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The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

aphyr.com

131–140 of 830 posts

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I never want to live in a society that views individualism as toxic

The term "toxic individualism" doesn't mean that individualism is inherently toxic, like "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean that about masculinity in the general case. These terms mean the over-expression of their worst aspects.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal cars are not the same as using them for logistics. Yes cars/trucks/busses are still useful overall and are an incredible last-mile solution for freight. But on a personal level, it means we all must live far apart and maintain our own individual vehicles, along with the average total costs of $11,500/year PER CAR. [0] I’m not saying they should’ve even been banned for personal use - owning a car and living i…

> Personal cars are not the same as using them for logistics. Yes, they are in fact, the same. You cannot introduce such massively useful technology into the world and then say that it would be used only for logistics and not for personal transportation. Short of a worldwide totalitarian government, such arbitrary restriction would be completely unenforceable. It is possible to shape things with regulation, but only…

We pretty much did with aviation.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm doing it because I care more whether I can live with myself than whether I impress people with the name of who I work for. Hence much of my recent comment history here, for example. I don't want any of these people getting the idea they should want me to work with them, either. I do want my name on every industry blacklist I can possibly get it on. Those will eventually be revealed - remember Franklin's dictu…

That's nice for you but other people have kids to feed and don't particularly care about your little crusade, which will fail.

Go look in a mirror, not at me. That's where the argument is waiting that you're feeling urged toward.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#134
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upsides of automobiles, or personal mobility in general, are enormous . I can go wherever I want, whenever I want along with other people and cargo. I don't have to wait for a schedule set by someone else, or worry about union strikes. I love my cars!

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Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#135

Rudolph built his engine, Henry built his car, Popular Mechanics published it. 2000 biofueling stations across the nation. All made illegal by special interests months before the article was published. Information didn't move fast enough to let the editors know that innovation was illegal.

I'm genuinely trying to understand this comment. Can you /explain

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automobiles are one of a key pillar of logistics. Getting things (food, medicine, construction materials, etc. etc.) to and from backbones like rail, harbors, airports etc. So even for those who don't own a vehicle or even want to own a vehicle, automobiles are still a vast net positive. I'm not sure what the alternative would be. Maybe everyone lives in giant 10 million+ population cities that are all connected to e…

Personal cars are not the same as using them for logistics. Yes cars/trucks/busses are still useful overall and are an incredible last-mile solution for freight. But on a personal level, it means we all must live far apart and maintain our own individual vehicles, along with the average total costs of $11,500/year PER CAR. [0] I’m not saying they should’ve even been banned for personal use - owning a car and living i…

The amount of space in US cities (broadly, out into their sprawl) that is used up by cars is incredible and serves to make other modes of transportation (to include things like busses, even) less-useful and make cars on-par with or worse than things like bicycles once you take out the time spent traveling these inflated distances, ~50% of which distance typically exists because of cars, and the time spent working to pay for your car, to say nothing of then needing to dedicate more time specifically to working out (or just accept being less healthy) because you're not walking or bicycling as much as you could be in a world where cars hadn't sprawled everything really far apart with gigantic parking lots, half-mile-diameter highway interchanges, large barely-used front lawns to provide distance from unpleasant and loud roads, big unusable "green space" buffers from highways, et c.

Once you start really marking how much nothing you're driving by even in many cities, where that "nothing" is one or another use of land that exists solely because of cars, it's a bit of a shock. "Wait, work would only be 8 miles away instead of 15 if not for the effects of widespread private car ownership? The grocery store could be 1 mile instead of 3? And I spend how much time a week bicycling to nowhere in particular to make up for sitting all day long? And this car & gas & insurance costs me how many of my work-hours per week, just to pay for it? Hm... am I... losing time to cars!?"

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I never want to live in a society that views individualism as toxic

You are taking the statement of "toxic individualism" to mean "all individualism is toxic" rather than "certain parts of individualism can become toxic if not followed."

It is possible to say "some things could be done better" without meaning "throw it all away."

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never want to live in a society that views individualism as toxic

You’re equivocating, your parent specifically named an example of toxic individualism, they did not say or imply that individualism is toxic.

I guess, if you feel that freedom of movement is insignificant

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#140
post #17

This is a must-read series of articles, and I think Kyle is very much correct. The comparison to the adoption of automobiles is apt, and something I've thought about before as well. Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. That said, I'm more open to using LLMs in constrained scenarios, in cases where they're an appropriate tool for the job and the downsides can b…

> Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. You say it in a way that it sounds like automobiles don't have a positive effect. I don't agree - they have some negative effects but overall they have a vast net positive effect for everyone.

The positive effects were immediate, and measurable. The negative effects are delayed, and hard to quantify without all the advancement in climate research since then. If everyone in 1920 knew a 100 years from now there would be climate crisis to reckon with, perhaps a few things would have changed along the way.

Today we have a much better understanding of the world, so we have the means to think down the line of what the negative effects of LLMs and course correct if needed.

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