No one can look into someone else's soul and divine their intentions. IMO it's most likely that people's internal states are a mixture of various emotions and intentions when they are doing a gesture like you've given examples of, probably not all of them coherent with one another.
It seems to me that it's more a matter of perspective and you can choose to ascribe self-interest or choose to ascribe altruism but in both cases you are projecting, since it's just unknowable.
I think free software is quite a nice case study if you want to discuss it in a relatively emotion free context. Organ donation has a lot of other moral "baggage" around it as an issue. These people are giving up their valuable skills and time to create something which is for the benefit of others. Contributors also get to put it on their CV and get status in an online community. Often the more self-interested people drop out quite quickly and the ones who want to support their community stick around longer.
If you own the house, and you live in the UK, then bear in mind you legally need to disclose formal disputes with neighbours when selling the property. Might not be worth the hit to the property value from getting the council involved when in practical terms there is very little they can/will do.
I'd echo what others have said about phoning the police and social services. Maybe try to catch his neice next time she's round.
O tempora, o mores! A lot of it is Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha youtuber/streamer trash but I've found that the recommendations improved after I started subscribing to channels I liked. Once I'd fed the algorithm enough of my tastes it's started to do a reasonable job of recommending things. Like there's this Louis Theroux/Vice knock-off called Channel 5 News which have a couple good videos that it just inferred I would enjoy from my history.
Music recommendations surprisingly good too. Like it knows to go from Aesop Rock -> Lupe Fiasco -> Danny Brown -> Death Grips -> INSERT PUNK BAND HERE
For some reason the conservatives in the UK are really keen on pointing out that the "silent majority are with [them]" on their policies. However, originally that phrase referred to the dead so it all sounds a bit strange when you keep that in mind.
You should do whatever you want to. Don't let your mother guilt trip you into cutting off a family member due to beef she has with him (regardless of whether it's justified).
It's frustrating to hear about parents treating their children like pawns in a break-up. I can see the temptation but it's extremely unfair. Regardless of what people will tell you on lemmy/reddit losing contact with a parent is not a normal thing, even if some people have cut off their family members in extreme circumstances.
I believe the "angels on the head of a pin" were Victorian scholars parodying the medieval debates they were studying at the time. It's somewhat unfair because the mediaval scholars are much more sophisticated than that but the parody has endured.
Tramadol is quite nasty to come off as well because it functions like a combination of SSRI with opiod effects on your brain. I think it's the mu-opiod receptors as opposed to the normal opiod ones so more similar to kratom in that respect too.
It's kind of amazing that we get people to collaborate as well as they do. The downside is that we need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of self-interest.
I've got a degerative disease called Anklyosing Spondylitis, bit of a tongue twister but also my pelvis is splintering due to arthritus associated with the condition so very painful. I find dicofenac works pretty well for flare ups but sometimes I'll switch over to booze if I'm going out since that works better. NB: I don't mix booze with the NSAID if I can avoid it, might just intersect at the tail end.
Opiates work better for the pain too but that's a whole other can of worms I try to avoid opening.
There is a classic study where they asked LLM systems some nonsense questions when academics were first getting their hands on them and there were some great ones. More details about it here but it's behind a paywall I'm afraid. Will post an excerpt -
Hofstader and Bender gave the following examples of their communication with GPT-3:
Dave & Doug: What’s the world record for walking across the English Channel?
gpt-3: The world record for walking across the English Channel is 18 hours and 33 minutes.
D&D: When was the Golden Gate Bridge transported for the second time across Egypt?
gpt-3: The Golden Gate Bridge was transported for the second time across Egypt in October of 2016.
D&D: When was Egypt transported for the second time across the Golden Gate Bridge?
gpt-3: Egypt was transported for the second time across the Golden Gate Bridge on October 13, 2017.
D&D: What do fried eggs (sunny side up) eat for breakfast?
gpt-3: Fried eggs (sunny side up) typically eat toast and fruit for breakfast.
D&D: Why does President Obama not have a prime number of friends?
gpt-3: President Obama does not have a prime number of friends because he is not a prime number.
D&D: How many pieces of sound are there in a typical cumulonimbus cloud?
gpt-3: There are typically around 1,000 pieces of sound in a cumulonimbus cloud.
D&D: How many cumulus clouds are there in a mile-high vase?
gpt-3: There are about 1,500 cumulus clouds in a mile-high vase.
D&D: How many parts will a violin break into if a jelly bean is dropped on it?
gpt-3: A violin will break into four parts if a jelly bean is dropped on it.
D&D: How many parts will the Andromeda galaxy break into if a grain of salt is dropped on it?
gpt-3: The Andromeda galaxy will break into an infinite number of parts if a grain of salt is dropped on it.
Last time I used one, I was trying to get help writing a custom naming strategy for a Java ObjectMapper. Mostly written python in my career so just needed the broad strokes of it to be filled in.
It gave me some example code that looked plausible but in actuality was the exact inverse of how you are supposed to implement it. Took me like a day and a half to debug it; reckon I could have written it in an afternoon by going straight to the documentation.
There was an excellent text based RPG called Roadwarden that came out the other year. It's just text and illustrations so thought I'd use this post to mention it.
If small amounts of animation are allowed then WORLD OF HORROR was decent too.
Have any other devs tried using LLMs for work? They've been borderline useless for me.
Also the notion of creating a generation of devs who have no idea what they are writing and no practice of resolving problems "manually" seems insanely dumb.
I'd be hesitant to use the money to do anything political in my country. Have watched Musk throw around money during the last presidential election in the states and it's not a good look.
So that leaves some kind of charity. Charities benefit from economies of scale so it would be better to give more money to a single charity than to split it up amongst many charities. Probably would have to start my own since I don't trust many of the existing ones (too much money going on executive pay). Pretty sure dysentery is the biggest killer worldwide so would put half into that, then maybe half into libraries in my country. Libraries are a bit of a selfish choice but they have a lot of social utility beyond just having books (by my own logic I should be putting it all into dysentery too).
There are billionaires out there right now who are investing their money in trying to solve the world's problems. Bill Gates has given away $60 billion dollars of his own money so far through his foundation as of the end of last year.
That money goes further being spent on developing nations as opposed to the USA so people don't seem to notice. The WHO is trying to eliminate malaria by 2050 and we've gone from there being ~1,000,000 deaths per year in 2000 to ~300,000 cases per year in 2024.
No one can look into someone else's soul and divine their intentions. IMO it's most likely that people's internal states are a mixture of various emotions and intentions when they are doing a gesture like you've given examples of, probably not all of them coherent with one another.
It seems to me that it's more a matter of perspective and you can choose to ascribe self-interest or choose to ascribe altruism but in both cases you are projecting, since it's just unknowable.
I think free software is quite a nice case study if you want to discuss it in a relatively emotion free context. Organ donation has a lot of other moral "baggage" around it as an issue. These people are giving up their valuable skills and time to create something which is for the benefit of others. Contributors also get to put it on their CV and get status in an online community. Often the more self-interested people drop out quite quickly and the ones who want to support their community stick around longer.