of the government (97% of all taxes)? The top 25% pay around 90% of all income taxes. Why does the US have an aggressively progressive taxation system if it's so utopian for the rich? That's quite obviously not how the rich would choose to arrange things at all. The top 1% take in 26% of income and pay 44% of all income taxes. The top 1% pay the highest average tax rate of any group (26%), over double the median figure.
Medicaid + SS disability + all state and local healthcare programs cost over a trillion dollars per year and are free for the poorest 1/4.
The US Govt alone (not including local or state) spent $200 billion on all of its food assistance programs in 2022.
These programs go toward people who contribute almost nothing in taxes.
> Why do the top 50% fund nearly all of the government (97% of all taxes)?
That's a flat out lie - that's not "all taxes", that's only one tax - Federal income. That's only about half what the IRS takes in (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-...), and then there's stuff like state, local, and non-IRS taxes like gasoline.
> The top 25% pay around 90% of all income taxes.
Guess what percentage of the wealth they hoover up.
A solid indication the level of taxation for that bracket is too low. Maybe it needs to add brackets up to the trillions, because there is a world of difference between 1M, 100M, 1B and, soon, 1T of net worth.
Remember - if you can't control money's political power, you need to control money itself, or the wealthy will have political power without the backing of votes.
You're looking at income quantiles, not wealth quantiles. It's misleading. Rich people don't earn salary.
A startup CEO probably gets a salary of like $250k, not much different from a senior SWE. However, the CEO has stock options worth hundreds of millions.
And those are ISOs, which are subject to favorable tax treatment...
...if you could exercise them for pennies, which is exactly what the CEO gets to do, because he gets the options before they ramp the valuation.
Rich people do not make high incomes. Incomes are taxed. Rich people keep their money.
There is a ton of content about Obsidian! Also it's a fairly intuitive interface. I'd just download it and start messing around, then check out the community plugins. If you really want to dig into notes systems, then you can Google PARA or Zettelkasten, but to me, that quickly begins to devolve into homework and needless learning curves. Just bolt on what you need it for. It's very full featured and if you feel like you're missing something, just search for a plugin.
I was in your boat. I revisited later and powered through and it does indeed get better. The narrative forms into something more cohesive and you start being less exhausted by all the lingo because you've learned it. You settle in. You have to sort of try to immerse yourself. I'd recommend trying to read in larger chunks of time and really absorb the aesthetic of the world.
I think that was my problem with Burning Chrome. Every sentence contained a new word or three that the reader is supposed to guess by context or conversation. Combined with something that read like stream-of-consciousness narration. I literally had no idea what was even happening after 30 or 45 minutes of reading.
But then I had the same problem with Shakespeare, so maybe I'm just dimmer than most folk.
This is exactly how I feel about Dune. The invented words and world-building are overwhelming at first, but once you absorb them it makes the narrative richer.
It may sound a bit pedantic, but this is why I prefer the term "software engineer". I don't write code. I solve problems, typically by writing code. AI just shortens the gap between my intuition and solving the problems. Yes it will obviate the need for me to be in the loop in some cases, but in the same way that automation obviates the need for coal miners and other mundane, dangerous, or otherwise uninspiring jobs, AI will obviate the need for us to write boilerplate, setup the 100000th CRUD app of our careers, write the same login endpoint for the 50000th time, etc... In our lifetimes, I'm doubtful that AI will replace my creativity and ability to synthesize large amounts of multi-domain information into a reasonable solution for end-users. I'm not doubtful that will happen eventually, I just don't see it impacting my job prospects prior to my retirement.
"For profit" and "healthcare" are just two things that shouldn't mix, but here we are. Everything in capitalism has a profit motive. Everything in life does not.
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