goodbetterbestbested's recent activity

  4. Comment on Gareth Pearson - Black Mountain Rag (2020) in ~music

  5. Comment on What's the last piece of technology that truly impressed you? in ~tech

    goodbetterbestbested
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    Two pieces of technology that have impressed me recently: AI Dungeon. It's far from beating the Turing test, but it's also nuts how much better chatbots have gotten since the days of AOL Instant...

    Two pieces of technology that have impressed me recently:

    • AI Dungeon. It's far from beating the Turing test, but it's also nuts how much better chatbots have gotten since the days of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). It's your personal AI dungeonmaster/storyteller, though it's not based on any D&D rules: it's more like an old-school text-based adventure game such as Zork. The potential of chatbots like this could create a whole new genre of gaming (or revolutionize an old one), and the non-gaming applications of advanced chatbot AI are so numerous as to bewilder. When someone builds upon AI Dungeon's concept with more money, better content to "teach" the AI, more art, and better curation of the AI's behavior by human hands, there's going to be a blockbuster hit.

    • Virtual reality headsets in general. Consumer-level VR really only took off with Oculus less than a decade ago and the advances since then have been so swift. The surprise at how effectively VR tricks one's brain never goes away entirely. It is now getting closer and closer to the point that VR delivers on its long-delayed promise to make Star Trek's holodecks a real thing.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on Let's try to make some quotes of our own in ~talk

    goodbetterbestbested
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    Oddly enough, I came up with that one weeks ago and just found an appropriate occasion to whip it out :p

    Oddly enough, I came up with that one weeks ago and just found an appropriate occasion to whip it out :p

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Let's try to make some quotes of our own in ~talk

    goodbetterbestbested
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    "Social media has made everyone want to be a quote-maker." -gbbb, 2020
    • Exemplary

    "Social media has made everyone want to be a quote-maker." -gbbb, 2020

    18 votes

  8. Comment on We have to talk about failed streaming app Quibi in ~tech

    goodbetterbestbested
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    I've followed Everything Is Terrible for years and it was just ridiculous how blatant the rip-off of their content was--even using the same title for their show that EIT used, Memory Hole. They...

    I've followed Everything Is Terrible for years and it was just ridiculous how blatant the rip-off of their content was--even using the same title for their show that EIT used, Memory Hole. They couldn't even be bothered to come up with a new title in their rush to rip off EIT!

    2 votes

  12. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    goodbetterbestbested
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    Currently, I am about to finish Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. It doesn't pretend to be an "objective" account of philosophy and that, along with Russell's easy writing style,...

    Currently, I am about to finish Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.

    It doesn't pretend to be an "objective" account of philosophy and that, along with Russell's easy writing style, makes it a joy to read. Russell slags off pretty much every philosopher he talks about and his British aristocratic condescension comes through clarion-clear. He also has some pretty out-dated ideas about "civilized peoples" and invokes ethnic stereotypes liberally, which sits uncomfortably by his Fabian socialist sensibilities.

    I read a review of A History of Western Philosophy recently that suggested the best way to enjoy it is to out-condescend Russell himself, who spends most of the text condescending toward other philosophers. That made me laugh, because I had been doing that since the beginning, and it has made the read truly fun--Russell is no stranger to self-contradiction and casual bigotry himself.

    And all the while I'm putting raised eyebrows and "lol" in the margins, I'm also learning quite a bit and refreshing my memory of things I have learned before. I'm really excited to get to the Nietzsche chapter, because I have heard that Russell hates Nietzsche, which is a feeling I mostly share (I believe that the post-WW2 rehabilitation of Nietzsche went way too far--the guy talks about blond beasts and the German nation and the righteousness of war too much for me to buy it's all a metaphor for personal growth.)

    6 votes