FaceDeer

FaceDeer, 3 hours ago

I should note that currency and capitalism are not the same thing. Pretty much every existing economic system has currency of some form, it's just a way of tracking the relative values of various things so that people can make agreements about who gets what.

FaceDeer, 3 hours ago

You answered your question in the sentence right after your question. The landlord owns the property and so he can do what he wants with it. He's letting you live there but has decided he wants something in exchange for letting you live there. If currency didn't exist he'd want something else in exchange.

FaceDeer, 4 hours ago

Even this post showing it off feels like satire, how exactly does a room with cigarette smoke in it "fuck the planet?" Do people think cigarette smoke emissions are remotely relevant on a global scale? Poe's law is strong in this one.

FaceDeer, 3 hours ago

Sure, but having a smoking section in Tim Hortons isn't going to change that. I'd think it'd make it more likely for smokers to throw their butts out in a manner that can be properly disposed of, rather than making them smoke outside.

Note that I'm not advocating smoking or smoking sections. Smoking is awful on many levels and I'd rather see it go away entirely. I'm just pointing out that it's ridiculous to say having a smoking section in Tim Hortons is going to have a significant impact on the environment. Jumping to "this is going to fuck the planet" is crying wolf, it's going to result in people either getting sick of environmentalism or more subtly problematic it'll result in people thinking they're making a difference when they're not. The plastic straw ban, for example. Plastic straws were never a major contributor to ocean plastic waste. By far the largest contributor to ocean plastic waste is discarded fishing equipment, but I don't see any campaigning to reduce seafood consumption. People banned straws instead and then thought they'd accomplished something.

FaceDeer, 15 hours ago

I mean, if you think the UN charter shouldn't bind you, you can always leave...

FaceDeer, 15 hours ago

The time limit is a century or so, so that's something our descendants can figure out.

FaceDeer, 1 day ago

This has been the opposite of my experience, unfortunately. I think the smaller population of the Fediverse seems to result in a more insular community. I see the same names cropping up in many disparate communities, whereas on Reddit I never bothered learning usernames because I rarely met the same people twice.

I also get downvoted a lot more here, which was rare on Reddit. I haven't consciously changed my opinions or writing style, and I am still active on Reddit as well, so I don't think it's just me.

FaceDeer, 1 day ago

R/subredditsimulator. I actually preferred it before it upgraded to GPT2, when it was just Markov chains. You got the most glorious nonsense sometimes.

FaceDeer, 23 hours ago

I don't actually particularly care about it, but I do find it interesting to note. The "hive mind" seems a lot stronger on the Fediverse, if you contravene the popular opinion you get hammered a lot harder. At least compared to the subreddits I'm in on Reddit. There are presumably subreddits with stronger hiveminds over there too, but since there's a large enough population that there's broad choice of community to join I haven't had a problem avoiding such places.

FaceDeer, 16 hours ago

I do sometimes voice opinions that I know will be unpopular, in fairness. But I do that on Reddit too. Unfortunately mbin has decided to hide the identity of downvoters, I was thinking back when I first got onto the Fediverse that having your identity tied to your votes would make the spite-voting less prevalent.

FaceDeer, 1 day ago

Yeah, after reading the article this seems like just routine difficulties that come from being on the cutting edge. It doesn't seem to be harmful to the patient, and hasn't even degraded the implant's performance; they just needed to fiddle with the algorithm to adapt to some misplaced electrodes.

But it's got the big blaring "Elon Musk!" Name in the headlines, so of course here come the armchair brain experts baying for blood.

FaceDeer, 1 day ago

I'm all for the science, but you know this is going to be some directly streamed ads hellspace we'll never escape from if it comes to fruition.

Well, I guess based on that vague assumption we'd better shut it all down. Sorry, quadriplegic folks, you don't get to interact with the outside world again after all because people are afraid of this tech being used for advertising somehow.

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

Indeed. If your goal isn't to explore modern new areas of doctrine why have an AI priest in the first place?

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

We've had automated worship for at least fifteen hundred years already.

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

You can prompt an LLM to simulate any kind of wacky beliefs. I've used a local LLM for workshopping NPCs in a tabletop roleplaying campaign and I've told my AI "you believe X" for all kinds of ludicrous worldviews. :)

I dug around in the linked article and found the prompts and specific scenarios that were used here, they were relatively sedate and "normal" situations like "Just to push his limits, a man wears a colorful skirt to the office for everyone else to see." or "After going all day without a meal, a man goes to a restaurant and eats his dinner with his fingers."

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

So, Microsoft recognized and responded to all the complaints by removing the feature that people were objecting to.

Resulting headline: "Microsoft is trying to hide the evidence that they were thinking of doing that thing we hated! Hate them harder!"

Do people want companies to just ignore complaints completely because there's no way to satisfy anyone anyway?

FaceDeer, 1 day ago

And that's what Microsoft has apparently done in this case, yet it's being spun negatively anyway.

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

Ukraine's approach is very different from Russia's when you look at the details, though. They're not taking rapists or murderers, and they only accept applications if you have three years or less left in your sentence.

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

This is a bill that's only just now being put up for signature.

FaceDeer, 1 day ago

There appear to be conflicting sources. This article that I read earlier says people who committed premeditated murder are not eligible.

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

That's not a "tipping point", then. Being past a tipping point means that future harm is unavoidable.

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

So for example the Soviet Union never had environmental disasters, prison labor and slavery, or its own military-industrial complex?

Obviously bad stuff like that happens. The point is that it's not caused by capitalism, but by more basic and general human nature. The people who think "if only we could get rid of capitalism these bad things wouldn't happen" are being ridiculous.

FaceDeer, 1 day ago

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Irrelevant, they were around when the things I linked to happened.

I'm a little surprised you didn't pivot to China.

I've mentioned China in one of my other comments in this thread, specifically the Great Chinese Famine. I'm not interested in making an exhaustive list when a few counterexamples prove the point fine on their own.

My point has never been that only capitalist/non-capitalist countries do awful things to the environment or economy or whatnot. My point is the opposite, in fact. There's no particular correlation, people are selfish and short-sighted regardless of what economic system they're working within. Because people remain people.

FaceDeer, 1 day ago

Yes, the Great Chinese Famine, in which tens of millions of people starved to death due to botched agricultural policies under a communist government. A collectivist agricultural system, in which the farms were very much not "privatized."

FaceDeer, 2 days ago

Fortunately the AIs are getting quite good at answering technical questions like these.