

I am 5’11’’ in the sense that it’s true enough and I’ve never cared to double check.
Telling people you’re just under the line can be a good litmus test for what kind of person you’re dealing with. Even if I were 6+, I’d still say I was 5’11’'.


I am 5’11’’ in the sense that it’s true enough and I’ve never cared to double check.
Telling people you’re just under the line can be a good litmus test for what kind of person you’re dealing with. Even if I were 6+, I’d still say I was 5’11’'.


It’s also not the apocalypse […] It’s just a tool.
So, the problem with tools is that their existence still affects the systems they’re a part of.
For instance, war between the US and Russia is much more dangerous now (yes, it used to be dangerous before as well) because now we have nuclear bombs. We did a whole cold war thing about it. Nuclear bombs change the world even when they’re not being used.
Similarly, meth is just a tool. It is entirely possible to smoke meth, not become addicted, have a great time, vacuum your entire house I guess, come down, chill, and move on with the rest of your life. But, that’s not what we would say meth’s effect on society is, is it?
I am so happy that you are capable of using AI without becoming a psychopath. I am concerned about the psychopaths.
Hm, I guess that makes sense. I have a friend who behaves a little like that.
Well, I’m sorry it took decades, but I admire your hard work. :)
I’m just asking out of curiosity: why do you think you care so much about the negative comments?
I am one of those people that shrug it off, and if I were to try to rationalize my emotional armor, I’d say that the places these matters of taste and disagreement come from, like psychologically, are often not you’re own fault and wouldn’t really be fixable even if you tried.
But, I wonder if that might be missing the mark. The futility of trying to appease people who are unappeasable might actually have nothing to do with it.


How is that functionally different from a human training …
It’s that part, right there.
You don’t see it because of the social nihilism you’ve been accumulating.


“piracy I enjoy/condone is good. Copying that I don’t like is bad.”
This is all of life. Yes, good things are good, and bad things are bad.
It is not curious or interesting that I dislike murder but support Ukraine fighting back Russia.


“It’s not Hillary’s fault she’s over 14” may have landed better. Possibly. Delivery can be a tricky thing in comedy.


I’ve seen a video about this:
https://youtu.be/LTaQnuQY9fY?t=5m36s
So, these are sort of confusing terms, but they have a really, really long history.
The tl;dw: a first person is like the object in a sentence, they are a thing doing an action—speaking, perhaps. Who are they speaking to? Well, that would have to be a 2nd person. Very literally. We’re just counting bodies in the scene. If those two people were talking about someone else, that would be a 3rd person. From this, we can imagine a 4th and a 5th, but as an analytical framework, they’re not fundamentally different from 3rd, so we just consildate them into one category: collectively ‘them’. ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘they’.
So, in order for a game to be 2nd person, it has to treat you, the literal audience-member you, as the second person in a conversation. They have to speak to you directly by breaking the 4th wall.
Games actually do this all the time. Any time you’re asked to press the ‘A’ button, they’re speaking to ‘you’, you are the 2nd person.
So, what does a 2nd-person camera look like? There are ways we could think about this. The video I linked presents some. But altogether, it’s probably more underwhelming than you think. These aren’t really a science as much as they are somewhat mangled metaphors for specific kinds of software or design problems. I imagine, partially from experience, that when people think about 2nd-person cameras, they’re excited about discovering a new kind of physics, sort of like learning that you can in fact take the square root of -1. It feels a bit like forbidden magic. But it’s probably more like the arcade Ridge Racer taking a booth photo of you for its leader board rankings.


This… requires a person to look at the profit numbers. To care about them, even. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at.
I think you’re saying that computers can be very good at chess, but we are the ones who decide what the rules to chess are.


Imagine however, that a machine objectively makes the better decisions than any person.
You can’t know if a decision is good or bad without a person to evaluate it. The situation you’re describing isn’t possible.
the people who deploy a machine […] should be accountable for those actions.
How is this meaningfully different from just having them make the decisions in the first place? Are they too stupid?


I live in the US. This American apathy and resentment of political power, this vaguely libertarian vote-with-your-wallet thing, is specifically what I’m criticizing. It’s a kind of political advocacy that abstains from the reigns of power. It’s also, like, a step above changing their profile picture.
I’m aware that everything is broken. But, it was less broken in the past. It’ll be more broken in the future. I look around, though, and I see so little interest in reclaiming the power we’ve lost. Nobody wants to hold the reigns. Zohran does. He’s trying something.
I worry that a lot of Americans, if not most of them, desperately want politics to go back to being something they don’t have to think about; which isn’t good—that’s not a good thing. You don’t win a game of chess by skipping your turn every time it comes up.


Okay, I’m trying not to be needlessly irate because I’m not yelling at you so much as I am lamenting the current state of political advocacy.
My problem is that you are confused. If we have enough people to do this:
If enough people are willing to say “no, I don’t want to see that show enough” then there is the possibility of change.
Then we have enough people to enact regulations. These aren’t different strategies, it’s the same strategy. You need coordinated public willpower either way. You need something tangible to actually direct the currents of the ocean.
People, today, broadly, don’t seem to believe that they can wield the government to their advantage at all. They don’t even see it as an option. They don’t have any ambition.
I’m not saying that you should spend money on a morally bankrupt company. I am saying that this won’t accomplish anything. It isn’t a solution. Certainly not if you don’t believe the regulations option is even possible.
I still have hope, you know. But, it’s dependent on people remembering the union, bar-brawl fistfights their grandpa used to get into.


I’m saying that people like boycotts more than they like actually doing anything. I think it’s a power fantasy, personally.
That said, I don’t expect anything to happen in the next 10 or 15 years given who’s currently in charge, so may as well.


the only way to defeat them is by not giving them money
Is this what it’s like to grow up on tiktok? Nobody has any ambition. It’s all just bootstrapping and personal responsibility.


I was going through my saved comments again, and I want you to know that I very much appreciate you for writing this up. :)


Knowing how to be abrasive is a very useful social skill, I think.
I saw a YouTube video from this guy who just liked to yap and tell stories. He was friends with a trans man, though I don’t think he knew at the time. Probably figured it out at some point, but it never changed their relationship. They were just best buds.
Well anyway, this trans man passed away, and the youtuber went to his funeral. The guy’s deadname was all over the memorial display. They’d prettied him up to look more feminine. Even clothed his body in a dress, I think. People gave eulogies about her memory, her significance, her this, her that.
The youtuber (and this was all before he was even on youtube, by the way) finally had his turn to go up and give a eulogy. He went up and said a few words about his friend, and then absolutely laid into these people for their callousness; for barely understanding who this guy, the deceased, even was; for amending his history and mourning only the parts of him they could actually stomach. And then he left. Not much point in staying in the service after that.
Being able to do things like that, though, requires some emotional strength. It’s a skill you have to practice. That youtuber wasn’t the only one there who felt that way, but he was the only one to say anything.


But do you expect different results when doing that? I think the point of that would be to get the same result every time.


I’m aware the quoted person agrees with me. I’m responding to a common public sentiment.
So are you paid by the comment or what?