JohnBierce

joined 1 year ago
[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I haven't seen any numbers on how much Sora cost to train, nor how much it costs to run- I can't help but believe it's painfully high.

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

How delightfully ineffective

(Seriously, what has Effective Altruism ever accomplished beyond buying castles?)

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 7 points 8 months ago

As someone who made decent money off that site back in the day, fuck Steemit. Realizing that my earnings came from Korean folks losing their life savings turned me against crypto for life.

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago
[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I absolutely get the "I'd be a good billionaire" fantasy, it's something I've indulged in every now and then- but for me, it's really more a personal agency fantasy, just one of many ways I like to imagine having the power to single-handedly make the world better. But... in the end, they ARE fantasies, are just cathartic games for me to play when I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed by the world's bullshit. (And they usually involve giving the money away, hah.) No one should actually have that much individual power. Definitely not me, lol.

It's the people who defend the exploitative systems that make billionaires possible, for the sake of that fantasy, who really irk me. They've genuinely convinced themselves, on some level, that it's possible to, as you said, keep the billions without being a leech on society. That there's somehow a chance they could really be that billionaire personally, or even that they're actually temporarily embarrassed billionaires.

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 1 points 11 months ago

But the laughter it brings us?

Priceless.

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 6 points 11 months ago

I've spent way too many pages of my books making fun of utilitarians to stop now lol.

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago

Even Peven Stinker, friend and defender of Jeffrey Epstein, is coming out against EA? Wow.

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago

Goddamnit I wish I'd intended that pun

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, there's absolutely a place for arguments that aren't full-bore "capitalism is evil, forward the revolution!" Some people need to be eased into that space, and articles like this, that show how fundamentally stupid and terrible Musk and company are, are a great way to get people to start asking HOW dingbats like that got power. And it's not the longest journey from there to questioning whether something is wrong with the system itself.

(There are failure states, of course- namely, reinforcing the neoliberal idea that if you just put better people in charge of a system, it will work better. But that's a question of execution, not of tactical validity.)

[–] JohnBierce@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago

Somehow, I doubt there's many other sneerers in Hanoi, but you never know...

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