Contramuffin

@Contramuffin@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Life pro tip for friends of pharmacists⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Realistically, most of the antibiotic resistance issues actually arise from antibiotic usage in farm animals. Turns out you get better and fatter growth if you microdose animals with antibiotics. Of course, that’s the perfect circumstance for promoting antibiotic resistance. And at the current massive scale of animal farming, antibiotic resistance spreads quickly.

  But, you know, that’s an acceptable cost when you consider all the shareholder value that you create by having slightly fatter animals.

  Funny thing is, antibiotic resistance is an energetically costly evolution, and studies show that as long as you drop antibiotic usage below a certain amount, evolution would actually favor deleting antibiotic resistance genes. In other words, if we stopped using antibiotics on farm animals, a large amount of antibiotic resistance would just evaporate basically overnight. Then realize that that would never happen with our current governments

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon thinks about wheat⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  My understanding is that rice doesn’t need to be soaking in water, either, but it helps with the weeds, since rice can survive the water but not other plants

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Serious] If a human is trained by AI slop and then they make something with their own hands, is it still art?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “explore and recombine” isn’t really the words I would use to describe generative AI. Remember that it is a deterministic algorithm, so it can’t really “explore.” I think it would be more accurate to say that it interpolates patterns from its training data.

  As for comparison to humans, you bring up an interesting point, but one that I think is somewhat oversimplified. It is true that human brains are physical systems, but just because it is physical does not mean that it is deterministic. No computer is able to come even close to modeling a mouse brain, let alone a human brain.

  And sure, you could make the argument that you could strip out all extraneous neurons from a human brain to make it deterministic. Remove all the unpredictable elements: memory neurons, mirror neurons, emotional neurons. In that case, sure - you’d probably get something similar to AI. But I think the vast majority of people would then agree that this clump of neurons is no longer a human.

  A human uses their entire lived experience to weigh a response. A human pulls from their childhood experience of being scared of monsters in order to make horror. An AI does not do this. It creates horror by interpolating between existing horror art to estimate what horror could be. You are not seeing an AI’s fear - you are seeing other people’s fears, reflected and filtered through the algorithm.

  More importantly, a human brain is plastic, meaning that it can learn and change. If a human is told that they are wrong, they will correct themselves next time. This is not what happens with an AI. The only way that an AI can “learn” is by adding on to its training data and then retraining the algorithm. It’s not really “learning,” it’s more accurate to say that you’re deleting the old model and creating a new one that holds more training data. If this were applied to humans, it would be as if you grew an entirely new brain every single time you learned something new. Sounds inefficient? That’s because it is. Why do you think AI is using up so much electricity and resources? Prompting and generating an AI doesn’t use up much resources; it’s actually the training and retraining that uses so much resources.

  To summarize: AI is a tool. It’s a pretty smart tool, but it’s a tool. It has some properties that are analogous to human brains, but lacks some properties that make it truly similar. It is in techbros’ best interests to hype up the similarities and hide the dissimilarities, because hype drives up the stock prices. That’s not to say that AI is completely useless. Just as you have said in your comment, I think it can be used to help make art, in a similar way that cameras have been used to help make art.

  But in the end, when you cede the decision-making to the AI (that is, when you rely on AI for too much of your workflow), my belief is that the product is no longer yours. How can you claim that a generated artpiece is yours if you didn’t choose to paint a little easter egg in the background? If you didn’t decide to use the color purple for this object? If you didn’t accidentally paint the lips slightly skewed? Even supposing that an AI is completely human-like, the art is still not yours, because at that point, you’re basically just commissioning an artist, and you definitely don’t own art that you’ve commissioned.

  To be clear, this is my stance on other tools as well, not just AI

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Serious] If a human is trained by AI slop and then they make something with their own hands, is it still art?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think there’s a bit of a misconception about what exactly AI is. Despite what techbros try to make it seem, AI is not thinking in any way. It doesn’t make decisions because it does not exist. It is not an entity. It is an algorithm.

  Specifically, it is a statistical algorithm. It is designed to associate an input to an output. When you do it to billions of input-output pairs, you can then use the power of statistics to interpolate and extrapolate, so that you can guess what the output might be, given a new input that you haven’t seen before. In other words, you can perfectly replicate any AI with a big enough sheet of paper and enough time and patience.

  That is why AI outputs can’t be considered novel. Inherently, it is just a tool that processes data. As an analogy, you haven’t generated any new data by taking the average of 5 numbers in excel - you have merely processed the existing data

  Even if a human learns from AI-generated art, their art is still art, because a human is not a deterministic algorithm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Fighting against AI slop is fine, but that’s not what’s happened here. The devs tested using gen AI for a brief time with the intention to make placeholders. They stopped using gen AI after they found problems with the outputs. They therefore continued to use humans to make the rest of the placeholders. They then replaced all the placeholders with finalized versions, which are entirely human made.

  The issue is not that Expedition 33 has gen AI, the issue was that they used gen AI for a brief time in the game’s development

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨awooga hubba hubba⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Humans also utilize a ton of their available calories to maintain their large brains rather than basically anything else in their body. We basically made a hyper minmax build

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Legion Go 2 might ditch Windows for SteamOS - and cost less⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Basically everything is more powerful than the steam deck. The steam deck wasn’t really designed to be powerful, moreso it’s meant to be the “reference model” for handhelds: cheapest, weakest, yet also most mainstream. My understanding is that the Z2 should be substantially more powerful than the steam deck, and though it should also use more battery than the steam deck, it also has a larger battery capacity to make up for that increased power draw. Price, on the other hand… Well, nothing can even get close to the sort of price that a steam deck offers

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's just grass, man.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Only under hotter, dryer conditions. Under wetter and cooler conditions, the inefficiency of C3 is offset by the extra steps required for C4, which makes C3 favored in those conditions

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Any games I missed in the last 21 months?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nine sols. A metroidvania with parry-based combat and insanely good plot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨the game "Horses" now barred on Steam, Epic and Humble Bundle⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My understanding is that there was a scene where a young girl rides a naked man/woman around. Apparently it has since been changed to make the child older, but… I can perfectly understand why anyone would be hesitant to accept such a game based on that description alone. Even if it’s not intended to be sexual, the developers were certainly pushing the line

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon has a plan⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Although, that would assume that companies don’t already trend towards doing so

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨kiss kiss, bang bang⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  A broad statement like “trees consume carbon dioxide” would actually be an incredible paper to publish because it means that there is 1. a lot of interesting data that could back up a statement so broad and 2. extremely applicable to a wide variety of fields. When I say “uninteresting,” I really mean a very specific type of uninteresting, like "sunlight does not affect the growth of the fungus Neurospora crassa. " It’s uninteresting because it doesn’t really tell us what affects the growth of the fungus, only that sunlight does not. If you got this result, you likely wouldn’t even feel like it’s information that’s worth making public, hence the lack of papers that have these sorts of results. But, if it weren’t published, then grad students across the globe would keep testing sunlight and keep finding the same thing again and again, wasting time and money. Hence the argument that all data should be published, regardless of how useless the results are

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨kiss kiss, bang bang⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No reason, I suppose. In my opinion it seems to just be a holdover from the previous systems of publishing. The prestige of a journal is ranked based on how often it gets cited (or in other words, how influential the papers are within the journal). Publishing insignificant/uninteresting data would lower a journal’s average citation count, which would make it seem less prestigious than other journals. Hence journals are incentivized to only publish interesting data. It’s a shitty system that everyone knows is shitty but nobody has a good solution for how to fix it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨kiss kiss, bang bang⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Survivorship bias is the idea that there might be an unknown filter that’s filtering the data before you even get to see it. In the case of the plane, that’s referring to a story from WW2, where planes returning from combat were recorded for where they were shot. Famously, the recommendation was to thicken the armor on places where the planes weren’t hit, because the “unknown filter” in this case is that if the plane were shot down, then you would never be able to record where bullets hit on that plane. Hence, the most important areas of the plane are actually the places that weren’t shot in the surviving planes.

  In the case of the graph, this is a graph compiled from looking through a lot of papers and recording how significant a result is. Essentially a measure of how “interesting” the data is. Here, the unknown filter is that if a result weren’t interesting, then it wouldn’t get published. As a result, there’s a gap right in the middle of the graph, which is where the data is least interesting. In recent times, there’s been a philosophical argument that even uninteresting data should be published, so that at least it would prevent wasted time from multiple people attempting to do the same thing, each unaware that it’s already been done before. Hence the reason why people made the graph in the first place

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Felt the need to carve a pumpkin this year, and so attempted to depict my favourite video game spooky guys⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Gives a strangely similar vibe to seeing the slide reels. Pretty cool!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨plump pumkins⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How does that work? Selective breeding? Fertilizer? Growth hormones? New growing techniques? What is it that’s allowing these pumpkins to get bigger and bigger?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ANTI PEE PAINT⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Like Wii Tanks, but with pee. Fun to play with your friends!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Remedy CEO Tero Virtala steps down after nine years⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I liked Control but Alan Wake was a sludge. Its age really shows. That being said, it wasn’t necessarily bad enough that I couldn’t tank through the game, but if Control were in lower A tier, Alan Wake would be upper C tier

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Have you done US district court jury duty? What CAN I bring with me to the courthouse?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  State, I think?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Have you done US district court jury duty? What CAN I bring with me to the courthouse?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It seems the rules are different for me than for you. I brought my backpack with my laptop. I did work during breaks. Or used my phone. I just made sure all electronics were off when in the court room. And I’m pretty sure I brought my water bottle too. The one thing that the security did enforce was my pepper spray, which I had to remove and hide in a bush outside. I’m not sure if that helps at all.

  One thing you can do is to leave your laptop/things in the car. You can leave the building during breaks and then just come back into the building before the session restarts. That was what most of the jury did during breaks during my time

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[USA] Is "there are ICE agents roaming the streets" a good reason/excuse to avoid going outside? Or is it just a part of reality that you have to learn to accept?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My gut instinct is that your mother may be wanting something else but doesn’t know how to put it into words. Not to say that she right, but I can definitely relate to that emotion.

  Speaking as a person who is close to someone who is depressed, there is a sort of mental drain and negativity-by-diffusion associated with being near someone who is depressed, and it’s really difficult to put into words. I can know full well that depression is a clinical illness and that the other person can’t help it, but I will still get frustrated over their inability to match my energy.

  If your depression and anxiety are as limiting as you say they are, it may be a good idea to talk to a therapist and get some medicine for that. Speaking from my own observations, you can definitely fight depression, but only to a small extent. Severe depression and anxiety are debilitating to the point where you will need medicine just to get close to what a regular person might feel

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon shops for diamonds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You might be thinking of cubic zirconium, which is another replacement for diamond. That one is softer, but my understanding is that it’s still quite difficult to scratch

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can mental health medication change nature of dreams?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My girlfriend said that her dreams got more vivid and serious once she started taking her meds

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨tag yourself⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Split between wild card and corner cutter (start from one corner and expand outwards to form a triangle)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How could I order a package without my parents finding it?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not all fungi are saprotrophic, and there’s definitely different degrees of unsanitary. I wouldn’t want my stuff being grown in untreated human waste

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨smol⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Or maybe Hearthians are just small. Would make sense why gravity is so weak

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you introduce the Fediverse to other people?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I would not talk about the technical aspects of the fediverse at all. Most people genuinely don’t care and they’ll immediately ignore everything else you say if you start talking about what federation is.

  Instead, the best introduction is to talk about what they will directly experience if they use the fediverse. I would say something like, it’s basically reddit/twitter, but with no ads and not run by a corpo.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨2 OP⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m going to need some source for this

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how do school shooters know how to use guns?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Shooting is like driving a car. A baby could do it. Few can do it safely.

  Using a gun is really easy. And I suspect school showers aren’t particularly concerned about safety, so that’s not an issue for them

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Awooga⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Skimmed the article. It happened over 6 months, starting from 1 week post-vaccine. Started with a tingling feeling. Patient grew from B size to GGG. Breast reduction was performed to reduce the size to DD, with further reductions being discussed at the time of publishing