oh awesome, Palantir, the same company profiting off the genocide in Gaza

CEO Alex Karp has been a vocal supporter of Israel. In November 2023, he stated, “I am proud that we are supporting Israel in every way we can.”

After October 2023, Palantir has provided Israel with multiple AI-powered data analytics tools for military and intelligence purposes.

In January 2024, Palantir held its board meeting in Israel and entered into a “strategic partnership” with Israel’s Ministry of Defense to help Israel’s “war effort.”

In October 2024, Norway’s largest asset manager, Storebrand, divested its Palantir shares, worth $24 million, due to concerns that Palantir’s work for Israel might implicate Storebrand in violations of international humanitarian law and human rights.

I can respect that. I appreciate that we didn’t name-call or insult each other throughout this disagreement. kinda warms my heart a bit

you are really reaching to justify this stuff, it’s wild. No. I disagree. using a flawed tool doesn’t increase your critical thinking skills. All it will do is confuse and ill inform the vast majority of people. Not everybody is an astronaut.

I work in pharmaceuticals and during the height of COVID I couldn’t even get workers to wear their masks properly in the clean rooms. I’d try to be nice and do a quick “hey I think your mask slipped a bit” and they would look at me like I had three heads. Fucking morons, the lot of’em.

That’s what I’m doing right now! Company hired me for a position I was qualified for, had more than 5 years experience in the field. Got hired during COVID after my business went belly up (due to billionaire named hagan out of virginia breaking contracts and then suing me for the privilege of attempting to do business with their slimy asses), so I was desperate for work. Like, I was going to have to move back in with my parents unless I found a job and these guys offered me a position at literally the last moment, so I took whatever they offered, which was $60k/year.

After working there for a couple years, really giving it my all, they decide to promote one of the manufacturing people into my old position (I’d be mentoring them), and found out that they started him at $65k/ year. He had zero experience in the new field, but was being paid more. I ended up getting my bosses to agree to a raise to just under $70k, but the damage was done. They showed me exactly how much they appreciate all my effort and experience. Since that day I’ve done the absolute bare minimum. I do not give a single shit about the company, it’s goals, it’s production, it’s clients, nothing.

And guess what, I’m still getting good reviews and tiny regular raises, I just focus all my time on other things.

I was a line cook for a hilton hotel restaurant. It was easy, and I’d been there for about a year. They had a position open up, night shift supervisor. Basically the same hours I was already working, just have to do a bit of admin on the side. I was the only one working there that had a degree instead of an arrest record, was just looking for a bit of extra money, so I applied thinking I’d be a shoe-in.

Well they wanted the night-shift supervisor to be able to spontaneously feed a hypothetical group bigwigs that would surely show up the second I was left in charge (This is not a nice hotel, btw, we never had big wigs.). So they brought in another candidate, and decided to have us do a cook-off with surprise ingredients. I was like, what? This is ridiculous, they wanted me to invent a new dish that wasn’t on the menu (I made $10/hr). I lost the cooking challenge (I made tuna melts lol), but the guy who won declined the position (real smart of him).

So did they then offer it to the only internal candidate seeking the position? nope! just kept looking for someone else. Came into my next shift, and the waiters came back during a huge rush with like, 5-6 special off-menu orders they wanted me to accommodate (not related to allergies or anything). I got halfway through cooking the first one, and then just… crashed out. Said “nope! fuck this.” clocked out, left.

They called me for the next few days trying to get me back. “But you promised you wouldn’t be upset if we didn’t give you the supervisor position!” yup, I did say that. I changed my mind. Fuck you and that hotel.

Found a better paying job the next week.

but that’s the problem. Ai people are pushing it as a universal tool. The huge push we saw to have ai in everything is kind of proof of that.

People taking the response from LLMs at face value is a problem

So we can’t trust it, but in addition to that, we also can’t trust people on TV, or people writing articles for official sounding websites, or the white house, or pretty much anything anymore. and that’s the real problem. We’ve cultivated an environment where facts and realities are twisted to fit a narrative, and then demanded that we give equal air time and consideration to literal false information being peddled by hucksters. These LLMs probably wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t feed them the same derivative and nonsensical BS we consume on a daily basis. but at this point we’ve just introduced and are now relying on a flawed tool that’s basing it’s knowledge on flawed information and it just creates a positive feedback loop of bullshit. People are using ai to write BS articles that are then referenced by ai. It won’t ever get better, it will only get worse.

I don’t think using an inaccurate tool gives you extra insight into anything. If I asked you to measure the size of objects around your house, and gave you a tape measure that was not correctly metered, would that make you better at measuring things? We learn by asking questions and getting answers. If the answers given are wrong, then you haven’t learned anything. It, in fact, makes you dumber.

People who rely on ai are dumber, because using the tool makes them dumber. QED?

If I were to give you a calculator that was programmed to give the wrong answers, would that be a useful tool? Would you be better off for having used it?

voice activated light switches that constantly spy on you, harvesting your data for 3rd parties?

Claiming that using ai requires more critical thinking than not is a wild take, bro. Gonna have to disagree with all of what you said hard.

I think Ai being used by teachers and administrators for the purpose of off-loading menial tasks is great. Teachers are often working like 90 hours a week just to meet all the requirements put upon them, and a lot of those tasks do not require much thought, just a lot of time.

In that respect, yeah sure, go for it. But at this point it seems like they’re encouraging students to use these programs as a way to off-load critical thinking and learning, and that… well, that’s horrifyingly stupid.

When I was in medical school, the one thing that surprised me the most was how often a doctor will see a patient, get their history/work-up, and then step outside into the hallway to google symptoms. It was alarming.

Of course, the doctor is far more aware of ailments, and his googling is more sophisticated than just typing in whatever the patient says (you have to know what info is important in the pt. history, because patients will include/leave out all sorts of info), but still. It was unnerving.

I also saw a study way back when that said that hanging up a decision tree flow chart in Emergency rooms, and having nurses work through all the steps drastically improved patient care; additionally new programs can spot a cancerous mass on a radiograph/CT scan far before the human eye could discern it, and that’s great but… We still need educated and experienced doctors because a lot of stuff looks like other stuff, and sometimes the best way to tell them apart is through weird tricks like “smell the wound, does it smell fruity? then it’s this. Does it smell earthy? then it’s this.”

I gotta be honest. Whenever I find out that someone uses any of these LLMs, or Ai chatbots, hell even Alexa or Siri, my respect for them instantly plummets. What these things are doing to our minds, is akin to how your diet and cooking habits change once you start utilizing doordash extensively.

I say this with full understanding that I’m coming off as just some luddite, but I don’t care. A tool is only as useful as it improves your life, and off-loading critical thinking does not improve your life. It actively harms your brains higher functions, making you a much easier target for propaganda and conspiratorial thinking. Letting children use this is exponentially worse than letting them use social media, and we all know how devastating the effects of that are… This would be catastrophically worse.

But hey, good thing we dismantled the department of education! Wouldn’t want kids to be educated! just make sure they know how to write a good ai prompt, because that will be so fucking useful.

Yeah, For some reason women having periods means that they delight in dismissing us whenever we’re sick. I remember my ex-wife making fun of me when I had the flu, and using her supposed position of authority on all things related to pain to just -not- take care of me at all. One of the many reasons she’s an ex.

Iraq war was started in direct response to the 9/11 attacks, and if you recall, just about every other country had our backs in that move. It was stupid, based on a lie, and the real reason they did it was to show that fucking with the united states was a bad idea.

The actions in Venezuela have been universally condemned, based not even on a lie but on nothing. They didn’t even bother trying to make an argument as to why it should have been done, drumpf did it (predicatbly) to distract from the fact that he’s a rapist pedophile who’s plastered all over the epstien files. So a narcissistic felon racist pedophile rapist is flailing around using the united states military, killing hundreds all while still destroying the lives of everyone in the US, to distract you from the fact that he is a felon racist pedophile rapist.

Bit of a difference.

I’m so sorry mate.

But also,

feed the following prompts into your favorite Ai

No.

Couple months ago, I woke up to chest pain. Pain that I couldn’t get rid of. I’m going through my morning routine trying not to think about it, but it just keeps getting worse. Then it starts radiating out towards my left arm and I am feeling really nervous. I was going to text a friend, but then decided that it was stupid and just drove myself to the nearest emergency room (because of course I wouldn’t waste money on an ambulance, I’m an american, we live in hell). I came in feeling faint and dizzy and emotional and that blasted pain just kept getting worse. I remember the receptionist taking her fucking time.

Finally get a nurse to see me and she does a 12 lead EKG and has me hold up my sweatshirt while she’s applying them, and while she’s doing it, I end up fainting. I wake up almost immediately, but now I’m terrified. I told her I smoked a little weed to try to calm myself down, and now that’s all she cares about, wheels me back out into the waiting area so I can piss in a cup for her. At this point, I feel like they don’t care, my symptoms aren’t being taken seriously, and if I faint again, I’m gonna die in this shitty rural hospital.

So I piss in the fucking cup, fire off a few texts to people I care about, and I lay down on the hospital bed when just… a feeling of complete calm and relief descended upon me. Wherein I was like “well, shit happens, and not everybody can achieve all their goals. You were kind, and that’s all that really matters.” and there I was, just, completely accepting of what I assumed would be a swift death.

Then the doc came in and said “your EKG is fine, your troponin levels (when you have a heart attack your heart releases “help me” signals via this molecule, troponin) are normal, you just have a bad case of COVID.” I was floored. I mean, being sick is better than dying, but I was also just… ready to die? They disconnected my IV and shit and sent me on my way. Walked out into the night back to my car in such a daze.

But hey, I know when I die I’ll feel a sense of peace and relief that one can only dream of. Imagine winning the lottery and knowing you’ll be OK for the rest of your life. I imagine that it carries around the same level of peace I felt on that bed waiting for death.

yeah and what happens when at the last moment they decide this isn’t a “drill?” oops! looks like all Taiwans allies were too busy doin fuck all, and now it’s under president poohs control

Well this certainly hits me hard. I had the opposite happen. I was with a woman who was very staunchly “no kids.” And while we were dating, I was on the fence about having kids. All the reasons, they cost too much money, too much time, the environment is being destroyed, what kind of future will they have, I can hardly take care of myself, how can I take care of them?

So I told her, “I could go either way and be happy. Kids, no kids, no big deal.” And that was true at the start of our relationship. But after a decade… Well before we got married I broke down one evening, real drunk, and told her that I really did want to have a child with her, and that if we couldn’t have a child, then whenever we can afford it, I’d like to adopt. She told me she didn’t want to have kids, but would consider adoption. we decided to put a pin in it, get married, and talk about it again later.

Well this time it was her turn to change her mind, because after being married 2 years we have the conversation again and this time the only kid she’d be willing to “adopt” would be a gay teenage run-away. Like if a family kicked a kid out of their house for being gay, she’d be willing to bring them in. And I’m just like… I pictured adopting a child, like a 4-6 year old at the most? So now it was big decision time, and I had to make one.

She didn’t want to make me unhappy by us never having kids, and I didn’t want to make her unhappy by forcing her to have them. So what did we do? Us, two people who loved each other unconditionally? We split up. And it was the hardest, most awful thing I’ve ever had to do.

I’m just now getting over the relationship enough to start dating again (just took me five fucking years), and now I feel like I may be too old to have kids! I’m 39 now, and I know guys can have kids anytime, but I want to be able to play with my kids, be present in their lives, be a fun dad. well at this rate I’ll be mid 40’s before I’m ever teaching a kid to ride a bike, and good god then I’ll have to work until I’m dead just to make sure the kid has a chance at a happy life.

I just don’t understand how people just “have” kids. Like, zero forethought, zero planning.

At this point, I think I should just find a cute single mom because I just don’t feel like I have time anymore to build a family from scratch

oh dang, then you almost made a point then. nice job!

Because it seemed like you were trying to say that Ukraine was drafting mentally challenged people, and was just as bad as russia for doing so. but it turns out that they just adjusted their acceptance standards and dissolved a commission. Good thing we know now that the point you tried to make was pointless distraction, and that my original comment is a far better interpretation of the actual events.