Wait a minute, that’s not a cat!

But it’s still cute so I’ll forgive it.

All of them.

Hi 30, I’m dad

Sure. America has its slimy tendrils in everyone else’s business, so it’s only fair that you have a say.

USA sux

“Gradient descent” ≈ on a “hilly” (mathematical) surface, try to find the lowest point by finding the lowest point near an initial guess. “Gradient” is basically the steepness, or rate that the thing you’re trying to optimize changes as you move through “space”. The gradient tells you mathematically which direction you need to go to reach the bottom. “Descent” means “try to find the minimum”.

I’m glossing over a lot of details, particularly what a “surface” actually means in the high dimensional spaces that AI uses, but a lot of problems in mathematical optimization are solved like this. And one of the steps in training an AI agent is to do an optimization, which often does use a gradient descent algorithm. That being said, not every process that uses gradient descent is necessarily AI or even machine learning. I’m actually taking a course this semester where a bunch of my professor’s research is in optimization algorithms that don’t use a gradient descent!

They created a good product so people used it and there were no alternatives when it got shit.

They created an inherently centralizing implementation of a video sharing platform. Even if it was done with good intentions (which it wasn’t, it was some capitalist’s hustle, and its social importance is a side effect), we should basically always condemn centralizing implementations of a given technology because they reinforce existing power structures regardless of the intentions of their creators.

It’s their fault because they’re a corporation that does what corporations do. Even when corporations try to do right by the world (which is an extremely generous appraisal of YouTube’s existence), they still manage to create centralizing technologies that ultimately serve to reinforce their existing power, because that’s all they can do. Otherwise, they would have set themselves up as a non-profit or some other type of organization. I refuse to accept the notion of a good corporation.

There’s no lock in. They don’t force you off the platform if you post elsewhere (like twitch did).

That’s a good point, but while there isn’t a de jure lock-in for creators, there is a de facto lock-in that prevents them from migrating elsewhere. Namely, that YouTube is a centralized, proprietary service, which can’t be accessed from other services.

I also respect your freedom to like what you want, but also also

Upvoted because it’s unpopular.

Also: model trains. I was into model trains for a few years, but I realized that I didn’t really have the life experience to make a fulfilling model trainset. Like I did the thing, I made a (really childish) layout with some crappy blocks and streets, and I got the trains to move and stuff, but it didn’t…say much? It was “I’m a child and I like trains”, which is great! Probably wouldn’t have become interested in trains at all otherwise!

But I want more…I always want more. I need to go more hardcore into the few things I can actually tolerate doing…

And as a child, I saw some really cool trainsets built by adults that told stories, made me laugh, made my parents laugh, made me feel awe at the storytelling and creativity of the craft. Even my cousin, who built a trainset in his basement in his early twenties, had a much more inspired trainset than mine (when I was much younger, like 10 or 12). His trainset was cool. He studied how trains worked, how to make a realistic line with realistic scenery and infrastructure. His trainset reflected who he was, and ultimately forecasted what he became. He literally works for a rail company now designing the train tracks.

So I’m kinda “saving” that hobby for when I’m in my 60’s after I integrate enough life experience (and hopefully some capital) to build a trainset that really reflects the person I ultimately became.

My trainset is gonna have a sick, functioning roller coaster, some overly complicated automated control circuits, some heavy metal references, some intentionally goofy shit, serious shit, an anarcho-communist bent, a layout that at least is informed by modern infrastructure design, etc., because that’s at least partially the person I will have become.

Roller coasters. I’m too heavy to go on them, too poor to afford to ride them, too busy to simulate them.

Or you’re just not posting trash enough content.

I’m intrigued but completely out of the loop. What’s the difference between these two sets of books?

Literally every corporation does or attempts to do the same thing.

Exactly. Every single corporation is evil and should be dismantled 🔥🔥🔥. This is just one of a thousand reasons to do so.

“Absolute evil” is a bit of a stretch, but it’s YouTube/Google’s fault (by closing off and centralizing their video platform) that it is impossible to go elsewhere for videos.

1 ÷ periodically

Okay so I honestly had trouble parsing this because of all the names. Also here’s a link to XCancel which lets you view without going on Twitter

Here’s what I learned:

• “Surprise” is the name of a small city, which is in Arizona.
• “Skip Hall” is the city’s mayor.
• Mr. Hall had Rebekah Massie physically removed from the council meeting in front of her 10-year-old daughter on the pretense that she violated the rules. More accurately, quoting the yourvalley.net link:

Violating the rules of professional conduct that should govern city council meetings, Mayor Hall interrupted Ms. Massie, told her that she must stop speaking, and threatened to have her escorted out if she wouldn’t yield the floor. He then accused her of “lodg[ing] charges or complaints against [an] employee of the city or members of the body,” displaying his incorrect understanding of that statute and inaccurate assessment of what Ms. Massie was actually doing.

Ms. Massie was not lodging charges or complaints against Mr. Wingo. She was offering her opinion that his salary should not be increased, based on facts that she cited regarding salary comparison data and outstanding Freedom of Information Act requests. She used publicly available facts to support her argument that his salary should not be increased, but she was neither offering her opinion on those facts nor lodging charges or complaints. To state such facts and to urge the council to not increase an employee’s salary is fully within her rights as a citizen.

In conclusion: fuck Skip Hall, fuck the government of Surprise.

Constant unprompted calculus lessons

Is like saying oh you don’t like your local librarians? you’re free to make your own library!

I’m probably being pedantic here but you kinda can, e.g. Little Free Libraries, although the reason isn’t “my local librarians suck”, it’s closer to “more libraries please”.

Okay well being free to do something doesn’t magically make it a real option.

Agreed, but I fail to see how, with enough consent from the user base, how moving to another existing server is not an option.

Are there even any exceptions to that that aren’t entire communities agreeing to move together off instances?

I’m not aware of any off the top of my head, but it absolutely does not seem implausible that we could move this community if the need arises. Entire communities moved off of Reddit during the boycott; I don’t see why we can’t do that again within the platform if the need arises. For the most part people are okay with the moderation here, as am I, but the minute that changes people will flee somewhere else.

For literally the entire time I have been on lemmy I have heard laments about the centralization of comms on lemmy.world and seen attempts to mitigate it but every pie chart just shows lemmy.world with more of the pie because growing a comm on small servers isn’t simple!

Hard agree there. I’m not sure how to fix it.

I didn’t ask for your answer, I asked for your opinion. I already knew that you didn’t have the answer. Nether do I.

Amen.

I do, however, have a great love for game theory, and game theory tells me that there’s only one correct decision to make where voting in the USA in 2024 is concerned.

Any recommendations for game theory resources? I’ve been putting it off for a while.

I hope this doesn’t come across as condescending. I don’t mean it that way but people often tell me I’m being condescending.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens? I’ve been there so many times. I feel you.

I wish you all the best in life. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you in any way, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you want a conversational partner or a sympathetic ear. I’m always open to discussing the world with intelligent people.

Will do. This honestly means the world because I don’t have a lot of players in my court.

If you’re interested in communal living or alternative lifestyles (at it pertains to anarchist communities), I’m happy to help there, as well. I think I still have some friends that know folx at Emma Goldman Finishing School in Seattle. Admittedly, I don’t know if they’re looking for any new members right now, but I’d be happy to put a word in for you.

Unfortunately, I’m kinda stuck on the “poor grad student” path. Got oodles of loans to pay off, but I also got tons of new tools and solutions to technical problems that I’ll likely never be allowed to work on. IMO I’d be more useful paying their bail funds as a successful engineer than living there and being a nuisance…because I am a nuisance to live with lol. I dormed for a few semesters and I can count on two hands the number of times I ever talked to my suitemates or neighbors, and one of them was a really nice dude.

The Answer.

From the song’s lyrics:

I don’t believe you have the answer

I’ve got ideas too

but if you’ve got enough naivete

and you’ve got conviction

then the answer is perfect for you

That’s kind of an obnoxious response when you yourself said:

I fear that you’re mistaking your own pessimism for absolute truth, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

(emphasis mine) followed by:

What, in your view, needs to be done?

Like you basically asked for my answer after saying you’d be willing to be convinced. You asked “what needs to be done?”, and I replied with things that I think need to be done. If you didn’t ask, I would have kept my mouth shut because frankly I’m pathologically disinterested in telling people what to do, probably to a fault. If you weren’t convinced then that’s fine, but it’s just kind of obnoxious to ask for an answer and then chide me for giving you my answer.

When fascists take power it’s not unheard of for them to line up commies and anarchists against a wall and shoot them.

Yes, and that’s why we need to prepare ourselves for when they do, which they WILL do regardless of who gets elected as the figurehead.

I’m all for ideological utopianism

I’m not [2]! I have explained over and over again all throughout my responses in this post’s comment section that I have very practical motivations for why voting is a waste of time. I encourage you to go through my comment history and see what I have said to others in this thread.

but preserving your moral superiority…

Yo literally the first thing I posted in this comment section was a meme dunking on the delegates and their misery, which is bar none the most engagement I have received on any comment and almost all of it negative. No one here thinks I’m morally superior. And in case you were wondering, I don’t like me either.

So let’s explicitly do away with the moral superiority pretense [1].

… is little comfort when you and your family are staring down the barrel of a fascist’s gun.

Yes, exactly, that’s why we need to build our community defenses against these fascist pricks before they kill us, keeping in mind that we’re in a liberal dominated community on a “civility-at-all-costs” instance where we’re not allowed to talk seriously about revolution!

But as I have said to other users, particularly the comment you initially replied to:

I got no beef with people voting for Democrats in the general election, even though I disagree with their choice, because it doesn’t affect the outcome of anything. My beef is with these delegates, these people in a position of influence and power.

So go vote Democrat if that makes you feel safe, I’m not going to bring it up again because it doesn’t matter, but I’m not gonna pretend that it’s helpful.

But also keep in mind that these are the assholes who platformed a cop over a Palestinian in the middle of their genocide…

Again, I invite you to reread what I’ve commented to you so far, and to go through my comment history and see what I’ve said to others.

[1] Really, my position is, boiled down, that supposedly “practical” solutions that violate common morality (for example, letting people die to save money in *insert industry here*) are not really practical at all. This inextricably couples practicality to morality.

Frankly, as a human actor who fails to always act practically, I acknowledge that for similar reasons, sometimes I also fail to act morally, i.e. in laughing at the pain of other humans because they happen to collude with an evil institution. Hence why I reject the idea that I am morally superior, and that I have asserted as such anywhere in this comment section.

And in the sense that the means should reflect the ends, I admit that I haven’t lived up to my own ideals, out of anger and irritation at the constant stream of bullshit being foisted on me and everyone I know by these very Democrat ghouls.

But I don’t believe that I need to be a perfect moral actor to speak out about Palestine and the fascists at the DNC!

[2] For similar reasons as those in [1], ideology should be coupled to practicality, which itself should be coupled to morality. Hence why I’m not interested in anarchism as a utopian ideology where anything is prescribed, but as a practical solution for humanity to overcome capitalism.