wervenyt's recent activity

  1. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    On the headline level, perhaps. But people are happy to dig their own graves too, if it means taking the easier path.

    On the headline level, perhaps. But people are happy to dig their own graves too, if it means taking the easier path.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Of course viewers are giving up on Netflix shows in ~tv

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    And that's exactly the depth we wouldn't have gotten without your elision! Now, I'm not sure what we'll learn from this millimeter dip, but hey, it happened.

    And that's exactly the depth we wouldn't have gotten without your elision! Now, I'm not sure what we'll learn from this millimeter dip, but hey, it happened.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Of course viewers are giving up on Netflix shows in ~tv

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    In this comment, you have said something much more interesting than if you'd said 'ending'. The abruption is the ending now, and it's a different story. Holding onto our ideas of narrative can...

    In this comment, you have said something much more interesting than if you'd said 'ending'. The abruption is the ending now, and it's a different story. Holding onto our ideas of narrative can spoil the ones in front of us.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on Why does WhatsApp drain so much phone battery? in ~tech

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    People tend to acknowledge my points, even if they don't change their behavior. But the whole network effect is built on being frictionless and the idea that everyone's on it. I'm not, and I make...

    People tend to acknowledge my points, even if they don't change their behavior. But the whole network effect is built on being frictionless and the idea that everyone's on it. I'm not, and I make friction when people bring it up.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    Oh, absolutely. That's why the framing ticks me off. If we legitimately were freeing ourselves from the oppression of written language, it'd be great. If we were training kids to think...

    Oh, absolutely. That's why the framing ticks me off. If we legitimately were freeing ourselves from the oppression of written language, it'd be great. If we were training kids to think multidimensionally and immanently, the loss of artistic appreciation for a form I love would be a worthwhile trade. Instead, people are being trained to fear indeterminacy, not to think, and are being left to follow their pleasure centers into the human mill. That's social collapse, not change.

    5 votes

  6. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    To me, post-literacy as a state implies it does something. Preliterate culture existed. I'm rather unconvinced that our culture will survive once the average person's education is as simple as...

    To me, post-literacy as a state implies it does something. Preliterate culture existed. I'm rather unconvinced that our culture will survive once the average person's education is as simple as being hitched onto the hedonic treadmill of algorithmic conditioning.

    6 votes

  7. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    This is why lumping all this in as illiteracy is ridiculous. This is The Atlantic, we all know their conventions, and you probably read up to the start of the quote, contextually realized that you...

    This is why lumping all this in as illiteracy is ridiculous. This is The Atlantic, we all know their conventions, and you probably read up to the start of the quote, contextually realized that you didn't need to read it to get the point, and moved on. That is good media literacy, not even necessarily an indicator of low attention span, let alone a sign of poor literacy. But kids are being deprived of being taught how to learn things like that.

    9 votes

  8. Comment on The end of reading is here in ~books

    wervenyt
    Link
    I'm particularly tired of think pieces looking at the mess that is education (globally, nobody is utilizing the state of the art in pedagogy at large institutions) failing when beaten by the waves...

    I'm particularly tired of think pieces looking at the mess that is education (globally, nobody is utilizing the state of the art in pedagogy at large institutions) failing when beaten by the waves of social media addiction and deciding this is an evolution for humanity. This isn't post-literacy, it's our society failing and us all willfully converting ourselves into dependent hostages a la North Korea.

    42 votes

  9. Comment on Why does WhatsApp drain so much phone battery? in ~tech

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    Yeah, that's the excuse people have made since long before 99%. It's true, we need non-individual solutions, yet nobody in power wants to do anything. So some of us are going into the gears,...

    Yeah, that's the excuse people have made since long before 99%. It's true, we need non-individual solutions, yet nobody in power wants to do anything. So some of us are going into the gears, whether we want to or not.
    The comment I replied to asked why one might do so. I explained the stance. The more annoying I am about this, the less likely it is that those who around me are tricked into the monoculture, and the less likely it is for a business owner to think that going WhatsApp-first is a good idea.

    I'm not doing anything to make the world better. But using WhatsApp makes it worse.

    4 votes

  10. Comment on Why does WhatsApp drain so much phone battery? in ~tech

    wervenyt
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Fundamentally, someone has to say "enough" and get crushed in the wash for things to get better. In certain places it might mean losing friends, in others, careers. But if it isn't someone doing...

    Fundamentally, someone has to say "enough" and get crushed in the wash for things to get better. In certain places it might mean losing friends, in others, careers. But if it isn't someone doing it for principles early it'll be the disenfranchised, or we'll surrender our communications to intelligence organizations who want us alienated and reactive to ads. Oh, too late?

    3 votes

  11. Comment on Modern, abstract art makes me angry in ~arts

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    It's extremely tepid to act like artists are flouncing about and wasting everyone's time. People got sent to prison many times over the past hundred years for making abstract art, under the Nazi...

    It's extremely tepid to act like artists are flouncing about and wasting everyone's time. People got sent to prison many times over the past hundred years for making abstract art, under the Nazi regime, but also the USSR and other totalitarian states. That's how widely held that opinion is.

    It's fun to point at the banana or a white canvas and ask wherefore art, but in most cases, these are genuine works of expressive intent made by someone who has devoted no small part of their life to said expression. The idea that it's a conspiracy to dupe the average person is deeply cynical and an extremely superior posture, and rude on the base level. It's snobby to assume you have the correct form of artistic taste.

    But maybe you're right. It's actually far less charitable to snobs to describe someone looking over a stranger's proverbial shoulder at their canvas and loudly proclaiming "oh, you think you're better than me, huh?" as one. Snobs might at least have an argument aside from aggrieved antiintellectualism.

    24 votes

  12. Comment on Reddit will require you to be logged in to use old.reddit.com in ~tech

    wervenyt
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Yeah, this is the future of policing and society.

    Yeah, this is the future of policing and society.

    Child labour is profitable, and nobody knows what to do with the hoodlums anyway. Nobody cares about the occasional crushed finger or wishy washy bullshit like 'education', and we shouldn't, or else we wouldn't have such delicate lacework for our collars. It's sad, but it just happens.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on No, artificial intelligence is not conscious in ~tech

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    What people consciously want and what the systems they live within tend to push people like them into working toward are often very contradictory. But assuming nonsentient intelligence is possible...

    What people consciously want and what the systems they live within tend to push people like them into working toward are often very contradictory. But assuming nonsentient intelligence is possible feels like operating on the assumption of eventually discovering cold fusion, especially when so much of what we think of as mechanistic information work is functionally a matter of subjective judgment in the first place, commoditized.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on Marc Andreessen is a philosophical zombie in ~humanities

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    100%. Said cult was made to appeal to them, it's just mindnumbingly stupid to watch.

    100%. Said cult was made to appeal to them, it's just mindnumbingly stupid to watch.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on Around twenty drown in France as French seek relief from heatwave in ~enviro

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    "fighting climate change will require nothing of me, because I deserve my comfort, unlike the bad people"

    "fighting climate change will require nothing of me, because I deserve my comfort, unlike the bad people"

    2 votes

  16. Comment on No, artificial intelligence is not conscious in ~tech

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    AI would be slaves, here. The issue of what moral duties we owe fellow sentient beings is the philosophical one. For the time being, AIs are probably not worthy of consideration. What about when...

    AI would be slaves, here. The issue of what moral duties we owe fellow sentient beings is the philosophical one. For the time being, AIs are probably not worthy of consideration. What about when we get something closer to AGI? Then we're talking slavery.

    11 votes

  17. Comment on Marc Andreessen is a philosophical zombie in ~humanities

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    His logic is even more specious when you get into what he's pseudoregurgitating: the idea that "the modern subject" is contingent upon the immediate precarity of owing your 'betters' for living,...

    His logic is even more specious when you get into what he's pseudoregurgitating: the idea that "the modern subject" is contingent upon the immediate precarity of owing your 'betters' for living, and similar socioeconomic arrangements. None of which concerns itself with introspective faculties, at most the modality of how that introspection is conceived.

    The way these billionaires style themselves ubermensch and fall into a methhead's performance art cult in one move is deeply entertaining, at least.

    6 votes

  18. Comment on No, artificial intelligence is not conscious in ~tech

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    If there's any consciousness there, it's going to be an incredibly small 'quantity' happening within specific processes, not something that's continuous or stable, that's for sure.

    If there's any consciousness there, it's going to be an incredibly small 'quantity' happening within specific processes, not something that's continuous or stable, that's for sure.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on No, artificial intelligence is not conscious in ~tech

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    Yeah, that's not what I was referring to. And I'd challenge the distinction between reasoning and consciousness.

    Yeah, that's not what I was referring to. And I'd challenge the distinction between reasoning and consciousness.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on No, artificial intelligence is not conscious in ~tech

    wervenyt
    Link Parent
    Why are you so willing to ignore centuries old philosophical subject matter for no reason but wishful thinking? It's condescending as hell, for one.

    Why are you so willing to ignore centuries old philosophical subject matter for no reason but wishful thinking? It's condescending as hell, for one.

    10 votes