domain:city-journal.org
Throwaway05
10hr ago
A million reasons. Because it looks bad? Because it's anti-social? Because people aren't qualified to determine what is or is not safe.
If I run up to you and punch the air around your face did I cause you any harm? No.
Does it suck balls and do you want that behavior banned? Sure.
No_one
10hr ago
We're All Sitcom Characters Now
Lot of small/middle accounts on twitter are perfectly normal and don't try to engagement bait or make a brand. And something like 80% of twitter eyeballs are allegedly people who barely if ever post.
oats_son
10hr ago
Obviously prayer does do something, if you're counting spiritual feeling or literal mouth movements as "something". If you read this far down in the thread, hopefully you remember the original claim causing me to post at all, but since you asked what I meant by "does anything":
But what really brought me back was simple, undeniable, tangible evidence. I decided to try to pray for something (freedom from an addiction I had) and the result was spectacular, far beyond anything I'd have expected. I then set about more formally testing prayer and related things and found consistent, similar results.
It's just plain false that there is undeniable tangible evidence to anyone except the prayermaker themselves. If it wasn't, all kinds of religious organizations would be falling all over themselves commissioning study after study.
I used to pray, and not as a magic ATM, but there's only so much placebo can do for you once you know it's placebo.
No_one
10hr ago
The reasons I'm interested in humans talking is either to find out what people think or to learn actual information/insight about the rest of the world.
LLMs are a great way of researching things because they have a surface level understanding on par with a median professional of some field. You'll be taken for a ride in some way if you don't know the topic yourself, but you can get a lot out of them that way.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
10hr ago
Eventually, we won't/can't. Thankfully, the people who are lazy enough to try and pass off AI generated content as their own seem lazy enough to not bother with fancy prompting or editing.
As far as I'm aware, it's an unsolvable problem, but it hasn't caused an apocalypse yet.
No_one
10hr ago
How are you going to be even able to tell whether something is AI or isn't?
Enough people around here are functionally indistinguishable from LLMs from my point of view. They produce huge reams of mostly waffling text circling at respectable distance off the problem without ever addressing it and it's a chore to read.
Any LLM can do so too, in fact they readily behave exactly like that. With the barest minimum prompting skill all the usuall tells of LLM output disappear.
No_one
10hr ago
If you're a cyclist and have some sense, you just stick to side roads or streets where there's few moving cars, the speeds and risks are low.
It's very unpleasant to be on the same road as a lot of cars and I always avoid it unless it's impossible. But 90% the time there's a side street, cycling path or an empty sidewalk to use..
No_one
10hr ago
Nevertheless, cycling shouldn't be needed in a rich country.
It's a fairly good way to get enough exercise. I vastly prefer cycling outside than being in a gym.
exercise, walk
Walking is incredibly weak exercise. Going full tilt on a bicycle at maybe 20 mph is incredibly taxing, you'll be spent after 1h, 1.5 hours. It's similar to running, but much lower risk of injury.
No_one
10hr ago
There's no limit on e-bikes speed in the US? EU bikes stop assisting at 25 kph, about 18 mph or so.
No_one
11hr ago
Sometimes, people want to pay that price. There was a funny joke I saw on twitter about how a someone's girl wanted some piece of jewelery. Guy said no, found it on aliexpress for 15% of the price, sent her the link and said he'd buy it and then wondered why she was upset.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
11hr ago
I think they're imagining it as if they were standing still, and you zip past at 120. People aren't good at imagining speeds compared to anything other than stopped.
JarJarJedi
11hr ago
What do you mean by "does anything"? If you see the prayer as an ATM, that you put the right card in, type the right code, and the stuff you asked for comes out, that most certainly does not work and can not work - that's called "magic" and you can read about it in any number of fantasy books, but that's not how our world works([citation needed], of course), and even more, as far as I know, most Abrahamic religions at least kinda frown on such things. Clearly, it's not intended to be the ATM.
If you are asking whether a prayer changes anything in the world at all, e.g. if the world post prayer is identical to the world prior, or you can observe something different anywhere at all, then obviously it does, there are multiple people who could testify to that. Is it just a subjective phenomenon? Maybe yes, maybe not. What knowing that would give you? If your answer to this boils down to "magic" again, then maybe that's not the right way to deal with the issue. You won't get magic from it. You can't just pray for winning the Powerball and become a multimillionaire (at least not in the sense that you can get $100 from your bank's ATM). If this issue bothers you, maybe the more productive approach would be to consider what people are getting from it, and what you would want to get from it - i.e. if it "did anything", what kind of anything would you want it to do? Is it magic ATM? Is it Prozac without side effects? Is it imaginary best friend? Is it something else? Maybe that's what people find in it.
TIRM
11hr ago
The problem occurs downhill. Every now and then someone goes downhill really fast and partially blocking the road, but not as fast as the cars.
There is a bike lane here. If they kept to the middle or right side of that there would be no problem. But some ride at least part in the road. I don't see this behavior on other bike lanes. This hill has some deranging affect on some people.
sockpuppet2
11hr ago
If I were dictator I would make a law that bikes can go anywhere, but never have right of way. If a cyclist is in an accident it will always be their fault- hit an old lady and go to jail, get hit by a car and die.
Why?
celluloid_dream
11hr ago
Yes, absolutely, and I do, but a lot of drivers aren't paying as much attention.
sockpuppet2
11hr ago
I'm curious, Mottizens: what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?
Minimal traffic, with lane discipline (and no legal speed limit)? 100-115mph. I had to do a big stretch of interstate on a Sunday morning in 2021 and that speed range isn't crazy, conditions allowing. But kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity, so I wouldn't want to regularly drive that much faster than the car was designed to be crashed at.
In realistic conditions? Flow of traffic, up to 85mph. Partly because 90mph irrationally feels wrong, even though 85mph doesn't; partly because the handful of times I've seen the flow of traffic be 90mph, the drivers going that fast were bad (perhaps these things are related?).
sockpuppet2
11hr ago
minimal traffic was specified, so we're looking at fairly minor danger, swerving around three other cars.
If you were swerving around other cars, I think your idea of "minimal traffic" is different than others'. Minimal traffic, to me, would be too few cars to accidentally get in each others' way.
sockpuppet2
11hr ago
How would you make a functional equivalent in your basement? Do you spend a lot of time working with stainless steel? Do you think their design is stupid drop-ship style crap?
TIRM
11hr ago
Googling a bit for the West Coast: I see California lacks a bikes on sidewalk law. So it is left up to local governments to regulate. Given how much I see kids on electric bikes on sidewalks: at least in practice they don't much bother regulating them.
sun_the_second
11hr ago
I don't know about the ratio of technical quality. But as it stands right now, AI art is largely samey and even the best specimen (that I could identify, obviously) have the trademark sameyness and do not exceed the best human artwork.
Suppose you searched for a particular topic on a picture website, before AI boom it'd be a normal distribution from, say, 30% human ability to 99% (with the bottom tail cut off because the people who can only draw stickmen with a pencil usually don't publish them). After, we get a massive injection of 60%, and it's all in the same style.
TIRM
11hr ago
Yep. I'm lean and in the suburbs. I bike as a hobby and fun activity with my family. Good thing to do with kids on Saturday.
I certainly don't bike to work. I'm way too far away. I also need to drive my kid to private school. I'm not doing that on a bike.
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
11hr ago
This is why I haven’t read a word of text since 2007. I use text to speech for everything.
wayfarer
11hr ago
Depends on size. It will range from "minor annoyance/breaks monotony" to "cycling is not going to happen at all".
sockpuppet2
11hr ago
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships
The US shipbuilding industry was only strong in the mid-1800s. Since the rise of iron and steel ships, massive government spending was able to buy military ships, but protectionism and subsidies failed to maintain a competitive shipbuilding industry.
Ford and GM only make good cars because of international competition, and Chrysler has never made good cars, at all (Chrysler fans won't be mad about me saying this, because they like that Chryslers are bad). The only long-lived US motorcycle manufacturer is Harley-Davidson and it not only needed tariffs to survive, it's also bad.
That isn't quite what I meant. Sure I believe an LLM-based agent may be able to accomplish that task. But if the intention were to make the task automatable, then you wouldn't need one. Since the point is to make the task not automatable, this is just a step in an arms race of making the task more frustrating.
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