Whats_your_reasoning @ Whats_your_reasoning @lemmy.world

In case you can't tell, I'm passionate about rationality and critical think

---

Read more

Posts

4

Comments

640

Joined

10 mo. ago

As a kid (12 years old) in the U.S., the division of eras that occurred on 9/11/01 was clear and immediate.

Adults acted very differently, starting that day. They went from being confident and in-control, to scared and uncertain. Teachers didn't know what to say to us. Some of the school staff openly wept. Everyone was really lost, and U.S.ians have been seeking a strong leader to guide them ever since.

Flags were everywhere. Everywhere. I know for foreign visitors it's hard to imagine there being more U.S. flags around the country than there already are, but it really was ridiculous. A neighbor and I used to see how many cars we could get to honk, just by standing on the side of the main road and waving flags.

It was like a hive mind took over the populace. Nationalism took hold in a way I had never seen before. Any disagreement with U.S. policy was now considered "unAmerican" and was likely to compel someone to say, "If you don't like it, you can leave (the country.)" (No, it doesn't make sense. It never made sense. I can't explain it, I was just a kid that got told it for disagreeing with George W. Bush.)

Anyway, there was a clear, undeniable shift in culture that happened on 9/11/01. It's wild to see the same people twist around over the course of 20 years, going from flying into a rage at the thought of someone criticizing the U.S., to actually agreeing that the U.S. is falling apart (even if we disagree on how or why.)

Chatbots, as they currently exist, are extremely concerning, especially in regards to their use by children and teenagers. Chatbots have neither ethics nor rational thought, and as such they can't tell right from wrong, nor true from false. Meanwhile, kids and teens are still learning what's reality and what isn't, meaning that a realistic, ever-confident bot without any ethical or logical understanding can easily lead them astray. There's already been one kid who killed himself because a realistic chatbot goaded him on.

That's already happening today, without any human oversight or guidance over the specific content on LLMs. But that may not be the case forever - consider that if AI chatbots are already that influential, how long until companies find a way to get their own products promoted by them?

Advertisers study the fine art of manipulation, they know the power of a personal story or recommendation from a friend. Until now, if they wanted that, they've had to either create a product/experience that generates word-of-mouth praise, or else incentivize people to generate such praise (ie "influencers.") But now, there's this technology that is able to fake being someone's friend, that plenty of people will trust wholeheartedly. That's a system that's ripe for corruption. Add in that Republicans are trying to ban the regulation of AI and it becomes clear - this technology will be abused. I'd even go so far as to say that it was intended to be used to manipulate people all along.

I don't know about that, I'll be fine until someone with no comprehension of "right of way" nearly kills me. Those moments usually create a string of angry swears that would make a sailor proud.

I feel you. I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of my anxiety isn't mine - it's my mom's. I just inherited the behaviors that she picked up, that in turn were created in reaction to my (long-gone) toxic grandfather's abuse.

Generational trauma probably lurks behind all of us, deeprooted and insidious, propping up maladaptive behaviors that go unexamined simply because they are considered "normal" in our families.

My sapphic brain wasn't tuned to understand that quote properly at first. Instead of seeing an insult, I thought, "Wow, that sounds like a busy, but amazing, morning."

Epidurals, in which labor pain is reduced, are expected to remain outside coverage under the proposals.

So what, pain relief is an optional upcharge, like choosing to add avocado to your sandwich?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be ecstatic if the US went this far to help new parents, but fuck whoever decided that it’s acceptable to omit epidurals from the covered costs.

Lord of the Flies. Good thing they were caught, they were just about to murder a kid.

Funny, all the things you said that offended Reddit sound like reasons to celebrate having you here.

I worked at a hardware store that had hired security at the doors, to check receipts. One day, a customer was leaving when the theft detectors beeped. One of the security guards requested to see his receipt, but he ignored her. So she asked him a second time.

That customer kept walking out. He then complained to the security company that employed the security guard, claiming harassment.

Next day, that security guard was fired.

Which is how I learned that airports aren't the only places that spend a ridiculous amount of money on pure security theater. Apparently the guards had been instructed to ask for a receipt once, and accept it if the customer ignores them, even if the alarms go off. I can understand not wanting someone to follow a customer out of the store, but that is a weak-ass bluff right there.

BONUS STORY! In that same store, someone was stealing tons of high-quality equipment. There was a guy who worked the lot, which meant that among other things, the outdoor trash bins were his responsibility. They were brought in during closing time, then back out the next morning.

Apparently this guy used that as his cover, over the course of several months, to sneak thousands of dollars worth of product out of the store. He knew where security cameras were (and weren't), and he knew nobody would question him dragging trash bins around. So he hid items on the bottoms of the bins, covered the top with a trash bag, and brought them outside. He'd then move them to an area where the cameras couldn't see and retrieve the items. Eventually loss prevention noticed something was fishy and caught him, but he'd gotten away with it for quite a while until then.

Reddit bans itself from my VPN, so I guess we had a mutual break-up.

zero click internet

I went to look this up and DuckDuckGo automatically provided an AI-generated answer at the top of the page, before all the search results. I'm not quite sure what the word is for the odd way I'm feeling now. Probably some obscure term that only exists in another language.

Or general insomnia, aggravated by the anxiety of living under a rising fascist regime.

It's similar in Spanish. "Mí mismo" means "myself."

mí = me
mismo = same

This language nerd thanks you for that gem. I just laughed so hard it turned into a cough.

Only thing that helped me was turning 18.

After that, I became a strong-willed adult.

It could be an official rite of passage, perhaps one that's provided after one receives the great sacrament of Sexual Education. Every student participates in a comprehensive, science-based course that educates them factually about sex, before they're given access to porn. That way, we're not letting porn be sex ed, which is currently a problem for way too many.

Weird downvote people.

I agree with you - just block and move on. This is Lemmy, a land without capitalist social media algorithms filtering our newsfeeds for us. Nobody's monitoring your preferences and automatically curating your main page to manipulate "entertain" you. The block feature is one way we can take control over the information presented to us, and using it to filter for language simply makes sense.

And before anyone chimes in with "jUsT cHaNgE YoUr sEtTiNgS tO eNgLiSh," some of us are multi-lingual in other languages and don't want to be limited to only English content - we just don't speak German, specifically.

That's interesting, considering that the origin of the term "meme" refers to one of two ways people pass down information - culturally (through memes) and genetically (through DNA reproduction.)

Testicles are too busy working on genetic transmission. They don't need to be tasked with memeing as well.

I've heard it called Earth's twin, but never specifically an evil twin.

I'm relieved I'm not the only one that saw a drink. I was wondering what a nearly-overflowing mug of iced coffee had to do with space.