strangegecko

I find the black and white thinking scary and I see as a result of social media. Nowadays you even have to argue for the possibility of nuance because everyone immediately jumps to "for or against" mode.

I strongly believe humanity needs to find ways to slow down, but the prevailing culture is for everything to go faster and faster, which doesn't leave room for nuance and non-emotional reasoning.

I have to say that I don't believe in most people's ability to teach their children critical thinking, compassion, nuance, etc. Most people barely manage to feed their kids and not mess them up too badly on the emotional side.

He said "At the very least you can be sure noone is in this for the good of the people anymore. This is about who will dominate the world of tomorrow.".

I.e. he doesn't see the US as "the good guys" either.

Pointing out the war threat from China isn't hypocritical just because you don't list all the war threats from the US at the same time.

Hypocrisy would be if the person only points out Chinese authoritarianism without acknowledging problems e.g. in US policy.

Not mentioning US problems every time they criticize CCP problems is not automatically hypocrisy, and this idea basically means you cannot criticize anything without criticizing everything someone considers just as bad or worse at the same time.

Calling a discussion on China hypocritical because it doesn't say "but US worse" is essentially trying to build in whataboutism into every discussion.

It's a symptom of increasing polarization and part of the problem.

Thanks for expanding on your story, it means a lot to hear from people with experience.

I've received a lot of thoughtful responses and am a little embarrassed because I'm probably looking in all the wrong places in my search for identity or joy or meaning. My life kind of fell apart in the last few years, first the career, then the relationship, then my sense of self as I realized all I've ever done were coping mechanisms. At this point, I'm essentially looking for a reason to live, and that places a heavier burden on anything I try than is reasonable.

I probably should have provided more context, but it's all rather off topic.

However, I guess my life is strange enough so that people made assumptions around my original statements that don't reflect my meaning.

Quite frankly, I'm friendless and have very low self esteem and have felt "not good enough" for most of my life.

I remember building Lego starships with a friend a long time ago, and I felt that on a fundamental level, nothing I could ever make would match what he could build. It was like a law of nature that I'm flawed in that way.

Any new interest that came into life also came from friends. Nothing ever originated with me, I didn't have the confidence for that. Having others to collaborate with automatically validates what I do, in a way.

It's possible I simply never learned how to self validate activities.

My need for validation is a very childlike one, it's rooted in emotional neglect. I remember my mom praising other people but never finding praise within our family. One of many things that planted seeds of this sense of fundamental inferiority. Then life solidified that in various ways.

I need to force myself to do almost everything. Simply saying it's a waste of time because of that isn't practical unless I give up on life entirely.

In practice, it's not binary. I'm interested because I want to make music similar to that which I like listening to.

Sometimes I get enjoyment out of it, but sometimes I lose interest maybe because I'm facing a frustration.

My question of wasting time is connected to "can I even create something worth listening to". If nothing I could make is worth listening to, then I guess I would feel the process of creation is pointless.

I've heard others write about how what they produce is worth listening to, to them. I think that is enough, but I also think I lack confidence in my own judgement. Almost like I need someone else to confirm my validity. I have recognized that as a result of emotional neglect, but I haven't figured out how to fix it.

> For me it is beyond trying to make money or become famous,

To clarify, when I speak of "approval", I'm not imagining a successful career or financial success. It's much more basic, i.e. having a few people tell me they genuinely like something I created would do that.

> it is simply to enjoy the journey and the creativity that comes with creating music.

It's unfortunately not simple for me (again, context of long term burnout / depression etc). If I only go by enjoyment, I will watch TV and maybe read and go on bike rides until the end of my days. But that is not fulfilling in the long term. I have a creative drive, but it's rather intermittent and not enough to consistently want to do the work involved. I'm trying to nurture it.

Thanks, I like this answer. I think part of my problem is more general, a struggle to enjoy something when I can tell I'm not good at it. It's kind of a circular problem, I will need to spend more time on it to get better and I need to conjure confidence that I could do so out of the ether.

I have experienced the process you're talking about, although to some degree I feel it's symptomatic of a lack of skill. I start out with some kind of inspiration in mind, but end up with a compromise between what I can do and what sounds good when I fiddle around with things. Part of me feels dissatisfaction that I don't know which knobs to turn to get what I want, but I suppose that's just the normal learning process (albeit less structured than those I have gone through in the past, which is its own obstacle sometimes).

> AI couldn't make my friends smile at me as I play them my music I've made, that's quite literally priceless.

Can I ask how you share music with friends? I guess this is part of my problem, I don't really have anyone I could share with or collaborate with. The few people in my life don't listen to the type of music I like.

I'm trying to learn music production with a DAW, sometimes I wonder if I'm wasting my time. Part of my reason for trying this was reading how creative endeavors can be therapeutic (I'm dealing with burnout/depression/cptsd).

I'm at the stage where sometimes I make something that sounds good (to me) but I know it requires work (in the "not fun" sense) to finish it and even then, it will likely never be appreciated by anyone but myself.

Which isn't a problem if the process itself is joyful, but I have to admit I've always struggled to enjoy anything that doesn't involve other people in some way (shared goal or approval of some form).

None of these problems are "new", but I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent. Kind of wondering how others are affected by all this, if at all.

I'm pretty sure that is advice from the last millennium that is no longer taught.

Yeah. That's leagues better than what I get in Taiwan. The alert often arrives when the building is shaking or even after. I've never had a meaningful headstart.

IMO this is aggressively unfriendly to the rest of the team that didn't consent to part of the team refusing to play.

There are so many other ways to chat and make friends without breaking tem balance.

The problem is a disconnect between management and those who build.

My thoughts when PE forced Agile on my employer were dismissed as "you're the technical expert, we're the process experts".

As someone without decision power, you read words of empowerment but your reality is a different one, and you're left resolving that dissonance on your own (quietly, otherwise you get pushed aside).

Those unhinged people might be busy in social media bubbles, fighting endless pointless battles (or simply doom scrolling) until they're too exhausted to do anything.

Profitability doesn't imply infinite ability to scale. Of course they will want to prioritize their most profitable customers when they hit capacity issues.

I reject your premise, but your conclusion is not surprising considering it.

I couldn't imagine an emptier life than one where the only thing that matters is procreation. We're not Pacific Salmon.

Constant military drills around Taiwan isn't peaceful or responsible.

China is bullying lots of countries in the SCS (ramming Philippine coast guard ships, building military installations in the SCS, ...). Not peaceful or responsible.

Agreed. I actually don't want more generations of humanity. The degree of abuse and destruction and selfishness is too depressing.

I grew up with emotional neglect and all sorts of mental health struggles that grew from that, so I find the cavalier attitude people have towards parenting and how people in the world treat each other in general appalling.

My parents (and honestly most, in my opinion) were not qualified to be parents. They were deeply broken themselves and didn't even have awareness of that.

I know humans could do better, but looking at the state of things, greed and hatred and aggression in all forms from interpersonal to wars are propagating themselves as the most successful traits. In a dog eat dog world, I'd much rather leave everything to animals, at least they don't destroy the entire planet when they maul each other

> Please. Now is objectively the best, safest time to have children. When western societies had high birth rates the expectation was basically "it is a coin toss whether a child will survive until adulthood and then they will have to deal with wars, famines and epidemics".

This argument is rather one dimensional. If you're trying to solve the problem in modern developed society, you can't look to what happens at a more primal level, you need to address the actual concerns people are living with.

We have more choice and visibility into options and unfair power structures now, and unless your solution is to remove choice again, then looking back to a time when people depended on children for survival and safety isn't going to offer much relevant insight. Instead it's going to lock you into positions with no way out.

"In the middle of negotiations" is arguably more and more used as a carte blanche to do whatever you want in the meantime. Prominent recent example being Putin pretending to be ready to negotiate for peace while bombing Ukraine.

The question is really whether negotiations were going on in good faith with the actual goal of realistic compromise.

None of us know that side, I would assume.

I understand they are separate processes (compacting memories vs training new models), it just surprised me to read that my chats are used for training.

This is how it's presented: "Temporary chats Opens in a new window don't appear in Recent Chats Opens in a new window or Gemini Apps Activity Opens in a new window and aren't used to train models or personalize your experience."

I'm guessing you're maybe on iOS? I don't see these UI elements, not in the App on my phone nor in direct web access.

On the web app, I see the "temporary chat" option but no toggle. It tells me temporary chats aren't used for model training. I thought I remembered that chats of Pro customers aren't used for that in any case. Hard to keep track of all this stuff.

Ultimately, I think the crossover memory is useful, but I'd really like to know exactly what's in there and an ability to validate/adjust, not just on/off.

Is there more detailed information how this works? I used to assume that it can be beneficial to switch to a new chat to avoid having took much irrelevant context in the interaction. How does this personalization happen, how does it decide which parts are relevant from one conversation to another?

It doesn't seem like there's a way to inspect or alter what kind of information Gemini had saved as "important information" about me (apart from deleting chats entirely, apparently).

The tell I remember was for Biff

I have nothing smart to say, but it's one of those games I played as a kid and I feel nostalgic seeing its title pop up here more than 3 decades later. For some reason, somewhat boring seeming games were among my favorites.

I'm still proud of figuring out that one of the hardest players had a tell that let you predict which corner he was going to target, thereby making him easy to defeat (that was on the Amiga version, I'm not sure if it was universal).

They've both become more adversarial. China has been using economic blackmail to advance political goals for a long time (e.g. wrt Japan and Taiwan and SEA). They also continue to expand military based in the SCS that don't belong there, hold exercises to simulate blockades outside of China. Etc.

There is no "promise".

The 2027 date was a guideline for their military to be "ready", which they may not be either. That is a far cry from the decision to actually make a move. They will only do that if they're certain it will work out for them, and as things stand, it is very risky for Xi.

I can't speak for FB. But I know a local (non-US) real estate company which does crap like this (they also love to disable right click and detect when browser tools are open and programmatically close the tab/page when that happens), and they're not paying much. I'm guessing it's double of minimum wage, which isn't high here.

How do home owners get into trouble from falling prices if they're just living in their home?

Sure, if they need to move and sell, the price difference might be less favorable to them, but having to weigh cost vs benefit of moving is a fact of life one way or another.

It's a strange expectation to have that home values should act as an investment that can only ever go up.

Letting that expectation influence policy on making space for living available is one of the root causes of this crisis.