I listened to a podcast (This American Life, IIRC), where some researchers were talking about their efforts to determine whether or not AI could reason. One test they did was asking it to stack a random set of items (one it wouldn’t have come across in any data set, plank of wood, 12 eggs, a book, a bottle, and a nail. . .probably some other things too) in a stable way. With chat gpt 3, it basically just (as you would expect from a pure text predictor) said to put one object on top of another, no way would it be stable.

However, with gpt 4, it basically said to put the wood down, and place the eggs in a 3 x 4 grid with the book on top (to stop them from rolling away), and then with the bottle on top of that, with the nail (even noting you have to put the head side down because you couldn’t make it stable with the point down). It was certainly something that could work, and it was a novel solution.

Now I’m not saying this proves it can think, but I think this “well it’s just a text predictor” kind of hand-waves away the question. It also begs the question, and based on how often I hear people parroting the same exact arguments against AI thinking, I wonder how much we are simply just “text predictors.”

Agreed. It could absolutely be that this person just likes to complain. But this whole “talking about banning things you don’t thing belong in this community is really just talking about it too” is a ridiculous “gotcha.”

It’s a meta discussion about the direction they want the sub to take.

Sitting down and discussing something that you don’t like, so you can avoid it more in the future, is not the contradiction so many people in this sub seem desperate to make it.

Yup, that’s exactly right. On Lemmy you don’t even have to log out, blocking someone simply means you can’t see their posts. If you don’t want a harasser or stalker to see something, and you post it publicly, you’re an idiot.

And this is the way it should be… You shouldn’t be able to silence someone from responding to stuff you say publicly by blocking them.

Not interested in the format even when it was still Twitter.

But “go away” is a good counter and you’ve got me convinced. You’re truly adding to the high level discourse here.

it’s more evidence that X caters more to the blockees than the blockers.

I’m not sure I agree. However, even if it’s true, I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing. If you’re saying something in public and I’m not even allowed to hear it, let alone respond to it, because you blocked me, you have an effective tool to shut down any dissent. This is what I saw on reddit all the time, there were posters who would block anyone who disagreed with them and so the comments sections on their posts would become very skewed.

And just the other day, I said that David Duke endorsing Jill Stein doesn’t mean Jill Stein approves of David Duke or anything he stands for. Someone accused me of defending David Duke, and when I pointed out that his was fantasy, they blocked me. So I see people blocking for bullshit reasons all the time.

Lemmy is much the same, even less restrictive because you don’t even have to log in to see anything. It’s better this way.

Yeah but this is musk and we hate him so this is obviously a very bad terrible idea and omg how can anyone still be on Twitter after this…but don’t mind that I’m posting this on a site where the block does even less.

But people will buy alcohol because they are addicted. It’s a harmful substance, that the producers know is harmful, especially to addicts, and sell the highly addictive substance anyway. It’s profiting from manipulating weaknesses in human psychology, just like the games are. If no one bought it, people would stop producing it. So simply extending your logic, buying alcohol is self-centered and contributing to alcoholism.

I’m not going to avoid enjoying myself because you say other people can’t control themselves. That’s like telling someone to not drink alcohol because some people suffer from addiction, and alcohol companies advertise.

Im not a big fan of pay to win, but I see no problem with micro transactions for cosmetic stuff. If people are dumb and want to spend their money on that, more power to them, especially if I benefit from it.

Just ditch the idea that you need any of those things. You don’t. From a personal gaming perspective, these have been great for me because I get to play all of these games for free because other people are paying for it for me.

I understand the joy comes from playing the game itself, not the loot.

This is a life lesson as well. You don’t need any of the flashy shit. Trying to avoid it is a losing battle, better to just understand it.

I bang my head against search engines. Normally I can find something decent after multiple searches, but it never used to be this way.

What do you do instead?

Never let critical thought get in the way of our 2 minutes hate. This is about interpreting it in a way to justify our dislike, rather than whether the current thing actually does justify it.

Switch to what exactly?

So essentially you’re saying that communication falls apart and you don’t have the correct tools for remote work.

The problem is that I don’t know of any tool or set of tools that fixes this. We have an extensive chat system that is open all the time with rooms for each group, we have zoom, we use all kinds of collaboration software. Everyone knows these are available, and uses them, but the hurdle inherent to it seems to be just enough to really put a damper on seeking help.

I think the best solution would be to have a zoom room where everyone is in it all the time. Which sounds even more miserable.

I know I’ll be downvoted, but I’ll answer your question.

“Need” is a strong word. Sure, it’s not needed. But that’s not what the business tends to care about. They care about productivity.

I work in software. In my previous job I was a one man show. For my day to day development, I didn’t need to interact with other people much. When I shifted to remote working it was a huge boost because I got protected time to work where I wasn’t distracted by other people in the office, either socially or incidentally. This case it worked very well.

After the pandemic I switched jobs into one with a hybrid schedule. Luckily for me my job is a 15 minute bike commute.

However, the suite of tools I’m now developing and working on require me to constantly interact with other people in the office. I also spend a lot of time mentoring jr devs.

This is, quite frankly, just better when we’re all in the office. The jr devs know, explicitly, that they can bother me whenever they need it. In the office this happens probably an average of 8 times a day. When either of us is remote, it’s probably once a day.

Now with the other senior devs, we hate meetings. However, all the time, spontaneously, we’ll end up chatting in our little section about the development of the system, someone will overhear (maybe even from an adjacent group) and chime in with useful knowledge. Next thing you know we have 4 or 5 devs whiteboarding and discussing things. Most of the fine tuning of our systems get hashed out in these impromptu meetings. This never happens when we’re remote.

Also the barrier to just turning around and asking someone something is so much lower. Often 30 seconds. Because at home I have to send them a message, maybe message back and forth a bit before determining that it would be easier on zoom, then we have to jump on zoom which takes a small amount of time. Now this is not some huge thing, but it is a barrier that makes it just hard enough that he happens way less frequently.

Working in the office is just better for productivity in this type of situation, which i imagine is true for most jobs that involve lots of collaboration. Almost all of my coworkers agree. We also all agree that remote is better because commuting sucks. It honestly even boggles my mind to hear other software devs argue that they are more productive at home. Believable if we are talking about my original situation, or if you’re just mindlessly closing tickets. But for collaborative development of large systems? No way.

Yeah but bringing people back is still more expensive because it means more maintenance, more cleaning, and in the case of Amazon paying more for the office perks.

I’m sure at some point, somewhere, someone forced people to rto because it was better for their real estate investment…but I just have not been able to make sense of the claims that this is driving factor.

You’re clearly arguing that tiktok is arguing in court that all Chinese apps steal your data.

This is patently false to anyone who has read the article. But, of course, it’s much easier to find something to be outraged over when you don’t really know what’s going on.

Simply reading the article would reveal how ludicrously incorrect your argument is.