soiltype

> Most people have more time to think than they actually use during conflicts, so I expect most of the time conflicts come from people preferring to not think than because they lack the ability.

This seems to imply that intelligence only exists in deliberate, conscious thought. Do you think that's true?

Second, revolving conflicts is not the same thing as getting into them, so it's unclear why bring that up at all.

Cartman typically had the most and funniest jokes and almost always got his way. He exercised power over others and only extremely rarely did the way he acted have negative consequences for him. That's a pretty attractive role model for the type of kid who's going to watch South Park. Role models don't have to be consciously selected, that's kind of the point, you see success and you imitate it. South Park is an especially stupid show but you'll see this in plenty of TV - it's basically the sitcom model: some character will be an asshole to everyone around them, but the show will frame it as a joke and consequence-free. The writers want you to think that character is funny and you probably do if you continue watching, so if you want to be a funny person you probably start acting like an asshole. Most adults can't see that for what it is - kids are screwed.

And South Park was (is?) on TV during daytime hours, of course kids watched it.

That's a lazy and irrelevant response because, as I actually said, evidence has been provided. If it's bad evidence, say that, instead of making a new claim that someone else is an idiot, for which the burden of proof is on you.

Further, these comments tend to come with the claim that the whole thing is a CIA/FBI hoax. Guess who bears the burden of proof for that? (Don't bother guessing. It's the person making the claim.)

> What makes something funny? Usually, it's by subverting someone's predictions.

And in those other cases? You have a rigorous definition of comedy?

> You have to explain a phenomenon better than the truth to convince someone of your lie.

This is so often not true I would argue it's generally false. A story is believed because a listener "wants" to believe it. Some listeners have more or less complex criteria for acceptance.

> As in, world-building? That is more of a memory problem than an intelligence problem, though you do need to be good at compressing the whole world into what is relevant to the story. People who are worse at that will have to take more notes and refer back to them more often.

People like Tolkien and Martin? Note taking as a sign of poor skill/intelligence is a wildly novel take from my point of view.

> Also, using the adjectives 'complex, multi-faceted' is lazy here. Be more introspective and write what you really want to say.

Couldn't I say the same about your use of Introspective? Surely a more detailed phrase exists to describe what you mean.

> interpersonal conflicts... Quite often not an intelligence problem.

Oh, I think this will get at the root of our misunderstandings. I believe I've seen this attitude before. Before I jump to conclusions: Why exactly do you say this skill is not intelligence-based?

Honestly not sure if this is a bit, it's so on-the-nose... Taking it at face value, you are literally claiming to know precisely what intelligence is? You would be the first to know if so. You should probably publish quickly before someone steals your definition!

In your post is demonstrated one of the deep mysteries of intelligence: How can a smart person make such a dumb assertion? (I'll give a hint: consider that "intelligence" is not a single axis)

In the Philippines policies that landed Duterte in The Hague.

And yet, the arguments against the narrative of Uighur genocide seem to exclusively be childish insults. Seriously, I see comments just like this all the time when someone mentions Uighur genocide, of which there is some evidence, and never an actual refutation. Are simpletons those who believe evidence might indicate truth, or those who let themselves be browbeaten by tribalism into believing otherwise? I wouldn't even ask if I thought you were just a CCP bot but your post history suggests you're not.

> Consumers won’t pay for anything online

I think we should note that this is a situation created by the businesses more than the consumers. By offering "free" products they drove paid products out of the market. They didn't have to do that. But if I'm going to be as fair as possible, it's only regulation that could have stopped such a niche feom being exploited. One business or another would have eventually figured it out.

> I don't see why that's implied

Because "it wouldn't be new either, with tools like Windows Replay".

Genuinely, why would they leave any data on the table if they don't have to? That's the entire purpose of the browser.

> No time spent learning, is time wasted.

From TFA.

If you don't want to tinker, don't! But it's absurd to suggest that it's only something for children to enjoy. (30 should not be considered near the end of your life btw.) Please don't tell others they should feel bad about learning for fun because they're adults.

...and is unreliable, hence the origin of this thread.

Yeah... you're supposed to ask the 5%.

If you have a habit of asking random lay persons for technical advice, I can see why an idiot chatbot would seem like an upgrade.

This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm most interested in finding on HN. How do other developers work, and how can I get better at my work from it?

What's always interesting to me is how many of these I'll see and initially think, "I don't really need that." Because I'm well aware of the effect (which I'm sure has a name - I suppose it's similar to induced demand) of "make $uncommon_task much cheaper" -> "$uncommon_task becomes the basis of an entirely new workflow/skill". So I'm going to try out most of them and see what sticks!

Also: really love the style of the post. It's very clear but also includes super valuable information about how often the author actually uses each script, to get a sense ahead of time for which ones are more likely to trigger the effect described above.

A final aside about my own workflows which betrays my origins... for some of these operations and for others i occasionally need, I'll just open a browser dev tools window and use JS to do it, for example lowercasing a string :)

It follows by definition. If the magic, spirit, or god were testable, it becomes a part of scientific theory.

You don't know how to elaborate on your claims?

> I already wrote that even under the assumption that intelligence is a purely biological phenomenon, it does not follow that computation can produce intelligence.

See this demands definitions because I do not understand how you can say this. If intelligence is an emergent property of a physical process then I'd feel insane to assume such processes can only happen in certain meats but never in artificially created computers. I fail to see any way they can be fundamentally separated without a non-testable, immaterial "spirit" bestowing intellect on the meat computer. They're just different substrates for computation.

> We know what computation is, because we defined it as such and such.

As what? This is the cornerstone of your entire argument and you've left it as an assumption. I can infer you define computation as "those processes which happen in non-biological systems and which do not lead to intelligence." But that would be worse than useless.

Sarcasm or comically on-the-nose bad example?

The cotton gin is the literal textbook example of a technology that ethically backfires and induces magnitudes greater suffering than what it was intended to obviate. It saved and expanded the institution of chattel slavery in the USA.

> You center cognition/intelligence on humans as if it was the pinacle of it, rather than include the whole lot of other species (that may have totally different, or adjacent cognition models).

Why does that matter to their argument? Truly, the variety of intelligences on earth now only increases the likelihood of AGI being possible, as we have many pathways that don't follow the human model.

I understand all the words you've used but I truly do not understand how they're supposed to be an argument against the GP post.

Before this unfolds into a much larger essay, should we not acknowledge one simple fact: that our best models of the universe indicate that our intelligence evolved in meat and that meat is just a type of matter. This is an assumption I'll stand on, and if you don't disagree, we need to back up.

Far too often, online debates such as this take the position that the most likely answer to a question should be discarded because it isn't fully proven. This is backwards. The most likely answer should be assumed to be probably true, a la Occam. Acknowledging other options is also correct, but assuming the most likely answer is wrong, without evidence, is simply contrarian for its own sake, not wisdom or science.

Physically, maybe not, but an AGI would know that, would think a million times faster than us, and would have incentive to prioritize disabling our abilities to do that. Essentially, if an enemy AGI is revealed to us, it's probably too late to stop it. Not guaranteed, but a valid fear.

It is completely unreasonable to assume our intelligence was not evolved, even if we acknowledge that an untestable magical process could be responsible. If the latter is true, it's not something we could ever actually know.

A simple input switch can be had cheap, but I spent some time last year looking into KVM switches and came away feeling it was not worth the investment. Perhaps I've been misled? I read a lot of issues with cheap ones and the high quality ones cost more than just buying a monitor that supports multiple connections and switching itself.

> You don't affect current social sensibilities with a blog post

Do you think they hoped their blog post would have the force of law? I think the many conversations started on the front page of HN were probably more than sufficient impact. You _really_ don't need to be so defensive of the status quo.

This is a really cool project for a teen and an ambitious goal, so congratulations!

That said, I think the goal and the approach are misguided. It's probably better to take this experience and use it on a different problem, or join forces with an organization that has more momentum.

1. How would you sustain this without ads? If you take subscriptions, that will hamstring growth. You'd be threading a needle even if your app was objectively the most secure, private, and authentic social network. To date, this is an unsolved problem.

2. There are other non-commercial social networks like bluesky or mastodon. Why wouldn't people use that instead?

3. Face verification is a hard limit for me and probably most other people who avoid commercial social media. I don't see any reason to trust a random new app with sensitive PII.

4. Is face verification even meaningful anymore in the age of unchecked generative AI?

This is so fucking weird and needlessly hostile to the guy.

Many people are actually quite uncomfortable with the prevalence of video surveillance, in fact.

However, there are significant differences: 1. The camera is in a fixed position, 2. The footage is not typically shared let alone published online.

This comment doesn't engage with the topic at all - you've just used "the free market" as a pass to avoid any meaningful discussion of privacy, consent, and social contracts in the digital age. If your "solution" is literally "tough luck" (we both know "no-recording" airsoft events are extremely unlikely to exist) - what has this added to the conversation?

> (Rome itself — the exception that proves the rule

You really have to explain specifically what you mean by this phrase, or else it's typically just saying you don't actually understand the rule or the exception.

It sounds like you're claiming Rome succeeded for reasons that overcame its geographical disadvantages, and due to this growth protected itself from naval invasions. But Rome was not a maritime power during its early republic period, let alone earlier. So why didn't Carthage or anyone else just sail upriver (Rome was not on the coast, just to clarify the context) and destroy Rome? How did Rome succeed in the first place to become a maritime power capable of defying southern Italy's geography?

How does this respond to my previous comment? In trying to respond to this, I completely forgot what the context was.

As I'm reading about their scrolling philosophy, my hand gets tired and I switch to keyboard scrolling.

Oop, there is none.

I will never laud an application that breaks the most basic of keyboard functions. You can design a clever and flashy application with pointer-only UI, but you can't design a good one.

I don't think there's any reasonable way to call that a likely scenario though. If life did emerge on Mars, why wouldn't it also emerge on Earth? For both planets to have life, the most likely explanation is that it's just common.