kibiz0r
@kibiz0r@midwest.social
- Comment on I'm literally a thinking lump of fat 1 day ago:
If by consciousness, you just mean thinking, then sure.
But if you mean awareness — “phenomena”, if you prefer — then I don’t see why an experiential state would (or could) be secondary to a physical state.
It is, after all, possible for me to write words and perform other physical actions based on my experiential state. In many ways, my mental world is more “real” than the physical world.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think rejecting physicalism necessarily requires embracing the idea of a soul. I’m an atheist, and a neutral monist, for example. But if I had to choose between only physicalism and idealism, idealism makes more sense. Before anything else, I’m conscious.
- Comment on Which game has your favourite dodges? 1 day ago:
Smash Bros
Omega Boost
Prince of Persia trilogy
Most of those also have blocking, so I think the relationship between dodge and block is essential in those cases.
A good dodge doesn’t feel better or worse than a block, just useful for different scenarios.
- Comment on Reading into something that is said 3 days ago:
It’s a common misconception that governments need to collect tax money so that they can finance public works.
In reality, any government that issues its own currency can technically spend as much as it wants to, whether it has the tax base to balance it out or not.
The only reasons to tax are to limit inflation, balance the wealth distribution, and maintain an incentive for people to actually care about your currency.
- Comment on My post was removed because it was not political? 6 days ago:
!lotrmemes@midwest.social
- Comment on Interesting. It's a constant reminder 1 week ago:
On the one hand, it’s depressing because people seem to care more about fitting in than being rational.
But on the other hand, it’s reassuring that we’re so eager to solve things collaboratively that we’re willing to set aside our own personal opinions.
Our relentless obsession with social connection will either be the thing that kills us or the thing that saves us. And I honestly have NO idea which.
- Comment on Interesting. It's a constant reminder 1 week ago:
I recall there was a story from Predictably Irrational where the experimenters were trying to figure out how to get participants to avoid double-dipping tortilla chips.
Along with a control condition, they tried setting up a sign that said “NO DOUBLE DIPPING”, and I think they also tried paying people or getting them to promise not to double dip, stuff like that.
The thing they found most successful was to set up two bowls of dip: One labeled “For double-dipping”, and one “Not for double-dipping”.
They supposed that once they had to do a physical action where they sorted themselves according to “what kind of person they are”, they wanted all of their visible actions to be consistent with that.
- Comment on Can governments compell mobile app developers to push out targeted updates as a privilege escalation or pivot point on a "suspect's" device? 2 weeks ago:
Probably, but they don’t really have to. Exploiting the OS itself is way better.
- Comment on I get it, but you're both part of a bigger problem. 2 weeks ago:
I can understand that take, but to me the more relevant comparison is the fossil fuel boom.
Like the advent of more powerful creative tools (camera, printing press, etc.), fossil fuels allowed us to do what we were already doing but faster.
Unlike a camera, though… Coal, oil, and gen AI all have to pull raw material from somewhere in order to operate, and produce undesired byproducts as a result of their operation.
In the early days of fossil fuel, it must been impossible to even conceive the thought that there might be limits to how much we could safely extract raw materials or dump hazardous residual crud.
From one person’s perspective, the world seems so impossibly large. But it turns out, there are limits, and we were already well on our way to exceeding them by the time we realized our predicament.
I think we’re sprinting towards discovering similar constraints for our information systems.
It won’t be exactly the same, and much like climate change I don’t think there will be a specific minute of a specific day where everything turns to shit.
But I think there are instructive similarities:
- The most harmful kinds of gen AI, as with fossil fuels, will have the highest ROI.
- There will be safe, responsible ways to use it, but it will be difficult to regulate from the top down and full of perverse incentives to cheat from the bottom up.
- It will probably continue to accelerate even as the problems become more noticeable and disruptive.
- It will be next to impossible to undo the damage at a significant scale.
- Comment on I get it, but you're both part of a bigger problem. 2 weeks ago:
If you dislike vapid slop that’s designed to maximize adherence to opaque and fickle metrics, you might wanna reconsider whether gen AI is fine and unrelated to the problem.
We’re seeing the genesis of the information equivalent of Kessler Syndrome here. Toxic promotion algorithms are quaint, comparatively.
- Comment on I get it, but you're both part of a bigger problem. 2 weeks ago:
What’s the “bigger problem”?
- Comment on definitely 2 weeks ago:
Occassionnaly
- Comment on New report claims gamers spend more time watching videos about gaming than playing games 2 weeks ago:
Super gross conclusions/recommendations from the marketing firm in the article.
I imagine that if the finding was “gamers spend more time watching friends play”, they’d suggest monetizing the couch cushions.
- Comment on Why do I tend to reply in the same amount of time it took my friends to? 2 weeks ago:
I’d say that’s pretty typical. Nobody wants to pester or to leave someone hanging, but that timeframe is different for every relationship.
- Comment on Makes more sense than the Imperial system 2 weeks ago:
Skelepede
- Comment on Tired of having to beg every December 2 weeks ago:
Santa gets an intern obsessed with ML:
“Santa! Do you realize that naughty kids tend to grow up to have children who also end up on the naughty list? I looked into it, and it actually correlates with a bunch of things like the parents’ health, income, ethnicity… who their friends were in high school… I think we’re judging kids for being born into circumstances beyond their control! Santa, what do we do?”
“Hm. Did you say you could build an app to accurately predict the naughty/nice status of a kid based on basic demographic information? Build it. I’m going on vacation.”
- Comment on punchable babies 3 weeks ago:
My inner monologue deciding whether to be a pedant about “monolog”
- Comment on I am a very liberal person and I have very liberal children, except for one. I'm pretty sure my Gen Z son has been taken in by fascist doctrine. What can I get him for Christmas? 3 weeks ago:
I’d recommend some Scott Galloway. He’s an advocate for young men, but he’s not one of those toxic manosphere types. He’s not exactly a leftist, but he’s certainly a liberal by today’s standards.
- Comment on I'm sure everyone remembers 3 weeks ago:
I read this as marital law
- Comment on YouTube devs be like 4 weeks ago:
I’ve been stewing on making an “unpopular opinion” post about how neckbeards ruined the internet by demanding everything be “free” (meaning ad-supported) and then using ad blockers (meaning the normies had to pick up the slack).
- Comment on A guy just got arrested in Houston US for allegedly being an ISIS member. I grew up in Reagan and 911 era are these people just saying this or are they actively buying bombs? 5 weeks ago:
People getting put on the no-fly list cuz of racial profiling, I guess?
- Comment on Quick. Someone invent an AI that can block out the orange man’s face everywhere so we don’t have to subject ourselves to it for 4 more years. 1 month ago:
Everything is political.
- Comment on Choices 1 month ago:
Return to freakin sender!
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 1 month ago:
Because making 400k/yr by sitting on a pile of assets and living a low-cost life in a paid-off small-town cottage is not the same as making 400k/yr as a debt-saddled surgeon renting in a high-cost city center, so targeting income instead of wealth gets us farther from a fairer economy.
Next question.
- Comment on Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, with nearly 100 million daily users 1 month ago:
I was using the mobile app.
- Comment on Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, with nearly 100 million daily users 1 month ago:
A couple months ago, I logged into an old Reddit account. It only took a few minutes of scrolling before it happened.
I had to scroll back up and try again, and record my screen so I could doublecheck my count later.
35 ads or “recommended” posts (i.e. not from anything I subscribed to) in a row.
I’m curious what that means for the overall percentage of the average user’s feed.
- Comment on I won’t be reading the replies 1 month ago:
- Comment on Geology 1 month ago:
- Balaclava
- Balacmagma
- Comment on ... i guess not 2 months ago:
Instant promotion to… Essential Worker™
- Comment on Starfish memory 2 months ago:
Cool vacations tend to be, unfortunately, bookended by extreme boredom and frustration of being stuck in a car. That was probably the most salient thought for that kiddo at that moment.
- Comment on Bless 🙏🏻 2 months ago:
He had an aneurysm, caused by a horrendous misspelling of the word “persuaded”.
