No, those would be people in the second. Snake oil drinkers and astrologists.

Elon Musk is the world’s best programmer. Ah! He makes so much money! 🤑

You disagree that women are socially pressured into being more apologetic and agreeable?

You may as well tell me an apple doesn’t fall when you let it go.

A refusal to acknowledge social trends is actually a very sexist (or homophobic, or racist) position to hold because it is a de facto defense of the status quo.

A person cannot hope to change society for the better while refusing to see society for what it is.

By the power of democracy vested in me, I choose to make the world as I see it.

But I am human, hehe. That’s true. You are correct.

Nah, I think that AI users ought to be shamed and mocked publically. It doesn’t really bother me that they find this frustrating.

I do think the fact that the US is the only dissenting voice is incredibly funny.

Turns out, there is more than 1.5 billion people in Africa.

But these are facts I can learn independently of its, you know, appearance on a map. And outside of this being a notable news story, I don’t really see it prompting any such questions.

so it’s not a question of making people feel better about the size of their country

It is, though. That’s actually the only purpose this serves.

I think you might read that as dismissive, but I see some value in making people feel better. Certainly in making the US feel worse.

I don’t, however, think that this will meaningfully improve anything.

Russia doesn’t really have this problem anyway, it’s very large in all our popular projections.

It’s area should still be incorrect, though, yes? Which would mean we have incorrect ideas about its natural resources, its farmland, its cultural cohesion?

A country’s, or a continent’s, signifigance has nothing to do with it’s size, though.

I mean, if we wanted to make the nations of Africa or Greenland feel better, does it follow that we could make them appear bigger on the map than they actually are? Just move the mercator around such that Africa is along the top or bottom edge of the map where things are larger?

I am absolutely not saying that people having a better understanding of Africa is bad. I just don’t think that this is really how that happens.

I remember thinking that Russia seemed pretty big on the map, and yet still, I’ve never had to take Russian culture as a class in high school.

[edit] I’ll add one thing, though. This decision has clearly pissed the US government off, which is based and incredibly funny. I’ll support it to that end.

This may or may not be true—in fact I’ll just assume that it’s true, fuck it—but I will say that it’s kind of like being asked to have an opinion on whether this person or that gets top billing on the theater marquee: is it going to be Rose & Krants or Krants & Rose? Which do you think, morally, is the superior option? I really, really don’t care.

And it bothers me a smidge that people do only because I feel like they’re being distracted by jangling keys. But oh well, whatever. Not my business, I guess.

AI has been around for 50 years now.

I really don’t care.

This is so divorced from the current discussion of what AI is doing now that it’s a waste of time even talking about it.

No, you’re right, those Meta glasses are also powerful csam-generating machines.

A lot of those accounts were young anyway, so I don’t know how many are even around to swallow their pride now.

Face lookup of contacts so I get reminded of people’s names.

Okay, I stop reading here. That’s fucking insane.

Like, I agree with you, except that

Change happens when individuals nut up and take things into their own hands.

Could mean people get new legislation passed or something. Otherwise, we’re basically just telling people to choose not to be addicted to heroin.

I love you!!

Also, how did you get this number?

Consensus in that regard would look like a strong trust in said experts’ views, and that people feel those experts are sympathetic if nothing else to the needs of the people they’re serving. It doesn’t necessarily mean giving creationism a seat at the biology table.

But also, bear in mind this is about avoiding conflict. If your situation does not care about avoiding conflict, then it doesn’t really matter.

What gets me so often in retro gaming is the desire of some to “repair” the past.

This would indicate the ‘hate’ is on ideological grounds.

I tend to agree, if I’m being honest. I sometimes see the retro modding community excited about improvements they’ve made: new models swapped in for characters, upscaled backgrounds with 10x the detail that was ever put into them, 4k textures stretched over low-poly objects like an animal wearing a skin suit. And these are called ‘better’. This is how new people are told to play these old games: we have added 4 cups of sugar to make the horrible taste easier to swallow.

I see this and I think… why? Why be this way?

Can you imagine if we raised new generations to treat paintings the same way? The Mona Lisa is not worth seeing because it is too old and ugly, but it can be made tolerable to one’s senses with the new power of AI?

This image is profane. It can only be produced by a sick people.

I worry that people’s desire for this kind of thing indicates a lack of curiosity in life. An unwillingness to do anything not already familiar to them. I would consider this attitude a character flaw in most people, if I met them.

Lying by omission and lying by over-reaction (“histrionics”, but that word’s a bit nerdy) are definitely ones that ought to be added to Bible 3, which I heard~ is supposed to be a prequel—isn’t that fun?