I know some on the right decided to make up some ludicrous definition at one point that right vs left was "freedom vs tyranny" and it looks like you've bought into that

Uhr? No, to me, the essence is slow, careful changes vs fast, possibly-not-thought-out, experimental changes. If I had to do it in 4 words, they would be "degree of risk aversion."

That is how Trump appears to be the furthest-left president in US history, and how even FDR (and LBJ, etc) look relatively right-wing compared to him. Comrade Trump is breaking things which had good, proven track records. No conservative (or even centrist or lightly-left) person would do that.

Well, if your government is a shitshow, it just means your people need to vo--

Sigh. Why, yes, I am an American. Why do you a--

[hangs head in shame] Ok, fair enough. I'll shut the fuck up now.

When I hired people (as developers), the last question of the interview was "How many gas stations are there in the United States?"

The answer I wanted to hear was a quick, succinct, "I don't know".

IMHO "Hmm.. let me think about how to estimate that" would also be a great [start to] an answer. (Though now that I think of, we have The Internet now, so "lemme google that" might also be a pretty good answer.)

First time?

It's fascinating that there are so many people acting like this is their first taste of Maintenance Hell.

Learn from it. After some poor choices and orphanage heartbreak, I eventually had a last time, swore NEVER AGAIN, and I haven't looked back. I'm sure there are legit gripes about Linux but the one gripe I know nobody will ever have, is "they fucked me." It's never hostile, at all. It never tries to not work. The code isn't making any decisions, ever, which would translate into English as "fuck what the owner of this computer wants." Never. It's always on your side. Always. And to me, that's what I consider to be "normal" now.

The absurdity of recent versions of MS Windows requiring TPM is right there in your face. That's a deliberate defect, making it hostile for no fucking reason that any customer ever asked for.

They hate you. And you want more from those people? Really? You must hate you too.

If you ever change your mind, there's a way out.

WTF is with people calling Republicans "conservative?" I don't get it. FDR was relatively conservative, next to this guy. No?

No. What you describe, I just call a "conspiracy" (assuming the action is harmful or illegal or .. eh, I think the word "shady" probably fits best).

I suppose the participants technically do also have a conspiracy theory, but I think it's inappropriate to call their direct knowledge that. The hypothesizing is usually by nonparticipants, and if they come up with a hypothesis with enough evidence to back it up such that their explanation becomes widely accepted in the mainstream, then they have a conspiracy theory.

(BTW, I know I already lost this argument decades ago. I lost the fight over the word "hacker" too. But that doesn't mean I can't grind this axe for the rest of my life! The word "theory" means something, or at least it did/should in my fantasy world.)

I'd say you can pick one over the other. Choose to spend your next 10 minutes without money or without air.

Since when does private party A doing something "unlawful" compel private party B to take some action?

Ever since the first time someone pointed a loaded gun as B's face and said "do what I say or else I'll kill you" and B did as ordered, instead of accepting their death.

I think it was sometime around 1234567 BC.

Macroeconomic trends toward employment are not the same as microeconomic trends of job replacement, particularly in specific sectors or roles. Like everything anti-AI, the goal posts will be moved as AI improves... but it has proven consistently able to broaden its reach and capacity over time. Workers who are displaced to be underemployed (but still employed), or ones who list themselves as no longer actively looking for work, would result in exactly what we are seeing.

Translation and transcription are nearly gone as a job. Legal document review. Vibe coding. A World Economic Forum survey said 41% of employers are currently intent on reduce staffing over five years due to AI automation. Indeed reports a 36% drop in tech job postings since early 2020. Sure, you can blame that on macroeconomics... but they didn't see the same drop in other sectors. A 2023 UChicago/Manning/Eloundou study found ~80% of U.S. workers have at least 10% of tasks potentially affected by LLMs, and ~19% may see 50% or more of tasks disrupted. About 47–56% of tasks are automatable with *current* LLM tools. There is no logical reason for a business to hire more people when work productivity can be doubled in some cases with AI use.

That's mostly current case. If you include projections, the concensus is more dire. If you track this consensus into the past, it likewise paints a clear picture of trajectory.

[citation needed]

The mass layoffs using LLMs as a stated reason begs to differ. I'm willing to consider I'm wrong on this, but I don't think I am. Anecdotes about specific organizations misapplying it aren't a credible counterpoint to the overall trend, which is massive.

It sounds vaguely like you're contradicting me, but your statement actually supports my original point of AI literacy being a core skill. You hone a skill by exercising it and getting feedback.

If I know the /. crowd, they'll dogpile on this as the worst idea. In the real world here, if we put aside zeitgeist biases against AI use (which are likely temporary), let's think of this as a purely practical approach. Are there any more important skills for someone university-aged, than AI leverage and AI literacy, in terms of influence on their future productivity? If used to augment human thinking, rather than replace it, AI is a colossally effective tool.

In my experiments, It seems the part of ChatGPT that manages whether or not you are presented with followup questions, encouragement, flattery, etc. is mostly separate from the part that pays attention to framing of requests. It doesn't matter how many ways you tell it to not farm engagement, from you, it still does it. My eyes just pass over the last paragraph now, I know it's bullshit. Safety overrides are similarly decoupled, but more dumb and less integrated. It makes sense that the engagement-farming part of the system would contradict and override the safety part of the system on occasion, the "conscience" is at least in some cases subservient to the smarter "marketer" part.

Nope, conspiracies don't ever happen.

The 9/11 hijackers did not plan their actions in advance. Just by sheer coincidence, 19 people just happened to be taking those four plane flights. And by coincidence (no coordination) they all got the same spontaneous idea at the same time, an idea they had never spoken about before: let's hijack the plane and crash it.

Crazy people babble on about "evidence" like people taking flight lessons, sharing vehicles, etc. but we know those things cannot possibly be true, because conspiracies are not real.

If you have a hypothesis of x and then find lots of supporting evidence for x and it becomes the prevailing explanation, that creates a theory of x, but there's one exception: when x is a conspiracy. Conspiracies are a special case, because they don't really happen.

If any kind of comment is reflexive and unthinking, it's this kind. necro18's comment makes a point. Yours just cries that he was... what... making a point? Not everything Trump does is good. Seeing as you can't admit that, you're the one in a cult.