FriendOfDeSoto

Yes, we are. Please stop masturbating. Thanks.

If you’re only looking at the tools everybody can get a hold of, I agree. I think if you look a bit further, you will find medical diagnostics that can hopefully top human detection scores and that’s worth pursuing as well.

I don’t see any good reason why the general public needs to have access to most of the models today. Most people just play around with it - and I don’t see the value there. When we get the final tally, we will have made the climate crisis worse and caused droughts with all the thirsty data center consumption. All so Alexa can remember what you said two queries ago and you can animate your childhood teddy in the Ghibli style.

I agree that women are still being objectified and that’s bad. I don’t agree with workers being dehumanized by being referred to as such. “Workers of the world, unite!” was a big rallying cry. For some people, it’s an identity-establishing part of life that they’re using manual labor and not fart into a desk chair all day. They take pride in being working class.

If by referring to a group of working folks is dehumanizing then we cannot talk about people like housekeepers, street sweepers, nurses, or engineers either. They’re people too. And I don’t see “people with job X” catching on in the language either.

Millions of peaches!

I’m not sure I agree with narcissism being on par with flanderization. One is a personality trait, if not a defect, and the other is lazy script writing. I sort of see where you are going with this but I’m not really onboard. Not all parents are narcissists, either.

The other thing is time. We all get set in our ways as we hurl around the sun time and time again. Everybody thinks they are enlightened enough to not become the stubborn weirdo, like mom or dad or the drunk uncle from Thanksgiving dinner. And everybody is wrong. You will too become a predictably dogmatic or a quirky person in one way or another. People will adapt around you. That’s neither narcism nor flanderization. That’s just life.

It is true that narcicists and abusers create an atmosphere, where their outrageous behavior gets ignored or swept under the carpet. I think it’s fair to say though that that involves more manipulation and strategic thinking on behalf of the a-hole. If somebody dismisses the abusive behavior as “that’s just Karen/Bob, they’re like that, you know” than that may present as flanderization on the surface but it’s not from a lack of script being written. The narcicist has succeeded in pulling the wool over their eyes. I guess that’s why bringing these terms together like this rubs me the wrong way.

Everybody is different, I suppose. I’ve seen people blossoming post retirement and falling into a hole. The level of enjoyment you felt for the work you did probably is an indicator of which end of the sliding scale you end up on.

What are you, as in you personally, doing about you feel? Learning to live with it, looking for a hobby, volunteer cause, part-time job? It might be presumptuous of me but I’m reading between the lines that you maybe want to continue feeling useful.

You say data, and I say data. Let’s call the whole thing off.

We should all be using the name less. And I don’t mean Jesus, I mean the other one. Because as far as I know Christ wasn’t a raging, unapologetic pedophile.

We humans always underestimate the time it actually takes for a tech to change the world. We should travel in self-flying flying cars and on hoverboards already but we’re not.

The disseminators of so-called AI have a vested interest in making it seem it’s the magical solution to all our problems. The tech press seems to have had a good swig from the koolaid as well overall. We have such a warped perception of new tech, we always see it as magical beans. The internet will democratize the world - hasn’t happened; I think we’ve regressed actually as a planet. Fully self-drving cars will happen by 2020 - looks at calendar. Blockchain will revolutionize everything - it really only provided a way for fraudsters, ransomware dicks, and drug dealers to get paid. Now it’s so-called AI.

I think the history books will at some point summarize the introduction of so-called AI as OpenAI taking a gamble with half-baked tech, provoking its panicked competitors into a half-baked game of oneupmanship. We arrived at the plateau in the hockey stick graph in record time burning an incredible amount of resources, both fiscal and earthly. Despite massive influences on the labor market and creative industries, it turned out to be a fart in the wind because skynet happened a 100 years later. I’m guessing 100 so it’s probably much later.

Depends on your definition of common. When the movable type printing press came to the British Isles, the available characters didn’t include the thorn so printers used the y as a stand-in. It was the beginning of the end and all “ye olde shoppe” signs are just a snapshot of a particular time in history.

Let’s say you’re right and you’ve prevented the birth of Adolf or altered him to send him to another life trajectory. Who is to say that there wouldn’t be another mad person, naturally a man, who would rise to power and commit similar if not even worse crimes. It’s not only the person that made the fuehrer possible, it’s also everything happening in the world, especially politics at the time. So you’ve bumped Adolf but you’ve created Anton who was similarly radicalized but he wasn’t a landscape painter, he was a physics major and he made Germany develop nuclear weapons much faster. So now you have to go back and disturb Anton’s conception. Which brings about fuehrer Armin and so forth. You might be stuck in a time loop you’ll never be able to stop because you can’t control all the variables.

But we already know what to expect thanks to Stormy Daniels.

It’s where all good engagements start!

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No, I mean engagements to marry.

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Is it just me? It’s just me, is it. Oh, okay.

qA fA qing plaH! Today is a good day to die!

Socialism badge unlocked.

In their defense, they were probably lying before the advent of so-called AI as well.

That presupposes though that a shapeshifter would need to see their own reflection to judge the look. If you have developed over millennia the ability to change your appearance at a molecular level, or physically speaking thereabouts, you probably have developed the ability to judge the look without having to look at it. You would be a rock who knew how to become Michelangelo’s David.

I’d be amazed to hear that chameleons practice at a puddle before they try to blend in with the jungle. But I was sick a lot when they taught biology in school.

European-Americans

Why only those?

need better leadership role models to show them that education and hard work

Compulsory education in the US is straddled with numerous problems. Underfunding is maybe the biggest one. The fact that schools need to be converted into bullet proof bunkers doesn’t help. Standardized tests are not a foolproof way to assess people’s aptitudes. The curriculum in some states leaves a lot to be desired. A defective system cannot produce perfect students. And we’re not even talking about the insane for-profit higher education system that gives people debt for life. The system produces undereducated leadership role models. The good people tend to find other areas to work in. You cannot demand new role models without a complete, well-funded overhaul of the entire education system.

Hard work can be helpful to get ahead in life. But it’s no guarantor of success. It’s more luck or inherited wealth that get you ahead. You seem to adhere to the good old American dream idea, rags to riches stuff. It’s a mirage. Like the melting pot theory or manifest destiny it deserves to be deposited on the trash heap of history. There was probably more truth to the dream when rent/mortgage was a fifth of your average paycheck when it’s now most of your average paycheck. That is if you still have a home. Times have changed, ideas are still catching up.

— not violence, promiscuity, and criminality — are the right ways to get ahead.

Violence? Agreed. Crime? Also agreed. Promiscuity? You’d have to define that first. And I have an inkling I may not agree with you once you have.

Fundamentally, you could make a caveat even for violence and crime under certain circumstances. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To the Brits George Washington was a violent criminal. Violence is baked into the birth of a nation, along with the prolonged history of slavery and segregation.

I also think that former criminals can be valuable role models. It depends on many factors, e.g. have they paid what we call the debt to society? Have they atoned? Etc. But if I’m not mistaken you’re looking more at financial fraud and maybe sexual misconduct - don’t have a clue why those two popped up first in my head - and I would say that disqualifies perpetrators from being leadership role models. People who vote for people like that to get into positions of power anyway are a real thorn in my sight as well.

So I find bits of your statement that I can warm up to. Overall, I think it’s a bit populist for my taste. I disagree with some of the assumptions I think you’ve made. And it does nothing to address any underlying problems as I see them.

As a general vibe in life, I try not to punch down. Antivax kids through no fault of their own are at a disadvantage in life (and make life for immunocompromised folks harder). Wondering if they’d be okay with a cootie shot as a question seems snarky and punching down to me.

You could not answer this question categorically anyway. It would depend on the age, how much autonomy they already have over their body, and to how much RFK junioring they’ve been subjected. So the answer is care and individual attention for each kid, not a generalization.

I don’t know where you get the idea I suggested we hunt them down from. But I think you’ve correctly picked up on my critical opinion on this question.

These kids have a bad enough lot in life by being born to and probably being negatively influenced by irresponsible parents. They probably deserve more care and individual attention than a throwaway question like this.