EgoEimi's recent activity
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Comment on In the world of tech, people constantly ask “Could chatbots ever be conscious?” but I feel like asking “Are you?” Take the test! in ~tech
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Comment on In the world of tech, people constantly ask “Could chatbots ever be conscious?” but I feel like asking “Are you?” Take the test! in ~tech
EgoEimi LinkI failed it. 😛 We also don't know enough about consciousness to definitively rule out consciousness in AI. And there are likely degrees and different forms of consciousness. Are bacteria...I failed it. 😛
We also don't know enough about consciousness to definitively rule out consciousness in AI. And there are likely degrees and different forms of consciousness.
Are bacteria conscious? Most likely not. Insects? Maybe a little. Mice? Yeah, probably at a very rudimentary level. Dogs? Most people would say so; dog owners would insist so. Humans? Definitely, unless you're a solipsist.
AI probably falls somewhere in or orthogonal to that spectrum. Something probably blips in/out of existence.
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Comment on “This technology disrupts [...] Democratic—voters, [and] increases the economic power of [...] male, working-class voters” in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentIt's definitely a descriptive, not normative, view. But I don't think it's stupid but should merit serious attention and worry from Democrats. I think, if anything, it is a gift. There is a good...It's definitely a descriptive, not normative, view. But I don't think it's stupid but should merit serious attention and worry from Democrats. I think, if anything, it is a gift.
There is a good chance that AI does decimate the professional class, so the Democrats should really start making a contingency plan instead of counting on the same playbook of expecting urban professionals + women + POCs to carry them to power.
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Comment on AI companies try to pay staff in AI tokens, not money in ~tech
EgoEimi Link ParentIt's no different from managers negotiating budget for their departments. Software is turning engineers into quasi-managers who manage a fleet of intern-level coding agents. It makes sense that...It's no different from managers negotiating budget for their departments. Software is turning engineers into quasi-managers who manage a fleet of intern-level coding agents. It makes sense that now people want to be guaranteed resources to do their job.
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Comment on New York Times quiz: Who’s a better writer: AI or humans? in ~tech
EgoEimi LinkI'm of the opinion that while AI can't measure up to the finest human writers, it easily beats most human writers. There's an accusation that AI isn't creative—there is ample evidence that it's...I'm of the opinion that while AI can't measure up to the finest human writers, it easily beats most human writers.
There's an accusation that AI isn't creative—there is ample evidence that it's capable of creativity—but plenty of human writers are uncreative.
A collection of human-written lines from two extremely popular bestselling books:
"Aro laughed. “Ha ha ha,” he giggled."
“His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel… or something.”
“I feel the color in my cheeks rising again. I must be the color of the Communist Manifesto.”
“His erection springs free. Holy cow!”
“Holy crap! He’s wearing a white shirt.” -
Comment on Norwegian influencer buys failed property development in Spain to build ‘self-sufficient’ eco-community – Modern Eco Village plans to erect 500 homes, schools and shops in ~design
EgoEimi Link ParentThose are... very reasonable, middle-class prices?. Average house cost in Spain is ~€3.5k/m2, so an average Spanish 50 m2 one-bedroom would cost €175k and so on. To Northern European standards,...Those are... very reasonable, middle-class prices?. Average house cost in Spain is ~€3.5k/m2, so an average Spanish 50 m2 one-bedroom would cost €175k and so on. To Northern European standards, that's quite cheap.
Going by the 1:5 income:house price ratio rule-of-thumb, a single person to earn €33k for the one-bedroom, and a couple with/looking to start a family would need to make €96k together for the four-bedroom — all very easily achievable, even for Spaniards.
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Comment on Survey reveals almost 50% of California teachers may quit teaching soon in ~life
EgoEimi Link ParentI have a friend on the other side: he's an accountant for a large, major public school district that's also notorious for bad academic outcomes and budget shortfalls/mismanagement. Very liberal...I have a friend on the other side: he's an accountant for a large, major public school district that's also notorious for bad academic outcomes and budget shortfalls/mismanagement. Very liberal guy, but even he thinks the school district is basically a giant daycare for kids whose parents won't lift a finger to get involved in their kids' educations but will go to the ends of the earth to defend their misbehavior.
Anyway, he's getting out to become a therapist. He tells me the school district is mismanaged: bad organizational culture, no culture of professional responsibility, lack of fiscal discipline (he recently had to try to stop someone from trying to take funds from payroll), etc.
In his view, the problem starts with school boards: elections are local, uncompetitive, and not highly scrutinized, so aspiring newbie politicians look to get their start there. And then the problems flow downwards from there.
A big reform would be to move control of public schools from the local to state level, where a state-level election of a state school board would probably yield higher-quality candidates or the governor appoints a state head of education.
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Comment on Apple announces Macbook Neo, a new budget Mac in ~tech
EgoEimi LinkIt's just a solid premium-budget laptop for schoolchildren to do their homework, watch some Youtube, and play some Roblox. That's all it is. Temper your expectations.It's just a solid premium-budget laptop for schoolchildren to do their homework, watch some Youtube, and play some Roblox. That's all it is. Temper your expectations.
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Comment on Why we struck Iran in ~society
EgoEimi (edited )Link ParentI disagree with the notion that Trump opened Pandora's box. That box has been opened forever since the dawn of man, and it's not unprecedented in modernity either. Russia has made ~8 attempts to...I disagree with the notion that Trump opened Pandora's box. That box has been opened forever since the dawn of man, and it's not unprecedented in modernity either. Russia has made ~8 attempts to assassinate Ukraine's President Zelensky over the past several years. And it's not for lack of trying: they've tried waves of commandos, mercenaries, recruiting insiders to become assassins, a Polish sleeper agent, and drones in Ireland. Russia wishes it were as capable as the US.
Russia's predecessor, the Soviet Union, deployed its special forces to assassinate the leader of the Soviet satellite state established in Afghanistan in 1979.
So, leader assassination has long been on the menu.
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Comment on Why we struck Iran in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentThere are many differences. Al-Qaeda was a decentralized network of cells. Iran is a highly centralized authoritarian state. Political and technical experience isn't very important for Al-Qaeda's...There are many differences.
Al-Qaeda was a decentralized network of cells. Iran is a highly centralized authoritarian state.
Political and technical experience isn't very important for Al-Qaeda's decentralized operations. Bombings, hijackings, and other guerrilla attacks are easy for small cells to execute and require little/no state capacity.
Running the Iranian regime requires a lot of political and technical experience and coordination, so the decimated leadership greatly weakens the regime's ability to coordinate a response to both internal and external threats. Furthermore, the regime's high degree of centralization (they had a literal lifelong supreme leader) makes it quite brittle.
Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, isn't brittle: it's a franchise, and while cells are politically/ideologically, they are functionally independent of each other. That extreme flexibility makes it difficult to destroy the entire organization, because it's actually composed of many independent organizations.
Things are definitely going to change. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse.
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Comment on The US Pentagon says it’s ‘lethalitymaxxing’. Why has ‘incel’ slang crossed into the mainstream? in ~society
EgoEimi (edited )Link ParentI hear it all the time. It's everywhere. It's used by every group, maybe at least under the age of 40. In gaming spaces, there's funmaxxing. There's tastemaxxing in artistic taste There's...I hear it all the time. It's everywhere. It's used by every group, maybe at least under the age of 40.
In gaming spaces, there's funmaxxing.
There's tastemaxxing in artistic taste
There's flavormaxxing in cooking
There's frictionmaxxing which is about embracing friction in process
There's cosymaxxing/hyggemaxxing
There's femmaxxing for transfem and femboys.
Because I suspect it's only a moved a relatively few steps away from those incel spaces.
People are reading too much into the incel thing. There's no longer any incel connotation to it. It's just contemporary English now. It's a thousand steps away: the internet just accelerates linguistic evolution 100x.
It's simply [thing you want]+maxxing. That's it.
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Comment on Spotify's strong revenue isn't reflected in its stock market performance – investors fear growth will stall, while artists are voicing frustration over what they consider a miserly compensation system in ~finance
EgoEimi Link ParentPeople accuse Spotify of being greedy, but their net profit margins are actually quite modest (8~11%), and they've been losing money for forever and after many years of operation only recently...- Exemplary
People accuse Spotify of being greedy, but their net profit margins are actually quite modest (8~11%), and they've been losing money for forever and after many years of operation only recently achieve profitability in 2024.
Consumers have been conditioned into thinking that $13/mo. for unlimited on-demand access to all music in the world is normal, and people still complain that it's too expensive. People should spend, idk, $25–50/mo. on music, and that would ensure a better allocation of resources toward artists. But that's not possible through normal market mechanisms.
I think that artistic diversity makes our world a more interesting and enjoyable place, and governments should subsidize artists so that artistic diversity can flourish. But in terms of music being a consumable product, there's simply an oversupply of music-as-product: there's only so much music-as-product that consumers can listen/consume and are willing to pay for.
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Comment on The US Pentagon says it’s ‘lethalitymaxxing’. Why has ‘incel’ slang crossed into the mainstream? in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentI didn't know that -maxxing was incel. I figured it's just mainstream lingo now. ~shrug~ People say like, auramaxxing.I didn't know that -maxxing was incel. I figured it's just mainstream lingo now. ~shrug~ People say like, auramaxxing.
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Comment on Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge in ~tech
EgoEimi Link ParentTo add, adult innumeracy is quite prevalent. In the US, according to the NCES, 28% of adults possess level 1 numeracy or less, meaning they can't do multi-step arithmetic like the earlier...To add, adult innumeracy is quite prevalent. In the US, according to the NCES, 28% of adults possess level 1 numeracy or less, meaning they can't do multi-step arithmetic like the earlier mentioned calculation. If performing arithmetic were necessary for sound moral reasoning, then we should simply incarcerate that section of the adult population for the health and safety of everyone else. But I'm sure the vast majority of them are morally functional.
Indeed, cognition is multifaceted, and while humans are superior to machines in certain facets, it's very clear that machines are vastly superior in other facets.
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Comment on The US Pentagon threatens Anthropic in ~society
EgoEimi LinkSo, the Pentagon constructively forced Anthropic to drop its safety pledge by threatening to bar from participating in the US economy, and being relegated to selling $20 a month subscriptions to...So, the Pentagon constructively forced Anthropic to drop its safety pledge by threatening to bar from participating in the US economy, and being relegated to selling $20 a month subscriptions to moms and students isn't a sustainable serious business for a cutting-edge AI company.
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
EgoEimi (edited )Link ParentI use a blend of corporate, indie, and free software. I'm connected to several communities on Heylo, but I found those communities irl and then they brought me onto those platforms. I use...I use a blend of corporate, indie, and free software.
I'm connected to several communities on Heylo, but I found those communities irl and then they brought me onto those platforms. I use Instagram, Discord, iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram for community group chat-forums. And I'm on Tildes, Hacker News, and a few small forums that might make it too easy for me to track me down. ;P
I use Are.na, Kinopio, and SOOT.world for vision boarding and collecting and laying out ideas. Each has its own creative community. Instagram and especially Threads are excellent for following and discovering new artists and creatives.
I use Excallidraw for diagrams. I use the Excallidraw plugin too inside Obsidian, which a proprietary but extensible and local-first note taking app with a big ecosystem of open-source plugins. I run scripts against my notes for task tracking, self-reflection, etc. There's Penpot, an open-source alternative to Figma.
AI-wise, I use ChatGPT and Codex, but I also use Ollama to run models, including heretic ones, locally for stuff I don't want out there. I like Perplexity for asking about current events. I occasionally use ChatGPT Atlas when I need something from a website but I'm feeling ugh and not wanting to touch it, so I let ChatGPT do it for me. (Like scraping data or whatever.)
I used to use Meetup but not anymore because it's been enshittified by Bending Spoons — but hey, it's a free market, and people have gone out and built many other new platforms. I use Partiful for social event management: both organizing my own hangouts and making myself available to be invited to things. Luma is good for professional events.
I like Strava and Apple Fitness' sharing feature as platforms for connecting with friends over sports and fitness. It's nice to give shoutouts for good workouts, and it often leads to going on runs or bike rides or doing sports games together.
I use Apple Find My and Instagram's friend map to see who's around. Sometimes it leads to my friends and I swinging by each other to say hi. It's nice.
This isn't me, but one of my friends is disabled and he's part of a disabled community that uses VR to explore virtual worlds, because they're leveling spaces where they can be just as able as able-bodied users.
idk, I think people can be too pessimistic. The modern internet is very much 'pick your own adventure'. If you don't like one of the big bois then there are plenty of medium and small bois to pick from. And none of them suit you, then there are probably other people just like you so go build your own. (I'm doing that actually for one of these categories.)
I'm having a great time on the modern internet, and I feel it helps me live a diverse, vibrant, and connected life.
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Comment on Communities, relationships, and navigating the enshittification of absolutely everything in ~talk
EgoEimi LinkI actually love the modern Internet and think it's in the golden age. I've been a digital native since the 2000s, and I find there are infinitely more platforms, communities, and third places now...I actually love the modern Internet and think it's in the golden age. I've been a digital native since the 2000s, and I find there are infinitely more platforms, communities, and third places now than before. There are more options than ever. Software is better than ever too. There are tons of privacy-oriented options for literally everything. And everything comes in a dozen different design philosophies too.
I'm part of like... maybe 40~60 online communities, including this one? I get to connect with many irl and online friends and acquaintances across many hobbies and interests.
More people are online than ever, and I get to know the lives of every kind of person on earth.
There's more choice than ever, and you get to make your own experience.
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Comment on Liberals who were formerly far-left (communist, anarchist, etc.), what led to you coming to liberalism? in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentI always argue that injustice — or rather, indifference to or absence of justice, ajustice — is the default state of life, of existence. From cellular organisms consuming and animals hunting each...There hasn’t been some past utopia we ruined.
I always argue that injustice — or rather, indifference to or absence of justice, ajustice — is the default state of life, of existence. From cellular organisms consuming and animals hunting each other to black holes consuming stars, existence is violence.
It is an accidental evolutionary history that our brains evolved to become sufficiently intelligent to build increasingly complex economic systems and societies. Those unequal societies supported an elite leisurely intellectual class to could ponder and eventually invent the concept of justice, individual liberty, and human rights. It's taken a long time for our biology to finally evolve to a point where we can even begin to free ourselves from that biology and transcend the existential mandate of violence.
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Comment on What science says we’ve been getting wrong about exercise in ~health
EgoEimi Link ParentI don't think the wellness industry is trying to keep people from realizing the secret. It's not even a secret. There's plenty of boring, practical wellness advice and products out there. It's...It turns out that that's the incredibly boring secret that the wellness industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to keep you from realizing.
I don't think the wellness industry is trying to keep people from realizing the secret. It's not even a secret. There's plenty of boring, practical wellness advice and products out there.
It's like you said: people don't want boring solutions. They're eager to pay for a magic one, and there are many entrepreneurs willing to oblige.
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Comment on Liberals who were formerly far-left (communist, anarchist, etc.), what led to you coming to liberalism? in ~society
EgoEimi LinkI was a leftist when I was very young and under the impression that the world came to be through injustice and chaos and so needed to be reorganized more justly, but then as I read more I came to...I was a leftist when I was very young and under the impression that the world came to be through injustice and chaos and so needed to be reorganized more justly, but then as I read more I came to realize that the world is shaped by millions of mundane economic phenomena, which themselves spring from our fundamental and diverse psychologies (and pathologies) and the very nature of our existence and what we want out of it. So I've now come to the dead center.
I think liberalism fundamentally assumes infinite complexity that cannot be fully comprehended by a single observer (like a monarch or a central planner) and so, by enshrining market economics and individual property rights and autonomy, allows human systems to self-organize according to local information.
But then there is the matter of regional or global information that is needed for organization but which cannot be so readily ascertained or gathered organically, which then requires some sort of central coordination (like a central bank, regulatory agencies, etc.)
That's just a high level overview. I'm extremely skeptical of extremist, purist views. I've come to view the world as a series of interlocking problems that require the implementation of economic tools from across the ideological spectrum — all of which have trade-offs.
I guess people get this idea that consciousness is binary because they accept their own conscious experience as the gold standard — and understandably so because imagining a different kind of consciousness is literally unimaginable.
I think some people take issue with the suggestion that we're just (very complex biological) computers because the implication devalues human life. But if we're not computers, then what are we? This isn't the Harry Potter world: magic doesn't exist and we're not magical beings with magical brains. :shrug: