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il y a 7 joursdiscuss

It strikes me as sort of civil society “arms dealer” type of role, like lawyers. In a utopia where everyone cooperated in good faith and behaved honorably we would not need them (or very few of them), but as soon as one group arms themselves, everyone must regardless of their feelings about it. Then the marketers become an interest group unto themselves and stoke the paranoia of everyone who might need their services, and the endless escalation eats away at the underlying system turning it into more noise than signal.

il y a 8 joursdiscuss

We’ll need a more apt parable for dueling superpowers and the effect on their citizens. Perhaps “The Giants and the Ants”, where the ants beseech the giants to stop stepping on them as they fight in the fields where they have built their nest. Each of the giants argue that if they look down to avoid stepping on the ants, their rival will gain advantage and win the duel. When the ants ask the giants why they must duel in the first place, the giants will not understand their question at all.

il y a 26 joursdiscuss

I’ve heard this is because a lot of symptoms are not from the disease itself but actually side effects of mounting an aggressive immune system response to the underlying condition. Once your body gives up the fight as a lost cause, you will get a burst of relief and restored function from the lack of immune activity but it happens just before total system collapse.

il y a 26 joursdiscuss

Yeah, I think AI support is great for those low effort calls where someone wants something simple and clear and company policy is set up to just give it to them. That’s why a lot of people like Amazon’s bot, it has direct access to account details and can auto-approve simple things like a return that is slightly outside the return window etc…

But what you shouldn’t do is try to dress up adversarial policies behind a friendly customer service bot and then fire your entire support staff. That is immediately obvious and will drive people bonkers.

il y a 28 joursdiscuss

I think without a clear, shared definition of “free” the term “free market” has no actual social value and just becomes a political football that sounds good but changes meaning at a whim. Some people use it to mean completely unregulated, some people use it as a synonym for “fair”, and ne’er the twain shall meet.

le mois dernierdiscuss

I think there’s still an open question around are the ultra-large next-gen models worth it? For those of us without early access to Mythos, it’s hard to verify whether it’s been held back from the public due to actually being “too dangerously powerful to release yet” as implied or because the gains aren’t outpacing the costs.

le mois dernierdiscuss

Oh, is that the guy that sold Loopt by claiming it had hundreds of thousands of users and it turned out to have 500 DAU after his exit?

il y a 2 moisdiscuss

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment for details

il y a 2 moisdiscuss

Pruning code is to software engineers what cancelling plans is to introverts :)

I think I need to work up a Claude skill named marie-kondo, so that when it breathlessly presents its triumphant solution, I can go “yes, but does it spark joy?” And have it go into an aggressive refactor loop with me.

il y a 2 moisdiscuss

Remember that this is disclosed spend. There are many things players especially in the media and tech space do that can have far more impact on public opinion via undisclosed “in-kind” spending and agenda-setting, it’s just that their manipulation doesn’t fall under any political transparency laws.

Every media mogul puts their thumb on the scale of public opinion. Broadcast media aligns and controls talking points, while new media manipulates visibility of user generated content via algorithmic weights.

il y a 2 moisdiscuss

Yeah, it’s the same reason that Alex Karp goes on those unhinged apocalyptic rants about Palantir. It’s not for public consumption, it’s for defense insiders. The old logic prevails: a world destroying system is bound to exist, so WE must control it. Spare no expense.

il y a 2 moisdiscuss

Sadly, polarization pushes people towards either wholesale “burn it down” anti-capitalism or full throated corporate bootlicking and I don’t think either tact is particularly useful. There’s a more subtle critique about our indoctrination in the west towards concepts like the “efficiency of the free market” demanding that we overlook rampant alienation among the working population that is more what a lot of people are vibing on, but it’s being expressed as diet anarchism because that feels more poignant online.

I think most folks do, in fact, want to “perform a skilled role or responsibility that's useful for your tribe”, but find themselves railroaded into bullshit office jobs full of performative nonsense, soul crushing frontline service work, or body destroying blue collar work with no safety net, all of which are recipes for burnout later in life. Compare Keynes’ “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” [1] to what we ended up with and you’ll find the root of the discontent is perhaps warranted.

[1] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

il y a 3 moisdiscuss

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il y a 3 moisdiscuss

Here’s everyone’s daily reminder that the Luddites were an anti-exploitation movement that were retconned into knuckle dragging technophobes by Capitalist propaganda. It is, was, and always will be, about the fair distribution of returns from productivity gains.

il y a 4 moisdiscuss

Yeah, the more I learn about American history, the more I realize American elites were never bought in to the “moral project”, but were happy to use it as PR to a largely religious public.

Though I’m not particularly looking forward to living through the decline of the empire, I cling to the hope that a post-imperial America can emerge and attempt to live up to the dream of FDR, MLK, and that Jesus guy everyone seems to like so much but ignores all the inconvenient tolerance and sharing stuff he was so obsessed with.

il y a 4 moisdiscuss

It would seem the best place to hide a real conspiracy is underneath a fake one.

il y a 4 moisdiscuss

I’ve been meaning to get my power supply checked, but my robo-kid needs a memory upgrade and have you _seen_ RAM prices lately.

On the plus side, plenty of employment opportunities in the US these days. They’re offering us all the former meatbag jobs :)

il y a 4 moisdiscuss

I’m curious about the overlap between people that want a keyboard driven experience, but also would prefer a Mac-native GUI rather than a TUI or a vim / emacs distro. Seems like a very narrow audience to aim for.

il y a 4 moisdiscuss

The case against GDP, by its own creator: https://gnhusa.org/gpi/the-case-against-gdp-made-by-its-own-...

It’s not that GDP is a poor measure, just that it is isolated as the only measure most policy is based on improving rather than being one metric in a portfolio of related metrics that balance technological progress, accumulation of wealth, and human thriving.

As Gary Stephenson rightly points out the culture of Economics in modern practice is not one of open query and scientific skepticism, but of proselytizing. More akin to a religion than a science.

il y a 4 moisdiscuss

If I apply the Purpose of a System is What it Does (POSIWID) heuristic, then the purpose of Flock cameras can not be cost effective law enforcement.