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Student economist
I don't think LLMs are just another tool, neutral.
I think the fundamental premise of the technology is that human consciousness has no meaning or value. This is something a lot of capitalists and their managers implicitly believed, and now it's becoming explicit.
In Marxist terms: a commodity has a dual nature, use value and exchange value. Human consciousness, desire, and empathy define use value. The premise of LLMs is that only exchange values exist and use values are an illusion.
Housing – A voice on the housing crisis – issue 1 https://rahu.org.au/housing-issue-1-november-2024/
Scientist Who Taught Rats How To Drive Explains Why She Did It
"Although cars made for rats are far from anything they would encounter in the wild, we believed that driving represented an interesting way to study how rodents acquire new skills," Dr Kelly Lambert, study author and professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Richmond, explained in a piece for The Conversation.
Not mentioned: My experience suggests that these rats had fun with driving. They enjoyed it for more than the treats provided.
#animals #learning #neuroscience #rats #fun
https://www.iflscience.com/scientist-who-taught-rats-how-to-drive-explains-why-she-did-it-76741
@harrym - they're just interested in SEEMING like they're doing something.
We know that young people are having higher and higher rates of mental illness and crises.
We know that covid affects mental health, capitalism affects mental health, impending climate doom affects mental health and we know that social media does also affect mental health.
We also know that social media is the primary way that young people access information now. And we know that young people are increasingly becoming more aware of social issues and protesting those issues.
If they ban social media it will:
1. Stop young people engaging in activism
2. Look like they're doing something to address the mental health crisis without spending any actual funding on mental health support services
It's a win-win for government, it doesn't have to make sense 😕
Some thoughts about living as a settler on stolen land.
Most people can now recognise the damage done to the Palestinian people by placing people en mass onto occupied land, but often don’t connect the dots to realising that settlers on the australian continent, on Turtle Island, or any of the other occupations are used as loaded weapons against Indigenous populations.
We can’t choose not to be settlers by having the ‘right politics’ but we can divorce our identity from the occupation, and recognise that any form of resistance is justified.
Land Back is not just a slogan, it’s the only path to justice and a soul not shattered by contradiction. An end to capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and ecocide is the first step towards our collective living salvation.
@harrym NT treating 10 year old Indigenous kids as adults is so baffling. I wouldn't be surprised if it was just an old law that they pretended to dislike, but never changed. But they actively imposed it by choice in 2024!
I don't know how anyone involved in that convinced themselves it was useful and benevolent, and not just textbook systemic oppression.
i don't really have time to rant today, but one's cooking about the presumption that #degrowth means some kind of miserable sepia-toned dustbowl future for Reasonable Western Citizens or whatever.
for now i'll just wonder aloud, what structures and institutions would benefit from this total conflation of growth with comfort and happiness? Would a system that profits from influencing all our beliefs and behaviors *dare* to position itself in our imaginations as the Only Good Thing? :thonking:
“It is possible for everybody on Earth to have their needs met and live a good life with only 30% of current global resource and energy use. That might sound unbelievable, right? Well, that’s capitalist realism for you. Because not only is it believable—it’s based on solid research and empirical data. It would, however, require ending capitalism and moving towards #ecosocialism.“
#degrowth #podcast #endCapitalism
Better Lives for All w/ @jasonhickel on #UpstreamPodcast
https://pca.st/episode/c7e5d597-cad4-48db-b965-9da7dc213bfa
the vegetables in my crisper watching me have diet pepsi and cheez-its for lunch
@RAHU I AM A LANDLORD
@kevinrns this is so intensely irrational. Read what I said instead of deciding that everyone has to explicitly agree with you, or else they're pro-oil.
@kevinrns @quietewe @thejapantimes "There are lots of energy sources."
Not so much. Almost any energy source we have requires us to harness the kinetic energy produced by gravity, otherwise basically everything else is powered directly or indirectly by solar energy. What we burn as fossil fuel is just solar energy processed by life millennia ago. The carbon released into the atmosphere was just stored harmlessly underground before we aerosolised it.
So saying there's lots of energy sources means that to continue powering the level of economic activity we sustain today, then you need to find those alternative power sources, and you need to harness the energy in a way that doesn't produce more atmospheric carbon (or other greenhouse gasses, carbon is not the only one). It can not be done. Even if we all agreed to never burn another drop of oil, the production of solar panels, and wind turbines, and hydroelectric generators would exceed the renewable capacity of earth's resources.
Meanwhile, we're absolutely cooking data centres at an incredible rate to build worthless AI apps. There is vast amounts of carbon being released that is not necessary for the survival and thriving of humanity. We can live better lives by reducing economic activity, and it is also absolutely necessary for the sake of the planet.
You will not find an energy source that can sustain the current level of economic activity without adding to the level of atmospheric carbon. Green growth is panglossian nonsense that perpetuates the same disastrous magical thinking that got us in this situation in the first place.
@kevinrns @quietewe @thejapantimes this suggests that you believe we're just burning carbon to put it in the atmosphere for fun. Why does the rise in atmospheric carbon directly correlate with the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism if it's not a direct result of economic activity?
I suggest warmly to read on of Kohei Saito's books.
Climate change is so much more than 'just burning coal'.
Its gas. It's industrial agriculture. It's deforestation. It's overfishing. It's overconsumption of crap nobody rrally needs but an advertising industry shovels into our faces. Its our economy's and governments' senseless addiction for GDP growth. And it's also 'green growth' where humanity learns nothing from the actual crisis and just replaces fossil fuels with expensive electricity containing rare materials. We can't outgrow biodiversity loss, or do you have an idea?
We could spend our time doing nice things. Useful things. Take care of ourselfes, our community and the environment. Redistribute wealth and end the neocolonial capitalist system based on global inequality and destruction of nature. To live less accelerated.
Preach ✊
Alt text: Landlords need to understand that no matter how you put it, no matter how horrible you try to paint the tenant, no matter what you say, you do not deserve income more than a person deserves a place to live. period. no matter how u slice it. i do not care.
Friday's blog post (26/07) is now posted (13:44 EAST) - Episode 2 of the second season of our Manga – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money – available now - https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=61887 #mmt
@tragiccommons @wirepair Sanders was the preferred candidate by the democratic process, but the party leadership rigged the game to make Clinton the nominee.
