PeepinGoodArgs

joined 1 year ago
[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

...why does the U.S. need more workers in the first place? With real wages being largely stagnant over the last four decades, who is producing what for whom?

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Now, I wouldn't give every dime away. But I'd turn my little city into a cyclist's haven and buy acres of land and set up a whole lot of tiny homes for the homeless. I'd also be looking at starting a business that can help sustain that lot over time since that is inevitably going to be very expensive.

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

This is just standard (and good) criticism of capitalism. "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" as they saying goes.

But there's the question of whether the mass murder in Myanmar would have happened without Facebook. That's impossible to know for sure, admittedly, but I still believe it's possible to think about it meaningfully. Because my answer is mass murder would have probably happened without Facebook.

The core of my argument is that technology merely allows humans to act more effectively and amplifies what we already do. What humanity does is not fundamentally changed by technology in most cases. And Facebook is one of the cases where the previously existing social division was amplified, where bad faith actors could act more effectively. Yes, Facebook had an important role to play by trying to make the platform addictive via algorithms that emotional content could hijack and spread like wildfire. However, while that doesn't absolve Facebook's instrumentality to mass murder altogether, it contextualizes it enough for me to treat it as any tool.

In other words, a murder-shovel digs just as effectively as a non-murder-shovel, and I don't really see an intrinsic problem with using the murder-shovel.

The analogy of the tool fails when it comes to Zuckerberg's role in directing Facebook to act as it did. A shovel doesn't have a CEO dedicated to digging as much as possible; Facebook does have a CEO dedicated to making the platform addictive, the mechanism by which social divisions were amplified. I think his responsibility is complex...but he absolutely shares some responsibility for the tragedy.

And so, that's why I believe your post is a good, moralistic criticism of capitalism: it demonstrates how market relations obfuscate moral responsibility. Facebook mediates and helps satisfy our social needs while allowing us to ignore our role, however small it is, in perpetuating the means by which others can influence others to commit tragedies.

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

If y'all keep listening to conservatives and businessmen, you're going to catch down to the United States of America

“Economic growth does not necessarily equate to economic prosperity,” TD economist Marc Ercolao wrote

This is what I'm talking about. This is the second line in an article that spends the entire time talking about a decline in economic growth as a proxy for standard of living. Changes in GDP don't mean shit if the wealth isn't fairly distributed

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 12 points 1 year ago

The difference between the cold war and climate change is that the former could be stopped simply by not being a warmongering idiot. The latter, even if we stop being a nature-raping idiot species, is still going to fuck. us. up.

Also, a lot of people have died in wars, genocides, natural disasters, and political churn. As a survivor for whatever reason, I'm not really sure how valuable your insight is. There are a lot of dead children out there.

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

the best way to use LLMs - general definitions or framing / summarizing of issues. And then always check the sources to make sure it was accurate.

I agree. The criticism that they're not accurate kinda misses the point of LLMs being tools. It'd be like complaining that a hammer doesn't jam the nail in all the way after the first stroke. Hit it again...and maybe try hitting it straight this time instead of at an angle. It's an iterative process that can be self-correcting when done thoughtfully.

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh boy. I do research on it for various things. Florida released some laws changing alimony and I researched it via Perplexity to understand what the problem was. It worked. I understood the issue.

Or carbon capture technology.

In any case, I do look directly at the sources. Perplexity.ai is useful for framing a topic, getting the gist of it, but for being sure I know wtf is going on, I personally need to look at the sources.

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As someone getting an MBA that hates the idea of labor being displaced by AI, if I were an unethical business owner that treated labor as a cost to minimize, I'd use AI to generate content that's "good enough" and use fewer people to make it exactly to my specification.

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Perplexity.ai has been a solid addition to my internet searches.

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