Ideally the answers aren’t just political soapboxing.
that I actually give a fuck.
I don’t.
many people still ignore, or dont believe white privilege is still pervasive in western countries. aside from the racists, some people of those groups do not want to discuss it ever because they still benefited fom all that abuse, strip mining of resources centuries ago.
White people often forget (or don’t realize in the first place) that, if you’re a black person in USA, the police is actively looking for an excuse to put you in jail so they can make you do slave labor
That the world is a zero sum game. That in order to have something, someone else has to go without. That in order to be great you have to drag others down.
It’s the driver for misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, and so much else.
A lot of those aren’t necessarily a “zero sum game” strategy and more of just that many people are genuinely judgemental, ignorant piles of shit.
It’s a mix of things! Many racists don’t think of themselves as racist and primarily worry about actions to empower minorities because of the zero sum thinking, not so much because it’s helping “the wrong people”
Exactly. If we could lose that somehow the world would be so much nicer to live in.
It has been my experience that, if you could identify these people, they are the best to avoid. Excising these people from your life can very quickly prove it.
Capitalism is worse. It’s literally Monopoly. We’ve all played that shitty fucking game. With capitalism you get perpetual inflation. A negative sum game. A zero sum game at least implies some basic conservation mechanics, perhaps even a fairness. A negative sum game is a total debt based economy. Waste is a feature. Disposability and commodities go together like peas and carrots, and that ethos sadly reverberates across ecosystems until the planet is dead but you got those pounds or dollars or pesos or whatever. Can’t eat them. Can’t really do Jack shit with them.
The rich gonna wake up some day soon and find the farmer has a well oiled rifle. They’ll make rich fertilizer… 🤑
Yeah I agree that isn’t true
These people must fail to understand how consensual sex works
Probably never had it
People tend to assume if someone is smart in one thing, they’re smart with everything else too.
That’s not usually the case.
And also assuming that someone who’s not smart in one area is not smart in any area.
Good point I like that answer. Conflating knowledge on a specific topic with general intelligence.
Similarly, people who assume that anyone who struggles with English as a second+ language is an idiot
This one always surprised me
Yup this is me and my dad, he’s great with handy work and has built numerous homes. I am good with technology and can build a server and make my own software. Put us in opposite roles and were both dumbasses.
Or if they are rich, they must be smart or a genius, because they got rich while everyone else did not, its further from the truth, since most of these people come from wealth to begin with. adjacent, same goes for these succesful youtubers/streamers/influencers, these top ones we see all the time dint come from rags to riches, they came from being rich or very well off.
Sure, but without this flaw engineers wouldn’t have any personality at all.
This effect was described by Dunning and Kruger.
I can differ 17 different kinds of glue by taste!
Money is real.
Tax Brackets. “I got a pay raise and will now be taxed more and make less money than before the raise”
If <=30k was taxed at 25% and 30+k taxed at 30% and you go from 30k to 31k a year, only the 1k is taxed at the higher rate.
This depends on the country
Benefit cliffs do exist however.
I get that this might not be super intuitive. but how can one not notice that this is untrue? don’t people check their accounts and see that there is still more coming in and not less? just not as much as one might want, but still.
You assume people look at their accounts and do some form of account keeping?
Actually, yeah. I just cannot fathom how one could not at least check what goes in and what comes out. Nowadays you get push notifications for everything anyways, so I just do not get it.
Is this really a common misconception?
Yes, unfortunately.
Very very common in Australia.
Conservatism.
Just…all of it lol.
Being hesitant to change and wanting to temper out things and make sure things are implemented effectively is one thing. And ensuring we respect tradition and culture is another (though progressives are more in line with that lol.)
Today’s conservatism is just hate and bigotry. And they don’t even recognize it as such.
Yeah this drives me crazy. I grew up where the old white men loved boating and fishing in the rivers, bringing the family out to enjoy nature. Now that it’s all getting contaminated and turning gross, even the dumbest person who actually valued ‘conserving’ would realise we actually have to do something.
Instead, we’ve got billboards up and down the country trashing the Paris agreement and the old white men are only interested in attacking the other tribe. Not a hint of concern for the environment. They’re not interested in conserving anything other than their social status and corresponding power.
High price = high quality.
The luxury pricing model has totally enveloped markets at this point and the correlation rarely applies now.
Absolutely. I’ve learned over the years that it usually works out pretty well to find out how much the cheapest dogshit option is and aim for an option roughly 1.5x the cost. Obviously not a blanket rule but it covers a surprising amount of common items and I’ve gotten plenty of long-lasting affordable alternatives that I actually enjoy using rather than having the crappiest version of everything.
Yeah I look for the cheapest option and go a step or two higer
Depends on what it is but as a general rule to start from it isn’t a terrible idea.
Veg I will go cheapest because I don’t care if a carrot has a curve. Cooking equipment I usually go midrange and try to find out WHY the really expensive ones are better, then look for those specific features if they actually matter.
My bike is quite a bit higher, though there is a very wide range for bikes. I went for the cheapest of the high end bike range at £600. Probably spent close to than in accessories and maintenance by now too. Although some maintenance costs are me buying tools I didn’t have before too.
As much as I’m laughing at people spending more than $50 on a kettle or toaster or toothbrush or what have you and calling themselves clever shoppers, I think it’s worth spending on anything that goes between you and the ground, e.g. tires, shoes, bikes, etc.
Though I’m sure that adage has also been incorporated into modern pricing models and every damn thing is a fucking scam to manipulate you into thinking you’ve made a shrewd and balanced decision when you spend just a weeee bit more.
I despise every company with a fiery passion.
Expensive doesn’t mean the shoes are good, but cheap does mean they are shit. Of course you also get different types of shoe that may not directly compare with others.
Then you also get different shops selling the same product at different prices.
My rule of thumb is the second-cheapest popular option.
I selected my toaster by visiting a store and physically fiddling with the levers. From 20€ onwards, the feeling got noticeably better until 120€ price point after which it got worse. The range ended at 300€ SMEG(ma) toaster that felt like what it sounds like. I’m happy with my 120€ toaster.
What store are you shopping at that has €300 toasters??? How could anyone ever get that much value from a toaster???
It’s crazy I know. They were bad quality.
You spent 120€ to toast bread! I don’t think you get it…
I toast a lot of bread and wanted a good toaster that will last a long time. I’m expecting to get minimum of 25 years of daily toasting out of it.
We are drowning in Temu trash. Maybe we should start to look at things from other than monetary perspective. I selected a good toaster and looked at the price tag afterwards. Apparently you can get shitty toasters for 20€ and 300€ but a good one costs exactly 120€
Idk some people use their toasters multiple times a day, and at that point it can make sense to spend more on a better toaster
It’s the best toaster apparently. Tbh I don’t know why I would care about the feeling of the lever but at least they have the best toaster lever money can buy.
For that kind of money I would expect it to make, cut and toast the bread for me.
That’s true but the other direction is generally true. Not always, but often high quality does come at a cost.
With automobiles, there is an anti-correlation.
Broke: You get what you pay for.
Woke: You don’t get what you don’t pay for.
that is true, or just slapping a label like supreme, or tesla on thier products and people thinks its high quality. or with ELECTRIC toothbruses, 100-200 seems to be more likely to be defective than cheaper lines of the same company. Always seek out reviews and peoples experience on specific products. same goes with healthcare/insurance, paying more doesnt mean you will get better quality(it actually incentivized that customers dont seek out care due to potential costs), likewise if you get too cheap of insurance you will get cheap results, not decent and not so-so.
Fuck me that is a lot, think my electric toothbrush was like £20-30
the higher price one are the “smart toothbruses” its not worth it anyways. either go off-brand or buy the 1000-1500 oral braun series.
Mine was oral-b but didn’t cost much. Their pricing seems to be very high base price but often heavily discounted so it would be silly to buy at full price. Was one of their cheaper ones but it seems fine and better than my old one which was also oral-b, largely went for it as the toothbrush heads I have would still be compatible. The old one was wearing through the plastic but it was over 5 years old by that point, battery isn’t great either.
Replaceable batteries would be kinda nice to have as a feature but if other parts are wearing away by that point too it probably isn’t too bad.
That’s a great one
That science is rational and objective.
In reality, the way that science works is much muddier than most realise. It’s full of subjectivity, and this isn’t a bug, but a feature. Intuition and tacit knowledge play a big role in basically any research (and this is why I am confident that AI can’t replace scientists). Politics are also present at every stage of the process. Science is at its least objective when scientists convince themselves that they’re being objective. We can’t escape our biases, so we need to actively acknowledge them and embrace the subjectivity of our situated perspectives.
The problem is that talking about this is a great way to piss off other scientists. I’ve been accused before of “betraying the side”, by a scientist who was aware that science has a disproportionately large epistemic platform (epistemic means pertaining to knowledge — basically just that as a result of the huge benefits of scientific advancements in the last century or so, science has been on a bit of a pedestal in terms of trusted expert knowledge in society. Criticising this is seen by a betrayal by some because of the concerning rise in psuedoscience and anti-scientific rhetoric.
However, I’m of the belief that some of what has driven the rise of psuedoscience is that the average person doesn’t like to be told “shut up and do what the smart people say”. They feel a lot of mistrust towards society (which, in many cases, is entirely reasonable, especially in the case of marginalised groups who have been heavily exploited by science and scientists),
The problem goes far beyond just science, but I think this is certainly an aspect of it. I sympathise with scientists who want to continue to have the privileged position they hold, but I don’t think that’s helpful in the long term.
Yeah, I wholeheartedly encourage constructive debate and skepticism. However, it doesn’t excuse repeating shitty arguments without doing anything thinking or research just because it makes you feel less bad and lets you not do anything.
One example that particularly bothers me was “humans affect on the climate is less than a single volcanic eruption”. There are a lot of things you could not trust about scientific reporting, but the base premise of 8 billion people flying around the world using decomposed dinosaur mass is at least an order-of magnitude larger in scale compared to a single volcanic eruption. At that point, you’d have to believe that there isn’t really 8 billion people or that oil is actually from somewhere else.
In summary I agree, I just want to add nuance that this doesn’t excuse people acting in bad faith. It’s important that everyone, not just scientists, recognize their emotions and bias and challenge their own arguments against these (I.e. am I just making this argument because I feel defensive?)
volcanic eruptions can be pretty big btw
this one here caused a famine as a side effect for example
I’m aware. Do you have something more to say?
just saying, “humans cause less effect than a big volcano eruption” isn’t the gotcha that people seem to think
in pseudoscience, person will seek answers they want to hear, and not ones that will contradict them at all. an example, chronic lyme which is a pseudoscience, is a belief that Lyme is a ‘permanent infectious disease’, and you can get it numerous ways other than the known vector, a deer tick(it is the actual way to get lyme) theres a whole industry built over this surprisingly, and hazardous because MDs have jumped into the scams too, and its primarly amongst MIDWESTERN white woman/men, how this scam works is the “patient” will go seeking online forums, sources and eventually end in the office of LLMD(“lyme doctors” which are actual doctors peddling the fake disease) which often charges alot of money per visit, usually several hundred and they dont take insurance(red flag) or the insurance rejects the DOCTOR and they give all thESE BS excuses why you have this symptoms and then prescribe you a blood test for lyme(another red flag), and then have you multi-month ANTIBIOTIC regiments, which can be hazardous because of the side effects. i happened to find these forums along time ago. most of these people have underlying mental issues, or a psychosomatic illness.
Long Covid was also a goldmine for the medical quackery institutions.
I still haven’t read it myself but you might be interested in the book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn
The phrase I’ve heard is “epistemically privileged.” And deservedly because from a standpoint of pure ethics, “science” has done way more good than damage than competing ways of looking at the world.
But let’s say someone asks you how a car works. You go into a bit about the internal combustion engine. You explain how little explosions make pistons go. They ask you about these explosions, so you have to take them to a chemist to explain. Then they ask the chemist why does this reaction happen, and the chemist sends them to the physicist. You go through the Newtonian bit, which seems intuitive enough, but when you ask about atoms, you have to go into subatomic physics. Which is something you cannot experience without special equipment that you trust the physicist is telling the truth about.
So, yeah, while the empirical method is fantastic and the best model we have, in the end it relies on faith as much as any religion.
You had me up until,
So, yeah, while the empirical method is fantastic and the best model we have, in the end it relies on faith as much as any religion
I feel like faith is the wrong word because the works that science hath wrought upon our world are due in part to its repeatability. When you follow the steps to build an engine and refine fuel for it, that engine will always run, and if it doesn’t, it’s due to a parts issue or a fuel issue that can be remediated. It always works because the laws of physics always apply (local variables notwithstanding).
I don’t have faith that my engine will start; I have absolute confidence based on my limited understanding aligned with repeated observations. I have evidence; where faith is often analogous to belief without or in spite of the evidence. Not that you may use that definition of faith, necessarily, and that’s fine; but that’s the definition I’m accustomed to thanks to being raised in a Protestant cult bubble.
Looking up scientific papers of any kind will immediately blow up the notion that science is rational and objective lol
well i’ve made good experiences with the papers of NTRS (nasa technical report server) especially with regards to water on mars. some are very well written. but yeah, in general, there’s a lot of papers that suck, especially in psychological medicine and sociology field.
Great answer.
Most people here have been using AI in some form for their entire lives without knowing it. It just did its job quietly with nobody noticing. Then venture capital (or just capitalism itself) ruined everything and broke the contract: publicly acquired data must be given back to the public for free.
I could pontificate at length about the terminology and how it has gotten fucked. The blending of the terms itself is part of what makes it difficult to have a reasonable and nuanced discussion.
Let’s take a moment to separate out AI from machine learning from deep learning from LLMs.
AI is fucking old. It used to mean “any algorithms that create intelligent behavior”. Not a particularly useful definition these days, but it used to mean things like pathfinding and searching.
Machine learning is a more useful phrase: a set of algorithms to solve problem where we don’t know “how”, but we have examples of inputs and outputs. For example, I don’t know how I would define cute, but if someone showed me a bunch of photos I could probably say which ones were cute, not cute, and unsure.
Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that uses a specific set of algorithms: neutral networks.
LLMs are a subset of deep learning that use “transformers”. Which is a specific architecture that does a lot of things quite well, like determine how proteins fold, how drugs interact, how words interact in a sentence, etc.
If you’ve used Google Maps at any point since it was created, you’ve used classical AI.
If you’ve used email, you’ve used machine learning.
If you’ve used a photos app that lets you search for similar pictures of people, you’ve used machine learning.
If you’ve had more than one prescription filled in the past five years, your pharmacist has used AI (even if they don’t know it) to check potential drug interactions.
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking hate that the field I spent my whole life researching has been coopted into a way to siphon money from people into the coffers of the richest fucking parasites, but when people say “fuck AI” they have either lost the nuance or never had it. Everyone that hears the message experiences on the surface and it does them a disservice.
When the luddites broke the textile looms, did they hate the machines or did they hate the loss of their livelihoods?
When the early industialists broke into factories and smashed their equipment, did they hate the machines or did they hate the captains of industry that forced them to work inhumane hours in terrible conditions?
When people say “fuck AI” do they hate the math that, until this point, has led to a better world for us all, or do they hate the system that has enshittified it into one of pure exploitation?
This whole mess feels like a distraction to me. Tech should be a social good. It should be helping people. Not to say it’s without problems, but now when we say “fuck AI” it leads us to pushing back against technology itself rather than the system that’s using it to hurt people.
I like my professor’s view in AI from over a decade ago. AI is the term non commercially viable research. Once something becomes viable it gets rebranded, like automatic text recognition, computer vision, machine learning, llms. It worked great until generative AI was good enough to impress average people, then it became a great way to attract venture capital. It’s still not quite viable so the rule holds, but we are in a very messy and public era where several products are likely to emerge and separate from the AI title.
That they need to buy cases and cases of water in plastic bottles which they throw in the landfill instead of just drinking their perfectly good tap water.
Depending on your municipality, sure.
Don’t know why you got downvoted. I drank tap water in India and threw up 3 times before leaving the office. I’ve seen the data center water and it looked worse.
Ummm, my tap water isn’t “perfectly good.”
Ummm, my comment was addressing the millions of people whose water IS perfectly good but they buy bottled water anyway.
Well mine is actually perfectly good safety-wise, but it tastes like shit. I eventually got a reverse osmosis system so I don’t waste any bottles anymore. Instead I waste water. BUT… But, when I’m at other people’s houses, if the water tastes fine, I drink that and refuse bottles. This is the best I can do.
In most of Europe, it is.
Plenty of people saying their tap water is not good. Just buy/install an RO for your tap ya dummy. They aren’t that expensive or difficult to install. Or some kind of brita-type filter. I’m lucky enough to have an in-fridge filter. Cold, clean water on tap. It’s the best.
Bottled water companies don’t produce water. They produce plastic bottles.
They probably don’t even produce the bottles. They probably just put the water in the bottles.
Good point. And it’s often just municipal water too. So uh… Tap water.
I live in the US, I’m not drinking the tap water lol. That being said you don’t have to buy cases of individual plastic water bottles either.
And yet millions do. Maybe there’s something actually wrong with your water, but the vast majority of municipal water in the US is perfectly fine.
If the tap is chemically fine, but still tastes awful, I get buying bottled water instead
Why would you buy bottled water? Buy a filter
That their neurodiversity absolves them of any responsibility and the rest of the world should cater to it.
This is true, but at the same time it does not mean that people shouldn’t be given reasonable accommodation for their particular needs.
Many people struggle to grasp that these two ideas can coexist.
Embarrassingly, I think I’m someone who struggles with both ideas. How many meltdowns am I expected to accommodate before someone is not invited back to a social event? A work event? Because if a neurotypical yelled obscenities at me, it would be one and done, but I’m expected to forgive and forget when the person is autistic. How many times do you accommodate someone’s tardiness? I have ADHD, and I work really hard to be on time, but I’m late plenty. Sometimes for work. Often for social events. It’s not because i don’t care about other people’s time. I try really hard, I just fail a lot. Like who decides what’s reasonable?
Perhaps the question you should be asking is why are the meltdowns happening in the first place?
Accommodations aren’t about tolerating bad behaviour. They’re about changing the environment to be more friendly, and putting systems in place to help people manage things better.
Ooh that’s a good point! I hadn’t looked at it like that!
Of course the meltdown I’m thinking of is that his own toddler was trying to eat old food off the floor and I was preventing that and offering fresh food while babysitting for free for him.
He doesn’t have meltdowns so often now, but the only thing that changed is that he feels safe and comfortable around us. Ironically, his bad behavior is what made us uncomfortable around him which is what made him feel unsafe. So as it got better, it just got better and better.
Unfortunately for him, he was raised in an emotionally abusive home, so his regular bad behavior was learned and then when we reacted poorly to that it would lead to an actual meltdown. Consistent kind behavior and firm boundaries is what eventually led to a two way street respectful situation. A meltdown now would be much more accepted and understood but we had to go to group therapy to get here.
Oh god yes. Good friend of mine was dating someone with autism, and he was constantly asking me, “is neurodivergence just an excuse to be a dick to people?” Yeah sometimes it sure is, just a helpless excuse to act out your baser, ruder instincts. If you’re neurodivergent and not in therapy, you should be asking yourself regularly, would others around me benefit from my being in therapy? Because the answer is almost certainly yes.
Absolutely fair, good answer!
That understanding someone or something means agreeing with them.
On a related note, this is one of my favorite quotes: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” -Aristotle
Or that refusing to understand is a valid counterargument.
But no one explicitly refuses to understand. Usually it’s person A doesn’t agree with person B, and person B thinks person A refuses to understand, while in reality person A understands perfectly but disagrees
Way too many people think that if you explain something, you’re endorsing it–even when you explicitly say that you do not endorse it. So frustrating, and it’s a huge problem here on the fediverse.
Exactly. Like, how do you expect to beat an opponent if your refuse to understand why they do what they do?
Or that not vocally disagreeing is agreement.
Folks, you can understand why someone decided to kill themselves: e.g. a tragic life, and from their perspective, there’s no one to support them, no one to love them, no one for them to love.
But it doesn’t mean you agree with their decision to kill themselves.
If understanding = agreeing, a lot more people would be committing suicide while trying to understand why such a person would kill themselves. It makes no logical sense. Or it means that those alive is either of these: they either don’t understand it out of naivety, or choose to not understand it to not kill themselves. Assuming it’s an adult with their full faculty, who witnessed such a tragedy, that’s just… such a sad world.
I’m not sure if its get what you mean.
For example, I can put in the effort to try and understand why a triple Trumper MAGA Republican did what they did without agreeing with the actions they took.
Oh jesus I’m a moron lmao. I misread what you said given the context of my post.
That because a problem is real, any proposed solution to it is a good idea, and anyone arguing against a proposed solution doesn’t want to solve the problem.
Yes, grease fires are bad. No, you should not use water to put it out. No, that does not mean I am pro-grease-fire??
So many things when it comes to police stops. There is absolutely a problem with policing in America but there is a list of things you ARE required to do when stopped by the police, whether you agree with them or not, and refusing doesn’t help you and only helps them. Yes you are required to have your license on you when driving, and yes you must display and/or hand it over to police when asked. Yes they can ask you to step out of the car. Yes they can search your car if they tow it. Hell watch a few videos on YouTube of traffic stops and you’ll quickly figure out what you do and do not have to comply with. And you will never, ever win an argument with the police on the side of the road, save it for court.
One thing to note is that they are allowed to lie to you, so like you said, important to know your rights, but mostly they can find probable cause to do whatever.
Best advice I ever heard.
Always treat cops as if they just came from dealing with something really awful.
They might have just seen a child abuse case, or a really bad accident, of a fire.
Assert your rights in the court, not in the street.
POLITELY assert your rights on the streets. If an officer asks if they can search your trunk, tell them that you would rather they didn’t.
“Do I have to” and it’s variants are deferential without necessarily ceding your rights in a way that “oh, sure” does. They don’t need any cause at all if you give permission, and if you give permission it’s going to be hard or impossible to argue later that it was an unreasonable search.
The sad truth is that you need to assume that you’re on camera whenever you interact with a police officer, act as if whatever you say will be either edited and shown to the jury or described to them out of context to justify whatever bad actions the officer takes.
100% be polite and even friendly, but 0% on “just let the officer do whatever and think you can fight it in court later.”
Very simple, “I do not consent to any search,” but do not interfere with armed people. Once you have asserted your right, you should not try to impede them violating them. Too risky. Let the courts protect you. Or hope that they do, at least.
Fantastic response
