I’ve been doing that for years. I’ve been claiming to be a conservative and supporting things like universal healthcare. I even give it capitalist flair by saying that ensuring everyone has more money means I can then take that money by selling them shit they don’t need. How the hell am I supposed to sell my useless crap if everyone’s spending their money on rent?!

Ditto with stuff like housing the unhoused. I don’t want filthy drug addicts strewn about the streets taking up my park benches and constantly asking me for ‘bus money’! Get them houses so I don’t have to see them anymore! Also god I hate kids, especially when they’re just hanging around on the street being annoying and intimidating. Build some youth centres so they have somewhere to go and get them away from me!

Altruism through selfishness etc etc etc.

I disagree that Reddit would gain in value over time if they kept banning automation, because it is increasingly difficult to avoid AI-generated material polluting your dataset, no matter how much you avoid automation and try banning it. Inevitably, some AI-generated material is going to get in.

It’s a problem in two ways:

1. The vast vast majority of data on Reddit has already been sold, so you can’t rely on that data for future revenue
2. The remaining data that’s current is polluted by AI and is therefore worth less than the historical data because the more AI pollutes your dataset, the more likely it is to lead to Model Collapse, where an LLM is poisoned due to unverified data generated by other LLMs

I am firmly of the belief that sites like Internet Archive will be some of the most valuable companies in the AI space, because they hold an immense amount of untainted data created prior to 2019.

I’m not sure why anyone would ever buy Reddit stock. There is no money to be made in Reddit. They failed to make any money before they went public, and they’re failing to make any money now.

They tried the whole NFT thing, failed. They’re trying to sell the data to AI companies but once that’s sold they can’t sell any more of it because the benefit of Reddit data was historical data unpolluted by AI, but new Reddit data is polluted by ChatGPT posts and is therefore worth less.

It’s not even about banning people, it’s about the fact that Reddit was never a sustainable business model from the start, at least not in the traditional capitalist sense where you’re actively trying to make a profit to please shareholders.

The only benefit to owning Reddit stock is if you have voting shares and can manipulate the algorithm to benefit you in some way. Suppress some voices, amplify others to back what you want to do etc. but you need money to burn in order to achieve that because you aren’t going to be making money directly by owning Reddit stock and manipulating public opinion takes time.

Personally I wouldn’t like it to be what you believe it to be, rather what you need it to be. Some people don’t know what they need until they have it. You can believe that Heaven is endless sitting in a circle and piling devotion upon God, but if that isn’t actually going to help you be at peace, then what good is it gonna do you? How is a baby going to form a belief of what their afterlife is?

No, I reckon Heaven ought to be what you need, not what you want. I want my afterlife to be me being a series of Isekai protagonists in my favourite fictional universes because I secretly want to feel clever and powerful and knowledgeable about things to come, but indulging me probably isn’t the best way to put me at peace.

What if heaven is just whatever you need heaven to be? Like, what if it’s just a temporary state of affairs? You enter Heaven, and it is exactly what you need to be at peace with your death and your life before that. Then, when you’re ready, after however much time you need, you can decide to move on and stop existing, or send your soul to be reincarnated.

I have more respect for someone who goes “I hate homeless people, I think they’re scum” and pushes for actually housing them because they don’t ever want to see them again, over someone who goes “Oh those poor dears! We really should do something!” and then just likes a social media post about hostile architecture and leaves it at that.

The funny thing is you can still buy Office standalone but you have to actively go looking for it and Microsoft doesn’t advertise it because 365 subscriptions make more money.

Microsoft doesn’t want you buying standalone versions of software, but they still have to sell it because there’s still a market for it.

I wonder if there’s a market for male-centric therapy. As in “I’ve got a loada wood that needs chopping. Come chop wood with me and we’ll talk about stuff”. You know, give 'em something to do with their hands while they talk. Obviously you probably couldn’t do that with someone who’s known for being aggressive and has a criminal record, but someone who has trouble talking about their feelings and doesn’t feel comfortable just sitting in a room or on a Teams call and would rather feel like they’re accomplishing something.