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A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

meyerweb.com

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Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#161
post #8

Perhaps it is no consolation at all, but grief is beautiful when expressed with grace like this. Also, I really like the design of this site.

I think it's terrible. I don't see a single positive thing about it. Even if shit is expressed in a graceful way, it's still shit. No grief would be beautiful

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#162
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why I hate AI so strongly (I... debated several less charitable wordings of this opening). I read, because I want to know what people think. What people thought, decades, centuries ago. Writing, and reading, are about the only mechanism we know to really get inside someone else's brain. To see how, and what, they think, in what they've chosen to communicate. I used to write more for a technical audience -…

You're right. The sad thing to me is there's not going to be much of a way to tell if the text we're reading, the picture we're looking at, or the person we're talking to even IS a real person unless they're physically in front of us. It's a huge loss for interpersonal connectivity at a distance

I hear this a lot, but why is it a problem? For most people I encounter ephemerally online, as long as I can't tell the difference, it doesn't matter. If you were an AI, I wouldn't mind. I usually talk to such people to try to understand ideas better and if an AI could provide that, then no problem. If you want some sort of real-world interaction with them, there's a good chance that'll never happen with a real person either. I've had many online friends who I never met but I still felt like I knew them. The AI just has to be good enough never to burst the bubble.

Then there's the opposite problem that we already have to deal with - real people who are effectively AI and not capable of forming a mutual relationship with you, such as narcissists, people with dementia, and celebrities. People can spend years of their lives having a relationship where the other person only really exists in their own mind. Actually it's quite normal to build an internal imaginary model of the people we know which might not actually be correct.

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#163
post #147
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but AI is telling you what 'people' think-- not a person-- but a blended up mismash of people, like the move Dark City, then strapped into a torture chair to diminish wrongthought. But it's people. or peopleish. It was made by people at least. sorta. Besides, after being filtered through perception and narration who is to say any story you hear from another person is real ? Shouldn't it be more a question of what it…

There's a reason the phrase, "Designed by committee", is not a praise. It applies to AI, too. I don't want a mash-up of generic human thought, as filtered through a machine. I want to hear what people think, as individuals.

But there's no reason it can't emulate that. What people themselves think is mostly just a mashup of the crap they hear from other people anyway. It's also usually filtered for wrongthink, at least until they get to trust you enough.

I had this realization of how fake most people are when I started to use AI to talk online with people from a real-life-group I belonged to. I got it to talk the way they did and they liked it more than the real me. I then realized they're probably all just applying their own meat-AI filter to their own words anyway and not actually exposing their real feelings. I also know people who carefully draft and craft all their text and email messages to convey the feelings they want to show, whether they're honest or not.

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#164
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's found in Jesus, and the life-on-life community known as the Church. Do you realize how incredibly dismissive it is for people to talk about the pain they feel, and to have someone respond "nah, you just haven't found Jesus yet"? I was raised in a deeply religious household. I found no peace in Jesus. I'm happy that Christianity works for you, but this is not globally applicable advice. It's also an example of…

You're free to share a more general answer, should you have one. And I'm free to share the answer I've found, even as I'm working through the challenges of life. I've no idea what "spiritual bypassing" even means.

You've found an "answer" in fairy tales, and think that gives you the right to dismiss other people's pain. Shame on you.

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#165
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a wonderful, affectionate, snuggly cat who also had a congenital defect. She only made it to a year and seven months old (having adopted her at around 8 weeks old). We lost her almost two and a half years ago, and I still cry over her memory once every couple weeks, and think about her multiple times a day. I don't have children, but if I ever do, I am worried that my experience with this wonderful little cat…

When you hit college age is often when your odds of experiencing the first death in your family spikes up. Grandparent, great grandparent, oldest aunt. It happened to a number of friends of friends and acquaintances. Some people were a complete mess and others were more resilient. The pattern I noticed was the people who had lost a pet were more equipped to deal with the loss of a human. The worst hit people never ev…

My mother died during my second year of college. My father died when I was in my 30s. My mother's parents died before I was born, and my father's had both died by the time I was 10 or so.

We had cats when I was a kid, and two of them died while I was in my early/mid teens. They were "mom's cats", and at the time I didn't understand why it affected her so deeply. It made me sad, to be sure (both cats had been around my entire life up to that point), but I didn't get it. Not until I lost my own cat, anyway.

In a strange way, a way that I sometimes feel bad about, losing my cat hit me harder than losing my parents.

> (Sorry for your loss)

Thank you!

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric Meyer's blog posts about his daughter Rebecca - see https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca...

Man, there is no way I can read this. I got choked up just reading the titles of the blog posts, knowing what was coming. I remember being younger and not being emotionally bothered by anything. Yet as I get older I am able to relate to so much more and everything hits so much harder because of it.

I started reading from the beginning, and by the time I got to the post about her cancer recurring, and her parents having to tell her that she's going to die, I was sobbing.

Had to take a break. Not sure I can go back to it.

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#167

This is deeply moving. I have 3 kids. One is adopted, but he is no different from the others. If anything happened to any of them, I sincerely can't imagine how I'd carry on. I know I would, but I don't know what it would look like. I can't imagine that world because I so badly don't want it. Sometimes I force myself to imagine myself getting a terminal illness or injury, and think of how I'd handle that, how I need…

If one is adopted but no different why even mention it?

I think because despite not knowing him for the first 5 years of his life, he has come to be so integral to my life and I find it profound and important. Without adding that context it does seem arbitrary and strange to mention. My relationship with him is very meaningful in that regard, so I suppose it occurred to me to mention it. Even without that bond normally formed in those early years, I'd be absolutely devastated if something happened to him.

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three months after my son was born, I made the mistake of following the news about the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes[0], especially in the Hatay region. I thought I was tough, as I had lived through the chaos and death of a disaster before, in 1999[1]. This time, I was far away in Germany, so not actually where it happened. But no. Back then, as a teenager, I could somehow handle seeing people take their last breath…

Sometimes it's easy to keep it together when you have to focus on something critical and hard to keep it together when you're safe and can drop your guard. Hope he's doing well.

Yes, looks like that. He's doing fine today, thanks for asking.

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#169
I have a daughter who is now five years old. Until recently, I would have certainly killed myself if she had died. Without hesitation, I would have run to the nearest bridge and jumped. Continuing without her, bearing the constant grief, would have been completely pointless. I felt this way even after my twins, her siblings, were born. My feelings for them during their first 18 months or so were nothing compared to those for her. I knew that losing one of them would devastate me, but at least I would still have had my oldest daughter, and that's what really mattered deep down.

It's only recently, in the past six months or so, that I feel it would somehow be possible to live on even if something happened to my eldest. The reason for this is certainly that I finally love the little ones just as much as her.

I don't know if the author had other children besides the daughter he lost. If not, then I wonder where he found the strength or even reason to move on.

Re: A decade later, a decade lost (2024)

#170

I have a daughter who is now five years old. Until recently, I would have certainly killed myself if she had died. Without hesitation, I would have run to the nearest bridge and jumped. Continuing without her, bearing the constant grief, would have been completely pointless. I felt this way even after my twins, her siblings, were born. My feelings for them during their first 18 months or so were nothing compared to t…

He has an older daughter and a younger son (in relation to Rebecca, before she passed).

He mentions in one of the blog posts after Rebecca's death that he and his partner try to be there, in the moment, for their two kids, though it may be difficult emotionally/mentally - like when his son entered kindergarten at the same school as Rebecca had done just a few years earlier.

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