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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#391

Post by coldpie »

card_zero wrote: post #382
coldpie wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to reconcile this point of view, which I understand, with quotes like "science advances one funeral at a time," which I also understand. I understand the individual desire for advancing anti-aging techniques, but it also seems to contain extremely real risks of stagnating our sciences & societies. I can't tell whether anti-aging science is ethical or not.

That's just a desire for a legal way to murder people (by waiting). It's entirely understandable, but we'll have to find another way.

> we'll have to find another way

You agree it is a problem, then. What are some solutions you can think of? I'm not convinced the gain is worth the pain, but maybe you have some ideas for me to think about.

Re: Bored of It

#392

Post by spencerflem »

baconbrand wrote: post #349
WD-42 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is all those other things you listed - food, drugs, etc provide value. An ad provides none.

Ads provide information. An event you might be interested in is happening. A food you might like is available. A thing that will totally improve your life can be yours. etc

The information in most ads is things like: "Skinny beautiful people are worthy of love and use this brand of makeup". Or "good parents who love their children go to Disney World". Or "it's a rugged and cool type of person that buys a Jeep".

The type of ads that do what you're taking about are sought out. People willingly watch Nintendo Directs.

Re: Bored of It

#393

Post by mapt »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #162
mapt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that specific quote - I feel like this is offensive on more than one level. The waste of our best minds... sure. Fine. But - "to sell you ads." Marketting has the dubious distinction of being one area of human endeavor where technological advances serve mostly to make your life worse, make your mind less focused, make your wallet more empty. The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect marketing campaign/tacti…

I disagree. The spherical cow of marketing is a system that connects consumers with EXACTLY what they are looking for. What you are describing is the capitalist spherical cow.

How many marketing professionals do you know that work for non-profit providers of goods and services? I'm sure they exist, but I imagine not many.

Re: Bored of It

#394

Post by card_zero »

coldpie wrote: post #391
card_zero wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a desire for a legal way to murder people (by waiting). It's entirely understandable, but we'll have to find another way.

> we'll have to find another way You agree it is a problem, then. What are some solutions you can think of? I'm not convinced the gain is worth the pain, but maybe you have some ideas for me to think about.

I really don't know, unfortunately. It seems important that we go beyond merely maintaining people in a state of being not dead, and enable them to feel young as well. This may cure a certain entrenched resentfulness. It will not, however, prevent people from being asshats or provide a mechanism by which they will eventually go away. Perhaps the concept of limited terms in power would be made more general to fields outside politics.

Re: Bored of It

#395

Post by diggan »

9rx wrote: post #289
diggan wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They still can’t decide, but I bet we’ve racked up 1000 coder-hours debating it. That sounds... Good? Lots of people run into using whatever is vogue without even thinking twice about it. See the massive move to using cloud for absolutely everything, money be damned, and you'll see what I mean. Cargo culting is a huge issue in the industry. At least they're actually considering if it's making them more or less prod…

> At least they're actually considering if it's making them more or less productive At 1,000 hours of "debate", it is unlikely that anyone is considering if it is more or less productive, but rather are using that time to convince themselves that their position is the right one, even when it isn't.

> At 1,000 hours of "debate", it is unlikely that anyone is considering

I mean, if you take that not as an exaggeration but at face value, it's 200 days of 5 hours of discussions per day. I'm fairly sure the specific number is an exaggeration, but if it isn't, I'd probably agree with you :)

Re: Bored of It

#396

Post by mapt »

spencerflem wrote: post #358
mapt wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to "First, we end capitalism" to recognize a problem that has already gone out of bounds and promises to go further. Hawaii bans billboards, and has, since 1927. Look into that. They manage to do so without some kind of slippery slope that ends in authoritarian oppression, or some kind of guillotine wielding anti-corporate mob. There are lots of ways to limit the harm without trying to completely erase…

I agree we should do all that right now- but I will say a huge number of problems in our society right now are caused by a prioritization of profit over social stability which is inherent to capitalism. One thing that convinced me is that we don't need to get rid of markets even- just make it so that its not a extremely small pool of unelected shareholders making all the major decisions affecting our lives.

> I will say a huge number of problems in our society right now are caused by a prioritization of profit over social stability which is inherent to capitalism.

I totally agree. I would prefer harnessing capitalism for our means and regulating it heavily, but I understand if you don't think our democracy could survive the conflict (or if you think that it isn't surviving the conflict already). I'm just very aware of all of the ways solutions to this problem have gone wrong in the past.

Re: Bored of It

#397

Post by listless »

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…

I do think this is true. I'm 46 and I find myself wondering when things are going to "return to normal". But I can't really define what that is besides saying "2019". I'm not even sure what I'm referring to other than I hate short form video. I don't know how I feel about AI. It does seem like something that has a lot of promise though if we can figure out the context issues.

Re: Bored of It

#398

Post by [deleted] »

latexr wrote: post #17

> The best minds of my generation I’m tired of that line. I remember first seeing it on “the best minds of our generation being employed to sell you ads”. Making a computer go brrr doesn’t qualify anyone for a “best mind”. I’d hope a “best mind” would be, above all, empathetic. Concerned about the well being of their fellow humans. Philosophical about the state of the world. Patient. Curious. Wise and not just smart.…

[deleted]

Re: Bored of It

#399

Post by [deleted] »

card_zero wrote: post #394
coldpie wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we'll have to find another way You agree it is a problem, then. What are some solutions you can think of? I'm not convinced the gain is worth the pain, but maybe you have some ideas for me to think about.

I really don't know, unfortunately. It seems important that we go beyond merely maintaining people in a state of being not dead, and enable them to feel young as well. This may cure a certain entrenched resentfulness. It will not, however, prevent people from being asshats or provide a mechanism by which they will eventually go away. Perhaps the concept of limited terms in power would be made more general to fields o…

[deleted]

Re: Bored of It

#400

Post by Strom »

nsagent wrote: post #164
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…

I'll bite. I received my PhD in Computer Science focused on NLP and creative text generation last year and I think the hype around LLMs is ridiculous (academics are no better than industry on chasing hype). They're trained to predict the next token given a context, and that's exactly what they're good at. How old do you think I am?

A transistor is just a way of connecting some wires, and that's exactly what it's good for. It's reducing a phenomenon into some core essence and pretending like there's not a bigger picture.
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