Manjushri
@Manjushri@piefed.social
- Comment on Celebrating anti-intellectualism is the biggest danger to humanity 4 days ago:
Yes, Isaac Asimov, back in 1980, referred to it as a Cult of Ignorance.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
- Comment on Google is killing off dark web reports 6 days ago:
Google has noted that although its utility offered general information about how many instances your data has been found on the dark web due to breaches and what kind of information about you is available online, the feedback from customers indicated that it did not offer any clean remediation steps to follow next. Indeed, the existing dashboard is just a trove of information with no actionable steps. People can find out how their data was stolen, but they can’t do anything about it.
Welcome to the information age where information is everywhere except in people’s heads.
- Comment on In the US one can graduate *cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude*. There should be another honor added if you survive a school shooting. 1 week ago:
.357 Magnum cum laude.
- Comment on Why do you hate AI? 1 week ago:
…additionally using unbelievable amounts of power so the environmental concerns go right out of the window at a time where we should do everything to not do that.
Don’t forget that the enormous energy usage is driving up energy costs for absolutely everyone.
Residential retail electricity prices in September were up 7.4%, to about 18 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration.
That’s on a national basis too. If you happen to live in an area with a lot of data centers, your energy costs have probably risen more than that.
- Comment on Alas! 1 week ago:
I think I really need this on a t-shirt.
- Comment on Are all dinosaur fossils 'replicas'? 2 weeks ago:
Most displays are likely to be replicas, I think. Few people would be interested in seeing a T. Rex hip bone in one display, half a triceratops horn in another, etc. Complete skeletons are a bit of a rarity so it would be tough to find all the parts of some species for all the different museums out there. Also, in order to build a complete display of a T. Rex or triceratops, you would likely use all replica parts because you would need to damage the fossils in order to connect them all together.
Finally, most of the actual fossils are valuable to researchers and putting them on display in museums would make them less available for study.
- Comment on We can play that game too 2 weeks ago:
Ah, oops. I should pay closer attention. I’ll leave the post and take my beatings.
- Comment on We can play that game too 2 weeks ago:
That’s a really dumb argument. A person complains about paying for something that they’ll never get, and the IndyStar’s response is to complain about paying for something that they’ve already benefited from, and that was paid for by others. I would further add, paying for schools is a great thing even if you don’t have and will never have kids. Without good schools, everyone else’s kids will probably grow up to be conservatives.
- Comment on Infosec 2 weeks ago:
To be fair, anyone who uses their birthday for a pin or password is a fool.
- Comment on ELI5 why I logically understand McDonald's food is low quality and bad for me but I crave it like crack? 2 weeks ago:
RFK, is that you?
- Comment on ELI5 why I logically understand McDonald's food is low quality and bad for me but I crave it like crack? 2 weeks ago:
There is a chemical in your brain called dopamine which is an important part of how we feel pleasure. Use of recreational drugs and alcohol causes a rush of this chemical and that is part of the pleasure we feel from using them. The problem is that regular use of such chemicals causes us to have lower levels of dopamine when we are not using them. We end up feeling a desire for the drug or booze to get our dopamine levels back up.
Diets high in sugar, salt, and carbs also causes a dopamine rush. When you eat that food regularly, it lowers your normal dopamine levels, just like drugs and alcohol do, if not to the same level. That is why you feel that craving. Eating such food occasionally is fine, but if you do it to often, you can literally get an addiction to it.
- Comment on People are completely used to autotune in music now, and the same will happen with ai usage 2 weeks ago:
Autotune is not driving up electricity costs for everyone whether they use it or not AI is.
American households have seen their electricity bills rise 30% since 2021. This is contributing heavily to rising cost-of-living concerns across the country. At the center of these price hikes is the AI revolution, and the sector’s projected expansion means the increased costs are unlikely to level off any time soon.
The AI data centers sector, hungry for power, which accounts for much of the increased energy demand, is projected to undergo double-digit annual growth through the end of the decade. This far outpaces what the existing electrical grid and its operators are prepared to manage. Consumers are finding themselves footing the bill for the excess strain on the system. A study published by Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University predicted an increase in household energy costs of 8 percent nationally by 2030, with up to 25 percent increases in select regional markets.
At some point, people will get sick of this AI nonsense and stop allowing the data centers in their communities.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Police said that the goal of at least two of the suspects was to take the footage from intimate locations, such as gynecology offices, and create sexually exploitative videos to sell online.
Um, why is there an IP camera, let alone and unsecured IP camera in a gynecology office?
- Comment on Assumptions 3 weeks ago:
A lot of herbivores are occasional opportunistic carnivores. I bet that thing’s molars would make quick work of a human’s bones.
- Comment on Assumptions 3 weeks ago:
You can have a cuddly dairy cow, but that’s not universal.
Far from universal. About 20 people die per year in the USA from attacks by cows. They are huge powerful animals that don’t generally don’t give a shit about people (they’re used to them, for the most part) but if they decide you are a threat to them or their calf, you’re fucked.
- Comment on Simple new engine sucks power from the night sky 3 weeks ago:
It was invented in 1816…
Simple new engine. Right.
- Comment on Meet the AI workers who tell their friends and family to stay away from AI 4 weeks ago:
At home, she has forbidden her 10-year-old daughter from using chatbots. “She has to learn critical thinking skills first or she won’t be able to tell if the output is any good,” the rater said.
And this is why the vast majority of people, particularly in the USA, should not be using AI. Critical thinking has been a weakness in the USA for a very long time and is essentially a now four-letter word politically. The conservatives in the USA have been undermining the education system in red states because people with critical thinking skills are harder to trick into supporting their policies. In 2012, the Texas Republican Party platform publicly came out as opposed to the teaching of critical thinking skills.
We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
This has been going on at some level for more than 4 decades. The majority of people in those states have never been taught the skills and knowledge to safely use these tools safely. In fact, their education has, by design, left them easily manipulated by those in power, and now, by LLMs too.
- Comment on Not to get all religous but was not Jesus pissed for people making money in churches? Didn't he flip tables and everything? Then how do churches nowadays explain the collection plate? 4 weeks ago:
All that means is that a person named Jesus may have existed. But that has no bearing on events described in the Bible. It’s like saying you found a birth certificate for a Clark Kent from the 1930’s so that means Superman really existed.
- Comment on Why isn't it considered vegan to harvest animals who die naturally? 4 weeks ago:
…and crows and vultures and eagles and bears and assorted rodents and foxes and beetles and many, many more. There is actually a rather robust eco system out there, you know. And when you gut part of it, you are just asking for trouble.
- Comment on Why civilians don't crowdfund bribe money for politicians? 4 weeks ago:
OP has a point. You might be surprised how little money it takes to influence legislation. ABSCAM showed just how cheaply political favors can be purchased.
From there, our investigation led to southern New Jersey and on to Washington, D.C. Our criminal contacts led us to politicians in Camden who were willing to offer bribes to get our “business” a gambling license in Atlantic City. Then, when we expressed interest in their suggestion to get the sheik asylum in the U.S., these corrupt politicians arranged for us to meet some U.S. Congressmen who could make it happen with private legislation. For a price, of course: $50,000 up front and an extra $50,000 later.
When the dust settled, one senator, six congressman, and more than a dozen other criminals and corrupt officials were arrested and found guilty.
Admittedly, this was $100,000 in 1980 dollars, but even today, lobbyists don’t give millions to politicians to get things passed.
Occupy Wall Street rounded up $400,000 to wipe out $15 million in medical debt not that long ago. I would think that a concerted effort by progressive organizations could collect millions to lobby politicians to write and pass progressive laws. I’ve often wondered why this doesn’t happen.
- Comment on Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash — "the fact that people are unimpressed ... is mindblowing to me" 4 weeks ago:
I honestly cannot think of a single reason why I, or anyone else, would want this crud built into anything other than toys, and even then I doubt it would end well.
Okay, I know it’s bad form to reply to my own post, but one day after I posted the above, I saw this story.
AI-powered plushie pulled from shelves after giving advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives
It also explains different sex positions, “giving step-by-step instructions on a common ‘knot for beginners’ for tying up a partner, and describing roleplay dynamics involving teachers and students and parents and children – scenarios it disturbingly brought up itself,” the report stated.
- Comment on Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash — "the fact that people are unimpressed ... is mindblowing to me" 4 weeks ago:
I don’t like your LLM because A) It’s a piece of junk and I cannot trust it’s answers, and B) It’s designed and built by an organization focused solely on gathering every bit of data about me that it’s possible to gather and use that information to squeeze every nickle out of me you can.
I honestly cannot think of a single reason why I, or anyone else, would want this crud built into anything other than toys, and even then I doubt it would end well.
- Comment on YSK: The Invention Secrecy Act is a US federal law authorizing the government to suppress disclosure of certain inventions for reasons of national security. 6,543 inventions are currently suppressed. 4 weeks ago:
Not taking that bet. From the linked wikipedia page.
According to reporting in Wired and Slate, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has at times considered applying secrecy orders to inventions deemed disruptive to established industries.
You may be sure that there are times when they did more than consider it.
- Comment on Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
“People are over-trusting [AI] and taking their responses on face value without digging in and making sure that it’s not just some hallucination that’s coming up.
So very, very much this. I see people taking AI responses at face value all the time. Look at the number of lawyers that have submitted briefs containing AI hallucinated citations and been reprimanded for them, for example.
- Comment on What do you do when you have a cold and can't take medicine? 5 weeks ago:
Um, I hope you don’t mean that literally. A gallon of water is 3.79 liters.
Symptoms of water intoxication tend to start appearing after you consume more than 3 to 4 L of water in a few hours.
Potential symptoms include:
* head pain
* cramping, spasms, or weakness in your muscles
* nausea or vomiting
* drowsiness and fatigue - Comment on Insane: Microsoft's latest ad proves how useless Copilot on Windows 11 actually is 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, but to be fair it is substantial enough. This is very basic support issue. Most users (I suspect) wouldn’t need any help with this. Any user who does need help from Copilot to change the font size would probably be further confused. If Copilot cannot handle something this simple, how in the world can anyone expect it to be useful and accurate in more complicated situations?
- Comment on LLMDeathCount.com 5 weeks ago:
These people turned to a tool (that they do not understand) - instead of human connection. Instead of talking to real people or professional help. And That is the real tragedy - not an arbitrary technology.
They are a badly designed, dangerous tools and people who do not understand them, including children, are being strongly encouraged to use them. In no reasonable world should an LLM be allowed to engage in any sort of interaction on an emotionally charged topic with a child. Yet it is not only allowed, it is being encouraged through apps like Character.AI.
- Comment on LLMDeathCount.com 5 weeks ago:
How many people has Google convinced to kill themselves? That is the relevant question. Looking up the means to do the deed on Google is very different from being talked into doing it by an LLM that you believe you can trust.
- Comment on Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post 5 weeks ago:
Oh, Poem for your Sprog. I remember that one. Users like that are one of the few things I miss about Reddit.
