GreenBeard

@GreenBeard@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Just to get this straight Odysseus angered the gods by just trying to survive the only way he could at the time?⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The idea of omni-benevolent gods is relatively new. The gods were always right because reality conformed to their will and the only thing that could argue with them was an equal or superior god. That didn’t mean they were always “good.”

  Think of it this way. Most of us were raised around at least someone who loved to remind you “Life isn’t fair.” And they’re right. That doesn’t mean that’s a good thing, but it is a true thing. We can choose to be fair, or not, that’s in our power, but life doesn’t know or give a damn about what human morality thinks are good or bad. Such are the gods. You can bitch about them, chafe at their injustice, but you, mortal, are one irrelevant lump of bacon flavoured jello with anxiety piloting a bone-mech with meat armor. Their will is their will, adapt or die.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are dictator's pieces of shit starting out the gate or is it over time they become corrupted and power hungry? Why is that?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes and yes. People who want to rule are generally those least qualified, but also, the nature of incentives to hang on to power takes one to whole new levels of depravity.

  Fundamentally, the best despots are those who don’t want the job in the first place, because they recognize that no single human being is capable of knowing better than everyone in the country and rule with the lightest touch they can get away with, harming as few as they can (and make no mistake, you will be harming people, regardless of your intentions). Wanting to do it suggests you don’t fully appreciate the responsibility, are grossly overconfident in your own abilities or both.

  “Heavy is the head that wears the crown” or at least it should be. Even if you’ve been trained from birth, no one is ever qualified for the job. It’s not a question of if you’ll fuck up, but how you’ll fuck up and how badly.

  But also, understanding that to make a real, significant change takes time means if you want to succeed in anything worth doing means holding on to power, and to do that, you better be controlling your pillars or your pillars will control you

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the difference between terrorist attack vs military strike if both kill civilians?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s an old saying that the difference between a freedom fighter and a guerilla is corporate sponsorships. Seems like a relevant distinction here as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In a rough estimaten for how much money it would cost for Wikipedia to quit asking for donation for like the next 10 or 20 years....or forever?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  However much it takes to make sure Elon can’t touch it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would you evaluate having more pay vs an easier job?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, better training would help more with the back pain. The physical exertion is not the problem, it’s the lifting form. A job that saves you time and money at the gym is not a bad thing. I don’t understand why employers think people want a frictionless work environment. Friction builds capacity and competence.

  If it’s a matter of time and efficiency, sure do that, but don’t kid yourself that’s for your productivity metrics, not the employee’s. If it’s a matter of safety, then absolutely address that, but you’re doing it as much for the sake of the company in terms of lost man hours and legal liability.

  If you’re trying to raise morale, then people need compensation. That’s the whole deal, I give you my time, effort, and experience and you give me something of equivalent value, monetary or otherwise. You can give them pay, you can give them insurance, you can offer professional development or financial planning services I don’t know, but give them something.

  Yes, people tend to prefer to work for a well run company that is taking care of its side of the deal, and providing the tools to do the job you’re paying for. It suggests the company has some future and foresight, but business competence is table stakes, it’s the baseline they should be able to expect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would you evaluate having more pay vs an easier job?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Define “easier” because that’s not a well defined term. Also, people do in fact aspire to do more with their life than watch Netflix in their down time, but Netflix never has scheduling conflicts or other responsibilities. The 24/7/365 work culture we all seem to be building towards, isn’t conducive to things like community organizing and routine social interaction outside our cloistered bubbles of employment. Also, define “more pay.” Are we talking imaginary “line-go-up” math, or are we actually talking about increasing people’s purchasing power relative to cost of living? Please, try to remember, we’re living in a shell game where actual value of goods and services relative to effort is so deeply obfuscated actually requires a Ph.D in Bullshit… I’m sorry “Economics” to grasp half of it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If someone was shrunk down to the size of an ant would they be able to make a little ant sized campfire with the same principles? Does it scale like that?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Too much oxygen. A tiny little campfire would be like a massive, and very short lived inferno to the “ant” that built it, because the ratio of oxygen to fuel is perfect for human size creatures but way too high to sustain a tiny fire for a long time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Actually it’s pretty common, although more common in women. It’s part of why in spite of technically attempting suicide more, women actually die less; because they’re trying to come up with methods that don’t leave much mess and end up just permanently maimed or disabled. Men are far more likely to just paint a wall with the insides of their skull or go base-jumping without a shute and that’s pretty hard to screw up or come back from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If the movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas was made today in these times would it be too meta on the current society? Or would it be seen as trying to push an agenda?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  MAGA and adjacent think Homelander was heroic. Their grasp on morality is tenuous at best. Violence over virtue is their only belief system, and if it hurts people, who cares, they go to church so they can’t be responsible for the consequences.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Social feedback is important. It’s not supposed to feel good, but it IS vital to building a healthy community. You need a sense of social awareness to evaluate your own ideas, even if the responder can’t clearly articulate their opposition.at the very least it says your presentation needs work.

  Dialog also isn’t free. It’s easy to demand someone defend their position for you, but real, thoughtful articulation takes time and effort. Many will offer it freely, but not everyone can afford to entertain you and not every argument is worth the effort. Their rejection of your premises stil matter.

  A world with only likes should terrify you. It’s the world of the executive surround by yes-men driving his company and the world to ruin. Human life requires friction. Every dislike is your ideas coming into contact with reality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any good thing for using AI for the middle class and poor? Instead of just the oligarchs ripping off the middle class and poor?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Order of operations. You cannot produce ethical systems in a socioeconomic system that will only reward unethical outcomes. Trying to build ethical AI models under the current social conditions is only handing the most powerful tools ever built by human hands to people who will use it to hurt everyone else on the planet.

  To use an analogy, the is no world in which unlocking nuclear fusion in Hitler’s German ends well for mankind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any good thing for using AI for the middle class and poor? Instead of just the oligarchs ripping off the middle class and poor?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If it works out, the AI would produce more than it consumes.

  Ah, yes, I’m sure AI is going to defy the first law of thermodynamics any day now.

  Sure in a couple hundred years, and a dozen new paradigms down the road we might get somewhere that AI is nearly as efficient as a human brain. Generative AI of this generation isn’t going to do that, I’m pretty sure that’s obvious to everyone by now. We’re never going to live in a world without money, because the people with all the money are never going to allow that. You think they don’t realize they are mediocre in almost every facet of life than shaking hands and raping babies?

  Who fills those committees, who appoints the boards? This is not made for us, this is made for them. It is not the tools that are the problem, its who those tools are designed to benefit. Because it isn’t the people being forced to use them to eat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I read somewhere a while back that most or at least half of California wildfires are cause by faulty electrical company equipment. Is this true? And how come no one has ever reported it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This. It’s the fundamental reason natural monopolies like utilities are problematic to privatize. Democratic governments have an incentive to prioritize residents and citizens interests. The only interests private companies incentivize are shareholders, who increasingly do not care if their profits result in destruction, death, and disaster because they don’t know or care about the people being harmed. They don’t live in the places that are burning, so why would they reduce their take just to ensure the safety of the communities the company serves. As long as the losses they take from lawsuits and the cost of paying governments to limit their liability, are less than the cost of maintaining the lines then 100 year old hardware seems “Good Enough” to them.

  Can you regulate them to the moon and back to prevent that? Sure. By the time you’ve finished building that bureaucracy, it would have cost you a fraction of price just to have a government department do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Aren't there More Fem-Focused Werewolf Stories?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say there’s the obvious industry sexism that limits it, but I do question if there’s a significant market for it? Werewolves are generally characterized as big, strong, hairy, violent, and bestial, and those tend to be characteristics a lot of women either don’t or don’t want to identify with. While there’s elements of werewolf mythos that some women might identify with, the common understanding of them as an archetype of everything that the social construction of femininity tells women they should be suppressing in themselves. While there’s certainly women out there that reject the common social construction and even actively defy it, I would suggest that that’s a rather niche market. That doesn’t excuse not publishing material for that market, lots of works do quite well playing to the niche, but I wonder if books like that would have any chance of making it into mainstream consciousness… at least without a fandom that becomes known for being a bit… rabid (I’m sorry, I had to).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is this high pitched whining noise temporarily coming from active studio monitors after reconnecting power?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s almost always the caps (capacitors). They have a very distinctive whine while energizing, and it can also cause some reverb in the speakers. It settles into a subtle whistle when fully energized. 40 some odd years and I can still hear them every time I turn on a computer tower, a TV, an amp, etc. I’ve learned to tune them out most of the time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do presidents *cough* Trump use the VA? When has a shit reputation in mental facilities and other things?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The VA is some of the worst medical care in the country, except for all the others.

  People don’t like doctors, ever. People get mad when they tell them what to do to help with a problem. People get more mad when there isn’t a clear answer what will help and they have to try some things to see what works. People get absolutely livid when stupid laws and regulations prevent them from getting the help they need, regardless of how much the doctors try to help. That doesn’t mean it isn’t some of the best doctors you can ask for. It just means people who shouldn’t be running a hot dog stand are being elected to do the bidding of profiteering ghouls and using vets as pawns in their money games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do crooks lose the "buzz" from stealing when found a surefire way not to get caught? Like pirates are with a vpn? To me it lost the thrill once I got one.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There was never any “thrill” to pirating. It’s simply the only way to get access to some things. If the fucking corpos would quit trying to monetize every goddamn part of life, then piracy wouldn’t be the only ethical solution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was there ever a solid or scientific answers to which came first chicken or the egg?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The egg is literally part of the chick until it’s hatched. It’s formed by the embryonic cells, not the maternal cells. Ergo, if the embryo is a chicken, the egg is a chicken egg, and the chicken came first.

  Now, it is arguable that an embryo is merely an undeveloped eukaryotic organism until such time as it is morphologically distinct from other organisms. A cell merely bearing chicken DNA is not yet a chicken anymore than a stack of lumber and a blueprint is a house. If that is the position you’re more comfortable with, then the egg formed before the chicken.

  So whether the undeveloped embryo constitutes a chicken or not is the core of the question, and no, science doesn’t have an answer to that. That’s a semantic, philosophical, and to some theological question about what constitutes a chicken.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The red bull guy who jumped from space what was going on with his body when him and his suit broke the sound barrier?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, we’re not a regular, balanced geometric shape. Without a tether or something to help stabilize against, every marginal push or pull (like gravity, or the marginal friction of the ionosphere) will tend to send us tumbling.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any good thing for using AI for the middle class and poor? Instead of just the oligarchs ripping off the middle class and poor?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course, then you run into the problem of access vs cost. Running the AI requires resources, those resources have market value so you need to make money. Setting aside the fact that by definition you are making sure those resources aren’t being expended on something else potentially more conducive to life, you now have to limit access and/or features to those who can pay, ie. not the people who are struggling the most and could most use the help. Given the price of processing power alone right now, let alone the rest of it, how do you propose these tools become available to the places they can do the most good?

  There’s also the problem that most engineers scratch their own itch, not other people’s. The tools you’re developing almost always tend to focus on things that are personal struggles. Your tools are often going to be solving problems the typical person will never have, or at the very least, are so low priority compared to everything else your tools are inconsequential. What you need is people, and feedback mechanisms that can help identify opportunities… you know like a bureaucracy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The red bull guy who jumped from space what was going on with his body when him and his suit broke the sound barrier?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  How would you control your spin if there’s no air to push against? The ionosphere is so thin, it may as well be hard vacuum. until you made it to some place the air is thick enough to help control your rotation, once you start spinning, you can’t stop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any good thing for using AI for the middle class and poor? Instead of just the oligarchs ripping off the middle class and poor?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want to drop the marketing buzzwords and be specific, yes, LLMs, image generation/graphic design and other generative models, but also machine assisted data analytics need to be heavily regulated and taxed into a box. Military and law enforcement applications need to be strictly state owned, automated surveillance needs to be put on a bonfire entirely. There’s a lot of different classes and categories of “AI” that need to be completely re-thought, but you are correct, I am not entirely against all categories of automation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any good thing for using AI for the middle class and poor? Instead of just the oligarchs ripping off the middle class and poor?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Make AI unusable. Keep Data Centers rare, keep tokens expensive, make sure no one is willing to spend on AI, and let the megacorps collapse under the weight of debt they can’t pay off. When they can’t fight back, start passing laws that outlaw private AI development and nationalize the major models. Start fighting for anti-trust laws with teeth, reduce corporate copyright entitlements while enforcing human IP rights, and void the whole concept of software patents.

  Or die. Dying is always an option. I think we’d all rather avoid that one though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What can be done to prevent more dangerous heatwaves in Europe?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This. What part of “well past the tipping point” do people not understand? The time to take drastic action was 20 years ago. It’s “adapt or die” time. The good news is, the elderly are more vulnerable so that should help with the population decline issue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is most music today follow a math cadence? Then add rhyming? Are artist today really that bad they have to resort to that instead of it natural stuff?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  … you do get all music is math right? Like all of it. Jazz has more in common with calculus than most people realize. What you’re having a problem with is there’s a handful of very common musical formulas that are all that any of the big producers want to use right now, and they just like, ignore 98% of music because those few big formulas tend to be the ones that hit a nerve with the most people. Math is natural. It’s emotional. It’s creative. It’s the tortured formulas in modern studio pop that make it seem unnatural.

  Think of it like this. Think about your favourite movie. Now imagine someone took the script, made a word cloud out of it, and took the 10 most common words in the script, then had the same actors just read those 10 words over and over again in different combinations. I don’t know about you but that sounds about as interesting as watching paint peel. “But everyone loves those words” yeah, as part of a bigger more coherent story. That’s the state of the music industry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any good thing for using AI for the middle class and poor? Instead of just the oligarchs ripping off the middle class and poor?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  At the current rate, few normal people will even be able to afford a computer or a smart phone in a few years, let alone run a private AI. These algos aren’t being made for normal people, they’re being made to benefit the privileged few. You can try all you want to be as altruistic with your design as you want, all that’s going to come of it is a cage for the vast majority of people. Whether Musk builds it, or Amodei builds it, or China builds it, it’s going to leave the vast majority of people shut out and struggling to survive. There is no kinder, gentler atom bomb. There is no world where these tools aren’t a global catastrophe that will ultimately cost billions of people their lives.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any good thing for using AI for the middle class and poor? Instead of just the oligarchs ripping off the middle class and poor?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No, you’re working on getting it to fill your pantry while the rest of the world goes hungry. There’s a difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those who are super against to AI/LLM today. What was the catalyst how did you reach to this point? If you have the power to change our current situation what would you do.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s really super simple what turned me against it. The absolute torrent of mindless garbage. Blogs and articles, and videos, and people who can’t hold a conversation without saying “Hang on, let me ask ChatGPT”, garbage code that people submit and demand I fix because “Claude said it should work” only to find out they couldn’t explain what it does or why, let alone figure out how it works themselves. The absolute sea of AI generated spam, the robo-calls, the infinite, endless baying of, infinite idiot electric sheep. People who literally cannot read without a chat bot reading it to them.

  This is hell. This is hell and every single AI is an legion of demons, and all I have to slay it is the lump of bacon-flavoured jello with anxiety between my ears to slay all the trash it generates.

  What should we do about it? I’m not putting that on the internet. Nice try though. If you want to fix it, you fix it by abandoning the digital wherever possible and living in the real world. Touching grass, talking face to face with real human beings. You’re not going to find the solutions in digital spaces. You find them in the faces and hands of your neighbours.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any good thing for using AI for the middle class and poor? Instead of just the oligarchs ripping off the middle class and poor?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No, not really. It’s a tool for the ultra-wealthy to masturbate with, that’s all. “AI” isn’t going to pay your bills or fill your pantry. It was never designed to benefit you, the majority of people who built it don’t even grasp what challenges you need addressed let alone have solutions. The very nature of the tech is to harm the middle and the poor. It’s the ultimate Veblen Good, a tulip trap for the 21st century.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do doctors not seem to give a fuck about pain? Is this just an American doctor thing, or is it universal?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s no note, everyone is a “Potential Drug Seeker”, no exceptions.