Not exactly related to technology, but I wished for a LLM that could talk with me (and giving me valuable insights) about things like black magick, chaos magick, summoning practices and rituals involving literal “demons” (as in Goetia and demonolatry), as well as very dark poetry and enchants (texts involving very sensible elements symbolically and metaphorically, such as very deep gory goth). These “ethical boundaries” also affects how LLMs can talk about such topics, because LLM deem them as “dangerous topics” (especially Claude, a very sensitive LLM that even refuses to talk about Lilith).

eugenics is gross

First and foremost, I was never talking about eugenics (a thing that would mean “selective breeding”, definitely not the thing I’m defending). It’s about other topics seen “as controversial as it” (although even the visible, blatant climate change is still seen as “controversial” by negationists in an anthropocentric world), which I guess will become clearer at the next paragraphs.

you’re wrong that there are too many people for the earth to support

While indeed Earth physically supports way more humans, don’t forget that humans were never the center of the biosphere: there are trees, algae, jaguars, owls, spiders, ants, bears, bacteria, protozoa, complex and beautiful sea life, and so on. We need to account for every single species, not solely homo sapiens. And that all life on Earth depends on Earth’s resources, mainly water and oxygen.

Unless you’re talking of humble cave people (hominins/hominids) who indeed maintained an harmonic relationship with fauna and flora behaving as all living beings do (collecting out-of-the-wild food and hunting preys to eat and survive) while also keeping a balanced reproduction (i.e. not reinlessly procreating), the “modern humans” can’t be no polluting. It’s the nature of modern humans: modern humans will pollute, whether they live at houses, at apartments or even at “modern caves” (bunkers).

Fire discovery is something to blame for this behavior. There’s always someone who’ll lit some logs and set fire on wildfire so to “expand their lawn”, or there’s always someone who’ll think “huh, I guess my apartment neighbors need money to exchange things, maybe I could become the leader and build a big polluting factory here to employ them while making industrialized things to sell them, because bartering craftsmanship is a primitive thing we can’t accept” (Fun fact: you don’t see birds carrying “money” or “goods” across the skies, for example).

Last but not least, I’m no alien nor a jaguar or a tree, so I’m obviously aware of myself. I’m aware of how polluter I am on Earth being a “modern human”.

If it didn’t become clear, I’m defending for primitive and sustainable ways of life (a return to our hominin origins), ecocentrism (Nature above humans, not humans above Nature), the awareness of how unbridled procreation is dangerous to both the Earth and the humans as well the “right” to live not being a “duty” to live. Again, all “controversial” topics for many people but whatever.

Exactly what I thought: “still too many people”. Considering one house/apartment to one person, there are 100 people. Where did they all came from? Being born. How they were born? Well, for the sake of Lemmy rules I’ll stop here, because what I’m thinking is still a taboo on societal debates.

Neither options. There’s a third option, involving a really smaller number (smaller than 100), but it’s too controversial to be written as a comment, I guess…

Ah, got it. Thanks for the reply!

A sincere question: why they don’t place some relay/repeater for the robot’s signal so they could control it from anywhere in the world through internet (or even some very private wireless communication network, outside internet due to security concerns)? The fact that they have to switch personnel every 15 minutes is a sign that they’re doing this in situ, rather than remotely.

Drones with mobile network connectivity are already a thing, for example. If you consider that internet exposure is dangerous (connection could be hacked, etc), ham transceiver repeaters are also a thing, and you can even chain many of them across many kilometers. It’s called mesh network.

According to my searches, while a RTG uses radioactive material weighting in the scale of kilograms (average of 5 Kg across missions such as Voyager and Cassini), a nuclear power plant requires several tonnes worth of plutonium and enriched uranium. The minimal critical mass for plutonium is 10kg, the double of how many fuel RTGs hold (that’s why RTGs don’t blow while ascending and/or on space). It’s a large difference of mass/weight between RTG fuel and rods for nuclear power plants. They’d need to carry the whole tonnes worth of radioactive material split across very small quantities (which would require a lot of lead walling and/or launches)

I can imagine a rocket full of plutonium and uranium rods, sitting above immense tanks of combustible liquid: what the odds of such a rocket exploding during ascent? What are the effects of solar and cosmic radiation energy over these rods (even if they’re lead shielded), especially around Van Allen radiation belt? So many questions.

First Rule: don’t rawdog internet, especially torrent search sites. Always use protections.

Second rule: always check if you’re on the right site. It’s relatively easy to find torrent search sites, but even easier to find phishing sites (i.e. sites that claims to be the original site, but they actually aren’t).

Isn’t a file browser needed for browsing the saved documents and spreadsheets?

Not to mention that office suites (such as WPS, OpenOffice and LibreOffice) will inevitably pop up a file browser when the “Open” or “Save” buttons/menu items are clicked.

It seems utopia/dystopia, but some things get discovered/invented by accident. The more companies and organizations (and even individuals) fiddle with AI improvement, the more the “odds” of a sentient AI (AGI) being accidentally created increases. Let’s not forget that there are lots of companies, organizations and individuals (yeah, individuals, people outside organizations but with lots of computing power and knowledge) simultaneously developing and training AIs. Well, maybe I’m wrong and just very optimistic for such thing to appear out of nowhere.

/r/unexpectedfactorial

My comment is meant to bring the perspective of someone who’s facing depression so to try to answer the main question (“a warning with suicide hotline really make positive difference?”) through that perspective. It’s not to seek mental help for myself.

For context, I’m a person facing depression, and my depression has broad and multifaceted reasons, from unemployment, going through familiar miscommunication (my parents can’t really understand my way of thinking), all the way to my awareness of climate change and transcendental concepts that lead myself to existential crisis. I’m unemployed to seek therapy (it’s a paid thing) and I don’t really have someone face-to-face capable of understand the multitude of concepts and ideas that I face in my mind (even myself can’t understand me sometimes).

That said, every depressive person has different ways to cope with depression. While some really need someone to talk to (and the talking really helps in those situations), it’s naive to think a conversation will suffice for every single case. I mean, no suicide hotline will make me employed, nor will magically solve the climate changes we’re facing.

So how I try to deal with my own depression? With two things: occult spirituality (worshiping The Dark Mother Goddess) and writing poetry and prose. I use creative writing as “catharsis” for my suffering, in order to “cope” with the state of things that I can’t really control (I can’t “employ myself” or “sell my services to myself”, I can’t “befriend myself”, I can’t stop temperatures from rising till scorching temps, nor the other already-ongoing consequences of climate change; I try to make some difference but I’m just a hermit weirdo nerdy nobody among 8 billion people, and I have no choice but to accept it).

I’m no professional writer (I’m just a software developer), but thanks to The Goddess, I can kinda access my unconscious (dark) mind and let it speak freely (it’s called stream-of-consciousness writing style). Sometimes I even write some funny surrealist prose/story, but sometimes it takes a darker turn, such as dark humor, or nihilistic, or memento mori. Doing this relieves the internal pressure inside my unconscious mind. After writing, I sometimes decide to publish it through fediverse , but when I do it, I constantly feel the need to “self-censor”: sometimes the stream-of-consciousness can lead to texts that people could interpret as some “glorification of suicide/self-harming” (especially when my texts take a nihilistic/memento mori turn), so I often censor myself and change the way I wrote the text. Well, it’s kinda frustrating not being able to fully express it, but I kinda understand how these texts could trigger other people also facing depression.

The fact is: when I write, it’s really relieving, way more than talking to people because, with poetry/prose writing, I can express symbolic things, I can have multiple layers of depth, I can use creative literary devices such as acrostics and rhymes, I can learn new English words while being a Brazilian, I can blend scientific concepts with esoteric and philosophic (my mind really thinks this way, blending STEM, philosophy and belief/esoteric/occult/religious concepts) without the need to fully explain them (because it’d take several hours and it’d be boring to anybody else other than me).

So, in summary (TL;DR): it depends on how multifaceted is the depressive situation. It won’t work for me. It surely can work for others that just need to talk to someone. Not exactly my case.

Interestingly enough, there’s an AI experimentation focused on (trying to) debunking conspiracy theories. The article was posted here on !technology@lemmy.world

Edit: the “Can AI talk us out of conspiracy theory rabbit holes?” article’s cover is misleadingly trying to relate conspiracy theories with occult, pagan and esoteric concepts, with symbols that you find in esoteric field (such as the eyed hand, alchemy symbols for planets and stars, etc). I’m a pagan myself. Religious intolerance is a thing that harms minority religions and the article sadly helps to spread this intolerance.

The occult, pagan and esoteric has nothing to do with conspiracy theories, they’re belief systems, they’re religions, they’re spiritual practices and views. Religions such as Luciferianism and Wicca are often attacked by Christians (with moralist speech such as “you worship Satan, you worship demons, you’re evil, repent”; let’s not forget what the church did to “witches” some centuries ago). I’m not attacking Christianity here (I was a Christian once), but it’s a reality: pagan beliefs, such as mine (I’m somewhat Luciferian and Thelemite in a syncretic way), are often attacked, and such a scientific article does harm pagan beliefs. Pagans don’t spread conspiracy theories.

“Press F to pay respects” Same vibe

Actively criticizing how both USSR and US secretly gave citizenship and hired nazi-fascists (and history is there to be checked) (therefore actively positioning myself against nazi-fascists and against everybody who “sits at a table with nazis and stays at the table”) is “carrying water for nazi-fascists”? WTH?!

Reeducation won’t revive nazi victims. USSR and US were no necromancers.

I’m not supporting conspiracy theories (they don’t even matter to me anymore), but people fiercely attacking conspiracy theories generally are unbeknownst to how some few conspiracy theories became facts (not every crazy-fetched theory, but a little few): back in 2012, I was aware of the existence of an annual meeting called “Bilderberg Meetings”. Around 2014, an official website popped up, finally listing matters and subjects being discussed at their secret meetings, as well as its attendees, but the group existed since 1954, so decades of talking about global matters behind closed doors. It took a journalist (now deceased) nicknamed as “Big Jim” to disclose the topic list, attendees, meeting dates (beginning and ending) and location (such as which 5-star hotel to be paid with taxpayers money), before the site finally became to disclose such things.

I remember being called “crazy” when I pointed to the fact that such meetings existed, now it’s simply normal and well-accepted (but it doesn’t take back the offenses I received that time). That’s OK for me, because I moved on. As I said, it doesn’t matter to me anymore, now I’m really numb to it all. There are worse things than rich people and politicians gathering behind closed doors, such as impending weather disasters and scorching temperatures due to the now irreversible climate change (in parts, some of the corporations that attended such meetings to be blamed, but not only them; if they were transparent about their discussions about climate change, maybe people opened their eyes earlier about how impending were the now climate disaster, uniting and charging companies and governments to earlier actions with the needed transparency).

TL;DR: For a fun, I tried the mentioned bot. I talked to it about the former secrecy of Bilderberg meeting (before 2014, when their official website got online).

He “agreed” but pointed on how “this level of privacy is not uncommon in high-level discussions” and regarding “media spotlight and pressure, which is a reason why the meetings are private”. I counter-argued by pointing out how the phrase “If you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear” does not only apply to “mortal citizens” but also to CEOs and politicians, but it insisted on how such meetings needs “discretion”.

One thing it pointed is valid, tho: “correlation doesn’t imply causation”. Indeed, the fact that such meetings were undisclosed doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re criminal or conspiratory. But does the same rule apply for citizens? The same rules should apply for both the “powerful” and the citizens.

As I said, time passes, really bad things happened so far (climate change, rise of bigotry and inflation worldwide, COVID-19 with seven million fatalities reported but up to 30 million estimated deceases including one of my uncles, etc) and I became really, really numb, so I don’t care anymore. Humanity (even the richest men) is deadwalking towards extinction, anyways. Unfortunately. Sorry for my sadness and numbness.

Indeed, but even hiring and giving citizenship for such people (nazi scientists, military and engineers), especially considering how they got their “knowledge” isn’t an “ok” thing. Neither for US’s Paperclip.

Both US and USSR secretly hired nazi personnel, such as scientists and engineers. Later, both operations were disclosed respectively as Operation Paperclip and Operation Osoaviakhim. USSR didn’t destroy nazi-fascism, they secretly incorporated it (that is, if I correctly understood the reference from the meme, maybe I’m needlessly “ranting”).