271–280 of 293 posts
"This is the longest a pig organ has survived in a living person." Not quite the way I thought it should be phrased...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Except their tablets weren’t filled with time-wasting features designed to keep you addicted and distracted. >And you’re ignoring we’re also in the stages of getting the surveillance from 1984 and the social class divide from Brave New World. Those are more human problems than technological problems.
They are human problems caused or exacerbated by misuse of technology. Mass surveillance and accruement of capital by private entities at this scale is only possible due to automation. What difference does it make, anyway? The distinction is meaningless when the result is the same. https://youtu.be/lBS9AHilxg0?t=36
It's good to remind ourselves from time to time that new developments in technology have both positive and negative potential, and how they're applied is largely due to sociological factors. When we dissociate the issues with "technology" we allow ourselves to see the underlying issues causing potential misuse, making progress at solving those problems possible instead of a knee-jerk negative lashback against anything new.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dialysis is hell. I had a friend that chose to die, after several months on a home dialysis machine.
>> Dialysis is hell. I've seen this sentiment before but I've been unable to find an explanation why. Searching around it's noted as relatively painless. Can anyone explain why it's so difficult?
The pain can come from fluid removal and electrolyte imbalances during the dialysis. The fluid removal is important because if you kidney fails, at some point you stop urinating. The in-clinic dialysis process is also compressing the 24 hour a day function of your kidney into a 3-4 hour process typically every other day. So if you remove fluid and shift electrolyte during a short period of time it can cause cramping and pain.
The situation can be improved by doing treatment over more days or for a longer period. That is where home dialysis comes in. Some people run it at a gentler pace at night. Some may run it for 5 hours 5 days while watching TV or doing something else. They get some flexibility around their schedule.
You can see one of the new home hemodialysis systems here. They are streamlined and less complicated to use than in the past. But for some older people and those with mobility issues they might not be operate it on their own.
https://freseniusmedicalcare.com/en-us/products/treating-wit...
I'll note however that I used a different type of dialysis called peritoneal dialysis which uses osmosis action of passing fluids through your peritoneal membrane in your abdomen. No needles involved but it doesn't work for every patient and over time it can stop working. But you end up holding a lot of dialysis fluid at night which can be uncomfortable. But it has less of the complications of fluid removal and electrolyte imbalance issues.
There is actually a project for a implantable artificial kidney but it has slow progress due to funding. This devices operates 24x7 do it could operate at a much gentle pace. Maybe its too ambitious but the lead scientist thinks about $50M would be enough to get it through trials.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are human problems caused or exacerbated by misuse of technology. Mass surveillance and accruement of capital by private entities at this scale is only possible due to automation. What difference does it make, anyway? The distinction is meaningless when the result is the same. https://youtu.be/lBS9AHilxg0?t=36
Imo the distinction is very important in this context because there's a lot of technophobia and cynicism in general discourse, to the point where new developments in technology are often immediately met with extremely pessimistic takes re exploitation. It's good to remind ourselves from time to time that new developments in technology have both positive and negative potential, and how they're applied is largely due t…
It is patently obvious by now that major developments coming out of big companies will be used to further encroach their dominance at the expense of every one else. It is not a knee-jerk reaction to recognise an obvious pattern and identify probable pathways for abuse. On the contrary, those have to be identified and discussed early if there is any hope of counteracting the problems.
So no, it doesn’t make a difference to distinguish between the technological and human problem when we’re not solving the human problem. It is an excuse which could be applied to anything—technology doesn’t harm by itself, all of it is created by humans. That’s just a variant of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. It is important to recognise the role of technology in facilitating and worsening the human problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would we? What for? Why would we need reams of iPads on our desks? To use like we'd use paper. > Which LLMs do not. They fake it really well but it’s still an illusion. No understanding is going on, they don’t really know what you mean That is very much up to debate at this point. But for practical purposes in context described here, they do. > and don’t know what the right answer is. They're not supposed to. This…
> They're not supposed to. This is LLM use 101 > (…) > Obviously, Star Trek's computer isn't just one big LLM. That would be a stupid design. Or, in other words, we don’t have Star Trek’s computer like originally claimed, and our current closest solution isn’t the way to get it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imo the distinction is very important in this context because there's a lot of technophobia and cynicism in general discourse, to the point where new developments in technology are often immediately met with extremely pessimistic takes re exploitation. It's good to remind ourselves from time to time that new developments in technology have both positive and negative potential, and how they're applied is largely due t…
None of the problems I referenced are “new developments” in technology. The Snowden revelations happened over a decade ago. We know that Facebook hid their discoveries on social media harm, like a tobacco company. It is patently obvious by now that major developments coming out of big companies will be used to further encroach their dominance at the expense of every one else. It is not a knee-jerk reaction to recogni…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not "just", the inspiration came from many angles: Stalinist USSR, Nazi Germany, Spanish repression of POUM, Wartime Britain (where the shape of the TVs come from) and multiple other dystopian novels. People seems to forget that Orwell was a anti-Stalinist socialist.
I don't know too much about POUM, but my understanding was that in Homage to Catalonia he's concerned with the Spanish Communist Party's suppression of POUM. So I think that is consistent with what I said above. I haven't forgotten that Orwell was an anti-Stalinist socialist. But there weren't any anti-Stalinist socialist states at the time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and really hope it lasts until something like kidney cloning is a thing. There was another technology under development, colloquially called the 'ghost heart' [1]. It uses a dead heart that's similar to a human's, most likely a pig's heart (I speculate that an unused human heart can also be used). They remove all the cells from the heart using a soap-like substance to obtain a ghostly white colored scaffolding of a…
Any time I haven’t heard about a tech for ten years I assume it didn’t work. I think I first heard of this stuff around ten years ago. At the time I think they were focused on kidneys. But those have a lot of complex plumbing. As an outsider, who is either missing a mountain of context, or not so close to the problem they can’t see it, I would assume a better tack would be growing ghost arteries for bypasses and aneu…
How about the donor piggy though? If this becomes commonplace and animals are bred/raised just for their organs, we get into murky ethical territory. (Yes, people already eat the organs for food, that's murky too. But industrial scale organ farming sounds even worse somehow.)
The donor pig is turned into bacon. Normally the liver goes in the trash.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? I think I can agree that the zoning isn't helping, but claiming we have figured it out seems like bold claim. Where _is_ it working? My impression is that housing costs are increasing faster than inflation and wages not only in North America, but also in the UK and EU, which don't have the same kinds of zoning laws.
It’s working in Japan