smeej

The thing I hate the absolute most about ChatGPT and that ultimately made me quit using it is that it absolutely will not stop making suggestions at the ends of its replies, asking me if I want some specific thing next.

Not once, not a single time, has it ever been something I actually wanted. I'm sick of telling the damn thing "No."

I have researched every possible setting. I have tried every possible prompt. But apparently "You are a helpful AI" is built into it at some non-overridable system level, where no matter what you tell it nor where, it will not stop making suggestions.

The prospect that it could now initiate conversations is like my own personal hell. I thought the existing system was the most obnoxious functionality anyone could build into a system. Now, not only have I found out I was wrong, but I'm afraid to assume this next version will be the last in this parade of horrors.

I haven't had any of those apps installed for years. It's using the web versions in my browser that kills.me, because I can't get by without a browser.

Yes, because that's what adding government influence does--benefit users lol

I think the developers want these AI tools to be likable a heck of a lot more than they want them to be useful--and as a marketing strategy, that's exactly the right approach.

Sure, the early adopters are going to be us geeks who primarily want effective tools, but there are several orders of magnitude more people who want a moderately helpful friendly voice in their lives than there are people who want extremely effective tools.

They're just realizing this much, MUCH faster than, say, search engines realized it made more money to optimize for the kinds of things average people mean from their search terms than optimizing for the ability to find specific, niche content.

With all the data companies certainly have about traffic flow, it boggles my mind that there isn't a company out there selling city-wide "traffic light optimization" where they come in, analyze the data, and set the traffic lights to optimize traffic flow. Heck, sell it as a subscription where the analysis continues running and factors in things like major events or road closures automatically.

Noise and air pollution would go down. Time waiting in traffic would go down. Crashes would go down.

Of all the things that have been optimized in the worod today by algorithmic analysis of data, it just surprises me that this hasn't been one of them.

I was looking for this response! I am in one of those parts of America where the complete absence of other cars is interpreted as a green light, even if nobody bothers to set them to turn to blinking red/yellow during the low traffic hours.

> The only reason people think otherwise is because because of alleged technical infeasibility.

Some people think otherwise because they trust each other, and understand that specialization allows efficiency and economies of scale.

Even if it's stupid easy to run five servers at home, there's sure to be one person who likes maintaining them more than the other four.

It's stupid easy to load and unload the dishwasher, but my sister didn't like handling the dirty dishes and I didn't like running around and putting them away, so I loaded and she unloaded, and we were both slightly but meaningfully better off on a daily basis because of it. Of course we could each just load and unload our own dishes, but a slight reduction in independence and freedom (counting on each other to do our part) improves things for both of us.

People often--I'd even say usually--work together because they benefit from it, not just because they lack the technical chops to do otherwise.

What? People suck at predicting whether they will enjoy things, especially when they know little about them. Regret is staggeringly common. Look at divorce rates if you want a life decision of comparable magnitude. And the opposite is just as true, that people are constantly finding new things they enjoy, or even love passionately, when they least expected it.

Are you genuinely not already aware of the biological difference between a (haploid) gamete and a (diploid) organism? This is like 7th grade science stuff, so I want to understand if you're questioning whether there is a difference or whether the difference matters.

Zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, adolescent, and adult are all different stages of the life cycle of a human organism. Gametes are not. Before fertilization, there are gametes. Unless fertilization happens, no organism comes into being. But once it does, it is the same organism from then all the way until its death. This is a biological reality, not a philosophical one.

I guess this is kind of like what I mean.

What I really want, though, is literally just for there to be an Umbrel "Backups" app that lets me choose as a backup location one (or more) friend's Umbrel(s).

Redundancy is the main thing all these Docker-wrapper systems are missing for general use.

They're missing the key feature I'm looking for: Decentralized backup to the same devices owned by people I choose. That's the "someone else's computer" part of what I want in a "cloud."

I can already easily run such things on my home computer. It's having remote (encrypted) backups and redundancy if my own system goes down that I'm looking for.

I want something easy to set up that lets me easily backup things like this within a user-chosen circle of family or friends. Build my own trusted "micro cloud."

And, the author is right.

Most people do not give a rat's ass about the security of their data. They know their social media apps are tracking where they go and who they meet, and they'll say it's creepy if you ask them, but they don't actually care enough to lift a finger to do anything about it.

The one thing I desperately wish Umbrel shipped with was an easy way to network with other Umbrel users for backup and accessibility. Let people set limits in terms of how much storage they're willing to allocate to others. REQUIRE end-to-end encryption on backed up files. But help people create their own community micro-clouds using each other's computers.

To me, the risk of backing things up in one building is too high, but the inconvenience of going even somewhere else in my own town regularly enough to rotate my backups is too high. But if my family members and I could easily back up each other's systems from our various states? Or my group of dorky college friends who are now all over the world could easily share with each other? We'd be all over it.

Of course there is, but when the perspective being asked is, "What's it like to raise a child with DS?" the only people who validly have an opinion are parents of kids with DS.

A different N==1, a friend and coworker of mine had a son with DS at 23. He's now the oldest of six children. They're doing great, and he's a terrific big brother.

I think the studies matter because N needs to equal more than 1 to get a sense of how it goes for the people who do it.

- Parents: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3353148/pdf/nihms37...

- People who have DS: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3740159/pdf/nihms37...

- Siblings of people with DS: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.c.30101

The perspective in question is about what it's like to raise a child with Down Syndrome.

Why on EARTH would the opinions of people who were so scared of the experience that they never tried it at all even for a minute be relevant to that perspective?

Yes, but none of those are of the human species. A Hunan zygote is a unique living human organism, and I think history has shown us we must at least be very, very careful when we start arguing that some unique living human organisms are different enough from the unique living human organisms that matter that it should be morally acceptable to kill them.

Maybe this really is different from all the things about which we've later lamented, "Never again!" but we certainly ought not consider that criterion easily satisfied.

I'm not doing any such thing. I'm just answering what's in the minds of many ethicists.

Here are a couple:

- Parents: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3353148/pdf/nihms37...

- People who have DS: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3740159/pdf/nihms37...

- Siblings of people with DS: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.c.30101

What is the objective standard? Subjectively, surveys consistently report that those who have DS and their families consider it a better outcome, so I'd like to know more about the details of an objective standard that ignores or overrides the reporting of those closest to the experience.

How long ago was this?

I ask because segregation like that was considered standard of care decades ago, but has not been in decades now too, so if it was recent, it's not following current best practices, and if it was long ago, it's worth noting that this is no longer the standard of care, indeed because it wasn't helpful and people would not choose it.

Surveys consistently indicate that people with DS, their family members, and people who know them consider their lives better because of it.

That's a benefit.

Do you really see that as a "norm" being met by a majority of the population today? I don't think most people's lived experience is anything like that.

The line between "haploid gametes" and "diploid organism" doesn't seem arbitrary. There's a clear and meaningful difference between a gamete and an organism from a biological perspective.

As the percentage of adults of ordinary abilities who fail to launch continues to rise, I wonder if we'll stop seeing this as a deficit specific to DS and other intellectual disabilities.

I wonder how familiar you are with the reality of a life with DS today. Certainly some children with DS are dependent their entire lives, but others marry, have jobs, support themselves, teach others, etc. And on the whole, both individuals with DS and their family members report higher levels of happiness and satisfaction with their lives than others.

I can say with absolute sincerity that if I happen to conceive a child with DS, I will feel like I won the genetic lottery. Not saying you do or should have the same values, but dismissing the experience of the families who do have these children in them because you have a different set of values that would make it undesirable for you isn't fair either.

People in privileged or powerful positions often would.

Many ethicists value the continuation of someone's--anyone's--(literal) life over the continuation of anyone else's lifestyle.

I'm not arguing whether you should or shouldn't agree with them, nor saying anything about in which cases. It's just one of the primary things going on in the minds of those people, and you said you wondered.

What? Are you talking about real, live people with Down Syndrome? Surveys have consistently shown that they and those who live with them (which is no safari) are happier than everyone else. That wouldn't make much sense if "most" of what they bring to the world is "unpleasant interactions."