Are you aware that there is a significant population of white people in South Africa and a long history of racial conflict there between them and the black majority? The white minority ruled over and oppressed the black majority until the end of apartheid in the early nineties and the idea that the majority could now be persecuting the minority is not ridiculous per se the way that you imply it is, although the general consensus outside of the circles Trump listens to is that such persecution isn’t happening.

Ah yes, an “unauthorized modification”. It must have been the janitor pressing buttons accidentally while mopping the mainframe room.

Is there any large city where people would have responded? I don’t think anyone would clap in NYC, because people who ask you to do things in public are usually mentally ill, want your money, or both, and so the normal thing to do is to pretend they don’t exist.

Lifting sanctions on Syria is not wrong just because Trump does it. Biden/Harris would probably have done it too, and rightly so because this guy as the ruler of Syria is the best the US can get.

It’s like gorilla glue: made by gorillas for gorillas from gorillas.

I don’t think they stomped loudly (except when they ran) but I don’t see how they would be able to move through the undergrowth without snapping a lot of branches. (Or how they could move through dense forest at all.)

I wanted to conquer the world like Alexander the Great. I’m not sure why that appealed to me, in retrospect.

(A friend gave me some advice a few years ago. He said “You’re much more normal than you like to think. You have normal needs and you will be happy if you live a normal life.” I don’t know if he’s right.)

I have a hard time imagining a stealthy t-rex. He’s going to be making some noise even if he tiptoes.

That lie was definitely inappropriate, but it would still have been inappropriate if it was told by a human. I think it’s useful to distinguish between bad things that happen to be done by an AI and things that are bad specifically because they are done by an AI. How would you feel about an AI that didn’t lie or deceive but also didn’t announce itself as an AI?

ChangeMyView seems like the sort of topic where AI posts can actually be appropriate. If the goal is to hear arguments for an opposing point of view, the AI is contributing more than a human would if in fact the AI can generate more convincing arguments.

I used to imagine it would be sexy to shower with my partner but I’ve learned that even women who appear physically delicate in most other situations still temper themselves like steel when they shower. I think that I would get burns from sustained exposure to water that hot.

The interesting thing is that anatomically modern Homo sapiens appeared about 300,000 years ago and did live exclusively as hunter-gatherers for about 280,000 of those years.

I do like how this Twitter account, in the rush to blame capitalism, overlooked the fact that the sun rises and sets every day.

How are you guys getting all these wrong answers? Because I do use ChatGPT to look up information about software development, which is something I have a lot of experience with, and it’s almost always right. “Almost always” isn’t “always” but, if I’m being honest, it’s probably better than my own memory.

Any possible negotiated end to the war at this time would involve territorial concessions by Ukraine. Putin himself won’t agree to withdraw from most of the territory occupied since 2022, and even if he is replaced by a new, much less expansionist ruler willing to withdraw from all that territory, the new ruler still won’t give back Crimea.

The Uyghurs in Guantanamo didn’t want to go back to China.

Do you remember how prisoners were kept in Guantanamo Bay, even after they were no longer suspected of any wrongdoing, simply because there wasn’t a country that would both accept them and treat them in accordance with US law? Many of those prisoners ended up nowhere near where they came from.

Some countries refuse to accept deportees. Some countries are so likely to mistreat deportees that sending them to those countries is illegal. Some countries simply don’t exist anymore.

“Obligatory charity.” Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

The computer that controlled all the doors refused to open any of them, including the door to the room in which it was physically located.

It wasn’t quite HAL 9000 because doors could still be opened from the inside, but control over the computer was regained only with the help of a locksmith.

No, not the bees. My eyes!

Or so I’ve heard…