• 28 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • To try and answer what you’re asking genuinely, since I don’t see indication that this is bad-faith:

    The reason African-Americans and some black people get a “pass” to use it isn’t because it isn’t offensive. Its because they’re expected to have a better understanding of their own oppression than someone who hasn’t lived with it, and because it can generally be assumed to not have racist connotations. The word has such heavy history that if someone who isn’t black uses it, it is usually (and reasonably) assumed to be racism. Even among those who are black, theres a lot of nuance, with many feeling uncomfortable with saying it, either because the word is so loaded that it can be offensive reguardless, or because they don’t feel like they’re connected enough to the history to have the “right” to say it (I.E. someone who grew up in a black-majority country might feel this way.)


  • Making immigration more difficult already benefits the wealthy. Not having birthright citizenship won’t change that.

    I think you’re misinterpreting my intentions. I believe that making immigration and citizenship easier is best. I just also believe that Jus Soli is an ineffective band-aid solution, that doesn little to help the common man.

    I’m not informed enough to be very specific in execution, but in my mind, immigration should be extremely generous. Ideally, I’d say it should be effectively unlimited, but I know there are economic considerations that need to be taken into account, such as the rate of housing construction. That said, I don’t feel confident enough to outline specifics beyond that. I have nothing against immigrants or immigration.

    Its purely citizenship, and the political power it involves specifically that I believe shouldn’t be given out based on geographic location at one instant alone. Given that its effectively giving you power to change how the country is run, it should be given to those who are directly affected by how the country is run. Ideally, I’d almost want a system where someone can’t be more invested in a different country, although again, I’m not sure about specifics. Prehaps something along the lines of a limit of how much property can be owned outside the country relative to within the country, so regular people qualify easily, but someone can’t get citizenship while they own a dozen houses elsewhere. Again, I’m not an expert, and not trying to advocate for a specific solution, just that immigration be made easier and citizenship shouldn’t be something you can buy.

    Edit: fixed a couple typos.









  • I theoretically, I would say I’m generally against it, with the understanding the citizenship is not the same as permission to live/work in the country nor the same as permission to access services.

    Citizenship should generally mean that the country is your “home country” rather than place of origin. In that case, citizenship should be given to those who want to commit to participating in and improving the government and culture of the country (if only because thats where they spend most time). Where you were born doesn’t relate to this strongly. What matters is how much time you’ll spend here in the future, such as if your parents are citizens or permanent residents (meaning you’ll likely grow up here) or if you want to move to the country permanently.

    Basically, where you’re born shouldn’t matter. What should is your intent on living in the society you’ve gained influence in.


  • I wouldn’t say the problem is with their length or simplicity. I’m sure I could enjoy a short anthology in one of these universes. The bigger problem is the fact that its embedded into a game, effectively breaking the pacing and flow of both the written text and the game. Ideally, this would at least allow you to use environmental and visual storytelling alongside the text, but this is rarely done well enough to justify all the downsides, so you end up with the worst of both worlds.





  • Its not so much social media that ruined it, as capitalism and centralization.

    Forums themselves are a form of social media, and they’re (mostly) great. For Reddit and Lemmy, debatably the best part is the social elements, like the comments sections. The problem isn’t the interaction or the “social” nature of it. Its that these platforms have turned into psudo-monopolies intent on controlling people and/or wringing them for every penny.

    Thats not to say toxicity and capitalistic exploitation didn’t exist before either. The term “flame war” is older than a lot of adults today. Unlike today though, platforms were both more decentralized meaning they were easier to manage and users could switch platform, and were less alorithmic meaning that users could more easily avoid large, bad-faith actors. You’ll notice the Fediverse have both these qualities, which is part of why its done so well.

    IMO, the best fix to this, would be twofold. A) break up the big monopolies and possibly the psudo-monopolies. Monopolies bad, simple enough. B) Much more difficult, but I believe that what content a site promotes, including algorithmically, should be regulated. Thats not to say sorting algorithms should be banned, but I think we need to regulate how they’re used and implemented. For example, regulations could include things like requiring alternative algorithms be offered to users, banning “black box” algorithms, requiring the algorithns be publicly published, and/or banning algorithms that change based on an individual’s engagement. Ideally, this would give the user more agency over their experience and would reduce the odds of ignorant users being pushed into cult-like rabbit-holes.


  • I went down this rabbit hole about a year ago, and didn’t have much luck. In the end, the best results I was able to get were from Steam’s Big Picture Mode on a Windows device, mostly launching Firefox (might have been Chrome?) with different launch arguments to immitate a smart TV.

    Most available software either doesn’t support Linux well, doesn’t support streaming services and outside software, or doesn’t support non-kb&m input methods. You can get two, but never all three. You could try SteamOS, now that its out, but unfortunately my hopes wouldn’t be high for it to have all the apps you needs functioning.



  • That was actually my biggest disappointment with my degree - the course didn’t teach anywhere near enough for my tastes. However I would hope that I was an outlier in that respect!

    From my own experiences, and those of my own social circles, you’re in the majority and its not even close. I think a lot of schools are both bad at teaching, and failing to account for the changes in the world since the internet. A lot of schools seem to want to stick to the bare minimum without changing methods or content, which unfortunately makes sense (financially), given capitalism and our current culture around schooling.


  • You seem to be missing what I’m saying. Maybe a biological comparison would help:

    An octopus is extrmely smart, moreso than even most mammels. It can solve basic logic puzzles, learn and navigate complex spaces, and plan and execute different and adaptive stratgies to humt prey. In spite of this, it can’t talk or write. No matter what you do, training it, trying to teach it, or even trying to develop an octopus specific language, it will not be able to understand language. This isn’t because the octopus isn’t smart, its because its evolved for the purpose of hunting food and hiding from predators. Its brain has developed to understand how physics works and how to recognize patterns, but it just doesn’t have the ability to understand how to socialize, and nothing can change that short of rewiring its brain. Hand it a letter and it’ll try and catch fish with it rather than even considering trying to read it.

    AI is almost the reverse of this. An LLM has “evolved” (been trained) to write stuff that sounds good, but has little emphasis on understanding what it writes. The “understanding” is more about patterns in writting rather than underlying logic. This means that if the LLM encounters something that isn’t standard language, it will “flail” and start trying to apply what it knows, regardless of how well it applies. In the chess example, this might be, for example, just trying to respond with the most common move, regardless of if it can be played. Ultimately, no matter what you input into it, an LLM is trying to find and replicate patterns in language, not underlying logic.


  • The LLM doesn’t have to imagine a board, if you feed it the rules of chess and the dimensions of the board it should be able to “play in its head”.

    That assumes it knows how to play chess. It doesn’t. It know how to have a passable conversation. Asking it to play chess is like putting bread into a blender and being confused when it doesn’t toast.

    But human working memory is shit compared to virtually every other animal. This and processing speed is supposed to be AI’s main draw.

    Processing speed and memory in the context of writing. Give it a bunch of chess boards or chess notation and it has no idea which it needs to remember, nonetheless where/how to move. If you want an AI to play chess, you train it on chess gameplay, not books and Reddit comments. AI isn’t a general use tool.