keegomatic

keegomatic , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to noncredibledefense in Know your genocide apologists

EDIT: for those downvoting me, I would be happy to engage in a civil discussion about why you think I’m wrong, and even change my mind if I’m mistaken.

This is extremely dumb for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it’s very clearly written with a certain bias.

A (the communist) is describing a tankie. But generally someone who identifies specifically as a communist is not authoritarian, they’re closer to anarchocommunism than the reverse.

B (the lefty antifascist) describes them as a subtype of A, but antifascists are diametrically opposed to tankies, ideologically. Also, “antifascist” is a word that has long been used to label a specific group of leftists… calling them “lefty antifascists” implies that there are also “right-wing antifascists,” trying to equivocate the sides by generalizing the word. Also, most importantly, the description is 100% bullshit.

C (the hard right) a single token addition of a very generic “hard” right person, to appear balanced. No making fun of this person like in the rest of the descriptions, just a list of facts… except “always an arsehole” which I would argue most of these people would enjoy reading about themselves because they would think it was funny and kind of true. Clearly the target audience.

D (the contrarian) this is the modern right wing lowest common denominator person, and an accurate description of the archetype, but no mention of left/right in this description. Wonder why?

E (the peacenik) what? Peacenik is just another historically left-wing-associated label. These people do not have a unified view of how to end the conflict, and certainly don’t frequently suggest ceding land to an invader. That’s a really stupid take on pacifism, and it’s just another dig at the left.

This is definitely dumb and probably just plain old propaganda.

keegomatic , 10 months ago to technology in The only way to avoid Grammarly using your data for AI is to pay for 500 accounts

I see this complaint a lot but honestly I don’t quite understand what the big deal is. Not everyone is subscribed to the same communities. Personally, I’d love a feature on kbin/lemmy that rolled up duplicate posts on the client, but it’s really not that annoying for me to see a couple dupes in my feed if they’re posted in relevant communities /shrug

keegomatic , 11 months ago to nostupidquestions in Do you feel this place has gotten more.. reddit-y lately?

In my experience, this has always been a problem after a forum grows beyond a certain size. It’s not really a Reddit-exclusive thing. It’s also not related to karma/reputation-tracking, IMO.

Early adopters of a small, somewhat empty community are people who want to grow the community and encourage posting. Discussion is bright and careful in certain ways because it’s usually just a few commenters interacting with each other who all want the same thing.

Once a community grows big enough to support lurkers and a variety of topics, with multifaceted discussion happening naturally, you have a familiar effect happen: you know how people are disproportionately more likely to review a product or business if they had a negative experience than a positive one? Well, in a similar way, when there’s enough content to lurk (and not be one of the early enthusiasts who post in spite of a lack of content, as a duty to help the community grow), then lurkers are more likely to come out of the woodwork and join a discussion when they see something they disagree with or feel strongly about.

Honestly, though, it has a few silver linings. I grew up learning a lot from arguments online in various places. Sometimes they are handled well and sometimes they are handled poorly by the participants. Learn from both. It’s great to see two sides of an issue, even a petty one. It can teach you a ton about how to behave well, how to actually persuade someone on a topic, and how to avoid conflict in the first place. It can also teach you about a controversial topic you knew little about, and spark your curiosity to learn more (if only to refute something with citations) and sometimes change your opinion altogether.

The healthy/toxic dichotomy starts in your own mind. You can’t control others, but you can control yourself. So find those little positive nuggets where you can.

keegomatic , 11 months ago to politics in Democrats worry their most loyal voters won’t turn out for Biden in 2024

Ever since Obama beat Clinton 15 years ago

Jesus I thought you were exaggerating and then I did the math

keegomatic , 11 months ago to technology in Failed replication of claimed superconductor reported on arxiv

Got a source? When I first read about this people were cautiously optimistic partly because the head researcher was well-respected.

keegomatic , 11 months ago to technology in Failed replication of claimed superconductor reported on arxiv

our compound shows greatly consistent x-ray diffraction spectrum with the previously reported structure data

Uhh, doesn’t look like it to me. This paper’s X-ray diffraction spectrum looks pretty noisy compared to the one from the original paper, with some clear additional/different peaks in certain regions. That could potentially affect the result. I was under the impression from the original paper that a subtle compression of the lattice structure was pretty important to formation of quantum wells for superconductivity, so if the X-ray diff isn’t spot on I’ll wait for some more failures before calling it busted.

keegomatic , 11 months ago to technology in An indepth explanation of how LLMs work with an minimum of jargon

This is a really terrific explanation. The author puts some very technical concepts into accessible terms, but not so far from reality as to cloud the original concepts. Most other attempts I’ve seen at explaining LLMs or any other NN-based pop tech are either waaaay oversimplified, heavily abstracted, or are meant for a technical audience and are dry and opaque. I’m saving this for sure. Great read.

keegomatic , 11 months ago to technology in Brands that don't buy enough Twitter ads will lose verification

Fair enough!

keegomatic , 11 months ago to technology in Brands that don't buy enough Twitter ads will lose verification

I’m not saying this to be an asshole, because I’m happy that you got to the right conclusion eventually, but I have to clarify for history’s sake: if you thought Trump was playing 4D chess in 2015-2016 then you were being duped. Most of us understood what he was from the get-go. Claims of 4D chess have always been stupid.

Again, I’m happy that you figured it out. Everyone makes mistakes. But “we” didn’t think he was playing 4D chess. The hypothesis about Musk/Twitter above is hardly the same.

keegomatic , 11 months ago to technology in AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway

I honestly only made it a few minutes in, and there is probably plenty of merit to the rest of her perspective. But… I just couldn’t get past the “AI doesn’t exist” part. I get that you don’t know or care about the difference and you associate the term “AI” with sci-fi-like artificial sentience/AGI, but “AI” has been used for decades to refer to things that mimic intelligence, not just full-on artificial general intelligence. Algorithms governing NPC behavior and pathfinding in video games is AI, and that’s a perfectly accurate description. SmarterChild was AI… even ELIZA was AI. Stuff like GAN models and LLMs are certainly AI. The goal posts for “intelligence” have moved farther and farther back with every innovation. The AI we have now was fantasy just 20 years ago. Even just five years ago, to most people.

keegomatic , 11 months ago to youshouldknow in YSK: Imperial units are based on the metric system

I’m in my early 30s and I learned metric pretty thoroughly as early as elementary school. Grew up in Massachusetts and went to public school, for what it’s worth.