canadaduane
@canadaduane@lemmy.ca
- Comment on If we're living in a simulation, why would the simulation creators allow the sims to ponder and speculate whether or not they live in a simulation? 1 week ago:
Because their creators allowed them to ponder and speculate about it.
- Comment on Why is there so much hype around artificial intelligence? 2 months ago:
What would a good incentive structure look like? For example, would working with public school districts and being paid by them to ensure safe learning experiences count? Or are you thinking of something else?
- Comment on Why is there so much hype around artificial intelligence? 2 months ago:
I wonder if some of our intelligence is artificial. Being able to drive directly to any destination, for example, with a simple cell-phone lookup. Reading lifetimes worth of experience in books that doesn’t naturally come at birth. Learning incredibly complex languages that are inherited not by genes, but by environment–and, depending on the language, being able to distinguish different colors.
- Comment on Ok so coffee is made from coffee beans. And beans are *also* made from beans. Why is nobody making, like, black bean coffee? 3 months ago:
A coffee bean is a seed from the Coffea plant and the source for coffee. It is the pit inside the red or purple fruit. This fruit is often referred to as a coffee cherry, and like the cherry, it is a fruit with a pit.
- Comment on Why is there so much hype around artificial intelligence? 3 months ago:
I appreciate the candid analysis, but perhaps “nothing to see here” (my paraphrase) is only one part of the story. The other part is that there is genuine innovation and new things within reach that were not possible before. For example, personalized learning–the dream of giving a tutor to each child, so we can overcome Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem–is far more likely with LLMs in the picture than before. It isn’t a panacea, but it is certainly more useful than cryptocurrency kept promising to be IMO.
- Comment on Why is there so much hype around artificial intelligence? 3 months ago:
Is human intelligence artificial? #philosophy
- Comment on Help me understand littering 4 months ago:
Have you ever heard the story of the snake?
One evening, a man walks along a dimly lit path. He suddenly halts, his heart pounding with fear. Before him, on the ground, lies what appears to be a venomous snake. He freezes, paralyzed with dread. Only when a friend comes by with a lantern does the true nature of the object come to light: it is merely a piece of rope.
I learned this story from Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist author. He would indicate with stories like this that our perceptions shape our reality. Often, we react out of fear and misunderstanding, seeing snakes where there are none. He said that mindfulness and deeper understanding can act like the lantern, illuminating the true nature of our experiences.
- Comment on Help me understand littering 4 months ago:
I wonder if it would help to think back to the first time you littered? When I was 5 or 6, I remember eating a candy and not wanting the wrapper any more. It had to be someone else who saw what I did and pointed out that it isn’t good if we all did this, because then the playground would be all full of trash and we couldn’t play there. I was like, “Oh, I get it.” But if someone hadn’t explained it to me, I think the behavior could have innocently continued for quite some time. I grew up in a very rural place (northern Canada).
- Comment on Help me understand littering 4 months ago:
Your condescension has sent my IED absolutely through the roof
Do I have to break out the crayons for you?
You understand condescension, and yet you still do it yourself.
- Comment on Why is there no sense of "camaderie" in the workplace? 4 months ago:
Word of advice–be a good person to your colleagues, and let friendship possibly develop after one of you leaves. I’ve made many friends throughout the years once we each know there is no pressure to be friends. I’ve had many job leads throughout the years because people I previously worked with thought I was a great colleague.
- Comment on What are some things you can do to maintain your teeth when you don't have health insurance amd can't afford dental care? 4 months ago:
See comment above, but basically, I question whether mouthwash is all that, based on recent research: www.microbiologyresearch.org/…/jmm.0.001830
- Comment on What are some things you can do to maintain your teeth when you don't have health insurance amd can't afford dental care? 4 months ago:
Based on recent research, mouthwash is now in question in my books.
We aimed to assess if daily usage of Listerine Cool Mint influenced the composition of the pharyngeal microbiome… Listerine use was associated with an increased abundance of common oral opportunistic bacteria previously reported to be enriched in periodontal diseases, oesophageal and colorectal cancer, and systemic diseases. These findings suggest that the regular use of Listerine mouthwash should be carefully considered.
Basically, it differentially kills good bacteria, leaving more of the bad kind.
- Comment on Why is currency so essential? 7 months ago:
Here’s my take:
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We’re built for about 150 relationships max (Dunbar number), and yet we benefit from cooperation above that threshold. Rather than make it so we have to have a personal relationship with everyone who could possibly benefit us, we accepted a ramped down version of relationship we call “transactions”. This is a very weak replacement for a relationship, but it is a sort of “micro-relationship” in that for a brief moment two people who don’t know each other can kind of care about each other during an exchange. Through specialization, we can do something well that doesn’t just benefit the handful of friends and neighbors we have, but tens of thousands and possibly millions of people via transactions.
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There is a process called “commensuration” in the social sciences, where people start to make one thing commensurate with another, even in wildly different domains. For example, to understand the value of a forest and to convey its importance to decision makers we might say “this forest is worth $100 billion”. It’s kind of weird to do this (how do leaves and trees and anthills and beetles equal imaginary humoney?) But slowly, over time, we have made many things commensurate to dollars at various scales. (I don’t think this is a good thing, but it does have benefits). In short, more and more things that were part of an implicit economy of relationships (e.g. can the neighbor girl babysit tonight?) have entered the explicit domain of the monetary economy (e.g. sittercity).
IMO, in order to participate in the huge value generated by this monetary economy, people sometimes lose the forest for the trees (so to speak) and forget what really matters (e.g. excellence of character, deep relationships, new experiences, etc.) because it seems like we might be able to put off those things until “after” we square away this whole money thing first. But maybe “after” never comes–and the hollow life of a consumer capitalist drains the inner ecological diversity of a soulful life.
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- Comment on Why do people still eat beef when we know it's terrible for Earth? 7 months ago:
“We know better than you” has never been an effective way to change other peoples’ minds, in my experience.
- Comment on Why do people still eat beef when we know it's terrible for Earth? 7 months ago:
I appreciate your question, but I think “we know” is problematic:
- who is “we”?
- how do we “know”?
- can some people know one thing while others know the opposite?
I’m not trolling, either, just asking questions from a philosophical point of view. I’ve changed my mind about several things I took very seriously and thought I was 100% right about. Could others be dealing with similar changing-mind-through-time processes? Could you?
- Comment on What is the word for someone who is friends with different groups but doesn't have loyalty to any one group? 8 months ago:
Wolf in sheep’s clothing
- Submitted 11 months ago to [deleted] | 82 comments
- Comment on what has worked for you to stop getting angry thinking about people who hurt you? 11 months ago:
From “Verissimus”, a comic about the Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius: imgur.com/a/FlvGJGT
My favorite two are “Being unlike your enemies is the best form of revenge,” and “Goodwill is a virtue, the opposite of revenge, the desire to help rather than harm our fellow man. So replace your anger with its antidote: kindness.”