You literally can’t be a billionaire without exploiting people. If you’re not sharing profits equitably, you’re exploiting your work force; if you ARE sharing profits, then there’s no way you’ll become a billionaire.

None of the rules and restrictions that they impose on us will ever impact them or anyone in their families, political power is just about maintaining and increasing political power. If we ever get any protections or services it’s just because doing so will enable them to get reelected.

I don’t think most people understand how politicians live - every room they go into, everyone in the room is suddenly their servant; they live every moment surrounded by sycophants who are making a career out of preventing access to you. There are a handful of people that have more power than you, but you hardly ever encounter them. A few months of that would change anyone - imagine living years like that?

One day, someone taps you on the shoulder; it’s some dirty 20 something who doesn’t even know what wagu steak is, much less why you shouldn’t be interrupted while it’s still hot.

What the fuck do you want, kid?

I’m up to my ears in medical bills, is there anything you can do about socializing our healthcare?

You look around the table apologetically at the people you’re eating with, three of whom work for health care companies. They don’t say, “that would destroy our line-goes-up” or “any normal job will get this kid health insurance, he just doesn’t want to work.” They don’t say anything. They just roll their eyes and flash a sheepish, such an embarrassment kind of look.

Now’s not a great time, ok? But call my office and we’ll set something up.

But there never really is a good time, is there? You turn back to your plate, your beef is still mostly hot, and don’t bother giving the kid your number. You forget the kid a moment later and don’t think of him again until years later. What ever happened to that kid? I hope he figured out his debt problem.

I like this take - I read the refutation in the replies and I get that point, but consciousness as an illusion to rationalize stimulus response makes a lot of sense - especially because the reach of consciousness’s control is much more limited than it thinks it is. Literally copium.

When I was a teenager I read an Appleseed manga and it mentioned a tenet of Buddhism that I’ll never forget - though I’ve forgotten the name of the idea (and I’ve never heard anyone mention it in any other context, and while I’m not a Buddhist scholar, I have read a decent amount of Buddhist stuff)

There’s some concept in Japanese Buddhism that says that, while reality may be an illusion, the fact that we can agree on it, means that we can at least call it “real”

(Aka Japanese Buddhist describes copium)

You seem very upset about this. I doubt this will help since it doesn’t seem like your reasoning is influenced by logic, but, the fact that there are fraudulent doctors and diagnoses doesn’t mean science isn’t real.

You don’t have to crack it to make it but you have to crack it to determine whether you’ve made it. That’s kinda the trick of the early AI hype, notably that NYT article that fed Chat GPT some simple sci fi, ai-coming-to-life prompts and it generated replies based on its training data - or, if you believe the nyt author, it came to life.

I think what you’re saying is a kind of “can’t define it but I know it when I see it” idea, and that’s valid, for sure. I think you’re right that we don’t need to understand it to make it - I guess what I was trying to say was, if it’s so complex that we can’t understand it in ourselves, I doubt we’re going to be able to develop the complexity required to make it.

And I don’t think that the inability to know what has happened in an AI training algorithm is evidence that we can create a sentient being.

That said, our understanding of consciousness is so nascient that we might just be so wrong about it that we’re looking in the wrong place, or for the wrong thing.

We may understand it so badly that the truth is the opposite of what I’m saying : people have said (“people have said” is a super red flag, but I mean spiritualists and crackpots, my favorite being the person who wrote The Secret Life of Plants) that consciousness is all around us, that every organized matter has consciousness. Trees, for example - but not just trees, also the parts of a tree; a branch, a leaf; a whole tree may have a separate consciousness from its leaves - or, and this is what always blows my mind: every cell in the tree except one. And every cell in the tree except two, and then every cell in the tree except a different two. And so on. With no way to communicate with them, how would a tree be aware of the consciousness of it’s leaves?

How could we possibly know if our liver is conscious? Or our countertop, or the grass in the park nearby?

While that’s obviously just thought experiment bullshit, my point is, we don’t know fucking anything. So maybe we created it already. Maybe we will create it but we will never be able to know whether we’ve created it.

Things that are scientifically provable are valid.

If I can interject - I don’t think the OP is showing an unpopular opinion. The people they’re talking to aren’t mad. It looks to me like an opinion whose wisdom isn’t generally accepted - and there’s a difference.

Unpopular opinion: pedophilia is a mental disorder; child rape (including “statutory” rape) is an act of violence, cruelty, and power - or, in arguably the worst case, crimes of opportunity. Not all child rapists are pedophiles and not all pedophiles are child rapists. Pedophiles should be treated; child rapists should be imprisoned forever. (Those that are in the overlap can be treated in prison.)

This opinion is (I think) probably true, but if you go around talking about it, you will be unpopular.

Unaccepted opinion: well, there are a lot of them here, but this one - about teachers - could be tweaked into one: the only way we are going to see changes that would actually benefit our society and country, the things the news and politicians say are “luxury expenses” - aka health care, teachers’ salaries, rent and real estate regulation, etc - is with a general strike. The propaganda and gaslighting and victim blaming are so deeply entrenched that they have become the most profitable sectors of our economy.

This opinion is - again, in my opinion - probably true, and there are a lot of people who agree - but not enough. If the crowd in that picture represents a country of 350 million, then that one person represents maybe 0.5-1 million people? Which is way more than the supporters of a general strike.

Why did I say all that? Mostly because I’m bored - but I think it’s a neat distinction to make.

This whole open AI has Artificial General Intelligence but they’re keeping it secret! is like saying Microsoft had Chat GPT 20 years ago with Clippy.

Humans don’t even know what intelligence is, the thing we invented to try to measure who’s got the best brains - we literally don’t even have scientific definition of the word, much less the ability to test it - so we definitely can’t program it. We are a veeeeerry long way from even understanding how thoughts and memories work; and the thing we’re calling “general intelligence” ? We have no fucking idea what that even means; there’s no way a bunch of computer scientists can feed enough Internet to a ML algorithm to “invent” it. (No shade, those peepos are smart - but understanding wtf intelligence is isn’t going to come from them.)

One caveat tho: while I don’t think we’re close to AGI, I do think we’re very close to being able to fake it. Going from Chat GPT to something that we can pretend is actual AI is really just a matter of whether we, as humans, are willing to believe it.

This thread is filled with people who don’t make a connection between shitty government websites and the roads that are filled with pot holes, several train derailments every day, a tax collection agency that doesn’t have enough staff to do audits on wealthy people, and schools that ban books that have rainbows in them but teach books by Prager U.

We could have better government websites - but not if we elect “starve the beast” politicians.

Ok cool, thank you! I’ll see how it goes.

How hard are the puzzles? I’ve been coding for a while but I’m self taught and I have no idea whether I’m any good or not. I’d love to give them a shot but I have no idea whether they’re totally out of reach or doable. What level of developer are they intended for?

Seconding this. For someone that doesn’t know anything about Python, there are vital aspects of Python 2 that need to be covered.

In the context of learning a language, most of the time, a lower version number doesn’t mean that much. In the case of Python 2, there are fundamental incompatibilities - and, as you say, it’s still out there, and when your see it, you need to know what that means.

Maybe you don’t choose a library or a piece of software if you notice it. Maybe you get a legacy code base dumped on your lap. This shit happens.

All of this. The reason why the “trans debate” is so problematic is because of the “debate” part. I don’t give a shit about whether gender is a performance or a genetic thing - i care that trans people are murdered at an alarming rate, and that their rights to health care are significantly under threat - or gone already. My concern is that trans and gay people still have to worry about their safety when they come out of the closet.

I care about providing safety and normal human treatment for people who aren’t getting it.

The “debates” can happen after these people stop being murdered and abused. You can tell me all about your religious doctrines and how god made Adam and Eve or whatever after we agree that humans need to be treated like humans.

I’m not sure if there is a “good time” to buy - not as a blanket timeframe for all things. If you want to save money, use camel camel camel and patience.

However - it all depends on how much you’re talking about trying to save, how substantial that amount is to you, and how much your time is worth - because if you make $20/hour and you spend 16 hours in order to save $5, that’s not a great investment.

Black Friday is almost always a scam. Maybe once upon a time it wasn’t, but, capitalists gotta capitalize.

Oh you mean the IBM Enterprise Linux upstream? Is that ok to use on a desktop computer?

(I’m just kidding, Fedora’s great.)

That’s Wikipedia’s approach, arguably one of the most successful “open source” projects in history - certainly not without its problems, but overall it’s pretty great

Idk if I would say it’s looks > usability, and it’s certainly not gaudy… There are theming styles that are much more unusable and gaudy than the “riced” look.

It’s an aesthetic that idealizes a kind of barebones utility, and while it often will lean towards the look over the usability, the look itself is like a “beautiful utilitarian” - minimalistic, uncluttered, etc.

Fwiw rice is a backronym, it originally comes from just “rice burners” which were the kind of cars & motorcycles that got “cosmetically enhanced”

Removed by mod

As a librarian irl, if I could make a horribly reductive characterization of the difference:

Librarians’ top priority is providing access Archivists’ top priority is preservation

Do you seed? You’re a librarian Leech and no seed? Archivist

be a librarian, we’re better