UniqueUserName
UniqueUserName's JournalAre "words" primarily for communication, expression, or something else?
Of course words are for communication and expression. But I am primarily a utilitarian. I would choose "communication" ---- being born to a child raised during the Great Depression.
Will AI be able to crawl message boards and build complex profiles of users?
Even before AI, we've known that tech companies are creating profiles of us with quite detailed properties. Many apps ask permission to access gps location data. Although I don't use apps that require access to my personal data, I suspect that Google has a pretty detailed profile of me including gps locations and times.
Heretofore, I did not consider it much of a risk to post some specific information. For instance, if someone were to post "Today's my birthday!" and then an unrelated post 30 days later that person casually mentions that they are 65, well you can easily determine the date of birth. The amount of personal energy it would take to glean useful information over a person's posting history would make the task unfeasible. But if AI gets faster, cheaper, and more accessible, I can imagine AI could create a world that would be difficult to navigate.
I believe that my Reddit account was compromised in the past. I believe I was compromised through the more traditional methods. I was going through a difficult situation and was vulnerable. I believe my account was compromised through private messages and the sender gaining my confidence. Fortunately I regained control of my Reddit account, but at the same time my computer got a virus. I was so freaked out that I bought a new computer and a new phone. I still consider that a relatively inexpensive lesson learned. My point is that almost everyone writes posts that make them emotionally vulnerable.
So how much of this question is my own paranoia vs. a legitimate concern? I just went through all of my DU posts and removed info that I thought could profile me. I removed that information because it was all true. Everything I have left is also true. Though I imagine that some people on message boards (not here) make things up.
I wouldn't want message boards to become impersonal. The more you peruse a forum, the more likely you are to begin to recognize and know people. Community is nice and desirable. But still, one of the things that I like most about Reddit is that, depending on the subforum, people are talking about things that are unique and meaningful to them. For the most part, while reading a board/forum, I'm not taking note of the poster. I'm taking note of what the person is saying. I would hate for people to quit sharing their unique, sometimes terrifying, sometimes funny, sometimes bizarre life experiences.
So is my concern legitimate? If legitimate, what actions can I take to mitigate risk and still share a community? I'm not so concerned about my financial accounts, I've got two-factor authentication and strong passwords. It concerns me that by sharing too much I might be at risk for another confidence scam. Is that just the risks that we all have to take to be a community?
Anyone else watch "Sam Now" on Independent Lens on PBS?
I've watched it twice now. On Alabama public television, Independent Lens will rotate the same films over a month or so and then they will repeat them again in maybe 6 months.
The film is so masterfully done. It's a documentary. The director is Sam's older brother and is from his point of view. Theirs is a blended family. Sam is the director's half brother. It's not giving anything away to tell you that Sam's mother abandons the family. The film begins with the director and Sam seeking out Sam's mom.
The entire film is spent searching for each of the individuals' motivations. I think the director does a great job of treating each person with kindness and importance. He also does a stunning job of condensing 30 years of video footage into an hour and a half.
Sleepwalking: Physically and Metaphorically
Jack had had his first operation---not the one that killed him. It was the operation to straighten his crooked eye. This was [date redacted]. Jack was always beautiful to me. He was my husband. BUT, I had asked him before he changed jobs was there any health insurance stuff he wanted to look at before he left the current job. He said, "No."
Well, two weeks later he wants to have cosmetic surgery on his eye. He's found a surgeon who would code it as "medical necessity." I am 100% certain that the statute of limitations has expired on all of this stuff. The surgery was fine. He was beautiful as always.
I lost a bit of sleep though pondering the ethics of it all. The person I loved most found a doctor willing to code a procedure so that it would be billable. ---The surgery might stop migraines----???
The night I drove him home from his surgery; I took an Ambien.
He and I slept together for about 7 years. At that point, I explained, "Jack, you know I love you, but I need to sleep in my own bed." Jack understood. I'm high-strung. I need time to rejuvenate alone before I can become useful. So for the past few years, we had separate bedrooms.
After his surgery on his eye, Jack wanted to sleep in my bedroom because it is darker. Of course, I agreed. That was the night I had the Ambien. I went to sleep. I slept for all the lost time I spent in worry. I woke up to my astonishment in my bed. Jack informed me that I had gotten up in the middle of the night and put myself to bed in my bed. So he had gotten up in the middle of the night and put himself to sleep in his bed.
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My doctor never prescribed me Ambien again. HOWEVER, he would prescribe it to Jack. Jack would share if I asked. We had specific protocols: Lock your door; Take my keys; Secure any dangerous object. . .
Anyway, the next time I slept walked was---you guessed it---on Ambien. From my perspective, I wake in the morning refreshed and wanting a new day. Jack comes in and says, "Did you find your shoes?"
I reply, "What? What are you talking about?!?"
He coyly replied, "You told me last night that you were looking for your blue shoes while searching the closet. You also told me that you loved me and for me to go to bed. . ."
I suspect that these years on, that that was him telling me he knew I was sleepwalking. He's been dead for four years.
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That is truly how sleepwalking works for me. I am highly functional and engaged---just not awake.
Metaphorical sleepwalking: I see it all the time in south Alabama---the willful shutdown of the brain and of reason. People who have perfected skills to make and do almost anything, shut off the higher cognitive thought processes on controversial subjects. They let muscle-memory take over. They just walk.
David Eagleman produced a 6-part video series on the brain ~2015. Sometimes I get the info in that series confused with articles that I read in "The Humanist." I walked away with three main points from the series and magazine. My understanding of what Eagleman posited is that consciousness may have arisen from the need to evaluate competing answers to problems that our well-established subsystems have created. That is, our brains are incredibly good at modeling different algorithms and paradigms. But often the brain's subsystems will generate incompatible solutions. Hence we needed consciousness to evaluate the solutions.
You don't have to think about walking. You just do it. We're not talking about the autonomic system, the one that regulates your heart, breathing, BP, and such. Your brain's ability to walk without thinking is not part of the autonomic nervous system. Your brain has myriads of these models for walking, playing guitar, typing, etc. I bet you even have a model for most of your favorite people. That is why you can imagine a conversation with them and pretty accurately predict their thoughts.
So when I postulate that people are metaphorically "sleep walking", They are using these well-developed models to process the world without actively engaging in thought.
Another point of Eagleman was that people are incredibly empathetic. That empathy can be turned off by "othering" the hurt person. He showed a very graphic video of somebody's hand being stabbed with a fork. Without further information, our natural tendency is to recoil in horror. But if you provide negative information about the person before you show the video, we will turn off our empathy. If the victim is in an "out" group like the wrong religion or if they are identified as a killer, humans have an ability to override their empathy. I think his point was for us to be aware that each of us can be manipulated by the othering of different groups, and that that manipulation can be intentional and malicious.
The final point I remember from "The Brain" video series is his interview with a fellow neuroscientist. This neuroscientist said that she could accurately predict a person's political affiliations by how they responded to a series of images. The images were all disgusting. That was her point. Some of us are hardwired to have a strong sense of disgust. By disgusting images, examples would be roadkill, a bloody surgery---nothing nefarious. Liberals would find the images unpleasant, but conservatives would find the images horrifically disgusting.
I can, to an extent, empathize. I am pro-choice ---pro-women's healthcare and their right to make their own decisions regarding their bodies. But I did feel that tinge of horror at seeing the pickled fetus in the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. It didn't change my opinion on women's rights. If we outlawed everything that was viscerally unpleasant there would be no surgeries and a lot more dead people. It's also why the pro-birth contingency uses the most deceptive images concerning abortion and not the most-common, realistic versions of what happens.
This last point is from an article I read in "The Humanist" years ago when I was in college. The author was examining faith-healing, miracles, and speaking in tongues. The article acknowledged that there was solid evidence of people spontaneously becoming healed. However, there was no correlation between one faith as having more miracles than any other. In no way was the article implying that there was evidence of divine intervention. There was clear evidence that sometimes people spontaneously heal. I don't subscribe to the god-of-the-gaps. I'm comfortable knowing that sometimes things happen that we cannot explain.
The really interesting hypothesis was regarding speaking in tongues. This article was written in the 1980s. I don't see how the author could possibly have data to support this hypothesis. However, as an atheist who can speak in tongues, it feels valid to me. That's not science of course. The hypothesis was that some of us are hardwired to be able to short-circuit out the speech systems in our brains and can connect the emotional centers directly to voice. My anecdote is not data. My mother and father were both capable of speaking in tongues. Having been raised in such churches, I've witnessed people getting their "prayer language" as they call it. It's not faking. I've seen faking. I've faked. That is, I can think of a well-known passage or poem and swap out the syllables to appear to speak in tongues. It's not the same. True speaking in tongues is more similar to a primal scream, just more complex. Of course it is all jibberish. But it doesn't feel that way. You get to express your feelings without the pesky difficulty of formulating thoughts.
I believe there is a conscious and malicious effort to divide the country and conservatives fall prey to the schemes more easily. I know that's condescending and would not attempt to use such a plain narrative when addressing conservatives. I believe there's been a conscious "othering" of both sides, but conservatives are more easily deceived. I cannot otherwise explain why people who can be highly-skilled in so many things can make irrational decisions. Undoubtedly there are bad people. There are racists and xenophobes. But I think some people are just sleepwalking.
I've been on this Earth for nearly six decades.
I think there are more zombies than before. My county went for trump 80%/20%. And I can't help but think, "You think this person best represents you? your values? A hero?"
Moderating the right wing trolls that walk up just to the edge, must be an incredibly difficult task
Moderators, I get why you let it last so long.
We all have bad days. Distinguishing between when someone is having a bad day, and when they're trolling must be arduous.
We've all seen them, posts spouting right-wing talking points, and then coming back and giving an empty platitude as being supportive of democratic candidates.
I use the DU mostly as a news aggregator. It's currently the best one around. I wish I had extra cash to throw your way.
I've committed myself to staying logged into du, so that I can put the trolls on ignore.
So if I failed to respond to your considered post, it's not because I don't care. It's just because I'm surfing for knowledge of what bill made it out of committee, or whether there's a countrywide serial killer on the loose.
I do love the occasional cat or dog post!
When she grilled Jeff Sessions was when I thought. . .
. . .I hope this woman runs for President. She's amazing!
Hi y'all. I'm new. Please let me introduce myself.
Hi DU,
I've met my post count; so I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm UUN (unique user name.) I found the DU about a year and a half ago. I have been a lurker. About the time I decided to be a participant, life sure pulled a fast one.
I know this is going to sound woe-is-me and over-the-top, but I swear it's all true. Three months ago my husband had 3 minor strokes, all on the same day. He had THREE strokes---cerebral vascular accidents, not TIAs (that's details for the initiated). Dear Husband (DH) is only in his late 40s.
Doctors said that if you have multiple strokes on both sides of your brain, it almost always comes from the heart. Sure enough my husband had a vegetative mass on his mitral heart valve. So we went to the best facility in the state to get his heart valve replaced. Surgery went fine. Three days after he was discharged my hubby was complaining about swelling and pain in his feet.
I searched through the discharge papers and could only find an 8 to 5 number to call. Alternatively, I called the home-health care nurse. She was disinterested. After checking my dear husband's vital signs, we decided to call the 8 - 5 number in the morning.
That Monday morning my husband woke up with Afib and a pulse rate of 200. After a trip to the local ER, DH was flown back to our state's preeminent hospital where he was diagnosed with heparin induced thrombocytopenia with thrombosis (HITT). If you ever have open-heart surgery, you will most likely be given heparin, a blood thinner. What doctors don't tell you is that between 1 and 5 % of people given heparin will have HITT---that's right, between 1 and 5 %. Why they can't narrow the numbers further is a question for a capitalistic, for-profit healthcare system. Of the people who develop HITT, 30 % will die; 50% will lose limbs. I know those numbers look funky. But I can't find better data. My mind goes to conspiracy theories that say the health-care system is deliberately concealing that information.
After another two weeks in the hospital, my husband was released to in-patient physical rehabilitation. His feet looked bad. They were badly discolored up to his ankles. The doctors assured him he was fine. He would lose a few toes but otherwise walk normally. Dear husband (DH) spent three weeks in physical rehabilitation where he learned to walk on dead feet. Two days before Thanksgiving and with little notice, the hospital declared him rehabilitated and discharged him. Did I mention this is our state's preeminent health-care facility? They released him with dead feet.
Let me be clear, DH had dry gangrene on both of his feet up to his ankles. This seems obvious now; but looking back I see that the doctor in charge of physical rehabilitation never once looked at his undressed wounds. Why didn't I insist that his doctor examine his feet? I know now that it is a false assumption that your doctor is paying attention and giving you the best care. The nurses administering care to the wounds are not necessarily passing on information to the doctors in charge. You'd better be very active in your own healthcare ESPECIALLY if you are in hospital.
At home, we made arrangements to see a wound care doctor. After a few visits, the woundcare doctor said that DH's limbs needed to be amputated. We got a second opinion. The second opinion was, "Uh, yeah, they need to amputated and don't walk on those feet. They could fall apart." So up to this point we had been told, "Walk! Walk! It will do your body good." ---This from a doctor who never once looked at his feet.
Mid December DH had his right hand and both feet amputated. He is in good spirits. He is a real inspiration. Our healthcare system is not. We probably have the best insurance our state offers (BCBS). We went to the best facilities. Of course, some of our woes are attributable to bad luck. But a good portion is due to a malignant healthcare system.
So our healthcare is why I have just met my 10-post count. I've been a bit pre-occupied. I hope to be a more active participant as time heals.
Life is not all bad. We are debt free. We own our house free and clear. We have over 20 years of a true and loving relationship. My DH is loved by all who meet him. I am a recluse. Funny how that works. His well-built social network has rallied round him. His co-workers donated more than three months of paid leave. DH is an inspiration. I know that he will walk with prosthetics just fine. He is so sweet and open. I confess I am a bit bitter, but I try to do better. I'm not bitter at my DH. I know he was wronged by our system. I'm trying to move on---spreading the word about heparin---doing what I can---gathering strength from you, Democratic Underground.
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Member since: Thu Sep 6, 2018, 02:26 AMNumber of posts: 178