#critical algorithm studies

[bulletbilltime]

I'm sick of all these tech bros and apps (especially social media and microtransaction-laden games) using psychology to make their shit more addictive. You don't fucking know me. Leave my brain alone. Go use psychology to learn why you don't have friends.

Also to the algorithms that "know me better than I know myself": No you fucking don't. And if you do, die. This is classified information. You're not allowed to extrapolate this about me. I will commit killing on you.

[determinate-negation]

how do you define positivism? I’ve seen it used a couple different ways

i mean it mostly in the way the frankfurt school criticized positivism, as reducing knowledge to what is merely calculable, instead of a dialectical approach- and especially that when this is applied to sociology, psychiatry, essentially studies of people its often vulgar and reductive. im gonna just quote this from dialectic of enlightenment instead of paraphrasing more

"The equation of mind and world is finally resolved, but only in the sense that both sides cancel out. The reduction of thought to a mathematical apparatus condemns the world to be its own measure. What appears as the triumph of subjectivity, the subjection of all existing things to logical formalism, is bought with the obedient subordination of reason to what is immediately at hand. To grasp existing things as such, not merely to note their abstract spatial-temporal relationships, by which they can then be seized, but, on the contrary, to think of them as surface, as mediated conceptual moments which are fulfilled by revealing their social, historical, and human meaning-is abandoned. Knowledge does not consist in mere perception, classification, and calculation but precisely in the determining negation of whatever is directly at hand.”

i think this is especially an issue rn in the way that people approach data, algorithms, the idea of something being data driven being that it reflects reality perfectly, also many popular discourses on mental illness and psychiatry

[tangibletechnomancy]

Neural Nets, Walled Gardens, and Positive Vibes Only

the crystal spire at the center of the techno-utopian walled garden

Anyone who knows or even just follows me knows that as much as I love neural nets, I'm far from being a fan of AI as a corporate fad. Despite this, I am willing to use big-name fad-chasing tools...sometimes, particularly on a free basis. My reasons for this are twofold:

Many people don't realize this, but these tools are more expensive for the companies to operate than they earn from increased interest in the technology. Using many of these free tools can, in fact, be the opposite of "support" at this time. Corporate AI is dying, use it to kill it faster!

You can't give a full, educated critique of something's flaws and failings without engaging with it yourself, and I fully intend to rip Dall-E 3, or more accurately the companies behind it, a whole new asshole - so I want it to be a fair, nuanced, and most importantly personally informed new asshole.

Now, much has already been said about the biases inherent to current AI models. This isn't a problem exclusive to closed-source corporate models; any model is only as good as its dataset, and it turns out that people across the whole wide internet are...pretty biased. Most major models right now, trained primarily on the English-language internet, present a very western point of view - treating young conventionally attractive white people as a default at best, and presenting blatantly misinformative stereotypes at worst. While awareness of the issue can turn it into a valuable tool to study those biases and how they intertwine, the marketing and hype around AI combined with the popular idea that computers can't possibly be biased tends to make it so they're likely to perpetuate them instead.

This problem only gets magnified when introduced to my mortal enemy-

If I never see this FUCKING dog again it will be too soon-

Content filters.

Theoretically, content filters exist to prevent some of the worst-faith uses of AI - deepfakes, true plagiarism and forgery, sexual exploitation, and more. In practice, many of them block anything that can be remotely construed as potentially sexual, violent, or even negative in any way. Frequently banned subjects include artistic nudity or even partial nudity, fight scenes, anything even remotely adjacent to horror, and still more.

The problems with this expand fractally.

While the belief that AI is capable of supplanting all other art forms, let alone should do so, is...far less widespread among its users than the more reactionary subset of its critics seem to believe (and in fact arguably less common among AI users than non-users in the first place; see again: you cannot give a full, educated critique of something's failings without engaging with it yourself), it's not nonexistent - and the business majors who have rarely if ever engaged with other forms of art, who make up a good percentage of the executives of these companies, often do fall on that side, or at least claim to in order to make more sales (but let's keep the lid on that can of worms for now).

When this ties to existing online censorship issues, such as a billionaire manchild taking over Twitter to "help humanity" (read: boost US far-right voices and promote and/or redefine hate speech), or arcane algorithms on TikTok determining what to boost and deboost leading to proliferation of neologisms to soften and obfuscate "sensitive" subjects (of which "unalive" is frequently considered emblematic), including such horrible, traumatizing things as...the existence of fat people, disabled people, and queer people (where the censorship is claimed to be for their benefit, no less!), the potential impact is apparent: while the end goal is impossible, in part because AI is not, in fact, capable of supplanting all other forms of art, what we're seeing is yet another part of a continuing, ever more aggressive push for sanitizing what kinds of ideas people can express at all, with the law looking to only make it worse rather than better through bills such as KOSA (which you can sign a petition against here).

And just like the other forms of censorship before and alongside it, AI content filtering targets the most vulnerable in society far more readily than it targets those looking to harm them. The filters have no idea what makes something an expression of a marginalized identity vs. what makes it a derogatory statement against that group, or an attempt at creating superficially safe-for-work fetish art - so, they frequently err on the side of removing anything uncertain. Boys in skirts and dresses are frequently blocked, presumably because they're taken for fetish art. Results of prompts about sadness or loneliness are frequently blocked, presumably because they may promote self harm, somehow. In my (admittedly limited) experiment, attempts at generating dark-skinned characters were blocked more frequently than attempts at generating light-skinned ones, presumably because the filter decided that it was racist to [checks notes] ...acknowledge that a character has a different skin tone than the default white characters it wanted to give me. Facial and limb differences are often either erased from results, or blocked presumably on suspicion of "violent content".

But note that I say "presumably" - the error message doesn't say on what grounds the detected images are "unsafe". Users are left only to speculate on what grounds we're being warned.

But what makes censorship of AI generated work even more alarming, in the context of the executive belief that it can render all other art forms obsolete, is that other forms of censorship only target where a person can say such earth-shaking, controversial things as "I am disabled and I like existing" or "I am happy being queer" or "mental health is important" or "I survived a violent crime" - you can be prevented from posting it on TikTok, but not from saying it to a friend next to you, let alone your therapist. AI content filtering, on the other hand, aims to prevent you from expressing it at all.

This becomes particularly alarming when you recall one of the most valuable use cases for AI generation: enabling disabled people to express themselves more clearly, or in new forms. Most people can find other workarounds in the form of more conventional, manual modes of expression, sure, but no amount of desperation can reverse hand paralysis that prevents a person from holding a pen, nor a traumatic brain injury or mental disability that blocks them from speaking or writing in a way that's easy to understand. And who is one of the most frequently censored groups? Disabled people.

So, my question to Bing and OpenAI is this: in what FUCKING universe is banning me from expressing my very existence "protecting" me?

Bad dog! Stop breaking my shit and get the FUCK out of my way!

Generated as a gift for a friend who was even more frustrated with that FUCKING dog than I was

All images - except the FUCKING dog - generated with Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Welcome to Spider Society -

A mega-post of my headcanons and (very) loose analysis of Spider Society and How It Works - like day to day. Or rather, how it works for recruits.

I'll be looking at things like dorms, contracts, mentors and more. [All of these are my headcanons really, so take what you like and leave what you don't.]

Recruitment - Your First Days At HQ

Learning about the multiverse can without a doubt be a jarring experience for some - And a new recruit's first days at HQ are usually no different.

Day One - First Contact

Based on the scenario, recruitment can happen one of two ways - each with different procedures based on the situation. Merit Recruit - Merit recruits are Spider-people approached on the grounds of merit, experience, or distinction. Spider-people from especially unique worlds, or those with extensive experience are approached by the Spider Society and extended an official invitation to join. Each potential recruit is profiled based on a number of things, including mental stability, talent, personality, or need. A potential recruit is then matched with an active member - an a first contact is organized. Potential Recruits are algorithmically matched with a Spider-person most likely to successfully recruit them - based on personality, emotional connection potential, and a host of other things. Pavitr Prabhakar, Peter B. Parker, and Hobie Brown are all Merit Recruits. Merit Recruits are more likely to bargain contracts, in order to enter the society at a high rank, or receive more perks. Hobie has bargained his contract for limited days - and he is only called for high profile missions. Other recruits cannot negotiate contacts, but Hobie hopes to unionize and change that.

Supervisory Recruit - A Supervisory Recruit is a Spider-person who is profiled and approached based on their 'need' or a growing concern for the situation of their universe. This mostly includes those from dystopian universes, experiencing their 'Public Enemy' Canon Event, or going through financial hardship. Although this also includes a small class of 'Critical Destabilization' Recruits - Spider-people from universes experience anomalies, or multiversal decay. Although approached as a Merit Recruit - Pavitr's file is now labeled as a Critical Destabilization member. Those with a 'CD' designation typically live in dorms as their worlds are closely monitored. CD Spider-people are deeply 'encouraged' to complete as many Canon Events as possible, in order to avoid possible anomalies.

Educational Recruit - Although rare, there are a small number of Educational Recruits - members approached based on their own educational research of the multiverse. If it is determined that a Spider-person has learned about the multi-verse on through their own research, the Society will make direct contact with them as soon as possible. Only a few high-ranking members are chosen to approach Educational Recruits - ready to answer any scientific questions they may have. Educational Recruits take seniority over Merit Recruits, and are also able to negotiate contracts - including access to Society technology. There is also a small academics program in which incoming Educational Recruits can study under other Genius Spider-people. They're trained in The Society Laboratory to develop new technologies and studying the multiverse. Most Educational Recruits are do not work in the field. Margo Kess is an Educational Recruit and is an early graduate of the academics program. Her job at the Go-Home Machine was negoitated in her contract.

Emergency Recruit - Emergency recruits are those who join the society through an Active Call. Contact is made with the recruit in order to prevent or capture anomalies, and treat multiversal decay. Emergency Recruit's experience an extended introduction period, in which they are emotionally monitored and treated before meeting Miguel and continuing on to their Evaluations. Emergency Recruits live on campus in separate private dorms in order to help with the shock. Gwen is an Emergency Recruit.

Next comes your Evaluations.

Evaluations

One of the most intense parts of joining Spider Society is often the evaluations. Because there are a LOT of them. Still recruits, incoming members take a number of evaluations and tests before becoming trainees. There's no way to fail these tests, but they're lengthy, and the data is used for a number of things, known and unknown

Week 1 - Your First Tests

After a contract is negotiated and a recruit accepts their invitation, the recruit is sent home with some materials in order to process what they've just learned. They're given a date and a time for them to return to meet their mentor and take their evaluations. These evaluations usually take a couple of days and so some may say in the dorms for the duration of this. Their original recruitment member will return to meet the recruit and take them back to HQ - and this is usually a time to bond and ask questions. Your recruitment officer is not the same as your mentor, instead they are someone you are mathematically chosen to get along with most. But how do they determine that? -

Your first evaluation at HQ starts before you even notice. Conversation With Lyla - Personality Analysis Prior to meeting Miguel for the second time, the recruit is asked to sit in the lab Gwen and Miles are shown walking through, and wait for Miguel. During this time, Lyla will appear on the console, and make light conversation with the new recruit. In doing so she begins her first analysis on the recruits humor, confidence, comfortability, extrovertedness, assertiveness, and a number of other things. With this, she begins to construct a profile. This conversation may last somewhere between 4-8 minutes - in which Miguel is given a report on you. Lyla is programmed to make the conversation as light as possible, as the participant should not be aware at the time of the test. Only a few have been able to recognize this tactic for what it is. Hobie being one of them. After questioning Lyla as to what she was, when she explained she was an AI - he stopped talking and refused to speak to her any further at that time. This raised his bargaining price with Miguel immensely. Event Screening - Moral Alignment Analysis Assigned by Lyla, A recruit's moral alignment is a profile taken by Lyla at the beginning of their contract, and annually every year after. Arguably the most time-consuming and tedious of the evaluations. Scenario Screening: A Recruit is seated in a lab with Lyla once more. Lyla shows the recruit a number of semi-realistic scenarios in an immersive simulation - similar to the ones Miguel shows Miles. Recruits are asked to respond to each scenario out loud and explain their reasoning, with Lyla making it as conversational as possible. However, this information is not taken at face value. During this conversation Lyla crossmatches. Career Screening: As you go through the Scenario Screening, Lyla will ALSO crossmatch your answers to past events in your career, pulled from sources like news television, and Daily Bugle reports in order to determine if what you are saying is true to your behavior. Both of these reports are combinded to determine truthfulness, self-awareness, selflessness, spontaneity and a number of other factors. This too is added to your file. A Session with Spider-Psyche - Mental Health Analysis Most people hate this part. The last evaluation is a three-session stint with a Spider-Psyche across three different days. During this time, your mental health will be evaluated, as the therapist begins to ask questions related to your canon events. In doing this, your events will be added to your file. This evaluation determines a recruit's mental stability, past traumas, and - hopefully - help determine their canon events in the future. The mental health analysis is due every six months - for every Spider person on campus. It's mandatory. The mental health center is robust, and appointments are easy to get. There is also a Post-Canon Crisis Center and multiple talk groups open for attendance.

Mentorship

Week 2, Day 1 - Meeting your mentor

Now that Lyla has a full profile of the recruit, they official become a member of the Society, earning their entry level badge - a card that gives access to the food court, showers, and other facilities.

As Lyla combines your evaluations into your file - she uses your Moral Alignment, Personality, and Mental Stability to assign you to an senior advisor to report to.

Mentors are responsible for Mission statuses, training updates, and a number of other things - depending on the recruit type and their needs.

There are many mentors on campus, including Ben Reilly, Lego-Spider-Man (for the non-human Spidey-people), Peter B. Parker, SunSpider, and some others.

Typically, a recruitment agent is a mentor in training. Had Hobie stayed in The Society, he would have achieved Mentor status.

First meeting: Largely determined by the mentor's preferred teach method, the first meeting with your mentor is fully determined by them. And some do not give a heads-up. It's encouraged that mentors visit their trainee's home dimension and/or join them on patrol. Mostly because next week, when you begin training, your mentor's report on you will determine your starting level and skillset. The Following Days: Second & Third Meeting Mentors are also encouraged to take and train their trainees in their own home world - for the trainee to get accustomed to blending in and working out there in the multiverse field. During the third meeting, Trainees are often given a tour of the facilities. Most mentors use this as a time to talk - mainly at the food court - in order to gauge their new trainee's skills, likes, goals, and needs. Report of Status and/or Need: Submitted by the end of Week 2 By the end of Week 2 your mentor will submit a report on you and their thoughts, as well as details on your experience, strengths, and skills. They will also determine things like your category - a descriptor of your fighting and battle techniques. There a nearly a dozen classes of category ranging from 'Speedsters' (Disco-Spider and Brown-Spider), to Wielders (those who wield extra weapons in addition - i.e Spider-Punk). You can fall into two or more categories at once - and your category is a large factor in your selection in particular missions. This entire status report - along with their full file and evaluations - is submitted directly to Miguel, not Lyla. And he reads each and every file. Miguel also requests a Report of Need if neccesary - detailing any struggles - financial, safety, or otherwise, that a trainee may need. For non-emergency recruits, this is also the time to sign up for dorms. In accordance with this report, Mentors must report HOW they're helping their trainee and their progress in need. For example, if a Spider-person is facing eviction or behind on rent, The Society will offer housing aid to assure they can keep their home, and they will continually check in to assures it stays this way. Once again, every one of these reports is screen by Miguel personally. (i.e Jessica is required by this rule to report how many days Gwen has slept on campus each month - as apart of her 'Need Relief Report'. Gwen got in trouble multiple times for spending under the required amount, during her time sleeping at Hobie's.)

Mentor Reports:

Mentors are required to give routine Training and Development Reports routinely - the frequency based on their time with The Society, starting at weekly and decreasing from there.

Personal Report:

You and your mentor may fill out a personal report, either together or by yourself.

This is to detail your feelings as needs as a new member, what you'd like changed, what you need, etc. This can range from anything from needing to set up Spider-psyche appointments, an increase in meal plan, or special accommodations.

Merit and Educational Recruits also fill out a Report of Perks & Benefits, in which they request things like entry into the Education program, private rooms, suit upgrades, and more.

Contract Negotiation: MERIT and EDUCATIONAL only

During this time, Trainees can now negotiate their contracts fully - outside of the Perks & Benefits, though taking more than usual is hard to get out of Miguel. But possible.

This negotiation is a personal sit down with Miguel, your mentor, you and Lyla. Your recruitment advisor can also be present for this as your second rep (besides your menton). After this, their contract is solidified.

Hobie, for example has negotiated a limited amount of mission calls per monthly cycle, earning his file the label of Class S, only reserved for high-level missions cleared by Lyla. Your class is another designation besides your category, however this is determined after Week 3 - your Training Week. Get ready to meet the training rooms and coaches!

___________________________________________ So yeah, that's how I imagine the first week of The Society is like. Based on.... :) haha mmm

But this is all just complete headcanon of how I imagine it - based on things like how I imagine Lyla works or mission teams are form and other stuff.

In my head Hobie, Gwen, Diane, and all Spider-sonas had to go through this lol

Um this was fun if you read this far I really appreciate it!!!! So take this photo of Hobie and uhhh....uhmm uh

Bye.

(also I mention Brown Spider who belongs to @brown-spider

And Disco-Spider Diane who belongs to me!)

[seven-meds]

Hi!

I love your art and I am extremely enamored by the beauty of your writing !

That being said, I am an artist as well and I feel like I have been stuck in a creative rut and I don’t know how to get to out ? Do you have an advice on breaking out of the hole and as well do you suggest drawing everyday as a method to keep up with skill?

Thank you so much <3

Thanks so much! I considered this for a while. Giving artistic advice, whether broad or targeted, is always difficult. It's too nebulous of a process for rules but everyone still has such a strong opinion on what the rules should be. 

In my experience, lulls are beneficial when seen from the correct perspective and then taken advantage of. Endless production is antithetical to all art that is not corporate in nature, and lack of inspiration means you will benefit from something often overlooked: new experiences and engagement with new things. Though if you do want to feel productive, take a sketchbook and a pen to a public area and draw what you see for an hour or two. You likely won't be inspired but you will feel accomplished.

Historically, artists took extended periods of time away from creating in order to experience life and take in the world, its people, and themselves. Not always willingly; some were torn away and sent to war, fled their homeland, or were imprisoned, enslaved, or institutionalized. And there are those who spent long periods of time bedridden by illness or injury. But whether their experiences were gained by choice, by force, or by nature, their time away from art is what ended up shaping what they made. Drawing in isolation will sharpen a skill, but it's through repeated use of that skill to translate your experiences that your art improves.

An artist's goal is communication first and foremost. This is why drawing daily on its own cannot make anyone a better artist. It will eventually lead toward some sort of technical prowess, but technical prowess with no voice is fairly pointless and very dull. Ideally, the development of voice will precede the development of technical skill and the two become honed in tandem. What you want to say should define what you need to learn. If you are developing an understanding of your own intentions then you are already a step ahead of the artist who is focusing solely on their ability to draw a head from every angle. 

It's beneficial to conceptualize art as a series of choices rather than a display of objective prowess. The more experiences you have and the more educated you are, the more sophisticated your choices become. You'll also find that you're able to analyze and appreciate (or criticize) the choices of other artists, increasing the enjoyment of engaging with art as a whole. You'll then be led toward more complex and unique work as you become bored with things that salivate over their own palatability. You may also find that art you've passed over before suddenly begins to speak to you.

Spend time exposing yourself to new art, ideally from large swathes of eras, places, and forms, including art that communicates things uncomfortable, disturbing, or offensive to you. Delve into the history of the artists and works you enjoy (or hate) in order to fully understand what's being said and why. If you currently find yourself interacting solely with contemporary art delivered largely via algorithm or advertisement that elicits feelings of familiarity and comfort, you should recognize that as a limitation. You are certainly free to work within it, but you will stumble into inspiration more quickly through exposure to different ideas.

It's also a good time to interact with others, if possible (even from a distance), and to look into topics completely divorced from art. Enrich yourself in many ways. The world is so vast and full of so much. What can you experience and learn that will make you yearn to communicate again? 

Try not to waste years studying aimlessly. Develop an interest, a concept, an idea, an experience, and then work toward communicating it effectively. You will learn as you develop new pieces (because you will put effort and energy into targeted research and study), and those pieces will become more complex in both substance and technique. 

Good luck!

[anemoiashifts]

why you should do your own research.

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚.

“you have to drink water.”

“you have to affirm through the day.”

“you have to think positive.”

“you have to lay in starfish position.”

“you cannot move.”

“you have to finish your homework.”

“you have to clean your room.”

you don’t have to do anything to shift or manifest. while these may be helpful for some people & can make certain people feel more “likely” to shift to their desired reality by cutting out distractions or “to-do lists”, there is no shifting step by step guide.

♡ why this is important ?

when learning, once you’ve learned something “wrong” it’s hard to unlearn incorrect practice & rewrite what you know to be true / false. those “wrong” thoughts can become a subconscious belief & you may not realize how these thoughts can hold you back.

if you have questions, don’t press that tiktok search ! don’t let someone tell you something. it’s 10x more satisfying & motivating to come across something on your own — outside of tiktok — because that was you putting action into your manifestations. it wasn’t someone else having an influence on your journey, it was you consciously searching for something & having it resonate & not having the algorithm feed something to you. it all comes down to choice & feeding your own curiosity.

♡ doing your own research vs validating predetermined belies.

if you’ve heard someone on tiktok that you now believe, will probably go looking for information that supports your existing thoughts — maybe even if you think it’s wrong. lead with an unbiased & open mind. you can learn a lot “from the other side”. when i say research i mean documents, studies, professional experiments that have been conducted, not random people on reddit , tumblr or tiktok. while these can be helpful, a lot of these are parroting others that may not be 100% true , thus breeding misinformation. you have to be very careful on who you can trust & believe. im specifically speaking to shiftok because — let’s face it — money can be made. if a more “validating & exciting” argument can be made for it that people want to hear, it will acquire more revenue. im not staying making money is bad, just be aware of that kind of stuff. people can twist words & leave out critical information to fit a narrative. it’s better to go straight to the study / source. it’s just more satisfying to see an article from 1988 proving your suspicions then a random girl on your fyp, you know ?

ps. i want to note science cannot prove everything as the term “shifting” — when it comes to what you may believe shifting to be — is a relatively new term from what I’ve seen. but !! it helps definitively when you have your beliefs backed by something. having that little bit of “proof”, that validation, can do wonders for some people. okay ! bye ! 🤍

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚.

[smute]

honestly the problem with booktok (and bookstagram) is not YA lit. it's not about people enjoying books that some might consider "low-brow" or whatever.

imo booktok is the culmination of several problems:

firstly, there's the homogeneity of algorithmic recommendations and the enormous influence those recommendations have on the publishing market. booktok recs tend to be of a very similar style and subject matter. they're easily digestible, easily bingeable titles that arent overly complex. booktok favors stories written by white women, often featuring characters with traumatic backstories and focusing on themes like overcoming adversity and the pursuit of romantic love. they are also usually very anglo-/americentric. none of this is necessarily bad, and none of it is by design, but it's not a coincidence either. it's the result of the constraints of short-form content on the one hand, and on the other, of an algorithm that amplifies, in broad strokes, the preferences of the core demographic of any given group of users.

secondly, it's about the commodification, not of reading, but of being Someone Who Reads Books (TM), which i think is just a particularly obvious symptom of online peer pressure and social-media-driven self-presentation. booktok doesn't encourage you to read, for example, sally rooney. it encourages the cultivation of one's own identity as someone who reads sally rooney. the problem here is not that sally rooney is a shit writer whose work has nothing of note to say. quite the opposite. sally rooney's work is relevant and interesting. in fact, it's being studied by scholars, and even if it wasn't, people can and should be allowed to enjoy some light reading, and yes, even Problematic (TM) fictional characters.

the real problem is the fact that the very nature of how booktok works actively discourages the critical discussion of the stories that it circulates. the problem is not millions of teenagers reading colleen hoover's slop (i love me some slop) – it's millions of teenagers encouraging each other to read and internalize – UNCRITICALLY – hoover's particularly romanticized depiction of abuse. tiktok's algorithm does not foster diversity of opinion. it doesn't foster diversity PERIOD. it doesn't foster slow, in-depth discussion. its only function is *make line go up* – line go up = clicks, views, engagement, money.

due to tiktok's popularity, booktok also has an enormous influence on marketing-related and (apparently, to some extent) editorial decision-making in the publishing industry. this is not just the fault of booktok, goodreads is part of the same problem. i mean, booktok has managed to turn colleen hoover's 'it ends with us' into a bestseller FIVE YEARS after it was originally published. it has also led to publishers dropping authors or DELAYING THE RELEASE of new titles after booktokers flooded the goodreads pages of unpublished books with one star reviews.

as i said, the underlying issue here is not unique to booktok. it's the same homogenization that plagues the movie industry, the tv industry, streaming services, etc. the publishing industry is just particularly vulnerable to such manipulations of public opinion. in the end, tiktok is not a social media app. it's an entertainment app and its content is focused on brevity. the biggest booktokers aren't simply avid readers. they don't post actual reviews of books they enjoyed. they're influencers who receive boxes of books from publishing houses to show off in haul videos like "have you guys heard of squarespace?" and that's it. the level of engagement with the texts themselves is like reading a blurb on the dustjacket, and unfortunately that is reflected in the selection of titles that become popular. if it can't be sold to you in 3 sentences, the algorithm will bury it.

[blackautmedia]

I'm sure plenty of people have seen that HBomb video now and one of the underlying things it indirectly touched on beneath a lot of it is also why I tend to be really picky with video essays.

Plot summary versus analysis. So many videos would benefit from this and be direct about what they are. Plot summary is still valuable when you know the audience you're courting is unlikely to know about the topic you're discussing.

Because there's a profit motive tied to most of them, particularly due to the amount of time and effort it takes to properly put one together, it creates a lot of situations where people are pumping out content to be as reactive and ride on trends as much as possible even if they're not well thought out. The algorithmic nature of YouTube also exacerbates this. You get a lot of videos that react to trends but don't necessarily have anything meaningful to say about it. Someone like HBomb can make a single video and reliably count on it being sufficient for even just a year, but most people aren't in a position to do content at that frequency.

A lot of more academic style video essays are almost always severely lacking in disability analysis and it displays a lot of harmful brands of leftism. That's not to erase the disabled voices we do have, but the focus on trying to apply so many academic norms to video essays also means that a lot of critical voices for oppressed identities that don't have easy access to those spaces (e.g. a lot of chronically disabled people) often don't get considered. Some of these groups you really have to be active in the communities to be able to know and listen to.

YouTubers also have to contend with the worse side of the algorithm in that you don't have enough control over what audience gets targeted in who views your video. How you frame and package your video is incredibly crucial to the audience you get and how they respond to it, but all it takes is your video hitting the wrong side for people to subject you to a great deal of harassment. I made a video where I just mention Chris Rock offhand in one sentence in a video not about him but people still get upset that I criticized him even though he's a rapist. White people get really uncomfortable at just the use of the word "white people" and stop listening and get angry in the comments. You can easily pick out moments where Youtube video essaysists will clearly have that "I don't really care about this, but I need to say this and spend half my video pre-emptively addressing really basic things in the hopes it'll reduce some of the harassment I get."

YouTube quite frankly is also just unsafe for a lot of creators. You run the risk of harassment and for many of the more marginalized voices (e.g. trans, non-white, disabled ppl, people of marginalized genders, etc) you're at higher risk for doxxing and other forms of danger. So there's always the lingering danger of being on some hate site or a part of a harassment situation.

Video essaysists that build enough of a following aren't just making videos, but they end up building a community and following. Because so many of the institutions around us deliberately withhold information about things like queer history and analysis, gender studies, race and disability analysis and so on, video essayists intentionally or not capitalize off that vacuum of information. A lot of the inaccessibility in how living spaces have become for people means that a lot of people don't have third spaces or communities they can turn to, which is a big part of what makes these personalities so appealing. Content creators should be very aware of that fact because if you make say LGBT content you're going to likely court a lot of younger LGBT people who don't have an ease of access to community. You're going to get a lot of undiagnosed neurodivergent people. I find a lot of attachment to individual creators can be rooted in a lot of the lack of community many of these people have, though certainly not always the case. I feel that leaving the conversation at just "parasocial relationships" also oversimplifies the nature of this part of the issue.

Academic so-called activist grifters position themselves as either activists, academics, or advocates but don't care to grow or do anything other than court bigotry out of their viewers under the guise of progressive ideology. Trying to make educational style video essays requires a great deal of humility, curiosity, and vulnerability in being able to constantly grow and challenge yourself in looking for videos, something a lot of people are not willing to do. A lot of bigotry just gets dressed up with progressive language. A Black youtuber talking about the ways white women perpetuate racism? Sure. A white "leftist" constantly injecting some attack against white girls and women in situations where it makes no sense though?

At the end of the day, I think it's good for both viewers and creators to be aware of these things and always treat essaysists with a bit of caution.

[codingquill]

19.09.2023

It's currently 9am , my goal today is to create a full-stack chat application .

And I also wanted to respond to @thepordigycarb's comment

You absolutely did not waste 6 years in my opinion. Algorithms are fundamental to every programming language. In my college experience, we dedicated an entire semester to studying algorithms, and it greatly helped us understand programming concepts. Algorithms foster critical thinking skills, which are essential for a coding journey. Understanding algorithm complexity is crucial because many companies assess problem-solving abilities during interviews. The best solutions are those with optimal complexity. This is where your 6 years of learning come into play. Additionally, knowledge of object-oriented programming (OOP) is vital.Java is indeed used in web development, with popular frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate.

Therefore, the post I published does not cover everything, but rather focuses on the essential basics that aspiring web developers need to know.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Galaxies in dense environments tend to be larger, settling one cosmic question and raising others

For decades, scientists have known that some galaxies reside in dense environments with lots of other galaxies nearby. Others drift through the cosmos essentially alone, with few or no other galaxies in their corner of the universe.

A new study has found a major difference between galaxies in these divergent settings: Galaxies with more neighbors tend to be larger than their counterparts, which have a similar shape and mass, but reside in less dense environments. In a paper published Aug. 14 in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers at the University of Washington, Yale University, the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany and Waseda University in Japan report that galaxies found in denser regions of the universe are as much as 25% larger than isolated galaxies.

The research, which used a new machine-learning tool to analyze millions of galaxies, helps resolve a long-standing debate among astrophysicists over the relationship between a galaxy’s size and its environment. The findings also raise new questions about how galaxies form and evolve over billions of years.

“Current theories of galaxy formation and evolution cannot adequately explain the finding that clustered galaxies are larger than their identical counterparts in less dense regions of the universe,” said lead author Aritra Ghosh, a UW postdoctoral researcher in astronomy and an LSST-DA Catalyst Fellow with the UW’s DiRAC Institute. “That’s one of the most interesting things about astrophysics. Sometimes what the theories predict we should find and what a survey actually finds are not in agreement, and so we go back and try to modify existing theories to better explain the observations.”

Past studies that looked into the relationship between galaxy size and environment came up with contradictory results. Some determined that galaxies in clusters were smaller than isolated galaxies. Others came to the opposite conclusion. The studies were generally much smaller in scope, based on observations of hundreds or thousands of galaxies.

In this new study, Ghosh and his colleagues utilized a survey of millions of galaxies conducted using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. This endeavor, known as the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program, took high-quality images of each galaxy. The team selected approximately 3 million galaxies with the highest-quality data and used a machine learning algorithm to determine the size of each one. Next, the researchers essentially placed a circle — one with a radius of 30 million light years — around each galaxy. The circle represents the galaxy’s immediate vicinity. They then asked a simple question: How many neighboring galaxies lie within that circle?

The answer showed a clear general trend: Galaxies with more neighbors were also on average larger.

There could be many reasons why. Perhaps densely clustered galaxies are simply larger when they first form, or are more likely to undergo efficient mergers with close neighbors. Perhaps dark matter — that mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe, yet cannot be detected directly by any current means – plays a role. After all, galaxies form within individual “halos” of dark matter and the gravitational pull from those halos plays a critical role in how galaxies evolve.

“Theoretical astrophysicists will have to perform more comprehensive studies using simulations to conclusively establish why galaxies with more neighbors tend to be larger,” said Ghosh. “For now, the best we can say is that we’re confident that this relationship between galaxy environment and galaxy size exists.”

Utilizing an incredibly large dataset like the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program helped the team reach a clear conclusion. But that’s only part of the story. The novel machine learning tool they used to help determine the size of each individual galaxy also accounted for inherent uncertainties in the measurements of galaxy size.

“One important lesson we had learned prior to this study is that settling this question doesn’t just require surveying large numbers of galaxies,” said Ghosh. “You also need careful statistical analysis. A part of that comes from machine learning tools that can accurately quantify the degree of uncertainty in our measurements of galaxy properties.”

The machine learning tool that they used is called GaMPEN — or Galaxy Morphology Posterior Estimation Network. As a doctoral student at Yale, Ghosh led development of GaMPEN, which was unveiled in papers published in 2022 and 2023 in the Astrophysical Journal. The tool is freely available online and could be adapted to analyze other large surveys, said Ghosh.

Though this new study focuses on galaxies, it also forecasts the types of research — centered on complex analyses of incredibly large datasets — that will soon take astronomy by storm. When a generation of new telescopes with powerful cameras, including the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, come online, they will collect massive amounts of data on the cosmos every night. In anticipation, scientists have been developing new tools like GaMPEN that can utilize these large datasets to answer pressing questions in astrophysics.

“Very soon, large datasets will be the norm in astronomy,” said Ghosh. “This study is a perfect demonstration of what you can do with them — when you have the right tools.”

TOP IMAGE: Image of Abell 2218, a dense galactic cluster approximately 2 billion light years from Earth. Credit NASA/ESA/Johan Richard

LOWER IMAGE: Images of galaxies of a variety of shapes and sizes. New research shows that galaxies with more nearby neighbours tend to be larger. Credit NAOJ/NASA/ESA/CSA

[bi-hop]

across the spiderverse spoilers under cut

was discussing the film with some of my friends who saw it last night, same as me, and I think I can provide a perspective on one of the major themes that is heavily rooted in the Black Caribbean student experience

tw: institutional racism, references to sexual harassment and antiblack hate crimes

everything in across the spiderverse is incredibly intentional, including the early college advising meeting. now, you may think it's solely furthering the theme of expectations, and while it is concerned with that in a fundamental manner, that's not the full story.

colleges, especially top colleges, want stories about struggle. they live for it! crave it! I was naive enough starting out that summer between my junior and senior years that I thought writing a personal essay about how my interest in game writing has influenced my own trajectory would fly. it didn't. my family, my advisers, they all said it lacked something, that it wasn't me. can you guess what WAS me enough to get me into 13 colleges, including the university of chicago? writing about me being hate crimed and sexually harassed at the same time. because I 'overcame it'. I struggled, yes, but I persevered!

I don't like college applications. I get the point of the holistic approach, but said approach fails students when what is personal is only seen as worthy if you suffered and can adequately describe it on the page. they constantly say 'we'd rather see a student who did poorly but had to raise their siblings than a Straight As students with no experiences to speak of' but why is the only merit we can find in students, especially students of color, moments of anguish that you have to then fight against? why do I have to recount the worst moments of my life (sanism in Afro-Caribbean communities, sexual harassment, the works) for the sake of a school that doesn't actually give two shits about me now that I'm here? thanks by the way, uchicago, love being a token, it's really cool. I swear this is still about Miles.

the framing of his familial story into something palatable yet appealing to princeton (a school that I also applied to back then) even though it's not exactly true? pure autofiction. and it's what colleges eat up. they want to see a Black boy, son of immigrants (again regardless of how true this might be), suffer but persevere. he's 'beat the odds'! look at him, going from his miserable little Brooklyn existence to studying quantum physics at an Ivy League!

and by the middle of the film, Miles says 'no' to all that. people are constantly trying to write his own story. they want to take who he is and judge it against a board of critics, against algorithms that say his choices are wrong, against his peers who don't think he belongs. and he says "nah. I'mma do my own thing."

he might not be able to transcend the desires of admissions, but he can assert himself here. he can protect his inner child as his mother wanted. and he does it as well as he can. it's why I relate to him so much, I wish I was in the position to do what he does: look someone dead in the eye and reject their narrative of him as unfair and stifling.

[kummatty]

Logic(s) Magazine and Arab Reform Initiative developed a one-year fellowship opportunity for Palestinian journalists and storytellers. Please share!

"The purpose of this program is to support community-led storytelling on Palestine and its relationship to technology, to strengthen the magazine’s contributions to Palestine reporting, and to redistribute resources to Palestinian journalists. Logic(s) will provide training, workshops, and informal mentoring to fellows on domain-specific topics like secure communication, algorithmic models, and techno-culture. ARI provides bilingual (English/Arabic) programming including a work group on tech in the Middle East North Africa region. Fellows have the option to participate in their work groups and publications if they are interested.

Each of the four Palestinian journalists selected will receive a stipend of 20,000 USD over the course of their fellowship year. They will participate in the Logic(s) magazine editorial board and have the option to participate in programming on critical technology studies alongside members of the ARI. Fellows are required to contribute at least one article to the magazine over the fellowship year but have the option to commission and publish up to two pieces per issue. We are a technology magazine that thinks about technology very broadly, publishing in a range of genres, including nonfiction essays, photography, graphic stories, poetry, and speculative fiction. Given that we publish only twice a year, we look for stories that take a step back to provide analysis on the larger historical, political, and technical context, rather than just-the-facts reporting better suited for daily news.

The fellowship is open to any Palestinian journalist and/or storyteller, anywhere in the world. Special priority is given to early career applicants who are either currently located in Palestine or in refugee camps, and/or have been recently displaced.

This fellowship was made possible through the generous support of Distributed AI Research, Migration and Technology Monitor, Pillars Fund as well as individual Logic(s) readers and supporters who gave between $5 and $45,000 each.

Priority Deadline: October 16 Final Deadline: November 27

For those who are ready to hit the ground running right now, they can submit within six weeks for an expedited consideration. For those who need more time, you can submit by November 27. At least two slots will be reserved for those who apply by the second date."

[darkmaga-retard]

AI is rapidly leading the world into a woke, left-wing sinkhole. The study concludes: “This shift in information sourcing [search engines vs. AI] has profound societal implications, as LLMs can shape public opinion, influence voting behaviors, and impact the overall discourse in society.” I can personally testify to this from my own experience with AI at several levels.

The study speaks for itself. There are two possible causes. First, the programmers are intentionally or unintentionally skewing the algorithms to lean left. Second, since the AI trains on content from the Internet, this could explain the bias. Or, it could be a combination of both.

All information in the world is not on the Internet. But the Internet has easily misrepresented or misquoted works of yesteryear to suit its new slant. Thus, much of past knowledge has been rewritten by changing contexts.

I have personally written queries for several AI programs to get answers on things like the Trilateral Commission, Technocracy, Transhumanism, global warming, Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, harms caused by Covid-19 injections, etc. Every answer I got tried to spin me away from any factual but critical information. Every single time. I can verify this because I am subject matter expert on all these, but anyone else would clearly be led into a ditch.

I asked several AIs to give me authoritative list of books on Technocracy, for instance. Half of what they gave me were minor-league. The rest were scattered. But my books were never listed. Really? One AI finally coughed up my name after I repeated needled it, but only mentioned Technocracy Rising; The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation.

Should any AI know about Patrick Wood in the context of Technocracy? Absolutely. In addition to my books, I have hundreds of in-print citations and countess video interviews over last 20 years. So, why doesn’t AI like me? Clearly, I am being screened out.

I use a program called Grammarly in my writing to help with spelling and punctuation. Predictably, they added an AI assistant to rewrite phrases and sentences. (This is common to almost all email programs and productivity tools.)  I routinely look at the suggestions that Grammarly queues up, but I always click “Dismiss.” Why? Because I know what I mean when I write something, and Grammarly wants to dispute with me by adding/replacing adjectives or adverbs or rearranging sentence structure. If I were to always click “Accept,” you would be completely and consistently led astray. – Patrick Wood, Editor

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrating into everyday life – as chatbots, digital assistants, and internet search guides, for example. These artificial intelligence (AI) systems – which consume large amounts of text data to learn associations – can create all sorts of written material when prompted and can ably converse with users. LLMs’ growing power and omnipresence mean that they exert increasing influence on society and culture.

So it’s of great import that these artificial intelligence systems remain neutral when it comes to complicated political issues. Unfortunately, according to a new analysis recently published to PLoS ONE, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

AI researcher David Rozado of Otago Polytechnic and Heterodox Academy administered 11 different political orientation tests to 24 of the leading LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT 3.5, GPT-4, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Twitter’s Grok. He found that they invariably lean slightly left politically.

“The homogeneity of test results across LLMs developed by a wide variety of organizations is noteworthy,” Rozado commented.

This raises a key question: why are LLMs so universally biased in favor of leftward political viewpoints? Could the models’ creators be fine-tuning their AIs in that direction, or are the massive datasets upon which they are trained inherently biased? Rozado could not conclusively answer this query.

“The results of this study should not be interpreted as evidence that organizations that create LLMs deliberately use the fine-tuning or reinforcement learning phases of conversational LLM training to inject political preferences into LLMs. If political biases are being introduced in LLMs post-pretraining, the consistent political leanings observed in our analysis for conversational LLMs may be an unintentional byproduct of annotators’ instructions or dominant cultural norms and behaviors.”

Ensuring LLM neutrality will be a pressing need, Rozado wrote.

“LLMs can shape public opinion, influence voting behaviors, and impact the overall discourse in society. Therefore, it is crucial to critically examine and address the potential political biases embedded in LLMs to ensure a balanced, fair, and accurate representation of information in their responses to user queries.”

Read full story here…

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 21, 2024

Suboptimal multisensory processing in pediatric migraine without aura: a comparative, cross-sectional study. Braunitzer, G., Tót, K., Eördegh, G., Hegedűs, A., Kiss, Á., Kóbor, J., … Nagy, A. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13, 19422.

Active cortical networks promote shunting fast synaptic inhibition in vivo. Burman, R. J., Brodersen, P. J. N., Raimondo, J. V., Sen, A., & Akerman, C. J. (2023). Neuron, 111(22), 3531-3540.e6.

Alpha-frequency feedback to early visual cortex orchestrates coherent naturalistic vision. Chen, L., Cichy, R. M., & Kaiser, D. (2023). Science Advances, 9(45).

Functional alterations of the prefrontal circuit underlying cognitive aging in mice. Chong, H. R., Ranjbar-Slamloo, Y., Ho, M. Z. H., Ouyang, X., & Kamigaki, T. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 7254.

Early Action Error Processing Is Due to Domain-General Surprise, Whereas Later Processing Is Error Specific. Choo, Y., Mather, A., & Wessel, J. R. (2023). Journal of Neuroscience, 43(45), 7678–7689.

The roles of surround inhibition for the intrinsic function of the striatum, analyzed in silico. Frost Nylén, J., Hjorth, J. J. J., Kozlov, A., Carannante, I., Hellgren Kotaleski, J., & Grillner, S. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(45), e2313058120.

Selective plasticity of fast and slow excitatory synapses on somatostatin interneurons in adult visual cortex. Grier, B. D., Parkins, S., Omar, J., & Lee, H.-K. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 7165.

Dopaminergic systems create reward seeking despite adverse consequences. Jovanoski, K. D., Duquenoy, L., Mitchell, J., Kapoor, I., Treiber, C. D., Croset, V., … Waddell, S. (2023). Nature, 623(7986), 356–365.

Association neurons in the crow telencephalon link visual signs to numerical values. Kirschhock, M. E., & Nieder, A. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(45), e2313923120.

A mechanistic insight into sources of error of visual working memory in multiple sclerosis. Motahharynia, A., Pourmohammadi, A., Adibi, A., Shaygannejad, V., Ashtari, F., Adibi, I., & Sanayei, M. (2023). eLife, 12, e87442.3.

A thalamocortical substrate for integrated information via critical synchronous bursting. Munn, B. R., Müller, E. J., Aru, J., Whyte, C. J., Gidon, A., Larkum, M. E., & Shine, J. M. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(46), e2308670120.

Change detection in the primate auditory cortex through feedback of prediction error signals. Obara, K., Ebina, T., Terada, S.-I., Uka, T., Komatsu, M., Takaji, M., … Matsuzaki, M. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 6981.

Immune activation state modulates infant engram expression across development. Power, S. D., Stewart, E., Zielke, L. G., Byrne, E. P., Douglas, A., Ortega-de San Luis, C., … Ryan, T. J. (2023). Science Advances, 9(45).

Dopaminergic error signals retune to social feedback during courtship. Roeser, A., Gadagkar, V., Das, A., Puzerey, P. A., Kardon, B., & Goldberg, J. H. (2023). Nature, 623(7986), 375–380.

Hierarchical temporal prediction captures motion processing along the visual pathway. Singer, Y., Taylor, L., Willmore, B. D., King, A. J., & Harper, N. S. (2023). eLife, 12, e52599.

Neuronal implementation of the temporal difference learning algorithm in the midbrain dopaminergic system. Stetsenko, A., & Koos, T. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(45), e2309015120.

Forgotten memory storage and retrieval in Drosophila. Wang, C.-M., Wu, C.-Y., Lin, C.-E., Hsu, M.-C., Lin, J.-C., Huang, C.-C., … Chiang, H.-C. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 7153.

Striatum-projecting prefrontal cortex neurons support working memory maintenance. Wilhelm, M., Sych, Y., Fomins, A., Alatorre Warren, J. L., Lewis, C., Serratosa Capdevila, L., … Helmchen, F. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 7016.

Vestibular contribution to spatial encoding. Zanchi, S., Cuturi, L. F., Sandini, G., Gori, M., & Ferrè, E. R. (2023). European Journal of Neuroscience, 58(9), 4034–4042.

Sampling-based Bayesian inference in recurrent circuits of stochastic spiking neurons. Zhang, W.-H., Wu, S., Josić, K., & Doiron, B. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 7074.

[kendrixtermina]

how finding your type can bring out your insecurities (& how this may actually be a misunderstanding)

I hadn’t put these on tumblr & it occurred to me that I probably should

1: 1s tend to be hard on themselves & constantly judge everything they or others do by criteria like factual correctness, appropriateness of morality. They can also have a fear of being bad or corrupt.

So when they read judgy hypocritical ppl who constantly give others the death glare they might freak out a bit – So they might end up being critical of themselves for… criticality, think they must be bad for having all these critical thoughts, constantly check themselves for the amount & appropriateness of criticism...

Some 1s beat themselves up for being critical without ever encountering typology, seeing as they are generally drawn to self-improvement, life advice & enlightenment etc & while some immature & unhealthy ones can be sanctimonious, average ppl with some shred of self-awareness are generally quite receptive to feedback, so often someone called them out for being critical & they tried to correct it or feel bad for it.

The counterpoint here is not even as simple as „its ok to make mistakes“ – the 1 attention pattern is to constantly evaluate everything, often in a ‚binaristic‘ fashion – Are the requirements met, yes or no? Is the room clean, yes or no? Have we correctly followed procedure, yes or no? Am I a good person, yes or no? - So a key insight here is that most people don’t immediately sort everything they see & might very much be willing to forgive 5% annoyingness on a 95% good person – especially if you’re willing to do the same.

2: 2s can often have the feeling that their needs are shameful & selfish, or nagging worries that no one really likes them & they just „tricked“ people into doing so.

When they read the descriptions, there mere suggestion that they may have any self-interest ever can feel like a confirmation of that: „Haha, you’re secretly needy just like you always wanted to avoid. Yes, you DID deliberately do things to make others like you. Some people might think you’re a pushy manipulator!“ - 2s can be particularly hard-hit by this cause they have a need to see themselves in a positive light, and may have had their more self-interested parts of their motivations (that ultimately, everyone has) repressed out of awareness.

Of course the real takeaway message is that wanting ppl’s love is a normal human trait & that ppl might be willing to give it – and that saying what you’d like might sometimes be more effective than trying to elicit it indirectly.

3: Some 3s can have this lowkey fear of having no real identity but what they deliberately present to the world, but even those who don’t might feel strong pressure to prove themselves as what their idea of being worthy/ valuable is (whether that is being the smartest, a badass leader, the most creative etc.)

So you see some individuals resist the typing with like real existential terror, „No, I’m real! I actually do have value! I’m not just pretending to be worth something. I’m real please believe me!“, sometimes decrying 3 as like being the „fake“ version of whatever type they think is the „real“ version of what they aim to be… which itself betrays an idea that your value as a person depends on fitting a certain prototype of value. Often their idea of the ‚target type‘ will have gotten a makeover that puts it nearer to Peak 3. (like appearing to picture it with a lot more social skills or motivation) Sometimes you get a person who’s studied the system for longer, has a correct idea of the other types, & hence puts themselves in the „none of them fit“ camp.

The real takeaway is of course that you actually have substance outside of ppl’s perceptions, even if those are what your attention often focusses on. You’re still there when no one’s looking – still real & still have value. Being a 3 doesnt mean you’re fake, it means that fear is an artifact of your perception algorithms. Though, if you see a way that you could realign your life to subjectively feel more in line with your feelings & preferences, that might help with that too. Eg, if something feels too much like an act or a stretch (as opposed to simply putting forward your actual good points so they aren’t missed), consider dropping it.

4: So, 4s fear being insignificant & replaceable, leaving meaningless lives, & build their sense of identity out of the differences they notice between themselves & others.

Even fitting into any sort of type at all kind of pokes at that – all this stuff you thought was unique to you & incomprehensible to others is actually a known quantity? There are thousands of ppl scattered somewhere out there who share it? If you are looking to define what’s uniquely you, that’s a huge „back to the drawing board“ moment. Was it all just illusion? Did all that suffering mean nothing? Was it just another instance of how you always ruin everything? Consider also that the 4 attention pattern involves reflecting upon your own feelings & responses, so for a while, you might be feeling a twinge of embarrassment everytime you see yourself Do A 4 Thing. Some also take it to mean that they are doomed to be unhappy & have dysfunctional relationships forever.

Some 4s throw themselves into self-develovement stuff to be rid of this „predictableness“,

& if this really does lead them to be freer & more enlightened and helping others do the same through taking a ‚shamanic‘ or ‚social critic‘ role, that’s great. The capacity for self-reflection that lets you a crisis of faith on your own is indeed one of strengths 4s can have.

Sometimes, however, it’s at least partially copium, an attempt at maintaining separation through being „more spiritual than thou“ & lambasting those who aren’t, but also pointing to their own messed-up-ness as an example for why people need to „repent“, in effect treating their typing as another reason why they’re irredeemably wretched.

Lambast away to your heart’s content, we have free speech here. However, what you might really question the basic premise that things that are shared or definable are always less meaningful. You’re never gonna be, like, a 6 or a 9 who’d take comfort in it if their suffering is shared, but if this particular shared or definable thing is important to you personally or just happens to be your personal truth, it may be more ‚authentic‘ to stand by it.

As for being doomed forever or irredeemable wretchedness…

Seeing as you’re wired to notice the negatives, you need not worry that you will ever „run out“ if you allow yourself to be happy 5 minutes. However, the fear that, if you allow yourself to rule something „good nuff“ it will be wrested away & you’ll be dissapointed again is harder to deal with cause that can never be 100% avoided. Disappointments can happen. But if you go looking for them preemptively before they hit you unexpectedly, you’re ensuring that they will happen. You might want to think about whether that is really what you want in each particular context.

5: 5s tend to have insecurities about being unable to satisfy others, of being inadequate, and of generally being empty and lacking.

So many among you probably devoured tons & tons of paragraphs & videos about how creepy, unfeeling, unlikeable and uncaring you are, and how frustrated, unsatisfied and neglected your spouse probably feels and how utterly Not Enough they probably find even the best of your efforts, precisely because of how it lowkey freaks you out.

You probably didn’t even get mad or indignant, you just resigned yourself to it – no use fighting against reality.

Many a guide to spotting the types in the wild goes into great detail about some hopelessly weird individual they met, detailing all the oddities of their speech and body language and how thoroughly impossible it was to connect with them in any meaningful way. Which is still alot less worse than the accounts that fall over themselves with pity for what an impoverished and diminished experience that person must be living, devoid of anything the presenter would consider meaningful or important. „Look at that weirdo! They’re so bad at existing! If only they let us save them, and by save them we mean throw out all their priorities and submit be meddled with according to ours!“ [funeral march starts playing]

Which is certainly not what anyone actually said nor how they meant it, but that’s how it can be heard.

Most 5s know better than to get indignant about something that’s plainly true but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting.

You have to realize that a lot of people aren’t even aware of the whole delayed reactions/ low level freeze thing & might be shocked to hear/notice it (& may have dismissed any such feedback as „they just don’t understand me“ or „its the others who are overdramatic or otherwise sus“) – and of course, your thinking immediately goes to how you’re inadequate.

I remember this mass freakout in the type subreddit where everyone was agonizing about whether their art might strike ppl as flat, lacking and feelingless.

And like, 80% had done some art and most of the rest „I wouldnt call myself an artist but I’ve dabbled“. That was a fairly creative bunch of ppl assembled there. Also, there’s plenty of famous musicians, poets and writers whom being a 5 plainly did not stop and whose works are not in the least considered flat lacking or feelingless. Some are renowned for quite the opposite.

So, if your art sucks its probably cause of you, not your type. And if it’s cause of you, actual practice probably helps, rather than just daydreaming about doing it… as would exposing what you’re working on to an actual test audience rather than tinkering with it indefinitely. (hence the high incidence of „works were published posthumously“) – what people think about your works, ideas or projects might surprise you, and leave you feeling a little less Inadequate(TM)

As for satisfying others, it would probably help not to unilaterally pack up and run for the hills the moment you think you can’t do what they want. You might be mistaken about what they want & be able to reach some mutually satisfactory agreement if you talk this over.

You can’t underappreciate (and I’m emphasizing this because of how much I underappreciated it) that normal people really really like spending time around each other. Like they don’t just want it more cause conventions say so or cause they need it more, they actually get a lot out of it.

So you might not actually have to jump through that many hoops for them to be happy about it, and when they say that they „just having you around“ even if you’re not obviously doing something useful, some of them might actually mean it. It’s not, in fact, too much to ask that they appreciate your efforts.

It’s mindboggling how anyone can hear those descriptions & think they sound like anything remotely desireable or like it would make you popular. To me it seems that to like being a 5 you’d have to already be one and even among those that are, some „wouldnt wish it on their worst enemy“. But that’s probably proof that the ppl who thinks it sounds great somehow don’t share this particular set of complexes and insecurities, and that the complexes themselves aren’t entirely rational. Not sure if relieved because of that or unsettled because of the biased nature of perception. Both at once, probably.

6: 6s seek to see through bullshit, be well-prepared for adversity & have the courage to deal with whatever the world throws at them. They have a fear of fear itself – eg. That they won’t be strong/brave/prepared/perceptive enough, that they’ll panic or crack & fail to protect their loved ones.

So, when they read the descriptions, they’re gonna be sensitive to the parts that sound scared, weak, panicky, dupeable or lacking in independence, as that is usually the exact opposite of what they want to be.

It doesn’t help that many 6 descriptions out there genuinely & objectively leave a whole lot to be desired, but the 6s themselves also tend to focus on the negatives, & distrust the intention behind the good traits („Loyal probably just means exploitable“) or deny that they even have any such good traits because they dont want to be blamed if they cant live up to the expectations it creates.

So actually, you might want to consider if it’s not worth the risk of admitting that you have some good traits, like being logical, discerning, perceptive, realistic, outspoken, resillient, resourceful, likeable and having strong convictions, solidarity, and a sense of justice. If they don’t all apply, focus on the ones that do. Or poll some ppl who actually know you, specifically.

Which brings us to the next point which is category thinking. It’s important to state that this isn’t per se about conformism or „completely defining themselves by labels“, but simply about seeing things through a lens of systems & categories. An intellectual/thinking lens, basically.

A well-developed, discerning 6 will be the first person to tell you that categories aren’t absolute and often overlap in contradictory ways, because they have a sophisticated & discerning understanding that can’t be compared to the less developed systemic thinking of someone who doesn’t use it as the main means to understand the world & hence hones it every day.

Still, this can cause them to heavily weight category labels when it comes to their identity.

A good way to spot a mistyped 6 is if they’ve made their type their username, they’re looking to connect with others of the same to comiserate about how the world did them wrong, they’re writing opinionated thinkpieces defending said type from misinformation... That’s the 6 „algorithm“, a behavior seen in many other areas of life.

(Notably, you never see a correctly typed 6 making their type their username, because, like most correctly typed people, they have some embarassment of the weak points.)

The tedency to „band together with others of shared interests“ is a sound survival strategy.

But here it can cause someone to become quite entrenched in or attached to the label they first arrived on even if it was just due to a simple beginners mistake or a set of bad descriptions.

Or they may resist a label they associate negatively because it would mean something drastic about who they are. Like they loathe conformism and think being a 6 would mean they are one.

But you’re still the same person before & after pinning some label on you to describe you. If you’re a 6 you’re already one, and if you are not conformistic now, saying you’re a 6 won’t make you that way.

Besides its quite natural to be annoyed with immature members of your own type cause, sure seems convenient & easy to just follow your worst impulses and avoid anything that challenges you rather than making an effort to be reasonable and/or fair to others…

7: One underappreciated thing is that part of the reasons that 7s avoid difficult feelings is that they believe they can’t handle them or that „everything will be awful forever“

So being typed as the „cant handle tough shit“ type can feel like a confirmation thereof. You see ppl lamenting possibly being shallow or wishing they were what they perceive as ‚deep‘ types, probably reflecting an inner complex that they must be interesting/entertaining enouh for others to like them.

eg. What they’re really afraid of here is, on the one hand, being boring or limited (for some being typed at all seems like a limitation, as every type has weaknesses.) and, on the other, since 7s often feel they can’t really depend on others, that others might get tired of them if you burden them with stuff like flaws, insecurities, or even just, like, limited entertainment value.

Plus, 7s have a need to see themselves in a good light, so confronting how they may have been selfish, irresponsible, unreliable or flakey in the past can be painful - & at that point it seems tempting to just put a checkmark under that whole ‚enneagram‘ thing & move on to the next cool-sounding curiosity.

What you might want to note instead is your tendency to think you need to have everything figured out at once, & how that is not a reasonable expectation is some contexts. You’re studying a system that’s supposed to tell you what biases you have, so it’s normal that it will point you to some errors or shortcomings, some of which will take a while to overcome – if it didn’t, it would not be very useful. But, knowing about it is an opportunity to do better.

Realizing you might have some flaws might be painful, so you might want to avoid sitting down & letting it sink in, but the feeling won’t last forever.

Also, you don’t need to always be nothing but awesome & dazzling & entertaining for people to like & accept you.

8: Now many do not, but generally 8s are the most likely type to say that they like being their type, & no doubt that some of them are grounded, pragmatic ppl who accept themselves & reality, see no point in wasting time wishing for an alternate reality that will never happen.

However, for some of those ppl it may rather be due to how their defenses work – they can’t attack you by saying you’re a villain if you flat out admit it. „Insecurities what insecurities? What do you mean, river in egypt? Talking how I’m a villain doesn’t bother me at all what do I look like some kinda softie? Nothing self-hating at all in going on about what a proud arsehole I am…“

The truth is that, at least in quiet, non-action moments, many an 8 may have had worries of being „too much“ for ppl to handle, or have regets about situations that they screwed up with their impulsive actions.

And now they’re apparently the „intimidating“, „rageaholic“ type? Ouch. Doesn’t help the whole complex about being „bad“ at all.

Also, many 8s have painful memories of situations where they felt they had to keep it together & ‚tough it out‘ despite extreme adversity, because else they would be finished, or because others relied on them to be the Unshakeable One, & the typing can probably remind them of that – it doesn’t help how the type tends to be idealized. Oh great, more ppl expecting you to be tough, more apparent conformation that no one will care how you feel inside.

On some level 8s want respect & consideration, but „hey please be nice“ seems like an obvious invitation for someone to come & do the opposite, so, what you see are aggressive responses to disrespect & preemptive posturing so nobody will dare do the disrespect (or far worse).

But is it really true that no one will care & that you always have to tough it out? Now, ovsly that doesn’t mean that it’s safe to tell all your sensitive & compromising information to the nearest oily used car salesman. That’s bullshit, as you were no doubt thinking already. But maybe in some special situations with some special people, you might feel better if you let them know what’s going on with you. After all you’re as deserving of care & consideration as everyone else, despite what that subjective sense of „badness“ may be telling you - & you’re probably more likely to get it if you get better at seeing where you’re actually being opposed and where preemptive strikes may be less needed.

9: 9s can have insecurities about thinking they’re unremarkable, don’t really have special traits, & that their presence doesn’t matter.

So at lot of the more unflattering traits like being reluctant to make waves, having a diffuse sense of self etc. may at first feel like a confirmation of this. „Ah yes im a boring person, I even got the Boring Person Type….“

Actually what being typed as a 9 means is, your subjective sense of being ‚just little old me‘ might be an illusion (so rather the opposite of confirming it), & you might have plenty of special strong points rife for discovery… and also, further cultivation. Withdrawn types underestimate how they might change things & might feel that it’s hopeless or not worth it, but that may not in fact be the case. So even if you think that you are, in fact, a doormat, you can change it - not overnight maybe, but, you know, manageable baby steps. More people will notice & appreciate your interestingness if you don’t hide it as much.

Consider this also: The fact that 9s are common means that a lot of ppl liked 9s, screwed them, and produced tons of little baby 9s. It’s probably not cause people loooove boring mates.

It might be worth looking up a list of widely beloved or accomplished Type 9 celebrities to dissuade yourself of the notion that it is in any way the „boring person type“. Would you say Tolkien was boring? Theoretically, you could be both a 9 and boring but your boringness would not be due to your type.

…

Of course, it is easy to list the conclusions like this. Even if you intellectually accept that it may be true it still won’t immediately feel true or sink in enough for you to act like it is. But being open to the theoretical possibility at least is a good start to allow the rest to happen and to „confirm itself“ through experience.