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ArbitraryValue

@ ArbitraryValue @sh.itjust.works

Posts
5
Comments
456
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • What is something you said in school that you didn't realise was embarrassing / inappropriate until later or later in life?

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  • Poking people with sticks was against the rules of recess and I knew that, so I didn't feel that I was punished unfairly. The teacher did let me know that the way that I did it was especially against the rules, but she didn't punish me more because of that.

  • What is something you said in school that you didn't realise was embarrassing / inappropriate until later or later in life?

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  • When I was little, I acted out cartoon violence by poking a girl's butt with a stick and the teacher told me that I was in trouble for reasons that I would understand when I was older.

  • Deleting Files

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  • What gets me is when I'm not allowed to remove an external drive. Deleting a file can be delayed until later but here I am with a physical object that I need to detach from my computer and first I need to play hide and seek with the OS.

  • What was your number one favorite website 'back in the day', that is now defunct?

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  • YTMND from 20 years ago.

    Technically it still exists but it's effectively dead.

  • Why is the human body so incredibly bad at responding to colds?

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  • Some of those symptoms are caused by the virus as part of its strategy for spreading. They make you likely to leak infectious fluid from your nose and mouth. Meanwhile your body has to learn how to recognize a virus that has evolved to be hard to recognize (and do that without also accidentally "recognizing" some of your own cells and killing you) and then track down every last virus. And there can be billions of viruses, many of which are hiding inside your own cells.

    You'd spoil about as fast as food left out of the fridge (but due to bacteria and fungi, not viruses) if not for the constant battle your immune system fights.

  • Will CEOs eventually have to replace themselves with AI to please shareholders?

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  • You might want to read more about corporate personhood. It doesn't mean that the corporation is considered by the law to be a person, or that whoever or whatever performs the duties of the CEO is by definition a person. It means that a corporation, despite not being a person, has certain rights usually associated with people. For example, a person can own property or be sued. A cat cannot own property or be sued. A corporation is like a person rather than a cat in that it can also own property or be sued. There's debate about exactly which rights should be granted to corporations, but the idea that a corporation has at least some minimal set of rights is centuries old and an essential part of the very definition of what a corporation is.

  • Will CEOs eventually have to replace themselves with AI to please shareholders?

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  • You're mixing up corporate personhood and the CEO's own personhood. He isn't the corporation. Ultimately, he's just an employee. There's no good reason for the board of directors to pay him if a machine can do a better job while costing less. I'm not sure why you might think that wouldn't happen.

  • Seriously what's that idea?

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  • Why would you want to read a comment by someone you've blocked, and why would you want to upvote, downvote, or report a comment that you haven't read?

  • Seriously what's that idea?

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  • You get to control your own experience, not their experience.

  • What keeps you hopeful?

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  • Not if they can help it.

    I suppose I still want life-extension technology to be developed for the sake of the large number of humans who aren't Putin or Xi. But for them,

    And on the pedestal, these words appear:My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay.Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare.The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  • Do you ever feel full and hungry simultaneously?

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  • Hmm, it's probably several of those things at once. The last time it happened was after I ate a bunch of pancakes for lunch while having a stressful day and not sleeping very well.

  • Do you ever feel full and hungry simultaneously?

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  • Usually I feel a more normal "I'm full but I could eat more because that was tasty." I have also felt "I haven't eaten all day but the thought of eating disgusts me," but that was definitely a side effect of a medication I was taking at the time.

  • What keeps you hopeful?

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  • Progress in AI. The sooner we build a machine god to judge us, the better. But seriously, it's exciting to see something so new and different being built at a time when so much human effort is dedicated to destruction.

  • Dreams are free!

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  • Superhero movies in general tend to struggle when they have a main character fight anyone who isn't another main character. I suppose the intent is to make the hero or villain appear powerful by having her defeat a bunch of badass normal people but what usually ends up happening is that the normal people just look like losers instead. Thor himself had the same problem when fighting Surtur's and Hela's minions - they looked scary but they were so weak compared to him that the fights were comedic instead of dramatic. However, at least Thor's lightning made his fights look cool. Hela's spikes were the opposite of a fun fight scene.

    If I were editing the script, I'd have Hela lay siege to Asgard with her undead army. She actually fights the Asgardians and forces them to retreat inside their fortress instead of just humiliating them and they're barely holding out while Thor is on his journey of self-discovery. This would also fix the problem with her own undead minions being useless. They'd actually have something to do (fight the Asgardians) rather than jogging around chasing civilians while Yakety Sax plays.

    (Oh and what was up with a guy who can beat the Hulk getting taken out instantly by a taser thingie? If those things are so powerful, shouldn't everyone just be throwing them at each other instead of using weapons?)

  • What's a sci-fi thing you feel is achievable with our current level of technology that you'd love to see become a thing?

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  • Plenty of other people's interests don't align with mine either - these days, it seems like most people's interests don't. What makes a corporation less reliable than my fellow Americans?

  • What's a sci-fi thing you feel is achievable with our current level of technology that you'd love to see become a thing?

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  • Corporations are predictable - they try to make money. If their profit motive aligns with my own interests, then what they do will be good for me. Amazon, for example, sells me all sorts of things for low prices and with great customer support. My interests and corporate interests won't necessarily align and that's why exit rights are so important, but at least I will still be dealing with an entity acting more-or-less rationally.

  • What's a sci-fi thing you feel is achievable with our current level of technology that you'd love to see become a thing?

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  • I'm going to go against the trend here and say that libertarian corporate city-states actually sound pretty cool. They're generally not portrayed positively in fiction but I think they might work well in practice. I'm a lot less optimistic about cooperating with all my fellow Americans in order to govern the whole country democratically than I used to be. Choosing to move to an independent city-state with a government that I agree with (albeit one I don't elect) might work better.

  • Dreams are free!

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  • Too bad they made her character so boring. "I'm evil! Also your dad was evil! I shoot spikes out of nowhere rather than having cool fight scenes! My evil plan is to have very slow-moving zombies chase civilians around ineffectually!"

  • Just keep coding

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  • Your options are an ugly wall that works or the beautiful lack of a wall.