Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 507 posts

Re: Bored of It

#171

Post by photochemsyn »

Is this a rant against investment capitalism and high-speed financial trading networks?

Or perhaps a screed decrying the shiny bouncing ball of blockchain-based cryptocurrency?

Possibly a takedown of the online pornography sector, which consumes a largish percentage of bandwith and data center power?

Maybe it's about LLMs, although they might end up going the way of compilers - mostly open source, only a few niche for-profit compilers still exist?

Oh wait - it's about the cell phones and tablets that everyone stares at all day instead of engaging in human social interaction and reading books?

Could it be that the problem isn't with the technology itself, but with how it's being used to manipulate and control people by the interests who currently control most people's access to the technology?

There might be something fundamentally wrong with a socioeconomic system based on investment capitalism and contolled by a few uber-wealthy oligarchs - something about it that inevitably leads to dystopian outcomes.

Re: Bored of It

#172

Post by zwnow »

bumby wrote: post #145
zwnow wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never benefited from "meaningful" relationships so the choice is pretty easy actually.

Do you have children? That was a prerequisite for the question. If you do, it implies you don’t consider the relationship with your children either meaningful or beneficial, which says…a lot.

If I asked a tiger if murder is wrong i would get a different answer as opposed to a human. What kind of argument are you making.

Re: Bored of It

#173

Post by pera »

terhechte wrote: post #71

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the na…

Based on those rules your guess would be wrong :)

This is not about age really: "NFTs"/"web3.0"/"Blockchain technologies" for instance were hyped by every age group.

Re: Bored of It

#174

Post by sgarland »

zwnow wrote: post #151
sgarland wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy. – Captain G. M. Gilbert, Psychologist at Nuremberg Trials

That implies there is evil, who's the judge on good vs evil?

Pretty sure the Nazis leaned towards evil, my dude.

Re: Bored of It

#175

Post by xeckr »

"Nobody asked for it, and nobody wants it" after accusing AI of being inherently dehumanizing. How ironic. Do those who personally enjoy interacting with AI not exist in your mental landscape? This reads like hatred, not boredom.

Re: Bored of It

#176

Post by zwnow »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #150
zwnow wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware people have trouble building this mental model of an unempathetic society. I am old enough to have witnessed that in 99% of situations people are directly responsible for their own situation. There is no reason to have empathy.

>I am old enough to have witnessed that in 99% of situations people are directly responsible for their own situation Old people can be wrong, and in this case, they are. >There is no reason to have empathy. This is a category mistake. You reason that empathy is superfluous if people are the cause of their misfortune. However, whether people are the cause of their misfortunes is utterly irrelevant to whether there is…

You not seeing arguments doesn't invalidate them. You arent the judge on this.

Re: Bored of It

#177

Post by mdp2021 »

zwnow wrote: post #123
mdp2021 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> useful to society On the contrary, the "respect" towards others is a condition to societies. Otherwise, all you'd had would be "accomplices". And also since Edward Bunker told us that actually, "dog eat dog", > will actively hurt your own life in a pool of free rogues you'll be at severe disadvantage as opposed to a society. > One only lives once so you better make sure you will achieve what you should. That includ…

Society already is full of rogues and guess who is winning in this game? The super rich already buying themselves out of society, punishment usually only hurts the ones who already barely own anything. Whats the benefit of a "society"?

> and guess who is winning

Again that is your perspective on "winning", which remains subjective (and normally faulty). Others call psychopathic achievers simply "contemptible".

> Whats the benefit of a "society"?

That would be the whole work of Thomas Hobbes, for example: avoiding the nightmare of perpetual conflict. It is very linear to see the benefit of being able to trust your neighbour.

Re: Bored of It

#178

Post by beepbooptheory »

lapcat wrote: post #168

Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed by the submission, the quality and utility of it is very low, so it's unfortunate that the submission has reached #1 on HN. I suspect the brevity of the submission has made it easy comment fodder.

What do you mean by "utility" here?

Re: Bored of It

#179

Post by mdp2021 »

zwnow wrote: post #151
sgarland wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy. – Captain G. M. Gilbert, Psychologist at Nuremberg Trials

That implies there is evil, who's the judge on good vs evil?

People who have developed judgement. The blind are not judges on visible colours, those with good eyesight are.

Re: Bored of It

#180

Post by lolinder »

sgarland wrote: post #174
zwnow wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That implies there is evil, who's the judge on good vs evil?

Pretty sure the Nazis leaned towards evil, my dude.

And for OP's benefit because they presumably missed the attribution of the quote, these were the Nuremberg trials:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials

Post reply on HN