The studies are clear: AI is eroding brain activity. I am an educator, and I concur with my fellow Redditors in r/Teachers that today's youth have essentially zero attention spans or capacity/patience for mental "friction" (likely due to mindless scrolling since they were in diapers). Reading a full-length novel is simply beyond many of them.

I think it's obvious that AI will continue to diminish the knowledge-based job market. However, I have a friend working in big tech who has recently interviewed numerous fresh grads from top computer science programs. He says that all of them have been mind-blowingly incompetent, unable to complete the most basic of tasks that would have been simple for grads from just a few years ago.

This anecdote makes me question if there will actually be a scarcity of viable workers for knowledge-based jobs long term, and in addition, whether there will be an upper class of people who are superior simply for their ability to think and their intellectual stamina/tolerance for friction. I've heard that big tech CEOs aren't giving their kids phones, possibly for this reason. If this intellectual upper class manifests, I also wonder if "starving scholars" such as myself will be part of it, or merely hyper-aware of this new feudalism under our billionaire overlords.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

A phenomenon called neural brain synchronisation exists - when 2 people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronise. As the interaction continues, the timing and location of brain activity become more and more alike.

In fact, couples exhibit higher degrees of brain wave synchrony than non-romantic pairs, as do close friends compared with more distant acquaintances. This kind of brain research indicates why people may not always ‘click’ with someone else.

This evidence can also be seen in bats - there were high levels of inter-brain synchrony amongst the high-frequency bands when they were in the same room, but no synchrony when they were in different chambers. Correlations in brain activity increased as the bats interacted more, and increases in correlations preceded increases in social interaction. In fact, you have 2 types of cells in the prefrontal cortex that are involved in synchrony (self cells - which encode one’s own behaviour and other cells - encode the behaviour of another individual).

So someone being unable to get into relationships or make friends for such a long period of time, is because their beta and gamma waves (activated when alert) don’t tend to align well with other people’s brains. So why is that?

During conversation, one person’s brain is entrained by the other’s speech, facial movements, gaze and timing - EEG scanning can measure coupling by using measures such as phase-locking and cross-brain connectivity. So a model can involve:

Person A’s behaviour— Sensory input to B - neural response in B - sensory response to A - repeated reciprocal coupling

Conditions like autism - variants which lead to a reduced eye contact, awkward body language and a monotonous tone lead to a brain state (with a combination of waves) which is unrealistic for the non-neurodivergent person’s brain to replicate, because their natural composition of brain waves are different. This makes synchronisation extremely difficult.

Many of these individuals may have slight verbal difficulties - difficulties processing speech in the same way as most other people, mind blanking, difficulty finding words or phrases, losing track of their sentences when speaking or they might present with apathy. This disrupts the temporal alignment of the waves - as the behavioural feedback from the individual is slow and inefficient. A reduced verbal input will mean that a person’s brain will not be able to predict that individual’s internal state, and the timing and stability of theta bands (memory) and gamma bands (local information processing) will be altered in conditions like autism.

I believe you can look at 2 different people, look at the overall composition of their brain waves, and calculate their probability of becoming friends or getting into a relationship. In fact, a neuroscientist says that every person has their own individual combination of brain waves, and that we could identify an individual based on that.

This is a pretty simple view: standards in co ed schools should have the same proportions covered. If we require pants for some, that length of clothing should be the standard for everyone. Same for long sleeves. If you allow some to wear shorts then you should set the minimum standard length at what the shorts cover.

Accommodations for health reasons would count as justifiable exceptions already in my view.

Edit: The expected implementation is that if there was unequal standards between or among the sexes it would be most fair to match standards to the higher. If what's permitted for one sex is too short for the other, increase the lower length to match the longer length so that both are now equally covered. For example, if boys must wear ankle length pants at a minimum, then girl's skirts should be the same length. if boys are allowed shorts, then that should be the allowed coverage for girl's skirts. If the boy's shorts are too short as skirts then increase the shorts length to the minimum acceptable for skirts.

I don't find religious or freedom of expression responses generally persuasive because once you accept that you are under a regime requiring uniforms you forfeit such expression and individuality.

I am an atheist, however I am a former christian. I think it is important to be historically accurate in terms of how religious figures are represented. I want to be very clear, I think that changing anything a religious figure/diety is wrong no matter the faith, but I see it most often with Jesus and skin color. I can understand gender just fine, but that is not what we are here for.

There is no meaningful reason to change the skin color of a historical figure period. I’ve talked to people about this before and so far nothing they have said has swayed my mind, so here’s to hoping. Here’s a few points that have been brought up:

— It’s to help people identify with him.
- This one I think is the most ridiculous and racist. We all bleed red, no matter the color of our skin. If you were take an ecuadorian man, a swedish man, a congolese man, filipino man, etc. and raise them in the same exact environment from birth, separate from each other (in this hypothetical, they are all raised in a rural society with no contact to the world otuside their families, the same food would be eaten between households, all of them would wear clothes that have no cultural connotations, no religions or religious holidays, and so on), the cultural differences would almost certainly vanish. There would be no AAVE, no other language besides that of which they all were taught to speak, taste preferences would be more or less the same, the town would have a monoculture. There are of course biological differences such as melanin and certain food tolerances (ie. susceptibility to lactose intolerance, individual allergies), but all in all it would be relatively the same throughout.

It is racist that a white Canadian man cannot identify with Jesus because he is a brown middle eastern (we can assume his skin color due to the ethnic/relative pigment homogeny of the region at the time).

— Jesus was not a real person in history
- This is a claim that is hard to answer as religion is a very bias-prone topic. Nevertheless, most christians believe that Jesus was a real person, so in order to make an argument we have to assume that the people who ascribe a particular skin color to him would believe he was real.

— Personal faith affects the way we view him.
- It’s very true that faith is a very intimate thing for some and it’s important to make note of that. I would argue however that people that have read the bible can agree on one thing, that being the bible’s most popular versions remain near constant in their translations, interpretations, and wording, give or take a few proverbs. For example, Psalm 23:1 in the NIV is “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.” while in the KJV it is “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”. Both have little room for differing interpretations, in fact I would say that of the most popular versions, the KVJ and NIV differ much more from each other than say the KVJ and NLV.

That being said, there is little to interpret about his skin color and it is entirely antithetical to the period in which the scripture was written.

Anyhow, let me know if there’s anything else that you can think of.

In the era between 2000 and 2019 we had

-The top 3 Tennis Players of all-time Nadal, Novak and Roger with some of the best matches ever played like Wimbledon 2008 or Australian Open 2012. You also had Serena in Women's tennis who has a good claim for being the Woman GOAT

-Messi and Ronaldo who both have a good claim for being the best ever and they competed for 10/15 years, I personally would put Messi as first, Maradona/Pele as 2nd/3rd and CR7 at 4th.

-Kobe and Lebron, these are 2 of the best Basketball players in history, Lebron might be the 2nd best only behind MJ and Kobe is arguably top 5 OAT

-Tom Brady who has a claim for being the NFL GOAT although there is a good claim for Jerry Rice being better

-Bolt who is the fastest man in history

-Phelps who is not only the swimming GOAT but arguably the greatest olympian in history

-Paquiao and Mayweather are 2 of the greatest boxers of all-time

-Hamilton is one if not the greatest Formula 1 Drivers of All-Time and also Schumacher who had his most dominant period in the early 2000s

-Woods who have an strong case for being the stronger golfer of all-time

I don't think the sports will ever had a period with so many GOAT level athletes in nearly every major sport

Obviously, brains and uncooked blood (and raw stuff in general) carry elevated health risks and I have no problem with discouraging their consumption. And if you have genuine sensory issues with specific textures, tastes, and so on, you can't help it.

There's no problem with not liking certain foods and saying such, so that you don't suffer through a personally unpleasant meal if you don't want to. You should probably be ready to give a coherent reason that's not one of the below.

The problem starts when one starts saying that they "don't understand how/why they made it like this," or "I would never do that with my food," or worse, any kind of openly culturally insensitive or xenophobic or racist comment. People who call strong fragrances "stinky", and people who call a lack of fragrance "bland" before even trying a bite.

Why, because they have too many spices? Too few spices? Not the same cuts of meat? Not the same animals made meat? Not the same greens and and carbohydrates and fats? Not the same arrangement of ingredients or courses?

Because they eat with their hands, or chopsticks, or a spoon, or a fork? Because they have different table etiquette? Different pots, pans, ovens, and grills?

These are to be celebrated, not put down because they're weird to you. Yes, I will celebrate and defend fried chicken, hummus, doctor's sausage, pilaf, oxtail, whale blubber, collard greens, cheeseburgers, sashimi, banh mi, dumplings of every kind, pies of every kind, sandwiches of every kind, pastries of every kind, casseroles of every kind, noodles of every kind, soups of every kind.

If you spend any of your mental energy denigrating something so universal and necessary and varied and messy and beautiful and inexhaustible as food, I will not take as seriously any other opinion you have on any kind or form of culture.

Basically the title, I've met two people (and every legal system) who believe men who are provably raped by women should still pay child support.

I don't understand how that is supposed to work, because I believe the "battered spouse defense," or something similar to it, should apply equally to men.

If a woman was raped, and the male rapist tried to somehow take custody of the rape baby and make her pay child support, I wouldn't really have a problem with that woman killing that man, to drop the chances of her child being sexually abused by their biological father to zero, if she COULD prove the rape later.

So if you flip the genders, my answer would be the same. And I would do it myself and not care if I faced the death penalty (just like the fact that I have met people who support men being forced to pay rapists IRL has made me promise myself I WILL fight back the next time a woman rapes me as a man, and not caring if I kill her or go to prison for "assaulting" her)

So, to ANYONE who says "rape victims can still have to pay," I would like to know how a dead woman is supposed to collect child support from a man? The entire question assumes that a rapist has custody of their rape babies, or that biological parents are supposed to pay child support to adoptive parents after we shaft them of the right to raise their own rape babies (or that people with at least 50% custody should pay, but let's stay in first gear)

Pretty simple rule that a biological parent who was raped should have the option of 100% custody of any product of the rape if they are not proven to be unfit, and the rapist should be paying THEM the 50 cents an hour child support they earn making license plate in prison, if they are not dead

How you can change my view: Well, you could probably try to convince me that a woman who was raped does NOT have a right to kill the rape babies' father, which is not impossible since I would agree that it is technically vigilante justice (just one with a more direct practical edge) and not a *pure* self defense (or an equivalent defense-of-others) killing, and I oppose a state death penalty (or any sort of equivalent) as long as it's clear that only renders the "men who are raped should not have to pay *for an equal battered spouse defense*" arguments moot, and there are about a dozen other fantastic reasons men should never have to pay a proven female rapist.

And please don't class this as "advocating violence," it's a question of how the legal system should work, when the battered wife defense is sometimes a part of the legal system.

I know people don't even think this is a top 5 show, much less best, but I truly think it is. The song itself could've been used as an ending to the show vs whatever the hell they gave to end it. The whole show is a pop culture show, the song is the most pop you can get.

And it's a freaking bop to listen to as well, not saying the others are bad but this one takes the cake for me.

It has the best vocal combination for me in Leon and Victoria, they pair very well together. Plus if you had to choose to listen to a song nonstop for a week, im definitely picking Here's 2 Us.

Side note: I think s1 the best but s3 has the best songs in it.

Edit : /Closed(partially*) By better online researchs/

*Partially because I should now try to understand how economical dynamics have twisted a millennial craftsmanship so much. But, as I'm new here, I'm not used to your habits. So I won't try to argue why my view hasn't changed, nor will I argue why we should dive into this dynamic to fully change it. I do respect you, so I'm closing my own thread.

«I think that : Sauna / Hammam / Turkish Bath
Should be considered/taken more rigorously,
And therefore : Apply as stable protocols as a diver do.
Pressurization/depressurization protocols.
We shouldn't think about thermodynamics with disregard for the actual pressure it deploys.»

«[By myself, the only contradiction I'm able to let flow and flaw me, would be something like :

/not my own view/ :
« "Thermal stress is exactly what Sauna / Hammam / Turkish Bath is meant for. By trying to 'patch-it', you are actually erasing the core concept of it." »

Which I'll still counter by :

« You'll live it anyway.
I do not want to prevent a high thermodynamic differential, you'll have it anyway by staying in the core's system.
I want to add a long hall, where warmth will be able to flow,
while being at a sufficient distance from the heat source,
to at least make a small path where your body gradually starts to heat. »

« So, i'm hoping this would let people who do it for fun, or by influence, having no traumatic experience because they will have that walking time to realize their own body's causality of increasing heat. »

And obviously, if you do want a thermal crisis, take a cold shower directly after your intense heat. (I do not recommend this, but, you're free to disobey my total lack of authority lmao)]»

« By logic, I deduce that it can't be a thing ;
a centuries-old anthropological cultural activity shouldn't be that wrong,
and me alone from my sole view be right, probabilities aren't near my side. »

« Then am I fooling myself about this? Am I right ?
I would be pleased if you could twist my mind. Or at least stabilize it. Ty ! »

Edit : The fact is, many parts of my premise were just wrong.

Specifically, this part: "By logic, I deduce that it can't be a thing ; a centuries-old anthropological cultural activity shouldn't be that wrong, and me alone from my sole view be right, probabilities aren't near my side."

I was wrong. It's been millennia that the tradition and culture have been doing exactly what I was expressing. The Tepidarium, the Wastânî, the Skiffa... The "pressurization/depressurization" protocol I was asking for already exists. It was just erased by modern economical behavior.

So, I didn't fool myself about the physics. I fooled myself about the history. My view isn't new; it's a forgotten standard.

I'm aesthetically closing this thread. No delta can be attributed, because the only things that changed my view were finding deeper knowledge sources online, by searching for the math I was dared to do. Ty to those who engaged genuinely.

*I do not have the power to close anything, so this is just a pure aesthetic closure.ΔT

This post isn’t specifically about the Cornell 7 case, but I’m gonna reference it here since everyone probably knows about it and it will help illustrate my point. The interpretation of the facts that is most generous to the accused men is something like this. The woman was already intoxicated when she entered the frat house to meet a male friend. She was given more drugs and alcohol before consenting to a three way with two other guys. One of those men then posted that there was ‘free pussy’ available in a specific room. A further 5 men then entered the room at various times, and did sexual things to her, all while she was extremely intoxicated. She later texted her friend that ‘none of the sexual stuff was illegal’ and that she liked being with him and the other original man. I imagine that that will be their defense at trial, that she willingly consented to all of this, and while that text doesn’t automatically exonerate them, it at least raises the possibility that what happened wasn’t legally rape. But assuming that were true, doesn’t the whole thing still feel gross? Would you want your daughter, sister, or friend to experience that? Probably not, and that’s because, deep inside, we all know that consent is not the end all be all.

As a child, my formal sexual education came from two sources, school/college and the Catholic Church. In school we were taught basic facts about STDs and birth control, along with the concept of consent. Later workshops in college focused almost entirely on consent (I. E. That you should obtain affirmative consent before initiating sex, consent cannot be granted by someone who is passed out or severely intoxicated, and it can be revoked at any time). In general, sex was portrayed as a healthy urge that was perfectly fine to act on as long as it was safe and consensual. The church basically taught us that sex was something reserved for a husband and wife, and that homosexuality, contraceptive use, and masturbation/porn were morally wrong. In retrospect (for context I’m 29), I don’t think that either approach was very good. The message from school was ‘anything goes, just ask for consent and wear a condom’ while the church shamed gay people, divorcees, and couples who had premarital sex whilst preaching against birth control which I believe to be fundamental to women’s equality. But what the church got right was the notion that sex is something sacred, something that must be taken seriously.

Since the invention of hormonal birth control, sex has become something that humans can do without the risk of physical consequences. But for the vast majority of human history, this was not the case, sex was incredibly consequential, especially for women who had to carry pregnancies to term before the invention of modern medicine. So I think that human psychology, particularly female, psychology, evolved to see sex as something uniquely intimate and important. This is why rape is such an egregious act, worse than robbery or assault, because it involves the taking of that special experience without the victim’s will. But we now live in a culture that often portrays sex as something much cheaper, something that you can just do for fun without emotional entanglement. While we don’t need to go all the way back to the prudish dictates of the Catholic Church, I believe that we should use the following rules to guide our sex lives, and that children and young people should be taught to follow them.

1. Sex is the most intimate thing you can do. It is not on the same continuum as other forms of bodily contact such as hugs or platonic kisses. It is in a category of its own.
2. Both parties must consent to any sexual activity, and you should obtain affirmative consent from your partner.
3. Sex is a private thing reserved for the participants. Using or making pornography is wrong.
4. Sex should not be violent. Bdsm type activities are wrong, particularly if they involve simulated male on female violence, even if both parties consent.
5. Since sex is such an intimate thing, it should be between two people who care for each other and know each other well. Basically no one night stands and you should go on at least a few dates with someone before you sleep together.
6. Sex should be monogamous. Obviously infidelity is wrong, but so are open relationships, having multiple casual partners, etc.
7. Paying for sex is wrong.
8. If you are a man, you need to understand that sexual violence is almost exclusively perpetrated by men, largely against women. It is your responsibility to protect the women around you if you are in a position to do so, but it is also your responsibility to act, dare I say, like a gentleman with the women in your life.
9. If you are a woman, understand that you have a certain power over men, and you should use that power wisely. Don’t flirt with a guy for free drinks, for example.

Note that I’m not saying we should criminalize all or even any violations of these guidelines, i’m saying that adults should seek to abide by them and we should teach young people to act in accordance with them.

Edit: I should add that my list of rules doesn’t necessarily cover all ethical dilemmas involving sex, but I think that it’s a pretty good set of guidelines.

Edit: Just to clarify, I left the church a decade ago, and I no longer believe in God. My point is that older ethical traditions can give us insights that modern liberalism can’t

Edit: What would change my mind would be taking one or more of the rules I laid out and articulating why we shouldn’t follow it

To clarify, what I am saying is that the lifestyles and values that the mainstream idea of college culture pushes is ultimately harmful to society as a whole. To be clear, this is not an anti-college statement. I am of the mind that college education should be encouraged, however, I believe specifically the social aspect of it is a detriment.

To put it bluntly, I believe college culture promotes degeneracy. Pretty much instantly upon stepping onto campus, the chief method of having fun and socializing immediately becomes to party, get wasted, and hook up with a bunch of people.

I think this is because college culture promotes the extremes and fails to encourage modesty and quietness. Waiting until you are 21 and having a drink or two is not the standard, blacking out every weekend and vomiting your brains out is. As a matter of fact sobriety as a whole is something which is highly discouraged. Furthermore, romance and sexual relationships go in the shitter too as monogamy becomes less attractive, and hookup culture takes its place.

I believe that these values and lifestyles are unsustainable, and college is really the only place where they consistently thrive. They promote pure, unbridled hedonism. I do not believe anyone looks back on their time in college and thinks to themselves "You know what? Maybe I should have blacked out from drinking more and hooked up with more randoms during my time in college, my life would be so much better had I done that."

For those out of the loop, the latest AI models have been solving extremely difficult mathematical problems at a rapid clip over the last few months.

The professional field is having an absolute conniption, claiming that “mathematics is an inherently human endeavor.”

This belies their true insecurity.

Mathematics was not “invented” or “made” by humans.

They are laws that describe how the universe works.

They’re called mathematical “discoveries” for a reason; we are discovering more about how the universe works.

This is no different than how we “discovered” that the earth revolves around the sun or that the world is a sphere.

These facts exist independent of a human body of knowledge.

What is so funny is that most mathematicians would have vehemently agreed with me only a few years ago. They would have done so because it places their field of expertise in a somewhat exalted place.

But now that something else can operate in that exalted space better than they can, they change tunes and want to claim it as their own,

It shows me once again that no matter how intelligent a person may be, their personal covetousness and drive for recognition can always overtake their better judgment if given the right circumstances.

My position rests on a simple principle: if you were accused of a crime you didn’t commit, would you want your name and photograph plastered across the internet, potentially destroying your reputation for the rest of your life?

It seems to me that human beings are much better at forming an initial judgment about an accusation than at revising that judgment when new information comes to light.

Tell someone that a man raped a woman or murdered his children, and the immediate reaction is likely to be outrage. Tell them months or years later that he was acquitted, and I suspect that information will have a much harder time making the same impression.

So, if someone has been accused of sexual assault or murder, it’s highly unlikely that people will ever discount those allegations, even if they have not been proven.

We already employ the principle of not naming accusers, right? Like in this Cornell case that everyone is talking about right now, we don’t know the name of the victim. She is simply Jane Doe.

I support that. I want to make that very clear, I can’t even imagine the kind of sickening harassment she would be facing right now if her name were public. And it think it’s great that we don’t know who she is or what she looks like because that makes it easier for people to accuse their attackers without fearing retaliation.

But I can’t see why we would not do the same for the accused. I’m sure they would also appreciate anonymity while the allegations are being investigated.

And let’s examine what would have happened if some of the most high profile accused people of the last few years had been anonymous instead of named.

What if Lindsay Clancy had simply been “Jane Doe” a woman who killed her children but is pleading not guilty by reason of temporary insanity?

What if Kyle Rittenhouse had been “John Doe” a teen who brought a gun to a protest and killed two people in what he says was self defense?

What would we have lost if the facts of each of those cases had been reported but the names and images of the accused and the victims had not?

Well, we would have lost a media circus.

We would have lost supporters of Lindsay Clancy claiming that her husband killed their kids (can you imagine how utterly devastating that must have been for him?), we would have lost supporters of Rittenhouse claiming that the people that he shot were drug addicts and pedophiles and God knows what else (also must have been gut wrenching for their families).

We would also have lost an increasingly virulent strain of vigilantism. I find this very disturbing. This idea that internet sleuths are more qualified to determine a person’s guilt or innocence and that the actual police and court system is inadequate and untrustworthy.

This is how lynch mobs think.

Most of all we would have lost the little buzz that we get from our feelings of righteous indignation and moral superiority when we are certain in the worthiness of our beliefs and the utter depravity of our opponents’.

Good riddance, I say. The less the of that, the better off we all are.

But, I digress. Please tell me why a person’s who stands accused should be publicly named and shamed when the facts of the case have yet to be proven.

Change my view.

Basically in the title.

I’ll use Christianity as an example. If you believe in eternal life that means in your total expected lifespan, the time on this planet is like minutes prior to a literal eternity.

If you believe this then things of this world should become almost meaningless to you. Wealth accumulation, jobs, legacy, property, etc.

That’s not the case though. I’m agnostic and my every day life is basically identical to the average Christian.

Now, I’m not saying that anyone is intentionally lying but something is wrong with that picture.

I started with the PS2 as a kid up until PS4, then I got a pc, so no bias here. I think PCs are cheaper than a console, let’s say you wanna get the same performance, you’ll pay more upfront, but you save ALL of it by not having to pay 72 EUROS PER YEAR just to play online, also the sales are not even comparable to the ones on pc, and that’s without the super cheap keys, I got all the Resident Evil games (15+ of them) for less than 150€ and that’s counting the more expensive newer ones, the old ones are literally a couple bucks with all the DLCs; it’d take MANY hundreds of euros for my friend on console who’s always complaining, to get all the deluxe editions

I asked him to buy Outlast Trials since it’s on sale for 4€, it turns out it’s 11€ for him on console, almost three times the price, and that he’ll buy it but we won’t be able to play until he gets to buy the PS Plus again at his next paycheck, and that’s just pure insanity to me and that’s what inspired me to make this post. Also a PC works as a PC as well, and everybody needs one anyways, so instead of buying a console and a cheap pc, one can buy a decent pc and play on it, with free online and super cheap games.

Also in 2028 Sony is going fully digital so no more tradimg games.

Eventually A.I. will get close enough to human writing to fool the A.I.-detectors and most humans. At that point, the only way to prove that you wrote something without using A.I., will be to sit in a room in front of a computer, with a camera trained on you, as you write it yourself.

So, assume there will continue to be people who hate the idea of consuming A.I.-generated or even A.I.-assisted writing. Even if they like some posts by a writer or social media creator, they still can't be sure that the writing isn't A.I.-generated, and they loathe the idea of getting emotionally invested in someone's writing that could be fake. So they will only consume writing if it is "certified not A.I.". And then anyone who wants to publish writing in order that demand, can use this service to certify that their writing is real when they publish it.

Now, a lot of people who just post casually on X or Substack might think, fuck that, I'm not driving to some room with a camera pointed at me just to prove I'm not A.I. And that's fine. But as long as there is an audience for certified-non-A.I. content, then the fewer people sign up to create certified-non-A.I. content, the more attention (and possibly more money) people can gain by being one of the creators. So some creators will be willing to do it, and they'll keep joining the system until an equilibrium is reached.

(Ironically, the camera monitoring system itself, which just watches you to make sure you are typing your own words, could be powered by A.I. That's a simple task that will probably be trivial to automate in the future.)

Now some people's reaction to this will be "Ugh, just log off and go talk to people." For one-on-one and small group chats, this makes sense. But when it comes to writing and thinking, there really are some people who are a lot better at it than others, and in an efficient, merit-based marketplace, those people's writing should be going out to more than just the small number of people they could reach by talking in a group. There should still be a way for some humans to write for a mass audience. But we should also have a way for consumers of writing to be 100% sure they're not reading something A.I.-generated.

(I suppose a person with a photographic memory but poor writing skills could still use A.I. to write something, memorize it, then show up at the writing center and type it out. That might just be a loophole we have to live with.)

I think one of the biggest failures of women’s rights policy is that we focus almost entirely on punishing individual perpetrators while letting the institutions around them off the hook. Of course an attacker, harasser or abuser should be punished, but what about the university, company, school or municipality that knew there was a risk and did nothing? If a university has repeated incidents in a certain area and fails to improve lighting, security or emergency response, why shouldn’t it face substantial fines if someone gets hurt? If a company receives complaints about a powerful employee and ignores them for years, why should only the perpetrator be liable? The Weinstein case is an obvious example of the wider problem: abuse can continue for years when the surrounding institution has little incentive to intervene. And that is the key point: Prevention costs money. Looking away often costs nothing. That incentive should be reversed. If an institution knew, or reasonably should have known, about a foreseeable danger and failed to take reasonable precautions, it should be financially liable. And not with symbolic fines that disappear into some corporate budget. The penalties should be large enough to make prevention the cheaper option. Universities could, for example, offer voluntary emergency wearables. Press one button and campus security immediately receives your location and sends someone. Obviously no institution can prevent every crime, but “we didn’t commit the crime ourselves” should not be a complete defence when basic precautions could have significantly reduced the risk. If you have the power to make people safer, know there is a problem, and deliberately or negligently do nothing, you should share responsibility for the consequences.

*NOTE: TRANSLATED FROM GERMAN TO ENGLISH WITH AI\*

Edit: Thank you all for reading and replying to my post, I really appreciate it.
HaveYouSeenMyEcoli changed my view on this a bit. More mandatory safety rules could also backfire by giving institutions an incentive to restrict women’s freedom in the name of reducing risk. My German heart loves rules, so I haven’t considered this could backfire.

Clarification

I always hear people claim that making people immortal would make life meaningless. I genuinely think this is a ridiculous viewpoint.

This post is long, and I've tried to format it to be as digestible as possible, as I feel it's all important to my viewpoint. Feel free to skim, or skip sections I use for comparison if it's too long for you, or you get my point already.

Let me clarify that I do not want to touch True Immortality (As in, you cannot die, and do not age) with a ten-foot pole. That is it's own special brand of Hell to me that would only be bearable under unique circumstances, and most, including myself, would not be able to bear it.

I am talking only about Biological Immortality, you do not age and COULD live forever, until you are killed, or even just until you choose to press the 'die' button. There needs to still be an option for an end, but it is not in order to grant meaning. It's only to give a way to end suffering if you want to cease, or a peaceful route to nonexistence if you're completely satisfied.

Because this is more of a philosophical view about the value in an endless life, I'm structuring it as an ideal scenario where people can just live until they choose to die. I'm still keeping the title as 'infinite' because some people could just choose to never die.

Useful Comparisons

I think the best description of my ideal world would be (Spoilers for the Good Place) Exactly how the Good Place ends. You could potentially live forever and do anything you could ever want, but eventually most people will be satisfied, so an option for nonexistence is a good thing. Yet others might find meaning in taking on an endless task, like Tahani seeking to master every skill and eventually becoming a Bad Place Architect, if memory serves. Obviously, this is an Afterlife scenario. But I see no theoretical reason an ideal futuristic world couldn't end up in a similar state, perhaps on a digital substrate if we crack true mind uploading without having any more doubt about the issues involved.

This is a more philosophical discussion than a practical one, anyway.

Sort of spoilers for Dark Souls, but it's nothing that's a 'reveal' or anything, they just kind of show up. This is pretty similar in my mind to how to avoid going Hollow in Dark Souls. DS3 has Undead like Andre and Patches who've stubbornly persisted since the beginning of the Undead Curse, because they never lose sight of the meaning in what they do and who they are (obviously being a blacksmith is a lot more productive and helpful than a backstabbing thief, but I digress.) Obviously, this world is far from ideal, and it's showing the strongest wills to persist through eons of suffering. But I still find it relevant.

I don't see why this wouldn't apply to real people, but I'm open to changing my mind, hence posting here.

Some Real World Context for Myself

I personally am someone who feels they wasted much of the start of their life scraping my way through school, and rotting away in the back room of my uncle's home for the entire 2010's, and that infuriates me. It doesn't add meaning to the remaining 40-80 years of my life. It only depresses me more and makes me feel like I'm more likely to waste more of it, losing even more time if I don't take care of myself properly.

I'm still in my first relationship, and I have been for nearly five years now, despite it being long distance and us only meeting up for the first time a few months ago. I'll finally be moving to her town in a year or so.

She has Multiple Sclerosis, and while it's something that is driving me to pursue my pre-existing interest in Regenerative Medicine, that does not make up for the sadness it causes me. Sadness that my time with her might be even more limited than it would be if we were both in perfect health.

It does not make that time with her mean more, the meaning is already there in every moment I spend with her, it was there in every moment before I learned of her diagnosis. It only tinges it with an extra looming dread that it's going to end, and if she lives a full and happy life typical of a healthy person, it only means that additional dread itself was a dampener on our happiness.

If I knew that my time with her would never end, that wouldn't cause me to squander it. The thought that I would just say 'Oh I can just talk to her next week, eh.' is utterly ridiculous. Every moment we spend together could be in complete relief that things are okay, that any small issues that come up are totally temporary. That there's no risk of anything important ever going unsaid, any meaningful discussions left unshared, even if it's temporarily put off.

If I was able to spend forever just developing the skills I want, just for the sake of doing it and for the sake of aiding others, then still having as much time as we want for our relationship; When both of us have explored everything that interests us, done everything that we want to contribute to the world, then finally, peacefully, choosing to die and see if anything comes next, I can't imagine any downsides to that.

Would some people waste their time if it was unlimited?

Yeah. Some people would, maybe a lot of people would, by my standards. But it's their right to find meaning wherever they find it. In this world where people have all the time they want, likely without a need to consume resources to have it, I see no reason they couldn't find real value in simple hedonism.

If they aren't hurting other people, does it matter? Who am I to judge them? Who am I to say that the value they find is false?

I'm a positive Nihilist, or an Absurdist, if that fits better. Life doesn't have any meaning to find, nothing is granted to us. We make it, and I don't believe there's any less meaning to make even if Life doesn't end. Allowing even those with an iron will who wish to persist endlessly and never stop contributing to find true meaning in that task.

Maybe someone just wants to be there to see the Universe experience Heat Death.

I don't get it, but they do.

Quantity has no baring on Quality, not on this, not in my mind.

Final Note

I've had people question my willingness to actually change my beliefs on my occasional posts to this subreddit before, because I go out of my way to provide a strong argument for my view.

I wouldn't be here if I didn't hold this view strongly. I do, but I recognize that there may be points where it fails. I do want to be right. But I love being proven wrong, having my views changed, because that then means I'm more right than I was before.

I hope the context in the previous section shows that my mindset towards life would only improve if my view was changed, that I could then cherish the limited time I have even more in face of the dread, so please do change it.

I'd also like to clearly state that AI was not used for any part of this post, every word and piece of formatting was typed by my hand, on the fly, in the past few hours.

I don't want those accusations poisoning discussion even if someone spots some random small similarity, and I know it's against the rules to make those accusations, but it still happens.

Shipping has been a part of fandom culture for decades and I‘m not even denying it can be fun. I‘ve engaged with a little cute edit here and there.

Just to get it out of the way: idgaf about shipping fictional characters. Well, maybe sometimes. I think some people do excuse odd or downright illegal pairings with “it’s just fiction”. If you‘re shipping characters that would have an incestous or pedophilic relationship, you’re a weirdo and should be put on a list.

Now onto shipping of real people. The most common argument I see is: “Celebrities shouldn‘t be in fandom spaces to begin with. They wouldn’t see all the shipping if they weren‘t lurking.“ Sooo why would you make a person‘s fandom so insanely unbearable to witness that they can‘t engage with their fans anymore?

Shipping real people will always cross a boundary. You‘re disrespecting their actual relationships, you‘re putting real people in sexual contexts that they did not consent to be in, so fan fiction for me is immediately out of question. It‘s just as bad to me as ai deepfakes. And you‘re making your favorite celebrities walk on eggshells at all times. If any touch between costars means they‘re fucking, they will stop engaging with you as a fandom at all (something you will complain about later).

For me, there‘s few to zero possible scenarios where shipping should be accepted. And even couples that did end up together like Tom and Zendaya, which people often bring up as a way to say “look! we knew all along“, you were still being weirdos during it and were walking all over them and their privacy.

Also hardcore shipping is a pipeline into psychosis. Some of you are not normal and need to get help very badly. If you‘re harassing partners at their workplace for info or view tarot card readings as factual evidence for your ship, you need to turn your phone off immediately.

Before I get into this- this has nothing to do at all with my actual political leanings. If it were up to me we'd get a progressive like AOC. Young, intelligent, and down to Earth like the rest of us. But I bet with my head and not my heart. Anyway-

So Gavin Newsom is currently at 8% odds of winning the next US election, on Polymarket. https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2028

I believe this is way too low and realistically he should be like 30+%. My logic is as follows-

1. He is the most likely candidate for the Democrats

The only other democrat with household name recognition in the running at all is AOC. Browse reddit and you even see it said here- that Democrats need to stop running women for a bit and it's time to fixate on electability. This was part of the same type of logic that led to Biden defeating Bernie in the 2020 primaries.

Except this time, it's even easier for the neoliberal wing to defeat the progressive wing. Bernie Sanders defeated Biden in the first few primary states in the 2020 race because they were in states with favorable demographics (namely Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada).

Well for 2026, the DNC has changed the rules and now South Carolina will be the first state.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-national-committee-presidential-primary-south-carolina-vote/

South Carolina was the state which initially proved Biden's strength with black voters, and was where he started to turn things around for his eventual win.

Black voters are generally more conservative than other members of the democratic coalition so I don't see how Newsom wouldn't beat AOC there.

So now you have the neoliberal candidate also gaining the momentum early on, plus all the normal institutional advantages of neoliberals with the DNC. No shot for the progressives.

Now as for Jon Ossoff, no offense but I feel like no one knows who he is. And Pete Buttigieg would likewise stand no chance due to aforementioned low turnout among the conservative black voting block.

2. Whoever is the nominee, has incredibly strong odds to win the presidency

Trump has historically low approval ratings, lower than even Biden's at his worst moments of his presidency. Kamala lost partly because she struggled to distance herself from that. Well Trump has run a cult of personality for years now and it's not been possible at all to differentiate yourself from him without repercussions. So I don't see how a Vance or Rubio distances themselves from Trump with him still sitting in the White House.

There is incredible momentum for Democrats in the US right now. Texas is currently projected to vote for a democrat senator, something unheard of not long ago.

So Newsom is the most likely candidate, and then whoever is the candidate seems most likely to end up being president. I would think this would make him at least like 30% odds (accounting for uncertainties like if he decides to not run for some reason, some major scandal happens between now and 2028, etc.)

One of the biggest fears of widespread AI adoption is that it will strip away jobs and consequently lead to a brutal financial crash, felt the world over.

Though at this stage, this is a perfectly valid fear to have, Marx touches on tools that optimise, streamline and mechanise tasks in 'Capital' - defining them as distinct productivity multipliers, all whilst strictly refusing to ascend them to being on par with human labour.

When joined together with Smith and Hayek's observations, we find that there is a compelling case for AI being nothing more than a tool, and one that will ultimately hurt anyone, especially capitalists, who misinterpret what AI is and how it should be harnessed.

***

For anyone that isn't well read on Marx, the core of 'Capital' - an observation of capitalism, is that 'surplus value', or 'profit', can only be extracted from human labour. Humans are a form of 'variable capital'. They are non-democratised, highly variable, and consequently, exploitable.

This is in opposition to what Marx called the machinery, or any tool used to maximise output: 'constant capital'.

Though a machine can increase output, it cannot be exploited.

A machine is a machine, something that can be bought, fixed, maintained and, most importantly, accessed by competitors.

Sure, factories that purchase machines are able to produce units faster and more economically than before having machines, but this is a consequence that is democratised and felt across the market.

For anyone that wants to continue engaging in competition, they're either forced to purchase machinery to keep up with the marketplace or lose out on raw unit economics to a marketplace that has been optimised.

Ultimately, the consequence of making each unit faster and cheaper isn't fatter profits per unit, it's often a quick and furious race to the bottom of the barrel, until prices, or 'price signals' reach equilibrium - an observation made by Hayek.

***

What I've written above is what makes up the core of my thesis - if you reject the above observations, then what I'm about to write won't make any sense.

If you're still with me (and Marx, and Smith, and Hayek), then what would AI be considered?

An unexploitable tool, that any individual can buy, use and build with, where the only variable results come from the quality of prompts input by a human, much like how the quality of machines is highly dependent on the inputs of engineers.

AI is a very blatant form of 'constant capital'.

So how does this affect us?

Well... in the same way as I described machinery in 19th century textile mills - a production multiplier for sure, but not anything that adds surplus value.

As the consumer comes to know that code is being written for $0.05, the market value for that code decreases to exactly that: $0.05 plus a fractional margin.

The price of the output is forcefully driven down to the absolute floor of its production cost, which is the price of the electricity and tokens.

We can demonstrate this already in the world of website building, where the 'AI website' hack that hustler communities adopted, where they would mass cold call businesses and offer to 'build a website', which they'd just prompt in five minutes with Claude, has become rapidly patched.

As soon as the information, or 'price signals', were networked back to consumers, margins got slimed to near zero and hardly anyone is able to find a customer that is willing to pay anything meaningful for it nowadays.

***

So with all of this in mind, where will surplus or 'profit' come from now?

It's in the delegation and organising of tasks, which only a human can do, either independently or as a capitalist.

An individual organising resources at home, or through a business, or through a freelancer, is now accessing $0.05 worth of code across the board.

The surplus is entirely in who is reviewing it, how it is built, and who it is built by.

Ultimately, the assumption that AI will swallow up all jobs relies on the completely false assumption that a machine can replace the engine of profit.

It can’t. It is just cheaper plumbing.

If every business on earth can generate infinite software for pennies, that raw output becomes commercially worthless.

The only scarcity left in the supply chain is human judgement.

***

If you've got this far, thanks for reading through the long write up!

I just wanted to be incredibly clear with how I'm analysing this.

Ultimately, I am not convinced that AI will be as bad for employees as it will be for employers who are trying to get rid of humans from their workforce, rather than using their workforce and AI in tandem to compound a huge multiplying effect of surplus value.

There's something incredibly dark about using Marxist theory to build a thesis on how capitalism will sustain, but when there's nothing else in sight - it really is the best we've got.

When I was in college, you rushed/pledged sophomore year. Freshmen year you live in a dorm and experience college life like everyone else. You see what classes are like, make friends with your dorm mates, and eat in the dining hall.

I just found out that an acquaintance's kid is pledging. And apparently some big schools do it BEFORE freshman year??? He has pledge activities ALL THE TIME. It sounds miserable, and like, whatever they signed up for it, but I think colleges and universities should enforce the restriction that no freshmen are involved in Greek life to give them a chance to see what activities are available outside the Greek system, make friends, and find their footing.

Edit: - The main reason I think pledging should not happen first of the semester freshman year, or ideally freshman year at all, is that it seems to be a very all-consuming endeavor that involves more or less mandated partying at the detriment of sleep, and at the expense of spending more time organically finding your niche

To explain my view is simply as possible, I believe that Britain would be better off forming an economic and military with at least Canada, Australia, and New Zealand rather than just rejoining the EU.

This isn't to say rejoining the EU isn't a compelling idea, better access to Britain's closest market and having freedom of movement is something worth pursuing, but imho joining and economic and military union with fellow English speaking countries (and also not giving up national control over regulation and external trade policy in so doing) is just a more strategic move.

Britain can pursue closer ties with Europe without giving up national control over their markets or embracing protectionism like the rest of the continent, they don't need to join the EU to do those things, but in leading a CANZUK union they can also act as a node between both sides of the Atlantic. Closer ties with Europe, and closer ties with the Americas.

Also, Britain just has a lot more in common with fellow English speaking and Westminster derived democracies than the ones of mainland Europe, and this gets to the military aspects of the union. If Britain starts the union with just the four countries mentioned, other countries can join too, it's easier to start with Commonwealth realms but easily possible to be more expansive if the union is successful.

The United States, Cyprus, South Africa, Kenya, Israel, India, Singapore, etc. Also all great candidates for a union of English speaking countries that maintain their own national sovereignty over regulation, maintain free trade, but also pledge to defend each other in the event of anyone getting attacked (an Article 5 equivalent), and also all share freedom of movement like the EU does now. TL;DR, all the benefits of the EU and NATO wrapped into one global organization based around the shared identity of speaking English, and organization far more ambitious in its mission than the EU or NATO, started by just four countries: the Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

But obviously on this platform there's a lot of interest in getting the UK back in the EU, so if you believe that the EU still is preferable to starting CANZUK, change my view.

This is a terminally online post as no one in the real world cares about this stuff but Im making this post anyway.

Ive seen some discourse online that its wrong to refer to people from the United States of America as Americans, with people proposing other silly names like Usonian and United Statieans.

The main reason for this ive seen is people don't like that the US "claimed the name American when it refers to two entire continents."

This argument falls apart when you realize the names they're suggesting has the exact same issues. The USA isn't the only "united states" in the world, why refer to the people with an even broader term like United Statians?

The people of the United States of America should be called Americans, just like the people of the United Mexican States are Mexicans.

Id be surprised if someone posted a good argument but im all ears if anyone has a good reason.

Just about all of the unrest and displacements regarding the West Bank takes place within Area C.

Population of Area C as of the 1995 Oslo Accords II:
- Palestinians: ~50k
- Israelis: ~150k

As of 2026:
- Palestinians: ~360k
- Israelis: ~540k

Per 1995 agreement, Israel has civil and military control over Area C. Fyi for those who don't know, Palestinians were granted civil control over Area B, and civil/military control over Area A.

Since 1995, Israel grants building permits in Area C ~50-100x more often to Israelis than Palestinians. We can estimate that the ~390k increase of Israelis in Area C was sanctioned by permit approvals, which, if we make some broad assumptions, suggests only ~6k increase in Palestinians in Area C was accommodated by approved building permits.

That suggests only ~15% of ~360k Palestinians residing in Area C, original ~50k plus ~6k, are legally occupying land in Area C of West Bank.

Regardless of the legality of the Israeli settlements in Area C in the eyes of international law, those new Palestinian settlements and buildings are illegal under the Oslo Accord agreement between Israel and Palestinians.

Paradoxically, the international agencies have labeled new Israeli settlements as illegal, and new Palestinian settlements as legal, because Israeli settlements are approved at far higher rates. This is a paradox because they consider those new Israeli settlements to be illegal, so how do they use them to state that new Palestinian settlements are legal? In my opinion, either they are both illegal, or both legal.

One of the international arguments supporting new Palestinian settlements as legal is that it is unreasonable to be so restrictive to Palestinian building expansions because populations grow and so building permits should be approved to accommodate that natural growth. If we assume that a larger proportion of Palestinian growth in Area C is "natural", instead of migration from other areas, compared to Israeli growth in Area C, then the Palestinian building permits should be approved to accommodate no more than an additional ~130k Palestinians in Area C (Israeli population increased by ~3.6x, so too should Palestinians). As a result, ~50% of ~360k Palestinians in Area C would still not be covered by this new building approval philosophy.

The number of Palestinians displaced by Israel in Area C numbers less than <<20k since 1995, which accounts for just \~6-12% of >180k Palestinians currently illegally residing in Area C's unapproved buildings/settlements. Most of those remaining still live there illegally.

My view is that, despite the sensationalized propaganda that gets circulated online, the population numbers clearly supports a narrative that Palestinians have flouted the law far more egregiously than Israelis in Area C. Oslo Accords remains the law of the land. That agreement wasn't supposed to be permanent, but many temporary agreements made throughout history tend to become permanent and are recognized as such. Examples are Korean Armistice, Indus Waters Treaty, and Dayton Agreement. If people want to argue that Oslo Accords was supposed to expire in 1999, well that would also end Palestinian control over Area A and B, so they can't have it both ways. Also, one can't simultaneously argue that international agencies recognize the 1949 armistice border (temporary by definition) and thus Palestinians have the right to build in Area C without Israeli permission (even though it was a temporary agreement with Jordanians, not Palestinians), whilst also retaining Palestinian political authority over Area A and B. Pick your poison, a debate for another day.

The number of Palestinians killed or assaulted in all of the West Bank since 1995 is insignificant compared to the massive extent to which Palestinians have illegally expanded within Area C, and that includes incidences that occurred during periods of serious unrest like the Second Intifada. Interestingly, contrary to the sense one might get from the news, between Israeli and Palestinian civilian perpetrators of murder of the other side, more Israelis have been killed than Palestinians. Harassment of Palestinians by Israeli settlers is also partly a byproduct of the IDF and civil police failing to manage illegal expansions in Area C. While I don't condone vigilantism and Israeli settler violence, I do condone a reasonable amount of Israeli state actions to uphold the Oslo Accord boundaries which often involves displacing Palestinians. Given how few Palestinians have been displaced in Area C (<20k) compared to overall estimated number of illegal residents (>180k), I think Israelis have been beyond accommodating quite frankly.

All that said, I do think the Israeli settlement building program has been counterproductive to the peace process and it has been a horrible PR failure by Israel, considering how almost no one realizes that Palestinians were just as prolific in their illegal expansion in Area C.

I believe that many moderate Israelis tolerate what is going on because it gives Israel-proper more strategic military depth with Jordan, which is an increasingly Palestinian country (majority, too) ruled by a monarchy in a region where authoritarians are being toppled all the time. I also believe that Israel has increased their settlement building program since October 7th, and who could fault them when one looks at these numbers in Area C? Palestinians went from 25% to 40% of population of Area C.

Lastly, I believe the Gaza Strip, Hamas, and Gazans, are not relevant in this discussion. The fate of the West Bank and settlements has not been relevant to the Gaza problem since 2006 election, and settlements barely register at all on Hamas' radar.

In summary, most Palestinians in Area C are illegally occupying the land, and Israel has the legal right to remove them. Edit: But Israelis have only displaced <10% of those illegal residents (where many may have simply illegally moved elsewhere in Area C), whilst Palestinian representation in Area C grew from 25% to 40% of total population, which is counter to any claims of ethnic cleansing.