YouTube has disappointed us all by removing the Dislike bar

 The Dislike bar was very useful.

1. It indicated the quality of the video / content, allowing us to decide if it was worth watching.
2. It indicated if the video was controversial (think 50-50 bar). Thus it showed where other people stand on the content of the video.
3. It was a quick summary of the public perception without needing to read many comments.
4. It was YouTube's qualitative advantage over videos & content from FB, Insta, Twitter. Those platforms without a dislike button allow crap content to be prevalent.

Youtube may give bullshit reasons like they removed the Dislike bar to "protect" creators from dislike-harassment but actually their motivation to remove it comes from point (1). If we cannot see the dislike count, it would increase user engagement, user watch time, increasing monetary profits. 

Thus, I urge you to realize this, and consciously reduce YouTube engagement.

• Skip over videos that you are unsure of for which you previously would have consulted the Dislike bar. Don't give them the watch-time, ad-time and Views.
• Unsubscribe from YouTube Premium. Use an adblocker in the browser. I guess if you are a power user who uses it on mobile & TV, this will be hard to resist.
• Use more alternative sites like Odysee.com, Vimeo, DailyMotion, FB Videos, CuriosityStream etc.

By removing the Dislike count, the valuable information gained from points (1), (2) & (3) will be lost forever in the future. The way people use the Dislike button will change because they cannot see the Dislike bar. More of crappy content will become prevalent. Imagine clickbait videos, fake news, fake guru videos for which you would not be able to see how many others have Disliked; you would take that content more seriously than if you could see the Dislike count. Bad content creators won't get accurate feedback.

I'm sure Google / Youtube understands all these negative consequences; because afterall they are the smartest people. But they can afford to do this because they have a monopoly. This is why we can't have good things. When a company has a monopoly, the quality of the product goes down. They just think of maximizing profits.

It is sad that Google / Youtube has made this decision for chasing financial profits, by causing a reduction in user experience and reduction in quality of content in the future. Google used to be the charming company that made products for actual good of the world, not for profits. But seeing this deviation change from their original company principle is saddening, lowering their image in the eyes of the public.

Perhaps by boycotting their attempt at increasing user engagement they would bring back the Dislike bar.

Finally, I leave you with the following three videos to watch to understand why censorship on Youtube, FB etc is bad. Hiding the Like/Dislike opinion of other users is a form of censorship.

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Purpose of Life - Revisited

 Ten years ago, after finishing my bachelors when I was in an existential crisis, I had come up with this purpose for my life:

My purpose of life, since we do not know our purpose, is to find that purpose of life. i.e. Work on finding out the Truth, meaning of life and universe. 

One way I figured I could contribute to this is through the field of machine learning and AI - I did not understand it much especially since I had studied mechanical engineering, but I felt it in me that these could be legit avenues. I figured if we ever invent a "self-learning machine", and provide it the same senses, cognition and motion as humans, it would learn and grow way faster than humans could. And then when it knows more than humans, we could just ask it the purpose of life.

My life did not go as planned for whatever reasons. I could not get onto that academic path of contributing to such science & tech directly [yet?]. Blame it on opportunities, circumstances, resources, personal flaws, procrastination, lack of information, bullshit US visa system, whatever. Life happened. I have been quite depressed about that for long.

Recently, I have been revisiting the simulation hypothesis (like The Matrix), and it has been causing a bit of an existential crisis again. Imagine humans in an effort to understand the universe spend thousands of years with science, tech, art etc, and finally understand it only to discover that they have perfectly understood only a simulation, and there is another real universe outside it with an unknown number of layers of simulations outside it! Our simulation may not have the same behavior as the real universe. The real universe may not even be observable. That information may just not be available to us. What then! Well, that throws out my original purpose which had pacified my existential crisis. 

I have also been reading / watching a little about how there possibly are limits to what we can know. Something like Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

So I guess if purpose-1 would be fundamentally impossible, then what's there to life at all? Other than just having fun, do your time and get out when it's time? Hence, I now have a secondary purpose in addition to the original primary purpose (at least tentatively until it gets ingrained):-

Enjoy living, as if you're in a video game with just 1 life. There's no meaning to life, just do what you like.

This is the message of the movie Soul. It's the same message as Kurtzgesagt's video on Optimistic Nihilism. It's probably the same message as when people say "Don't forget to have fun!". It's probably the same message as what my mom writes in her email signature - "Be Happy". It's the same message as The Happiness Equation's rule - "Be happy first, then pursue wants".

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Musings to follow this:

Implications of that purpose. Hedonism? Maximizing fun? Short-term vs Long-term gain? Calculative vs impulsive? Calibration of that? Morality? 

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