Ask Lemmy

Trump was good for the economy.

During the election this kept being repeated even though the economy collapsed because of his covid response

God.

That food stamps or any handouts at all are a serious problem. Our (the US) government launches a single bomb that's worth years of food support. Idgaf if the food stamp recipients never do a damn thing but watch TV. I'd much rather millions of people doing that than bombing brown people half a world away.

That the granny who sued McDonald's was just upset that her coffee was too hot.

She suffered from either third or fourth degree burns, on her lap.

Parts of her were fused together.

She just wanted McDonald's to cover the medical bill, but they dragged her name through the mud.

Oh plenty...

The myth of "alpha wolves" and all the men who build a toxic social and psychological image of themselves and other men because of it, apparently because they would like to live in a zoo and get into conflicts with other men they have never met before or something.

But seriously, there were some grave errors in how this came to be. This wasn't observing wolves in their natural environment. There are no "alpha wolves" in nature. The researcher, David Mech, who was in part responsible for this stupidity has been working since then to correct this, but media and society already swallowed the misconception too hard.

Next one:
"LLMs are not AI." Yes, they are. AI is a scientific label for a bunch of methods, algorithms, and models.
"But they are not 'intelligent'." My dear fellow flesh bag, we do not even have a clear definition of what 'intelligence' even is. Come up with a good one, then let's talk about this particular label. Until then, you can rename AI to 'pesto alfredo' for all I care as long as we agree what kind of methods we mean by that to categorize a bunch of computer science stuff.

In the opposite corner:
"We have achieved AGI with LLMs". No, we have not. There is still a substantial lack of capabilties and properties.

Or: "LLMs are sentient and self-aware". To the best of my knowledge, they are not. To be fair, there is little room for debate, which often boils down to stuff like semantic arguments about consciousness and definitions of understanding, but the consensus is that they are not.

Another one:
"Homeopathy cures diseases." No, it doesn't. It has a placebo effect but that's pretty much about it.

There is more:
"Evolution theory is just a 'theory'." No, it's a proven set of explanations and models supported by overwhelming empirical evidence. Popular confusion of the colloquial use of the word "theory" with the scientific one.

Colloquial meaning: a guess, hunch, speculation, or unproven idea.

Scientific meaning: a well-substantiated explanatory framework supported by extensive evidence and capable of being tested and potentially falsified.

And there is even more, but I have already written a wall of text and am tired now.

That all the Y2K preparation stuff was a waste of time / a scam, instead of an example of massive success (people coming together and pulling off something to avoid a disaster)

Marginal Tax brackets drive me insane especially my parents constantly misunderstand and think a payrise will make them lose money.

They don't understand that the tax is only paid on the money earned in that bracket. So going up 5% isn't your total income being taxed an extra 5% its only the money earned on that bracket that is taxed at the higher rate.

I got another one. It bugs me when people say that it's not possible for two dark haired people to produce a blonde child. These people think they're so smart because they know genetics exist. But if they learned anything about genetics at all, very basic punnet square genetics you learn in highschool biology explains why it's not only possible but pretty common. If both dark haired parents are carriers for the blonde gene, there is a 25% chance of a blonde child. And reality is probably more complex than what I learned in highschool.

It's like the stubborn fuckers who refuse to accept the science of sex and gender being any more complex that "penis man vagina woman". They think they're so smart for knowing "basic" biology and refuse to fucking learn anything beyond that.

The persistent myth that corporations are legally required to act only in the service of shareholders’ financial interests.

Powerful groups have a vested interest in keeping the myth around, but it doesn’t even pass the smell test— they were more interested in social control with the return to office stuff. Even though productivity is higher and costs are lower with WFH. Even if you argued it served the interest of shareholders as a broad class, without checking for the real estate holdings of the company’s shareholders, they could accidentally assist companies that their shareholders don’t have investments in. Or worse, competing ones.

It goes further. Why not treat employees better to reduce turnover or improve performance? No, of course not. It is used exclusively to justify immoral actions.

Propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.

Solar panels are the cheapest source of electricity now. Batteries have dropped in price by more than 90% in the past decade, and are now viable for grid-scale storage, addressing the main issue with renewable energy. EVs are competitive with combustion cars, and in some ways superior. Heat pumps are now superior to furnaces in many locations. The solar punk future is now! But you wouldn't know any of this by listening to the public discourse, mainstream media, and many politicians.

Relevant video from Technology Connections

The average person only lived to be 35 back in the day.

No, the average lifespan was like 35 back in the day. 40 year olds weren't some rare wrinkled old person, the average was affected by the extremely high childhood mortality. If you could survive the first few years of your life your chances of surviving the next 60 were pretty good.

Hairs grow longer, thicker and darker when you cut them.

That WW1 was the same moral black and white as WW2.
In my opinion, every country in WW1 was the villain just that one side was impatient enough to be the aggressor first.

That the general population are directly responsible for the amount of pollution occurring a la "carbon footprint" when there are 10 companies producing 70% of the world's pollution

Tryptophan makes you sleepy on Thanksgiving.

Large doses of Tryptophan can make you sleepy, but the amount you get in turkey doesn't come close. Thanksgiving meals make you sleepy because you eat a huge meal. Eat a huge meal without turkey and you will be tired, eat a normal sized meal with turkey and you won't be more tired than any other meal.

New cars are reliable.

First of all, no. Their more complex and failure prone, and you are the guinea pig they test new crap on.

Second of all, you literally cannot call a one year old vehicle reliable. You do not have enough data to make that claim. My jeep is about 40 years old, and with the 40 year old head start will still out live a brand new jeep. It has no "limp mode" because u slipped out of 4 lo in the woods (actual customer example), and it doesn't require Internet connection + a security gateway authentication to reset things like limp mode and doing a clutch position relearn. If you want a reliable vehicle get something made between 85 and 05, as long as it doesn't rust out from underneath you it will give u less headaches than anything made in the last 20 years.

History time!

Myth: People in the past drank beer because it was safer than drinking water.

Fact: People in the past drank beer because it was full of calories and tasty. Before modern times people generally had access to or knew how to find clean water, and water has always been the most popular drink throughout history.

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Myth: People needed spices to cover the taste of rotten meat.

Fact: People ate fresh meat when it was available and preserved it when they could by smoking, drying, salting, fermenting, or otherwise processing it. When they didn't have access to meat they just wouldn't eat it. They wanted spices for the same reason we do - because they taste good.

The best first aid for someone having a seizure is to shove a wallet (or something) in their mouth, so that they don’t “swallow their tongue”.

NO!

Never do this. Absolutely never. It’s far more likely that you’ll injure the victim (or yourself) in the attempt.

Furthermore, don’t restrain a seizure victim in any way unless it’s absolutely necessary for their physical safety (like if they’re in danger of falling down a stairway. Even then, it’s usually better to just stand at the top step and act as a barrier). Whenever possible, move things they may hit out of their way; don’t try to move the victim. If there’s something you can’t move, try to put something soft between the victim and the object.

Most of the time, the best thing you can do for a seizure victim is to not touch them at all, and simply give them room.

That you only need headlights to see in the dark. Headlights are just as much so other cars can see you, than they are so you can see. In the rain and in the fog, they're crucial to have on.

Agreeing to disagree is only applicable to matters of taste.

Example would be a preference of maple or agave syrup with your choice of cooked dough.

One cannot agree to disagree when one of the parties is factually wrong.

That Social Security is going to collapse. I've been hearing it for literally 50 years. I honestly grew up thinking SS would not be there at retirement, and now I'm collecting it (although I'm not retired). It was a psy-op the whole time, trying to keep workers anxious, and at the grindstone.

Social Security is literally the easiest problem in DC to fix. All they have to do is raise the income cap. Right now, the cap is $184,500. You pay into Social Security on the first $184,500 of income, and anything over that doesn't get touched. If you make less than that, then 100% of your income gets tapped for SS. But if you make more, you pay a much tinier percentage of your total income.

So if SS is looking like a problem, all they have to do is raise the cap. It goes up a bit every year anyway, but there is no reason it can't be $500,000, or even $1 million. Of course the rich will scream, but they're always screaming. We have to learn to ignore that as background radiation, nothing to be concerned about.

Raise the cap enough, and you not only protect Social Security forever, you can give Grandma a nice raise. Doesn't she deserve it for all those delicious cookies? Or brownies actually, in my Grandma's case. She made the best homemade brownies, and she cut them BIG!

That we eat spiders in our sleep. Just grab them and nomf or they willingly crawl into our mouths of something.

"Half of Americans voted for this"

No, half the people who actually showed up to vote voted for the guy, but not necessarily all he is and has been doing. It's actually only about 20-22% or less of the population that actually voted this guy into office and fewer than that are on board with current events. Far from "half of Americans", so just stop it.

The birth rate going down = the population is collapsing.

No.

The birth rate is going down and the population is increasing. Both of these are happening at the same time.