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mnbpdx

Re:The Dead Economy Theory on Saturday May 30, 2026 @11:10PM (#48342667)
If a computer being better than people at a thing made it not satisfying to do, then no one would enjoy doing anything AI/computers are already better than us at doing.

IOW why do people still love playing chess

I love playing the piano, but my skill is pretty low. If AI becomes better than me at piano, that's just one other person among millions who are better than me at piano; I couldn't care less.

meaning/satisfaction != advancing the absolute edges of human ability

if you have to be the best to be happy you're missing the point

I don't have a strong opinion here yet, because I think it's a genuinely complex problem:

Information should be as free as possible, but creating and organizing information still needs to be encouraged, and people need money to live.

How do we meet all these goals?

My liberal ass is just like....tax the rich, solve all the problems but it's likely not quite that simple.

Re:MIT: 20% drop in incoming graduate students on Sunday May 17, 2026 @01:23PM (#48170949)
Yeah, I agree:

"academic/intellectual/educated person" != "owner class"

I feel like that's the big misunderstanding between working class libs & working class conservatives.

I'm (working class liberal who went to college) not the one oppressing you (working class conservative). We make basically the same money and hold the same power, lol.

Clever of the (actual) conservative elites (1%, billionaires) to shift the blame to the intellectual class, when we don't own shit. We just piss you (working class conservatives) off at Thanksgiving with "new ideas" so we're an easy target.

Re:DIY Soft Drinks on Saturday April 18, 2026 @02:14PM (#47818119)
Yeah I do ginger beer! There's plenty of recipes online. Simplified version:

Combine ginger + sugar + water in a quart jar. Let it sit for 3-7 days, covered but open, at room temp. Will stary to bubble. These are your live ginger yeasties, or ginger bug.

Boil a big batch of ginger tea (more ginger + sugar + water). Cool to <100F, add ginger bug. Strain. Bottle in plastic bottles (glass explodes on me sometimes). Ready in 3-7 days. Gets boozy if you leave it out longer.

Add a little citric acid and/or lemon juice at tea step to give it a little acid to counteract the funk.

Re:OpenAI – How to delete your account on Wednesday March 04, 2026 @11:59AM (#47250407)
Turning it back around, what's the goal of this message? At least talking about it and signing petitions keeps the cultural idea alive.

If you'd prefer people spend their energy elsewhere, say where. If you just want to justify your own inaction by saying others' actions are useless, you aren't solving anything.

If this is true, then what would explain just oral vitamin D supplementation working?

that said, yeah let's all get outside more for sure

Re:I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla on Sunday November 16, 2025 @04:05PM (#45948389)
would be funny if openAI couldn't turn a profit but somebody could suppressing it
Regardless, it's not what humans are used to, culturally, or in our recent human evolution. Lol maybe I don't disagree that it's a lizard thing. But then why would you force a thing on lizards that they don't like?

Even if you're right, and we all just should be comfortable with being seen by the internet when we're in any semi-public space, you can't expect human brains and culture to change on a dime, and you should expect weird effects.

Side note, this is a spectrum, not like a black and white thing. Semi-public is a thing, why not let it still be a thing

So is thoroughness, you have to strike a balance.
Just double checking...we agree that this is suboptimal, right? Since might does not in fact equal (moral) right?

I'm not arguing for any previous arguments here, just want to argue that "might makes right" is a very dangerous system.

Strawman-ing: It sounds like the argument is "might implies right because you must have done something right to get that money"

There's a lot wrong with that. You didn't earn the money often, because inheritance. And we're assuming the "right" things you did to earn that money for capitalism maps somehow to "right" things for humanity, which obviously isn't a direct 1-1.

And imagine that logic flipped: "Less might makes less right" -> "less might implies less right because you must have done something wrong to not have money". Like, say that to a 5 year old, poor descendent of slaves.

But again, I'm strawman-ing. Just wanted to get that out there.

Re:Fight Chat Control on Monday August 11, 2025 @04:59PM (#44869396)
The establishment right-wing is pro privacy?
Re:GPT-5: It just does stuff on Sunday August 10, 2025 @01:46PM (#44856887)
> AIs that "think" before answering (called Reasoners) are the best at hard problems. The longer they think, the better the answer

I'm curious if that second sentence true or not. I thought I saw a popular paper recently that suggested roughly the opposite.

Re:Everything Else on Thursday July 24, 2025 @01:19PM (#44673367)
I don't think the author was talking shit about Dubai, she was sticking up for the people who are being exploited there.

Obviously there's humanity and real lives everywhere, she's just advocating for those lives to be valued. With, ya know, human rights protected by the government.