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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1424 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 22, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Huh, I haven't heard of that one before, and up till this point, I thought I'd read pretty much everything he's ever written. Maybe it's even more misanthropic when translated to Polish? You guys aren't known for your sunny vibes and general optimism.

In general, I agree that Watts is deeply, borderline-fanatical levels of misanthropic. I regularly check in on his blog, and a running theme is his sentiment that humans have Wrecked The Planet (ecological collapse, global warming), and we're going to pay for our sins/hubris by quite possibly going extinct. There is such a thing as overstating the seriousness of what is otherwise a real problem. Global Warming is an eminently solvable problem, for very little money should we get over our civilizational allergy to geoengineering. Of course, the idea of using technology to solve things instead of degrowth and industrial regression is deeply antithetical to his worldview. Recently, he's slowly migrating to AI-bashing, which is a very modest directional improvement.

For now, he's busy writing polemics and giving talks at moderately populated scifi seminars. A retired academic in Canada has largely aged out of active terrorism, that's a young man's game.

Recently, he's slowly migrating to AI-bashing, which is a very modest directional improvement.

Oh? Why? Shouldn't he love AI, here is proof you don't need to be conscious to be smart?

I regularly check in on his blog, and a running theme is his sentiment that humans have Wrecked The Planet (ecological collapse, global warming), and we're going to pay for our sins/hubris by quite possibly going extinct.

The moment in Blindsight where Sarasti the Superpredator (watch out, he looks at screaming faces to visualize data!) berates our clueless hero for not caring about climate change was absolutely kino.

Did you know that visualizing data in the form of faces is an actual technique?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernoff_face

Making them screaming faces? Subtlety is a lost art.

I realize it's an "actual" technique in that a guy published a paper about it and it's been included in a couple of scifi books. It isn't an "actual" technique in that I've never seen it used anywhere and it seems unlikely that in the future we'll realize we've been sleeping on this.

https://x.com/lauriewired/status/2020006982598685009?s=20

This is the closest I've ever come to seeing usage in the wild, and Laurie claims it's applied by some flavor of analyst. I suppose it's neat?

And even this isn't a face. I guess reality just keeps disappointing.

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