Carnelian

Not at all. I’m 100% sure that spending as much time as possible playing Umamusume is the most spiritually fulfilling course of action one can embark on in this life

As an honorable mention, Wilco also named a subsequent album “Schmilco”, which is just delightful

Total vertigo. Just walking through the streets is surreal. You crane your head to try and make sense of it but the buildings just keep going.

Individual buildings in NYC have more people in them than at any given time than my entire hometown. By a large margin. Just so cool. I guess that was the main shock for me, the sheer sense of scale

Couldn’t believe how good the tap water tasted either haha

I agree, I think the conflation of machine learning, which has existed and benefited us for decades, with “AI” is an unfortunately effective marketing strategy. In fact most of the “benefits of AI” being discussed above are just classic machine learning applications being rebranded as AI purely for the sake of allowing the media to have headlines like “AI cures cancer!”

Right like in this metaphor we’re now lumping scarves in with jackets (classic style, normal manufacturing and impact on the environment) and saying that jackets are good so we should be careful when addressing the field of clothing as a whole. I think the critical thing to understand is that clothing is not under the scarf umbrella, it’s the other way around. It’s not a condemnation of pants to oppose the scarf industry, regardless of how desperately the scarf industry wants to inherit the legacy of pants

We’re currently in the beginning of the story, the alarm is sounding, and instead of firmly rejecting it, we find ourselves trying to balance the discussion by reminding ourselves of the many positive things people like about AI

Everyone agrees destroying the environment is bad, just like everyone agrees Hitler was bad. But when we find ourselves in modern parallels of these situations it seems like decisive action is often derailed for the sake of nuance.

I apologize for any condescending air, I am not accusing you of vehemently supporting the scarf industry. I think this discussion is just a bit tough to keep grounded as we shift between addressing each other, ideas in general, and the people we know who hold them. I appreciate your posts and bringing forward the perspectives you’ve encountered and your thoughts about them

would like for a transphobe to learn from their mistakes by handing me a strap

ooh :3

of non-sequential twenties, and immediately walking away.

ohh 3:

Again we aren't

I know friend, I’m addressing the people you are speaking for, regardless of who amongst us here agrees with them. I apologize for the confusion

but the idea that there is nothing good being developed at all, that it has zero benefit, strikes me as the inverse

This comes up a lot.

Are you familiar with the story of The Lorax?

To summarize briefly, a billionaire creates a comfortable scarf, made from felled trees. He aggressively markets this fashion item to the point where it becomes a worldwide sensation, and all the trees are felled in the pursuit of manufacturing more scarves. In the end, without any trees, there is no more fresh air to breathe. Ah but, worry not, the billionaire rises to the occasion, and graciously begins selling the populace canned air so they can survive.

In this story, do you consider the many objectively good qualities of the scarf to be relevant in any way? How comfortable it is? How warm? How stylish? Would you dismiss the pleas of environmentalists for being too narrow minded in their denial of these many clear benefits?

If AI figures out a cure for every disease, healthcare is going to be destabilized, but you'll still have every cure

Why are we assuming that if we acquire the knowledge of how to cure a disease that the cure will be made accessible to all?

If AI takes every job, you can't really have capitalism anymore, so what happens next?

What they're hoping for is the world that comes after 'the big breakthrough'

we'll only be left with the benefits

Why are we assuming anything positive would happen for the vast majority of humanity? Is our allegiance to the tech billionaire’s verbatim propaganda completely predicated on optimistic vibes?

These aren't out of touch boomers, they're multi-doctorate holding, cutting-edge researchers

It is extremely important for everyone to understand that intelligent people are not necessarily less likely to be deceived. In fact, without specialized training, a more intelligent person may in fact be better at compartmentalizing their beliefs, and have a very robust ability to internalize false beliefs without letting it decay their ability to function within their field of specialization.

Indeed, if we observe cult recruiting tactics, being an extremely capable high achiever often just puts a bigger target on your back, attracting more robust efforts to indoctrinate you into the fold.

All of which is to say, you are not immune to propaganda, regardless of being a phd researcher.

when I see a new application for AI in cancer research

We had an absolute flood of reporting about “ai” breakthroughs across different fields of science. There have been countless examples of these stories being investigated, and it turns out the “breakthrough” was either unrelated to AI or blatantly fabricated. I myself work in one of these cutting edge industries and I personally know of two major international companies who have heavily marketed and sold “AI” systems, complete with public press releases detailing the breakthroughs, when in reality the systems are literally and totally unrelated to anything AI. In one case they simply affixed an “AI” sticker to an existing device without changing the programming or capabilities whatsoever.

Just be careful out there friend. This whole affair is rotten to the core. Have optimism that we can protect one another from what’s coming. Don’t be optimistic that the billionaires are simply waiting until the right moment, when they are satisfied with the power they have amassed, to finally share their prosperity with us

What if I’m in-office dev?

I don’t know the exact mechanisms at play that make it necessary, but they sell the additive at automotive stores!

Asbestos is already in all the buildings, we can’t remove it. All the cars already require leaded gasoline, we can’t unlead it.

Fun fact I didn’t know until recently: if you have a classic car that requires leaded gasoline, they actually sell lead substitute that you mix with modern unleaded gas

Of course!

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10180745/

Those considering creatine supplementation for the goal of regional muscle hypertrophy should consider the practical significance of the small magnitude of effect

compared to a placebo, the magnitude of this effect was trivial to small

To be clear, there is a minuscule effect observed over the relatively short time scale of the studies. What people do is erroneously assume that your “gains” will compound the same way interest compounds with money, so someone hawking the supplement will point to one of the more positive studies (for every hundred studies, we’ll get 5 that erroneously say it’s extremely good, with 95% confidence!) and argue that even minuscule amounts of extra progress will result in much better results over a long period of time.

In reality muscle hypertrophy actually works the opposite way. The further along you are the slower you progress lol. Furthermore, there has literally never been a study on the muscle building effects of creatine supplementation over a long period of time. We have no evidence whatsoever to suggest you’ll be better off at the 1 year mark, 3 years, 5 years, and so on. (There have been observational studies performed up to the 5 year mark, but only looking for negative side effects. No word on the benefits at that point)

This is all also ignoring serious methodological issues regarding the studies themselves. We just don’t have a reliable way to measure regional muscle hypertrophy at such a small scale. There is work being done at the moment trying to repeat some of the more positive studies while controlling for sudden water retention (which causes most measurement methods to false positive) and so far every time they do that they fail to replicate the original findings.

But yeah, even awaiting the controlled reviews to play out, based on the current flawed and overly optimistic studies, experts are saying “trivial to small” to the point where it has questionable practical significance. Which is why I say next to worthless instead of totally worthless.

As a side note, believe it or not, the international powerlifting federation officially recommends against creatine supplementation and even protein powder. Mainly because there are significant systemic contamination issues across all supplements and they keep finding banned substances in the powders. The amounts are probably small enough not to affect your health but pose a problem for athletes during drug testing