In my experience, it’s because as part of becoming millionaires they also become obnoxious money-obsessed losers who are totally unenjoyable to talk to

Yeah this is the kind of thing where you really need statistics. This sticks out because it’s a prominent example of something new, an autonomous vehicle, doing something notable - killing an animal for the first time (or at least one of the very first well-publicized times on record).

For people’s reaction to this to be that this is because it’s an autonomous vehicle is the same sort of cognitive bias that causes things like, " The first person to get a math problem wrong in class was a girl so it seems like girls are bad at math". When of course it could be that the probability of boys and girls getting problems wrong is equal, and that the girl was simply the first one to get a unlucky roll on the dice of the universe. It could even be that boys are more likely to get problems wrong, and the girl was especially unlucky. It could in fact be that girls are more likely to get problems wrong, too, but this single instance doesn’t give us enough evidence for that. It could be that boys actually have gotten more problems wrong, but we only hear about the girl getting the problem wrong due to sociological biases, or vice versa. Etc.

I get that we shouldn’t trust corporations, and it’s not fun to defend a corporation, but it is important to defend rational thinking. And the rational way to approach this is to employ statistical methods to judge whether a vehicle being autonomous truly makes it a bigger risk to animals in the road or not. Any other line of reasoning is not right for this kind of problem.

Seriously. What candidate is it that this innocent perfect figure here represents? Which politician is it that is like this?

It kind of sounds like you’re talking about it purely as a thought experiment or as something to inspire other philosophical thinking. But I think the issue most people have with the simulation theory is when people think that it’s actually the way that the world is or think that it’s worth investigating the way that the world is just because it theoretically could be the way the world is. But theoretically the world could have been created by the god of the Bible or any of the other million explanations proposed by the million other religions that have existed. Almost every religion proposes a hypothesis that could indeed explain reality, but just because it could explain reality doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to investigate it.

I agree with you that all the questions you raised are interesting and worth thinking about, but none of that really relates to thinking that we actually live in a simulation. You’re just using the idea that we live in a simulation as inspiration to start thinking about these other ideas. But actually thinking that we live in a simulation is much less reasonable.

Heard about this story a few days ago and it’s pretty annoying that none of these so-called news agencies could be bothered to provide the extremely relevant pictures of the thing. It’s sooooo much worse than I imagined. It ain’t “child like” that’s a straight up child sex doll. I was thinking maybe it was some dubious anime loli looking thing, which would still have been bad, but this is crazy. Good job France for taking serious action against this scumbag company. Shein, Temu and the like are such filth and this sort of thing exemplifies why. Their sketchiness leaves room for things like this to exist. Saving this for next time the ignorant people in my life insist that buying clothes on Shein is not bad.

Yep, even on the side of the right ideas, half the people still got there via the same wrong methods that the people on the wrong side use. They just coincidentally happened to land on the right side instead. It is quite disheartening, exactly

Not sure. Google patched it by just limiting the amount of blurs an app could request: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/native/+/20465375a1d0cb71cdb891235a9f8a3fba31dbf6

Yeah, far be it from me to rush to the defense of religion, but this is not quite as scary as it sounds. You could very well have a religious person answering this survey who absolutely hates Trump and thinks he is a force for evil. Like you said, most Christians believe literally every event is part of God’s plan (which is quite reasonable given their axioms tbh).

In fact the article clarifies this:

"That survey, of a nationally representative sample of 8,937 Americans from across the U.S., found that overall, 4 percent believed God chose Trump because He believes in his policies, while another 32 percent think Trump’s election is part of God’s plan, although God may not necessarily agree with his program. Nearly half, 49 percent, said God doesn’t get involved in elections, while 14 percent said they don’t believe in God.

When it comes to white evangelicals, those numbers are much higher, with 8 percent believing God ordained Trump because He agrees with his policies, and 63 percent thinking his election is part of God’s plan, whether the deity agrees with his policies or not. Their beliefs held firm with regards to Joe Biden’s election in 2020 with 67 percent of white evangelicals believing his victory was part of God’s plan – but with the stark difference that a negligible percentage believed that God agreed with his policies."

"Our end-to-end attacks simply measure the rendering time per frame of the graphical operations… to determine whether the pixel was white or non-white.”

This is a prime example of something that is so simple, yet elegant, and brilliant. Fantastically cool and scary.

Thank you for saying it so I didn’t have to. It’s so disappointing to see people on “my side” say dumb crap like “wait so if ur anti antifa that means ur calling urself fascist haha 🕵️‍♂️🕵️‍♂️🧠 Q.E.D republikkkan”. Like fuck me. Just like you said it’s the same shit as Republicans saying “oh you’re socialist??? Google what Nazi stands for sweaty 🤭🤗”

You’d think people would learn not to use shitty reasoning when it’s used against them. But it seems like instead people only care that the reasoning is bad if it contradicts them. And as soon as they want to throw things at their enemy they’ll pick up whatever flawed garbage they can, not worried about how it reflects on them or how it undermines the state of reasonable public discourse. Any weapon is valid as long as it’s used against the Enemy. So disappointing.

Note: My rant against people here is not directed at OP who seems to be genuinely confused about the dynamic of misrepresentative naming. And to clarify further, it doesn’t matter that antifa isn’t a misrepresentative name: it’s opponents think it is.

Don’t think the fact that corporations use VPNs will protect us. There are all sorts of products that are legal for corporate purchase but not for individuals. Typically dangerous equipment, chemicals, tools, etc. The precedent is there as long as you can establish that a VPN is dangerous or unfit for the public. I’m very sure this will be the angle taken for Phase 2 of the “finally fuck up the internet for everyone” plan.

All politicians are united in their love of surveillance, as it allows them to subjugate the population via panopticon-induced threats. “We are always watching, so don’t try anything”

My issue is that the ones who aren’t bothering you with it are essentially not doing so because they know other people in their group are already handling that for them. Religions, especially those you named, come with a mandate to spread themselves and force others to comply with their standards.

It’s kind of like a really selfish kid who would steal all your lunch every day, but he’s not strong enough to do so, so instead he’s just nice and kind and smiles at you and lets you be. But if he ever gets strong enough, he’ll start taking your lunch every single day forever.

The religious people who aren’t forcing it down your throat either (1) think someone else is doing it for them so they don’t have to, or (2) don’t think they could get away with it without being counterproductive to their cause, and are waiting for a more opportune moment.

These are people who believe that they factually know what constitutes objective good. Imagine if raping children was legal and you knew your neighbor was raping children. You might just leave him alone about it because, what can you do? But the moment you have an opportunity to vote for a law to outlaw it, the moment you have a chance to kill him and get away with it, etc. you’ll try to act against him. Your polite indifference to him is a lie, because from your perspective he is committing an absolute and unforgivable wrongdoing that MUST be stopped. This is how religious people are to you, except for instead of it being about reasonable things like raping children, it’s about stupid bullshit that makes no sense, like the fact you don’t pray every day at a certain time, or the fact that you’re attracted to the same sex, or the fact that you don’t want the ten commandments posted in schools.

Oh derp, I saw “October 9th” and glossed over the rest. Yeah no surprise. Telling a joke like that in that environment might get you killed. Not that they see any problem with that I guess.

Extremely disgusting. I already found most of these people uncool and unfunny but I thought Bill Burr was at least alright (still didn’t think he was funny, but he at least seemed to have sane political views - guess not). The only way any of them can make this a respectable choice is if they’re doing it Trojan Horse style, and they’re planning to tell a bunch of jokes shitting on Saudi Arabia and calling them out for their infinity of evil acts. Not getting my hopes up for that, though.

The Guardian remains respectable and has not pulled punches in this article at least.

Yeah I swear every time religion appears innocuous it’s actually just incubating its next wave of evil. At some point people need to say enough is enough. No more being tolerant of religion or polite about it. They should be treated with the same two-faced smiling disgust they treat us with.

Ahhh I see, I was confused about what you were getting at. My mistake. And yes that’s very true…hmm. More dire than I was even thinking then…

Honestly this is exactly the kind of thing that taxes and governments are supposed to be good for handling. Failures within failures I suppose!

Yes, it does apply to every operating system - hence, the differentiator becomes whether the operating system has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on dedicated security development. This is why a lot of companies now don’t even let you use Android devices for BYOD aside from Google or Samsung, because they’re the only companies with the resources to keep their security really up to date.

I think the big problem with this, as far as I know, is that this code needs pretty rapid security updates that require a fairly huge and experienced team of people to both find, understand and implement the security changes. Otherwise it becomes very insecure very quickly. So yeah we can always use 2019 Android, etc. But it would just put you at a huge security risk.

Just because the doomsday cultists happen to share the same name for their beliefs as people who are substantially less insane than them

Yes, the other Christians are who I am referring to here. Although I do believe that the fundamental way of religious thinking (belief contrary to logic) does inevitably degrade into the behavior of the doomsday cult, in the same way that a seed inevitably becomes a plant given the conditions that it latently seeks out. So while I do not hate your everyday type Christian, I do think it is important not to create the conditions that they seek out, as that will result in a hate-worthy entity before long. The particular conditions, I believe, are an environment where they cannot be questioned, an environment where logical thinking is not valued, an unequal ability to disperse their beliefs while others cannot, etc. Given those conditions, harmless beliefs will expand to become harmful beliefs in the same way a liquid conforms to whatever container you put it in. This goes for any kind of belief, not just religious ones. But religion is a smart enough meme to encode the importance of creating that environment as part of its core values, which makes it a belief that is at especially greater risk of degrading into harmful behavior. This much is undeniable, as you hardly ever see people getting in doomsday cults over their favorite type of cheese or other non-religious beliefs.

So no, I don’t mean all Christians, but in the same way that all Christians think I deserve to go to hell in my current state but may still treat me with kindness in hopes of what I may become, I believe all Christians deserve to be treated with suspicion and wariness in their current state in hopes of what they may NOT become. All things considered, I think it’s a pretty de-escalating stance for me to take.