Why are you reading this? Go do something worthwhile.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • As someone who’s had two kids since AI really vaulted onto the scene, I am enormously confused as to why people think AI isn’t or, particularly, can’t be sentient. I hate to be that guy who pretend to be the parenting expert online, but most of the people I know personally who take the non-sentient view on AI don’t have kids. The other side usually does.

    When it writes an answer to a question, it literally just guesses which letter and word will come next in a sequence – based on the data it’s been trained on.

    People love to tout this as some sort of smoking gun. That feels like a trap. Obviously, we can argue about the age children gain sentience, but my year and a half old daughter is building an LLM with pattern recognition, tests, feedback, hallucinations. My son is almost 5, and he was and is the same. He told me the other day that a petting zoo came to the school. He was adamant it happened that day. I know for a fact it happened the week before, but he insisted. He told me later that day his friend’s dad was in jail for threatening her mom. That was true, but looked to me like another hallucination or more likely a misunderstanding.

    And as funny as it would be to argue that they’re both sapient, but not sentient, I don’t think that’s the case. I think you can make the case that without true volition, AI is sentient but not sapient. I’d love to talk to someone in the middle of the computer science and developmental psychology Venn diagram.



  • Just want to drop this here.

    Birth control is great.

    Some methods of birth control are bad for you specifically. Not all birth control is equal. You are a complex piece of equipment. Birth control alters the way that equipment works. There are side effects, no matter what, and they are listed because the were well documented in clinical trials.

    That does not mean you should not use birth control. It means you should work with your doctor to find the one that works best for you.

    My wife tried a birth control medication that had an interaction with another medication and made her very drousy. My sister took one that made her feel suicidal. They shopped around and found something that worked.


  • There are very few people who are a “catch” in the traditional sense. You have to be hot, with no faults, flaws, or baggage. High bar.

    We are all depressed, stressed, anxious, self-absorbed people, in our own ways and to our own degrees. Admitting and understanding your shortcomings is hard. Having someone in your life that you can say those things about is a godsend. In the real world, the only requirement for being a catch is that you work your ass off so that your partner can say the same.

    Also, this woman is having a baby shower. She’s probably 7-8 months pregnant. Having been through that a few times, she’s probably a hormonal, emotional wreck under the best of circumstances, but her husband is in a concentration camp, and thanks to the Supreme Court, he can be deported to Sudan with no repurcussions.












  • Not an expert by any stretch, but I would say it is infinitely more likely Iran deploys a nuke now. The US has spent a lot of time over the past 80 years doing whatever it wants to countries it doesn’t like that don’t have nukes, and it leaves alone countries that have them.

    If I’m Iran, and I don’t have a nuke, I would be on the phone 24/7 with Putin and Kim about using something they have to stage a “test” detonation on Iranian soil.


  • Nah, the people who don’t want it are hourly workers who are living paycheck to paycheck, which is tens of millions of workers.

    The sad truth is he’s right, but the reason is that for these people, missing out on $80 could be the difference between paying the water bill or not this month.

    It’s not that people love to work so much that they hate missing a day, it’s that they can’t afford to not work a day.


  • It’s a tricky situation.

    I think a lot of men, particularly rural men, want someone in their corner. I think a lot of people are underestimating how angry and hopeless many of these men feel. The study a couple years ago from NPR about how many families are living paycheck to paycheck, have less than like $400 in savings, and have nobody to call in during a financial emergency was astounding.

    Most Americans are in a desperate situation. And they aren’t used to it. And they feel they don’t deserve it. And because of that, they’re going to vote for whoever promises to fix it, whether they fix it or not.

    The issue is that neither party is willing to fix the wealth desparity and class oriented labor practices that cause it. They’re only interested in playing the same game we are now that keeps them paid, and grinds everyone else into the dirt.