Makes sense, thanks!

Goodness in one aspect doesn’t cancel badness in another…

It can be always bad AND sometimes good.

Got some examples?

No, it’s not. It’s saying that any amount of suffering is bad, but a tolerable amount of suffering can have good secondary effects (but this is not guaranteed, it’s circumstantial). The secondary good doesn’t mean that the bad part didn’t happen.

Agree it’s on a different scale (everything is relative to 200 years ago).

One of the main “benefits” of mechanised factory machinery in the early 1800s was that shifted the demand side of labour, such that capitalists had far more control over it. I reckon that counts as a kind of large scale manipulation (but yeah, probably not as pervasive of other domains of life).

More or less

AI is exactly as bad as mechanised weaving looms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal

Multi-million dollar advertising budgets from apple and Microsoft. Coordinated campaigns to embed those systems in education institutions and workplaces.

Wait until you run out of dishes before you start to wash any.

I would say someone getting offended by you communicating openly is not “nothing”. At least it would be a problem for me.

Seems possible.

But the answer might be highly culturally dependent, and also contingent on a tonne of extra context, so you’re probably not going to get a reliable answer from the internet.

You could try asking him his intentions directly. Or telling him that you’re not interested.

That REALLY isn’t how things work

It definitely can be. I haven’t dealt with payment processors in this way, but I’ve had (spurious) DCMA takedowns that required my service providers to act immediately, or else they’d get sued. They did notify me, but gave me about 2h to figure something else out.

A payment processor is in full control of payments across your entire site (unless you have multiple, I guess). They can pull the rug with no notice if they want. Doesn’t seem nice, but nice isn’t part of the business model.

This is just a stupid headline. I mean, not that Reuters is wrong, just that the world is stupid right now.

I’ve played with switches before, and some DIY electronics, and have done some network admin. I’ll grant that the actual internal electronics and software are far to complex for even me to understand.

But again, if you talk to someone with some interest in what you’re doing, you can find a level they they can understand. Maybe using metaphors like human-operated old-school telephone switch boards, that’s an image that most people will have seen, and can understand at a coarse conceptual level. You CAN have an interesting conversation at the level, if YOU want to be interested in it (and if they do, which is partially contingent on you being able to connect with them in the first place).

If you think climate is simpler or more accessible, I’d suggest you have a quick go at explaining the Navier-Stokes equations, Darcy’s law for fluid flow through porous media, or why convective storm activity needs to be parameterised in climate models (and at what scale it doesn’t). Climate isn’t easier, or more accessible than network admin - both require years or tertiary education to start understanding even parts of the underlying principles, and no one person understands either field completely. It IS probably more familiar for most people, because it’s in the media all the time. But again, that’s just a matter of finding the extent of their knowledge and interest, and coming up to their level.

I don’t though, because I actually know how to talk to normal humans. It’s not that hard. You start high-level, and then gauge their curiosity (via questions and body language), and then go a bit deeper, and if they start getting confused, then you back up a bit, and you just stay at their level, not at whatever insane depth your own brain might be at at the time. You use metaphors to link what’s happening in your work to things they have experienced in their life to build understanding at their level. Simplify and abstract, without dumbing it down.

My brain is fully stuck in philosophy of science mode at the moment, and thinking about how to integrate climate science with financial risk models (and how that doesn’t make sense in some ways). I have talked with people from across the spectrum, from people working in climate science or finance for decades, to people with a high-school education. The conversations are nearly always interesting (for both of us), and usually decently long. It’s really not that hard, if you just make an effort to meet people where they are.

I don’t necessarily mean trying to convince people of something, I more mean conversing with interested, but less educated people. Convincing people is a whole separate skill set to just explaining your technical knowledge in plain language (which is the part that’s beneficial here).

whelp, I guess that’s the end of that joke thread

So no harder than email then

I just did. The age verification is the only thing that looks slightly confusing, and anyone keen enough would deal with that fine. It’s not a technical skills/knowledge barrier, it’s just reading comprehension.