That feels to me more like Wisdom and Intelligence working together

I went to one of the very posh UK universities where they’re split into smaller colleges, and my friend’s college would play the Soviet National anthem at the end of every big party that was hosted in the college bar. The college student union had even passed a motion mandating that.

It was a surreal experience to see. A large chunk of people loved this tradition, but for very different reasons. There were a decent number who were straight up communists (or at least sufficiently left wing that they loved the political subversiveness of celebrating this song at such a posh university); Some people liked it ironically, for the meme (of the anthem-enjoyers, this faction were typically the poshest of the bunch); meanwhile, some people just thought the song was a banger — in my view, on this matter, these were the most based of them

The meme doesn’t say anything about attractiveness though. As a not very attractive goth girl, I like goth style because it makes me feel less self conscious and more powerful in myself. The silly stompy boots help a lot with that

I have a friend who is a vicar, and she tends to use They/Them for God, which I find interesting.

I also met a few people who use different pronouns for the Holy Trinity. She/Her tends to be either the Holy Spirit or the Father (the Father being She/Her seemed odd to me, but this person felt quite strongly that the Holy Spirit was They/Them, and that Jesus was He/Him).

They/Them tends to be used for either the Holy Spirit or Jesus (Jesus says “I am He” at one point, and the argument here is that this isn’t Jesus saying his pronouns are He/Him, but rather that “He” refers to the entity who made Jesus — I.e. God).

He/Him tends to be used for Jesus or the Father.

Even amongst people who don’t use pronouns other than He/Him for the Christian God or one of God’s aspects, I’ve heard quite a few people argue that He/Him != he/him (and that They/Them != they/them etc.) and thus God uses neopronouns.

I really like how you’ve phrased this here — I think I’m going to end up borrowing aspects of your explanation to use myself. The person you’re replying to in this thread seems too entrenched in their opinion to hear the point you’re making here, but I not too infrequently find myself trying to explain the nuance of this phrase to people who are pro-palestinian liberation, but unsure about this particular slogan because they (quite reasonably) don’t want to inadvertently respond to a genocide with pro-genocide.

I’ve usually had good success in explaining why “from the river to the sea” isn’t inherently a pro-genocide slogan, but I feel like your explanation will help me to do this more effectively in future.

People like you help to make the internet a better place — which matters a lot to me, because one of my most desperately held beliefs is that it is possible to take the hopefulness of the early internet and combine it with the wisdom of the last few decades to produce a more robust kind of hope

Cory Doctorow actually goes more in depth on the radiologist example in a post from last year:

'If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: “Hey folks, here’s the deal. Today, you’re processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we’re going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you’ve missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you’re only processing 98 x-rays per day. That’s fine, we just care about finding all those tumors.”

If that’s what they said, I’d be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market’s bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists’ job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it’s catastrophically wrong.

“And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist’s fault, because they are the ‘human in the loop.’ It’s their signature on the diagnosis.”

This is a reverse centaur, and it’s a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it’s what Dan Davies calls an “accountability sink.” The radiologist’s job isn’t really to oversee the AI’s work, it’s to take the blame for the AI’s mistakes.’

In short, we definitely could (and indeed should) be using tools like tumor detecting machine vision as something that helps humans build a better world for humans. But we’ve seen time and time again, across countless fields that it never works out that way.

That’s because this isn’t a problem with the technology of AI, but the fucked up sociotechnical and economic systems that govern how this tech is used, who gets to use it, who it gets used on, whose consent is required for those uses and most significant of all: who gets to profit?

!Not us, that’s for sure!<

Most of my understanding of the horrors of white phosphorus comes from the game Spec Ops: The Line, a game that initially presents itself as a generic FPS in which you’re a valiant hero, but later forces you to confront the effects of the war crimes you commit in the game.

That’s what’s going through my head right now when reading this. White phosphorus is an abhorrent munition to use, even if there were no civilians in the blast area.

Marmite is really good for this. Some of the other go-to “umami bomb” condiments aren’t vegetarian, but Marmite works well for vegetarians

I’ve found that I actually seem to use more em-dashes since they became understood to be associated with AI — it’s a defiance thing. I mostly type on my phone, and to type an em dash, I just need to long press on the dash.

Thank you! I appreciate you for ensuring the artist gets credit. Plus I now get to see more of their stuff, so that’s neat too

I didn’t know that about Framework HiDPI displays

I agree, but like others have said, it bodes well that they’re open about this in the article

I’d rather see multiple comments giving the same safety advice if it means people are more likely to be able to see it.

Telling kids “you’re only allowed to dig a hole that’s at least as wide as it is deep” is likely to go over a lot better than “you’re not allowed to dig a deep hole because it’s unsafe”

But I, the barbarian, really wanted to hit someone with my axe this turn :(

This is a great example of the effectiveness of using a timer.

In addition to streamlining the session, I’ve found that it is also a massive help for roleplaying. Our party was once put on the spot in a similar way, and we ended up making choices that we deeply regretted. However, it was the kind of situation where there were no straightforwardly good choices, and we’d have probably agonised over the consequences either way. Our DM spurring us into action meant that we experienced the analysis paralysis (and subsequent regret) in-character as well as out of character

Yeah, this is especially useful for classes that prepare their spells from a longer list, like wizards or clerics. I like to use revision card size notes for each spell, so then when we long rest, I can just rifle through them and physically take the ones I’m choosing to prepare. It is more faff to make the notes than for sorcerers or warlocks, who only have to prepare a few notes each time they level up, but it massively streamlines sessions

This is why I love barbarians.

I deeply loved playing my delightful himbo. I only had two questions to answer: reckless attack (usually yes, because taking damage usually just makes me a more effective HP tank), and “do I want to hit them, or try to hit them really hard?” (Great weapon master feat — also usually a yes, mostly depending on healer availability).

I relate to your thing about a power fantasy of helping people. My guy had big “dad energy”, because he was older, and was deeply committed to putting himself between the squishy kids of the group (even if those “kids” included an elf who was twice his age). His mindset felt very paladin-y

Oh man, you weren’t kidding. This is so cringe:

[Not Epstein]:

Energy is a concept like matter is

It’s first an experience then a human interpretation of hat experience

By reifying flashes of evanescent perceptual snap shots the notion of objective reality is created and gives us the capacity to quantify and measure - so matter / energy are useful

constructs but constructs nevertheless

[…]

Epstein’s reply:

“Invisible… only means you cant see it. . a chair in a blackened room. It is the unknowable that is real.”

That’s so painful to read. It’s not the fact that they’re crudely waxing philosophical about fairly basic metaphysics — I’ve done plenty enough of that myself to be familiar with having thoughts that feel deeply profound and original, but are like metaphysics 101.

However, I had the curiosity to actually go and try to actively learn more about philosophy, which led me to be thoroughly humbled by realising how basic my ideas had been (and how out of my depth I was when trying to understand actually profound ideas). I stuck it out, and now I’m slightly less of a fool than I was then, and significantly more aware of my foolishness. Whereas Epstein and co. don’t have the self awareness to take their philosophising beyond this absurdly arrogant intellectual circle jerk.

These are the rich and powerful who are running the world, folks. Epstein’s mate even said “Dinner with minister for economy tonight.”. Ouch.

Thanks for sharing that talk, it’s pretty good.

I always find his talks interesting, because it often feels like it’s the same core talk each time, but changed through iterative refining of his ideas and rhetoric due to how often he gets the chance to talk about these issues.

Even though I’ve seen many of his talks before, I am surprised at how skillfully he is able to weave in new angles and themes. I mean, he has been doing this stuff for literal decades, but still, it’s impressive.