I’ve been thinking this for awhile. When people say “AI isn’t really that smart, it’s just doing pattern recognition” all I can help but think is “don’t you realize that is one of the most commonly brought up traits concerning the human mind?” Pareidolia is literally the tendency to see faces in things because the human mind is constantly looking for the “face pattern”. Humans are at least 90% regurgitating previous data. It’s literally why you’re supposed to read and interact with babies so much. It’s how you learn “red glowy thing is hot”. It’s why education and access to knowledge is so important. It’s every annoying person who has endless “did you know?” facts. Science is literally “look at previous data, iterate a little bit, look at new data”.

None of what AI is doing is truly novel or different. But we’ve placed the human mind on this pedestal despite all the evidence to the contrary. Eyewitness testimony, optical illusions, magic tricks, the hundreds of common fallacies we fall prey to… our minds are incredibly fallible and are really just a hodgepodge of processes masquerading as “intelligence”. We’re a bunch of instincts in a trenchcoat. To think AI isn’t or can’t reach our level is just hubris. A trait that probably is more unique to humans.

If you mean “better at thinking long term rather than short term to prevent you from staying at your current situation”, then yeah 🤷‍♂️

Energy star sticker on mine says $46 a year to run it. $3.84 a month. If you can’t plan for that then you have bigger issues than AC.

Look, I’ve been poor. What do you think happens when something major like your car breaks down? You figure it out. You don’t really have a choice so you do whatever you can to make it happen. You have to take that same determined energy and go “this is what’s important right now, how do I make this a priority?”. Is it easy, no. But it’s not gonna happen if you just throw your hands up and give up. And sure, if you want to get stuck in that boot paradox of constantly replacing lesser solutions and eventually spending more than the right one in the first place, be my guest.

I mean, sure, if you want to look like you live in a meth lab. Or you could spend a little bit and have something 100x better and actually functional and not be miserable. This is like that whole boot problem: you can only afford $20 boots so you buy them and they wear out in 6 months. Over 5 years you spend $200 when a nice pair that would’ve lasted as long or longer would cost you $100.

You can get an ac for like $60 new, like $20 on Facebook. Walmart has Artic Kings on sale every year for that much. But yeah, spend hours of your time Macgyvering a makeshift solution that maybe drops you 10°. You know what “10° degrees cooler” is where I am? 100°. You’d still be plenty miserable.

Yup. A $100-200 window unit(personally I prefer “portable” units with the exhaust hose to the window - keeps the main unit out of the sun that causes it to work harder) will be your best bet every single time. But sure, go ahead and check the price of tinting every window(about $20 per window) or getting blackout curtains(~$20 per panel in my experience) or any of the myriad of lesser solutions. Then, when you’ve spent as much or more with worse results and finally cave on getting a small unit, you’ll wonder why you ever did anything else before. Nevermind the fact that OP basically said “so aside from all the normal passive options, what else is left?” AC. That’s what’s left. Unless you want to advise them to replace all the insulation/windows/seals in their house.

Because you’re not actually contributing to the conversation and are just trolling. Or you’re dumb. I’m not sure.

So you offered no explanation. Thanks for the contribution.

Why are you so dense and think correcting you is attacking you?

You want me to go to my mailbox and show you how many manipulative credit card offers I have just today? You’re still not making any points other than “I don’t like this one particular thing”. Cool, you hate it. Understand how most credit is like this and stopped being shocked it exists. Because that was your original point you’ve so conveniently forgotten: how does this make money? With fees like has been explained to you over and over again.

So you have no clue what you’re talking about about

They also typically require a minimum purchase amount, so you have to spend more than you might have planned in order to use them. That $45 purchase suddenly becomes $55 because you needed to add something to go over $50. Those amounts add up over time and result in overspending.

Please explain how a credit card, especially the spam ones that show up in your mailbox unasked for, is any different.

Everyone is ranting on these services like they’re something new. They’re not.

I honestly don’t know what you mean because if any of that happens all finance gets fucked. This is no different than a payday loan and those have been around forever. Are you just learning today that predatory loan practices exist, and gasp thrive?

Again, you pay more in fees than they give you in loan. They can and will absolutely wreck your credit and sell your debt to collection agencies. And you also realize that the starting credit limit on these things is like $200, right? They’re not giving out $5000 credit lines just for signing up. Actual actuaries have done the work to figure out the risks.

Credit cards are unsecured loans too. The average person only gets a secured loan when it’s a car payment or a mortgage. Unsecured loans are incredibly common.

You have no clue what you’re ranting about, you just want to be mad about something.

I mean isn’t this one obvious? Fees. There’s a ~$4 fee for the basic 4 payments every 2 weeks plan. There are also numerous plans that span various amounts of months. THESE plans have APR up to 30%. Add in your 'I missed a payment, here’s a fee" and it’s basically just a credit card with more rules that requires ~1/4th payment upfront. They also treat each purchase as a separate loan, so you don’t get the benefit of one single monthly payment against the whole balance- each loan must be individually paid - adding up to a lot more than a credit card with a similar balance. And then add in selling marketing data of what customers purchase. It’s a simple and solid business structure.

This or “support group”. Community implies those already around you. Something like AA would fit the bill for something that is similar to religion or a cult but positive and affirmative.

Again, if you’re too stupid to make sure the multiton hunk of metal is coming to a stop by all the other obvious visual markers, including watching it’s speed compared to stationary objects like signs and lamp posts, then this won’t do shit. People need more aweness of their surroundings, not a bunch of lights and horns because people won’t pay attention.

You enter the road when it’s safe, not jump in and play frogger with lights hoping to get across.

If a car is braking it rides differently from one that isn’t. A car is normally rather level and leans “forward” when braking.

Besides that, YOU SHOULDNT GET IN FRONT OF ANYTHING YOU ARENT SURE IS STOPPING. If it’s moving fast enough that you need this, you shouldn’t be trying to get in front anyways.

All these fancy answers and I’ll give you a real simple one: sidewalks and paved roads. Does it have fully paved roads and sidewalks? Urban. Does it have that and mostly houses? Suburban. Some/no sidewalks and the roads aren’t all paved or is done poorly? Small town/rural. It’s all about the concrete/asphalt to dirt ratio.

Frankly, at this point, I just assume. The old joke was something like everyone on the internet is a man, except for the children, those are FBI agents. Now I just assume everyone is a bot.

And it was also noted by other commenters that it’s likely a default chipset that is used rather than anything actually nefarious. Most people are unaware of how many regular devices contain disabled hardware because it’s cheaper to make one board and modify it than make a million custom ones for every cheap thing.