ameancow

It's the same phenomenon of de-socialization that was radically accelerated during peak Covid that has led to everything from a 1000% increase in unruly passengers on airlines, to a drastic decrease in relationships and dating, to a whole host of people just checking out from the social contract and embracing ludicrous conspiracy theories and retreating to online safe-spaces where any crazy thought will be validated and praised.

As a species we were not meant to have constant exposure to millions of people's innermost thoughts and feelings and unrestrained impulsive ideas. It fucks with your head. Combine that with the economic incentive of keeping people in one spot, scrolling their attention-span to sawdust, and you are training an entire generation of people to turn off their inner monologues and to stop thinking entirely, just seeking validation and things to click on.

I feel strongly that AI ruining the internet will be a net-positive, as it's going to drive more people to human spaces to connect with each other. Sure there will be a whole segment of people raised in the AI slop of the next decade, but there will also be a subset of people who want more and create their own spaces with other real humans.

I have indeed punched nazis.

I was involved in martial arts for nearly two decades, I attended many tournaments in that time. I don't make any claims of being an amazing fighter but I was able to hold my own and I can really take a hit.

There is a huge spectrum of tournaments out there. Some of these venues were far less strict than others, and basically let in anyone who was good at faking being from an actual karate school, because some hosts just cared about collecting entry fees. This was a long ass time ago, I have no idea if it's still like this now.

So there were almost inevitably a scattering of delusional psychopaths who just wanted to fight, from gang-members to college kids who watched Bruce Lee films so many times they thought they knew how to fight. And of course a few tattoo-plastered biker types who were able to set aside their ego enough to actually put on a gi and follow tournament etiquette. (Love those black belts that are so stiff you can tell they've never been worn before that day.)

So it's easy enough to see things like hate symbols tattooed on some people's chests or arms. I am proud to say that I have gone against some of these chucklefucks and hit them hard enough that they fell down and had a hard time getting back up. One just left after the first hard kick to the nuts. Fortunately (and unfortunately) the same kinds of tournaments that let just anyone in also seemed really lax about enforcing "light contact" rules and people were routinely just smashing each other as hard as possible, and why I eventually stopped doing tournaments.

The suburban hellscape that is most residential coded zones is far, far more sardine-like than what I'm describing, which is an environment far more like many cities in Europe that evolved to be, and have been maintained as walkable cities. The reason you're repulsed by the idea of urban environments is specifically because you're used to American residential areas that are hard, brutal and packed next to busy highways and multi-lane avenues that are constantly packed with people trying to get to and from work, with huge parking lots that act like hot deserts in the sun, with sprawl and noise and pollution and no good reason to leave your sardine can because there's nowhere to get to within 30 minutes of walking except more sardine cans.

If a neighborhood is designed to be walkable, you will have condos and apartments and medium to high-density living spaces, sure, but you will have an entirely different aesthetic and atmosphere around it so it feels more welcoming, and encourages community.

If you're opposed to community entirely, that's your prerogative, there are still vast, vast tracts of land across the world you can live in and be left alone, and that's fine. My comment isn't addressing that lifestyle, because for MOST people, cities represent opportunity, safety and essential services. We can't look down at the vast bulk of humanity who want to live around other people just because you yourself are bothered by your own memories and experiences of city life.

This entire post will age poorly if we ever transition out of this incredibly self-indulgent and wasteful period of human civilization.

We should have walkable neighborhoods, mass transit of gleaming efficiency, bike lanes as priority, we should be encouraging socializing and creating spaces for people to gather that aren't profit-driven, but with plans to create comfort and recreation to better the people and foster a sense of belonging to a community. It's absurd we all live in places with lots of people but have no sense of belonging to a community. This goes against literally millions of years of our own evolutionary history. We NEED community to function and have healthy minds.

I mean, it's not likely to happen. But maybe when the next great apocalyptic event happens the survivors can try to remake things with a little more planning. After the whole period of darkness and cannibalism of course.

Do you have money and/or personal emotional validation tied up in the promise that AI will develop into a world-changing technology by 2027? With AGI in everyone's pocket giving them financial advice, advising them on their lives, and romancing them like a best friend with Scarlett Johansson's voice whispering reassurances in your ear all day?

If you are banking on any of these things, then yeah, you should probably be afraid.

As someone dabbling with writing, I bit the bullet and tried to start looking into the tools to see if they're actually useful, and I was impressed with the promised tools like grammar help, sentence structure and making sure I don't leave loose ends in the story writing, these are genuinely useful tools if you're not using generative capability to let it write mediocre bullshit for you.

But I noticed right away that I couldn't justify a subscription between $20 - $30 a month, on top of the thousand other services we have to pay monthly for, including even the writing software itself.

I have lived fine and written great things in the past without AI, I can survive just fine without it now. If these companies want to actually sell a product that people want, they need to scale back the expectations, the costs and the bloated, useless bullshit attached to it all.

At some point soon, the costs of running these massive LLM's versus the number of people actually willing to pay a premium for them are going to exceed reasonable expectations and we will see the companies that host the LLM's start to scale everything back as they try to find some new product to hype and generate investment on.

Truth. I would say the actual time scales will be longer, but this is the harsh, soul-crushing reality that will make all the kids and mentally disturbed cultists on r/singularity scream in pain and throw stones at you. They're literally planning for what they're going to do once ASI changes the world to a star-trek, post-scarcity civilization... in five years. I wish I was kidding.

He's a 4-chan troll that gained enough wealth from his parents that he can now actually believe and preach the things he used to read on those forums and not only barely see consequence, but actually ignite passions and movements in the world's most ignorant and mentally challenged chuds.

We have to stop wondering what his "plans" are because he has none, he is just a stupid man, like so many others, and yet commands legions of devoted followers because our species is fucking stupid.

The only reason we're trying to somehow compromise and allow or even incorporate cheating software into student education is because the tech-bros and singularity cultists have been hyping this technology like it's the new, unstoppable force of nature that is going to wash over all things and bring about the new Golden Age of humanity as none of us have to work ever again.

Meanwhile, 80% of AI startups sink and something like 75% of the "new techs" like AI drive-thru orders and AI phone support go to call centers in India and Philippines. The only thing we seem to have gotten is the absolute rotting destruction of all content on the internet and children growing up thinking it's normal to consume this watered-down, plagiarized, worthless content.

Do you honestly think your choice of words in this post led to you being heard and understood? Or do you think that everyone is just being mean bullies? THiiiiiiink hard about this one.

It doesn't matter where it came from, if you're steeped in this kind of language it's a massive signpost that you've handicapped your own intellectual abilities in a profound way. Healthy, normal people with regulated feelings and stable perspectives grounded in reality do not frequent the communities that use this kind of language.

It's a red flag that will always make the outside world laugh and reject what you have to say, and if your instinct is to retreat back into the places that use this language, you are going to absolutely SUFFER in life, this is a warning coming from a place of compassion, you HAVE to believe me.

I am a well educated person who uses these forums and many others with regularity and I have many opinions on tech after working in both marketing and the tech sector for a long time.

That out of the way, I will simply skip over any comment that says "normies" unironically. Especially over and over.

This isn't fucking 4chan, communicate like a human like the rest of us. You don't get out of being one of us. I don't even know your take because it's so distracting and immature and condescending.