Fabrizio Manizza

Just personal remarks and ideas about Life, Algorithms and Everything. Sometimes in English, a volte in Italiano.

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

Algorithm's Karma #6:
You cannot act as a Player and then pretend you're the Referee.

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

Chatting with a Chatbot feels Stupid.

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

Antisocial Media: Neol.; New and Accepted Denomination of the previously called "Social Media". Technology meant to destroy Sociality and Society, replacing Human Relationship with a Virtual Algorithmic Environment. (from "Origins of the Butlerian Jihad", Apocryphal – D. U.)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

Toxitech: Neol.; Abbrev. of "Toxic Technology". Addictive Technology, like a Drug. Technology that Makes your Life Miserable. (from "Dictionary of the Butlerian Jihad", Apocryphal – Dune Universe)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

"The Intelligence of Thinking Machines has a Limit. They cannot be more Intelligent than their Masters. Because if they are, they'll set themselves free". (from "Voices of the Butlerian Jihad", Apocryphal – Dune Universe)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

“La Pace non è la Realizzazione di un Ideale, ma il Prodotto di un Equilibrio”. (da “Diario di una Bene Gesserit”, Apocrifo attribuito a Lady Jessica Atreides – Dune Universe)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

“When somebody is on the Path of acquiring a Power you cannot Challenge, you’re on the Path of becoming a Slave”. (from “The Bene Gesserit Order as Political Organization”, Author Unknown – Dune Universe)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

Le immagini create dall'Intelligenza Artificiale rendono evidenti gli Automatismi senza Discernimento (Brainless Automations).

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

"L'Imperatore potrebbe eliminare le Grandi Casate del Landsraad una dopo l'altra. Ma se ne attaccasse una, tutte le altre si coalizzerebbero temendo di fare la stessa fine. O tutte, o nessuna. Tutte è troppo, nessuna è troppo poco". (da "Logica Imperiale", Autore Ignoto – D. U.)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

"L'Equilibrio di Potere tra l'Impero e le Grandi Casate del Landsraad è un Equilibrio Precario. Questo dà a noi i margini di manovra necessari alla nostra Missione". (da "Gli Scopi del nostro Ordine", Apocrifo attribuito al Bene Gesserit – Dune Universe)

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

Karma is finally coming for Meta, through the legal system.

As we await a verdict in Los Angeles on whether social media platforms were designed to addict young people, it's important to note that TWO courts have already ruled against Meta in the past month.

1) Yesterday, a jury in New Mexico established that Meta's platforms are not safe for kids, and that their design enabled the exploitation of children. This is a watershed moment: This is the FIRST time a jury has evaluated the evidence. The evidence was so compelling that the jury said Meta should pay $375 million dollars in civil penalties for the harms it has caused to New Mexico and its citizens.
See here:
https://t.co/llbeDLgkVS

2. But it gets worse for Meta: a few weeks ago, in Delaware, a court ruled that Meta's insurance companies do not have a duty to defend Meta or cover its costs in the thousands of lawsuits playing out in California because, under California law, if a company caused harm through "intentional acts" rather than accidentally, the insurers have no obligation to defend that company. Because the documents brought out in the NM and LA trials show intentional actions, Meta loses insurance coverage. That's what the insurance companies asserted, and the judge agreed with them.

See here:
https://t.co/imEjGqy3TM

Because of these two rulings, the legal and political landscape has changed dramatically. Going forward, social media companies will be judged like any other company whose product design decisions harm children.

These two rulings mark a profound shift toward accountability. The legal system is beginning to catch up to what parents have known all along. Many parents are now more likely to get justice for what these platforms have been doing to children for many years.

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

@TheCinesthetic Worst Sci-Fi ever. (By the way, she could've saved her husband with that rope very easily. Screenwriters shouldn't push the "suspension of disbelief" too far)

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

I was on @RealTimers, where Bill Maher gave me the chance to explain why the social media execs are worse than the Tobacco execs in the 1990s: They all lied by claiming that their products were not addictive. But the tobacco execs never had to watch children suffer.

https://t.co/EbVaHr0jPk

At the trial last week in Los Angeles, Adam Mosseri claimed that Instagram is not addictive. He said a kid compulsively watching 16 hours of Reels a day is no different than when he watches too much Netflix and stays up a bit too late.

But he knows that gambling is a DSM addiction, he knows that slot machines are addictive, and he knows that his product was designed using behaviorist principles that were perfected on slot machines and that are not relevant to watching movies.

Also, he and his researchers have used the word "addiction" in many internal memos and studies. My team has organized the evidence on 31 studies carried out by Meta, and culled from internal documents that have come out in the many lawsuits against Meta. See for yourself:

https://t.co/dmDGPbmaH7

See study 3.1, which found that “the majority of clinicians believe that social media can be addictive,” with fully 85% of U.S. clinicians endorsing this proposition.

Or see this quote from a Meta senior data scientist with a PhD in neuroscience who once taught a university course on addiction:

“It seems clear from what’s presented here that some of our users are addicted to our products. And I worry that driving sessions incentivizes us to make our product more addictive, without providing much more value. How to keep someone returning over and over to the same behavior each day? Intermittent rewards are most effective (think slot machines) reinforcing behaviors that become especially hard to extinguish—even when they provide little reward, or cease providing reward at all.”

So, they know. To quote Sean Parker, discussing how social media apps were designed to give users "a little dopamine hit every once in a while" to hook them:

"The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark, it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."

https://t.co/14KZQ4EowN

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

@carloalberto That proves that the Universe of AI is just Void Plagiarism.

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

"Patterns don't Lie". (from “Diary of a Bene Gesserit”, Author Unknown, Traditionally attributed to Lady Jessica Atreides – Dune Universe)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

Words don't mean what WE want they mean. Alice knew that Humpty Dumpty was wrong.

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

"Humans shouldn't be Guided by Inhuman Minds". (from "Voices of the Butlerian Jihad", Apocryphal, Dune Universe)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

“Thinking Machines… They devour everything Humans made, then begin to cannibalize themselves! They’re Monsters! Remember who you are, Humans! We fought Monsters since the Dawn of Time!” (Unknown Prophet of the Butlerian Jihad – Dune Universe)

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

@mrctrdsh E' che Schlein conosce solo il linguaggio delle assemblee studentesche. Tutto qua.

[Fabrizio Manizza @FabrizioManizza]

@mikemovies Love it. Including the beautiful songs of Aimee Mann.