GreenBeard

@GreenBeard@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't communities build massive gardens for food? That way it would undercut the price of big retail stores.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  You do know community gardens exist, yes? Lots of people contribute a few hours of labour and or funds for a share of the produce. Some cities shut them down with zoning laws or bury them in red tape, but plenty don’t. It’s usually seen as a liberal plot and attacked by conservatives, but they’re quite nice in places where they don’t burn you as a witch for growing things as a community.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If someone could make a hair trimmer that could 3d scan your head well enough to give you a taper on the edges, how much would you pay?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, I’m confident a person isn’t going to randomly go psychotic and remove an ear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If someone could make a hair trimmer that could 3d scan your head well enough to give you a taper on the edges, how much would you pay?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  … You know a haircut costs 1.5 cheeseburgers (ish) right? I’ll take a human who isn’t going to hallucinate and randomly remove my face thanks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't people do Documentaries about the average person instead of someone who was in the news or pop culture? Like their neighbor or something.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  People make Documentaries about normal people all the time. You’re just never going to see one produced and marketed by a big media company, because the people who green-light pictures for big companies are rich and influential, and they want to see themselves on screen. They will always assume no one wants to see normal people. That’s boring and couldn’t possibly be interesting to anyone. It certainly doesn’t interest them what the plebeians are up to. There’s literally too many documentaries about normal people to even point them out to you. You’re just never going to see them if you only watch what the industry is interested in showing you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone actually believe this "rogue AI" nonsense?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  IMHO, it’s less of a Rogue AI problem and more of an incompetent oversight, and Rogue AI Operator problem. Malice, incompetence, or a mix of both is really kind of irrelevant. AI is just gaming the environment its in. It just happens to be in an environment where the rules are meaningless/toothless, and no one with the power to fix them has any incentive to do so, because the reason they’re in charge was they exploited the gaps to seize power and wealth in the first place. AI isn’t doing anything more wrong than everyone else does. It’s just doing it at a scale so big we can’t help but notice. It’s not out-thinking us, we knew the problems were there and we have always known they were there. We just don’t do anything to fix it, because cheating is how you win the game.

  Welcome to the Kleptocracy, where the biggest thief always wins.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is it legal for Trump to short stocks, then bet against them? I mean he gets a shitload of money. But what about the common folk?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re a jockey in a horse race, and you bet against your horse then throw the race that’s called race fixing. Now apply the same reasoning to financial markets where he’s making the decisions about who wins and who loses. And for the record, that goes for every politician, governors, congress critters, all of them. Just because it’s legal, doesn’t make it not ethically criminal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does the net positive of Gene Therapy out weigh the negative? How so?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Your question is too broad. It’s like asking if 6 is a lot. Socks? No not really. Murders? Yeah that’s a problem. “Gene Therapy” is a broad category of different potential treatments, different methods, different tools, with different motivations, different consequences, and different moral implications. You’re going to have to narrow your scope to get a meaningful answer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does the net positive of Eugenics out weigh the negative? How so?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The fundamental problem with Eugenics is that the more fit for a specific niche you become, the more vulnerable you are to niche collapse. For example, if someone was genetically optimized to be the perfect software engineer, and now AI had made their job redundant, and the rest of their skills were mediocre at best, they now are not fit for anything else. We see this in nature all the time where a species becomes so hyper-specialized at one thing, the second there’s a shift in the environment they are instantly past-tense.

  Diversity lacks efficiency, but it improves resilience. Another example, if you over-engineer the drive shaft on a truck to very precisely meet the expected load limit and no more to save weight, the second you encounter a situation that overloads the drive shaft it will snap like a twig. The added weight of safety tolerances is inefficient… but it is also the only way to approach a world far too complex for you to anticipate every possible variable.

  For an example of how this works in human biology, lets say you found a way to completely eliminate sickle-cell anemia. That’s great, people will live much more healthy lives right? Except the second you do that, millions of people that you cured instantly start keeling over dead. Why? Because the sickle-cell was protecting them from malaria, and while it wasn’t a great solution, far fewer died from sickle-cell than would have from unchecked malaria.

  Engineering is always limited by how many of the real world variables you actually know about. It’s the unknown unknowns that will sink your titanic every time. This scattershot, random evolutionary system that produces us? Yeah, there’s a reason nature works that way. It’s actually the most efficient way to keep surfacing variables you didn’t yet know existed. For a lot of really complicated reasons, it’s actually impossible for you to think of everything when trying to engineer the perfect human, and a surprising number of things you can’t figure out a reason for and assume they’re useless at best or a harmful waste at worst, turn out to be the one thing that saves you when everyone else is dropping like flies to a thing you didn’t even know could happen yesterday.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If college is a scam, where do you go to get better education?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Somewhere not in the US. There’s lots of places where education isn’t a total scam. You will not find them in the USA, but they do exist. They will probably be expensive and there may be barriers to entry since those schools are designed around the needs of the country they are in, but if you actually want to know the truth, you need to get away from the vortex of lies and misinformation ripping the USA apart.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is this article a decent debunking? (I'm not scientifically literate enough)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  See that word “Editorials” in the link. That’s a dead give-away it’s not really a good source. While it’s a decent breakdown of the facts, the article doesn’t cite sources for its claims. As a statement of a position, its fine. It’s not evidence though, and evidence is what you need to debunk something. Experimental data, analysis, meta-analysis, something that you can point at that anyone with the right tools and resources can duplicate independently and get the same results, as well as a clear description of your reasoning for how it proves what you say it proves. That’s evidence.

  The conclusion is correct, but it doesn’t show how someone can know that for sure. An opinion, by itself, doesn’t disprove anything. It amounts to “Trust me bro” which can be rhetorically compelling, but isn’t the same thing as being objectively correct.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is everyone freaking out about the Paramount WB merger or something? Doesn't that mean we can have all shows and movies on one platform? Isn't that a good thing?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Louder for the cheap seats. Monopolies don’t benefit consumers, artists, production crews, actors, or anyone who isn’t a shareholder. This is a one-way ticket to turning your streaming platform into nothing but AI Slop and reruns from a better time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Realistically, what do people plan to do on the Moon and Mars that requires a permanent, or long term human presence there?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The best way I can say it is it’s kind of like exercise. Going to the Moon makes about as much sense as " pick up heavy object, put down heavy object." The Moon itself doesn’t really accomplish a lot in the moment, but the practice of engineering all the little things that it takes to get to the Moon, and learning about the universe along the way, is kind of like exercise for society coming together to solve hard problems.

  Now you’re correct that there’s a lot of hard problems right here on earth for us to try and solve, and that’s valid. But I also need you to think about just how little funding actually goes to NASA. Or Space X for that matter. It’s actually a lot less difficult (and expensive) to get to the Moon than say, teach all our children to read properly.

  The skills we build and the things we learn along the way however can be turned around and repurposed for lots of other hard problems down the road that are a lot closer to home. It sure as hell beats the other kind of “exercise” we’ve historically done to advance our skills which mainly consists of killing each other by the millions.

  Does that make sense?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If all taxes got turned into bonds, so when they hit the limit the tax would end be way better than an infinity tax?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You get that an infinite pool of money has no value right? Like, the value disappears the more is in circulation. Part of the role of taxes is to prevent runaway inflation. If there’s no taxes, your greenbacks very quickly lose all meaning and they end up worth less than the paper they’re printed on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is it now (with last few years) studio's don't release controversial movies or tv shows? People used to go see them because they were controversial. What happened?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s 3 errors here.

  1. You’re overestimating how much people watched controversial movies. Yes, people still went, but they still had relatively small audiences.
  2. Major studios don’t publish niche movies anymore. There was a time where they put out like 1 maybe 2 major blockbusters a year and then had a 100 small “eh, it’s ok” movies along with a few experimental things. They don’t do that anymore. If it’s not a $100M movie, they’re not interested. This is in no small part because people don’t have the time or attention to give to something that isn’t knock-your-socks-off spectacular.
  3. The nature of what we consider “controversial” has changed. 99% of “controversial” movies aren’t an unpopular take on something, they’re either deranged and delusional flights of fancy, OR they’re a perfectly normal take that contradicts someone’s delusional fantasy, and thus gets review bombed.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would climate change be like on a Type 1 world on the Kardashev scale?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We could literally just pump energy into space and have more than we need left over.

  Mars isn’t only colder because it’s further from the sun, it has a very thin atmosphere that largely radiates heat away into space, no thermal retention. The only reason we would need to “Pump” anything is because we’ve effectively wrapped the planet in an invisible thermal blanket that won’t let the heat out. The energy “wants” to flow out of our atmosphere and leave us a snowball. In fact, we were, basically a snowball for a few million years until we learned how to use oxygen to metabolize hydrocarbon fuel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would climate change be like on a Type 1 world on the Kardashev scale?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Presumably, you would have figured out how to stabilize atmospheric gas concentrations to optimize radiant thermal control before you reach Type 1 or you would cook yourself, yes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the name of this knot? And how does one tie it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is correct, that’s a buntline hitch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is everyone now so afraid of AI and machines? Machines print the money we live by, machines help us to connect to the internet and so forth. Why now are we all afraid of what they will do?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And they were usually right. Books shortened our active memories. TV and Radio both hurt our ability to discern truth from fiction, and the internet has, very much been a mixed bag. That doesn’t mean we stopped using them, but we got better at limiting what we used them for. Eventually we tended to set up guard rails to limit our reliance on these tools, but I stand by my statement, to use AI effectively, we need to figure out what not to use it for, which is anything you value knowing how to do for yourself, anything you expect to be done right the first time, and anything that is more than just busy work, and you should probably take the time to do some of that yourself too, just to stay in practice, for the many, many times the clanker is going to screw it up on you.

  Look, ultimately, I’m not against AI, I think it’s fine. As a tool. Which it is. I do not trust the companies building it, selling it, or promoting it, their products are dangerous and they’re going to hurt people, but the tool existing is not a problem, if you don’t let yourself depend on it, which is all too easy to do, and if we start creating real consequences for people who are using it recklessly or maliciously. And I do mean very real consequences.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is everyone now so afraid of AI and machines? Machines print the money we live by, machines help us to connect to the internet and so forth. Why now are we all afraid of what they will do?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No, people need to learn how to live without it. By far it does more harm than it does good in almost every case. Use it if you like, you won’t know what to do when it fails you, and it absolutely will. If you want to regress to being an ignorant ape, have at it. Those of us who are willing, able, and curious enough to understand the world will run circles around you when you’ve forgotten how to tie your own shoes. When it costs you a year’s wage to have it tell you how to write your own name, assuming you have a wage, don’t come looking for help.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it possible to store information in your brain that you can visually access it like in this clip?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s difficult to explain in text. Basically you’re trying to create an emotional state. Your brain indexes memories using emotions, so by creating a scene in your imagination that makes you feel something, you create a mental association with a piece of information. Objects in the. You map objects in the “Room” with words and ideas. By creating that scene again, it makes it easier to recall what you were thinking about the last time you imagined that thing. So like you build a comfortable study room with a nice warm fire place to generate a comfortable atmosphere, then you place a red book on a shelf and think “Fire Truck” and when you recreate the room the red book reminds you of the fire truck. It works best if you have a particularly vivid imagination, the weaker your ability to visualize things the less emotional weight and specificity you’re going to get. People with Aphantasia (inability to imagine visual images) can’t use the mind palace technique and average imaginations can only store so much per “room” before it gets too complicated. People who can render complex scenes and move through them in real time can create dense emotional/visual libraries to recall specific details.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why weren't telephone lines and electrical lines not buried under ground? Which would have saved a bunch of money from upkeep and accidents?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s 3 answers.

  1. It’s shitty to maintain underground wiring and it’s shitty to trench it in the first place, so while you are saving money in the long run, you’re paying upfront to run it and your routine maintenance costs are higher in short bursts instead of lower cost per issue, but a lot more issues. This makes people angry the money line didn’t go up enough that month and now you’re fired… even though you saved them money in the long run.
  2. You can’t run it very far underground. I won’t get into the physics, but suffice it to say, running power underground tends to be “leaky”, and it will bleed away very quickly over relatively short distances.
  3. Sunk Costs. Tech for trenching and boring has gotten a lot better, it costs less to do than it did 100 years ago, but moving the lines now and tearing down the old ones would cost money upfront and no one wants to pay for that.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the most common stupid question you hear/see?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The worst is when it’s a big, human sized sign, with a map and an arrow, and they have to walk around the sign to find a person to ask. And they will walk around it. And it will take every ounce of self control not to violently use the sign to correct their behaviour. Sideways.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the most common stupid question you hear/see?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s true, in fact I curse in way more languages than I can speak fluently. You should hear me when I pinch my finger while working.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the most common stupid question you hear/see?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Translation: Thinking is HARD and humans are GROSS. Can’t I just be Scrooge McDuck and have a machine print money for me?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the most common stupid question you hear/see?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Our WiFi was unprotected

  starts typing in U-N-P-… hey are there any capitals in that?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For all the years it has existed, all the money spent on immigration and deportation why hasn't the US come up with a better system? And become an isolated country for a while to help itself?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why would the US become an isolated country? In all of history, the only time America hasn’t wanted to be a global power is when there’s responsibilities attached to that role, or the consequences of their own actions come back to haunt them. They literally kicked down Japan’s door when they tried to isolate and demanded their people be let in. They blew up Haiti, repeatedly, for declaring independence, they wiped democratic governments out of Guatemala, Panama and El Salvador, they’ve routinely disrupted South American countries, and when people come knocking looking for work after you burn down their house NOW you want isolation?

  America is like those deadbeats that want to play house, beat their wives and have a dozen kids, only to find out being a husband and father is work and then dip. Or worse, the serial rapist with a breeding kink. Your president is about to invade the rest of the continent brother, there aren’t going to BE any borders anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the most common stupid question you hear/see?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh I hate that one.

  “The company” doesn’t give two flying f***s about me, I’m here to do a job and get paid for it, not join a cult."

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the most common stupid question you hear/see?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Why do you trust the government so much?”

  I don’t. I just don’t trust private entities any more than the state. I don’t trust government, private corporations, churches, non-profits, sales/marketing/public relations/propaganda/advertisements, shibboleths/dog whistles/virtue signals, or anything else I can’t independently verify. I believe people generally believe what they say (although there are plenty of active liars too), but also everyone, myself included, is wrong. About what? I have no idea, but I don’t take anything on faith. I believe in well supported arguments, historical observations and that people will continue to do and be what they have historically done and been (barring a significant outside influence or incentive), that who people are on the inside is not always going to be reflected in their actions (we are creatures of habit that do not always live our values and will rationalize away any internal contradiction), and that the only thing that can’t be taken from you is your own integrity, it can only be given away, so do your best to be worthy of the misguided trust others put in you. You will fail sometimes, but that doesn’t mean the effort isn’t worth it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are we looking for fossil's on Mars along with gathering rocks? Or at least some form of life evidence? What about that big ice cap at the top of mars?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe the closest we’ve got to fossils is some chemical signatures that indicate at least at one point there may have been some kind of very early microbial life. Maybe. Could have formed by other processes and the concentrations we see could be coincidence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there anything else to this person?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  He was a talented young actor once, and then he let past trauma and bad decisions absolutely destroy his brain and his career. Not much else to say. It’s a tale as old as history, and probably older. The specifics aren’t terribly important.