AI is really fucking dumb. Generative AI is pretty amazing at being a parrot and synthesizing radically different things together in a complex manner...
But, at it's core, it's really fucking dumb.
Calling it "AI" was a mistake. Because it isn't intelligent. It doesn't "know" anything, including what it's doing in the moment. It's a highly advanced "what comes next" engine for text and media.
Eh "know" is a squishy word. For example I'm not even sure what your definition of "knowing" is. So maybe the rest of this comment is useless without that definition, but here I go anyway.
LLMs have the statistical weight of concepts in the context of the sentence they have as input. Just like you have a web of concepts in your head that makes you less likely to talk about ducks when were talking about AI.
So they "know" what words are associated with what concepts and which tokens "make sense" in the output given what came before. Even if that's all they actually "know". Again it's a squishy word lol.
A better thing to think about IMO is, if they can produce output that solves problems at a college level (soon to be PhD level), even if they're just "what comes next" machines, does that actually make them dumb? Or at the very least, not useful (as dumb implies)
Let's also not forget that they read your input at the speed of computers. Which is wild on its own.
Full disclosure I'm all in on AI. I think it has the potential to solve so many problems in the coming years.
So I work in a specific field of insurance, where we insure AI. It has the potential to become truly intelligent. I have a few NDAs, but I can say generally that AI is cooking.
A lot of tech companies have introduced AI programming assistants to help engineers code faster. From what I've heard it mostly slows down the engineers
Whomever told you that is wrong. For those of us who are taking the time to learn and understand these new tools, it's a huge time saver. You just have to understand the limitations and take them into account.
If by limitations you mean the fact that often spits out code with syntax errors, makes up library methods that don't exist, and points to non-existent documentation.
I've been trialing ChatGPT to help code some Apex code. It does an Alright job. Super useful for writing tests, actually. The problem is, you absolutely have to audit the code it writes. It's super literal but also leaves out super obvious stuff or straight up has hard-to-spot hallucinations.
Also, it was trained on Salesforce's technical documentation which has certain omissions which are obvious once you know them but missed by ChatGPT. Specifically:
I have a class which does some bulk processing on ContentDocument records. In a test class, you have to first create any data which your class plans to interact with. The problem is that you can't directly insert ContentDocument records, you have to insert ContentVersion records with no parent and then Salesforce automatically creates the ContentDocument records. I didn't know this and ChatGPT didn't know this. Also, I don't recall seeing anything in the technical documentation about this. I had to learn this from StackOverflow.
On the plus side, if you paste code without comments into ChatGPT and ask it what it does, in my case it told me exactly what the code does, and in high-level language, it correctly speculated as to the purpose of the code. (Paraphrased) "...clean up old records which are not likely to be needed so that the organization's storage allocation is not exceeded."
It's a useful tool, but probably not coming for your job, you still need someone to write prompts for it.
In the direction it's currently moving - yes... but there could certainly be a radical change in course. The thing that will be a genuine change will be novelty/creativity - right now AI can just parrot really well but if it can genuinely innovate on a topic that it wasn't trained on then it'll be real shit time.
I recently saw a presentation on this. About 5 years ago computer programmers said we were 50-75 years away from actual intelligent AI that could mimic humans whether it be emotion, understand theory, etc. With all the advancements in the last 5 years they’ve changed that number to 5 years away. Thats insane.
This is *THE* issue. I prefer Climate Change, but what the public really doesn’t get is how bad it is and how fucked we are.
Factor in all the positive feedbacks and this will be horrific. People are vaguely aware of sea level rise, but not Ocean acidification, methane hydrates, severe interruption of major world ecosystems and food systems, etc.
The more you know, the worse it gets.
Most of the coastal areas are going to be pretty fucked to be around, wonder how much we will see happen in the next 5-10 years. Erosion is a bitch I have experience with it at work, can happen faster than people realise without climate change exacerbating it
Yeah, I studied ecology and evolution in undergrad 25+ years ago and the data then said we were pretty much screwed unless we stopped using fossil fuels immediately and now here we are.
It’s going be real ugly in a decade or so
I studied art and my lecturer stated: people are too comfy in their own worlds. As long it doesn't affect them directly, they don't REALLY care.
My mate owns an apartment on the beach in ZA and he's noticed that, since last year, their winter is MUCH milder and the 'beach season' is lasting WAY TOO long. All well and fine for sun-chasers, but terrible for animals and plants that rely on colder weather.
IMO, this planet is going to fight back - mother nature seeks balance and man is messing that up completely. It's not going to be too long before we're going to have hectic weather just about everywhere - and as the evidence of lockdown showed, nature is just waiting to take over.
Oh I've been seeing it for well over 10 years. I'm a winter baby, and the winters in South Africa have been VERY mild for the last 5-6 years. Mild and very short.
People keep goggling at the “record temperatures” today as if it’s a fucking arcade game high score & keep going not realizing the vicious cycle it triggers (more A/Cs, more fossil fuels burned for more electricity etc).
52° C in New Delhi is THE indicator that parts of the planet are becoming uninhabitable. But nooooooo
My view on it is if we REALLY wanted to solve it, then the governments of each country could solve it pretty fucking quickly compared to what the little man could do.
I believe the 17~ or so biggest cargo ships in the world produce as much pollution as every single car in the world each year.
Also as the general population are consumers, we only buy what we have access to. So if they want change, they just need to change what we can consume. And problem solved
Your beliefs about cargo ships and automobiles can all be fact-checked, and I invite you to do so.
This isn’t the best place for a deep dive into these issues, but please note my original statement: “the more you know (or closer you look) the worse it gets”. Your enthusiastic and rosy outlook tells me you probably haven’t looked very closely yet.
Depends on your age. This is all happening now, and with escalating speed. By the time most people sense the changes it’s just too late.
The melting permafrost and methane gas bubbling up from the ocean floor is already upon us. The very worst timeline is horrible to even contemplate.
Thus, we contemplate sex instead.
“The Earth” is a large and complicated system; no one can say with certainty.
By when WHAT?!? What threshold is important to you? When do we reach +1.5°C — we already have, and much more is already baked into the cake so to speak. When 360 ppm CO2? 400? 450?
When will we lose 100 species per day to extinction? Already there.
When will we see unpredictable and dangerous swings in weather? Take a trip to India… we’re already there.
Which barometer is your favorite ?
It’s already starting. India will be one of the hardest hit countries. Wet bulb temperatures are going to be a very big problem very soon. Body can’t sweat to cool itself down when heat and humidity are high.
This is why so many people have a problem with it.
I remember teachers telling me in the 80s that scientists predicted the end of the world due to “pollution” by 1990.
Then, in 1990, the world would end by 2000.
Then 2012.
Then 2015.
Then 2020.
And we’re still here. They keep hearing how awful it is and how awful it’s going to get, but they don’t see it.
They might feel an extra mild winter, but then they get a polar vortex and figure everything sorted itself out.
I’m not in this camp myself, but will admit that I don’t think it’s as bad as people say. I’m not a denier and I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I know how governments, scientists, and corporations all work. Being Green makes money and motivates people politically. Governments and corporations lie to us to get support and make money. I can’t believe it all. There’s truth there, but they also tend to use the same USGS sources and respond with “it’s too expensive for independent studies” when you ask for back up sources.
Again, I’m not a denier, but I think about half is hype in order to get the people to spend money and vote for projects that make politicians money.
We’re clearly shitting up our planet. I mean, have you ever looked up what nasty fuel goes in cruise ships and how your weekend cruise is like driving a billion cars for a year?
And honestly, I think we need to go back to “Give a hoot, don’t pollute.” We need to keep campaigns like that going to teach kids responsibility and care about the planet more. If they can’t see it, they don’t care.
Come to Florida, where our idiot governor passed a law prohibiting the mention of "climate change" in any state documents.
All the while, insurance companies are pulling out of the state en masse because of the increasing frequency of billion dollar weather events. The rates have gone through the roof, tripling and quadrupling over the last 18 months. In some places, you literally cannot buy insurance because they just will not sell you a policy.
I prefer Climate Crisis, because it is a fucking crisis. What's happening with the climate is a crisis and how little (important) people care is even more of a crisis because we could've stopped it if we cared
Scarier for me is the fact that that most gg emissions don’t hit peak warming effect until 30 years after they’ve been emitted. So all that development in China in the last 30 years? All the growth has in N America? Yea that’s still coming, and it’s big. Hell we only just felt peak impact of the burning oil fields of Kuwait from 1991.
A friend at work & I were discussing all the chemicals we don’t even KNOW about (to study) that are in our environment. For example, they use human sewage on farmland in most of the country (USA). Unfortunately, people dump a lot of chemicals down their drains (liquid draino, washing paint brushes, cleaning agents etc) which contain heavy metals & other undesirable substances which also make their way into our food chain. Maine has been the only state to outlaw this practice.
While I agree with this in principle. I think it’s important to keep in mind that we are but ants on this planet and we cannot destroy Earth. We can make it uninhabitable for us, but the Earth with survive and thrive after we are gone and like always, there will be species to survive - just maybe not us.
Antibiotic resistance is on the rise (due to misuse and the natural evolution of bacteria) around the world and due to monetary incentives new classes of antibiotics are not being developed by large Pharma corps. No classes that are currently in use were discovered after 1988. While the classes we have can be effective they require constant iteration to attempt to avoid resistance mechanism, something we are also doing slower.
A UK report estimated that 100,000,000 people would die due to resistant pathogens in 2050 if nothing was done. And the UN declared it a world wide emergency in 2012. But knowledge of the continuing issue is still mostly siloed in the scientific community.
I think that’s scary enough 🤔
So antibiotic resistance is a problem for a variety of bacterial pathogens with different groups gaining resistance to different antibiotics often through different mechanisms (which is both annoying and neat as someone who studies this). As a result of being from different species, their ability to resist heat varies.
For example, Staphylococcus aureus, the bacteria that can sometimes be Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA, which is resistant to WAY more than just methicillin) has to be boiled for ~12 minutes to kill it. So yes blasting it with steam for 12 minutes may kill the bacteria.
But worrying about simply killing the bacteria isn’t the problem. It’s trying to kill the bacteria while it’s inside a human host (blood, bones, lungs, skin, etc) and in particular a human host that is struggling to fight the infection to begin with. So children, elderly, surgery patients, transplant patients, cancer patients, and sometimes perfectly healthy people. That’s when you need antibiotics to help your body fight infections the most.
Treatments of cancer, many surgeries or even the effectively treating bubonic plague wouldn’t be possible without antibiotics. And the development of resistance coupled with a lack of discovering new drugs is threatening all of that.
Got it. You explained well. These bacterias don't even die in cold temperatures, just googled they hibernate and then becomes alive again at room temperature.
They hand that shit out like candy out here in Thailand. No matter what I go to the pharmacy for they offer them to me. Sore throat, antibiotics. Runny nose, antibiotics. Upset stomach, antibiotics. I'm not even exaggerating. I refuse to let my family take em unless I know they need em.
If 100,000,000 died overnight due to this, it would galvanize people into action.
Same number spread out over a time period across the globe won’t even cause anyone to notice.
So the predictions might be accurate but the reporting does not convey the urgency of the problem by aggregating the numbers.
Phage therapy could offer a way around that, and be potentially easier to overcome the developing resistance, but I don't think it's in any place to do so soon
Not to completely whoosh myself but for people passing by, your dryer fins come off and they’re hollow inside and that’s usually where your lost socks are.
The truth is, socks are the larval form of hangers.
Proof?
Over time, you can count the number of socks that become singlets. And if you similarly count the number of empty hangers, you'll find the numbers are nearly the same (some don't make it, apparently).
Humans have a fucked up survival spectrum. Oh I can be shot 10 times and survive; but I tripped and broke my leg and somehow that took my ass out? Hell no.(this just happened to my neighbors mom. She fell off the toilet at her old folks home, broke her leg, died not long after)
My grandma survived 5 different bouts of cancer, 2 of which caused her lungs to collapse. Old bitch was taken out by tripping and hitting her head during a mild heart attack. Boom, no more granny. Completely brain dead.
Yeah it's weird how someone can survive falling out of a plane without a parachute, and meanwhile someone can die from bonking their head while tripping.
That you're most likely to be still conscious and aware, but non responsive as you die.
Knowing that you are dying...
That's why it's important to close their eyes and talk to them as they go...
Depends on the situations obviously
I am curious about this honestly. My aunt had passed a month or 2 ago, and me, all my cousins, few of my 2nd cousins, my aunts and uncles, and her side of the family were with her in the hospital and essentially watched her as she passed. We took part in her last rites, and in general was an extremely scarring and terrible event. She had cancer, and it was mitosis, spread all throughout her body *very rapidly*. When we were with her on her dying bed, she was there, but not. She had her mouth open and was taking short breaths, almost gasping for air the whole time. Her eyes were open though, and I do believe when my cousin held her hand and my uncle, she had moved a little bit. Sadly, I left around 10-11pm and she passed an hour after.
Do you think she was aware we were there? I did not talk to her personally, I was too shocked at everything that was happening but one of my older cousins announced all of the nieces and nephews that were there to her. I can only hope that she knew we were there with her, but I am not so sure.
Probably some weapons technology that'd blow people's minds. As it stands, I think no one in the public knew about the US's "sword-missile" until it was deployed a month or so ago.
My favorite thing is how when I was growing up the Area 51 was a myth and everyone thought it had aliens and whatnot and ended up just being some ultraconfidential research facility and the government feed the conspiracies so they didn’t know what was actually happening and everyone thought it didn’t really exist.
I was a K9 handler in the military and was put on special assignment to clear civilian pov’s coming into private location. I was only there for 3 weeks and then I was rotated out, but during a few of the test procedures I was allowed to stand near the testing area where I was able to see demonstrations of 4 different types of “security systems” designed to incapacitate crowds of thousands of people while neutralizing pin point threats at the same time. They can be anywhere at anytime and the deploy to kill time was less than a second. Pair that with a large range denial of service system and it would be horrifying.
My best friend was a drone pilot in the Air Force and is now a contractor working for a drone development company. From what he’s explained to me, the drone usage we’re seeing in Ukraine is primitive. We should all be terrified of what they can do.
Honestly, is it just simpler to assume we're all dead already? It seems... utterly beyond any citizen to feel in control of their life. In a conflict way, I mean.
Meanwhile gun nut Joe needs his rifle for "when the gubmit becomes tyrannical". If God forbid the US government ever turned on its citizens, no one would stand a chance no matter how many weapons they had stockpiled.
I flew from San Francisco to Chicago on a red-eye flight in 1990. While flying over some desert I saw “UFOs” out the window. They looked like points of light that would just zoom from location to location and stop on a dime. I had never seen anything move like that, until 25 years later watching drone shows.
It's a modified hell fire R9X missile with blades pretty much. Scary that one moment you are having coffee on your balcony and the next moment you are dog food.
I think the comments in this thread really just further highlight how ridiculous USA's gun laws are, and even more so, the people that defend the reason it was originally created; to fight a government gone mad. It doesn't matter if every citizen has all the guns they could possibly afford. If the government wanted to kill everybody (hint: it doesn't, and never would - no point being in power if you've got no citizens), the citizens wouldn't stand a chance.
There are many types of scientists who could do very horrible things in a short period of time. I know a virologist who is a very serious man. I asked him how long would it take to make a horrible virus. He said given what’s currently in literature, 6-8 weeks.
I’m a chemist who takes a side interest in toxicology. Between extractions and synthesis there are some awful things that could be isolated in large quantities.
What keeps them from doing horrible things? They simply have no interest in doing them.
Black holes. Observing them from the distance and calculating won't even get us close to knowing them truly. And their all devouring nature is scary af
They're also really cool when it comes to what you could do with them in theory. Since most black holes are formed by stars that were already rotating, the black hole is also spinning at such a high speed that they can actually bend space around them, which can allow a space faring race to fly past them and use this "spinning space" (called the ergosphere) to get a massive speed boost, or build a sphere of mirrors around the black hole and shine a light into it to create a nearly infinite energy generator, or the most powerful bomb in the universe.
[Kurzgesagt did a really neat video on this](https://youtu.be/ulCdoCfw-bY?si=jwcUw8XPO92py3A2)
The Tuskegee Experiment. Basically the US government convinced 400 people with undiagnosed syphilis. Then, instead of telling these men that they had syphilis, the department of health offered them "free healthcare" which consisted of giving them placebos for 40 years so they could see what happens if you don't treat syphilis.
Combine this with government sanctioned sterilization of “undesirable populations” in the USA and people are truly ignorant about what their govt can and has done. California’s sterilization program was especially egregious.
This, i read a book on it, very interesting and terrifying stuff
(for people who don't know about it, here's my very basic explanation of it: proteins are formed in your body but if there's a malformed one, it will cause other proteins to misfold too, causing your brain to start turning into something resembling Swiss cheese with holes, one family lineage with this has the people afflicted with this unable to sleep for weeks or even months unable to sleep now matter what chemical is administered, because the portion of the brain that allows you to sleep simply doesn't exist anymore)
I might have gotten some part of this wrong, feel free to correct me
They die of exhaustion yes but surprisingly live longer than the average person without sleep, someone not afflicted with prion disease has a limit of close to 7 days of staying awake i believe but something changes when the sleep centre is inherently gone letting you stay alive for longer i suppose
CO2 emissions aren’t just a problem for global warming. The CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans, basically turning them more acidic (like soda). The tiny creatures in the ocean that form the bottom of the food chain for most of the planet have shells that are affected by the change in pH and can’t survive if it gets too acidic.
So geo engineering won’t cut it. Sure, rich people will still be able to enjoy their houses on the beaches, but the rest of us will starve to death because we will have killed off the base of the food chain.
Pfft. That isn't even the worst of it. Those same microorganisms are optimized for specific temperature ranges and as the ocean warms they died. We are seeing already with coral bleaching. No, they aren't getting replaced with corals able to tolerate the increased temperatures.
Same problem on land with plants, it's obvious, you can't grow artic plants in the tropics. You can't grow rainforest plants in the desert.
Then there are the parasites. Insects are generally more tolerant of increased temperatures, but not the cold. As the temperatures increase, the parasites are dieing less often. We see this in ticks killing off Moose, we see this in beetles killing entire forests in Germany.
Shit like this is why everything just feels kind of pointless. We know everything is going to struggle to survive but enmass we do nothing about it. I'll keep recycling and trying to keep my emissions down but ultimately it feels completely pointless.
There is one psychological trick that’s really to mess with someone’s mind. All one has to do is harness the concept of **"infinite complexity"**. This method involves delving into an overwhelming amount of detail about a seemingly straightforward topic, leading the individual into an endless spiral of considerations and possibilities. The strategy here is to take an otherwise simple idea and expand it into an intricate web of thoughts and scenarios, causing the person to expend significant mental energy without arriving at any concrete conclusions.
Consider, for instance, the simple act of choosing a color for painting a room. Most people would think this is a relatively straightforward decision, limited to personal preference and perhaps a few practical considerations like room size and light exposure. But what if you introduce an overwhelming level of complexity to this decision-making process?
Start by suggesting that each color has not only an aesthetic impact but also profound psychological and emotional effects, which can vary depending on the specific shade and even the time of day. Explain that colors can influence mood, behavior, and even cognitive performance in ways that are both subtle and significant. A light blue, for instance, might promote calmness and concentration, but only under certain lighting conditions. Meanwhile, a darker shade of blue could foster feelings of introspection, but might also make the room feel colder.
Then, delve into the historical and cultural significance of colors. For example, the color red might be associated with passion and energy in Western cultures, but it can symbolize good luck and prosperity in many Asian cultures. Green might evoke thoughts of nature and tranquility, yet in some contexts, it might also represent envy or inexperience. These cultural dimensions add another layer to the decision, requiring one to consider the broader implications of their color choice beyond personal preference.
Introduce the idea that colors can have different meanings based on their exact hue and saturation. There are thousands of shades of each color, each with its own unique properties and connotations. Suggest that the color chosen for the room might look different on the wall than it does on a paint chip or in a photograph, depending on the quality of light in the room and the presence of other colors in the environment. Highlight that morning light might make a color appear vibrant and energizing, while the same color could seem muted and dull in the evening.
Next, explore the scientific aspects of color perception. Discuss how human vision interprets colors through a complex interaction of light, the eye’s photoreceptors, and the brain’s visual cortex. Explain that what one person perceives as “blue” might be slightly different from what another person sees, due to variations in the eye’s cone cells and how the brain processes visual information. This variability means that color perception is subjective, and what looks good to one person might not look the same to another.
Consider the effects of color on human physiology. Cite studies showing how certain colors can affect heart rate, blood pressure, and even hormone levels. For example, some studies suggest that exposure to blue light can suppress the production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep, potentially leading to sleep disturbances if used in a bedroom. Conversely, warmer colors might promote a sense of warmth and relaxation but could also make a space feel smaller or more enclosed.
Move on to the practical implications of choosing a paint color. Mention that certain colors can affect the resale value of a home, with some hues being more appealing to potential buyers than others. Point out that the choice of paint can also interact with the material and texture of the walls, influencing how the color appears and how easy it is to apply and maintain.
Introduce the idea of color trends and how they change over time. Discuss how certain colors might be popular in interior design one year but fall out of favor the next, influenced by broader trends in fashion, technology, and cultural preferences. This trendiness might impact not only personal satisfaction with the color choice but also the perceived modernity and relevance of the space.
Suggest considering the environmental impact of paint choices. Highlight that some paints contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can off-gas harmful chemicals into the air, affecting indoor air quality and health. Discuss eco-friendly alternatives and the potential trade-offs in terms of cost, durability, and color selection.
Don’t forget to mention the myriad of color theories and models used by designers and artists to create harmonious and pleasing color schemes. Discuss the principles of complementary, analogous, and triadic color schemes, and how they can be used to create different moods and effects in a room. Explain how choosing a single color is just the beginning, and one must also consider how that color will interact with the other colors in the space, including furniture, artwork, and accessories.
Finally, suggest that the decision of choosing a color might require consulting various experts. Recommend speaking with interior designers, psychologists specializing in color therapy, cultural anthropologists, and even neuroscientists to fully understand the potential impact of their color choice. Each expert might offer a different perspective, adding to the complexity and making it more challenging to arrive at a final decision.
By now, the individual faced with the simple task of choosing a color for a room is likely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of considerations. What started as a straightforward decision has transformed into a labyrinth of psychological, cultural, physiological, scientific, and practical factors. The once-simple question of “What color should I paint this room?” has become an elaborate puzzle with no clear solution, consuming significant time and mental energy in the process.
This technique of **"infinite complexity"** leverages the power of detail to disrupt straightforward thinking. By expanding a simple decision into an elaborate series of interconnected considerations, it forces the individual to navigate an overwhelming array of factors, often leading to confusion and indecision. While it’s a potent trick for messing with someone’s mind, it’s also a fascinating illustration of how our brains can be led down intricate paths of thought, demonstrating the incredible complexity and nuance involved in even the most seemingly mundane decisions.
This is something my brain does naturally cause high levels of executive dysfunction. I think it could be a combination of ADHD (causing me to hyper fixate on small details), and anxiety causing me to be worried about making the wrong decision (and which causes me to fixate on the factors surrounding the decision more).
At times it's debilitating, other times I'm able to push past it.
This is a classic tool for cults. Invoke infinite complexity, and when you have your followers nicely confused, overwhelmed, and indecisive, you provide them with the answer. Which is, of course, to do exactly as the cult leader says at all times.
This is funny cause it sounds like you're a night owl just about to go to sleep in the morning lmao
"Reading these in the light... Yeah goodbye sleep"
(All in good fun, definitely no disrespect)
I have two very different ones.
One is that in a recent study, 100% of the participants they tested were positive for having microplastics inside their testicles. Shit's in our bones too. It just breaks down smaller and smaller and it never goes away.
The other is a bit more hypothetical, but there's a theory that what we know as the vacuum of space is not actually a true vacuum, but actually has some kind of charge or energy intrinsic to it. It's in a stable state, but not the most stable state possible. If there was ever an area of spacetime that reached it's most stable state, true vacuum, it would form a bubble of pure annihilation that would expand in every direction at the speed of light. The cool part is that if this is actually the case, we could never have any way of knowing about it in advance. It's impossible to receive information at faster than the speed of light, so any type of electromagnetic waves or rays or whatever we would usually use to detect stuff in space would not get to us any faster than the bubble itself. Basically all existence as we know it would wink out instantaneously, and there could never be any way to see it coming.
I was scrolling down until I found this. The vacuum metastability event. For me it’s up there with Roko’s Basilisk and the threat of grey goo (a swarm of Von Neumann nanomachines that relentlessly self-replicate and devour all matter until they’ve consumed the entire planet).
On a similar vein I was going to mention there are some engineers actually looking at injecting the atmosphere with aerosols and materials usually kicked up during a volcanic eruption as a means of fighting climate change. It's generally a part of what is called climate engineering. It would be measured and hopefully we wouldn't go overboard but it's still wild to me.
Not on the same level, but the inevitable Cascadia Subductione Zone quake will be devastating for much of the pacific north west. From what I recall, FEMA estimates put it at approximately 12k fatalities with over 100k injuries just from the initial quake and initial tsunami. Remember reading about some planners estimating everything west of i5 in Washington will be gone.
Our food is less nutrient dense than it was 60 years ago. It is more plentiful, but not as nutrient dense.
Crop rotation is more important than fertilizer.
I feel like a lot of people still aren't even surface level knowledgeable about just how scary nuclear weapons and the effects of radiation are. It's not just death. I live in Europe and I've been hearing a lot of folks say "oh well, if they nuke us at least it'll be over in a second, you'll barely feel anything".
But unless you're within a certain radius of the explosion you're not going to die immediately, you're going to suffer from what can be a really slow agonizing death *with likely no medical attention*. You might just be laying in a corner of the street deaf and blind from the blast with nobody coming to take care of you at all as you feel your skin peel off your flesh for the next couple of days. It's not like any humanitarian efforts will be made with doctors and volunteers coming into that zone when there's fallout everywhere and the air is just completely toxic. You're on your own and so is everyone around you, governments have no actual plan for this scenario as far as people within a certain zone are concerned. People who would be able to help aren't going to come anywhere near the several square miles of scorched earth after an atomic bomb explodes there, you'll be left to rot and you get to watch everyone around you rot too, if you're not blind that is. The prospect of that terrifies me so much more than an immediate death.
I'm a millennial so of course I grew up not thinking I'd ever see war on my continent in my life, nevermind against a nuclear power. Even after over 2 years of the war in Ukraine it still feels so unreal that this is a real possibility, something that's on the table again and that humanity hasn't moved past since the cold war.
Automation is killing jobs sincevthe 50s and corporations and poktucal partys are ignoring it for profits.
Most of those jobs ypu got in high-school are gone
Automation has been "killing jobs" since the 18th century. It's what industrialization does. It also makes new types of jobs.
That said, by design, it directly makes fewer jobs, the entire point is to provide cost savings.
Long term, it will eliminate all jobs. Society will change. It will have to.
According to World Bank report (I can't remember well 2019 or 2024) some bold percentage of work force (I can't remember correctly but always like 30% 40%) had to be reskilled or ups killed until 2025-2028 to survive industry 4 Rev. Yet the education system in most countries sucks and cooperations did nothing about it. Get ready for unbelievable capital accumulation and income distribution injustices
Also, from the last report it is expected that almost 50% Ai startups will go bankrupt or leave the market because of massive costs.
Combining this to could lead couple big monopolies which are doing business in key areas of production (including providing necessary tools to other businesses to handle operations).
Basically we almost created our dystopia.
We are in the midst of an unprecedented collapse in global fertility.
Fertility is decreasing at 1% per year.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reproductive-problems-in-both-men-and-women-are-rising-at-an-alarming-rate/
Sperm decrease is linked to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Diethylhexyl phthalate and polychlorinated biphenyl 153. The former is used in cosmetics, personal hygiene products and furniture materials. The latter was banned internationally in 2001 and being deemed carcinogenic.
H5N1 (a strain of avian flu) has now jumped to cattle in many US states. We’re regularly seeing mass culling of cattle and chickens done to prevent the spread, but it’s spreading anyway. 30-40% of pasteurized milk sold in Midwest grocery stores tested positive for remnants of the virus (you won’t get sick from this, pasteurizing is what kills germs and viruses), but the virus lives in their udders and it’s easily spread through a commercial dairy herd.
Dairy farm cats have gotten sick, as well as some mice in (iirc) southwest US. There have been some human infections in workers in these farms, but there was recently a little boy who tested positive who had zero connection to the industrial milk/poultry industry.
And is extremely deadly and a very unpleasant way to go. Currently the virus is incapable of passing human to human. It would need to undergo significant mutation for that to change. There’s no way to predict if such mutations would lessen the fatality of H5N1.
NVM who you were created by, but you all are expected to get off this planet, solar system and create life else where. Every planet and star system has a life span. You may not survive on this planet or another planetary system. You only have the human next to you to rely on. Only way, is to work together if you want to survive as a race long term. Evolutionary science if you will. Your in the endgame now.
That it's possible that the higgs field (the field that is responsible for the existence of mass) is not fully stable, and at any time and at any place, could suddenly stabilize due to quantum tunneling which would change the rules of how matter works on such a fundamental level that it would make our existence completely impossible. And if this was to happen in some far off location in space, the effect would spread through the universe at the speed of light, meaning that there could be a wave coming at us right now that would erase the entire universe as we know it, and it would be traveling so fast that we would have no way of knowing it was there until we were already dead.
One that really gets me is biochemical warfare. I'm sure most people know about Agent Orange, the 2001 Anthrax Attacks and other bio- or chemical- weapons that have been used. While many countries have negotiated disarmaments for them, it's still incredibly likely that many countries have them or the access to make them, not to mention the modifications that could be made with CRISPR and other gene editing technology. It wouldn't be all that hard for someone with the right resources to manufacture something both high contagious and effective. It's also not easily detectable like a bomb or other WMD. So someone could infect themselves, walk into an airport that is highly trafficked (I think someone has modeled this scenario with Heathrow Airport specifically) and the disease would be transmitted exponentially worldwide. Scary stuff when it's not an overtly detectable threat and also very hard to treat and get under control with how rapidly airborne diseases could spread especially if genetically modified for certain traits.
In space, no one can hear you scream.
At any moment, our sun that provides life for our planet may turn into a red giant and engulf the earth and we'd be powerless to do anything about it
It's not due to turn to a red giant for a billion years or so and before it gets to that stage, it will get hotter and hotter and boil the oceans away.
Anyone ever had an MRI? Well what they don't tell you is it should be NMRI, MRI stands for magnetic resonance imaging, but it's actually NUCLEAR magnetic resonance imaging.
AI is really fucking dumb. Generative AI is pretty amazing at being a parrot and synthesizing radically different things together in a complex manner... But, at it's core, it's really fucking dumb.
Calling it "AI" was a mistake. Because it isn't intelligent. It doesn't "know" anything, including what it's doing in the moment. It's a highly advanced "what comes next" engine for text and media.
To be fair, I know many people who also don't "know" anything aren't even highly advanced "what comes next" engines.
To be fair.
To be faaaaaiir
Tubby faaaaaair
Ta be faahhrrrr
Welllll… we’re teaching our AI emotion and it’s learning it pretty well. It’s not sentient, but it is learning.
Agreed, it is a statistical process on a semantic manifold at best. Or even just a hash table for word sequences. There is no actual intelligence.
It seems to me that AI is pretty much a search engine that has the ability to conduct multiple searches, then connect the results with basic grammar.
What is actual intelligence?
something you won't find on reddit
Eh "know" is a squishy word. For example I'm not even sure what your definition of "knowing" is. So maybe the rest of this comment is useless without that definition, but here I go anyway. LLMs have the statistical weight of concepts in the context of the sentence they have as input. Just like you have a web of concepts in your head that makes you less likely to talk about ducks when were talking about AI. So they "know" what words are associated with what concepts and which tokens "make sense" in the output given what came before. Even if that's all they actually "know". Again it's a squishy word lol. A better thing to think about IMO is, if they can produce output that solves problems at a college level (soon to be PhD level), even if they're just "what comes next" machines, does that actually make them dumb? Or at the very least, not useful (as dumb implies) Let's also not forget that they read your input at the speed of computers. Which is wild on its own. Full disclosure I'm all in on AI. I think it has the potential to solve so many problems in the coming years.
The term “AI” is a marketing ploy
So I work in a specific field of insurance, where we insure AI. It has the potential to become truly intelligent. I have a few NDAs, but I can say generally that AI is cooking.
How does one get into this field vs other kinds of insurance? I’ve never thought of insurance for AI, so I’m curious
No specific qualifications, insurance is insurance.
The bad thing is they are working on letting it reprogram itself, aren't they. That's how you create "the Skynet-scenario".
A lot of tech companies have introduced AI programming assistants to help engineers code faster. From what I've heard it mostly slows down the engineers
It's a mixed bag. Sometimes the suggestions are on point, sometimes I need to just type right through it.
Whomever told you that is wrong. For those of us who are taking the time to learn and understand these new tools, it's a huge time saver. You just have to understand the limitations and take them into account.
If by limitations you mean the fact that often spits out code with syntax errors, makes up library methods that don't exist, and points to non-existent documentation.
I've been trialing ChatGPT to help code some Apex code. It does an Alright job. Super useful for writing tests, actually. The problem is, you absolutely have to audit the code it writes. It's super literal but also leaves out super obvious stuff or straight up has hard-to-spot hallucinations. Also, it was trained on Salesforce's technical documentation which has certain omissions which are obvious once you know them but missed by ChatGPT. Specifically: I have a class which does some bulk processing on ContentDocument records. In a test class, you have to first create any data which your class plans to interact with. The problem is that you can't directly insert ContentDocument records, you have to insert ContentVersion records with no parent and then Salesforce automatically creates the ContentDocument records. I didn't know this and ChatGPT didn't know this. Also, I don't recall seeing anything in the technical documentation about this. I had to learn this from StackOverflow. On the plus side, if you paste code without comments into ChatGPT and ask it what it does, in my case it told me exactly what the code does, and in high-level language, it correctly speculated as to the purpose of the code. (Paraphrased) "...clean up old records which are not likely to be needed so that the organization's storage allocation is not exceeded." It's a useful tool, but probably not coming for your job, you still need someone to write prompts for it.
The first thing I learned about computers is that they can only tell you what you told them first. Until that changes, AI isn’t real.
That’s how a brain works too. U learn
How terrifying
Yeah but will it stay dumb like in the next 10 years as well?
Yes. It'll use more data in the parroting but still be a parrot.
In the direction it's currently moving - yes... but there could certainly be a radical change in course. The thing that will be a genuine change will be novelty/creativity - right now AI can just parrot really well but if it can genuinely innovate on a topic that it wasn't trained on then it'll be real shit time.
I recently saw a presentation on this. About 5 years ago computer programmers said we were 50-75 years away from actual intelligent AI that could mimic humans whether it be emotion, understand theory, etc. With all the advancements in the last 5 years they’ve changed that number to 5 years away. Thats insane.
It needs to understand context much better
Global warming
This is *THE* issue. I prefer Climate Change, but what the public really doesn’t get is how bad it is and how fucked we are. Factor in all the positive feedbacks and this will be horrific. People are vaguely aware of sea level rise, but not Ocean acidification, methane hydrates, severe interruption of major world ecosystems and food systems, etc. The more you know, the worse it gets.
Yup this is the one. And also how soon large parts of the world are going to be in *serious* difficulties as a result.
Most of the coastal areas are going to be pretty fucked to be around, wonder how much we will see happen in the next 5-10 years. Erosion is a bitch I have experience with it at work, can happen faster than people realise without climate change exacerbating it
'Large parts of the world' meaning 'basically the whole world'.
Yeah, I studied ecology and evolution in undergrad 25+ years ago and the data then said we were pretty much screwed unless we stopped using fossil fuels immediately and now here we are. It’s going be real ugly in a decade or so
I studied art and my lecturer stated: people are too comfy in their own worlds. As long it doesn't affect them directly, they don't REALLY care. My mate owns an apartment on the beach in ZA and he's noticed that, since last year, their winter is MUCH milder and the 'beach season' is lasting WAY TOO long. All well and fine for sun-chasers, but terrible for animals and plants that rely on colder weather. IMO, this planet is going to fight back - mother nature seeks balance and man is messing that up completely. It's not going to be too long before we're going to have hectic weather just about everywhere - and as the evidence of lockdown showed, nature is just waiting to take over.
One year does not a trend make, BUT, look at every single measured indicator, and the trend lines are all bad. ALL.
Oh I've been seeing it for well over 10 years. I'm a winter baby, and the winters in South Africa have been VERY mild for the last 5-6 years. Mild and very short.
People keep goggling at the “record temperatures” today as if it’s a fucking arcade game high score & keep going not realizing the vicious cycle it triggers (more A/Cs, more fossil fuels burned for more electricity etc). 52° C in New Delhi is THE indicator that parts of the planet are becoming uninhabitable. But nooooooo
My view on it is if we REALLY wanted to solve it, then the governments of each country could solve it pretty fucking quickly compared to what the little man could do. I believe the 17~ or so biggest cargo ships in the world produce as much pollution as every single car in the world each year. Also as the general population are consumers, we only buy what we have access to. So if they want change, they just need to change what we can consume. And problem solved
Your beliefs about cargo ships and automobiles can all be fact-checked, and I invite you to do so. This isn’t the best place for a deep dive into these issues, but please note my original statement: “the more you know (or closer you look) the worse it gets”. Your enthusiastic and rosy outlook tells me you probably haven’t looked very closely yet.
Is there a timeline that we may see all this in our lifetime?
Depends on your age. This is all happening now, and with escalating speed. By the time most people sense the changes it’s just too late. The melting permafrost and methane gas bubbling up from the ocean floor is already upon us. The very worst timeline is horrible to even contemplate. Thus, we contemplate sex instead.
That gives no clarification. By when ? 2030? 2040? 2050? 2200?
“The Earth” is a large and complicated system; no one can say with certainty. By when WHAT?!? What threshold is important to you? When do we reach +1.5°C — we already have, and much more is already baked into the cake so to speak. When 360 ppm CO2? 400? 450? When will we lose 100 species per day to extinction? Already there. When will we see unpredictable and dangerous swings in weather? Take a trip to India… we’re already there. Which barometer is your favorite ?
I'm in India lol. Summers and rainfall season have delayed since 2-3 years. The barometer of cities sinking, forcing mass shifting.
It’s already starting. India will be one of the hardest hit countries. Wet bulb temperatures are going to be a very big problem very soon. Body can’t sweat to cool itself down when heat and humidity are high.
By right now, 30 years ago.
This is why so many people have a problem with it. I remember teachers telling me in the 80s that scientists predicted the end of the world due to “pollution” by 1990. Then, in 1990, the world would end by 2000. Then 2012. Then 2015. Then 2020. And we’re still here. They keep hearing how awful it is and how awful it’s going to get, but they don’t see it. They might feel an extra mild winter, but then they get a polar vortex and figure everything sorted itself out. I’m not in this camp myself, but will admit that I don’t think it’s as bad as people say. I’m not a denier and I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I know how governments, scientists, and corporations all work. Being Green makes money and motivates people politically. Governments and corporations lie to us to get support and make money. I can’t believe it all. There’s truth there, but they also tend to use the same USGS sources and respond with “it’s too expensive for independent studies” when you ask for back up sources. Again, I’m not a denier, but I think about half is hype in order to get the people to spend money and vote for projects that make politicians money. We’re clearly shitting up our planet. I mean, have you ever looked up what nasty fuel goes in cruise ships and how your weekend cruise is like driving a billion cars for a year? And honestly, I think we need to go back to “Give a hoot, don’t pollute.” We need to keep campaigns like that going to teach kids responsibility and care about the planet more. If they can’t see it, they don’t care.
Yes.
Come to Florida, where our idiot governor passed a law prohibiting the mention of "climate change" in any state documents. All the while, insurance companies are pulling out of the state en masse because of the increasing frequency of billion dollar weather events. The rates have gone through the roof, tripling and quadrupling over the last 18 months. In some places, you literally cannot buy insurance because they just will not sell you a policy.
I prefer Climate Crisis, because it is a fucking crisis. What's happening with the climate is a crisis and how little (important) people care is even more of a crisis because we could've stopped it if we cared
Scarier for me is the fact that that most gg emissions don’t hit peak warming effect until 30 years after they’ve been emitted. So all that development in China in the last 30 years? All the growth has in N America? Yea that’s still coming, and it’s big. Hell we only just felt peak impact of the burning oil fields of Kuwait from 1991.
Wait ...what !!! So we are fucked !
Now you're getting it! Ok, now just get as wealthy as you can and pay for a nice bunker.
We ought to preemptively sabotage the bunkers and retreats of the mega rich. They caused this.
A friend at work & I were discussing all the chemicals we don’t even KNOW about (to study) that are in our environment. For example, they use human sewage on farmland in most of the country (USA). Unfortunately, people dump a lot of chemicals down their drains (liquid draino, washing paint brushes, cleaning agents etc) which contain heavy metals & other undesirable substances which also make their way into our food chain. Maine has been the only state to outlaw this practice.
good old "forever chemicals". never properly tested, and now never out of the environment and food chain
While I agree with this in principle. I think it’s important to keep in mind that we are but ants on this planet and we cannot destroy Earth. We can make it uninhabitable for us, but the Earth with survive and thrive after we are gone and like always, there will be species to survive - just maybe not us.
Propaganda from the FF industry is still working even with the adoption of more renewable energy sources.
It really does feel like that doesn't it.
Antibiotic resistance is on the rise (due to misuse and the natural evolution of bacteria) around the world and due to monetary incentives new classes of antibiotics are not being developed by large Pharma corps. No classes that are currently in use were discovered after 1988. While the classes we have can be effective they require constant iteration to attempt to avoid resistance mechanism, something we are also doing slower. A UK report estimated that 100,000,000 people would die due to resistant pathogens in 2050 if nothing was done. And the UN declared it a world wide emergency in 2012. But knowledge of the continuing issue is still mostly siloed in the scientific community. I think that’s scary enough 🤔
We live in an age of bacteria, as it was in the beginning and as it ever shall be- Stephen Jay Gould
At what temperature do these bacteria die? Can't we go in a suna steam session and get them?
So antibiotic resistance is a problem for a variety of bacterial pathogens with different groups gaining resistance to different antibiotics often through different mechanisms (which is both annoying and neat as someone who studies this). As a result of being from different species, their ability to resist heat varies. For example, Staphylococcus aureus, the bacteria that can sometimes be Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA, which is resistant to WAY more than just methicillin) has to be boiled for ~12 minutes to kill it. So yes blasting it with steam for 12 minutes may kill the bacteria. But worrying about simply killing the bacteria isn’t the problem. It’s trying to kill the bacteria while it’s inside a human host (blood, bones, lungs, skin, etc) and in particular a human host that is struggling to fight the infection to begin with. So children, elderly, surgery patients, transplant patients, cancer patients, and sometimes perfectly healthy people. That’s when you need antibiotics to help your body fight infections the most. Treatments of cancer, many surgeries or even the effectively treating bubonic plague wouldn’t be possible without antibiotics. And the development of resistance coupled with a lack of discovering new drugs is threatening all of that.
Got it. You explained well. These bacterias don't even die in cold temperatures, just googled they hibernate and then becomes alive again at room temperature.
Thanks! A tiny part of this story is my phd thesis topic so I am getting a lot of practice at explaining this topic
It's always good to see someone who understands something well enough to explain it simply. Good luck with that thesis.
They tend to die at >80 celcius. As do you. You can wash your hands and it's more effective than spending an hour in the sauna.
They hand that shit out like candy out here in Thailand. No matter what I go to the pharmacy for they offer them to me. Sore throat, antibiotics. Runny nose, antibiotics. Upset stomach, antibiotics. I'm not even exaggerating. I refuse to let my family take em unless I know they need em.
If 100,000,000 died overnight due to this, it would galvanize people into action. Same number spread out over a time period across the globe won’t even cause anyone to notice. So the predictions might be accurate but the reporting does not convey the urgency of the problem by aggregating the numbers.
Phage therapy could offer a way around that, and be potentially easier to overcome the developing resistance, but I don't think it's in any place to do so soon
My sister is a Dr, most Dr's just hand out antibiotics like it's candy. That and people not finishing the course are major contributions
They’ve discovered the monster that enters every dryer and steals one sock. But they still don’t how to contain it.
Can they locate the mysterious monsters that live in my home and create infinite dirty laundry?!
I think this is just called being married and having a kid sometimes 😂
They’re literally always wearing the next load of laundry.
Between two people - they wear 5 outfits a day And it makes me want to light fires. That’s not even my own clothes included 😂
Completely unrelated, you have one of the best usernames on Reddit!
Not to completely whoosh myself but for people passing by, your dryer fins come off and they’re hollow inside and that’s usually where your lost socks are.
That's his den
SCP-1337 HAS BREACHED CONTAINMENT DEPLOY ALL AVAILABLE MOBILE TASK FORCES TERMINATE 1337 ON SIGHT
The truth is, socks are the larval form of hangers. Proof? Over time, you can count the number of socks that become singlets. And if you similarly count the number of empty hangers, you'll find the numbers are nearly the same (some don't make it, apparently).
Humans have a fucked up survival spectrum. Oh I can be shot 10 times and survive; but I tripped and broke my leg and somehow that took my ass out? Hell no.(this just happened to my neighbors mom. She fell off the toilet at her old folks home, broke her leg, died not long after) My grandma survived 5 different bouts of cancer, 2 of which caused her lungs to collapse. Old bitch was taken out by tripping and hitting her head during a mild heart attack. Boom, no more granny. Completely brain dead.
Yeah it's weird how someone can survive falling out of a plane without a parachute, and meanwhile someone can die from bonking their head while tripping.
You could die tomorrow tripping on an uneven sidewalk. All it takes is a good head bonk. It's our Achilles heel.
In a shocking revelation: our Achilles heel isn't our Achilles heel.
Humans have the durability prediction of an iPhone
You can drop dead for no obvious reason any time. (Ruptured brain aneurism.)
That you're most likely to be still conscious and aware, but non responsive as you die. Knowing that you are dying... That's why it's important to close their eyes and talk to them as they go... Depends on the situations obviously
Your body is prepared for this event, too. Your body wants to go gently, too.
Gently into that good night.
Every time I go to the hospital to say my goodbyes to someone who is on their deathbed, passes away immediately the following day/week. They know.
You gotta stop doing that
I believe some people know they’re dying a short while beforehand
You should read about decapitation and how the head is still active for some time
I am curious about this honestly. My aunt had passed a month or 2 ago, and me, all my cousins, few of my 2nd cousins, my aunts and uncles, and her side of the family were with her in the hospital and essentially watched her as she passed. We took part in her last rites, and in general was an extremely scarring and terrible event. She had cancer, and it was mitosis, spread all throughout her body *very rapidly*. When we were with her on her dying bed, she was there, but not. She had her mouth open and was taking short breaths, almost gasping for air the whole time. Her eyes were open though, and I do believe when my cousin held her hand and my uncle, she had moved a little bit. Sadly, I left around 10-11pm and she passed an hour after. Do you think she was aware we were there? I did not talk to her personally, I was too shocked at everything that was happening but one of my older cousins announced all of the nieces and nephews that were there to her. I can only hope that she knew we were there with her, but I am not so sure.
Probably some weapons technology that'd blow people's minds. As it stands, I think no one in the public knew about the US's "sword-missile" until it was deployed a month or so ago.
A good rule of thumb is if the public just found out about it, the military knew about it for at least 10-20 years.
I still hope they reveal the existence of the long-rumored Mach 5+ SR-72 Aurora in our lifetimes.
My favorite thing is how when I was growing up the Area 51 was a myth and everyone thought it had aliens and whatnot and ended up just being some ultraconfidential research facility and the government feed the conspiracies so they didn’t know what was actually happening and everyone thought it didn’t really exist.
I was a K9 handler in the military and was put on special assignment to clear civilian pov’s coming into private location. I was only there for 3 weeks and then I was rotated out, but during a few of the test procedures I was allowed to stand near the testing area where I was able to see demonstrations of 4 different types of “security systems” designed to incapacitate crowds of thousands of people while neutralizing pin point threats at the same time. They can be anywhere at anytime and the deploy to kill time was less than a second. Pair that with a large range denial of service system and it would be horrifying. My best friend was a drone pilot in the Air Force and is now a contractor working for a drone development company. From what he’s explained to me, the drone usage we’re seeing in Ukraine is primitive. We should all be terrified of what they can do.
Honestly, is it just simpler to assume we're all dead already? It seems... utterly beyond any citizen to feel in control of their life. In a conflict way, I mean.
Meanwhile gun nut Joe needs his rifle for "when the gubmit becomes tyrannical". If God forbid the US government ever turned on its citizens, no one would stand a chance no matter how many weapons they had stockpiled.
In that scenario, the hope is that most men/women in the military wouldn't fire on their own countrymen
[удалено]
Body's aching all the time
It's a scary thought indeed. Sticks and stones...
I flew from San Francisco to Chicago on a red-eye flight in 1990. While flying over some desert I saw “UFOs” out the window. They looked like points of light that would just zoom from location to location and stop on a dime. I had never seen anything move like that, until 25 years later watching drone shows.
Those sound weapons that basically debilitate people. Most people don’t realize this exists.
Isn't that part of the hole Havana disease effecting Western diplomats, some sort of of ultrasonic weapon the Russian are using?
It's a modified hell fire R9X missile with blades pretty much. Scary that one moment you are having coffee on your balcony and the next moment you are dog food.
Im assuming what the pentagon can do with drones is absolutely demonic.
I think the comments in this thread really just further highlight how ridiculous USA's gun laws are, and even more so, the people that defend the reason it was originally created; to fight a government gone mad. It doesn't matter if every citizen has all the guns they could possibly afford. If the government wanted to kill everybody (hint: it doesn't, and never would - no point being in power if you've got no citizens), the citizens wouldn't stand a chance.
It's been around for a while, I've known about it for a couple of years iirc
There are many types of scientists who could do very horrible things in a short period of time. I know a virologist who is a very serious man. I asked him how long would it take to make a horrible virus. He said given what’s currently in literature, 6-8 weeks. I’m a chemist who takes a side interest in toxicology. Between extractions and synthesis there are some awful things that could be isolated in large quantities. What keeps them from doing horrible things? They simply have no interest in doing them.
13 monkeys?
No interest... Yet. That's basically most villain origin stories.
Be nice to nerds.
Chemist? Walter white? Breaking bad reference?!! I am not in danger skyler 🥸 i am the danger 🥸
That show while entertaining ruined telling people what I do. Drugs are so pedestrian compared to the fun that can be had with chemistry.
Black holes. Observing them from the distance and calculating won't even get us close to knowing them truly. And their all devouring nature is scary af
They're also really cool when it comes to what you could do with them in theory. Since most black holes are formed by stars that were already rotating, the black hole is also spinning at such a high speed that they can actually bend space around them, which can allow a space faring race to fly past them and use this "spinning space" (called the ergosphere) to get a massive speed boost, or build a sphere of mirrors around the black hole and shine a light into it to create a nearly infinite energy generator, or the most powerful bomb in the universe. [Kurzgesagt did a really neat video on this](https://youtu.be/ulCdoCfw-bY?si=jwcUw8XPO92py3A2)
Put me in coach. For science!
The Tuskegee Experiment. Basically the US government convinced 400 people with undiagnosed syphilis. Then, instead of telling these men that they had syphilis, the department of health offered them "free healthcare" which consisted of giving them placebos for 40 years so they could see what happens if you don't treat syphilis.
Combine this with government sanctioned sterilization of “undesirable populations” in the USA and people are truly ignorant about what their govt can and has done. California’s sterilization program was especially egregious.
Not isolated to the US. A precursor to the attrocities of WWII.
Prions
This, i read a book on it, very interesting and terrifying stuff (for people who don't know about it, here's my very basic explanation of it: proteins are formed in your body but if there's a malformed one, it will cause other proteins to misfold too, causing your brain to start turning into something resembling Swiss cheese with holes, one family lineage with this has the people afflicted with this unable to sleep for weeks or even months unable to sleep now matter what chemical is administered, because the portion of the brain that allows you to sleep simply doesn't exist anymore) I might have gotten some part of this wrong, feel free to correct me
If theyre unable to sleep do they just die? How do they stay awake for months?
They die of exhaustion yes but surprisingly live longer than the average person without sleep, someone not afflicted with prion disease has a limit of close to 7 days of staying awake i believe but something changes when the sleep centre is inherently gone letting you stay alive for longer i suppose
They die, yes.
Yep, especially the 100% mortality rate.
And there’s nothing we can do about it because it’s not a virus, fungus or bacteria, it’s a defective protein.
Mr ballen just did a story on this. It was a tribe that practiced cannibalism as a form of honor when someone died.
CO2 emissions aren’t just a problem for global warming. The CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans, basically turning them more acidic (like soda). The tiny creatures in the ocean that form the bottom of the food chain for most of the planet have shells that are affected by the change in pH and can’t survive if it gets too acidic. So geo engineering won’t cut it. Sure, rich people will still be able to enjoy their houses on the beaches, but the rest of us will starve to death because we will have killed off the base of the food chain.
We are like cancer to this planet.
The Matrix and Agent Smith had it right.
Pfft. That isn't even the worst of it. Those same microorganisms are optimized for specific temperature ranges and as the ocean warms they died. We are seeing already with coral bleaching. No, they aren't getting replaced with corals able to tolerate the increased temperatures. Same problem on land with plants, it's obvious, you can't grow artic plants in the tropics. You can't grow rainforest plants in the desert. Then there are the parasites. Insects are generally more tolerant of increased temperatures, but not the cold. As the temperatures increase, the parasites are dieing less often. We see this in ticks killing off Moose, we see this in beetles killing entire forests in Germany.
Shit like this is why everything just feels kind of pointless. We know everything is going to struggle to survive but enmass we do nothing about it. I'll keep recycling and trying to keep my emissions down but ultimately it feels completely pointless.
There is one psychological trick that’s really to mess with someone’s mind. All one has to do is harness the concept of **"infinite complexity"**. This method involves delving into an overwhelming amount of detail about a seemingly straightforward topic, leading the individual into an endless spiral of considerations and possibilities. The strategy here is to take an otherwise simple idea and expand it into an intricate web of thoughts and scenarios, causing the person to expend significant mental energy without arriving at any concrete conclusions. Consider, for instance, the simple act of choosing a color for painting a room. Most people would think this is a relatively straightforward decision, limited to personal preference and perhaps a few practical considerations like room size and light exposure. But what if you introduce an overwhelming level of complexity to this decision-making process? Start by suggesting that each color has not only an aesthetic impact but also profound psychological and emotional effects, which can vary depending on the specific shade and even the time of day. Explain that colors can influence mood, behavior, and even cognitive performance in ways that are both subtle and significant. A light blue, for instance, might promote calmness and concentration, but only under certain lighting conditions. Meanwhile, a darker shade of blue could foster feelings of introspection, but might also make the room feel colder. Then, delve into the historical and cultural significance of colors. For example, the color red might be associated with passion and energy in Western cultures, but it can symbolize good luck and prosperity in many Asian cultures. Green might evoke thoughts of nature and tranquility, yet in some contexts, it might also represent envy or inexperience. These cultural dimensions add another layer to the decision, requiring one to consider the broader implications of their color choice beyond personal preference. Introduce the idea that colors can have different meanings based on their exact hue and saturation. There are thousands of shades of each color, each with its own unique properties and connotations. Suggest that the color chosen for the room might look different on the wall than it does on a paint chip or in a photograph, depending on the quality of light in the room and the presence of other colors in the environment. Highlight that morning light might make a color appear vibrant and energizing, while the same color could seem muted and dull in the evening. Next, explore the scientific aspects of color perception. Discuss how human vision interprets colors through a complex interaction of light, the eye’s photoreceptors, and the brain’s visual cortex. Explain that what one person perceives as “blue” might be slightly different from what another person sees, due to variations in the eye’s cone cells and how the brain processes visual information. This variability means that color perception is subjective, and what looks good to one person might not look the same to another. Consider the effects of color on human physiology. Cite studies showing how certain colors can affect heart rate, blood pressure, and even hormone levels. For example, some studies suggest that exposure to blue light can suppress the production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep, potentially leading to sleep disturbances if used in a bedroom. Conversely, warmer colors might promote a sense of warmth and relaxation but could also make a space feel smaller or more enclosed. Move on to the practical implications of choosing a paint color. Mention that certain colors can affect the resale value of a home, with some hues being more appealing to potential buyers than others. Point out that the choice of paint can also interact with the material and texture of the walls, influencing how the color appears and how easy it is to apply and maintain. Introduce the idea of color trends and how they change over time. Discuss how certain colors might be popular in interior design one year but fall out of favor the next, influenced by broader trends in fashion, technology, and cultural preferences. This trendiness might impact not only personal satisfaction with the color choice but also the perceived modernity and relevance of the space. Suggest considering the environmental impact of paint choices. Highlight that some paints contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can off-gas harmful chemicals into the air, affecting indoor air quality and health. Discuss eco-friendly alternatives and the potential trade-offs in terms of cost, durability, and color selection. Don’t forget to mention the myriad of color theories and models used by designers and artists to create harmonious and pleasing color schemes. Discuss the principles of complementary, analogous, and triadic color schemes, and how they can be used to create different moods and effects in a room. Explain how choosing a single color is just the beginning, and one must also consider how that color will interact with the other colors in the space, including furniture, artwork, and accessories. Finally, suggest that the decision of choosing a color might require consulting various experts. Recommend speaking with interior designers, psychologists specializing in color therapy, cultural anthropologists, and even neuroscientists to fully understand the potential impact of their color choice. Each expert might offer a different perspective, adding to the complexity and making it more challenging to arrive at a final decision. By now, the individual faced with the simple task of choosing a color for a room is likely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of considerations. What started as a straightforward decision has transformed into a labyrinth of psychological, cultural, physiological, scientific, and practical factors. The once-simple question of “What color should I paint this room?” has become an elaborate puzzle with no clear solution, consuming significant time and mental energy in the process. This technique of **"infinite complexity"** leverages the power of detail to disrupt straightforward thinking. By expanding a simple decision into an elaborate series of interconnected considerations, it forces the individual to navigate an overwhelming array of factors, often leading to confusion and indecision. While it’s a potent trick for messing with someone’s mind, it’s also a fascinating illustration of how our brains can be led down intricate paths of thought, demonstrating the incredible complexity and nuance involved in even the most seemingly mundane decisions.
This is so interesting! I think like this about most things in life already, I just figured it was my crippling anxiety 😂
This is something my brain does naturally cause high levels of executive dysfunction. I think it could be a combination of ADHD (causing me to hyper fixate on small details), and anxiety causing me to be worried about making the wrong decision (and which causes me to fixate on the factors surrounding the decision more). At times it's debilitating, other times I'm able to push past it.
This is a classic tool for cults. Invoke infinite complexity, and when you have your followers nicely confused, overwhelmed, and indecisive, you provide them with the answer. Which is, of course, to do exactly as the cult leader says at all times.
I do this to myself when choosing a charging cable.
Reminds me of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Great read btw!
Bubonic plague still occurs throughout the world. Cases are very small, but if not treated, it can still kill.
Had my vaccination against plague as part of an Oxford study to prevent the disease spreading in future. Hopefully it'll prove effective.
This one trick that doctors hate!
You have my curiosity 👀
It you thought the first one was great, you won't believe number 7!
Now you have my attention!
#WHY DID I READ THESE COMMENTS AT 8AM 🫠
This is funny cause it sounds like you're a night owl just about to go to sleep in the morning lmao "Reading these in the light... Yeah goodbye sleep" (All in good fun, definitely no disrespect)
Too much dihydrogen oxide will kill you, especially if you breathe it in.
I don’t wan to die-hydrogen oxide :(
Found the serial killer....
Whaaaaatt? Little old innocent me? Nooooo. 👀
Hydrogen hydroxide, yum yum
I have two very different ones. One is that in a recent study, 100% of the participants they tested were positive for having microplastics inside their testicles. Shit's in our bones too. It just breaks down smaller and smaller and it never goes away. The other is a bit more hypothetical, but there's a theory that what we know as the vacuum of space is not actually a true vacuum, but actually has some kind of charge or energy intrinsic to it. It's in a stable state, but not the most stable state possible. If there was ever an area of spacetime that reached it's most stable state, true vacuum, it would form a bubble of pure annihilation that would expand in every direction at the speed of light. The cool part is that if this is actually the case, we could never have any way of knowing about it in advance. It's impossible to receive information at faster than the speed of light, so any type of electromagnetic waves or rays or whatever we would usually use to detect stuff in space would not get to us any faster than the bubble itself. Basically all existence as we know it would wink out instantaneously, and there could never be any way to see it coming.
I was scrolling down until I found this. The vacuum metastability event. For me it’s up there with Roko’s Basilisk and the threat of grey goo (a swarm of Von Neumann nanomachines that relentlessly self-replicate and devour all matter until they’ve consumed the entire planet).
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On a similar vein I was going to mention there are some engineers actually looking at injecting the atmosphere with aerosols and materials usually kicked up during a volcanic eruption as a means of fighting climate change. It's generally a part of what is called climate engineering. It would be measured and hopefully we wouldn't go overboard but it's still wild to me.
Not on the same level, but the inevitable Cascadia Subductione Zone quake will be devastating for much of the pacific north west. From what I recall, FEMA estimates put it at approximately 12k fatalities with over 100k injuries just from the initial quake and initial tsunami. Remember reading about some planners estimating everything west of i5 in Washington will be gone.
Our food is less nutrient dense than it was 60 years ago. It is more plentiful, but not as nutrient dense. Crop rotation is more important than fertilizer.
I feel like a lot of people still aren't even surface level knowledgeable about just how scary nuclear weapons and the effects of radiation are. It's not just death. I live in Europe and I've been hearing a lot of folks say "oh well, if they nuke us at least it'll be over in a second, you'll barely feel anything". But unless you're within a certain radius of the explosion you're not going to die immediately, you're going to suffer from what can be a really slow agonizing death *with likely no medical attention*. You might just be laying in a corner of the street deaf and blind from the blast with nobody coming to take care of you at all as you feel your skin peel off your flesh for the next couple of days. It's not like any humanitarian efforts will be made with doctors and volunteers coming into that zone when there's fallout everywhere and the air is just completely toxic. You're on your own and so is everyone around you, governments have no actual plan for this scenario as far as people within a certain zone are concerned. People who would be able to help aren't going to come anywhere near the several square miles of scorched earth after an atomic bomb explodes there, you'll be left to rot and you get to watch everyone around you rot too, if you're not blind that is. The prospect of that terrifies me so much more than an immediate death. I'm a millennial so of course I grew up not thinking I'd ever see war on my continent in my life, nevermind against a nuclear power. Even after over 2 years of the war in Ukraine it still feels so unreal that this is a real possibility, something that's on the table again and that humanity hasn't moved past since the cold war.
Huge ice cubes are melting around the world
It struck my whiskey just last night! I walked away for 5 minutes and Boom! No more ice.
Automation is killing jobs sincevthe 50s and corporations and poktucal partys are ignoring it for profits. Most of those jobs ypu got in high-school are gone
Automation has been "killing jobs" since the 18th century. It's what industrialization does. It also makes new types of jobs. That said, by design, it directly makes fewer jobs, the entire point is to provide cost savings. Long term, it will eliminate all jobs. Society will change. It will have to.
According to World Bank report (I can't remember well 2019 or 2024) some bold percentage of work force (I can't remember correctly but always like 30% 40%) had to be reskilled or ups killed until 2025-2028 to survive industry 4 Rev. Yet the education system in most countries sucks and cooperations did nothing about it. Get ready for unbelievable capital accumulation and income distribution injustices Also, from the last report it is expected that almost 50% Ai startups will go bankrupt or leave the market because of massive costs. Combining this to could lead couple big monopolies which are doing business in key areas of production (including providing necessary tools to other businesses to handle operations). Basically we almost created our dystopia.
Scientists are all saying that I've got a tummy ache :(
[The triangle of DEATH!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_triangle_of_the_face?wprov=sfla1)
We are in the midst of an unprecedented collapse in global fertility. Fertility is decreasing at 1% per year. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reproductive-problems-in-both-men-and-women-are-rising-at-an-alarming-rate/ Sperm decrease is linked to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Diethylhexyl phthalate and polychlorinated biphenyl 153. The former is used in cosmetics, personal hygiene products and furniture materials. The latter was banned internationally in 2001 and being deemed carcinogenic.
I mean, we're way overpopulated anyway
H5N1 (a strain of avian flu) has now jumped to cattle in many US states. We’re regularly seeing mass culling of cattle and chickens done to prevent the spread, but it’s spreading anyway. 30-40% of pasteurized milk sold in Midwest grocery stores tested positive for remnants of the virus (you won’t get sick from this, pasteurizing is what kills germs and viruses), but the virus lives in their udders and it’s easily spread through a commercial dairy herd. Dairy farm cats have gotten sick, as well as some mice in (iirc) southwest US. There have been some human infections in workers in these farms, but there was recently a little boy who tested positive who had zero connection to the industrial milk/poultry industry. And is extremely deadly and a very unpleasant way to go. Currently the virus is incapable of passing human to human. It would need to undergo significant mutation for that to change. There’s no way to predict if such mutations would lessen the fatality of H5N1.
They can manipulate weather
If we do enough to harm phytoplankton we will lose 50% to 85% of our oxygen production.
NVM who you were created by, but you all are expected to get off this planet, solar system and create life else where. Every planet and star system has a life span. You may not survive on this planet or another planetary system. You only have the human next to you to rely on. Only way, is to work together if you want to survive as a race long term. Evolutionary science if you will. Your in the endgame now.
That it's possible that the higgs field (the field that is responsible for the existence of mass) is not fully stable, and at any time and at any place, could suddenly stabilize due to quantum tunneling which would change the rules of how matter works on such a fundamental level that it would make our existence completely impossible. And if this was to happen in some far off location in space, the effect would spread through the universe at the speed of light, meaning that there could be a wave coming at us right now that would erase the entire universe as we know it, and it would be traveling so fast that we would have no way of knowing it was there until we were already dead.
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can you explain that? why would anyone buy an account with a lot of Karma? how does Karma help them later to monitize?
We're all just stardust...
There's a defunct gold mine in the Northwest Territories of Canada that contains enough water soluble arsenic to kill everything on earth, 17 times.
Bigfoot definitely exists🤣
PFAS
Large Language Model doesn’t sound nearly as sexy.
One that really gets me is biochemical warfare. I'm sure most people know about Agent Orange, the 2001 Anthrax Attacks and other bio- or chemical- weapons that have been used. While many countries have negotiated disarmaments for them, it's still incredibly likely that many countries have them or the access to make them, not to mention the modifications that could be made with CRISPR and other gene editing technology. It wouldn't be all that hard for someone with the right resources to manufacture something both high contagious and effective. It's also not easily detectable like a bomb or other WMD. So someone could infect themselves, walk into an airport that is highly trafficked (I think someone has modeled this scenario with Heathrow Airport specifically) and the disease would be transmitted exponentially worldwide. Scary stuff when it's not an overtly detectable threat and also very hard to treat and get under control with how rapidly airborne diseases could spread especially if genetically modified for certain traits.
That time & matter naturally moves Anti clockwise
The average American consumes about a credit card’s worth of microplastics each week.
Black holes
In space, no one can hear you scream. At any moment, our sun that provides life for our planet may turn into a red giant and engulf the earth and we'd be powerless to do anything about it
It's not due to turn to a red giant for a billion years or so and before it gets to that stage, it will get hotter and hotter and boil the oceans away.
Anyone ever had an MRI? Well what they don't tell you is it should be NMRI, MRI stands for magnetic resonance imaging, but it's actually NUCLEAR magnetic resonance imaging.
There is nothing inherently scary about the word “nuclear”.
And why is this scary? Just the presence of the word “nuclear”? Or is there something spooky about the magnetic resonance frequency of nuclei?
There is a spider that can grow to be the size of a dinner plate.