whalesnrainbows

While I think studies like this are bunk, I think it’s a mistake to assume that there is no real effect on cognitive health.

We know that using LLMs is addictive. I can’t imagine that long term use is going to be as benign as long term use of a calculator.

While it was a common name, it was also a common double entendre, even back then.

It’s highly unlikely that they didn’t know what they were doing.

If he does, it might be the first time a man has ever made me cream my pants

More well thought out than your original comment

Ah yes, Australia, famously immune from capitalism

I’m very sorry for your losses. I suspect that my own quality of life has been severely affected by undiagnosed curable health issues, and I’ll be genuinely surprised if I make it into old age.

Capitalism has murdered and continues to murder countless human lives.

Eh, as someone who was homeschooled, there are some legitimate reasons and legitimate ways to approach homeschooling.

I do think regulations regarding homeschooling need to be far more stringent across the board to ensure that all children are receiving a decent education and that they are being properly socialized.

Almost everyone in the family and community in which I was raised believes that human-caused climate change is not real. They believe that all climate change is a wholly unavoidable phenomenon that is just part of the earth’s natural cycle.

You can imply that no one has actually been fooled by the oil industry’s propaganda all you want, but it’s both incorrect & unproductive to do so.

True, it is much harder than it used to be to catch the oppressor class off guard.

But given how hard they work to discourage us from even nonviolently protesting, I suspect that they understand that once we truly collectively achieve class consciousness, it’s over for them.

I’d attribute this to two main factors:

1. The wealth inequality we’re dealing with has a higher ceiling (and higher floor) than the wealth inequality in pre-revolution France. We’re poor and hurting financially, but most of us are still able survive day-to-day without viscerally feeling the effects of our poverty.

2. The internet keeps us apart. Pre-internet, people built communities, coalitions, and armies much more effectively because they weren’t so isolated in their homes, and so paralyzed by screens.

EDIT: the advent of suburbanism & carcentric infrastructure is another factor that keeps us more isolated than past populations have been. People used to live right alongside each other and their communities used to be walkable. The most disadvantaged among us (and therefore the most personally motivated to mobilize) are also the most limited by carcentric infrastructure.

I’ll acknowledge that saying it’s a dog whistle every time was slightly hyperbolic. 

However, I’d argue that the claim that the global human population is declining too rapidly is actually pretty hotly contested. The world's population is still growing — around 8.2 billion now, heading toward a peak near 10.3 billion in the 2080s.

That being said, in some countries there will be a surplus of retirees and not enough workers to fund them through the existing tax structure, which is a legitimate problem. But it's a problem best remedied through better social safety nets, not by popping out more babies.

The biggest contention I have with the concern over population decline is that population decline doesn’t matter at all if we don’t adequately address climate change within the next decade. If someone’s house is actively on fire and they express concern to me that their roof should be re-shingled, I’m not going to give a shit about their roof shingles until I’m certain their roof will survive the fire.

If only there was a way we could satisfy both your desire and knoxvomica’s desire simultaneously