Monthly Archives: January 2020

Christian lifestyle and the reasons of so-called Christian education importance – Christian Post

Posted: January 18, 2020 at 11:02 am

By Anna Medina, Op-Ed Contributor | Saturday, January 18, 2020 Students at Spalding High School in Griffin, Ga., pray on August 23, 2019. | Screenshot: AHA

Does a Christian need education? Before answering, let's look at the history of this question. For almost the entire twentieth century, humanity has lived under the banner of scientific atheism. People were told that faith in God was supposedly incompatible with scientific knowledge, and therefore only backward, semi-literate people supposedly believe in Him.

But if that were true, then each person, regardless of character and other personal qualities, would automatically become an atheist after accumulating a certain amount of knowledge. However, this does not happen. On the one hand, many well-educated people believe in God, and on the other, many such people do not aspire to any knowledge, and at the same time consider themselves convinced atheists. Is Christian education important today? Of course, yes, because it leaves its mark on a persons lifestyle, his worldview and the opportunities that he can open before other people.

Christian Education Explains the Laws and the True Causes of Things

If we are striving for truly Christian education, then we must focus on the divine origin and explanation of the world in every subject. In the course of history, for example, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that behind all the events that have taken place over the centuries, there is a clear pattern. History is not driven by chance, but by God's purpose. He "rules over the kingdom of man" and does "everything according to His will." It is important to see the hand of the Lord and His sovereign goals in everything that happens.

The same can be said of the natural sciences. In Christian education, we cannot approach the study of phenomena from the so-called neutral positions. The neutral position does not exist. The world around it arose either as a result of chance, as unbelievers believe, or it was created by our God. And if the world is His creation, governed by His sovereign power, then we reject and insult God, not recognizing this in all the events that take place, whether in physics, biology, chemistry or any other science. An education that does not recognize the Creator God and the role of providence in maintaining a certain order in this world cannot be called Christian.

Christian Education Teaches Truth and the True Path

Sometimes parents believe that a secular environment will strengthen their children, teach them to defend their views. But the Word of God does not confirm this point of view. It does not say: "Let the youth twelve years follow the unrighteous path to strengthen him." God teaches us something completely different: Teach a young man at the beginning of his path: he will not deviate from the righteous one when he grows old (Prov. 22: 6).

Secular education is just the case when young people are allowed to follow any path the path of cruelty, bullying, self-centeredness, disrespect for elders and violence. There is not one such verse in Scripture that would say that secular education will strengthen Christian children, except in the sense in which stale bread is strong. Yes, it will make them callous and sin will seem normal to them. It will make them firm, and they will care more for worldly things than for God. It will make them insensitive to evil and it will be quite comfortable for them in a world that sins against their Lord every second. But secular education will not strengthen them as Christians, therefore, "teach a young man at the beginning of his path".

This is like a poor translation of an important document - it only seems that the meaning of the written is preserved, but in fact, it is hopelessly lost. To get a high-quality translation of, for example, a marriage certificate, which, as we know, are concluded in Heaven, you need to contact The Word Point translation service. And to strengthen your Christian soul, it is necessary to receive a religious education.

Christian People Can Give the World a Chance

So, what is the role of a well-educated person in the church of Christ? Generally speaking, the role of a well-educated believer is the same as the role of any Christian - to carry the gospel to a perishing world. Such is the nature of man he best perceives spiritual information from those who are equal to him both in rank and in education. Therefore, the role of a well-educated Christian is to bring the message of salvation to the society of well-educated people and to acquire at least some of them for Christ. The Apostle Paul was a well-educated man for his time. That is why he was to preach in Athens - in the center of ancient science and culture.

Scripture says that the whole world is controlled by evil. (1 John 5:19). Every believer should not only move away from evil but also expose this evil. And a well-educated Christian has to expose the evil that takes place among scholars. For example, now there is much debate about both cloning and experiments on pillar cells, that is, on cells of the human embryo, to obtain which this embryo needs to be killed, that is, an abortion is performed. And this is just the tip of the iceberg: modern science often goes beyond morality. And it is precisely well-educated believers who must raise their voice against this kind of lawlessness. And to see the boundary between the permissible and the immoral, you need to know the Scriptures.

Christian education is important, and most importantly, it should begin in childhood. In modern schools, much attention is paid to the development of mental and physical abilities, and this is good. It is bad that spiritual needs, which are very significant throughout the life of a child, do not develop, and therefore in our society, there are many spiritually and emotionally lonely people. The lack of religious education in childhood certainly affects the character of a person: in the mental warehouse of such people, a certain breakdown is felt. The child is unusually susceptible to religious impressions: he instinctively reaches for everything that reveals the beauty and meaning of the world. Take it from the child - and his soul will fade; the child will remain in a deserted world with his petty everyday interests.

Anna Medina is a specialist in different types of writing. She graduated from the Interpreters Department, but creative writing became her favorite type of work. She works as a freelance writer and translator forTheWordPoint.

See the original post:
Christian lifestyle and the reasons of so-called Christian education importance - Christian Post

Posted in Atheism | Comments Off on Christian lifestyle and the reasons of so-called Christian education importance – Christian Post

A brief history of doubt and the emotion that underpins it – Church Times

Posted: at 11:01 am

THE philosopher Charles Taylor puts it well. Why, he asks, was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?

The conventional, triumphalist, inevitabilist answers about secularisation tend to focus on philosophers and scientists, on the Enlightenment and the Victorians, and on intellectual critiques. But that misses a longer, deeper story.

Intellectual critiques of religion did not cause our modern secular surge. The purely rational case for atheism has added almost nothing to its arsenal for a century (only the neurological argument, really).

In the same time-frame, lots of anti-Christian truisms that every educated European in the early 20th century knew have been debunked. We no longer believe that the universe is infinitely old and entirely deterministic, that humanitys races are fundamentally different, that evolution is governed by some sort of progressive life-force, or that the Bible is a mere collage of myths shared by peoples across the ancient Near East.

And yet, during this same era, Christianity in the West has been receding, not advancing. It looks as if it is not all about science and philosophy.

Then look at the other end of Taylors timescale. The conventional story says that the starting-gun for modern atheism was fired by Spinoza in the 1660s. But, by then, the Christian West was already nearly two centuries into a full-scale moral panic about what it called atheism. The English word, coined in 1553, quickly became ubiquitous.

It was not just paranoia. The villain in Cyril Tourneurs 1611 play The Atheists Tragedy is a caricature, but Tourneurs rival, Christopher Marlowe, was credibly accused of saying: There is no God, and that Christ deserved better to die than Barabbas. It was proverbial that physicians, soldiers, and politicians were naturians or nullafidians, with no faith.

Even the most earnest believers found this kind of atheism in themselves. A pious Londoner described how she had spent the 1640s wrestling with temptations to believe that there was no God, no Heaven, and no Hell. The young John Bunyan spent a year desperately wondering whether there were, in truth, a God, or Christ?

None of these people had sound philosophical grounds for their doubts. Like nervous flyers white-knuckled during a nasty bout of turbulence, they told themselves firmly that there was nothing to worry about. But, under such circumstances, rational reassurance does not help much. In other words, atheism existed in practice before it existed in theory.

This is as we should expect, of course. If our own age has taught us anything, it is that intellectual arguments rarely change anyones mind. The conventional story has it that philosophers attacked religion, and people then stopped believing. But what if people stopped believing and then invented philosophies to rationalise their unbelief?

So, the answer to Taylors question why it is that belief once felt so natural, and now feels so difficult is an emotional one. We all accept that, when we embrace religious faith, we do it intuitively or emotionally, with our whole selves, not by dry calculation. My point is simply that when we reject or abandon faith, we do exactly the same thing.

THE emotional history of atheism that I have been reconstructing has two keynotes, which run deep back into the Middle Ages: anger and anxiety. Anger was directed at overbearing Churches, interfering priests, and the God who, they claimed, was on their side.

Anxiety was about whether God really hears prayers, whether the soul is really immortal. In themselves, neither anger nor anxiety threatened Christian society. They were perennial, predictable, and eminently manageable. The fury of a few blasphemers and libertines offered the Church exactly the kind of opposition it wanted. And stirring a little anxiety into the faith helped to ensure that it never solidified into a mere habit.

And then came the Reformation. Martin Luther turned his personal crisis of faith into a Europe-wide religious explosion by weaponising scepticism: training Christians not just to doubt other Christians, but to mock and vilify them, accusing them of perpetrating a centuries-long priestly con-trick. Pretty soon, whether you were a Protestant or a Roman Catholic, scorning other Christians beliefs as ridiculous was an inescapable part of your faith.

The point was, of course, to overthrow the corrupt Church and set up a purified one in its place. But the trouble with arming whole populations to fight a war of scorn and scepticism is that they do not always stop when they are told.

So some people turned their scorn on to the new religion as well as the old. Catholics were blind, and Protestants one-eyed, one group of French free-thinkers said. Only they themselves were truly deniaisez. The word meant both enlightened and deflowered. They had lost their religious virginity, and there was no going back.

Both anger and anxiety had a new urgency. That startlingly secular playwright William Shakespeare summed up an age of religious warfare in the words of a dying man caught in senseless crossfire: A plague on both your houses! Anger at the Churches had acquired a righteous edge. Was this how Jesus Christ would have lived?

As for anxiety it was not only the terrible choice between Catholic and Protestant, made in the knowledge that heaven or hell hung on the outcome. You did not need to spend very long impaled on that dilemma to begin to ask: is either of them right? Am I damned, whatever I do? Or is Hell simply another of those priests tricks? Would a good God ever truly condemn his creations to eternal torment? Maybe, a few people began to wonder, the most truly moral thing to do was to walk away from all this so-called religion?

And so, by the middle of the 17th century, something new was stirring. Moral rationalists such as the Dutch Collegiants, or mystics such as the early English Quakers, had turned their fury at the Churches and their struggles to find spiritual bedrock on which they could build a true faith into a moral struggle against religion and all its evils. When a brilliant, excommunicated Dutch Jew, Baruch Spinoza, fell in with the Collegiants and the Quakers in the 1650s, that was the world that he discovered.

Like him, many of the canonical founding fathers of Western secularism, from Pierre Bayle through Voltaire and Tom Paine to Feuerbach and beyond, were not trying to abolish Christianity: they were trying to reform and purify it. In practice, though, that could look pretty similar. If you conclude that your faith is built on sand, you might demolish it and start digging to find bedrock so that you can build anew. That is not too different from just smashing it up especially if, no matter how deep you dig, your shovel never seems to ring on anything truly solid.

Anger and anxiety kept simmering away: in the anticlerical fury of Karl Marx or the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, in the agonised doubts of Fyodor Dostoevsky or George Eliot. And, as ever, what truly fired those emotions was not science or metaphysics, but ethics.

LIKEWISE, the secular surge of our own times does not represent any kind of intellectual breakthrough; more that, in the wake of two world wars and the social revolutions which followed, our society no longer measures its morals by religious yardsticks.

Once, the most potent moral figure in our culture was Jesus Christ, whose ethics were normative for believers and unbelievers alike. Now, our most potent moral figure is Adolf Hitler, who has become our new, secular embodiment of absolute evil. That is the conviction on which most of our modern ethics, including the gossamer bubble called human rights, depends. So, now, Churchills speeches tug at the heart more than the Sermon on the Mount, and a swastika stirs deeper emotions than a crucifix. Its powerful, its fiercely moral, and its right as far as it goes. But it is not rational, it is not inevitable, and it is not stable.

The enduring truth is that, from the Middle Ages to the present, most of us have made the great choices beliefs, values, identities, purposes intuitively and emotionally. That is not because belief, or unbelief, is irrational. It is because human beings are irrational or, rather, because we are not calculating machines. The emotional history of belief and unbelief suggests that our intuitive choices often have a certain wisdom to them.

Blaise Pascal, the 17th centurys shrewdest wrestler with doubt, famously compared the choice between belief and unbelief to an impossible wager on unknown odds. His point was not to make a crass, pragmatic argument for faith: that was only ever a parody. It wasto demonstrate that multiplying proofs of Gods existence is futile. This is not an academic matter: too much is at stake.

And so, like any gamblers, we wager with our guts and our hearts. As well we should; for, as Pascal also told us, the heart has its reasons, of which Reason knows nothing.

Dr Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University. His latest book, Unbelievers: An emotional history of doubt is, is published by Harvard University Press at 18.95 (CT Bookshop 17).

Originally posted here:
A brief history of doubt and the emotion that underpins it - Church Times

Posted in Atheism | Comments Off on A brief history of doubt and the emotion that underpins it – Church Times

I would absolutely become a true believer tomorrow if – Patheos

Posted: at 11:01 am

Consider for a moment the essential idea in this photo illustration:

It would only take 1 piece of verifiable evidence to destroy atheism.

This is what distinguishes religious faith from religious doubt.

For example, science and common sense have provided veritable mountains of material evidence irrefutably contradicting many fundamental proclamations in the Bible, such as the age of the Earth, the genesis of humankind and how the solar system is structured and moves.

Which is to say, substantive fact has proven that the Earth is more than 4.5 billion years old (the bible says 6,000); our species, Homo sapiens, evolved from lower life forms over eons (the Bible says God originally created humans in the same form they exist today); and all the planets in our solar system, including Earth, orbit the Sun, and only moons orbit their parent planets (the Bible contends that Earth is the center of the universe around which everything else revolves).

And weve known these concrete truths for a long time now, centuries in some instances.

Reasonably speaking, the credibility of any book divined as the Word of God should be permanently destroyed if any part of it proves mistaken, not gospel, in other words.

But this has not fully happened because religious dogma, unlike facts, is based on inaccessible surreality, not reality, and believers trust sketchy and uncorroborated supernatural imaginings received from the ancients instead of material, testable, provable, empirical evidence obtained from the real world in the here and now.

As a nonbeliever in all things supernatural and superstitious, I subscribe to the sentiment in the photo illustration embedded here. If any any evidence were credibly produced that divinities exist in an invisible realm and control our lives beyond our capacity to investigate them, I would instantly transform into a true believer.

But such evidence has never been reliably, plausibly presented. So I remain unconvinced and live my life by the stars, as it were by the banal realities of existence, not seductive fantasies.

It would be a far different world if faithful people would hold their beliefs to the same rigorous testing that atheists and even agnostics do.

If they did, most of us would likely be of the same mind regarding the gods: There arent any.

Photo illustration/Atheist Global

Visit link:
I would absolutely become a true believer tomorrow if - Patheos

Posted in Atheism | Comments Off on I would absolutely become a true believer tomorrow if – Patheos

Godless Engineer Best Advice Ever #20 | Andrew Hall – Patheos

Posted: at 11:01 am

Episode 20 of Best Advice Ever touches on whether Jesus ever existed.

Here is the latest episode of Best Advice Ever, the show where awesome people share the best advice they ever received. Past guests include Professor Phil Zuckerman, YouTuber Steve Shives, and cardiologist Sanjay Gupta.

Lets go through some basics!

Godless Engineer is a YouTuber. He has 47,300 subscribers and has had over 7.6 million views of his videos.

Heres an excerpt from his about page on YouTube:

I am an ex-christian. There was nobody around to point me in the correct direction as far as thinking critically about what I believed. I was allowed to believe ridiculous things like that Adam and Eve were real people and a global flood I covered the earth. I felt stupid believing those things when they didnt make sense but I was told that was what I was supposed to believe.

I understand the sentiment. One of my friends observed Im so passionate about atheism because I feel like I was duped.

We take some time and talk about how Paul (yes, that Paul who wrote Acts and was integral in creating Christianity) never met Jesus. Godless Engineer continues to say Paul never met any of Jesus disciples. It seems what Paul had in spades was a creative imagination and a penchant for writing.

And what was the best advice ever? We delve into the nature of fear and how it prevents people from creating and living their best (or least bad?) lives.

I hope you enjoy this episode. Please go to the YouTube video,hit like and subscribe to the channel!

Thanks for watching.

Follow this link:
Godless Engineer Best Advice Ever #20 | Andrew Hall - Patheos

Posted in Atheism | Comments Off on Godless Engineer Best Advice Ever #20 | Andrew Hall – Patheos

Twitters Jack Dorsey on edit button: Well probably never do it – The Verge

Posted: at 11:00 am

Twitter users have been asking for the option to edit tweets ever since the service launched in 2006, but the company has always prevaricated, saying its looking into the problem, or considering it deeply, or a hundred other ways of saying please stop bothering us about this, please.

Now, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has given perhaps the most definitive answer on the question to date. During a video Q&A with Wired, Dorsey was asked if therell be an edit button for Twitter in 2020. He replies, with a faint smile: The answer is no. Watch below:

This isnt a huge surprise. Although Twitters users have long argued for the benefits of an edit button, the company has always been ambivalent; happy to consider the question to placate its users, but never actually committing to a fix. As Twitters product lead Kayvon Beykpour said last summer: Honestly, its a feature that I think we should build at some point, but its not anywhere near the top of our priorities.

In the video Q&A, Dorsey expands on this thinking, noting that the decision to leave out an edit button has its roots in Twitters original design. We started as an SMS, text message service. And as you all know, when you send a text, you cant really take it back, he says. We wanted to preserve that vibe, that feeling, in the early days.

He notes that the service has moved on since, but the company doesnt consider an edit button worth it. There are good reasons for editing tweets, he says, like fixing typos and broken links, but also malicious applications, like editing content to mislead people.

So, these are all the considerations, says Dorsey. But well probably never do it.

But again, note that theres just a sliver of ambiguity in what he says (well probably never do it), which leaves open the possibility of enabling edits in future. Whether out of strategy or spite, Dorsey just wont fully commit to an answer, giving himself the option of changing his mind in future. At least, then, he understands the appeal of an edit button.

Read the original:

Twitters Jack Dorsey on edit button: Well probably never do it - The Verge

Comments Off on Twitters Jack Dorsey on edit button: Well probably never do it – The Verge

Gaetz in Twitter battle with Florida House Republican | TheHill – The Hill

Posted: at 11:00 am

Rep. Matt GaetzMatthew (Matt) GaetzGaetz in Twitter battle with Florida House Republican Apple under pressure to unlock Pensacola shooter's phones Conservatives slam Warren's call to put transgender women in women's prisons MORE (R-Fla.) exchanged insults with Florida state Rep. Chris Latvala (R) in a nasty Twitter feud earlier this week.

Itbegan Monday shortly after Latvala tweeted a photo of himself meeting the Rev.Al Sharpton, a moment he described as an honor.

It was an honor to meet @TheRevAl today. #FlaPol pic.twitter.com/ecL4Y6asKO

The photo was met with criticism from Gaetz hourslaterin a tweet that kicked off the feud between the two Republicans.

Sharpton has called cops pigs, whites interlopers, Greeks homos and Jews diamond merchants. So that is pretty disgusting, Gaetz tweeted.

Sharpton has called

Cops pigsWhites interlopersGreeks homos andJews diamond merchants

So that is pretty disgusting. https://t.co/SODj3YPBke

Less than an hour later, Latvala responded with a knock of his own that immediately escalated the feud.

And you created a game where members of the FL House got points for sleeping with aides, interns, lobbyists, and married legislators. Hope DC is treating you well, Comgressman, he wrote.

And you created a game where members of the FL House got "points" for sleeping with aides, interns, lobbyists, and married legislators. Hope DC is treating you well, Comgressman. https://t.co/PGFuQHJbEJ

Latvalas accusation, which Gaetz denied in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday, references a game that was alleged to have been played in the Florida House of Representatives years back.

Marc Caputo, who currently reports for Politico, tweeted about how the alleged game was played in 2013, when he was working for the Miami Herald.

Hey ladies! Source: young male FL Reps have point-system contest for having sex: 1=lobbyist 2=staff 3=other legislator 6=married legislator

Gaetz, who served in the Florida House of Representatives before being elected to Congress in 2016, told the Times that he had no idea what Chris was talking about on Tuesday.

I know Jack Latvala has to resign in disgrace over demanding sexual favors from lobbyists in exchange for appropriations, so it was likely Chris projecting, he continued. I dont start conversations with people on Twitter about their sex lives. Especially Latvalas.

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, there is a history of bad blood between Gaetzs and Latvalas families in Florida.

Gaetz responded to Latvalas accusation on Twitter later Tuesday night, tweeting at the time, Just because I own you on twitter, dont confuse me for your daddy when it comes to abusing power for sex.

Also, I missed the defense of Sharpton in your reply, he added.

Just because I own you on twitter, dont confuse me for your daddy when it comes to abusing power for sex.

Also, I missed the defense of Sharpton in your reply.

According to the Times, Latvalas father, former state Rep. Jack Latvala (R-Fla.), resigned from his seat in 2017 after allegations of sexual harassment that were brought against him.

Latvala shot back at Gaetz on the same night on Twitter, writing, Have you been drinking tonight?

I hope you dont get behind the wheel. I know you have had a rough few days up there, he added, appearing to refer to Gaetzs DUI arrest in 2008.

Have you been drinking tonight? I hope you dont get behind the wheel. I know you have had a rough few days up there.

I spent my day talking to my friend & supporter, the President. You spent yours with Al Sharpton, Gaetz responded soon after.

I spent my day talking to my friend & supporter, the President.

You spent yours with Al Sharpton.

Yep. I'm not afraid to meet with folks with differing opinions than mine. Hence why I posted the picture on Twitter, Latvala added.

yep. I'm not afraid to meet with folks with differing opinions than mine. Hence why I posted the picture on Twitter....

Gaetz and Latvala did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Hill.

Go here to see the original:

Gaetz in Twitter battle with Florida House Republican | TheHill - The Hill

Comments Off on Gaetz in Twitter battle with Florida House Republican | TheHill – The Hill

Elon Musk keeps getting owned by the PA Treasury’s Twitter account – Mashable

Posted: at 11:00 am

Elon Musk has a new high-profile Twitter hater, and for some bizarre reason, it just so happens to be the official account of the Pennsylvania State Treasury.

The certified Extremely Online CEO has had his share of Twitter beefs over the years. From calling someone a "pedo guy" to possibly ripping off farting unicorn artwork, Musk has typically been the instigator in online matters past. Not anymore.

The verified @PATreasury account started dropping Musk-flavored insults last August, but the campaign of dunks truly began in earnest on Monday.

"'What if we took something like a subway, but made it unfathomably expensive and only for cars, and also make sure that it will never work?'Elon Musk,,a genius," wrote the Treasury.

That message was quickly followed by another tweet unfavorably comparing Musk to Mark Zuckerberg. Damn, that's harsh.

"A big difference w/ Zuckerberg and Elon Musk is that Treasury has worked hard for yrs to make gradual progress on getting Zuck to not serve as CEO and Chairman of the Board at the same time; and Elon Musk literally did a tweet so bad that he was forced to step down as Chairman," read the Tuesday tweet.

In case you're curious, the verified account repeatedly owning Musk really is a Pennsylvania Treasury account. A July article in the Pittsburgh City Paper confirms that, yes, this is all legit.

"We decided to create the account and get kind of weird with it, but hopefully not too weird," one of the people behind the account told the paper.

We reached out to the Treasury via email in an attempt to figure out what, exactly, is going on here, but unfortunately received no response as of press time. We did, however, hear back from the @PATreasury account itself over Twitter direct message.

"Its not some specific thing about Musk," read the response in part. "The real conversation is about investment in public infrastructure versus a private company trying to do this stuff, wealth and income inequality, corporate power, etc. But clearly Musk gets people thinking about this stuff."

Essentially, it's trolling to spur public discourse.

"Were trying to engage our PA constituents into a conversation about the issues that matter to them," continued the response, "so however we can get that going is good to us."

Which, sure, why not?

SEE ALSO: Has Elon Musk finally ... cracked?

And maybe, just maybe, it will have the side benefit of luring the CEO into another public Twitter feud. Because he definitely needs one of those.

Read the original here:

Elon Musk keeps getting owned by the PA Treasury's Twitter account - Mashable

Comments Off on Elon Musk keeps getting owned by the PA Treasury’s Twitter account – Mashable

It’s Easy to Be a Jerk on Twitter. And Twitter Wants to Fix That – WIRED

Posted: at 11:00 am

NT: You need a red checkmark if somebodys a total dick. Theres some line they cross, and then they get a red checkmark next to their profile.

KB: It's a funny example, but if you think about a service like Lyft or Uber, there is a disincentive to be a total jerk. As a passenger, I have a passenger rating. As a driver, I have a driver rating. And there's an understanding within the marketplace that if you behave a certain way, that your reputation will be impacted in a way that can have adverse consequences. And I think that notion exists in some capacity on Twitter, but not enough.

NT: Let's say somebody comes to you says, You know what, I totally agree, Kayvon. Let's do this. Let's give everybody a troll score. And we'll use our AI to determine how much of a troll theyve been. Like how much shitposting they've done, how many cruel statements, how many times they've been flagged. We'll make it one to five, it won't be the most prominent thing, but it will be next to your follower count, right? What's wrong with that? Can we do that?

KB: It sounds like you want to be a product manager. Are you interested in doing that?

NT: If you will let me create a troll score on Twitter, I will be a product manager on Twitter tomorrow. That would be hilarious.

KB: Yeah, I think it's a good example, with the troll score as a symbol of something we could do is a good example. There's going to be account-level solutions. Then there's content-level incentives, like the likes and the retweets are mechanics that exist at the content level, not necessarily at the account level. So there isn't a single silver bullet here. But our plan is to be thoughtful about this stuff, continue doing a lot of research and experiment.

NT: So let's get more specific. Instagram has announced that they're heading toward demetrification. They're not going to show the number of likes on the story, they're going to either deemphasize or hide the number of followers you have. If you hid the number of followers that people have, you totally change the incentives of the platform. You might get less engagement, but my guess is you get more health. Why haven't you done that?

KB: Well, so actually, we have in our public experimentation app that I mentioned, Little T, we did exactly that. We deemphasized the like count, the retweet count. And when you look at the conversation, we actually don't show those metrics in the forefront. Similar to Instagram, we haven't removed them, we buried them. And we wanted to understand what the implications of that are to how the conversation unfolds. But that's a pretty minor step. Nevertheless, an interesting step. I think there are more extreme steps that we can consider.

NT: So what have you learned? Are you going to do this?

KB: That's something that we're actually moving into public experimentation with right now.

NT: So you've gone fromyou've done the experimentation with Little T, you're going to do public experimentation at some point in the next year, there may be an announcement, there may not be an announcement?

KB: Yes, but not again, I think it's important to know that this isn't just limited to visually removing orsuppressing or elevating metrics is one way to do it. I personally think that are even more meaningful ways that we can introduce new incentives.

NT: So actually more like adding a troll score or changing the structure of the algorithm?

Originally posted here:

It's Easy to Be a Jerk on Twitter. And Twitter Wants to Fix That - WIRED

Comments Off on It’s Easy to Be a Jerk on Twitter. And Twitter Wants to Fix That – WIRED

Twitter and Microsoft sign on to amicus brief against Trumps immigration rule to keep out low-income migrants – Vox.com

Posted: at 11:00 am

Twitter, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and dozens of other tech companies are calling for an end to a new rule that places restrictions on low-income immigrants entering or living in the US.

The companies signed on to an amicus brief filing in the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Thursday, against the administrations public charge rule, which would establish a test for whether immigrants are likely to use public benefits in the US like food stamps or Medicaid. If so, immigration agents would be able to deny their right to legally enter or live in the US. The rule has been blocked from implementation by state lawsuits.

In the brief, which calls the rule an arbitrary, capricious and unconscionable regulation, the companies argue that it would slow down their ability to hire crucial employees by tacking on additional requirements and paperwork to the already lengthy immigration process.

The document, which was filed by immigration technology company Boundless Immigration, argues that the bill could cause tens of billions in negative economic impact far outweighing the savings President Donald Trump has estimated it would reduce in taxpayer dollar spending. By signing it, these companies hope to sway the courts to appeal the presidential administrations increasingly harsh policies toward immigrants, which they see as not just morally wrong but also financially harmful to their operations.

By hindering immigrationincluding the movement of highly-skilled immigrantsthe Rule will slow economic growth, prevent businesses from expanding, and break faith with core American values, reads a draft copy of the brief obtained by Recode. This is bad policy for American businesses and American taxpayers.

Compete America, a coalition of tech firms that advocates on immigration policy, also signed on. Its members include major tech companies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

This is not the first time that tech has rallied against the Trump administrations immigration policies. In the past, tech companies have challenged proposed changes to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and theyve also criticized the travel ban. This latest brief signals that these tech companies oppose immigration policies that target low-income immigrants, too, and not just those who have high-income job offers and the potential to work in the tech space.

The public charge rule, published in August, has been controversial since its release. Politicians, judges, and human rights advocates say that its antithetical to American values around welcoming immigrants of all backgrounds, regardless of their income.

Trump, meanwhile, has said the rule is long overdue to make sure that immigrants are financially self-sufficient and to protect benefits for American citizens.

Studies have shown that low-income immigrants are less likely to use public benefits than low-income native-born Americans. But Trump has focused on what he says is a growing problem of immigrants using public benefits at other Americans expense.

Several federal courts in states such as California, New York, and Washington have blocked the rule from going into effect by issuing injunctions while they hear legal cases against it. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to lift those injunctions so the rule can take effect.

Tech companies opposition to the bill focuses on how it would add more hurdles to the green card and visa application process for immigrant workers. They also argue that adding a list of disqualifying factors for immigrants, such as having poor credit scores, being over the age of 61, or having debt of any kind, would restrict their potential workforce both directly and indirectly.

Even if highly educated and well-paid engineers meet the new qualifications, they could slow down the entire immigration process. More broadly, these tech companies argue that Americas innovation is fueled by attracting entrepreneurs and talented individuals around the world. Immigrants have been a key driver of financial success in Silicon Valley. About 56 percent of the 25 most valuable tech companies in the US had a founder who was a first- or second-generation immigrant, according to a 2018 estimate.

Our nations strength comes from our ability to attract top talent from around the world to come and contribute to our economy, wrote a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to Recode. Among our concerns with the rule is how it would negatively impact the immigration prospects of people with disabilities. We believe that having a diverse workforce that includes people with disabilities is essential to our mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, shared a similar statement expanding on its support of the brief. Were committed to creating economic opportunity for everyone, regardless of their social or economic status, a spokesperson for LinkedIn, Riki Parikh, told Recode in a statement. We know that immigrants play a critical role in our countrys economic growth, and that were a stronger and better company because of the diversity of our workforce.

One company is notably missing from the list of major tech signatories and supporters on this amicus brief: Apple.

In the past, the iPhone manufacturer hasnt been shy about its opposition to Trumps immigration policies. In October 2019, the company filed an amicus brief in support of DACA a program introduced by former President Obama that has protected around 800,000 immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation. Trump terminated the program in 2017. Apple CEO Tim Cook personally signed on to the impassioned brief, calling it a moral issue, and noting that the company currently employs hundreds of people under DACA protection.

But now, on another major policy that could negatively impact immigrants across the board, the company has yet to take a public stance.

Apple did not respond to Recodes request for comment about why the company is not signing the brief against the public charge rule, or if it has a stance on the public charge rule.

Whether or not the public charge rule will go into effect is up to the courts. Thats why tech companies filing amicus briefs could potentially make a difference on this issue.

Seeing as tech is one of the main drivers of growth in the US economy, and a major employer of high-paying jobs, these companies opinion on these cases could very well sway judges, including conservative ones who may be more convinced by economic reasons rather than political arguments.

Whether or not these court cases ultimately keep the public charge rule from being implemented, its already hurting many immigrants. As my Vox colleague Nicole Narea wrote, the rule has had a chilling effect already: Non-citizens have been needlessly dropping their public benefits at alarming rates for fear that they will face immigration consequences.

Xiao Wang, the CEO of Boundless, which is filing the brief, says that his goal in rallying tech companies on this issue is to provide people with the same opportunities he had to become a successful business leader.

My family gave up everything to make it in America because this is where dreams come true, Wang told Recode. So its heartening for me to hear that all these other companies also think about the future of this country.

The rest is here:

Twitter and Microsoft sign on to amicus brief against Trumps immigration rule to keep out low-income migrants - Vox.com

Comments Off on Twitter and Microsoft sign on to amicus brief against Trumps immigration rule to keep out low-income migrants – Vox.com

Math-obsessed Andrew Yang should be thrilled with these Twitter hashtag numbers – Fast Company

Posted: at 11:00 am

Tuesdays Democratic debate in Des Moines, Iowa, produced plenty of attention-grabbing hashtags and viral moments, including one final moment of tension betweenBernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, during which the two senators accused each other of lying.

But math, unlike politicians, doesnt lie.

Thats why the candidate who should be the most pleased with all the debate-related Twitter chatter is one who wasnt even in the debate. Businessman Andrew Yang failed to meet the polling threshold to participate in Tuesdays event, but his supporters made their presence known nonetheless. According to new data from analytics firm Sprout Social, #AmericaNeedsYang was the top hashtag related to the debate on Tuesday, not counting general hashtags like #DemDebate or #DemocraticDebate. Bernie Sanders nabbed the No. 2 spot with #Bernie2020, while Yang landed in the No. 3 spot, too:

For the upstart candidate who turned MATH (Make America Think Harder) into an acronym, those numbers arent too shabby.

Sprout Social measured social media volume and sentiment on January 14, the day of the debate. The data also shows that Sanders was the most talked-about candidate on the debate stage, with more than a million Twitter mentions on Tuesday. But 44% of those mentions were negative, the data shows. Sentiment around Warren wasnt much better:485,380 Twitter mentions, 41% of which were negative.

Overall, no candidate should be thrilled with how people are feeling about politics these days.Sprout Socials data showed that 57% of the general Twitter chatter around Tuesdays debate was negative, while only 21% was positive and 22% was unrated.Based on my own (unscientific) review of debate-related headlines over the past two days, Id say those numbers probably add up.

Read more from the original source:

Math-obsessed Andrew Yang should be thrilled with these Twitter hashtag numbers - Fast Company

Comments Off on Math-obsessed Andrew Yang should be thrilled with these Twitter hashtag numbers – Fast Company