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by ryandvm 18 days ago
Man, I appreciate your optimism, but I don't know how you can spend even 5 minutes on Facebook looking at the absolutely bonkers shit one's own relatives and neighbors post and still come away thinking that most people are "thoughtful".

Are humans capable of profound creativity? Of course. Are they actually doing it? No, not very often.
1 comments
boothby 18 days ago
I do not spend even 5 minutes on facebook. Aside from a comment or two per day on HN, the only human interactions I have on the internet are with coworkers, a of whom I regularly see in person.

If you find yourself consuming more than 5 minutes of content you don't find thoughtful per day, I would ask why. "Touch grass" seems to be the common advice to combat this.

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ryandvm 18 days ago
Okay, and you're not wrong, but it sounds like you're filtering out most of the shit that humanity is producing and then lecturing folks that say LLMs are smarter than most people.

It's kind of like you hang out in a Buddhist monastery saying, "I don't know what you guys are talking about - people are so peace-loving!"

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boothby 18 days ago
No, I'm interacting with people in person. I'd debate your claim that "most of the shit that humanity is producing" is internet-mediated, but your choice of noun renders that rather moot. Stop ingesting shit. There's a whole world out there.
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scotty79 17 days ago
You are heavily self-selecting what part of humanity you interact in the real world as well. You pick your friends, places you live, places you frequent, times you choose to go out and so on.

I didn't know how wide the humanity variance is before I had to go to a government office to exchange identity card (as the old one expires after some years). In the queue, when I looked to my left and right I saw some of the most bizarre people I ever saw. Because they were picked fully randomly just by having their identity documents sort of "off by one" in relation to mine. Humans and their output, when taken representatively are at most tolerable.

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ryandvm 18 days ago
I think we both agree that I need to spend less time in intellectual ghettos.
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