andrewrgross
@andrewrgross@slrpnk.net
- Submitted 1 week ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 10 comments
- Comment on AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast 1 week ago:
I don’t relate to your impression that religions or culture are typically humble. I wish they were.
Suggesting that I’m drawing equivalence between a forest and a data center and Implying that the belief that I am not entirely distinct from a stone is interchangeable with the belief that I am no different than a stone both seem like bad faith arguments by absurdism.
- Comment on AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast 1 week ago:
This depends on your definition of self-awareness. I’m using what I think is a reasonable, mundane framework: self awareness is a spectrum of diverse capacitors that includes any system with some amount of internal observation.
I think the definition that a lot of folks are using is a binary distinction between things which experience the ability to observe their own ego observing itself and those that don’t. Which I think is useful if your goal is to maintain a belief in human exceptionalism, but much less so if you’re trying to genuinely understand consciousness.
A lizard has no ego, but it is aware of it’s comfort and will move from a cold spot to a warmer spot. That is low-level self awareness, and it’s not rare or mystical.
- Comment on What is a good present to get your dentist and dental assistant as a way of showing thanks? 1 week ago:
This is what I came you say.
Scented candles and nice soaps are the gifts that you can pretty much give anyone to communicate “thank you” without having to give the gift any thought.
- Comment on What is the best way to drop 50lbs in two months without spending alot and no fad diets? 1 week ago:
I’ve heard it said that a healthy target is around 1 lb per week. Maybe 2 if you’re very obese, but at that point you really should be doing it under medical guidance.
In any case, the best way I’ve heard (outside of drugs) is to get an app that helps count calories, set a realistic daily caloric target and exercise schedule, and stay on it.
- Comment on AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast 1 week ago:
How are you defining self awareness here?
I understand how they work, btw.
- Comment on AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast 1 week ago:
A hamster can’t generate a seahorse emoji either.
I’m not stupid. I know how they work. I’m an animist, though. I realize everyone here thinks I’m a fool for believing a machine could have a spirit, but frankly I think everyone else is foolish for believing that a forest doesn’t.
LLMs are obviously not people. But I think our current framework exceptionalizes humans in a way that allows us to ravage the planet and create torture camps for chickens.
I would prefer that we approach this technology with more humility. Not to protect the “humanity” of a bunch of math, but to protect ours.
Does that make sense?
- Comment on AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast 1 week ago:
Frankly I think our conception is way too limited.
For instance, I would describe it as self-aware: it’s at least aware of its own state in the same way that your car is aware of it’s mileage and engine condition.
I think rather than imagine these instances as “inanimate” we should place there level of comprehension along the same spectrum that includes a sea sponge, a trout, a grasshopper, etc.
I don’t know where it falls, but I find it hard to argue that it has less self awareness than a hamster. And that should freak us all out.
- Comment on AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast 1 week ago:
This is fuckin’ bonkers.
Frankly, I feel somewhat isolated: I don’t buy into the bs and hype about AGI, but I also don’t feel at home with the typical “it’s just mimicry” crowd.
This is weird fuckin’ shit.
- Comment on Before social media/internet/cell phones/landlines/payphones; how would 2 friends living across the same city arrange in person meetings and stay in touch? 2 weeks ago:
My grandparents told me stories of how they’d have regular times and places. My grandpa told me stories of meeting up with his boys on Saturday mornings at the synagogue, and then going out and about. They’d sometimes park cars for folks, and sometimes take them on unauthorized joy rides. Occasionally folks would borrow a car that no one asked them to park, since apparently I guess folks left keys in cars regularly.
This was in Pittsburgh, and from what I gather captures the experience of the life of a Jewish teenager in the twenties and thirties pretty well.
There was a lot of hanging out on street corners and stoops, and just looking for friends at their regular candy shop/soda joint/pool hall, etc.
It sounds fuckin’ wild, tbh. My grandma says she’d take the bus across town in high school to meet up with her boyfriend and I was like, ‘Was that at all seen as daring or risky? For a young unaccompanied woman to be out like that?’ Apparently not. Folks could really hang.
I don’t know how this relates outside of specific cultures, though. Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X gave me the sense that a lot of experiences were different depending on race, but just rolling up to your friends’ houses or regular hang out spots seems to have been pretty universal.
- Comment on Im stupid but have money 2 weeks ago:
It sounds like op doesn’t know what they want. Ultimately, OP, I think you have to figure out that question.
When was the last time you were consistently happy? Are there any people in your lives of whom you’d wish to trade places?
- Comment on Bluesky just verified ICE 3 weeks ago:
Personally, I do want a common communication platform for people I despise because I want to be able to keep tabs on their public announcements.
I do not want to share close proximity to them on a network graph, or regularly engage with their supporters, though. So I agree that federation is crucial. But to be clear, it’s not because I want to ban them from a platform, it’s because I want managed distance and better moderation.
I don’t mind Bluesky verifying them, but I’m glad that on Mastodon I don’t have to share the same giant server as them.
- Comment on How do you build and cultivate revolutionary optimism, given what's happening in the US? 3 weeks ago:
Yes. It’s free and open-license. It’s free as in speech AND as in beer.
- Comment on How do you build and cultivate revolutionary optimism, given what's happening in the US? 3 weeks ago:
I’m a big fan of tabletop RPGs, and I like sci-fi, so a few years ago I moved from playing standard-issue cyberpunk to a solarpunk game instead.
It was such a radicalizing experience that my friends and I eventually released it as a totally free game, along with a ready to run starter campaign. It’s called Fully Automated! Solarpunk RPG.
If you’re a fan of TTRPGs and looking for fun, social way to get better at believing in a better world, go download it. It’s a blast, and really makes you want to go out and overthrow fascism.
- Comment on I don't understand how Trump gets away with all his senial BS. How come everyone is telling him to piss off or use the constitution to shut him the hell up? 3 weeks ago:
Respectfully, I think this is a naive myth.
Ask yourself this: if Bernie won and began executing his agenda with the brash disregard for criticism of Trump, do you think he could do it and people would say the same things we say about Trump? Or do you think we would see the collective power of congress the supreme Court the state governments and the corporate world come down on him in 100 different ways?
I think the more honest truth is that there are people with power who like what Trump is doing, and the people who don’t like what he’s doing don’t have power.
- Comment on ‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, it’s wild how Palestine has become the global laboratory for surveillance and state violence tech and tactics.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
This article doesn’t really seem to validate it’s headline. I was eager to learn more about the methodology and how to better detect corporate content, but I was disappointed that they apparently just made the leap from the claim that 15% of popular subs host a non zero amount of corporate manipulation to the claim that this represents the fraction of total content.
I’m not saying this to dispute how much of the total content is corporate bots. I’m just pointing this out because I actually care about the quality of statistical claims and data science, and I hate to see my ideological allies either misusing data because they’re dumb or because they don’t have a commitment to truth.
- Comment on At this point, what should we do about the ICE raids? If an ICE agent breaks in without a warrant or holds you at gunpoint, what do you do? 4 weeks ago:
The federal government is sending masked agents to brutalize and terrorize people is cities that are adversarial to their agenda.
It’s bad.
- Comment on Instead of everyone leaving NATO, could everyone else just kick the US out? 4 weeks ago:
I wrote a long answer and then accidentally hit the back button and don’t have the patience to retype it.
The short version is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. I don’t want any confusion about that.
NATO’s influence was that the US has been advancing against Russia for decades even after their country collapsed, and it was obviously nakedly escalatory. Combined with the US is overall foreign policy, which has always been imperial, we’ve acted as though putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them to stay cool was an actual way of calming things rather than the exact opposite.
I’m not saying that a version of NATO couldn’t have done what it claims to do. But that’s never been the version that has existed.
- Comment on Brussels plots open source push to pry Europe off Big Tech 4 weeks ago:
Thank fucking God that they’re finally waking up. This is long overdue.
- Comment on Instead of everyone leaving NATO, could everyone else just kick the US out? 4 weeks ago:
GoddlessCommie’s take is valid.
Nato is the core organizing instrument of western imperialism. Nato is like Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense shield. It’s easy to look at it and say, ‘Well now could anyone object to a tool of defense??’ But if you know anyone about war then you know that establishing an unbreakable defensive capability is what allows an imperial army to slaughter their weaker targets with impunity.
I’m not co-signing GodlessCommie’s point. But we gotta ask: did you like Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? Korea? Venezuela? Nicaragua? Georgia? Libya? Ukraine? Gaza? Because arguably, all of this shit rests upon the conditions established by NATO and US imperialism. So… It’s not unreasonable to ask whether NATO has actually fostered peace or just fostered peace for the people who wage wars.
- Comment on we need more users 4 weeks ago:
I think that if we want new folks, it would make a big difference is we organized the equivalent of a new member drive.
Currently, look at a default front page for your home instance and ask how enticing it is to a total newbie. There might be some good stuff, but it’s foreign and overwhelming. You feel out of place.
Now imagine if the first Friday of January had been “new subscriber day”. People on Reddit and Bluesky are taking about the fediverse and if it’s any good. And on Lemmy there’s a bunch of posts about finding the best instances and memes about being new on Lemmy. That’s a much more inviting beginner experience, and it makes it more likely for folks to come back the next day.
I really think planning for bursts of new folks is the way to welcome people.
- Comment on Why is kissing? 4 weeks ago:
This. Put another way: mammals use our mouths for sensing and manipulating. Note that people naturally use their mouths and noses to kiss and smell babies and pets on places other than their mouths.
If we instinctively use our mouths to kiss things, it’s natural that when two people want to do this at the same time they’re going to both do it to the other person’s mouth.
- Comment on What is the champagne of champagne? 4 weeks ago:
For what it’s worth, I just asked my sommelier husband, and he independently answered Billiecart-Salmon, Runart, and Krug.
- Comment on Bose open-sources its SoundTouch home theater smart speakers ahead of end-of-life 5 weeks ago:
I appreciate the distinction, but open source is always a spectrum, so I think the description is a reasonable application here.
- Comment on How to vote? 5 weeks ago:
That’s true. I don’t think it’s generally a problem, but I do find it funny when you see someone politely correct someone else deep in a chain where no one else is reading, and the correction says “0”.
To anyone who downvotes like that: you look like an insecure clown.
- Comment on Can other countries impose sanctions on the US? 5 weeks ago:
Corey Doctorow had a presentation this past week at the C3 hacker conference arguing that all our allies only agreed to be ruled by US tech hegemony in exchange for free trade agreements, and if they want a win-win solution to getting f’d, they should repeal their laws against jailbreaking US tech.
Tech sovereignty is already (finally) an issue the rest of the world is waking up to. I hope they go much farther and faster.
- Comment on Hacker Congress CCC talk by Cory Doctorow: 'A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet' 1 month ago:
It’s pretty wild, because this is genuinely great politics and great policy. It’s weird that folks haven’t realized this and acted on it yet. Fingers crossed.
- Comment on US sanctions two ICC judges for rejecting Israel's appeal against Gaza investigation 1 month ago:
This is nuts.
I’m gonna set this next to “declaring opposition to fascism” an FBI flag for investigation on the shelf of ways to really say the quiet part out loud.
It’s particularly wild to me because there’s no specific benefit to the US here. Sanctioning them clearly achieves nothing. They’re just going on the record as being opposed to the basic concept of war crimes prosecutions.
- Comment on Everyone is so close to grasping your unique vision! 1 month ago:
Real