rng-concern

I agree it's fun, no argument there.

However, it's no longer a good metric, as "drawing svg pelicans" is now showing up too much in the training data, so is not proof of generalization.

Honestly curious why you're being downvoted, but I think about this all the time. We always focus on the positives of any new technology and the negatives are either invisible (till later) or glossed over.

Not my idea though, greater minds than I have talked about this a lot: Neil Postman, Lewis Mumford, etc..

I won't argue the ethics of piracy. That was not my point, but if you want to I suppose I could.

My point was, their ethics WOULD have prevented them from doing the thing. But they chose not to think about it too hard. Perhaps subconsciously. I'm not above doing this sort of thing either. We all do it for various things.

I've added code that is bad for the user (overbearing telemetry for instance) because my salary depended on it. At the time I tried not to think about it too much, as it would cause cognitive dissonance.

I know a few people who buy these, and they kind of know what they're doing. They just try and not think about it too hard.

It reminds me of the saying: "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It".

If these people thought about it for a few minutes, they would understand, but they choose not to, as ignoring it is too advantageous.

I admit I was tempted, as the price of all streaming services goes up, and services become more and more fragmented. During the same period where I have not had a raise.

I don't own a cell phone, haven't for years. I fear this alone would be enough to arouse suspicion and I'll be denied access. Not an immediate problem for my family: as a Canadian I have no plans to visit the states for a long time. However, I could see this being suspicious in other countries as well..

I think the difference is between: 1) me doing a nice thing and them reciprocating later, possibly. Others may or may not see this display of niceness. 2) me doing a nice thing, getting karma points my friend and other sees, which I can possibly use to get perks of some kind.

Gamification is not a new word for an old idea. It's a new thing, at least in many contexts.

#1 seems a lot more human to me.

Ward Cunningham, who coined technical debt, describes it as having interest, which is exponential:

> Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite.... The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a stand-still under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation, object-oriented or otherwise.

You're making a lot of unwarranted assumptions about me: I'm not dismissing agency. I don't feel people making decisions is inconvenient. I don't not like their decisions. Their preferences do not mean nothing. I'm not dictating their actions.

I own and drive 2 cars.

I'll just stop there. I don't feel this conversation can continue in a positive way.

It's not just a matter of preference or proclamation. There are decades of research showing that more walkable neighborhoods are associated with higher physical activity levels, lower rates of some chronic diseases, more interaction with neighbors, and stronger feelings of community. The debate is usually about how large those effects are and whether they're worth the trade-offs, not whether the effects exist at all.

Ahh France. I was in Paris trying to order a sandwich. I asked: "Parlez-vous anglais?" Them: "Non!" (rudely and went back to what they were doing) I then tried explain in my very butchered french I learned in elementary school: "Jambon du pain et...." And they immediately turned back with a big smile on their face: "What would you like?"

It seems the fact I knew some paltry french and I was trying was enough. A strange but nice experience.

Only it's been shown time and time again that piracy does not destroy the profit motive.

As a personal anecdote, when I used to pirate things, I still bought things in the same category, ie: I would pirate movies and I still bought movies. I would pirate games and I still bought games.

I don't think it affected how much of each thing I purchased by much, but I don't really know.

I think whether you can say it's empirically incorrect depends on if the researchers measured the right thing. Measuring: “Do you think your job is useful?” was over-simplifying, and could miss the phenomenon that Graeber was actually talking about.

Late reply so not sure if you'll see this.

But I mean: they appear to be results. They look real, but are not. There are subtle errors hidden that the casual observer will not, or even cannot detect.

Obviously there are exceptions to this. Many exceptions. AI right now can probably write most if not all algorithms on par or better than I could. It can put together working prototypes for many ideas I've had and not had time to implement.

But the danger is in assuming that because it can do A, it can do B, because a human that does A can do B.

Asking chatgpt, in UK in late 80s, it would be 20-25% across all computers, depending on definition of "computer". A 1/4 of households is still high. It may have been higher in your neck of the woods.

I bought this book a year ago but have not read it. It's one of those books that requires effort from the reader, which these days seems in low supply for me. :) I'll have to give it another try.

Recently I commented that: Artificial intelligence produces artificial results.

I liked the double-artificial but I wasn't happy with the meaning. Perhaps Simulacra is more accurate? I will see :)