2devnull

I gave one quote that is an example of the lack of thought, here’s another,

“by spending millions of dollars on research into manipulating the human brain. But while the science never exactly panned out, residual beliefs fostered by this bizarre conflict continue to play a role”

In what sense did the science “not pan out”?

What “residual beliefs” could she mean? The text implies that it’s the idea that the human brain cannot be manipulated.

Almost every sentence has that level of inanity and incoherence. Advertising meanwhile is a billion dollar industry built on manipulating brains.

The author seems not merely uninformed but a mix of unaware and unconcerned that they don’t know what they’re talking about. No discussion of hypnosis, Stockholm syndrome, and a general vibe that psychology is like not really a thing unless it coincides with cherished narratives. And then little chestnuts like, “the idea of brainwashing continues to be a powerful metaphor for the effects of systemic racism.” Say what?

“ and disrupt international drug cartels who are looking to smuggle fentanyl into our nation,” they said.”

Just a totally absurd statement. Drug traffickers pour across the border in droves, daily. Anybody who supported this && does not support securing the border is a corrupt weasel and an enemy of Americans.

“It also implies that explanations of belief in conspiracy theories need to accommodate the observation that beliefs in such theories vary much more between people than within people.”

To me it implies that what they are operational using as “conspiracy theory” is nothing more than individual differences in personality. Those who want to study/address/remove “conspiracy theories” really just have a problem with individual differences and want to control others.

Usenet didn’t have this problem. It’s not being online and interacting with others that’s the problem. It’s the money. And we’ve known that forever.

Arguably that’s the meta force behind social media. The platforms are designed to make people think in collectivist terms, which coincidentally (or not) makes things easier for more tyrannical forms of government. Indeed Facebook and old twitter are arguably quasi-federal entities.

I’d say a lot of that is genetic and or cultural. At the very least there are many of us who do not possess that instinct. We have much lower karma scores but we don’t care.

“the skill to stop being angry”

Often that amounts to changing the people or circumstances in one’s life. That’s the point of therapy. A good therapist wouldn’t help a sexually abused child stay in a bad situation and just learn to suppress emotion. Well maybe a cbt therapist would. But a good therapist would try to help catalyze a change in the situation causing the trauma.

Monks are doing it on easy mode. They have nothing to anger them, zero triggers. It’s the whole point of hermeticism. Remove all sources of stress. Desire nothing. Of course they aren’t angry, they have nothing; nothing to feel angry about.

The world is nothing but edge cases. Expressing anger requires cooperation. If someone doesn’t want to listen, and you express anger at them anyway, is it not abuse?

I think the answer about why it’s so specific is if you just say you threw someone out of a window people might assume it was only one story high and not lethal. Defenestration tells you that it was a high window, and often implies the ejection of the owner or a legitimate occupant. Similar to shock vs electrocution.

Seems wise to get out in front of the impending backlash.

Seems like a good lens through which to view California politics, which is often dominated for better and worse by special interests like the trial lawyers, firefighters, etc…

Boycott please.

“Not only did we measure significant concentrations of PFAS in these containers, we can estimate the PFAS that were leaching off creating a direct path of exposure,” said study coauthor Graham Peaslee, PhD, professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Notre Dame.”

I’m glad the EPA tried but have to wonder why congress can’t do their jobs.

Probably going to be flame city in this thread, but I think it’s worth asking: is it possible that even with collateral damage (killing women and children because of hallucinations) that AI based killing technology is actually more ethical and safer than warfare that doesn’t use AI. But AI is really just another name for math, so maybe it’s not a useful conversation. Militaries use advanced tech and that’s nothing new.

Weird, I feel like I read the opposite thing just last night; that historically, prior quakes didn’t cause tsmc to slow production significantly. Because earthquakes are expected there are safeguards in place.

Right. Urbanism is a primary driver of racial strife and violence. Look at crime stats. Cities make people violent. Nature makes people calmer and less likely to commit violent acts.

Suburbia isn’t famous for its total lack of sidewalks. It’s not famous for being unsafe to bike in either.

Not in the Bay Area. Or manhattan. City living is for the wealthy. Working folks live in cheaper places like East Palo Alto.

How do you feel about mopeds? You obviously hate cars, and seem to like bikes. Where is the equilibrium for you? Are pedal driven mopeds tolerable? Vespas? Sincere curiosity.

“AI will undermine trust that applicants know what they're doing?”

Yes. Is that not obvious? It’s already a major problem in educational settings. I’ve seen video of people using it for job interviews.

Have you been handed any code yet that was written partially or wholly by gpt? If not, you will soon, and then you’ll get it.

You don’t know latin I see. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a well known fallacy where one assumes that something that follows an event in time was caused by that event.

“Does it even matter?”

Yes, it would have prevented this attack. It isn’t totally sufficient but it’s quick and easy and would have prevented this attack.

“Most people don’t want …”

I get it. I think the issue is that pushing junk code from malicious contributors into your project causes more hassle in the long run. If you just want to code and make stuff work, you should probably be careful who you pull from. It’s not just for the benefit of others, it’s first and foremost to protect the code base and the time and sanity of other contributors.

Check the GitHub profile of anybody that commits. Is there a photo of the person? Can you see a commit history and repos that help validate who they seem to be.

In this instance, noticing the people emailing to pressure you have fake looking names that start with adjacent letters and the same domain name.

Be more paranoid.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Offshoring didn’t increase jobs. That’s absurd.

“AI will lower the barrier for entry level position”

No. Empirically, has it?

It will do the opposite. It removes trust, therefore making existing powers more powerful. Ain’t going to democratize anything but cybercrime.

The most charitable thing I can say about this is that it’s likely wrong.

If the flyovers/Texans have to buy an electric car, then they will likely buy one from Elon. I agree, they aren’t clamoring for EVs unless and until they have to.

“They have warned about nato expansion and the overt, publicized plans of US think tanks and policymakers about destroying Russia for two decade.”

Ah, you didn’t watch the tucker Putin interview!

First question was whether NATO’s threat caused the Ukrainian invasion, and Putin quite clearly said, I’ll paraphrase, “Nope, Ukraine has always belonged to Russia.” Puty’s actual response was 30 minute history lesson on why Russia owns Ukraine. No mention of NATO. Anyway, you don’t know what you’re talking about it seems, or Putin is lying about his intentions, which I suppose is totally on brand for genocidal despots.