wonderingwanderer

Except that the angle of a circle’s circumference is measured as an arc with the vertex at the center, and to include an infinite number of angles you would need to reduce the degrees accordingly to avoid overlapping

That story was about a guy paying to use an API for a flagship model (like 200 billion parameters).

I think these people are talking about self-hosting a local model (probably like 12-32 billion parameters depending on your hardware), which means no API, no payments, and more personal control over settings and configuration.

Thousands of open-source models are freely available on huggingface, and you can even make your own fine-tuned version based on an existing one using any datasets you choose.

Still no point in using an AI agent to do what a basic alarm/reminder could do, but it allows people to innovate their own ways to integrate them into specific workflows. You can even configure them to play minecraft, just as an example

A circle has 360° discreet 1° angles. While there’s a theoretically infinite number of angles within a circle, those angles would need to have an infinitesimally small fraction of a degree. If you divide a circle into 3600 angles, each angle would be 0.1°

A segment of a circle is also measured as an arc corresponding to a vertex facing outwards from the center. A triangle’s vertices on the other hand face inwards. The sum of those angles is always 180°. If you juxtapose a circle on top of it, yes, it goes all the way around since it’s a closed shape. But if you place the three vertices side by side so that their lines line up, it’ll only cover half of the circle.

There’s no inconsistency.

“Something something, worn-out cliché, HA HA HA!”

It’s okay, it’s understandable. I misunderstood what you were saying at first too. These things happen.

Thanks for being reasonable and having a discussion about it, clarifying what you meant and considering my perspective. It’s much healthier than assuming the worst intentions and going on the attack, which is far more common online.

What was it Carol Gilligan said about the ethics of care, that we should try to “ascertain the other’s perspective” or something along those lines?

I think we had a productive conversation. It certainly expanded my perspective.

That makes sense. The type of guys who aren’t like that don’t really approach women anymore, because the whole online discourse kinda indicates that women don’t want to be bothered and the guys who respect boundaries respond by leaving them alone.

It’s sad that so many men are misogynistic jerks. I’m sure they’ve always existed, but I think their prevalence nowadays has a lot to do with a combination of social media, right-wing grift, and kremlin psyop money. It’s been documented that there’s a lot of overlap between the manosphere, right-wing grifters, and russian-paid actors. Even Russia itself has publicly said that it’s waging a hybrid war to destroy the fabric of western society from within. And where else would these “manfluencers” be getting their sudden and inexplicable fortunes from?

Unfortunately, a lot of young men and boys are vulnerable to that kind of influence. They lack positive role models, and social media funnels them into these sort of spaces with their algorithms. The problem is complex, and any potential solutions need to be complex to address it. But I think a few key things will include degrifting social media (and the fediverse is one way to make that happen), providing young people (of all genders) with positive role models and opportunities to receive mentorship (funding education is a good place to start, and also providing extracurricular activities in the civil sector where people can volunteer for causes they care about and legitimately feel they’re making a difference), and healing the rift between genders (which will be difficult because there’s a lot of bad blood, but cycles of hatred only self-perpetuate). Manfluencers would lose their audience if they couldn’t play off the grievance that so many disenchanted young men and boys feel they’re being left behind and no longer have a place in society. If those same men and boys had more healthy social interactions in gender-diverse settings, they’d be more likely to see women as people and not fall for the caricature of the “angry radfem.”

I’m not saying the impetus is entirely on women to forgive and forget, but there’s a lot of societal healing that needs to be done, and it will take a long time, maybe generations, but it can’t be done by only one side. Men certainly have a responsibility for detoxifying male-dominated spaces, but it can’t be only on men, because patriarchy and toxic masculinity are perpetuated by men and women alike.

For instance, how does a man address toxic masculinity and harmful patriarchal expectations imposed on men, if topics like “men’s liberation” are viewed as inherently redpilled incel fringe? There have been times when I’ve tried to call out patterns of toxic masculinity and the societal ways they’re enforced, but people are way to quick to pigeon hole everything into the closest-sounding trope, so then they call me a “nice guy” or an “incel” and other nasty names. Seems like a losing battle.

I mean, I often can’t even talk about problems that men commonly face without being skewered online by people assuming I’m just brainwashed by the manosphere and mindlessly repeating dogwhistles, instead of genuinely concerned about problems that I’ve faced and have noticed other men facing. If there’s no way to have a collaborative discussion about these problems, then it’s going to continue perpetuating this “us vs. them” mentality that drives so many impressionable young people into the extremes.

I understand it’s exhausting on your part to try to deal with, and believe me, I truly wish you didn’t have to put up with toxic men. If society is going to overcome this trend, men and women need to work together to do so. From my perspective, it really hurts to be lumped into a category with the jerks, especially when I can’t even say “not all men are like that” without being mocked. Or if I talk about “misandry,” people claim it doesn’t exist, it’s a made-up problem, it’s just a misogynistic dogwhistle, and they assume I mean it as “criticizing legitimately bad behavior from men” when I really mean it as “painting all men with the same brush, assuming all of them are as bad as the worst among them.”

I understand how easy it is to generalize, though. Sometimes I’ve found myself thinking about “women” as a general category, as if they all think the same way as the meanest man-hating redditor online (even the meanest are probably just carrying a lot of pain). It’s hard to remember that some feminists still actually follow the example of bell hooks, who didn’t hate men and viewed them as victims of patriarchy who required healing too.

We’re hard-wired to generalize. Schemas and heuristics are both well-known phenomena in different fields of psychology. It has evolutionary value, i.e. “Big orange cat = danger!” But evolution hasn’t exactly equipped us for modern life (our entire stress response system is optimized for wilderness survival situations, not deadlines and commitments), and purely evolutionary behaviors are often maladaptive in civilized society.

I agree that the lack of empathy is a key part of it. It’s a really tough situation, because universal empathy is not the default. Society had to evolve to the point where empathy between strangers was commonplace, and once it got there, it was still fragile and there were always people who were against in. Those people have been feeling emboldened by recent events, and what was left of the shared empathy was shattered. It takes a lot to heal that wound. Feuds don’t dissolve overnight. There’s a lot of pain and anger on all sides, some of it justifiable, and forgiveness and healing isn’t easy even when the preconditions of remorse and behavioral change are met. And that requires willingness from all sides. I really wish there was an easier and more straightforward path to reconciliation, but seeking simplistic solutions to complex problems is often how those problems get even worse and more complex.

And I appreciate your dating advice, but I’m past the point where I can use it. I’m too burnt out and disillusioned, I’ve been rejected enough for three lifetimes, and I don’t need to put myself through that pain anymore. It’s easier to keep my walls up than to let down my drawbridge and get hurt.

It’s not easy to get to know someone’s personality when their first thought when they see you is “potential predator.” Especially when I’m shy and awkward, I notice people tend to find my nervousness off-putting and they think I’m up to no good. I can’t keep up with witty banter in real time, and when I seem hesitant and people see my gears turning, they tend to think I’m being calculating and manipulative rather than scouring the blank surface of my mind for literally anything to say that won’t sound stupid.

What charred remains of my personality are left are bitter and cynical. Even if I expose my softest, most excitable core, people think I’m a spaz or a freak. If I unmask and infodump about my special interests, people tell me to stop mansplaining and other mean things like that. Okay, so I can’t talk about my passions, but I’m supposed to be open, vulnerable, and interesting? I’m supposed to be charming without seeming fake, when my natural authentic state is super-cringe-level-awkward? I don’t need to keep embarrassing myself by exposing myself to rejection. It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I’ll probably never find love again. I’ve had it before, and I let it slip through my fingers because I was stupid, so I just tell myself this is my punishment for letting go of what I had.

If you’re referring to multilateralism, international law, and rules-based-order, I’d agree. We already had that and it (mostly) worker since the second half of the 20th Century. Although there was still a lot of room for improvement, but now we’re throwing the baby out with the bath water.

But if you mean some well-intentioned do-gooder should conquer everybody and enforce their own standard of decency, then I’d say that’s a slippery slope and self-contradictory. Well-intentioned people don’t conquer the world.

I see. It sounds like some of the men you’ve encountered are pigs, and I can see how putting up with that could make someone cynical. I’m sorry that you go through that.

I overthink a lot because I don’t want to come off that way. I guess I can’t quite imagine the depravity that’s out there, so when I hear people talk about it my mind fills in a placeholder of something more innocuous, and then I worry that the things I thought were innocuous were actually perceived as worse. And that can be kinda paralyzing when I both don’t want to be perceived as a pig and I also don’t want to ruin someone’s day.

I’d still be afraid to compliment someone’s hair or outfit though. You seem to have a rational view, but there have definitely been times when it seemed like people were assuming the worst about me and reacting as if I had said something as depraved as the things you described. It’s not a good feeling. I don’t want to be painted with the same brush.

These days I don’t make an effort to meet people anymore. I’ve learned to accept my loneliness. The dating scene is too hostile, and I was always nervous and awkward about it to begin with. Rejection was always painful, but now it seems to come with extra layers of insult and derision.

I was never really a catch anyway. If there’s anything even remotely likeable about me, someone else does it better, guaranteed. So why should I waste anyone’s time?

Plus, judging solely from most of the discourse online, it seems like women don’t want to be approached at all. So I don’t even try anymore. Like, if she would literally rather encounter a bear in the woods than talk to me, then I’ll just pretend I don’t see her. I just tell myself that I’m expressing my affection by ignoring everyone I’m potentially interested in. Even if I think she’s sending signals, with body language, eye contact, tone, or whatever else, I wouldn’t trust my perception. I would assume I’m misreading the situation, because that’s easier to cope with than risking putting myself out there and being wrong.

Anything with crisp formatting gets labeled as AI these days — and if you use the dash, forget it!

Is it treating you like a sexual object to strike up a conversation? If they’re objectifying you, that’s one thing. Are they literally coming up to you and saying “Hey, wanna hook up?” Or do you consider it sexualization every time a man says hi?

Dating functions are one thing, but arguably only a small portion of dating activity takes place at those or begins from an interaction at one. And dating apps are notoriously toxic. The thing about genuine love is that it doesn’t happen when you mean it to. It’s unrealistic to expect to find it at those type of events. If it happens at all, it’s more likely to emerge organically. A chance encounter that turns into a coffee that turns into dinner that turns into three years and counting.

But if saying hi to that stranger with the cool style is inherently misogynistic, then how many chance encounters that would have had potential will be missed? That seems like a sad world, where everyone is isolated and no one is meeting the people who would be right for them because no one is talking or even beginning to get to know each other. And it seems like that’s the world we’re already living in.

Maybe I don’t quite get it, because I don’t understand flirting. I wouldn’t know how to do it if I set an intention to. I don’t really think about interactions as flirting. If I did I would just get nervous and awkward, and unable to think of anything to say. But retrospectively, there may have been times when I was trying to be friendly and outgoing that people thought I was flirting. I’m not really sure what counts as what. So should I have rbf all the time to avoid confusion?

If I’m interested in someone romantically, my first instinct isn’t to “flirt,” whatever it means. It’s more like “Can I learn her name? What can I learn about her personality? I wonder what she likes? Will she talk to me for long enough to develop a connection? How can I get to know her without sounding nosy?” In fact, when I really like someone I get so shy that she probably thinks I’m being standoffish.

The reverse is true too. I’ve thought someone was interested in me before, only to find out that she was just being friendly or had a bubbly personality. And likewise there have apparently been times when someone was dropping hints and they went right over my head. Clearly I don’t know “the code.”

And besides, how does one get consent to flirt? Do you literally say, “Hi, can I flirt with you?” I don’t know much about socializing, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how most people would do it, and it would come off as painfully awkward and cringe for everyone involved. What exactly are the logistics for requesting clearance to exchange lighthearted pleasantries in order to gauge whether someone might be interested in continuing the conversation? These things don’t come intuitively to me.

Is it really necessary to be demeaning? I’m sure you feel like they all deserve it, and probably some of them do, but also some of them are probably decent people who are trying to be outgoing and probably had to work up a lot of courage to try to start a conversation with you.

Do you really need to crush them when a simple no will suffice? If they don’t take a simple no for an answer, then you know they deserve harsher treatment. But wanting to destroy someone’s spirit over a simple interaction seems a bit sadistic. I mean, how would you feel if someone did that to you?

Like, think about that for a minute, you want others to consider your feelings, but you consistently have made clear you’re actually content to not think about theirs

You continue to reverse the order of operations. I stopped caring about people’s feelings after years of consistent reaffirmation that nobody cares about mine. Why should I? By your logic, you don’t have to care about my feelings because I don’t care about yours. Apply your logic consistently and this whole thing will make more sense to you.

Or continue making special exceptions for yourself to justify why it’s okay to degrade me, but wrong if I question someone else’s choices, because I’m an easy target and it’s so easy to gang up on someone that already no one likes.

You’ve consistently operated on the assumption that I can simply choose to be likeable, but I assure you that no matter what I do, I will never be likeable because I don’t know how to be “normal,” and the harder I try the more people call me “cringe” or a “try-hard.” You can go back as far as you please, to my earliest memories and beyond, and I was already being ostracized, bullied, and isolated.

Call me a fucking whiny bitch. I don’t care. And when I don’t care the next time someone else complains about their problems you’ll probably call me callous. Because to you, their problems matter, and mine don’t. It’s a pattern I’m familiar with. This isn’t fucking new to me. You’re not unique, and your vitriol isn’t some breakthrough revelation that’s somehow never occurred to me.

You don’t know fucking shit about me or my life. Don’t give yourself a stroke on your way out the door.

I’m gonna paint you a picture with words, because I don’t have skills with pixels.

Imagine there’s a bucket. Maybe it’s been sitting in a forgotten corner for a long time, filled with cobwebs and debris from disuse.

The bucket decides it wants to improve itself, so it cleans itself up and sets itself out somewhere someone might make good use of it.

People see the bucket, but it doesn’t look new, it doesn’t look clean, so they don’t want to use it for nice things like carrying water. But the bucket waits patiently, hoping someone will put it to good use.

Well it sits out for a while, and people regularly walk past, and those people are carrying cups overflowing with hate.

The people pour their cups of hate into the bucket. The bucket lets them do this because, after all, it wants to be put to good use, and giving people a place to pour out their hate seems like it might be helpful.

So people continue pouring their hate into this bucket, until the bucket starts overflowing. Then people get angry at the bucket because it’s overflowing with hate. They say “that’s an evil bucket, it’s filled with hate!” Forgetting that they themselves were the ones who poured the hate into the bucket in the first place.

What did the people expect? They filled the bucket with hate and now they wonder why it isn’t overflowing with honey?

Sooner or later, someone knocks the bucket over, and all the hate pours out. Then everyone blames the bucket. “It shouldn’t have been filled with hate! Now the hate is spilled everywhere!” Well, it was their hate in the first place, and the bucket gave them a place to pour it so it wouldn’t be spilling on themselves while they were walking.

But the people move on, and forget about the bucket. Eventually someone sees the bucket and says “That’s a useless bucket. It’s on its side! It can’t hold anything like that!”

So the person sets the bucket upright and says “There, now the bucket can be useful.” Then the person moves on.

The people walking by see an empty bucket, and find that it’s a very convenient place to pour out their hate…

When you decided to switch to personal insults, I stopped caring about your feelings.

instead of you not wanting others to suffer as you have

I used to want to change the world so that others wouldn’t suffer like I have, but when people decided to view that as a weakness and exploit the vulnerability by heaping piles of extra suffering on top of me, it beat me down and after a while of that it kind of turned my plot arc into that supervillain origin story with an underwhelming conclusion due to my lack of superpowers.

The world has never taken responsibility for its role in making me what I am. I had potential, but they’d rather see me fail and suffer than live in a world where I had the satisfaction of making the world a better place. They wouldn’t tolerate me being compassionate. They chose suffering, and then they complain when the suffering envelops them too. They thought I would be the only one who suffered, a convenient and well-behaved scapegoat. Well, I’m not so docile, and I don’t have sympathy for a world that had no sympathy for me.

You have zero desire to do better or grow, as much as you like to pretend you do.

You’ve clearly misinterpreted what I said. I said I put effort into growth for years in the past, but when it proved to be futile I gave up on it. That implies that I don’t care anymore, so it’s still logically consistent. Is trying the same thing over and over and expected a different conclusion not the definition of insanity?

Demean me harder. Maybe it’ll finally give me the resolve to do it.

I wish there was a choice…

I’ve always wanted to open my wrists in a public place, to traumatize everyone around me. They’ll probably celebrate my death, so I won’t give them the satisfaction of doing it quietly in a dark corner. I’m not mean enough to be violent towards others, though. But no one’s ever grateful for all the times I’ve exercised self-restraint. Oh well.

The world is going to shit, anyway. It’s a shame about all the loss of biodiversity. Nature was always my refuge, but humanity destroys all things good. I won’t care when they destroy themselves. It’s only a matter of time…

I’ve already told you, I’ve put effort into growth. It only got me shat on. I haven’t always been this resigned to defeat.

Some people overcome trauma, some people don’t. Just because some people escape poverty doesn’t mean the ones who can’t are to blame for their own condition.

Ciao 👋

Fuck you. I haven’t really been upset about anything you said until this point, but fuck you for that one.