I always thought it was funny how the right uses commerce as the solution to all problems when it’s inherently exclusionary. You have money, you get things. You don’t, you starve… Government is supposed to be inherently inclusionary- all people are guaranteed inalienable rights by dint of their existence.

If we have to use capitalism, it should be backstopped by a system that continues to deliver when markets fail. This idea that we should run government like a business is ridiculous.

Not to worry, we will cover the expense.

The feeling of constant acceleration is valid. It will only get more intense in the coming years, so consider this your practice round.

In spite of the marginal results a lot of current LLMs can deliver, they are making a difference in some areas of work. I’m a data engineer and working with an agent over the last few months has been a revelation. You have to wrangle it just so, but with an adequate context well-defined, you can plow through months of tedious due-diligence and fine-tuning in days.

I wouldn’t trust it for medical advice… yet… but the time will come when it stops being “ai” and becomes like autofocus or voice transcription or shopping cart suggestions, just another tool. Something else will take on that mantle, and be a different, even more disconcerting mixed bag.

There was a book that came out about 20 years ago by Ray Kurzweil, named The Singularity is Near that discussed this phenomenon in detail, and so far has been prophetic. It will help you understand what’s happening and what’s coming next.

Welcome. I too disagreed with the wrong people on Reddit and can no longer participate there.

Yeah presently Lemmy is not Reddit-scale. But, it also is not Reddit-moderated, or Reddit-algorithmed. I find I can sign into Lemmy, do a bit of scrolling and commentary to scratch my itch, and get on with my day. No dynamic selection designed to retain my engagement through emotional manipulation, a far lower population of malicious bots and actors, and generally more thoughtful discussion.

Quality beats quantity. Federated social breaks the toxic monoculture. Distributed media like this is able to support a broader diversity of people. In the end, this is the future.

Is this related to the idea that as soon as artificial intelligence can be applied to a specific use-case, it ceases to be magical, hand-wavey magic and becomes auto-focus, or shopping suggestions, or voice transcription?

To the 18th century doctor, our state of healthcare is literally science fiction tales of wonder. Resurrecting the dead, replacing organs, changing gender… impossible! Now it’s just healthcare.

The “waning days” are not waning fast enough. Too much time will pass and we will forget all of these monstrous people did and said all those horrible things.

Transgender tech person here. I’d generally agree with you.

In the last 5 years I’ve lost 160 pounds, instituted an aggressive exercise program, started a longevity-focused supplement regime which includes radically changing the function of my endocrine system to focus on estrogen. Somebody who hasn’t seen me since starting would have a hard time believing I was the same person.

All of this is really only possible due to the technology and research we have access to. Bioidentical hormones, anti-inflammatory drugs, anti-androgens, metabolic support like GLP-1 agonists, etc, as well as the basic over-the-counter supplements… are all backed by many decades of research by armies of scientists on proper formulation and dosage. Not to mention the advances in wearable tech that continually track my physical condition, combined with staggering levels computational power that synthesizes the whole picture.

The march of advancement is ongoing. We are soon to enter the era of personalized medicine, where my genome can be analyzed to produce custom viruses and mRNA that deliver precisely defined instructions to fix or alter specific aspects of my person. This doesn’t even touch on surgical innovations.

I think what the kitten-eaters dislike is not the tech but the -ism in transgenderism. The notion that I should want a change they find culturally icky, but can’t dispense with without also doing away with all the other stuff they do want. It drives ‘em nuts, lol. As long as we live in a free society, I get to do whatever I want. So, their solution is to make the society less free, but just for this.

That targeted disenfranchisement easily broadens to persecute an entire credo that naturally occurs around people such as myself. I also live in a city, have electric cars in my drive and solar panels on my roof, and subscribe to crazy notions like everybody should have guaranteed access to medicine. This is apparently an existential threat to the straight, white, male, Protestant, suburban fossil-fueled strip-mall American Way. I’m well and certainly on a number of lists. In case they’re reading this, Ka$h Patel can eat the peanuts out of my asshole.

I aim to live for a long time, in good health, as the person I envision myself to be. The only threat to that are the right-wing psychopaths… but I contribute too much to the precious economy to be written off completely. It vexes them, which amuses me.

Homeboy might be more credible without that fucked-up haircut. Seriously, are you that disconnected from the world of normal people that you can look in the mirror with that ‘do, consider it critically, and say, “yeah, that’s just what I’m going for"

Yes, and yes.

It’s telling that the defining event in his political transformation was a serious neurological injury. We’re all apparently one brain bleed away from right-wing authoritarianism. Also, nobody seems surprised that somebody diminished from their former selves will naturally move to the right. Its almost as if that worldview is more suited to people who aren’t accustomed to thinking.

Under His eye.

Typical boomer nonsense, conflating anti-zionism with anti-semitism when it’s convenient for argument’s sake. I feel like there should be more depth from Carville, but then again senescence is a bitch.

They couldn’t have been sober, then.

Just install Amphetamine on your Mac, duh

Nick Bostrom takes himself waaaaaaaayyy too seriously.

I’m only aware of a lot of what I find distressing because of my superpowers. I can know what’s happening everywhere in the world within minutes of it happening. Somebody I will never, ever meet in person can say something mean about me and put a shadow on my mood, if I choose to pay attention to it.

My day-to-day is idyllic. Modest, urban, a bit ecclectic… but comfy, by American standards. Food, shelter, medicine, recreation, community, art, adventure, mobility, and friendship are all in adequate supply. I’m employed and paid fairly. Accepted by friends and family, valued by my colleagues. If my sphere of awareness and sphere of routine travel were the same, I would think myself a prince.

But my sphere of awareness is vast. So, I know my comfort is a byproduct of privilege, which is withheld from millions of other deserving people because… reasons. I know there are other parts of the world where logic and justice and tolerance are in widespread, societally upheld ascendance, and that those places are far, far away from where I live.

Immediately outside the personal bubble I labor to maintain, there’s pain, violence, fear, hunger, and hatred. One misstep on my part and I could find myself there as well. I know that fear is wielded as a tool by people who live in fortresses made of money, by people who claim to represent the ideals of my nation, but only care that they are the winner and everybody else is the loser.

So yes, there are many nagging feelings. I wish my comfort was more than the byproduct of somebody powerful wanting something from me. Much angst, as I sit in my comfortable chair with my expensive technology, in my lovely house on a gorgeous spring day. I wish I was stupider, less aware, less experienced in the motivations of horrible people.

Scroll through your typical node_modules directory without learning a little something about software bloat. Yikes.

It’s quite a lot, what we expect from our technology now. But we made it this way because the marketplace has deemed there must always be a winner and a loser, so it’s a never ending game of accelerationist oneupmanship.

The market pressures the competitors, the competitors pressure the engineers, the engineers pressure each other to deliver faster and faster. Sometimes they’re backed into a corner and have to focus on more speed and efficiency, which is shortly thereafter consumed by frameworks, languages, and operating systems that are also competing for adopters, and thus supply stuff like JIT compilers and UI frameworks.

Even before we were plunged into the hellscape of vibe coding, you could knock an app together with a kit of parts using a pinch of glue code, having no clue what’s happening underneath the gui. Who cares? My Mac at idle is running hundreds of processes, it can take it. Until of course it can’t.

Back in olden times, a piece of software was painstakingly hand-built in assembler and C over a course of many months. But ain’t nobody got time for that when your manager can shit out an app with Claude in an afternoon.

Narrow down your inputs. Isolate until you feel calm. Yes, this by itself is very difficult and could take a while.

but, if you manage it, begin reintroducing stimuli one at a time and monitor your inner state. Sit with it for a while and see if that experience contributes to a level of unease. Record your impressions. Repeat.

Maybe its too on the nose to say so on Lemmy, but fuck Reddit right in the earhole. Their pearl-clutching, risk-averse, pro-corporate moderation-bot and tattle-tale system was the last straw.

Cool, cool. Go form a militia, why dontcha, you little bitch. We can throw down someplace more private.