I specifically wont pretend to be interested. You’ll notice that I’m not - that’s why I wont ask in the first place.

The nature of my job is that I often listen to people tell me their life story while I’m replacing their kitchen faucet. It’s not that I can’t do small talk - I just find most of the topics incredibly uninteresting. Like I said earlier, I know how to play the game, I just find it mind-numbingly boring.

This goes both ways, though. I’m acutely aware that most people aren’t interested in the things I’m most passionate about, so I don’t bring those up either. But when I do meet someone with similar interests, I could talk for hours. Those conversations are rarely about people or events - mostly about ideas.

I don’t feel like it makes much difference whether the person is close to me or not. It’s not that I don’t care about what happens to these people, but a huge part of the topics people generally small talk about are the kinds of mundane things I have almost zero interest in discussing. For example, if something interesting happened to you over the weekend, I assume you’re just going to tell me about it - I would. But I sometimes feel like people expect me to ask about those things, and when I see others do it, I’m often a bit skeptical about whether they’re actually interested or just going through the motions. Thus this thread.

You have data caps on your broadband connections in the US? Does your phones have rotary dials too?

$190 bucks a month for a limitless connection is insane. I’m too cheap to pay 30€ a month for unlimited fibre connection so I use 4G router which gives me around 40Mbps unlimited connection and it costs me 10€ a month.

When speaking of memes, most people think of internet memes. The likes of which this and every other meme community is full of. That’s not what Dawkins means by a meme. What he means by it is a cultural analog to genes. A trait that passes from person to person as an idea or behavior. Shaking hands would an example of such meme.

Internet meme on the other hand generally comes in the form of a picture which is funny, ironic or relateable.

Yeah, but this is what troubles me. It’s not that I don’t know what’s expected of me in these situations - I know how to play the game. I’m just not interested in it.

I do try to think about whether there’s anything even remotely interesting about what’s happened to them, and if so, I’ll ask about that. But in many cases, there’s not. Unless their vacation was to a place like North Korea, the most interesting part to me is what kind of plane they flew on and whether they found the baggage carousel mesmerizing.

The vast majority of posts on this community are internet memes that don’t fit that definition.

I can’t believe how little news coverage there has been about this. Seeing that thing land was probably the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen.

It wasn’t the first starship launch but it was the first where they tried to land onto the chopsticks. Last time I believe they simulated the same thing but landed in the ocean instead. They did get just one try with this particular rocket since if it was unsuccesfull the rocket would now be in a million pieces.

That’s not a claim, it’s the name of the company. I’m not aware of Altman being the one who even came up with it.

What does?

How dare you imply that humans just make shit up when they don’t know the truth

…or you can just keep watching videos from human creators like you have done so far. If the content you’re consuming is already the kind that’s difficult to tell from AI in the first place then not much will change.

Further proof that what ever criticism one can come up with about how this war is being fought very likely applies to both parties involved.

What’s an example of a claim Altman has made that you’d consider bullshit?

No wonder you guys are so damn stressed if you really think climate change is literally going to end human existence on earth.

To me, being an intellectual doesn’t necessarily mean someone is exceptionally smart in the traditional sense. I’ve always taken it to mean a person who can take a few steps back and dispassionately, honestly evaluate things from a distance. It describes how they think, not what they think.

I listen to a lot of podcasts with guests/hosts I’d consider intellectuals, and I’ve often found that, given the same information, these people tend to land on the same or similar conclusions on unrelated topics. Another common trait of an intellectual is that their ideas don’t map neatly onto a political ideology. They don’t adopt ideas wholesale but instead form opinions on different subjects individually. Maybe I’m talking about intellectual honesty now, which might be slightly different, but that’s my take on it. I remember Sean Carroll defining intellectualism along these lines on an old podcast, and it resonated with me.

There have been two recent events that, in my view, serve as good tests of a person’s intellectual honesty. First was the Trump assassination attempt. One of the thinkers I admire most is also one of the most anti-Trump people I know, but I was confident they’d still condemn political violence like this, which they did. The second event was just a few days ago: the landing of the Starship 1st stage. If a person is so blinded by their hatred of Musk that they can’t admit how impressive that was, then I don’t consider them an intellectually honest thinker.

It’s a common tactic of news outlets to choose bad pictures of people they’re against and good pictures of people they’re for. Once you see it, it cannot be unseen.

you know he’s not personally involved in the design or manufacture of these things right?

He actually is. Everyday astronaut has done several interviews with him and the dude knows about rockets and engineering.

Can a malicious actor remotely do stuff with your thing you connected to the internet?

Yes.