Deestan

Completely agree.

It's just a popular quasi-religion for rich people to keep doing what they do while coming off as megabrain angels.

Longtermism is a cardboard halo. A thin excuse to act in complete self-interest while pretending it is good for humanity.

The further into the future we try to think, the more different factors and uncertainty dominate. This leaves you room to put in any argument you feel like, to make any prediction you feel like. So you pick something vaguely romantic or appealing to some relatively popular opinion, and hey you're golden.

I am approached by a beggar. What do I - the longterminist - do?

I feel like being kind today. My longterminist argument is that every bit of happiness and relief today carries compound interest into the future, and by giving this person some money today, they are content and don't have to resort to thievery, which again makes another person have a safe day and have mental energy to do a lot of good tomorrow. The goodness becomes bigger every step, over time. I give them $100. It's pretty obvious, really.

They smell and I don't want to deal with that right now. My longterminist argument is that helping out beggars actually just perpetuates a problem in society. If people can't function in society without random help, it's just a ticking bomb of a humanitarian disaster. Giving them money just postpones the time until the crisis is too big to ignore, and allows it to grow further. No, this is a problem that society needs to handle right now, and by giving money to this person I'm just helping the problem stay hidden. I ignore them and walk on by. It's pretty obvious, really.

My wife left me and I want other people to hurt like I do. My longterminist argument is that unfortunately, these people are rejects of society and I can't fix that. But we can prevent them from harassing productive citizens that work hard to create a better future. If fewer beggars make commuters sad and it gives a 1% improvement in productivity, that's a huge compound improvement in a few hundred years. So I kick him in the leg, yell at him, and call the police on him and say he tried to assault me. It's a bit cold-hearted, but it's obviously good long term.

The ending of Link's Awakening

"Arr, this ❌ marks where I buried 44 billion doubloons!"

Most chatbots are speed bumps. Like phone menu trees and hold times, they slow you down on your way to get actual help.

Sometimes that means you give up before getting to the real help, which saves money on support.

Whether it's the intended effect or not, it is so well known at this point that we shouldn't excuse anyone using this tactic. It's malicious.

So in legalese, it basically says "we are scared but not sure why. GRR!"

okay eyes clised, now whar?

I do love the "it may do so later" part. It reads like the journalist was writing this via speech-to-text from the shower, just rambling off whatever thoughts came to mind.

And hiring people up to the last second. Last few hires probably barely have time to sell their old apartment and pack their families on the plane to California before being laid off.

It will probably happen soon also. :/ The global economic situation that drove Reddit and Twitter to desperation applies to everyone else also.

Same here. Reddit had me going only on inertia for the past few years. Whether they revert their API lalala doesn't matter - the communities are broken and I don't feel like getting up again.

And even if through some divine intervention they manage to repair the communities, I'm like... eh. I went to sit over here now and it's comfy.

Negotiating is futile. They can never prove beyond "trust me bro" that they deleted the data, nor that they kept it secret, so why would they actually follow up?

Whatever they have, if it is good they have already sold it to several interested parties under the table, and they will continue to do so. This is just an attempt to grift out a bit of extra cash.