The knowledge that the Editor in Chief of Science, while writing his article "AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse and more expensive" is doing so from inside a bubble so opaque that he believes chatbots are the only way "anyone" searches for anything anymore, is uhhhh extremely sobering

Oh, this is getting quite bleak

I'm sure Patrick here thinks he's being very clever and he'll reply to whatever I say with a repeat of the accusation. But I'll take the opportunity to confirm that I would never violate another person's dignity and consent by causing them to consume synthetic text.

It's very funny that all of these guys making up a degrowther to get mad at are making up different degrowthers. Almost like its a reflection of their own fears about people they share a society with rather than anything to do with those people as they actually exist (to the extent they actually do)

Gently explaining to everyone who thinks they're oh-so-clever that "if you're using a phone or computer right now you're using a data center" that a typical data center before now could comfortably fit in a wide closet and didn't require 60 gas turbines.

why does the box to confirm a block pop up and then a second later move JUST a little bit upwards, such that if you fluidly hit block and then click to confirm you wind up hitting the cancel button and have to do it again (well, we know why...)

Coughing at your desk is normal! This is your new normal why are you being so change averse. Can’t you get with the times?

Testosterone is a hormone surrounded in myths and misconceptions, which the Right loves to use to both demonize trans people as well as to fuel their weird beliefs about masculinity. Today, Jules Sherred dives into the science of testosterone and the reality of the effects it can have on the body.

going back in time in my time machine to give opinionhaver an all-expenses paid vacation to a beach with, crucially, no wifi on november 9th, 2024

A lot of people on the lib-left spectrum are parroting some version of this take (“WE know that data centers are fine/good but we need to appease the idiot masses”), and I find it pretty galling. I hope there’s some introspection when masses are proven 100% correct in every way on this issue.

Oh what joy to have no internet for a few hours and to eat an apple. God I wish that were me

The need for adoption to boost internal metrics resents the notion of "consent."

I resisted making an account on here bc I didn't want to be able to post while in a frothing rage, but now I can block accounts that post like "we encoded all of consciousness into an n-dimensional perfect crystal and now the brilliance of thought itself writes our ad copy" I'm frothing less

Shorter Taposh: we will keep making the robots that tell kids to kill themselves and we will keep replacing your ability to access medical care with robots that tell kids to kill themselves, but we will say the word "ethics" a lot of times so you know we're being so so responsible about it

Pete Hegseth is actually doing very normal heteropatriarchal gender enforcement. He is using the power of the govt and his cis masculinity to decide for everybody what their gender will look like and do.

It’s not ‘gender affirming care’ if it’s being forced on you or you’re happy with your gender as it is. What Hegseth is doing is more akin to forcing pregnant people to stay pregnant. It’s a violence against body.

YIMBYs can look forward to playing nice w/ the "median voters" they hold in such contempt for the chance to be the junior partner in the left anti-data center coalition. Or they can bitch and moan constantly about how we're all glonzo slopulists. You only get to pick one or the other, choose wisely!

it's just.. you can walk around constantly announcing your intent to force on people a life that they don't want and are actively trying to avoid, over their protest, by any means necessary. or you can have those same people approach you with good faith and civility. why do you think you get both???

It's conference season, so I wanted to share the AI refusal statement I put at the end of my presentations and book talks. Feel free to use it!

Wrote about the new "We Must Act Now on AI" sign-on letter. The point of the letter isn't its substance (there isn't any). The point is to combine the impressive title with impressive signatories, so the AI industry can maintain the halo of futurity. davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/on-the-str...

Constantly enumerating the list of ways in which you will violate us doesn't tend to inspire "normalcy" in response, nor should it!

the only things you're allowed to do is gamble use AI and get skinny

There was a moment in the 2010s when a lot of us believed this, myself included! But sousveillance really hasn’t brought about the justice we want from video evidence. If anything, we have fed training data on how best to abuse us and anesthetized the public to death rituals.

Wild how people on this site have become...positively...polarized? in favor of scams because people point out that many forms of technology have made scams worse

"air quality" was a mistake. I think we should go back to talking about air pollution wildfires aren't "lowering air quality" they're increasing pollution and filling the air with smoke

Hold on, do people on here believe that voter profiles in the newspaper are actually profiling "the median voter" rather than people whose opinions the owners of the newspaper want to put in the newspaper?

People on this website can see tech fascists in the media saying we need to supplant democracy and understand that this is bad, and ignore that their tech acolyte friends who post constantly about how the people are fools who need to be saved from themselves are actively working towards that goal

This is situated similarly to "rainbow capitalism," IMO. Will those companies sell you out the second it earns them an extra buck, absolutely. But a social consensus that compels them to make the right noises is unequivocally a positive thing even though the noises themselves are meaningless.

everyone seems to be responding positively to this and i hate to burst anyone's bubble, but i recently went to a Luddite festival in NYC and this is something organizers specifically warned about: don't let capitalists sell your hatred of capitalism back to you

The holy grail of the, shall we say less autonomy-focused side of mental health care has always been an objective test to find something structurally wrong with our brains. Now, in the absence of any indication that such a thing is possible, they have the permission structure to just hallucinate one

The ethics of AI always boils down to an ethics of rape.

The continued attacks on people disliking the planet destroying data centers as "slopulism" and "glonzo" remains the dumbest shit said on this website. Just colossally fucking stupid and the way it is framed is so condescending. Sorry you might have to relearn how to write your own emails man

And if they can instead have it declared that the use of AI means there was no unlawful animus and therefore no discrimination, then they never have to worry about those petty laws again.

Isn't that just our "revealed preference," James? If we've allowed it to be inflicted upon us, surely we must have wanted it somehow. Or is that recognizably bullshit when it's James experiencing an outcome he loathes but is forced to live with and deal with regardless?

We're going to need the same effort that was used to reduce the acceptability of smoking in public spaces and raise awareness of the risks of smoking to push back against the ever increasing exposure to AI.

I come back to my point that a whole chunk of people in professional positions are essentially faking it. COVID exposed a lot of people like this, and GenAI is doing the same. It has uses, but not like that.

It’s like everyone is afraid to just say “we tried it, it causes harm/does not have the intended benefits, we don’t need it.” But that’s the truth, and that’s okay. “If we keep trying maybe we’ll figure it out” will never convince me to use my students as guinea pigs.

This is the same for all kinds of anti-social behaviour; queue-jumping, littering, speeding, peeing in public…. It’s one of those #IrregularVerb things

Masterfully demonstrating the rot of the entire concept of "revealed preference"

It's really remarkable how media outlets can frame a politician doing everything short of throwing herself on a grenade for data centers as actually being meaningful opposition to data centers. Just sign the law, Kathy!

Hochul’s order, which is much weaker than the data center moratorium the legislature passed, attempts to make it look like she’s acting as the election looms. She’s doing everything she can, politically, to protect tech billionaires, developers & AI. Sign the bill, Hochul!

If that guy you know is regularly getting people to kill themselves by being a friend it's a *whole legal thing* but if he does it via a 'puter it's all good.

“hey idiots, I just thought of something for the first time ever, my altruism is going to be Effective” [I’m hiring a philosopher to cook up thought experiments proving that I can spend my billions exclusively on my own lunatic pet projects]

Ilan Wurman : citizenship :: Andy Masley : the environment

They are continually extending these Fable 5 trial access periods. Which is definitely something you do when you have a product that people love and are willing to pay for.

we are witnessing a company who thought they invented the ham sandwich realizing in real time that they sell ham, bread, and mustard at the grocery store