ContrarianTrail @ ContrarianTrail @lemm.ee

Independent thinker valuing discussions grounded in reason, not emotions.

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Joined

11 mo. ago

No wonder you guys are so damn stressed if you really think climate change is literally going to end human existence on earth.

To me, being an intellectual doesn’t necessarily mean someone is exceptionally smart in the traditional sense. I’ve always taken it to mean a person who can take a few steps back and dispassionately, honestly evaluate things from a distance. It describes how they think, not what they think.

I listen to a lot of podcasts with guests/hosts I’d consider intellectuals, and I’ve often found that, given the same information, these people tend to land on the same or similar conclusions on unrelated topics. Another common trait of an intellectual is that their ideas don’t map neatly onto a political ideology. They don’t adopt ideas wholesale but instead form opinions on different subjects individually. Maybe I’m talking about intellectual honesty now, which might be slightly different, but that’s my take on it. I remember Sean Carroll defining intellectualism along these lines on an old podcast, and it resonated with me.

There have been two recent events that, in my view, serve as good tests of a person’s intellectual honesty. First was the Trump assassination attempt. One of the thinkers I admire most is also one of the most anti-Trump people I know, but I was confident they’d still condemn political violence like this, which they did. The second event was just a few days ago: the landing of the Starship 1st stage. If a person is so blinded by their hatred of Musk that they can’t admit how impressive that was, then I don’t consider them an intellectually honest thinker.

It's a common tactic of news outlets to choose bad pictures of people they're against and good pictures of people they're for. Once you see it, it cannot be unseen.

you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right?

He actually is. Everyday astronaut has done several interviews with him and the dude knows about rockets and engineering.

Can a malicious actor remotely do stuff with your thing you connected to the internet?

Yes.

Cause more terror how exactly?

There's not? Why?

There was 50 years worth of oil left 20 years ago too

If SpaceX landing and reusing rockets is not impressive to you then what is?

FSD is not available in France.

Oh now I'm the enemy for daring to ask a difficult question to which you failed to give coherent answer to?

Life is not binary. This is not a yes or no question.

That was the most impressive thing I think I've ever seen

But surely a 15 year old Canon don't have a GPS on it? I just can't think of what technology they could use to detect someone taking a picture in order to interfere with it other than camera surveillance and some sort of an AI system to detect cameras. I'm not doubting you, just curious about how it could possibly work and especially how to evade it.

Yeah I love all that. Flipping old cars is something I've thought about as well but something I'd be even more interested in is doing the same with boats. Now that I'm self-employed I've tought about getting a project boat that I could work on when ever business is otherwise slow. I couldn't fit a large one on my yard but some smaller fishing boat would be interesting to start with. When looking at old boats they often look like just even a simple pressure wash would double their price.

It’s a difficult subject to discuss without sounding like you’re either bragging or talking down to those less well off.

I recently bought a new-to-me truck. I paid in cash, and if I wanted to, I could’ve bought two more. If I liquidated my investments, I could have bought three more, so six in total. I’m self-employed now, but I built all my wealth while working for a (plumbing) company where I was surrounded by people earning twice as much as I did. Yet, these are the people who need to finance their cars, have massive mortgages, and are always in a bad mood due to stress.

I understand that some people have been really unlucky and struggle to improve their financial position despite their best efforts, but these aren’t the people I’m talking about when I wonder how a working-age person can’t come up with a thousand bucks for an unexpected expense. I hardly even consider that a lot of money.

but I want to buy some land at some point, basically so I have more area to build stuff and make stuff.

I feel you there. What kind of things would you like to build? For me, it’s things like a rainwater harvesting system, solar/wind power, a pond with a pier and sauna, a chicken coop, a heated workshop with a car lift, a root cellar... I basically have an infinite list of projects I'd like to pursue.

modern cameras are blocked from taking photos

Really? That's interesting. I wonder what the technology is that they're using to detect cameras in the first place. When I think of a DSLR for example, it's a passive sensor that's only receiving photons but it's not sending anything outwards. Some phones have laser autofocus so that I imagine could be detected but even that's quite rare technology on phones.

Yep. The only way to prevent daily snacking is by not having snacks in the house.

Unsalted cashew nuts and french fries. The nuts I eat as is and usually run out by the end of the week. French fries I toss into the air fryier when ever I don't feel like cooking.

The current AI discussion I’m reading online has eerie similarities to the debate about legalizing cannabis 15 years ago. One side praises it as a solution to all of society’s problems, while the other sees it as the devil’s lettuce. Unsurprisingly, both sides were wrong, and the same will probably apply to AI. It’ll likely turn out that the more dispassionate people in the middle, who are neither strongly for nor against it, will be the ones who had the most accurate view on it.

I was talking about writing stuff on the floor and gluing a toilet seat on top of it so I assumed it would be obvious I'm talking about the whole fixture. Google translates it to toilet seat or just toilet. I don't know what else to call it. To my ear, toilet refers to the room where it's located.