FaceDeer
@FaceDeer@fedia.io
Basically a deer with a human face. Despite probably being some sort of magical nature spirit, his interests are primarily in technology and politics and science fiction.
Spent many years on Reddit and then some time on kbin.social.
- Comment on Stupid sexy raft 1 hour ago:
"If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be an experiment, would it?"
- Comment on Do you think there would eventually be technology to delete/replace memories (like the *Men In Black* device). How much do you fear such technology? (like misuse by governments/criminals) 2 days ago:
Yeah, I was going to recommend this one too. IMO one of the more realistic depictions of how memory-editing technology would work, at least in terms of what the technical requirements would be. All the inside-the-head stuff was just good cinema, not necessarily realistic.
- Comment on "Does Hitler have a right to privacy?" and other big questions in research ethics. 4 days ago:
The way I've reconciled the Paradox of Tolerance for myself is to view tolerance as part of a social contract. The social contract demands that tolerance be extended to everyone who in turn accepts that social contract themselves. "Being tolerant" doesn't necessarily require that tolerance to be given out indiscriminately. Like how I wouldn't consider a vegan any less a vegan if they ended up having to kill something in self-defense, even if they had to kill it by biting chunks out of it.
- Comment on When "AI" content becomes indistinguishable from human-made content, is there, philosophically speaking, any meaningful differences between the two? 5 days ago:
No, as I said courts have been ruling the opposite. The act of training an AI is fair use. There have been cases where other acts of copyright violation may have occurred before getting to that step (for example, the download of pirated ebooks by Meta has been alleged and is going to trial) but the training itself is not a copyright violation.
You can argue about ethics separately but if you're going to invoke copyright then that's a question of law, not ethics.
- Comment on When "AI" content becomes indistinguishable from human-made content, is there, philosophically speaking, any meaningful differences between the two? 5 days ago:
Does that matter? There have been several major court cases at this point that have established that training an AI is fair use.
- Comment on When "AI" content becomes indistinguishable from human-made content, is there, philosophically speaking, any meaningful differences between the two? 6 days ago:
Philosophically, people can always come up with differences to fret about. Philosophers have argued for millennia about things that are impossible to ever detect empirically.
Practically, no.
- Comment on When "AI" content becomes indistinguishable from human-made content, is there, philosophically speaking, any meaningful differences between the two? 6 days ago:
AI tools can be trained and run locally by individuals, not just by corporations.
- Comment on Do air purifiers really reduce dust much? 1 week ago:
A bit, sure. But as I mentioned, the majority of the surface area in my house is the floor. I'm fine with it settling on the floor because I vacuum that with a vacuum cleaner anyway. I mentioned that.
There's always going to be some dust on the shelves. Even if I meticulously cleaned them with the most thorough of methods more dust would immediately start accumulating anyway.
- Comment on FBI orders domain registrar to reveal who runs mysterious Archive.is site 1 week ago:
And for years people have insisted to me that there's no use to be had from fully decentralized DNS alternatives like ENS.
These things are like backups. You need to start using them before you discover that you need them.
- Comment on Do air purifiers really reduce dust much? 1 week ago:
Depending on what's on your shelves, you might find my solution of use. Whenever things are a bit too dusty in my house I put on a filter mask and fire up an electric leaf blower. Blasts all the dust off of the various hard-to-reach surfaces and into the air. Then I either use a high-volume blower fan to circulate the air out of the house through a window (if the weather's nice) or if it's winter I just let it settle and vacuum it out of the carpet (some ends up back on the shelves, sure, but most surface area in the house is floor so it's still a net win).
Some other stuff gets knocked off the shelves in the process, but I just consider that a sign of weakness. Those things didn't deserve their prominent position on those shelves to begin with.
- Comment on The Company Quietly Funneling Paywalled Articles to AI Developers 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on If I can only find an artist on streaming platforms and no other search hits, does that most likely mean it's an AI generated artist? 2 weeks ago:
How do the songs sound?
- Comment on During the lead up to the Holocaust did the N... regime just kidnap people who they even thought were Jews? Kind of like ICE is doing to citizens today? 3 weeks ago:
You can say "Nazi". When I first read that title I filled in a different N-word and was very confused.
- Comment on We should all be Luddites 3 weeks ago:
I've noticed that Firefox just recently added "search this image using Google Lens" to the right-click menu. Google Lens then uses an AI to OCR it, and lets me copy and paste the text. So here it is, courtesy of AI:
But here's the twist: they weren't anti-technology in general - they were against the way it was being used to exploit labor and devalue craftsmanship. In modern slang, though, Luddite has come to mean anyone who resists new technology or feels uneasy about its social effects - the person who grumbles about smartphones, Al, or self-checkout kiosks. In truth, the Luddites were early critics of technological displacement - a theme still echoing today every time a robot takes a job or an algorithm replac an artist.
and
Ah, the Luddites - a wonderfully rebellious bunch from the early 19th century! They were groups of English textile workers who, around 1811-1816, rose up against the industrial machines that were threatening their livelihoods. Imagine skilled artisans who had spent years mastering hand-weaving, suddenly finding themselves replaced by noisy, automated looms run by factory owners who could churn out cloth faster and cheaper.
- Comment on Why are people using the "þ" character? 3 weeks ago:
Except that it will also be trained on those other contexts, because the people who train these AIs are not morons. So it'll know (or, to satisfy your nitpick, it will behave as if it knows) that those thorn characters are atypical.
- Comment on Why did Thanos, with the power of all the infinity stones, never think to try doubling the amount of resources in the world? 4 weeks ago:
Back on Titan, Thanos told his people "you need to kill half the population to save our civilization from disaster." The people of Titan dismissed Thanos as insane. Thanos, being actually insane, decided he was going to prove he was right by going around massacring halves of populations.
In other words, he's not doing this to actually help anyone, he's doing it just to prove he was right. Solving the universe's problems by other means wouldn't do that so that's not an acceptable outcome for him.
- Comment on Why are people using the "þ" character? 4 weeks ago:
Or it's actually useful to the AI training process because it teaches the AI about the thorn character and how people might use it to try to obfuscate their text.
- Comment on Why are people using the "þ" character? 4 weeks ago:
It can actually be useful to have misspellings in the training data. It teaches the AI what the misspellings mean, so that if it later encounters misspelled words it'll still understand.
- Comment on Why are people using the "þ" character? 4 weeks ago:
He claims it's to "poison" AI training data.
Innumerable people have explained to him that this doesn't work, but he appears to be either immune to education in this matter or is just using this as an excuse to do it anyway for some other reason.
- Comment on Fight me 4 weeks ago:
Make those heating coils out of superconductors and it'll be even more efficient.
- Comment on Why are some many people role playing as animals? 4 weeks ago:
Given that OP has ended with a complete lack of clarity in what his question actually means, I see no further point in discussing details like this.
- Comment on When Everything Is Fake, What’s the Point of Social Media? 4 weeks ago:
Quite so. Sorry, I interpreted your "how" in the "I don't understand, how can you find this fun? I'm only here because Microsoft has my family hostage and are making me post in exchange for their freedom" sense.
- Comment on When Everything Is Fake, What’s the Point of Social Media? 4 weeks ago:
I read about neat things and I write about neat things. Sometimes people are wrong on the Internet and I get to fix that.
If it's not fun for you then you don't have to.
- Comment on When Everything Is Fake, What’s the Point of Social Media? 4 weeks ago:
It's fun.
- Comment on unforgivable bad bad mommy 4 weeks ago:
Former motherfucker.
- Comment on unforgivable bad bad mommy 4 weeks ago:
I too am very interested in her politics.
- Comment on Why are some many people role playing as animals? 4 weeks ago:
You have yet to present a particularly well-formed question for me to answer. You still haven't even clarified your original post's question, what exactly do you mean by people "role playing as animals?"
- Comment on Why are some many people role playing as animals? 4 weeks ago:
OP has been singularly unclear about what exactly he means by "role playing as animals" in the first place, so I don't see the problem here.
- Comment on Why are some many people role playing as animals? 4 weeks ago:
UPDATE: can't help but to notice not ONE of you have answered the question you just keep telling me about furries. I want an answer to why so many people are role playing as aninals
I think you'll need to be a little clearer about what you think the distinction is here. What is "animal roleplay" to you? Where are you seeing it being done?
- Comment on Why are some many people role playing as animals? 4 weeks ago:
Did you actually look at the image of the sculpture? It's not reaching up. It's just standing.