pixxelkick
@pixxelkick@lemmy.world
- Comment on We poisoned the whole planet so our eggs wouldn't stick to the pan 🙃 1 day ago:
Just one example, we have many population groups that live in areas where groundwater is used for drinking that also live near a firefighting training base/station that has released huge amounts of PFOAs into the aquifers
Crazy as it sounds but living next to a firefighting training station still biases you towards certain living conditions
Scientists are perfectly fine with using lab, mouse, and emprical cross-sectional studies - that’s all valid scientific evidence.
Yeah obviously, but that’s still evidence, not proof, I used the word proce there intentionally.
I’m not suggesting they actually do it, I’m calling out people that take a bunch of very good evidence and then treat it like it’s proof. That’s all
And I’ve been using the words proof/prove this whole time.
There’s lots of evidence, but there’s not enough yet to do more than draw an interesting corollation.
But there’s definitely no proof and click bait videos that word it as such are trash
Thats what I am addressing, numties taking this evidence and running off with it to spread disinformation framing it as proof via their choice of words.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ. People need to learn to read.
I’m not sitting here saying PFAS dont cause issues
I’m sitting here calling out clickbait youtubers who frame evidence as proof via poor wording to incite people
God fucking damnit I hate how much people on the internet are so focused on bring right they won’t even read what you write properly just so they can find things to pick a fight over. Fuck off lol
- Comment on We poisoned the whole planet so our eggs wouldn't stick to the pan 🙃 2 days ago:
No.
There’s a huge difference between rejecting data and just pointing out that nearly every single study is too small and underfunded and nearly every one of them is preliminary.
There’s a reason all these papers are careful to say stuff like “more research is needed”
The goal of science is to try and prove the negative
You never actually can sufficiently prove your goal, but you can disprove other possibilities to narrow alternative reasons down until you get as close as possible to your outcome being the only remaining reason left.
This has not been achieved with PFAS studies yet simply due to a lack of time and quantity. Most of these studies are either too small, or too specific to do anything more than conclude “well, this definitely is interesting and should be investigated more”
Because proving it actually for sure does something is incredibly challenging, because there’s thousands of other variables at play, and many of the studied symptoms don’t display massive magnitudes in change.
Not enough to be very certain that they aren’t being caused by some other factor that pairs up with PFAS exposure.
For example, PFAS exposure also will correlate with other possible exposures to pollutants simultaneously for the same reason you got exposed to PFAS.
Air pollution levels also correlate, once again, same reason.
It’s devilishly challenging when the people with above average PFAS exposure also are getting exposed to other pollutants to then narrow down to just PFAS being the cause. It could be the wrong chemical causing issues… or ot could be 100% the cause.
It’s not like Asbestos where we could find villages with clean drinking water and air quality with zero other concerns that had huge issues due to being downwind of a mine.
If they managed to find a large group of people downstream of a plant that only dumped PFAS in the water and not other pollutants too, you’d be in business.
But that isn’t a thing, they dump all manner of shit in there with the PFAS, so can you see how that fucks up the numbers?
- Comment on We poisoned the whole planet so our eggs wouldn't stick to the pan 🙃 2 days ago:
You clearly didn’t read it, it’s just a giant metastudy gathering up tonnes of research but it’s basically just a shotgun paper covering all the “maybes” that have been highlighted
It cites dozens and dozens of papers, most of which highlight “maybe possibly potentially PFAS levels corrolate with (insert health effect here)”
However it also glosses over tonnes of other studies that havent found links to be statistically significant.
I want you to read this XKCD comic and try and understand how it relates to the discussion
- Comment on We poisoned the whole planet so our eggs wouldn't stick to the pan 🙃 3 days ago:
it states that the indirect genotoxic (and thus carcinogenic) potential of PFOA cannot be dismissed
Its important to understand that “cannot be dismissed” is not the same as “we think it does do this”
It’s a double negative, its “we dont not think it causes it”, but waaaaay more study is needed.
Serum Concentrations of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances and Risk of Renal Cell CarcinomaActually is a new one for me, I havent seen this one, and it does look much more compelling than the other smaller studies, this one is more concerning than the others.The Panel determined in 2012 there was a ‘probable link’ (i.e., more probable than not based on the weight of the available scientific evidence)
Fourth link is a lot of nothing, why did you bother linking it? It just discusses other studies but doesnt add anything new of substance.
Fifth link is pretty sketchy, theres many other variables that also associate, and they didnt even find a link between specifically PFOS anyways
while no significant association was observed for PFOS (OR = 1.14; 95% CI 0.98-1.34; P = 0.09)
Its important to note that every single one of these studies is empirical post exposure which means many other associated variables can also contribute.
People with low PFAS vs high PFAS exposure almost undoubtedly are also exposed to many other things… like pollution in general
It’s borderline impossible to actually separate out PFAS levels from these other entangled variables, people who are heavily exposed to 1 type of pollution will also be exposed to many others, and theres a heavy association between living situation and PFAS exposure.
That is why its so damn hard to get any conclusive proof on this, the only way to truly figure it out would be to purposefully administer PFAS to people intentionally in a controlled environment, to try and separate out variables.
The relationships that do show up are all very tenuous, and could easily be also explained by the dozens of other variables, so thats why you keep seeing the wording of “may contribute” or “requires further study” or “associated with”
- Comment on We poisoned the whole planet so our eggs wouldn't stick to the pan 🙃 3 days ago:
No, there’s a very minor causational link that has been classified as “needs further study”
cancer.org/…/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pf….
Its extremely far away from “concrete evidence”, that’s what Im talking about when saying this video was hypebole.
Many places are classifying it as potentially hazardous to be safe, because:
- Theres safer alternatives anyways
- Better safe than sorry, its not a missions critical option
- Comment on We poisoned the whole planet so our eggs wouldn't stick to the pan 🙃 3 days ago:
No, I watched it, and the end result is a lot of hyperbole.
- Comment on We poisoned the whole planet so our eggs wouldn't stick to the pan 🙃 3 days ago:
… No? I consider myself pretty well read.
If you have any conclusive peer reviewed papers that prove PFAS are poisonous if ingested at such microscopic scales, please by all means… link them
I have been keeping an eye on the progression of study on PFAS for nearly 6 years now since they started finding it all over the world. Im not gonna claim it isnt poisonous, but I certainly am gonna say despite all the studying, no actual issues have been found with them yet that have been repeatable in peer reviewed studies.
Everything seems to still be quite a bit inconclusive so far. Albeit I also chalk a lot of that up to a pretty heavy amount of muzzling on actually researching the impact of PFAS. If you have anything that proves otherwise though, by all means share it with the rest of the class.
Now, if you wanna talk about inhaling vapors from burnt PFAS, now we are talking about potential poisons that can really fuck you up.
But the quantity of PFAS in things like drinking water seems to be so incredibly low and some studies have shown that boiling water actually helps remove many different types of microplastics, including PFAS, due to interesting effects of sodium deposits in the water forming that bind to them sorta Katamari Damacy style.
But other than that, no, I havent seen anything else, just a loooot of “inconclusive, needs further study” stuff published time and time again.
- Comment on We poisoned the whole planet so our eggs wouldn't stick to the pan 🙃 3 days ago:
I haven’t actually yet seen any conclusive proof that PFAS are poisonous to ingest, however
Sure, it’s present everywhere, and I wouldn’t be shocked if we found out it’s bad for us.
But it has to actually be a poison to call it poison.
Pollutant? For sure. Poison? No proof of that yet. Just very annoying but the very principle that makes it hard to scrub out of water (very non reactive and tiny) is also what makes it seem to, so far, show no negative side effects on stuff.
It’s there but kinda just, doing nothing as far as we can see… so far
We need more funding into studies on it.
- Comment on 'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds 2 weeks ago:
Then I’ll just assume they’re bullshitting. Even San Francisco has a couple houses I found listed for 500k. And no, its not an apartment, it was a detached home.
- Comment on 'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds 2 weeks ago:
What city
- Comment on 'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds 2 weeks ago:
3 seconds of looking and I found five houses under 500k. Two of them genuinely look pretty decent too tbh, not even rough looking homes.
- Comment on 'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds 2 weeks ago:
“When I eliminate all the homes that normal people would classify as a starter home, I can’t find any starter homes!”
“Wait to buy a starter homes you are telling me I can’t live in a rich gentrified white neighborhood, I might have a black guy for a neighbour? That just won’t do!”
“Sorry anything not within 5 blocks of a Starbucks can’t possibly count as a starter home”
This is what people sound like when they talk about “safety” and “crime rates” and “starter homes” in the same sentence.
- Comment on 'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds 2 weeks ago:
(X) Doubt
- Comment on 'Starter homes' cost at least $1 million in over 200 U.S. cities, Zillow data finds 2 weeks ago:
It literally sounds super fake.
I can’t find a single major city without 200k to 350k homes lol
It takes like 30 seconds to check what starter homes cost in any city, yet people will believe this shit instead of just go look.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Sorry. Naive and easily fooled by propaganda and disinformation that feeds into their bigotry
My bad ❤️
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Not appropriate enough.
Unironically over 30% of people somehow still voted conservative.
I’m ashamed to admit a very large amount of them are from my area.
I don’t know what is wrong with some people. The education system has clearly desperately failed many of the people here though.
- Comment on Covid․gov now points to a ‘lab leak’ conspiracy website 4 weeks ago:
Wow, that sure is something else.
- Comment on Trump reportedly suspends Nvidia H20 export ban plan after $1 million dinner with Jensen Huang 5 weeks ago:
This genuinely made me do an IRL spit take, holy shit.
- Comment on ‘An Overwhelmingly Negative And Demoralizing Force’: What It’s Like Working For A Company That’s Forcing AI On Its Developers. 5 weeks ago:
Same, but they did set up a self hosted instance for us to use and, tbh, it works pretty good.
I think it’s s good tool specifically for helping when you dunno what’s going on, to help with brainstorming or exploring different solutions. Getting recommended names of tools, finding out “how do other people solve this”, generating documentation, etc
But for very straightforward tasks where you already know what you are doing, it’s not helpful, you already know what code you are going to write anyways.
Right tool for the right job.
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
I primarily use GPT style tools like ChatGPT and whatnot.
The key is, rather than asking it to generate code, specify that you dont want code and instead want it to help you work through the solution. Tell it to ask you meaningful questions about your problem and effectively act as a rubber duck
Then, after you’ve chosen a solution with it, ask it to generate code based on all the above convo.
This will typically produce way higher quality results and helps avoid potential X/Y problems.
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
For sure, much like how a cab driver has to know how to drive a cab.
AI is absolutely a “garbage in, garbage out” tool. Just having it doesn’t automatically make you good at your job.
The difference in someone who can weild it well vs someone who has no idea what they are doing is palpable.
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
Good, fire 2 devs out of 3.
Companies that do this will fail.
Successful companies respond to this by hiring more developers.
Consider the taxi cab driver:
With the invention if the automobile, cab drivers could do their job way faster and way cheaper.
Did companies fire drivers in response? God no. They hired more
Why?
Because they became more affordable, less wealthy clients could now afford their services which means demand went way way up
If you can do your work for half the cost, usually demand goes up by way more than x2 because as you go down in wealth levels of target demographics, your pool of clients exponentially grows
If I go from “it costs me 100k to make you a website” to “it costs me 50k to make you a website” my pool of possible clients more than doubles
Which means… you need to hire more devs asap to start matching this newfound level of demand
If you fire devs when your demand is about to skyrocket, you fucked up bad lol
- Comment on A police officer just dropped off our water bill 1 month ago:
Maybe the post office fucked something up so he has to deliver it?
How would a cop even acquire your mail in the first place?
All I can guess is like, the cop had to pick up the job cuz someone else was sick or something???
Weird lol.
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
Wait til you realize that’s just what art literally is…
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
You skipped possibility 3, which is actively happening ing:
Advancements in tech enable us to produce results at a much much cheaper cost
Which us happening with diffusion style LLMs that simultaneously cost less to train, cost less to run, but also produce both faster abd better quality outputs.
That’s a big part people forget about AI: it’s a feedback loop of improvement as soon as you can start using AI to develop AI
And we are past that mark now, most developers have easy access to AI as a tool to improve their performance, and AI is made by… software developers
So you get this loop where as we make better and better AIs, we get better and better at making AIs with the AIs…
It’s incredibly likely the new diffusion AI systems were built with AI assisting in the process, enabling them to make a whole new tech innovation much faster and easier.
We are now in the uptick of the singularity, and have been for about a year now.
Same goes for hardware, it’s very likely now that mvidia has AI incorporating into their production process, using it for micro optimizations in its architectures and designs.
And then those same optimized gpus turn around and get used to train and run even better AIs…
In 5-10 years we will look back on 2024 as the start of a very wild ride.
Remember we are just now in the “computers that take up entire warehouses” step of the tech.
Remember that in the 80s, a “computer” cost a fortune, took tonnes of resources, multiple people to run it, took up an entire room, was slow as hell, and could only do basic stuff.
But now 40 years later they fit in our pockets and are (non hyoerbole) billions of times faster.
I think by 2035 we will be looking at AI as something mass produced for consumers to just go in their homes, you go to best buy and compare different AI boxes to pick which one you are gonna get for your home.
We are still at the stage of people in the 80s looking at computers and pondering “why would someone even need to use this, why would someone put one in their house, let alone their pocket”
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
No, it’s just not something exposed to you to see
But under the hood it very much does shift gears depending on what you ask it to do
It’s why gpt can do stuff now like analyze contents of images, basic OCR, but also generate images too.
Yet it can also do math, talk about biology, give relationship advice…
I believe open AI called the term “specialists” or something vaguely like that, at the time.
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
I am indeed getting more time off for PD
We delivered on a project 2 weeks ahead of schedule so we’re giving raises, I got a promotion, and we were given 2 weeks to just do some chill PD at our own discretion as a reward. All paid on the clock.
Some companies are indeed pretty cool about it.
I was asked to give some demos and do some chats with folks to spread info in how we had such success, and they were pretty fond of my methodology.
At its core delivering faster does translate to getting bigger bonuses abd kickbacks at my company, so yeah there’s actual financial incentive for me to perform way better.
You also are ignoring the stress thing. If I can work 3x better, I can also just deliver in almost the same time, but spend all that freed up time instead focusing on quality, polishing the product up, documentation, double checking my work, testing, etc.
Instead of scraping past the deadline by the skin of our teeth, we hit the deadline with a week or 2 to spare and spent a buncha extra time going over everything with a fine tooth comb twice to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
And instead of mad rushing 8 hours straight, it’s just generally more casual. I can take it slower and do the same work but just in a less stressed out way. So I’m literally just physically working less hard, I feel happier, and overall my mood is way better, and I have way more energy.
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
Meanwhile a huge chunk of the software industry is now heavily using this “dead end” technology 👀
I work in a pretty massive tech company (think, the type that frequently acquires other smaller ones and absorbs them)
Everyone I know here is using it. A lot.
However my company also has tonnes of dedicated sessions and paid time to instruct it’s employees on how to use it well, and to get good value out of it, abd the pitfalls it can have
So yeah turns out if you teach your employees how to use a tool, they start using it.
I’d say LLMs have made me about 3x as efficient or so at my job.
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
They did that awhile ago, it was a big feature if gpt 3
- Comment on Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End 1 month ago:
We already did this like a year ago mate. That was like v3 of gpt
