Trying to find my place in an alienating world.
Matrix user - @seeingred:genzedong.xyz
I’m in a similar boat. I ended up getting rid of my car and a bunch of other expenses that were not bringing me joy and were a drain on me. As a result, I’ve been able to save a lot as a bulwark against the need to constantly perform. It doesn’t help though, because I still need to go to a place I don’t want to be for too many hours per day. It’s not like I could survive indefinitely if I stop working.
I would like to have a kid, but can’t afford to. My wife also is trying to get her career off the ground and so we are not really in the best position. I’m well off enough for our current life, but if we move to a bigger space and have to start paying for all that is required, the math doesn’t math anymore.
Maybe in a few years we’ll reconsider before we are too old
It really is like this. I have a friend who’s family grew up in the Soviet Union, and left during the collapse (he was born after). He is vehemently against Communism, but he’s also strongly against capitalism. It’s a bit frustrating to talk with him because he’ll agree with me right up until I start to talk strategy or historical context around the Soviet Union.
I always find it silly how humanoid robots almost never turn in a way that looks easy. They do a small shuffle and it takes multiple steps to turn 90 degrees.
I guessing that it’s not a trivial problem to solve. Or maybe there are hardware limitations that don’t allow human like movements. Like, maybe the hip and leg sockets are not able to make certain motions. Otherwise, it’s something that could easily be solved through reinforcement learning. Maybe it’s just never been a priority either.
I know that from an economic perspective, having a robot that can do a human task slowly but for less than it takes to hire a human for a proportional amount of time makes sense. And if we want to reduce mundane human working hours under socialism, it makes sense to build these sorts of robots. Especially as their abilities increase (more dexterity, better sensors, better software, etc.). Right now they feel super gimicky, but I can see the potential.
That bit at the end where the one bot charged the other bot was kind of cute.
What is this even supposed to mean!? I guess the reader needs to only see Russia as some mythologized evil to make that sentence make sense with the rest of the article.
I definitely get that. I was somehow able to get through it because it was what I was focused on at the time, and it still took me a while.
It really is worth reading. To make it easier, I suggest a reading group, or a reading companion podcast, or the audio version.
This has truely been a wonderful thing to see. I do wonder about what actions will be taken by the west in response to this.
At least 小红书 seems to be in the position that they want to allow the western users to keep using their platform non-region locked.
I’m the same way, and have a friend with a good memory. Every time we meet up he talks about all the DnD games we played and different things we had done in the past and I only really remember, like, half of it.
I’ve kept journals in the past, but I rarely stick to it. It’s interesting to return to those after a while.
That’s true, on a non human timescale the progress is nearly impossible to predict, especially with novel technology. For example, when space travel was an early concept, we thought travelling the stars was a forgone conclusion. We now know that any exploration in that front will be locked behind either breakthrough science or will be limited to slow generation ships, or robotic exploration.
That a technology capable of producing human level intelligence, or beyond does feel like a certainty since there is no reason to believe that the process of intelligent thought is limited to a biological substrate. We haven’t discovered any fundamental physical laws that stop us from doing this yet. Key issues to solve beyond the hardware problem come into effect with alignment, understanding the key fundamentals of consciousness and intelligence, understanding different types of minds beyond those of humans, and better understandings of emergent phenomena. But these areas will be explored in sufficient detail to yield an answer within time.
I will have to read these other books, I’m definitely interested in picking up some more good books.
We definitely have a series of breakthroughs needed before I can see any possibility of human consciousness uploads, to say nothing of the resources required to simulate that intelligence. Any simulation of intelligence requires resources, it may be plausible that we can bring the resources required below the resources for keeping a human alive. That being said, I’m not sure it’s the only logical progression of technology.
I’m partial to the concept of artificial realities presented in the “Culture” book series.
In that series, the biological population in the “Culture society” is well educated, truly free and provided anything they could want by purpose built extremely compassionate AI. Then simulated world’s are primarily an afterlife or an alternative to the physical world.
They also had artificial intelligence and uploaded biological intelligence interact with the physical world through robotic presences.
There were some interesting concepts that came out of that, like highly religious societies producing horrific “Hell” afterlife when they realized that metaphysical afterlifes were not experimentally verifiable.
I had issues with some of the takes of the author, but it was an interesting read.
Oh nice! I wouldn’t mind a re-read of it before jumping into volume 2. Especially if the language is easier to follow. Even just a re-read of some key chapters.
It’s so frustrating to read anything about IMF loans because most summaries are all euphemistic economic jargon. Then you read past the summary and while the material is still opaque, they’ll have snippets where they explain in plain language what they want.
I assume this is an attempt to re-shore manufacturing, especially if as many of us expect, many countries choose to take the tarrif hit so that they can keep trading in their own currency between eachother.
It’s a strategic bet, bring home some manufacturing while hurting those who defy the empire. It’ll certainly reduce the availability of certain goods in the US as countries choose other markets. This likely would help to encourage some level of reshoring, or at least increase pressure from the ruling class to force more coups of other countries to force them back onto the dollar system.
Whether this will backfire or not will is something that is very hard to predict.
This is definitely good news. It’s too bad they didn’t go as far as Cuba on their most recent rewrite of family law, but I’m glad things are moving in the right direction.
I hope Didi gains custody of her son soon enough, that will also be a win when it happens.
This was certainly something. Many points were just horrible, but there was a sprinkle of good positions.
My takeaway was they seek to be connected with both west and east, which probably means connecting to the BRI. Improvements to employment (full employment?) and cost of living are also on the table. They recognize that America, and the west more generally is on the decline and that there is effectively no leadership in that space.
The far right wing screed against LGBTQ and immigration was really horrible to read. Just goes to show that the western culture of hate is alive and well. I’m sure there was more horrible stuff that they said, but I only skimmed the majority of the headings after I got through the first fee sections.
The fact that they are centering companies in their plan seems like a bad idea unless they plan to nationalize key industry (doubt). Maybe someone more well read could speak more to their actual plan here. We know that capital generally will reject full employment unless it is forced to do so. So they have contradictory goals. That being said, contradiction can obviously be managed if it is understood and there is sufficient power/will to do so.
I’m definitely curious about the self cleaning property, and how easily it is to produce (is the process sustainable, toxic, expensive reagents, etc.) That was the biggest issue with a lot of the previous radiative cooling surfaces. If I have time I’ll try to read into it more.
There was a neat video on how to make your own from readily available material, but not from cellulose, but it had issues with being clean and application onto surfaces. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRnEm-B3AI&t=1s
You too!
Flow batteries seem very promising, but the chemistry required needs more scale/external funding to be viable.
There were some thermal battery retrofits for coal power plants using carbon and steam that looked interesting in principal, though cost and logistics are not fully solved problems, and the round trip efficiency was rather bad compared to other storage methods.
There were also some molten metal batteries that have been working towards useful scale over the past decade or so. They had cheap and abundant matetial inputs and significantly long charge discharge.
There are many neat options out there. I think researching and building out each as they become viable would help to improve system resiliency and long term viability.
Its a vague statement. Not specific enough to be true or false.
We can be more specific by saying something like, “inventions and ideas will become refined and widespread when they are beneficial, useful, and practical.” Or maybe “necessity is a crucible for refining ideas and inventions.”
Even these are only roughly applicable as a generalization and a statement could only be said to be true when given specific conditions and detailed investigation.
For example, the basics of steam power were understood back in ancient Rome, but they didn’t make any steam engines to convert heat to useful work. Why? Because they didn’t need to. They also likely didn’t have the requisite industry to make and maintain them in any useful capacity. The engine was invented before it was necessary, but it didn’t become widespread until material conditions made it useful.
Even ideas like socialism have existed for a very long time, but the only place we see it kicking off (so far, inshallah) is within the places that need it the most. Was it invented in those places? No. Was it refined through those struggles? Of course it was.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing Microtopia which is a game about ants that are microprocessors/mechanical. It is a factory simulator, but the base components are the ants and production buildings.
The ants have a lifespan, so you are managing them as a resources that is also required to make more of themselves. And there are not any belts or inserters as in most games, but instead the ants act as the logistics system, the resource gathering system, and the productive system.
It’s a slightly fresh take on the genre, and it was fun to learn the novel systems. However, it really could use some QOL and some options for lower graphics settings.
These sorts of games are fun for me because they allow me to solve small problems that slowly lead to complex systems. I really enjoy the feeling of accomplishment from building something complex like this.