rowansprig

joined 1 week ago
[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

My guy. That was the precise thing most of our ancestors struggled their whole lives to get out of.

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 1 points 1 day ago

True.... but then, like with obesity, these problems always come back to affect everyone anyway.

I never thought much about cognitive laziness and associated decline before AI came onto the scene, but now I've actually been trying to do more thinking on purpose (e.g. doing maths in my head instead of relying on my phone). So I am a bit grateful that AI threw this whole thing into clarity.

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

For a point against AI, I think you should consider the way in which LLMs reduce cognition in people.

Arguably it's not necessary for people to do all of their cognition themselves, but that definitely does make people's thinking ability weaker. I suppose you could look at it like how when we automated physical labour away from most people - and now most people do not do nearly enough exercise. If we automate thinking away from most people, I feel like that will lead to worse health outcomes as well

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 13 points 2 days ago

Well, they did that on purpose, no? To defect criticism.

To distinguish them I would call the other stuff machine learning, which is what we already called it before, and the LLMs as AI, since that's what the common people think of when they say that word.

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 1 points 2 days ago

I can see that there is some value in using AI in the workplace, but I am hestitant to use it myself until someone can show that it is not damaging the environment, we have a plan for how to ensure people can use it in a healthy way, and that the content which was used to train it was ethically sourced and/or those content makers were appropriately compensated.

Because I just can't shake the sense that the tool is fundamentally unethical to use currently.

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 4 points 3 days ago

Wisdom is understanding that all word categories are largely arbitrary, based on the distinctions which are needing to be made at any one time, and thus to apply the scientific, botanical definition of "fruit" to a general culinary context is foolish.

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 1 points 3 days ago

Yeah. It's like any other religion, I guess.

Fun fact, tarot cards were invented in the late Middle Ages (from other similar cards which were popular around then, I think imported from the East?) and were used to play a game called Trumps. That's why the major arcana cards are also known as trump cards. The magical ot esoteric aspect was added later. This means that technically, using tarot to "read the future" has as much inherent validity as any other deck of cards.... I wanna see someone try with Pokemon or Uno cards 😂😂

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No idea what that is but I'd love an explanation!

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 2 points 3 days ago

Imma level with you, I have no idea what that means. But uh, it was cool hangin'

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space -1 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Irrespective of its truthfulness, astrology is really cool! I love learning about it. I also really like alchemy. It's kinda like looking at someone's fanfic AU. Of course 17th century guys were inventing cute lil alphabets, pretending they belonged to angels, and writing lil secret notes. Of course someone looked up at the sky and then invented a whole magic system about how the pictures affect our lives. Humans never change.

In fact things like Tarot and astrology can be used to ascribe meaning to some of the ways in which we behave - like, you can't tell the future objectively from it, but you can figure things out about your own current feelings based on what you gravitate to and what the results make you think about.

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Sadly it doesn't! I'll give up my share. You can have it 😊

[–] rowansprig@leminal.space 11 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Oh, coffee and all forms of alcohol.

I think I might have stronger perception of bitter flavours than the average person, so both of these taste bad to me. Coffee is hands down the worst though. It doesn't even smell good. It's like if someone burnt something. Rancid.

Before anyone claims I've just encountered bad coffee - I live in Melbourne, we have a lot of high quality baristas here so I doubt it.

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