Signtist

“Coward” implies that they want to do good, but are too scared to do so. There’s no reason to think that, and indeed we shouldn’t. They want money and Elon makes them money; that’s all there is to it. If ethics mattered to them at all, they wouldn’t have been able to climb to the position of CEO of a major corporation in the first place.

Well, they have to say “we’re training a music AI” while slipping several million dollars into the pockets of the right people. Rich people don’t win legal battles by actually proving what they did isn’t illegal, they do it by discreetly paying people to say they did.

This is the biggest reason why I only block sparingly. If you aren’t regularly challenged in a way that forces you to assess and explain your world view and why it makes sense to you, then you risk becoming detached from reality in the same way that so many people have these days. It’s easy to fall into the idea that your way of thinking is inherently correct, especially when you only interact with people who agree with you.

It’s tough to interact with someone who disagrees with you, especially on the internet where people can be unnecessarily harsh, but it’s also good to do for your own understanding of the world. I think of it like a workout for my moral compass - if I can’t fully explain why my viewpoint is more accurate than someone else’s, then there’s something I’m missing, and I know where I need to spend more time reassessing my beliefs.

Good to know, thanks! I did just upgrade to a gigabit fiber connection, but you’re right that I’m not usually maxing that out.

How beneficial is connecting via ethernet instead of wifi? My wifi mesh pods only have 1 ethernet out port, so I use it for my desktop. Not sure if I could split it or not, but I imagine if I did it’d slow down my desktop’s internet connection, which I’d rather not do.

What you see as “spot the error” type training, another person sees as absolute fact that they internalize and use to make decisions that impact the world. The internet gave rise to the golden age of conspiracy theories, which is having a major impact on the worsening political climate, and it’s because the average user isn’t able to differentiate information from disinformation. AI chatbots giving people the answer they’re looking for rather than the truth is only going to compound the issue.

This is the real concern. Copyright abuse has been rampant for a long time, and the only reason things like the Internet Archive are allowed to exist is because the copyright holders don’t want to pick a fight they could potentially lose and lessen their hold on the IPs they’re hoarding. The AI case is the perfect thing for them, because it’s a very clear violation with a good amount of public support on their side, and winning will allow them to crack down even harder on all the things like the Internet Archive that should be fair use. AI is bad, but this fight won’t benefit the public either way.

Ah, man. Usually I can talk myself out of purchases like these, but this was my very first video game console, and I got it with those specific games…

Yeah, she had just broken up with her boyfriend and found a bunch of “self-help” youtube videos that basically just said everyone who disagrees with you is a narcissist, then the algorithm started recommending her videos that said everyone who disagrees with you is actually an “energy vampire” literally and maliciously draining you of your life force. From there she got into all the crazy health conspiracies - which of course happened right as she was diagnosed with DCIS, which is easily treatable, but if left untreated becomes breast cancer. She dove head-first into all of the conspiracies after that, throwing money at anyone claiming to cure cancer so long as the method wasn’t backed by “big science,” and died of breast cancer a few years later.

It took my mom less than 4 years to go from crying in horror when Trump was elected in 2016, to crying in horror when he wasn’t elected in 2020, and lamenting her inability to join Jan 6 due to her cancer that was mysteriously worsening in spite of all the 5g blockers and expensive heal-all herbal teas she bought.

You’re right that the vast majority of media will shift to being AI, to the point where you’re really going to have to dig to find real art, but art will never cease to exist. So long as people have a way to make things, they will. It might be surrounded by a sea of soulless generated content, but it will exist. It will likely never be a viable career, even for the most talented, however. It will only ever be something people do for their own self-expression.

I remember when I learned about the vastness of space when I was, like, 6. I sat up that night just thinking about how incredibly huge the universe is, and how nothing on one random planet amongst it all could ever really matter. Then I thought “Well, I matter because I want to matter,” and went to bed. Sometimes the simplicity of childhood can help answer the most paralyzing of philosophical quandaries.

When I built my first computer I got a bunch of RGB and loved it, but by the time it was a few months old, I got bored of it and started to view changing the colors and whatnot as a chore more than anything, so when I built my second computer, I went without.