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Cake day: June 28th, 2024

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  • I’d love to see it being used by enemies so they’re challenging without cheating, though.

    This is a different sort of problem that’s outside the scope of generative AI. Making a computer opponent that can kick a human player’s ass is technology we’ve had since Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997.

    The problem isn’t actually making a computer that’s challenging, that’s been solved. The problem is that it won’t be any fun for the human if the computer is actually allowed to go all out, if Kasparov couldn’t win in 97 then you sure as hell aren’t winning today. But it also won’t be any fun if you nerf it too badly, low level chess bots are weird. The sweet spot isn’t just a matter of difficulty either, the nearly unsolveable part is getting it to play in a way that feels like a realistic human opponent.

    And that’s just from a turn-based game, kinda the closest thing to a level playing field humans were ever gonna get. For any game played in real time, the computer is able to treat it like it’s being played at 60 turns per second. Is it “cheating” for the computer to have perfect reflexes, but otherwise still be following the rules of the game perfectly? How would you even try to take this away from the computer to make it see games the way humans do?

    Generative AI doesn’t have any kind of solution for any of this. ChatGPT famously can’t play chess, at all. It’s a different type of AI that really can’t have any useful application here.


  • You’ll never convince diehard MAGA true believers. But it’s worth recognizing that that’s not all Trump voters, it’s not even the majority of them. Swing voters can always swing back the other way.

    You can really only talk to those who are on the fence and willing to listen. If they’re not willing to listen, don’t waste your breath.

    For those who are willing to listen, start with why they voted for Trump to begin. Many voters in this country were struggling to make ends meet and didn’t feel like the Biden administration was doing enough for them, so they were desperate for change. Trump preyed on that desperation, told them that it’s all immigrants’ fault, it’s trans people’s fault, it’s woke’s fault, it’s whatever scapegoat he blames next’s fault, so if you vote for him he’ll own the libs to Make America Great Again. A lot of people voted for him because they felt unheard by establishment politicians and were desperate enough to believe a con man who sounded like the only person in the room actually speaking to their fears.

    If they are willing to have the conversation, get to the root of those fears. Ask if Trump has actually made their lives better. Attempt to deprogram anything directed to the scapegoats he blames it on. Try to pivot to Democratic policies that actually can help in tangible ways.

    But again, I cannot stress this enough, this can only get through to people who are open to listening in the first place. If you try to preach at people who are not, they will dig their heels in deeper. Pick your battles carefully, figure out who is worth talking to.



  • Mamdani won by focusing his campaign on the most pressing issue to voters today: affordability. The cost of living keeps going up, wages stay the same, and everybody’s scared and frustrated looking for someone to promise they can do something about it. And he had answers.

    In increasingly uncertain times, we can win voters over by appealing to their fears and frustrations and promising change that will directly address their needs. This is, in a way, how Trump won. He told voters, “I know you’re upset and scared in a changing world. Well it’s the immigrants’ fault, it’s trans people’s fault, it’s whatever target I tell you to hate next’s fault, and when I own the libs, I’ll bring the price of eggs down.”

    Of course you and I both know Trump was full of shit. But as long it sounded like he was addressing their fears, the most frightened people struggling to make ends meet latched onto whatever false hope he gave them. And I believe we can win people back by speaking to those same fears, but this time we offer real solutions.

    However, there is a very important catch. Do not ever say the word ‘socialism’. The legacy of McCarthyism has ensured that that word is still political suicide on the national stage today. You can get away with it in a city as deeply blue as NYC, but not in a general election.

    But it’s really only the word that’s the problem, not the ideas behind it. People really are fed up with capitalism, they just don’t know that that’s really what they’re fed up with. And as long as you avoid the word, I think you’d be surprised what you can get people to agree with.

    Look at Obama in 2008. He ran his campaign on universal healthcare as his main issue, knowing that healthcare in America is a major problem voters wanted addressed. Detractors called it socialized medicine, but as long as he never said that word himself, voters just understood that he was offering change and they wanted to try change. They were fed up enough with American healthcare that red scare tactics didn’t stop them from considering change.

    I believe a viable next step that could work in 2028 could be to campaign on universal basic income. The job market is becoming increasingly unstable, especially with the AI bubble. People fresh out of college can’t get jobs because everything that claims to be entry level wants three years of experience, and they can’t get that experience because they don’t have experience. We’re coming to a point where it’s time to rethink one of the fundamental flaws of capitalism, that everyone must work or else they starve and die, as this is about to break when too many people lose their jobs. But don’t use the c-word, don’t use the s-word, just talk about UBI as its own issue and I think people will warm up to the idea.









  • Idiocracy is an entertaining fictional comedy, but any time someone tries to compare it to real life I want to smack them. IMO, the movie would’ve been improved if they’d chopped off the eugenicist intro and just said he’d been isekai’d into a world of idiots.

    The movie portrays a world where everyone is stupid, no exceptions, but nearly all of them are well-meaning. President Comacho cares about doing the right thing, he just has no idea how to solve the problems the country is facing. But then when someone smarter comes along, Comacho at least understands that he can step aside and let Not Sure save the day.

    The problems facing the real world come from people who are both intelligent and evil. Smart people at the top use propaganda to manipulate dumb people at the bottom. That’s nothing like Idiocracy, not even close.




  • They’re kind of just really damn bad at being currencies. Transaction times and fees make them too difficult to use for anything short of money laundering. But actually decently suited to that one purpose since other forms of laundering are usually even more expensive.

    Even worse though is the deflationary nature also disincentivizes ever using them as currency. They’re instead being treated as speculative assets, people buy crypto not because they actually want to use crypto, but because they expect to sell it to another bagholder later. But of course the only way to profit off crypto in this way is for someone else to lose. And yet people still try to pretend it’s a currency even when no one will ever use it as such, because it sounds more legitimate that way.

    And this in turn has made crypto an incredibly attractive target for scams and grifts. Pump-and-dumps are everywhere, but even when people know this they still try to get in hoping they’ll be the one to win this time.

    Crypto really is just a solution in search of a problem, and every now and then you’ll see cryptobros insisting they have the next big thing in NFTs, smart contracts, whatever bullshit they’re pushing next. But none of it has ever been anything more than a vehicle to try and find a new way to rip someone else off. They just need to convince you they have something to sell here so that you’ll be the next sucker.

    Bitcoin has been around since 2008, and in all that time, it’s still not amounted to anything more than one big grift.




  • People stay on mainstream corporate platforms no matter how badly they enshittify because that’s where everyone else is. They don’t want to jump ship unless everyone else will jump ship with them, and so nobody makes the first move.

    Lemmy isn’t more popular because Lemmy isn’t more popular. Lemmy wants to be an alternative to Reddit, but the best thing Reddit had going for it was all the niche communities for fandoms, hobbies, and other interests. That’s something that just can’t exist here, because if you take a niche thing and multiply it by a niche platform, I’ll bet that I might very well be the only person on this platform who is into some of my hyperfixations. So people who want to talk about topics that have no community here, leave and go back to bigger platforms.

    I’m still here to try and push for a better future, but I honestly don’t know how we can grow this place to the kind of critical mass it would take to really get the ball rolling.