bsbbtnh
1yr ago
But why go through all the trouble?
I'd imagine just eliminating subreddits isn't ideal, when its possible you can convert them into whatever the rest of Reddit is. Then instead of an exodus, you get to slowly shape the discourse of people you don't like or agree with. Why give up control over your outgroup?
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The very existence of the placebo effect (and the nocebo effect) and the fact it works even if you tell people it is a placebo, suggests that our mind plays a larger role than we give it credit for. And if our mind can make us believe that pain is worse than it is (or that pain exists where it does not), then our mind can do the opposite and alleviate 'real' pain. I think a lot of people want their pain to be recognized and validated, and that turns them away from 'simple' solutions they can do themselves. In the past, you needed to get through pain in order to survive. Today pain can be used as an excuse to not work, and not working isn't going to impact your survival. So the motivation to be pain free, especially for the lower class, has evaporated. Good times create weak men.
I think masturbation is a great example of how powerful the mind is. If you're not aroused or comfortable, masturbating can be a futile exercise, no matter how much physical effort you put in. And yet a dream can be so powerful as to cause an orgasm, with absolutely no physical stimulation. For the most part, people prefer masturbating with a particular thought in their mind, or looking at certain materials. Typically people masturbate in a comfortable area where they feel safe (and private). Imagine if we began to ignore this mental state with regards to masturbation, and instead replaced it with a pill (and not specifically viagra, but something that would make you ejaculate/orgasm; or maybe not even feel the need to). This is basically how we treat pain today, with no concern given to the mental state. Mental health is treated like this more and more everyday, it seems.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I don't think this is going to be that big of a bane on the average artist. In fact, I think this will be much like other digital tools, which have allowed below-average artists to punch above their weight. AI will be quickly adopted by these folks. Their overall art will improve, and they'll be able to pump out a lot more content. But they'll likely suck at doing revisions, as the AI probably isn't going to be built with that in mind. So the average artist will be able to step in, using AI to create ideas and starting points, and then build off of that. AI will be the go to for reference images.
And you'll have AI whisperers who are incredibly good at constructing prompts to get great results from AI.
I think artists largely fall into two camps. One are people who produce things that appeal to others, and another is people who produce things that appeal to themselves. Sometimes, in rare cases, the people who do their own art are able to appeal to the masses; and truly great artists can influence what appeals to the masses. When it comes to dealing with clients who are commissioning a work, some artists are trying to shove their vision on their client, while others are able to take what their clients want and replicate it perfectly. But the great artist is able to take what a client wants, filter it through themselves, and produce something the client didn't explicitly ask for, but really wanted. Or something like that.
Anyways, over the course of the next few years, I imagine there will be a few scandals, from niche to mainstream, of artists using AI but representing it as human-made. What I'm really looking forward to is a scandal of a web personality turning out to be a complete fabrication, and all their art/work being produced by AI. Because at the end of the day, most of the artists online are only popular because of the work they put into creating a name for themselves, cultivating an audience. It's largely marketing, with a small amount based on skill. Some of it, to be honest, is a woman having a pretty face and a prettier body. And so the real threat isn't a computer that can make great art; it's a computer that can connect with an audience in the same way an 'influencer' or 'content creator' can. The social skill needed to amass an audience, and retain them, is something that is far more valuable than drawing or any other skill. An AI that can replicate that is a direct threat to every 'influencer', whether they be an artist, streamer, Twitter journalist, etc. Though that will open the door for people with fewer social skills to do well, since they could leverage AI to create a social identity, but even if not, their inept social skills will come across as more 'authentic'.
Imagine if that happened with acting. Movies in a couple decades, the ones made with actual human actors in front of a camera, could end up with atrocious acting just so it seems more authentic..
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I feel like there's another issue here, which is large institutions (typically mutual funds) holding vast shares in these companies, yet not selling when the price skyrockets. The supply side of the stock market is broken if most of the public float is locked up. If Vanguard or Blackrock were selling their holdings (which are held on behalf of their clients, which they have a fiduciary duty to) when the price doubled or quadrupled, then that would help not only meet demand, but quell a bunch of it.
If the execs are all selling, everyone who go in early are selling, demand is insatiable, and yet the people managing most of America's 401Ks are just sitting on their hands, something is wrong.
The fact so many shares are essentially 'locked up' makes short selling more profitable, but more volatile. It makes buybacks much more attractive (especially for executives). All the incentives are wrong. You don't actually need many people to create a meme stock, you just need Blackrock, Vanguard, and other institutions, to own most of the shares.
And when the share price of a company spikes far past what its fundamentals suggest it should be worth, maybe companies should be forced to issue new shares and dilute everyone else, in order to get the price down. Almost feels irresponsible for a company to not raise funds off things like this, since it'd benefit the majority of their shareholders.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I used to be on (I think) dexedrine. I hated it, because it would keep me awake for 20+ hours, even at the lowest dose. One time I took it before bed and woke up 4 hours later feeling more refreshed and energetic than I've ever felt in my life.
I stopped taking it after that, because I got worried that I'd never be able to survive without the stuff if I continued, lol. So I still dread getting out of bed each day.
Have you tried sleep hygiene and such? Make your bed, clean your room, clean sheets, have some nice scent (lavender), only use your bed for sleeping, no phone/computer in bed, no eating/snacking in bed, stuff like that?
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I always wonder what it must be like for cis-women that look sort of like transwomen. I've known a few women over the years that have sort of a 'trans' look about them, particularly as they got older. I wonder if it is tougher to be in that position these days.
About twenty years ago, when I was in high school, there was a new student. I didn't know jack shit about transgenderism, and neither did anybody in my school (that I know of; it was a rural school). The student looked like a girl, talked like one, walked like one. But there was always something off about her. Then the school year ended and I never saw her again.
Anyways, years later (actually just a few years ago), I was flipping through my yearbook and saw her. And I immediately recognized that she was trans. Googled her, and it turns out she's still trans, openly so, and streams (to an extremely small audience) on Twitch. Heard her voice, and it sounded just like it did when we were younger, but I could recognize that it was a trans voice. It was pretty interesting to me how, not knowing the concept of transgenderism, I viewed her as female. And it was also interesting how something in my subconscious picked up that something was awry. She was 'passing' simply because I knew of nothing else. Today, with transgenderism being taught at such a young age, I imagine the younger generations will be able to decipher between trans and cis people at younger ages, and much more accurately, despite the fact that many young trans people seem to be much more passable to me than 20 years ago. It'll be more and more difficult for 'passing' transwomen to actually be mentally categorized as women.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Remember in 2017 when they gave Bill Nye the Science guy a Netflix show, with no rules on content, where they’d talk about sex and swear and stuff… and somehow it was more moralizing, condescending, and insulting to its audience than the children’s show?
For some reason I grow fonder and fonder of that video. I really enjoy how she's singing about her vagina and such, dressed in a sexy outfit, but is completely unable to manifest an ounce of sexuality in her performance. She stomps around like an elephant on stilts.
To your article, does it really matter what the legacy media is up to? Their power has been waning, and I imagine that a lot of society's problems of the past few years aren't actually because of social media or political divisions, but because the legacy media is grabbing onto anything to try and stay relevant, and flexing every muscle to show its power. It doesn't care if it's cancelling some random soccer mom in Bumfuck, Nowhere, they are simply doing it as a way to show that they hold power. They are trying to curry favour with the right groups in order to strengthen that power. But at the end of the day, if all you can do is squash random nobodies and relegate 'dissidents' to far-flung corners of the web where they get more views than CNN does on a good day, then I feel like legacy media has lost the war already.
The legacy media spent 4+ years pushing 24/7 propaganda and barely got Trump out of office. And the heavy lifting on that can probably be better attributed to Google and social media (and probably even moreso to the FBI giving social media a 'heads up' about Trump's October Surprise).
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I think it was mentioned previously that his ads weren't explicit about being a Democrat, so maybe that is Oz's attempt at making people realize the guy's a lib.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The hero's journey typically starts with the "character vs self conflict", while the heroine's journey you describe is more like "character vs society."
The hero has to overcome some internal conflict before they can succeed in their other conflicts. But a heroine seems to not be overcoming her own internal conflict, but instead figuring out that her internal conflict is actually something imposed on them by society's stereotypes of women. Hell, the heroine's journey may be better parsed as "character vs (character vs self)."
There are movies where the heroine follows the hero's journey. Romantic films are big on them. The internal conflict is typically about which guy to pick, the trauma is some crap relationship from years ago. Lifetime/Hallmark movies do a lot of this, too. You'll see some big city lawyer (female) who has to go and close a deal on some property development in a beautiful small town. She goes and meets a handsome guy, usually they get off on the wrong foot. And he happens to run a failing business, which just happens to be the one she's there to buy. He bitches about how horrible the property developer is, but he has no choice but to sell. She hides that she's working for them. Internal struggle, people find out, everyone hates her, she realizes she loves the dude and hates her job, she quits her job and manages to save the failing business. Happy ending.
Anyways, what I hate in many Hollywood movies is that the female lead doesn't have the initial struggle at all. The story is basically reduced down to just the main conflict, but we go through the motions like there's a character vs character conflict. Instead this is basically just targeted at the audience, it's a "character vs (audience vs society)" conflict or something. Like we're supposed to expect her to fail, to struggle, but she doesn't. Our expectations, as they say, are subverted. And we're bigots if we think that the character should have struggled. Really what we're seeking is for the character to grow. If our heroine happened to meet the enemy at the beginning, it'd be a short film rather than a feature.
I've felt many recent female characters are basically written like one-dimensional villains, but they happen to always win.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Russia tried to join NATO. They were rebuked. That's when it was cemented that Russia would never be welcomed into the west, and their policy shifted towards self-sufficiency. And that's why sanctions haven't destroyed Russia.
It's amazing how the west has become solely reactive, and worse, they spend all their time telegraphing their next move. They spend weeks talking about sanctions to hit Russia with, giving Russia weeks to plan for them. And when those sanctions hit, it turns out our leaders never thought about how it would affect us. Absolutely amazing.
And our leaders have basically pretended that Russia can't hurt us. Make us pay in rubles or they'll cut us off? Surely Russia wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot like that. Oh, they did, and they are actually making more money now. Well they'd never cut off the Nord Stream. Oh they did that to? And they are making record profits again? Hmm..
Now we're seeing our leaders try and force a price cap on Russia. I think I know exactly how this works out. China and India get cheap gas, Russia cuts off the EU completely, gas prices skyrocket, and Russia somehow makes even more money.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If we accept as fact that most women say they don't want to be leaders, then the argument from (the left? SJW? feminists?) will be that this is internalized misogyny, that our culture and the way we raise girls is what causes them to not want to be leaders. If we raised girls (and boys) in a gender neutral/fluid environment, removing their parents' biases as much as possible, then the world would swell with women leaders!
You can probably find research showing that most women want to stay at home, raise kids (maybe), and not work. But I have a feeling that the response from the left wouldn't be 'ok', it'd be "this is the result of the patriarchy."
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I've always wondered if the special interest group that Pete Dominick said you have to hand an envelope of cash to in order to win an election is the Israel lobby (AIPAC?).
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Reminds me of that bodybuilding/math article someone was looking for in the Sunday thread. The premise is that there are two types of 'hard', bodybuilding hard (where we know how to do something, but you have to put in the effort), and math hard (where it's hard to figure out, but once you do, it's easy).
AI is basically just plowing through the 'math hard' stuff. And for the most part, creative arts are mostly 'math hard'.
But how much will society really suffer if art, on average, becomes higher quality (because low-quality art basically vanishes when an AI can do it well for free). It reminds me a bit of projectionists in movie theaters. For many years you heard projectionists sounding the alarm about what would happen if they were replaced, how the theater experience would drop. But the honest truth is that most projectionists were teenagers who had no idea what they were doing, and the average experience for theater goers was that the film would be poorly lighted, framed incorrectly, that reels wouldn't be changed properly, that sound and video would be out of sync.
Sure, in a few large cities there were great projectionist made a film dramatically better. But for the whole of society, the death of the projectionist was a net benefit.
Anyways, the average artist (and the crappy artists) probably benefit the most from AI art, because they can increase their output and potentially their quality. For those who get stuck (like writers block) AI is a great way to blow through that. And maybe society as a whole benefits if people who have great vision, but not the skill to put their vision on paper, have the tools to be able to do so.
Most 'great' artists will survive fine, since most 'great' artists are actually just 'good' artists who built a brand. At some point AI will figure out how to build a brand, an audience, a following, and that'll be a major changing point for humanity.
Who knows, maybe the rise of AI in digital media will lead to an increase in demand for in-person, local arts, like theater. If everyone can simply type an idea into a prompt and get a theatrical quality film, then the real treat is going to be seeing performances live (just like with concerts).
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I remember the Anti-war movement being more prominent at the time... Was that only after the fact?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests
The largest anti-war rallies in history.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
What, exactly, would you have considered the appropriate response?
Empathy for the states that deal with this everyday.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If he were criminally charged, I think it'd become an even more successful PR stunt.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
In an old thread about this, someone linked to Steve Pinker's AMA, in which he had this to say;
It's the "moralistic fallacy," the idea that we should shape the facts in such a way as to point to the most morally desirable consequences. In the case of rape, the fear was that if rape has a sexual motive, then it would be natural, hence good; and instinctive, hence unavoidable. Since rape is bad and ought to be stamped out, it cannot come from "natural" sexual motives. My own view is that these are non-sequiturs -- rape is horrific no matter what its motives are, and we know that rates of rape can be reduced (in Better Angels I assemble statistics that US rates of rape are down by almost 80% since their peak). One surprise that I experienced upon re-reading Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book "Against Our Will," which originated the rape-is-about-power-not-sex doctrine, is that idea was a very tiny part of the book, thrown in almost as an afterthought (Brownmiller said she got the idea from one of her Marxist professors). Most of the book is a brilliant account of the history of rape, its treatment by the legal system, its depiction in literature and film, the experience of being raped and reporting it, and other topics. It's also written with great style, clarity, and erudition. Though I disagree with that one idea, I would recommend it as one of the best and most important books on violence I have read.
Anyways, years ago there was a thread in AskReddit, in which someone asked rapists why they rape. It was a long thread, but one component that was noticeable was that it clearly had nothing to do with power. This, of course, pissed off a ton of people, and the thread was shut down and later scrubbed because it was deemed harmful. I think some 'psychologist' had come out to say that the thread could encourage more people to rape? Anyways, that seemed like a significant moment where the tide began to turn for open discourse on Reddit.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Of course they think this. They got this job via J.J. Abrams, they are jobbing scriptwriters who worked on stuff for Bad Robot amongst others, and that hit me. J.J. Abrams is the guy who said Star Trek was too philosophical for him, so when making the reboot, "So we tried to make it work for people like me ... and people like you. The goal was to make a movie for moviegoers, not just for 'Star Trek' fans. So if you've never seen 'Star Trek' before, you can still see it."
I never really got into Star Trek, but I did enjoy the film JJ Abrams made. Don't think I watched any of the sequels, since it was just enjoyable, but not something that really connected. I only watched it because I was on a Heroes binge at the time, and enjoyed Zachary Quinto. This would have been a few years after it came out.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Anybody see Top Gun Maverick? Biggest movie of the year (so far, it could get dethroned by Avatar or Black Panther). Made over $700m in the US and Canada, and like $1.4b worldwide. I think this is the first weekend it has fallen out of the top 5.
Anyways, I was excited to see it and finally went a couple weeks ago. But it seems like absolute shit to me. Beautifully shot, the flying scenes are great. And yet the story seems bland. The graphics used when they are discussing missions and stuff seemed like some shit out of a Command & Conquer cutscene. A lot of transitions between scenes felt a bit sudden, like something was cut. I've seen celebrities gushing over this film, Quentin Tarantino was fanboying over it. But I honestly think it's one of the worst Tom Cruise movies I've ever seen.
And despite being the biggest movie of the year, I've barely seen a peep about it online (other than it's box office success). Despite seeing it a coupe weeks ago, I never ran into a single spoiler for it. Never saw a single meme. So obviously not a movie that appealed to those who very online. On YouTube I'd been putting every Top Gun video I saw in my Watch Later playlist, to binge after I saw it. And even those videos, going over how great the film was, really had no substance. All the interviews I found with the cast were just the same stories about flying in a jet or meeting Tom Cruise.
The bits James Corden did with Tom Cruise were more satisfying than the actual film.
I'm definitely not a film buff, so maybe I'm missing something. I have seen the original, quite a few times. But something just felt 'off' throughout this film.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
especially related to the potential for mercury exposure
I get the feeling that the risk of mercury in general is far overstated.
Aside from that, did you ever experience other issues with CFLs? I know there were many people who claimed they caused headaches. The light seemed to always bother my eyes when they were first turned on. And they seemed like a really poor choice for rooms I was only in briefly, as they'd burn out after relatively few uses over the course of a year or so (storage room/pantry). And being from a household where we tended to turn off/on lights when leaving/entering a room, the lifespan seemed to be cut to the order of a few months.
CFLs were a waste.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
- They government offices, schools etc. can move into online mode again to save on heating
Arguably this will lead to higher costs. Home heating tends to be inefficient. So sending everyone home to keep warm will likely result in higher costs. And it's not like you can just turn off all the energy to government offices and schools. You're going to have to keep them above freezing throughout the winter.
Usually, during the workday, energy use at home drops. And that's without considering that most people don't turn down the heat. If energy prices are high, everyone is going to be locking that dial when they leave home.
By keeping schools, offices, and basically any place where people congregate, open and warm, you're going to see people turn down their thermostats and spend more time in public places, making it even more efficient.
Basically locking people down during an energy crisis is going to lead to increased demand for stuff to do at home, and supply is limited. That's going to push up prices even further.
They should be creating communal areas where people can gather, stay warm, hang out, and even eat. Commercial kitchens are far more efficient than residential ones. Restaurants are getting priced out by energy costs, but then we're just going to end up with more people eating at home, which means more energy consumption.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Even ignoring that, I think the calculus for winter riots changes if everyone is cold at home.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
For property taxes, most cities have a cap on how much they can go up each year. This is to 'protect grandma', so that property taxes don't push her out of her home. If grandma sells, the property is reassessed, and the taxes can increase significantly.
Anyways, you'll notice that Trump owns some 500 'businesses'. Most of these are LLCs with a single property attached to them. The reason you do this is so that when you buy or sell a property, it isn't technically changing hands. Instead you're buying/selling the LLC, which owns the property. No tax reassessment, which means you keep those low rates locked in indefinitely.
Hillary seemed like the porn star who has been in the business for 30+ years, has sagging implants, plastic face, obnoxious moans, and is still wearing school girl uniforms. Trump was like a nymphomaniac doing their first porn scene and genuinely enjoying it.
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