testfactor

joined 2 years ago
[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

While preventable child deaths are obviously terrible, I feel like this could be overextended.

Like, how many child deaths has McDonald's caused vs guns. I'm too lazy to do the math like the other guy, but I'd presume it's comparable. (Although I suppose by the time it catches up to them they're no longer children.)

Idk, you see things like, "leading cause of death in children" and it makes the number seem huge, but it's less than 100 kids a year. And it looks like around 400/yr die from drowning in swimming pools. So if we really care about the children, we should bad swimming pools? They kill 4x the number of kids than guns.

I'm not saying guns are great. But using child deaths as part of the argument just feels like a great excuse to ban literally anything you just don't like.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Even in your made up scenario it doesn't prove the negative. Maybe your mind reading didn't work because Apple has a mind wiping device that made them forget. Maybe the crystal ball didn't work because Apple made an even more powerful "crystal ball blocking" device. You can't prove that's not what's really happening.

So no, you in fact can't prove a negative.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

As an example, the lawsuit alleged that Faust and other white, male farmers are charged a $100 "administration fee" to participate in one program that exempts women and minority farmers from paying the same fee. In another example, Faust "participates in a USDA program that guarantees 90% of the value of loans to white farmers, but 95% to women and racial minorities," according to the report.

While I'm not exactly sympathetic to the "plight of the white man," it is a little weird (if true) that the USDA can have a "white men only fee" for some programs.

My understanding was that most DEI initiatives were built around breaking up old-boys-clubs by requiring preference for minority businesses when all other factors are considered equal. The above doesn't really feel like that.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world -2 points 5 months ago

Other countries don't enshrine freedom of speech the way the US does. In many countries certain types of political speech are outlawed.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago (4 children)

They probably don't have the warehouse capacity to store all those extra units. There's a lot of logistics involved in housing and shipping 2.2mil consoles, and "just wait" can be way harder than you would think.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (6 children)

I will say, the longer I look at that, the less confident I am that there is any difference at all, lol.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I think "improperly obtained OpenAI's data" with reference to China, probably means internal trade secrets were stolen. Wouldn't be the first time China hacked a US corporation and stole all their IP, lol.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 27 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I don't agree, but I've also literally never seen a sex toy for sale in Walmart. Like, is that a thing?

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Tbf, the bill targets "retail stores," not specifically Walmart.

[–] testfactor@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago (3 children)

In 1962 Phillip K Dick put out a book called "Man in the High Castle." In it there was a scene that stuck out to me, and seems more and more relevant as this AI wave continues.

In it a man has two identical lighters. Each made in the same year by the same manufacturer. But one was priceless and one was worthless.

The priceless one was owned by Abraham Lincoln and was in his pocket on the night he was assassinated. He had a letter of certification as such, and could trace the ownership all the way back to that night.

And he takes them both and mixes them up and asks which is the one with value. If you can no longer discern the one with "historicity," then where is it's value?

And every time I see an article like this I can't help but think about that. If I tell you about the life and hardship of an artist, and then present you two poems, one that he wrote and one that was spit out by an LLM, and you cannot determine which has the true hardship and emotion tied to it, then which has value? What if I killed the artist before he could reveal which one was the "true" poem? How do you know which is a powerful expression of the artist's oppression, and which is worthless, randomly generated swill?

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