We’re not the first organisms to alter the atmosphere and cause a mass extinction. The first ones were cyanobacteria and the gas they released was oxygen. They caused
a decrease in the size of the biosphere of >80%
We’re descended from the survivors that adapted to a high-oxygen environment but to this day there are many microorganisms that die if exposed to even small amounts of oxygen.
Ah 2013, the year I got my first real job after grad school. That was fun. I miss being 27 - I didn’t have the “Oh shit, time is running out and soon I’ll be old!” feeling quite as much, although back then I did worry about turning 30.
And speaking of the past, does anyone else feel like it’s sort-of still 2020? 2019 was long ago but everything after the start of the pandemic seems like it has happened so quickly.
My Windows is more like “I am scheduling the restart. Pray I don’t schedule it any sooner.”
It’s straight to Hell for you, no Purgatory.
Watch out, you’re straying close to heresy.
In relation to the process of digestion, the Catholic Church’s teaching has been expressed in this way: “The substance of Christ’s body is not subject to processes of digestion or to any chemical reactions. The qualities of bread of course behave in their normal way, undergoing a change as they are affected by digestion. Our Lord’s substantial presence ceases as these qualities cease to retain those characteristics proper to bread.”
I’m not saying that ice cream is healthier than a normal dinner, just that if I really crave something sweet then the cost to my health of eating it periodically is actually quite low, whereas the cost of some other desserts (baked sweets are often the worst offenders) is relatively high. That means that a lot can be gained simply by replacing one dessert with a different, equally tasty dessert. Hence my ice cream advocacy.
Your points are valid, but I think that building AI has benefits beyond simply enabling people to use that AI. It advances the state of the art and makes even more powerful AI possible. Still, it would be good to know about the amortized cost per query of building the AI in addition to the cost of running it.
I don’t see why this argument works better against AI than it does against microwaves. Those are used hundreds of millions of times a day too.
With regard to sugar: when I started counting calories I discovered that the actual amounts of calories in certain foods were not what I intuitively assumed. Some foods turned out to be much less unhealthy than I thought. For example, I can eat almost three pints of ice cream a day and not gain weight (as long as I don’t eat anything else). So sometimes instead of eating a normal dinner, I want to eat a whole pint of ice cream and I can do so guilt-free.
Likewise, I use both AI and a microwave, my energy use from AI in a day is apparently less than the energy I use to reheat a cup of tea, so the conclusion that I can use AI however much I want to without significantly affecting my environmental impact is the correct one.
I’m back in the U.S.S.R
You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the U.S
Back in the U.S
Back in the U.S.S.R
Things that I wish web interface devs would just let me type, for God’s sake:
Just validate the input after I type it in. Don’t make me scroll through 50 different states or 100 different years.
I know people whose grants have been put on hold and these people don’t even know if they have health insurance anymore, since grant money pays for that too. This is wild.
A friend’s husband keeps his phone on silent but also expects to be notified if plans change.
I write my texts like I’m writing a cover letter or a wedding invitation to flex on the less erudite and meticulous.
I get permitting these blogs as part of a commitment to avoid censorship - someone with non-mainstream but far less extreme opinions can look at them and say “If Substack doesn’t censor even these guys, it definitely won’t censor me.” With that said, I’m still surprised that Substack apparently doesn’t manually curate its push notifications.
I’m not necessarily supportive of Thiel - he does some things that I oppose, and also some things that I think are silly. He’s not a very likeable man overall. I’m supportive of transhumanism. The substance of this article is merely that:
Peter Thiel hesitated when asked if he “would prefer the human race to endure.”
The article doesn’t even say what his reply ultimately was, but the implication is that even considering that a transhuman future would be better is somehow horrifying, and that’s the implication I’m surprised to see supported here.
Lemmy as a whole is more seems to attract neo-Luddites but I’m still surprised to see someone so against transhumanism in c/technology.
I saw a guy once with no gap between his beard and his chest hair.