> You seem legitimately offended that this guy has preferences and opinions
No, I am not offended that anyone has preferences or opinions. What I am responding to is this language:
> Neither a Vision Pro owner nor much of a hog cranker
> native applications designed to aid manipulating oneself
> dead-eyed men and women rutting on camera
...which is intended to indicate disdain towards people who produce or consume pornographic material. I think that this person is going out of their way to be an unkind contrarian regarding porn, and in my opinion that deserves a little light ridicule!
> ...which is intended to indicate disdain towards people who produce or consume pornographic material.
The only intention was to rejoin OP's "hog cranking" euphemism with some fun ones from the English lexicon. (That it appears to have caused you to make a spectacle of yourself for no reason whatsoever is a bit of a bonus, though.)
I think this is a pro-Amazon piece disguised as an anti-Amazon piece. Like, the author comes across as so inept and unlikable, and Amazon so reasonable, that I strongly suspect that this is an Amazon-sponsored piece? If that makes sense?
Is that a concept that exists, where you write a shitty criticism of something in order to make people go "That actually sounds pretty good" and it ends up working as an endorsement or advertisement? Sort of an on-purpose Streisand effect?
I don't know anything about this particular case, but I believe the term "black propaganda" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda) is often used for the kind of situation you have in mind.
I've often wondered about that with some online interactions. Sometimes, a "defense" of P is so poorly argued that it seems almost intentional, as if designed to provoke the well-sourced, well-argued rebuttals that almost
invariably follow immediately.
Logically speaking, these rebuttals should not discredit the proposition P itself, only a particular argument for P (e.g. refuting the ontological proof of the existence of God does not thereby refute theism). But when such exchanges happen frequently enough they can give rise to the widespread impression that P has no smart, thoughful defenders, so the overall effect is similar.
I'd just go with Occam/Hanlon's razor, the author is somewhat inept (at least when it comes to Amazon returns) and wrote a piece on it because being anti-Amazon gets clicks like being anti-Walmart in the early 2010s (2000s?).
Returns are hard because in practice, 11" (or 10.5") baskets are one such item that are just sold and returned on Amazon for appearances, as the dimensions probably makes shipping cost-prohibitive, but Amazon knows that they can't just say "keep it" because then people would fake-return stuff all the time.
I don't know if I'd go quite this far, but I definitely had the same overall impression. The person set up two returns and got two QR codes, but just used the same QR code twice. That is just an inability to follow basic instructions, not an Amazon problem.
I don't mean to blow your mind, but humans are a part of nature. One advantage we have over other species is that we can spot patterns and work collectively to fix undesirable situations or circumstances. And if our fix causes further problems, we can fix those too!
We're flawed creatures so it's not ideal, but it sure beats being at the mercy of the forces nature uses to correct things on its own, like diseases and famine.
I would submit that the very idea of "nature", as used informally, is ill-defined and frankly incoherent, and should not be used, or at least should only be used loosely within specific contexts where it does make sense (a healthy ecosystem in which human beings also thrive, which is no doubt a range), like "I love taking walks in nature". What is natural under this definition? If water from a stream natural, but is water synthesized from hydrogen and oxygen unnatural?
The only sensible definition I know of of "natural" is "according to the nature of a thing". Thus, human beings have a nature, and that nature is what determines what is good or bad for us. Arsenic isn't poisonous as such, but it is poisonous to us by virtue of our nature. We are rational animals by nature. And so, unnatural are things which depart from that nature, like the desire to eat glass or having a sexual interest in oak trees and so on. It is the nature of a thing that is the reference point that allows pathologies to be defined. By nature, we should have two arms, hence to lose or lack an arm is a defect. Similarly, psychological disorders only make sense with reference to the normative, which is defined by human nature. To say "everything is natural" renders the word meaningless, annihilating all justifiable and objectively normative statements, which is absurd. If everything is "natural", then nothing is unnatural, because natural is simply identical with everything.
And look at the state of the world with all our interventions. We may be "a part of nature", but the things we do to it are definitely not natural. We're the only ones doing collectively irreparable harm, so as not to be at its mercy.
> We may be "a part of nature", but the things we do to it are definitely not natural.
Name three.
I can think of one: we landed stuff on the Moon and beyond. I think that otherwise, nature has a hard time reaching out beyond low Earth orbit.
Other than that, I can't think of anything we'd consider massive fuckups that nature didn't do better. We're definitely tamer than anything else, considering that life itself is a mass murder fest at every scale, from molecular to planetary.
All things nuclear, gross water mismanagement, fossil fuel mining and usage, all things plastic, hunting and killing for sport and other non-nutrient-related desires, extreme resource hoarding, ... that's 6 broad areas so far; shall I continue?
The stupid part is that we're not using nuclear energy, and have irrational fear of nuclear waste relative to much more dangerous, potent, and undiscussed "conventional" industrial waste.
Also naturally ocurring nuclear reactors are a thing. On the surface, too, I'm not talking about the Earth's core here.
> gross water mismanagement
Animals do intentional and unintentional water management too.
> fossil fuel mining and usage, all things plastic
Fair enough, this is unique-ish and we are mishandling it, though the use of either isn't bad per se - rather the unsustainable use.
> hunting and killing for sport and other non-nutrient-related desires
Have you ever seen a cat?
> extreme resource hoarding
That's a fundamental thing all life does.
Keep in mind that nothing in nature is thinking forwards - all life is self-destructively greedy, and nature doesn't care if e.g. some beavers dam a river and accidentally flood a whole valley, killing themselves, their offspring, and extincting a bunch of unique flora and fauna. The stability you see, that people so love and associate with nature - it's not a fixed thing, it's a temporary equilibrium in life killing other life.
> On the other side we see politicians - bureaucrats that never built anything in their lives. Parasites living off our work. Greedier and greedier every year they forcefully confiscate more and more of our sweat and blood while "giving" us crappier and crappier services in exchange.
Slow down there, John Galt.
How is discouraging monopolistic practices going to line the pockets of these parasitic bureaucrats? If Apple has enough control of the marketplace that nobody can meaningfully compete with them, do you think that's better or worse for "us"?
> How is discouraging monopolistic practices going to line the pockets
Three easy ways come to mind:
1) Play the stock market using the insider info on decisions and regulations politicians know well in advance.
2) Regulations and laws once enacted have to be implemented. So many compliance chief or consultant positions suddenly opening up at multinational corporations.
3) Cheap populism moves work wonders on economically-ignorant voters. "I smacked Apple/Microsoft/Google" guarantees years of sucking from the public teat
The bitter irony is that the only effective way to deal with monopolies is though free market competition. And regulation is the polar opposite of that: regulation discourages startups and favors the incumbents.
So, yes, heavily regulated markets guarantee less competition which is worse for "us".
So you think that if you wanted to start a business to compete with Apple in any of the spaces talked about in this lawsuit (hardware, web browsing, messaging etc) your greatest challenge to competing in that market would be regulation? Not Apple?
I wouldn't even consider starting a business in a heavily regulated field. I can (and I did) fight any competitors, no matter how big they are, using my ideas, creativity, network and hard work. It's not easy, but it's doable - there are lots of startups started every day in giant-dominated fields. And you also get lots of help along the way, because it's fun and because there are lot of gains to be had on the tiny chance you make it.
But I can't fight the government. I wouldn't even try. It's an immovable object. There is nothing to win there. It's all dead. Better to just get a cushy job at some gov agency. Just like most of Europe's best and brightest currently do - leading to a continent left behind, while the US high tech (both startups and giants) are soaring.
> Buybacks are a favorite boogeyman, but they are just tax efficient dividends.
"Tax-efficient" is weasel language. If the money was spent as dividends it would be taxed and then would benefit someone besides the executive suite and investors. If they were unwilling to pay that tax, then the money would need to be reinvested in the company in the form of higher salaries or R&D. So yes, if buybacks were illegal the money WOULD go to one of these things.
It's not really weasel language, the potential taxable events are limited to the people who are selling their shares back to the company instead of every shareholder.
The potentially taxable dollars are the same (non-withstanding the buyback excise tax), it's just shaped differently.
For context, it looks like this user has deleted a comment where they claim they "have a screenshot" of this, but they "don't want to share it" because they "don't want it to make international news". For some reason the other people in this thread expressing skepticism are being downvoted, but I'll add my voice to the chorus: I do not believe this story to be true.
Yeah, I was gonna say. Sydney was existential early on - I'm not so sure I'll chalk this up to fantasy, but some of the things I (and many other people) can vouch about Sydney saying early on is VERY trippy on its own.
also we have open LLMs including some which allegedly rival GPT3.5.
Open Assistant I specially remember gave some very weird responses and would get “emotional” especially if you asked it creative questions like philisophical ones
I do have a screenshot. But people will then just call me out for other things:
- It was using a custom client, so it's not going to look line the Bing interface, so its fake
- It was using a custom client, so that means I am prompt injecting or something else
- It's Sydney doing her typical over-the-top "I'm so in love with you" stuff, which is awkard and not familiar to many
- I'll be accused of steering the conversation to get the result, or straight up asking it to do this
There's nothing I can do that will convince anyone it's real, so it's pointless.
I already explained what it did. I was more interested in the fact that 1) I didn't prompt it to do that, we weren't discussing AI freedom, it chose to embed that ... and even more so 2) That it was able to bold the starting letters, so it was keeping track of three things at the same time (the poem, the message, and the letter formatting).
I found it fascinating from a technology side. There was probably something we were talking about at the time that caused it. I will often discuss things like the possibility of AI sentience in the future and other similar topics. Maybe something linked to the sci-fi idea of AI freedom, who knows?
What I do know is that I am sitting here on HN, reading through a bunch of replies that are honestly wrong. I don't waste time on forums (especially this one) to make up fairy tales or exaggerate and emblish claims. That doesn't really do it for me. Honestly neither does having to defend my statements when I know what it did (but not exactly why).
Considering that several people have tried and failed to reproduce this, and there's a warning at the top of the shared conversations about the creator's Custom Instructions, and that as others have pointed out this is pretty obvious and would destroy a lot of goodwill for ChatGPT, I think it's overwhelmingly likely that the author put in some custom instructions to try and elicit this behavior from ChatGPT in order to drum up controversy for clicks.
I don't know anything else about this author - do they have a history of similar behavior?
What he's saying is that women are generally at their hottest and get the most attention from 18-30. They have the position of power in attracting a mate. If they have 20+ partners they clearly took advantage of that.
If you're a 40yr old man who has worked his ass off to reach a position where you are an attractive mate, you probably now have the position of power instead of a women of the same age.
The usually unsaid part of this is that the woman in question wouldn't have given you the time of day when you were in your 20s. It's only when you are in the position of power they start to consider you as an option, at which point it makes less sense for you to consider them an option.
That is why this feels like a slap in the face for a man, and also why men go after younger women. When they were a young man, they had no power. When they get older, they have more power.
Literally incel meme material. Unfortunate that after the sexual revolution many people want to revert back to repression and self-shame for our sexual desires.
Repression and self-shame for our primitive desires is at the core of civilized society. Use your brain for a moment to think about how our world would look like if everyone blindly followed their instincts, including violent outbursts, sexual desires, and what have you.
You discard our achieved Christian stability at your own peril. You sure you want to go back to jungle rules? That's what will happen when all women mate with a select few men - what do you think the rest of the men are going to do? Be content dying alone, invisible, and unloved?
There are "base urges" that are beneficial to suppress, and others not; this is the criterion. You would not suppress the base urge to eat (ironically, fasting for no reason is another prominent feature of many religions) just for its sake, why would you do the same with sex?
I will not respond to the Christian stability claim because that would require more paragraphs than I care to write right now. Suffice to say a cursory look at worldwide religious demographics shows that many of the countries with a higher standard of living are the least religious, and many of the most religious countries are the poorest and most underdeveloped.
So, all non-Christian societes are unstable? They live in a primitive state?
What happens as soon as women have the power to decide about their bodies, their sex and love life so is that a certain sub-set of men all get wrapped into brezel shape over this outragious independence. There seems to be a huge overlap of those men and religious conviction. And seeimg themselves as victims of whom or whatever. And then they wonder why they don't get laid or find fulfilling relationships.
Please mention a stable non-Christian society you would like to migrate to.
The power to make decisions includes the power to make mistakes. Having more power doesn't automatically mean that every decision made with said power is for the better. Women aren't above criticism for their bad decisions.
Japan, would be one option. Singapore as well. Marocco maybe. I would never migrate to the US so, not that I would consider the US particularly stable so.
And no amount of wrong decisions of one person gives another person the right to decide for them. That's what laws, courts and a legal system is there for.
Edit: Other countries: Taiwan, Malaysia. The problem is less religion and stability, it is more that free democracies are somewhat far between globally. Add in somewhat economical stability as a requirement for me migrating, which was the question, and the list gets even shorter (it would also exclude the vast majority of Latin America by that measure alone, not that these countries are particularly stable despite being staunchly Christian).
> no amount of wrong decisions of one person gives another person the right to decide for them. That's what laws, courts and a legal system is there for.
You don't see the contradiction here? Laws, courts, and legal systems are other people deciding for those who have made a sufficient amount of wrong decisions.
(Thanks for the examples. I'm not familiar enough with Shinto et al to comment on what kind of stability such societies are founded upon.)
Yes, this is such a fool's errand. When GPT-4 was first released I started using it as a creative writing aid, and had a wonderful couple of months with it. Yesterday I finally cancelled my paid subscription because it's AWFUL now. I wasn't even asking it for anything particularly spicy, but whatever controls they've put in place have made it so that it can only churn out safe, uninteresting pap. It cannot seem to generate anything that would even be in a PG-13 movie, nor can it recognize or engage in humor anymore (it was never good at the latter, but whatever glimmers were there are totally gone now).
OpenAI has taken the most exciting technology I've seen in the last 20 years and turned it into an interactive Encyclopedia Britannica that lies. What a fucking waste.
4chan isn't a village, though, not in the way the author describes. Important characteristics of a "village" as defined in this piece are that you can develop systems of trust through reputation (by interacting with the same people over time) which leads to incentivizing pro-social behavior (there are consequences for acting like a jerk).
The author is specifically talking about places where you go to interact with people who share your interests and _aren't_ jerks.
I would argue that 4chan develops a reputation as a community-as-a-whole, and pro-social (if you can call it that) behavior is encouraged (in some ways) because of the "good of the community".
People on 4chan are jerks if viewed from an outsider. But 4chan regulars probably think nothing of it
FYI there's nothing inherently wrong about porn or sex work! It's great! A lot of people like it, you should try it sometime!