ZephrC

Oh, also, it’s a common misconception that publicly-traded companies are required to maximize profits. They can have whatever goals their shareholders want. It’s just that the way modern publicly-traded companies work, most of their shareholders are people quickly buying and trading shares based on who they think will earn them the most money this month, so that sort of inevitably becomes the goal of any publicly-traded company.

It’s not really direct cause and effect, but yeah. The incentives for a publicly-traded company make enshitification far more appealing then it would be for most other organizations.

I mean technically yes? There’s kind of a post pandemic return to normal still going on, and before that there were consistent record low crime rates for the first half of the 10s, so they’re not that low, but they’re still pretty low. Nowhere near as bad as the terrifying dark ages of the 90s.

Yeah, and none of them can actually design bridges. Some of them can be useful tools for engineers to use while designing bridges, but this isn’t tech bro fantasy land. You’re gonna need some engineers. That’s gonna take more than a day.

Engineers using a specialized AI to make a design slightly lighter and then using a 3D printer to print that design isn’t a 3D printer using AI.

Did you actually even read the article you linked? It’s about a type of generative AI that’s slightly better than humans at finding the most efficient way of providing structural strength with minimal material. If you think that’s all there is to designing a bridge I can only hope you aren’t allowed anywhere near a bridge I need to drive across.

So uh… how exactly does a 3D printer use AI? Is the AI running the stepper motors? Or is this person actually suggesting that an AI could design a bridge? Because, uh, no. No it can’t. Maybe someday in the distant future, but large language models aren’t structural engineers. Those aren’t even remotely the same thing.

Okay. I see the problem here. Shell doesn’t mean shotgun round. Bullet and shell are technical terms for the bit of a round that comes out of the business end of a weapon at high velocity. A bullet is a single, simple solid mass that follows a ballistic trajectory and just imparts kinetic force into whatever it hits. A shell is anything more complicated than that. Shotguns are just the small arms weapons that are most likely to use shells, but anything can, and it doesn’t have to be buckshot to be a shell. Even something as simple as a tracer round is technically a shell.

Uh, no. No it’s not. You can have a cartridge that fires a shell instead of a bullet. That is totally a thing.

I guess, it just seems odd to me to correct a meme for using a term in way that’s absolutely vital for both the rhyme and the pun to actually happen and not even really wrong, just weird if you over-analyze it.

What? Revolver rounds absolutely do have shells if you mean in the sense of synonym for casing, or if you mean in the strict military sense then usually they don’t, but they’re just as capable of firing small shells as any other modern firearm.

Yes. That is in fact what I am arguing. I would also argue that the harm is tiny and can sometimes be justifiable, depending on the circumstances, but yes. It absolutely does do some non-zero harm, and yes there is no thing being stolen. That is the argument I am making.

Maybe, but it’s also closer to the price saved on less wear and tear on the turnstile than it is the price of the ticket.

The employees don’t get paid less if some jumps the turnstile, the fuel cost to carry a single person is completely trivial, and I didn’t say nobody should care about turnstile jumpers. I said its not stealing. If you damage the tracks and cause the train to derail you’re a monster, and there are financial costs, but you still didn’t steal the train. Your argument doesn’t make any sense.

Depends on the circumstances I guess, but no matter how I feel about it people jumping the turnstile aren’t stealing the train.

I think you don’t understand what motivates a lot of science fiction authors. Sure, there are a lot of science fiction novels that are really just science themed fantasy, but there are also a lot of authors that love real science and are trying to make stories about realistic interpretations of its potential effects. To say that science fiction authors don’t care about interpreting the Torment Nexus in a realistic way misses the entire point of a lot of really good science fiction.

On the other other hand, maybe we only understand the dangers of the Torment Nexus and use it responsibly because science fiction authors warned techy people who are into that subject about how it could go wrong, and the people who grew up reading those books went out of their way to avoid those flaws. We do seem to have a lot more of the technologies that sci-fi didn’t predict causing severe problems in our society.