At work, I had to design something for a new software product and realized that if we applied the same approach as our old product we were going to run into major scalability issues. The problem is the whole organization was basically used to the product working this old way. For months, people tried to ignore the scalability issues and push forward with the old approach in the new product. I kept being a pest though and pointing it out. Eventually, I wrote a several page document with data and graphs explaining exactly what the problem was and presented it to other teams. I also did research and found that our competitors were doing it my way, which I attributed to the scalability issues inherent to the problem. This forced everyone to accept the problem and eventually my solution. It was really hard to basically be fighting against a mob mentality and feel like the only sane one. It was also hard because even after the solution was accepted people were still upset about the change. In my view, this was like being angry at the laws of gravity. You can feel that way, but it doesn’t change that they exist and you have to accept them.
I believe that GenAI is a scam that should’ve been treated and criminalized/prosecuted like one long before it got to the point of destructiveness that it’s currently at and will die on that hill.
You have my sword.
You want a scenario of ‘what if Theranos was actually successful and Elizabeth Holmes didn’t get busted?’ That’s GenAI in a nutshell.
They tried to argue that all math was useless bullshit because it couldn’t deal with infinity.
I tried to show different ways math has been useful for me personally, and for humanity generally. None of that mattered to them. I tried to explain how math can actually work with infinity. They insisted I was lying.
A part of me thought they were just trying to troll me, but after seeing and interacting with them multiple times afterwards, I’m pretty sure those were their genuine beliefs. They were also a moon landing denier, but after the whole math discussion I didn’t touch that topic with a ten foot pole.
JFC don’t send them stopdoingmath.jpeg
I now consider it one of many examples of the idea that you can’t use reason and evidence to change someone’s beliefs, if they never used reason or evidence to conclude those beliefs in the first place.
I feel sorry for those who have never felt the excitement of changing their beliefs based on new evidence or understanding, especially when due to their own hubris. Being wrong is an opportunity to learn and discover. Everyone who has ever lived, and will ever live, is sometimes wrong.
In a way, that’s the general theme of this thread. We stood our ground when we knew we were right and could prove it with reason and evidence, while facing opposition that was based on stubbornness, hubris, and refusal to admit to being wrong.
I feel sorry for those who have never felt the excitement of changing their beliefs based on new evidence or understanding, especially when due to their own hubris.
Not only is it sad, nearly everything wrong with the world right now can be boiled down to a handful of people having this character flaw
“Nearly everything” seems a bit hyperbolic, but I absolutely agree that it’s a major problem that has caused, and will likely continue to cause massive unnecessary suffering worldwide.
You can’t even prove numbers are real!
Sounds irrational
We should all imagine imaginary numbers together.
Ha! You got me there!
What really disappointed me about math is that there is a proof that there must be mathematical theorems which cannot be proven or disproven.
I never made the connection until reading your comment, but I now wonder if they heard about the incompleteness theorems and came to their conclusions about math based on a misunderstanding.
I’m sorry to hear that concept disappointed you, but I personally don’t think it ultimately matters or effects the usefulness of math. I see it as similar to the difference between science and engineering. An engineer can create something useful by knowing what works, without knowing precisely why it works. A scientist tries to uncover why things work the way they do, regardless of the utility of that understanding. Often the output of those two fields overlap, but they don’t have to.
Just adding to aMockTie here: I love math, a math-lover, if you will, and I don’t find the incompleteness theorem disappointing, I find it incredibly interesting and captivating. It’s like learning that black holes are real. It gives me the same feeling that watching superfluids in chemistry flow up their containers do.
The fact that the universe conspires to keep us ignorant is so goddamn interesting.
So many people never even look at calculus & how it addresses infinities, it’s got this reputation as difficult but that’s just because of all the different algorithms and rules to learn for different cases, but you can teach the basic operations and build intuitions of differentiation and integration to grade schoolers.
I said in a meeting “that’s a really bad idea”
They still did it.
During years, we had trouble with it. I kept saying “I told you it was a bad idea”.
After 6 years, they finally removed it. I said “well, I said it was a bad idea”.
Sounds like youre not a team player. /$
I was once a consultant for wine companies. I was working on helping establish a new wine brand. The client was really clear that they did not want to rely on the idea of terroir, nor their vineyards closeness to the ocean as selling points.
My boss thought the brand should use a bunch sails and anchor imagery to sell the terroir and the vineyard’s closeness to the ocean.
I told him the client wouldn’t like it as they’d been clear that’s not what they wanted. He said I was wrong. If he’d told me the client was wrong that would have been fine but he insisted that I had heard it wrong and started gas lighting me.
Turns out the client felt they’d been really clear that they didn’t want a brand that focused on the terroir and closeness to the ocean and refused to pay for that round of work.
TIL Terroir means “the complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including factors such as the soil, topography, and climate”
I have to be “that guy” sometimes when it comes to fire performance safety. There’s huge risks involved so there really isn’t a lot of wiggle room. I try to treat any fuckups as learning opportunities though, I don’t want to scare away the newbies
Friends is not a good show and of course I’m right.
Ever since someone pointed out that it’s just a whitewashed version of Living Single, I’m completely unable to take Friends seriously.
It’s kinda like white noise for me. Like I probably won’t turn it off if it’s on but I won’t pay a ton of attention to it either.
It’s so fucking bad. Always has been. And coming on directly after Seinfeld only highlighted how supremely unfunny the show was.
I honestly judge people irl who tell me they think Friends is funny. I honestly cannot stop myself.
Yes, we had a tooling design and it was going to fail because the angles and mechanisms were not right. My boss overruled me, under protest, and we built it how the customer wanted it with no changes.
It failed in production.
There was a big meeting with everyone upset. I said I told you! And tried to reexplain why it doesnt work. They denied knowing about the issues previously.
Thankfully the president stepped in and said, I was in the initial meeting and remember you warning of the potential failure. Then everyone shut up.
We redid everything my way.
Sounds like an awesome president.
I have the same story (with a huge failure at a metal factory) that I had a dozen times made a big scene about how terrible an idea it was. The corporate guy who suggested it decided to email god and country that if only (my team specifically of) engineering had supported us more it wouldn’t have happened like that. I was fuming, spent half the night furiously detailing and outlining my proof of how we supported him, bad idea, etc.
I ended up drunkenly scrapping the entire write up and just reply alling “fuck you (name)”. Perhaps my proudest work moment, tbh.
Lol
Playing noise on your phone in a public place is wrong. Violators should be put in one those midevil contraptions that lock your head and wrists in a plank of wood so that we may all pelt you with rotten fruit and vegetables.
No one wants to hear that shit. You’re an asshole and should feel bad.
To extend that, people that have there notification sound on all the time is really annoying, just leave it on vibrate it’s just as useful!
I think having pets is fundamentally unethical. Your dog lives in a tiny fraction of the world with absolutely no agency and only “loves” you because it is literally programmed to after centuries of breeding for traits that promote that. Your pet did not choose you and if it “loves” you at all, it’s only because they are utterly dependent on you because they have been taken far from where their species can survive or that place has been ruined by humanity. Animals cannot consent period and by extension cannot and never do consent to being property.
I’m not a PETA freak. I don’t shame people for having pets, but I’m unable to think of pets without considering these facts and it makes the entire thing seem gross and wrong to me. I rarely bring it up because it never leads to an engaging or productive conversation. No one ever really has an argument against it besides something along the lines of “Humans have had pets for millennia” or “It’s too late to put them back” which don’t actually prove me wrong in any way.
Domestication is interesting because your average German shepherd is arguably living a significantly higher quality of life than a wolf living in the wild. While they may not have the same “freedom” as a wolf living in the woods, the wolf lives in its own shackles, always fighting for food, shelter and protection from predators. While I don’t disagree that having pets is fundamentally a problematic concept, I also think its always a bad idea to attribute abstract human traits and concepts onto animals, most of which want food, water, safe territory, and engagement.
Almost every animal specialist I talked to never talks about animals as if they were people, they always have a sense of respect for them being an animal and of a different species. I suppose they have a greater understanding of what an animal “wants”.
The second part of the question was were you right, and I think you’re probably wrong most of the time on your stance, but there are definitely areas where you are correct.
My argument would be that even though many of these pets have ingrained psychosocial issues that make them more amenable to being owned as pets, the counterpoint is, is there is no fundamental and absolute right way to live.
If there’s a tiny little section where people and animals can be happy, then there’s nothing wrong with that happiness.
Blaming someone for not taking the entirety of the universe into account for something that gave them happiness is generally considered a dick move.
I’m not really blaming anyone. It’s a complicated idea. I don’t expect every person to philosophize about the problem. Ultimately I’m just one person who gets uncomfortable when I consider what a pets life really is. It’s not a high priority to me and I don’t get preachy about it. There are more pressing issues in the world to me.
To your point of an “absolutely right way to live”, I agree, but my belief is that living things should ideally have the freedom to choose how they want to live rather than someone assert their personal opinion of the correct way to live. Pets however have absolutely no freedom to choose how to live. They don’t choose their owners nor the conditions they live in nor can they truly do anything about how they are treated.
The fact that they are (sometimes) happy makes it an easier pill to swallow except for the fact that their happiness comes largely from a variety of factors that limit their perspective. That’s not even considering the unknowable number of mistreated pets there are or innocent creatures that lived entire lives of misery and abuse due to uncaring owners.
Yours is a fascinating perspective that I haven’t considered before.
My “shooting from the hip” response is to consider the life of an animal in a 2x2 grid. The first column is pets, the second column is non-pets (i.e. Animals living in the wild). The first row is animals with sufficient access to food, shelter, and overall wellbeing. The second row is animals without those needs being met (i.e. Suffering under the hands of either humans or nature).
In my opinion, based on my personal life experience, and only if you consider the animals that are not typically used for food (that’s an entirely different, but also important discussion), the number of animals in the top left quadrant are second only to the number of animals in the bottom right. Because of this, I believe that the concept of pet ownership is an overall net positive.
That still absolutely does rob the pet of the free will to decide their own destiny, and that is still absolutely a moral quandary.
Edit: Another way to frame my opinion that pets are a net positive is that we humans have done a great deal to improve our general quality of life (for better or worse to the world at large), and have mostly brought our pets up to a similar quality with us. Food, water, and shelter are usually provided to pets at a minimum, but those are anything but guaranteed in the wild. Pets lives also greatly improve compared to wild animals if you consider modern heating and cooling, pet friendly dietary considerations, veterinary care, and an overall pet friendly society.
I mean you can make the same argument for many humans, we as children don’t choose where we are born and who are our parents. And each country and society will decide for them the “correct” way to live. If anything, you could say we are currently treating tiny humans as pets.
I agree but I think it’s alright to have rescued pets. Would be better if they didn’t need to be rescued but that’s the way it is.
if it makes you feel better, there are different ways to take care of a pet (or companion animal if you prefer that term)
my dogs (**my **as in they are under my care, like children) don’t know tricks, they are free to perform any behavior that doesn’t put them or any other animal in danger
around me they are free to keep doing whatever they want or ask to be pet, the only orders I give them is to sit down and stay still when I give them treats so they don’t start a fight over it and to move from one part of my yard to another when we need to move heavy stuff
whenever the capitalist system let’s me keep enough energy after my chores I take them out for walks but when that’s not the case I play with them in my yard
I respect and love them in that way
Iffeel the same way, especially about cats.
Nobody likes candy corn and anyone who does is trying to gaslight me personally
I like, and have always liked, candy corn. Consider me a very dedicated gas lighter if you must, but I am probably older than you which makes this quite the complex conspiracy theory.
Time is relative
I love candy corn. I like sticking it onto my front upper incisors like I’m some weird harvest vampire. Yes I’m an adult.
I like two to seven pieces of candy corn a year. After that it’s too much and I can’t take it anymore, but every year the counter resets and I don’t know how many I’m going to get to eat before I’m sick of them again.
I like a small handful a day while it’s seasonal.
I do that too. I buy a bag after Halloween at a deep discount, then it lasts me a couple of months. I even like it a little stale.
Mine doesn’t last that long because my wife loves the stuff too lol
I liked candycorn till one of my kids made a bunch of it at home and pointed out the layers are just food colour and not a different flavour ingredient etc. The facade was ruined.
Eh, it’s fine. I mean, did you ever expect the different parts of the seasonal pumpkin shaped candy corn to taste like pumpkin? Nah, its all candy corn.
Hmm that inspires me to make pumpkin flavoured ones
That’s why my household buys it every year for certain
If you’re walking down stairs or an escalator you stand/walk on the right. always. If you live in a country that drives on the left side then you apply the same to stairs.
When walking on the sidewalk you pass on the right.
People who walk down the opposite side are a cancer to society.
Adding to this, if a group is walking together shoulder to shoulder taking up most of the sidewalk, it’s that groups responsibility to stack when a single person is coming. The single walker should not have to move off the sidewalk to accommodate.
Now playing The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
When walking on the sidewalk you pass on the right.
You walk on the right, but if someone is slow, and there’s no room on the right, you can def pass them on the left. Like driving.
Fun fact, in Japan, they drive on the left. As a result, they also walk on the left on the sidewalk. However in Osaka, they walk up stairs and use escalators “international style” on the right. They still walk on sidewalks on the left side. The rest of the country is not like this.
yeah I’m autistic this happens very often
That smart phones are surveillance/psyop devices, and that they own you, not them. I’ve been 100% phone free for 5 years now. I’m a 30+ Year IT expert. Also, fuck A.I.
100% phone free or 100% smartphone free? Thats wild
ALL: I don’t own a smartphone, dumb cellphone, landline, or anything else. I don’t own a tablet either.
I only use my computer without any camera’s, microphones or other feedback systems that social media can use to listen in or watch what my eye is focused on. I limit my online time to less than 2 hours a day, and often go several days without it at all.
I do have a media player that uses yt-dlp too download a few youtube channels I like, but with all the ads and whatnot removed. It’s as anonymous as I can get to limit what big tech knows I’ve consumed. Censorship and book burning start by knowing the source of the offending information.
Ive thought about going smartphone free, but I literally need it for a lot of 2fa stuff and travel.
However, all I do on it is, read, read lemmy, and talk to friends. Sometimes play nethack. Im not on toxic social media. So other than being on lemmy a little too much, I dont think its a bad thing to have, minus all the spyware, which I hope to get a pixel or light phone someday to rid that.
What I do think is good and needed more is respecting it. I dont need to be on it when im with friends. I dont need to look at it first thing in the morning. I dont need it when im in public and could sit contently or talk to a neighbor. Usually on weekends I leave it in my sock drawer and check it once or twice (unless i just need it for 2fa)
I’m a structural engineer. It is part of the job.
I’ve been mostly right.
A profession where I’m sure it’s beneficial to be very rigid…
Except during seismic events.
Tell me, as a structural engineer, should I build my home on sand?
Depends on the sand.
That’s also generally more the geotechnical engineer’s call.
What about the graboids?
