If your job can be replaced with GPT, you had a bullshit job to begin with.

This one’s funny to me, because the people who WILL try to replace you with GPT don’t care if they CAN replace you with GPT. They just will.

Look at how it’s haphazardly shoved into everything for no reason whatsoever already.

Cosmo? Isn’t that Pop_OS’s new DE coming out? :D

Plot twist: Wasn’t a Geology major, there was no test.

I get the caution about unintended consequences but damnit of all the crazy planetary issues we’re dealing with right now, I’d rank

“oops, got rid of West Nile and Malaria as well as annoying little red bumps from wandering too far from big cities”

As a win, the consequences of which we can probably figure out how to deal with when we come to it.

I know it doesn’t work that way but I’d trade all the world’s mosquitoes to keep the polar bears or pangolins or something any day.

YES!!! 1000x yes!!

It’s an “appeal to authority” argument that’s usually used to justify a cynical and brutal, often fatalistic worldview:

• “Mankind is doomed to destroy itself”,
• “Someone always needs to be in charge, because humans are wired to organize around strong influential figures.”
• “Humans need to always have an enemy to unite against or else they’ll turn on each other.”
• Social darwinism culls “the unfit” who can’t thrive in the “free market.”
• Homo-Economicus

If they’re not a deeply depressed edgy teenager who had a bad church experience once, I find that usually this perspective will be espoused by someone who will use it to justify why they, or people like them, should be in charge of “the masses.” (You get a Bingo if they start bringing up “wolf packs” lmao)

They just want to be able to claim they’re objectively correct. “My view is just science, you can’t argue with science!”

I think it does a lot of damage when people internalize the idea that we’re all just some kind of hungry animals in a zero-sum gladiatorial arena.

BTW love your username+domain :). It’s really refreshing hearing from other intelligent folks who see the good in what we are and what we can be, rather than try to justify the worst of humanity as a “natural constant.”

I’m kinda glad this is so heavily contested, because I thought I was some kinda “science denier” for being annoyed that there was some “bEcAuSe OuR aNcEsToRs” explanation for everything.

• Altruism? “CaveBros died without bros.”
• Faith? “Simple explanation of complex universe make ape happy.”
• Complex reasoning? “CaveBros threw selves off cliff or poked predators otherwise.”
• Love? “CaveGals selected for strong sensitive CaveBros.”

(Disclaimer: I’m being intentionally facetious and making these up in an attempt to be funny. This is likely because my ancestors wouldn’t get beaten with sticks if they made funny joke, the funnier ones got to reproduce, but the trait may have diluted over eons, you tell me.)

I respect the desire to understand us, but I also think there’s a subset of people that want to reduce the complex beauty of humanity to cold, mechanical, precictable, reproducible determinism.

They’re easily spotted when they say things like “The concept of the soul is stupid, we’re just a bunch of furless lab accident monkeys that started using tools in an uncaring universe and love is just chemicals mixing because monke needed to maek moar monke.”

I feel like this stance is prized by the types that want to mind-control the world’s humans with ads, or State coercion, or corporate culture. The same types that enthusiastically rave about one day merging all human consciousness with some giant FacebAmazOogleFliX Ai or something. The same types that have no problem leveraging technology to reduce art, poetry, storytelling, relationships, down to algorithms and claim “There’s no difference.”

It disrespects the absolute mind-blowing wonder of humanity and our understanding of it, usually to appear smart or edgy for personal gain. And I’ve personally had enough of it.

Wowh woah you gotta start with the basics!

…OSI model.

“Hello, light!” https://youtu.be/nm1_bKFhYIY

Like Hitchhiker’s Guide’s sighing doors. :D

Beautifully (tragically?) put. Well done. It’s worth pondering…

I think maybe it’s because when something lacks human qualities, we’re more able to project our wishes onto it, whether that’s its “personality” or “story” or “feelings”, whatever. Maybe in a way it makes it feel predictable and “safer”, like we know it somehow. It will behave the way it behaves regardless of the little projections we put on it that can sometimes be a remnant of our own egos.

…People, on the other hand, are much less predictable, and tend to highly dislike being projected upon. Maybe removing relatable qualities and generalizing groups of them is a selfish way of turning them into an “object” that “feels more predictable” and the one projecting feels like it satisfies their need for control, even though it dehumanizes others who are, in actuality, just like themselves.

I feel like it’s a maladaptive way to simplify the complicated. The brain loves to simplify.

Empathy tends to be such a prevention AND a cure…

The only ways their dumb PR project intersects with anything NASA related…

I mean we’re all nail-bitingly hoping Musk-and-friends’ increasing amount of space trash doesn’t intersect with NASA equipment as much as it already intersects our line of sight to the cosmos. :( lol

Oh yeah, absolutely agreed.

Schools will care so much about their reputations, deny responsibility, and then it’s all “thoughts and prayers, who could imagine such a thing” when their gamble busts.

I bet they secretly love the “gun debate” because they can just back out Homer Simpson style while everyone fights and argues about dangerous objects, meanwhile they’ll continue to cultivate an environment where they can ignore the kids who are learning to hate the world and everyone in it with such intensity they’ll feel like doing something terrible about it.

Adequate motivation will always find the means, and they keep creating an environment that fosters that motivation.

If we take this thinking to its ridiculous extreme: Admins likely wouldn’t care if they had an entire school of bullied, depressed, violently rageful potential killers in every class, provided they were able to remove all of these students’ hands and the funding kept flowing.

It’s unforgivable. Nobody copes well with believing they’re alone in the world and nobody is on their side or understands them.

I legit thought it was making the cursor “closer” because windows were layered on top of each other and it was doing weird depth scaling or something LOL.

Depends how strong the espresso was. 😅

Or my favorite “Well did you tell them to stop treating you that way?”

Woah, Master Oogway, that’s some deep enlightenment right there. :O

Not saying your experience was a good thing by any stretch, but I do think especially in the U.S, we all run into that point at one time or another, when it really hits you that the “authorities” don’t really have much stake in your well-being, and so usually disregard it.

A lot of times this will be in school, yeah, with nonsense “zero tolerance policies.”

Other times it’s the “You can trust me and tell me anything” HR department that fires you for “performance reasons” conveniently after being a harassment victim.

Eventually something goes the wrong way and you realize “Help ain’t coming.” And it sucks.

Ourselves and each other are who we’ve really got in the end. Look out for each other. <3

Basically like they (and Google) have handled phones. “Wow look, a majority of the OS work is done for us! Sooo if we just…overlay it all with proprietary blobs and un-removable software and locked bootloaders and…”

That’s always weird to me. If I meet another penguin-enthusiast in the wild, I try to ask all enthusiastically “Oh neat, what distro?” And I am genuinely curious and open about any answer.

But it’s funny how most of the reactions are like “Eh, y’know. This one. But mostly for work.” or something. Like I know forums are hostile but c’mon.

Big bummer. :( lol

That’s so painful and I feel for you. I had the same situation with a Honda Element. (I’ve heard of people going to Flexes as a more recent but similar body haha)

Except for me, I broke it myself, and it was a VERY PARTICULAR bolt that nobody wanted to touch. Thing was leaking oil all over the place and nothing could fix it.

Turned a ~$4000 sale price to $800 junker haul-away. :(

But I got 219,000 miles out of it, so…

Here’s to those roomy boxy brick cars everybody called ugly but were absolutely awesome and refused to die…until they did. 🍻

They sure put a ton of money into sweeping it under the rug that exploiting workers at near-slavery wages is always what makes these “technological revolutionary marvels” actually tick.

Whether it’s new FoxConn chips, EV batteries, “free shipping”, or LLMs.

Every. Time.