papasquat's recent activity
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
-
Comment on An AI-generated country song is topping a Billboard chart, and that should infuriate us all in ~music
papasquat Link ParentGarbage isn't just an assessment of quality or utility. It's an assessment of value. To me, a kids Dora the explorer quartz watch I found on the ground is garbage because it was mass produced in a...Garbage isn't just an assessment of quality or utility. It's an assessment of value. To me, a kids Dora the explorer quartz watch I found on the ground is garbage because it was mass produced in a Chinese factory for pennies just like the millions of other identical models. It's worthless because it's not special. No care was put into its production, it doesn't actually say anything. The fact that it objectively tells time better than a handcrafted 1 million dollar mechanical movement Patek Philippe doesnt somehow make it not garbage.
-
Comment on An AI-generated country song is topping a Billboard chart, and that should infuriate us all in ~music
papasquat Link Parent"competition" is kind of wallpapering over the fact that people who have put in zero effort are stealing from people who have put in a lot of effort. Like, imagine if Taylor Swift put out a new..."competition" is kind of wallpapering over the fact that people who have put in zero effort are stealing from people who have put in a lot of effort.
Like, imagine if Taylor Swift put out a new song, and I just copied it, somehow promoted it better, and my version of her song sold a hundred million copies to the detriment of the "real" version. That would be just competition as well, but pretty blatantly unfair and immoral.
AI music is doing the same thing except it's cribbing from millions of unverifiable recorded tracks. It's not a consciousness being influenced by those tracks and remixing it based on their own lives experiences, it's just taking them, converting them to weights, then composing a song based on a sentence long prompt with a sprinkle of randomness thrown in.
There are obviously things that cross the line from "well, that's just competition" to blatantly immoral and unfair practices that hurt us all long term.
-
Comment on James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers in ~science
papasquat Link ParentThe type of person that is obsessed with this stuff doesn't care that it was associated with the Nazis. They divorce the effects of the science they're promoting with its conclusions. To them, it...The type of person that is obsessed with this stuff doesn't care that it was associated with the Nazis. They divorce the effects of the science they're promoting with its conclusions.
To them, it doesn't matter what the social implications of of what they're studying are, only it's truth.
That is, it doesn't matter if by proving that different races inherently are more or less intelligent than one another, there will obviously be discriminatory laws passed against those less intelligent races. All that matters is that we discover the truth.
I do think that truth for truths sake can be virtuous, and I think that's what drives these people.
Unfortunately for them, association with Nazis isn't the only reason why racist science has fallen out of vogue.
It turns out it was never very scientific in the first place. There are no rigor, clear studies that correlate genetics as related to race with general human intelligence. The studies that attempt to do so have serious flaws because of how hard it is to separate culture, education, geography, racism, and testing methodology from genetic testing of human beings.
Not a whole lot of effort has been put into studying it recently either, because what would be the point? We already know that individual variation of intelligence within a race is far higher than variation between races. Any conclusions we could draw about genetic racial intelligence could only be used to justify immoral, racist policies, so it's one of those things that I think social scientists have accepted we won't ever truly know, and also, it really doesn't matter.
-
Comment on Post breakup ramblings in ~life
papasquat LinkIt's not a first world problem, first off. People all over the world go through breakups, and no matter what their situation is, it sucks for everyone. If you're barely scraping by living under a...It's not a first world problem, first off. People all over the world go through breakups, and no matter what their situation is, it sucks for everyone. If you're barely scraping by living under a dictatorship, being broken up with sucks just as bad as it does if you're filthy rich with no other problems in the world. It's something we're hard wired to struggle with, and it never feels good.
Secondly, from what you've described, it sounds like you've made a lot of compromises in what your ideal relationship looks like in an attempt to get this woman to stay with you. Compromise is a necessary part of all relationships, but it's always a matter of degree. Too much compromise can mean you're giving part of yourself away, and sacrificing your happiness for security. It's not a recipe for long term contentment.
I don't have a whole lot of advice for getting through this, because it's one of those things that just has to feel like shit for a while. If you can though, try to focus on the positives of being single. There are always positives, even if it doesn't seem like it right now, and even if this woman truly was amazing. What can you do now that you don't have another person's feelings and needs to consider?
What new adventures might the future hold? What types of people could you meet?I would just caution you to be careful if you're trying to get her back. Don't sacrifice too much, and try to be certain that if she ever does agree to get back together it's not just a compromise to try to keep you happy, and it's not just because she's convinced she's settling for you. Understand that you're a human being who deserves someone that truly wants to be with them, and anything less just isn't worth it.
-
Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
papasquat LinkAs far as ai in general goes, I use image search in Google photos quite a bit, it works really well, although I do sometimes wonder if I'm missing photos. Like if I search for "dog", it's...As far as ai in general goes, I use image search in Google photos quite a bit, it works really well, although I do sometimes wonder if I'm missing photos. Like if I search for "dog", it's sometimes hard to tell if it truly found all photos of dogs I have in my albums.
As far as generative AI.
It really hasn't I guess. I've tried using it for troubleshooting problems around the house or with drones I work on or with my car, and it usually suggests the most obvious, likely cause of an issue, and something I've already considered. When I tell it that, it starts going down increasingly crazy and not relevant troubleshooting steps, and I usually give up trying.
It's especially bad with software or products that have lots of different revisions. It almost always suggests command line options they don't, or never have existed, product features that aren't relevant for the type of product I'm using and so on.I usually just find it to be a waste of time and an exercise in frustration so I basically never use LLMs for anything nowadays.
-
Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society
papasquat Link ParentYeah, that's the one proposal I saw that really doesn't make any sense to me. The really obvious result of this is that communities start relying on government run grocery stories because all...Yeah, that's the one proposal I saw that really doesn't make any sense to me. The really obvious result of this is that communities start relying on government run grocery stories because all other food stores go out of business, and because everything you're selling is at a loss, you're just doing welfare in an inefficient roundabout way that doesn't benefit the community.
Subsidies to existing stores to encourage them to stock healthier foods seems like a much better idea that actually puts money back in the pockets of the community.
-
Comment on Pathfinder 1 airship overflies Golden Gate bridge: pictures in ~transport
papasquat Link ParentSeems like the cost would always be way higher than a helicopter. You need a specialized, massive hangar to house it, special mooring equipment to land it, it wouldn't be able to fly in high winds...Seems like the cost would always be way higher than a helicopter. You need a specialized, massive hangar to house it, special mooring equipment to land it, it wouldn't be able to fly in high winds like a helicopter, it can't really hover in one spot like a helicopter, it's slower than a helicopter, and I don't know what the aircraft itself would cost, but I imagine it's many times more expensive than even the biggest cargo helicopters.
There's are pretty good reasons we don't use airships anymore, and it has very little to do with the Hindenburg. Heavier than air aircraft have advantages in basically every single area, and once manufacturing and aerospace science got to the point where they could produce cheap, large rotary and fixed wing aircraft, airships stopped making financial sense.
These projects only ever pop up every so often because of some wealthy benefactor, since airships are neat.
-
Comment on Study suggests that the Universe's expansion 'is now slowing, not speeding up' in ~space
-
Comment on Two signs that Democrats flipped Donald Trump supporters on Tuesday (gifted link) in ~society
papasquat Link ParentAs much as I hate agreeing with you, the next Republican presidential candidate seems like they have a pretty easy road ahead of them by simply not being as batshit insane as Trump. If they could...As much as I hate agreeing with you, the next Republican presidential candidate seems like they have a pretty easy road ahead of them by simply not being as batshit insane as Trump.
If they could tone down the things that Trump's doing that hurts basically all Americans like tarrif whiplash, insane funding cuts siphoning money to the gestapo, and deranged rants on twitter while keeping all the stupid culture war and religious stuff, I think the Democrats would have a very tough time.
There's a bit of a cargo cult mentality in the Republican party though, and I guarantee they're just going to try to find someone who can do a decent Trump impression in 2028 and fail miserably because of it.
-
Comment on Two signs that Democrats flipped Donald Trump supporters on Tuesday (gifted link) in ~society
papasquat Link ParentIt doesn't actually matter if his policies are implemented and working unfortunately. What matters is the messaging about those policies. Realistically, nothing he's proposing is going to be 100%...It doesn't actually matter if his policies are implemented and working unfortunately. What matters is the messaging about those policies. Realistically, nothing he's proposing is going to be 100% amazing or 100% terrible. In all likelihood his platforms will have pros and cons, just like everything else.
What matters is how the media reports on those policies, how people react to those reports, and who can control the message.
As unfortunate as it is, we really should have learned the lesson 10 years ago that reality has a very small influence on politics. Vibes are king.
-
Comment on What makes a game, a game? in ~games
-
Comment on What makes a game, a game? in ~games
papasquat Link ParentThat's interesting, because it rules out one of the most famous and fundemental thought experiments in game theory, the prisoners dilemma. None of the participants in the "game" are willing. It's...That's interesting, because it rules out one of the most famous and fundemental thought experiments in game theory, the prisoners dilemma. None of the participants in the "game" are willing. It's formally described as a game though.
I don't disagree with you necessarily, I probably wouldn't initially considers prisoners vying for a reduced sentence as a game, but maybe by the formal, academic definition it is.
-
Comment on What makes a game, a game? in ~games
papasquat LinkIf there's one thing that efforts like this, and other similar questions "is a hotdog a sandwich?" has revealed, it's not really anything about the answers to the questions themselves, it's that...If there's one thing that efforts like this, and other similar questions "is a hotdog a sandwich?" has revealed, it's not really anything about the answers to the questions themselves, it's that human beings, most of them anyway, are deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty, or fuzziness.
The most accurate answer to all of those edge cases is probably "kinda". That's not acceptable to a large swath people though. We love to meticulously categorize things, and when something doesn't neatly fall into a category, a crazy list of post facto rules are invented to handle those edge cases.
This is especially prevalent online, maybe because there are so many programmers and other computer people online that have a subconscious desire to make life make sense in the way a computer program does. Maybe it comes from a lack of nuance being conferred over text. Maybe it's just because people like to argue.
When doing the original quiz though, most of my answers were more like "well... Kinda?" though.
Is a puzzle a game? I don't know, maybe a little bit. Is a foot race a game? Sort of. Is tossing a coin a game? Kinda.
A lot of angry and very serious arguments come from this incessant need to categorize things as well. What is a terrorist? What is a woman? Is someone good or evil?
It seems that human beings prefer the world to be a lot more binary than it really is.
-
Comment on How Bill Gates is reframing the climate change debate in ~enviro
papasquat (edited )Link ParentYou're making it out like wealth is an intangable, trivial thing to be concerned about. It's the biggest impact on people's well-being out of any factor though. Billions of people no longer being...You're making it out like wealth is an intangable, trivial thing to be concerned about. It's the biggest impact on people's well-being out of any factor though. Billions of people no longer being in poverty means hundreds of millions of deaths avoided, and billions of people not suffering starvation or disease or other factors making their lives less miserable. If that's not the goal, what is?
Environmental destruction is primarily a problem because it negatively impacts those goals. But the world getting wealthier overall isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing.
-
Comment on Is 67 just brain rot? in ~humanities.languages
papasquat Link ParentI'm not sure if culture in general is becoming homogenized, or if it's just regional culture. In some cases, culture is actually going the opposite way. 15 years ago, you could talk to anyone...I'm not sure if culture in general is becoming homogenized, or if it's just regional culture. In some cases, culture is actually going the opposite way.
15 years ago, you could talk to anyone about The Office. Even if they didn't watch every episode, basically everyone in the US had seen an episode, and failing that, they were at least familiar with it. 30 years ago it was Seinfeld. 50 years ago it was Cheers, and so on.
Now? I don't know a single person who watches For all Mankind, despite it being a great show. I have a single other friend in real life who watches The Chair Company.
There are plenty of people online who watch those shows and sometimes I look at subreddits for them, but we no longer have huge shared cultural artifacts like the office. Same goes for games, hobbies, music, and so on. The references that I make to these things are only understood by other people online who are familiar with them, not to my real life friends or family.
So yeah, in some aspects there is a huge big monoculture, but in others, there are tiny little microcultures everywhere, completely divorced from geography.
-
Comment on Is 67 just brain rot? in ~humanities.languages
papasquat Link ParentIt's not novel at all though. It seems pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention, it's just a way to signal in group membership by being intentionally nonsensical. It's literally the exact...It's not novel at all though. It seems pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention, it's just a way to signal in group membership by being intentionally nonsensical.
It's literally the exact same meme as "E", which was a decade ago.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
papasquat Link ParentUse raider hatches. The keys are very common, can be crafted very easily, and allow you to extract with virtually no chance of being killed in the process.Use raider hatches. The keys are very common, can be crafted very easily, and allow you to extract with virtually no chance of being killed in the process.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
papasquat Link ParentHelldivers 2 would be pretty similar. It's not technically an extraction shooter, because you don't bring loot in that you can lose every round, but that may be a good thing, if you want to play...Helldivers 2 would be pretty similar. It's not technically an extraction shooter, because you don't bring loot in that you can lose every round, but that may be a good thing, if you want to play more casually.
-
Comment on Israeli military's ex-top lawyer arrested as scandal over video leak deepens in ~society
papasquat LinkI'm struggling to think back to a similar atrocity that my country, the US undertook at Abu Ghraib. I seem to remember the US public almost universally condemning them, but I might have been in a...I'm struggling to think back to a similar atrocity that my country, the US undertook at Abu Ghraib.
I seem to remember the US public almost universally condemning them, but I might have been in a bubble at the time. Was there a significant push from the right at the time to defend the soldiers involved in the abuse, similar to what we're seeing now with Israel?
I've been having a blast with the game as well. I started falling into the trap of thinking that players trying to kill me are assholes, but then I got betrayed, it started my villain arc which I had a blast with, and I realized that the guy who betrayed me really helped me enjoy the game more.
If it wasn't for him, I'd just be farming relatively easy PvE and the games legs probably wouldn't have held for much longer.
Now, if I see people extracting and I'm not in any major danger, I'll pop a Ferro shot into them, not to try to kill them, but to put the fear in them, and give them the gift that I received.