You’re correct in that it is an odd question. But just because it is a question that isn’t commonly asked doesn’t mean that it’s not one that can intuitively be solved.

And the entire point is that AI would never be trained on it. That’s how we are able to demonstrate the difference between AI and humans. For the longest while you could also ask AI how many 'r’s are in the word strawberry. And it would get this wrong. Because people don’t normally go around asking questions about occurrences of letters in words. So this wasn’t in the training data. But if you ask the same question to a human, they’re able to deduce the answer. Even though it is a peculiar question, and doesn’t get asked often. The entire point is that the AI are able to parrot little tidbits that they’ve been trained on. Like being able to walk short distances, or the environmental impact of cars, etc. But they’re not able to reason in the same way that a human can.

And what do you mean of course the car is there? Under what circumstances would your car be sitting at a car wash, without you in it, unwashed, when you want to wash your car. This is such a ridiculous leap to make. Did you drive your car to the car wash, park it, and get out to walk 50 meters away? Did somebody else drive your car to the carwash without you and just leave it there? It makes no sense.

I’m not sure I follow your logic. My /s is there because tone can be ambiguous within text. I don’t think tone is relevant to the question. Do you think that a tone indicator would have made the question more clear?

The point is that all the information is either present or implied in the question. You can spend all day nitpicking the ambiguity of questions all you want, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. There comes a point where it gets exhaustive trying to preemptively cut off follow up questions and make clarifications.

When you are in school and they give you a word problem such as “you have 10 apples and give 3 to your friend. How many do you have left?” It is generally agreed upon what the question is asking. It’s intentionally obtuse to sit there and say the question is flawed because you may have misplaced some of your apples, or given some to another friend, or someone may have come and stolen some, or some may have started to rot and so you threw them out, or perhaps you miscounted and you didn’t actually give 3 to your friend.

That’s a very good point! For that matter the car could still be at the bar where I got drunk and took an uber home last night. In which case walking or driving would both be stupid.

Or perhaps I’m in a wheelchair, in which case I wouldn’t really be ‘walking’.

Or maybe the car wash that is 50 meters away is no longer operating, so even if I walked or drove there, I still wouldn’t be able to walk my car.

Is the car wash self serve or one of the automatic ones? If it’s self serve what type of currency does it take? Does it only take coins or does it take card as well? If it takes coins, is there a change machine out front? Does the change machine take card or only bills? Do I even have my wallet on me?

There are so many details left out of this question that nobody could possibly fathom an answer!

…/s if it’s not obvious

Are they even accusing the article itself of manufacturing consent? The way I read that, it was talking about online spaces and communities falling for the manufactured consent. Which is not coming from the reporting, but from propagandists, who use the reporting to help them manufacture consent.

I’m nowhere near well versed enough on the topic to chime in. But isn’t this the same excuse people try to throw against supporters of Palestine? “Oh yeah you support ending the genocide in Palestine? Did you know they throw LGBT people off the rooftops”.

Regardless of the truth/inaccuracy of the statement. It seems like it’s not really that relevant to the conversation and just thrown out there as a cheap gotcha. Does the suppression of LGBT individuals mean that their overall quality of life hasn’t improved? Does a country have to be perfect and not have other social changes that need to be worked towards in order to acknowledge progress? This is not an endorsement of China, again I’m not knowledgeable enough on the topic. But just a criticism of this rebuttal.

Gestures broadly at the US.

While that’s true, I think by positioning ourselves at the 2nd state, it allows us to “negotiate” our way down to getting the 1st state. Its kind of like haggling. If you start at the more extreme position, opposition will (in an ideal scenario) try to find a middle ground to agree on. And that middle ground would look like the 1st state. It’s a way of combatting the ratcheting effect.

Woah. That sounds interesting. Care to elaborate?

It’s literally the artist’s self insert OC. How else are they supposed to communicate that they’re talking about a personal experience about them self and not speaking broadly on the topic? Notice how the person commissioning the NSFW art is pictured very plainly without much detail. That’s because they’re a generic stand-in. But the artist is more detailed, because they are a specific person.

Or. And hear me out here. The message of the comic is “the author thinks sex is gross. The author doesn’t like drawing sex. The author is willing to give up on those values for the right sum of money.” And it’s a tongue in cheek joke about how their opinions can be easily swayed by financial incentives, rather than a reflection of all artists.

I completely agree on the idea of voting for Harris for harm reduction. But I’m genuinely curious why you think her being elected would put us in a better position to get progressive reform. She showed that she was completely unwilling to back down or change her stance to get elected. Once she had won the election, there really isn’t any reason for her to change her stance. Even the idea that she would try to gain popularity to be reelected seems unlikely. Because if we have already proven that we’ll vote for someone not because they have good policies, but because they have less bad policies. The next election would be the same. With her most likely running for reelection. And either Trump or some other far right extremist running against her, forcing a repeat of the hypothetical 2024 election where she won.

It’s a rather bleak cycle, that makes it frustrating when people constantly hammer against the voters for not holding their nose and voting for the lesser of two evil, rather than the Democratic party in general for not listening to what their constituents want, and changing to a more populist progressive policy. I don’t agree with the protest voters, but I can at least empathize and understand where they’re coming from.

The really depressing thing is that even after losing because of it, we’re still not seeing much of a shift within the party. This should have been a wake up call for them. But it seems they still haven’t learned their lesson and seem more intent on using the Republican party as a cudgel to beat the population into voting for them, rather than actually adopting policies that make people want to vote for them.

I agree with the sentiment, but the reason they’re looking at third party apps is to avoid the control that payment processing companies have over censorship following the whole Visa/MasterCard issue.

Mind sharing what extension you use?

The thing that concerns me, is where does it stop? This is something I’ve been thinking about all through the election cycle, and even now. I understand the idea of voting for lesser evil. And that’s exactly what I did. But when you vote for the lesser evil, you are showing your support of that evil. You are sending a message that it’s an acceptable level of evil. That it’s tolerable as long as the alternative is something worse. And it allows the Democrats to keep shifting further right little by little.

We already saw that with Harris campaigning on having “the most lethal military”, and talking about how she’s going to continue building Trump’s wall. (Something Biden did, but at least wasn’t campaigning on, and acting like it’s a selling point). Maybe the next democratic candidate will be even more anti immigrant, but still pro lgbtqia+. So we have to vote for them over the Republican candidate. Then the next dem candidate is only pro lgb, but anti trans. Democrats were already talking about how Harris’s support of trans people lost her the election. When she never even openly campaigned on any trans issues as far as I saw.

And we can elect the lesser of two evils and then protest and send a message about the issues that we don’t support them on. But at the end of the day, what incentive do they have to change? What are you going to do about it? Not vote for them and get the greater evil?

Obviously voting 3rd party just splits the left leaning candidates votes and allows the right to win. But unconditional support of the democratic party seems like it just allows them to take a leisurely stroll towards the right every election. I don’t have an actual answer. But the idea of continuously voting for the lesser evil as the lesser evil becomes incrementally more evil doesn’t really sit well with me.

If you figure out what your coworkers sauce of choice is, let me know too. I love spice, but haven’t found a good staple to keep on hand.

I think it’s sort of a matter of perspective. You may feel like having an easier mode degrades the experience, but for others it makes the game enjoyable/playable to them.

Do you have the same perspective on people that like the sandbox style of the sims games and so would use cheat codes for infinite money? It certainly alters the experience in a way that is different from the intentions of the devs, and to you may degrade the experience of the game, but for other people it elevates the game, and makes it more interesting or fun for them.

A similar argument could be made about the modding scene. Although it’s community driven rather than done by the actual devs of the games, allowing people to mod the game to customize their experience with quality of life mods, or mods that make the game easier/harder allows people to tweak the game more to their tastes and what they’re looking for in a game.

You might say that if a game isn’t appealing to someone they should just play another game. But if the game is very close to the experience they are looking for, but there are a few hangups that are a deal breaker for them, why force them to look for the perfect unicorn game instead of acknowledging that allowing players to cater the game to their own tastes is better. Having an easy mode does nothing to harm you, or your experience of the game, you can still play at your desired difficulty. And it only opens the game up for other people to enjoy.

You can’t make a blind person see a painting. But you can put a braille placard in front of it with a description of the painting. Or have audio tours that describe the paintings. And to you, that may degrade the art, but for someone who otherwise wouldn’t be able to experience it at all, it allows them to at least share somewhat in the experience that everyone else in the exhibit is having.

If the brain worms tell RFK Jr. That psychedelics are actually a cancer cure, then legislation could be put forth to legalize psychedelics. But rather than allowing recreational use, or using them for a medical purpose based on scientific fact such as use in conjunction with therapy to treat depression, it could be legalized as prescribed medication for cancer. This has the drawbacks of not allowing access to people that could actually benefit from it, as well as now being used as a snake oil cure for something completely unrelated that will prevent people from getting other more effective treatment.

I think the implications here is that the reasons it gets legalized can have an impact on the specifics of the policy. Which would mean that they wouldn’t agree with the policy beyond the legalization itself.

What about Joe Biden made him sufficiently left while Kamala Harris wasn’t?

-Joe Biden wasn’t campaigning to finish building Trump’s wall. Or saying that actually it was a good idea to build the wall and the only problems were just that Trump said Mexico was going to pay for it and that he didn’t finish the job.

-Joe Biden wasn’t campaigning on being pro-fracking. And bragging about how he was the tie breaking vote for the IRA, which leased new land for fracking. (I understand there was more to this act, but Harris points to it as a way to show she supports fracking)

-At the time the genocide in Gaza hadn’t ramped up and gotten as much publicity as has now, so we didn’t get to hear Joe Biden’s stance on it.

-Joe Biden wasn’t calling to ensure America has the “strongest most lethal fighting force in the world”.

-Joe Biden didn’t align himself with the Cheneys.

You see that 10 million more Democrats voted for Biden, but stayed home for Harris and you believe the problem is with the people and not the candidate? Now granted, racism and sexism played a role in this for sure. But to attribute that much of a difference just to that? Most of the people that are deeply racist and sexist are already voting for Trump because he supports those ideas. And from what I’ve seen, the Republican voters stayed pretty consistent from last election. It was mainly a dip in Democratic voters. If the problem is with the voters and not just that Harris was an incredibly weak candidate, then why do you believe that many more people voted last election?

I watched this video when it came out and I disagree with the findings in it, because to me it seems less to indicate that people reject logic because of political affiliations, and more people are critical of studies that contradict prior knowledge.

People interpreting results on the skin cream have absolutely no frame of reference. There isn’t a brand name associated with the skin cream that might have some kind of recognition for people to have prior knowledge. The study that they are presented with is the first time they are seeing anything about this skin cream.

People weighing in on gun control, have a lot of prior knowledge on the topic. Now whether all this knowledge is based on facts or data is obviously questionable. But regardless they have prior experience with the topic. So naturally you are going to be critical of a study showing you results that directly contradict your prior knowledge. Also from the video it doesn’t seem clear that they are asking them to specifically treat it like math problem and make judgements based on the study alone. They are asked whether they think gun control is effective. And while obviously they have the infographic right in front of them, most people are not going to base their judgements solely on that data alone.

To put it another way, what if the study was based on something non-political, like say whether smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day improves or worsened lung capacity over the course of a decade? I think most people would be heavily critical of the study that shows smoking improved lung capacity even if the data they are presented reflects that. And I don’t think it would be because they are simply rejecting logic and numeracy based on affiliations. It’s because they have prior information and knowledge that directly contradicts the singular study that is presented to them.

And this is ignoring the fact that while the statistic they use to measure the effectiveness for the cream is very tangible and direct. Either the rash improves or it worsens. And you can make direct comparisons with the control groups. In the gun control study you are comparing different sets of cities, ones that have gun control laws and ones that don’t. You aren’t comparing the same set of cities before and after gun control. So already this is a poor study. Then to make matters worse the statistic they use to measure the effectiveness is “crime worsened” and “crime improved”. Not crime committed with firearms. Or even just violent crimes. Just crimes. And in cities where gun control laws have been implemented, crime is naturally going to go up because there is a new law for people to break. Anybody who isn’t following the gun control laws in that city are committing a crime whereas people in the cities without those laws are doing the exact same thing, but it’s just not counted towards “crime” because it hasn’t been outlawed.