darthelmet

“Air traffic control, please respond. We aren’t able to see the landing strip and we might crash!”

“Sounds like a skill issue. Git gud.”

Works on my machine. :P

I don’t know how much money it costs, but if it’s not going to financially hurt him and you don’t care about your burial, then it seems fine. Like I don’t believe in religious stuff, but other people do and I understand why. But you don’t even really need to get that deep into it. It’s a thing he wants and will make him happy. Just think of it like any other purchase.

This seems over engineered. I’m pretty sure a simple program that just replies “yeah sure” to anyone from the right department asking about something would outperform most CEOs.

How would you go about getting your town to plant more trees?

I live in the suburbs (I know it sucks, but that’s just my current family situation.) and lately I’ve been trying to get outside more for my mental and physical health. The problem is, the suburbs are kind of shit for this. Obviously there’s all the car-centric infrastructure which makes walking more difficult and dangerous, but there’s not much I could conceivably do about that in any reasonable amount of time. However, the other big issue I’ve found, especially as it’s gotten so hot this summer, is there are barely any trees, and thus barely any shade anywhere along the sidewalks. Even the local park doesn’t have much shade aside from a small area in the corner. So it’s really unpleasant to walk anywhere. I get super sweaty even taking a leisurely walk on most days of the summer.

So I was thinking that maybe I could lobby the town to plant more trees such that most of the sidewalks are at least partially shady. I know there are some barriers to this like the tree roots cracking sidewalks and probably some NIMBYs who only view nature as being ornamental, and of course this would cost money to do. So it wouldn’t be a trivial thing, but I don’t think it’s entirely outside the realm of possibility either.

What do you think are some strategies I could use to make this happen? What sort of things do I need to do or account for? Obviously it’s going to be different depending on the town, but if there is any kind of general idea of how to go about this I would appreciate hearing it.

No. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what current AI models even are. They’re not smart and they don’t think. They are just reflections of what has already been. Whatever was fed into their training. They aren’t going to magically solve a problem in some way none of us would have because it’s kind of an amalgam of all of us. (and a LOT of bots) You also can’t separate governance from politics. There is no one best answer which everyone is happy with, and the various groups or individuals with those varied interests have varying degrees of influence over the process. If the AI came out and was like “socialism all the way baby!”… do you really think that the people in power who benefit from the current system would just be like “Well I guess the AI said it’s right, time to give up our power.”

That’s not to say there’s no place for AI. Machine Learning can be used as a great tool for statistical analysis to help answer specific questions we have in implementing priorities we’ve already decided on, but just like everything in statistics, it doesn’t matter how good your math or data was if you didn’t ask the right question in the first place.

I like the cultures that have leaned more into socialism. Not just for the practical benefits to society, but because they just seem to be more caring and community oriented in general. In the US I always feel so isolated. There are all sorts of norms that put up barriers between people and can make people feel like they’re on their own when they need help. I’d like to live somewhere where people would care and do something if their neighbors needed help or where I wouldn’t feel so weird talking to strangers. Maybe this is too idealized. I know no culture is a monolith, but there seem to be some better tendencies in other countries.

EDIT: For all the time I’ve spent watching anime (including 2 trips to Japan), I have a hard time thinking of much I actually admire about actual Japanese culture. They’ve got the toxic work culture, they’ve got the confucian family thing going on, there’s the xenophobia, and then there’s their… suspicious obsession with some other questionable countries like the US, UK, and Germany. I guess anime can be funny and they have nice trains. So at least they have that. Oh I guess they also seem to be more chill when it comes to religion. Like it’s still there, but it doesn’t seem like the intensity of it is enough to cause regular problems like it does in the Western world.

In general I’m jealous of countries where the norm is for them to eat healthier food. I grew up eating the typical crap 'Murican diet and it’s left me very unhealthy. I’ve been trying desperately to change that, but it’s such a slow process to change what you’re used to. I get repulsed by things that people in other countries just look at as at worst a normal part of their diet or sometimes they even actively like it. I wish I had grown up being socialized on that before things got so out of hand.

How do you conceive of your "self?"

I have been suffering from a whole host of mental health issues for a long time in my life. Some only popped up around college, some were probably there for most of my life and were just not diagnosed yet.

Lately I’ve found myself struggling with thinking about or describing to others things I like or don’t like or ways I go about life. There are some things I either used to like or think I should like but don’t at the moment. I might even come up with reasons to rationalize these dislikes that sound plausible to me. But then I stop and feel kind of disingenuous about it. Like do I not like a thing because that’s what my “real” feelings are? Or is it something due to one of my issues like depression and I might like the thing if I were finally able to find a treatment that worked. What is the difference between my intellectual thoughts and how my brain and body actually feel and behave?

Another manifestation of this has to do with the things that bother me about the world. There’s so much terrible stuff out there and I feel bad about that, but am I depressed because I feel bad about these things or do I feel bad about these things because I’m depressed? Would I stop feeling bad about wars or climate change if I weren’t depressed anymore? That doesn’t seem like it would make sense. I guess I’d just be regularly sad as opposed to clinically depressed?

Things get even weirder and more existential when I start to think about what we even are. Our brains aren’t just computers running software. We’re a collection of cells all doing their own things that somehow come together to perform larger functions that compose a larger complex organism. Not even all of the things that make our body work and affect how we feel are even technically “belonging” to to the body. Things like the bacteria in our guts are super important to our health and as I understand it, have an impact on mental health to some extent.

So what am I? What is “me?” Is it possible to separate my thoughts from my body? What does it mean to think things that are in conflict with your feelings?

Obviously this is a pretty vague topic and can be approached from a variety of perspectives such as biology, psychology, philosophy, etc. So I’m curious what people think about this.