stray
@stray@pawb.social
- Comment on /c/fuckai in shambles rn 2 weeks ago:
The difference between ChatGPT and Computer (not into Star Trek enough to know what it’s actual name is) is that Computer doesn’t pretend to be a person or have feelings, and it doesn’t encourage harm to anyone. Computer’s purpose is to serve its crew in a constructive manner, not to keep the user engaged at all costs.
- Comment on AI-generated isekai novel that won a literary contest Grand Prize and Reader’s Choice award has its book publication and manga adaptation cancelled 3 weeks ago:
I’m not really sure what compelled me to read this; I guess I wanted to see the quality of what won the contest.
So an office lady dies of over-work and gets reincarnated with magical organization skills which she’s called on to use in aid of the nation. I was kind of hoping this would go the cozy route of her organizing a healthy society with education and healthcare and all that, but she just immediately starts doing accounting work for the king, exposing embezzlement schemes. What a fucking tool. As if the entire aristocracy isn’t designed to extort the peasant class.
I quit reading after that. It felt like what you’d expect to get if you fed a program heaps of fanfics and asked it to output the average of them.
- Comment on Off the Rails 4 weeks ago:
How so? (I’m assuming OOP is using the common definition of “animal” to exclude humans.)
- Comment on OpenAI's ChatGPT ads will allegedly prioritize sponsored content in answers 5 weeks ago:
ChatGPT already shills products; it just does so semi-randomly and usually at the behest of the user. I think this could actually push users away if it prioritizes paid content over tailoring itself to the user, which would be a weirdly positive outcome.
To make a simplistic example, take someone who’s into aluminum foil to block mind control waves. If ChatGPT won’t shut the fuck up about Reynolds Wrap and links to where you can buy Reynolds Wrap, that might be a tipping point that gets them to close the app. Which won’t make them all better, but at least they wouldn’t be using AI to get worse.
ChatGPT might finally be made incapable of discussing harmful topics if advertisers don’t want negative associations, giving Sam Altman the monetary incentive he needs to pretend he gives a shit about human lives.
- Comment on All Life on Earth Comes From One Single Ancestor. And It's So Much Older Than We Thought. 1 month ago:
- Comment on The Sensory Biology of Plants 1 month ago:
That’s not a problem. The idea is to define practical categories along the spectrum of consciousness so that they can be discussed without having to re-define terms prior to every discussion. There’s no reason any given organism should or shouldn’t fall into a particular category except for its properties directly regarding that category.
- Comment on The Sensory Biology of Plants 1 month ago:
I think the big dividing line between what many animals do and what cells or plants do is the ability to react in different ways by considering stimuli in conjunction with memory, and then the next big divide is metacognition. I feel like there should be concrete words for these categories. “Sentient” and “conscious” have pretty much lost meaning at this point, as demonstrated by this discussion’s existence.
I will call them reactive awareness, decisive awareness, and reflective awareness in the absence of a better idea.
- Comment on The Sensory Biology of Plants 1 month ago:
Conscious: aware of the delineation between self and not self
I don’t know whether this applies to plants and fungi, but it applies to just about every animal. There’s a minimum basic sense of self required in distinguishing one’s own movements from the approach of an attacker. Even earthworms react differently when they touch something vs when something touches them.
- Comment on Kohler Can Access Data and Pictures from Toilet Camera It Describes as “End-to-End Encrypted” 1 month ago:
end-to-end
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Ferengi females have smaller lobes, implying that this is a sexually-selected trait and that the small ears of other species’ females might be a huge turn-on. We already make art of alien species that have massive dump trucks and extra boobs.
Teratophilia and furries also exist. What people are attracted to isn’t necessarily what God intended.
- Comment on mmm... tastes like chimkin 2 months ago:
Everyone eats baby birds. They’re full of delicious little bones, which plants are famous for lacking.
- Comment on I dunno 2 months ago:
- Comment on I dunno 2 months ago:
But there is logic behind them.
1+2+3=6 and 2+3+1=6 also.
But 1+23 and 23+1 won’t come out the same if you do the calculations in just any order. It’s not always possible to order them left to right like in the second version, and if we use parentheses for everything we can end up with an illegible mess. I actually tried to type an example of how silly it could look and lost track of my own parentheses nesting before I got very far.
Do you have any other suggestion for how to notate an equation which would make memorization of PEMDAS unnecessary?
- Comment on I dunno 2 months ago:
I sometimes like to add unnecessary parentheses or brackets to section things off and improve legibility, but I don’t do any math stuff collaboratively, so I have no idea whether others would find that disruptive or helpful.
- Comment on Scientists identify five ages of the human brain over a lifetime— Four major turning points around ages nine, 32, 66 and 83 create five broad eras of neural wiring over the average human lifespan. 2 months ago:
I’m not sure that they do. The description sounds related to how the brain is growing and organizing rather than its actual contents.
I think as a baby you can’t be sure what environment you’ll end up in, so evolution has packed lots of clothes for every occasion. Then by 9 you realize it’s much too warm here, so we can trade away these winter jackets and collect more appropriate clothing and work out to best sort them all. Then by your 30’s you’ve assembled a very appropriate wardrobe and organized it the way you like. Then by your 60’s the clothes are beginning to wear a bit, but we can’t buy any more clothes in this analogy, so we’ll have to make do. And then around 80 some things have become unusable, so we have to rely on whichever clothes proved most durable.
Exact clothes and how they’re organized will vary by individual situation, but the stages of collection and sorting will be a more universal experience. At least that’s how I read it.
- Comment on OnLy tWo eLemEnTs 2 months ago:
I’m pretty sure they have an agenda, yeah. I just wanted to think about the premise on its own terms, like how one might think about the definition of a fish? I feel like it’s both personally enriching and better equips me to respond to such arguments. Even though I don’t think they’ll listen to anyone, I don’t think anyone’s responses to them were a waste of time because I really feel like I’ve learned a lot from reading them, and I’m sure plenty of other people did too, so thank you for your labor.
- Comment on OnLy tWo eLemEnTs 2 months ago:
You are misunderstanding, but I don’t blame you in the slightest. I don’t seem to have communicated very clearly. Someone else in this post has a comment making the argument that there are two sexes and that all humans either produce one of two gametes or have the potential to based on their body’s design, and at the time I thought it would be very obvious what I was referring to and why I would make a separate post instead of replying in that chain. I’m sorry for the confusion and any offense.
What I’m thinking about with my question is whether any humans can truly be considered as capable of producing eggs if they must be present at birth, if even people who already have eggs can’t make more.
- Comment on OnLy tWo eLemEnTs 2 months ago:
Okay, thank you.
When you say other methods, do you mean like in a lab somewhere? I was restricting my idea of egg production to what’s naturally capable by a human body (which I feel is in the spirit of powerstruggle’s definition of a sexual binary), but I figure probably anyone can produce any gametes they like through the magic of science.
- Comment on OnLy tWo eLemEnTs 2 months ago:
There’s a comment chain in this thread focused on the definition of sex as producing one of two gametes, which leads to pointing out that some people produce no gametes, which is countered by saying they could potentially produce them in the future or if they didn’t have a particular condition, etc. Normally I would post this kind of question directly to someone, but the same stuff is being said so many times that I’m not sure which one to reply to, hence creating a new comment chain.
Basically I’m thinking that defining the female sex by ability (or potential ability) to produce eggs might be faulty on the grounds that no one produces eggs. Or that only a person pregnant with a child who will be born with eggs can be said to have achieved femaleness by this definition. Or maybe the baby is the one making the eggs, so the only way to be female is to have produced eggs prior to birth. I’m not really sure of the details regarding when the eggs develop or who’s really responsible for them, I’m just pretty sure they’re there at birth and it’s interesting to think about.
- Comment on OnLy tWo eLemEnTs 2 months ago:
I have a question for kind of the whole thread in general, regarding the gametes discussion. Isn’t it the case that a human is born with all the eggs they’ll ever have? So like if you aren’t both with any, you’ll never make any later? And if so, isn’t the only way to produce eggs to become pregnant with a child and make their eggs for them?
- Comment on Pioneer species 2 months ago:
Knowing full well it’s a mistake, I prefer to interpret it as meaning “here-bringer”, not as one who simply goes ahead as a sign, but one who actively summons. Alternatively, the “bring” could derive from “brísingr”, as in “I’m going to burn this fucking place to the ground.”
- Comment on Labcoat! 2 months ago:
Yeah, I’m hoping the image is just a cute joke and that the lab is actually not dealing with anything hazardous.
- Comment on Labcoat! 2 months ago:
doggles
- Comment on Ahead of her time 2 months ago:
I think the meme is good either way. I think we’ll eventually have the capability to do such testing simply and quickly, and she’ll still be a loser for having lied about it and scammed people.
- Comment on Ahead of her time 2 months ago:
Molecular profiling includes genetic testing.
- Comment on Ahead of her time 2 months ago:
I think the study they reference is the UK Biobank itself, which is ongoing.
- Comment on Ahead of her time 2 months ago:
The article doesn’t seem to be selling any particular technology, but rather sharing information on the fact that the research is currently in progress.
The concept of identifying risk factors via blood sample has always been a good one. I’m not a scientist or medical professional, so I just assume the reason we’re not sequencing everyone’s genome is that it’s not currently a good use of medical resources. I can’t recall the name of this woman or her product, but my recollection is that she was claiming something currently impossible, not theoretically impossible.
- Comment on I wonder 2 months ago:
I can’t relate to being disturbed by the idea that other creatures remember their own lives.
- Comment on Microsoft detail 'agentic AI' plan for Windows 11, immediately admit it might install malware on your PC 2 months ago:
Christ, maybe I will just buy the damn Steam Cube.
- Comment on Crime gangs in UK start making own branded weight-loss drugs 2 months ago:
Yeah, I for reals thought there was an underground market for bathroom scales and was very confused.
