5 ms·

1a. Plenty of people, especially on this website, are not just scraping by. 1b. Some are of course. Many are legitimately scraping by, but many others are scra

by ajkjk 3y ago

1a. Plenty of people, especially on this website, are not just scraping by. 1b. Some are of course. Many are legitimately scraping by, but many others are scraping by because they're in a lifestyle prison of their own making, and could easily have complete financial security by consuming less. For them it's an excuse, not an explanation. 2. A lifestyle that has you "making it to the end of the day" is an unhealthy lifestyle, and, yes, you've got to do work on yourself --- take charge of your free time, leave the bad job, leave the bad relationship, strike out alone, etc --- before you can work on making the world better. So there are some dependencies before you're gonna do anything important, but that doesn't mean you can't be on the path.

ragestorm 3y ago
1c. Plenty of people are poor without life choices. The trap of being poor is real.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  Oh, yes, definitely; I said "plenty of people" to try to intentionally indicate that I know it's not all of them. Regardless, out of all the forums you could wander into on the internet, this is probably one of the ones with the most rich people reading it. I rephrased (1b) a bit to make that more clear.
  - ragestorm 3y ago
    Ah I misinterpreted. Indeed. I think we can safely assume vast majority of users of this forum don't fall into the 'poor trap' category but rather what you described if in fact they are living paycheck to paycheck.
wfhBrian 3y ago
Re 1a. This is why I'm constantly discouraged by the lack of useful political discourse here on HN. If a well-payed anf well-educated group can't manage it, then who will?
- hhh 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
  - topato 3y ago
    He's not suggesting ideological battles, I think that we're all capable here of having intelligent discourse
    - 6510 3y ago
      I seem to see very different things from... well... what is normal. Political representation was an idea from back in the days when one had to travel to have a discussion. The traveling was rather complicated too. For a while now we can have a discussion globally with millions simultaneously. This produces way to many opinions that are way to fuzzy to compile into a single plan so we end up with representation again. I think it is worthy to have your mind blown by what these large language models can do in this context. Our representation atm is unable to read our opinions, there is just to much opinion, it is clueless about what we think or want. But the puzzle is kinda solved now isn't it?
      - bwi4 3y ago
        Why use an LLM as middle-man? If we’re all connected to the network just switch over to real-time direct democracy enabled by your brain implant ala sci-fi.
        6510 3y ago
        I can see it, maybe I'm hallucinating I dunno. You don't need a brain implant or even a vote if everyone's influence is limited to such extend that they cant look beyond their self interest - voting is not required. Direct democracy might be to much of a leap but we may take note of what people think and what ideas and proposals are out there. You have ideas, you could write them down properly with sources and everything. Who is going to read it? What if you have 20 ideas? What would be the point in doing that? If it is pointless you should stop having ideas. There are countless fun, useful and interesting things to do that all have a point. Say we all start writing down our poorly thought out ideas. Share our collective political ignorance with the void. If that could be aggregated and combined into something perhaps agreeable or just refutable, then we could at least debunk it and at best consider it. Everyone can come up with a list of pro's and cons for any topic but if many do we can have the full list and may address the [perceived] misconceptions. Not use LLM as a middle man (that would put it in charge) but as an aggregator. To construct the questions and answers for a poll for example. If it works it will become worth having ideas, perhaps even good ideas, perhaps the feedback loop has to run for a while for the good ideas to happen. Anything is better than pretending to know what the public wants while the public doesn't bother to want anything. There is also the way we blame the representative for doing the wrong thing. They cant take positions on anything without offending some of their voters. We pretend everything is their idea. I might be hallucinating, either way it is quite an enjoyable thought. Of course I know no one will go along with anything until civilization implodes again.

by ajkjk 3y ago

ragestorm 3y ago

1c. Plenty of people are poor without life choices. The trap of being poor is real.

ajkjk 3y ago
Oh, yes, definitely; I said "plenty of people" to try to intentionally indicate that I know it's not all of them. Regardless, out of all the forums you could wander into on the internet, this is probably one of the ones with the most rich people reading it. I rephrased (1b) a bit to make that more clear.
- ragestorm 3y ago
  Ah I misinterpreted. Indeed. I think we can safely assume vast majority of users of this forum don't fall into the 'poor trap' category but rather what you described if in fact they are living paycheck to paycheck.

wfhBrian 3y ago

Re 1a. This is why I'm constantly discouraged by the lack of useful political discourse here on HN. If a well-payed anf well-educated group can't manage it, then who will?

hhh 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
- topato 3y ago
  He's not suggesting ideological battles, I think that we're all capable here of having intelligent discourse
  - 6510 3y ago
    I seem to see very different things from... well... what is normal. Political representation was an idea from back in the days when one had to travel to have a discussion. The traveling was rather complicated too. For a while now we can have a discussion globally with millions simultaneously. This produces way to many opinions that are way to fuzzy to compile into a single plan so we end up with representation again. I think it is worthy to have your mind blown by what these large language models can do in this context. Our representation atm is unable to read our opinions, there is just to much opinion, it is clueless about what we think or want. But the puzzle is kinda solved now isn't it?
    - bwi4 3y ago
      Why use an LLM as middle-man? If we’re all connected to the network just switch over to real-time direct democracy enabled by your brain implant ala sci-fi.
      - 6510 3y ago
        I can see it, maybe I'm hallucinating I dunno. You don't need a brain implant or even a vote if everyone's influence is limited to such extend that they cant look beyond their self interest - voting is not required. Direct democracy might be to much of a leap but we may take note of what people think and what ideas and proposals are out there. You have ideas, you could write them down properly with sources and everything. Who is going to read it? What if you have 20 ideas? What would be the point in doing that? If it is pointless you should stop having ideas. There are countless fun, useful and interesting things to do that all have a point. Say we all start writing down our poorly thought out ideas. Share our collective political ignorance with the void. If that could be aggregated and combined into something perhaps agreeable or just refutable, then we could at least debunk it and at best consider it. Everyone can come up with a list of pro's and cons for any topic but if many do we can have the full list and may address the [perceived] misconceptions. Not use LLM as a middle man (that would put it in charge) but as an aggregator. To construct the questions and answers for a poll for example. If it works it will become worth having ideas, perhaps even good ideas, perhaps the feedback loop has to run for a while for the good ideas to happen. Anything is better than pretending to know what the public wants while the public doesn't bother to want anything. There is also the way we blame the representative for doing the wrong thing. They cant take positions on anything without offending some of their voters. We pretend everything is their idea. I might be hallucinating, either way it is quite an enjoyable thought. Of course I know no one will go along with anything until civilization implodes again.