Text only forums?

The issue with LLM copypaste by non-expert humans, and it took me a while to realize this, is ego.

What they feel like when they do it: "Man, I'm fucking brilliant. Look at me using new technology well. I was always the key provider of value here."

What they hear when you call out AI copypaste as less useful: "None of that is true."

Now we can debate on the factual merit of both sides, but that doesn't change the feelings.

Unfortunately, I don't see a way to change the feelings, because that dopamine burst of making non-experts feel like experts is something all the AI labs have a HUGE financial incentive to maximize in their products.

No love for VOY? :)

I know it's been a long time...

There were definitely some good episodes and it probably got better over time. I'd probably give it a mild thumbs up overall with reservations.

The overall Star Trek experience since DS9 feels like:

Fans: "The last series was the worst ever!"

Star Trek producers: "Hold my beer..."

Fans: "You know, the old series weren't so bad in retrospect."

> Everyone who got out of that decade alive and with at most minimal brain damage thinks that we're too obsessed with safety today.

There must be a word for this, but the issue today is the normalization of zero-risk.

Did some kids likely die because of the shenanigans free range kids were allowed in the 70s - 90s?

Sure!

Were those kids as cohorts on the whole better off because of the freedom they were allowed at formative years?

I'd be hard pressed to argue against that...

Sometimes it takes a few broken eggs (or children) to make an omelette (a responsible and creative adult).

Maximize the good to each individual, but only up until it begins impacting the good of the many.

I think the idea that people are willing to consume an even more slopful Netflix is dubious.

There's has already been a decade of complaints about trash content in excess of available viewing hours.

The thing with media consumption is that there exist a finite number of eyeball-hours available, and it's a zero sum game against other non-media consumers.

The more apt analogy is between pre-electric and post-electric lighting (~1850 to 1920), when efficiency of light generation rapidly increased, restabilizing at ~222x as much light for the same unit of human labor. [0]

Across that period, first world countries massively increased their demand for light.

Further efficiency increases only matter to individual choices if they take a use case from {economically impossible} to {economically possible}.

I'd offer that by the 1920s, most goings-on in first world urban environments were no longer price constrained in terms of their light usage.

[0] See table 1.4, p21 https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6064/c6064.pdf

HeisenShop sounds like a great app idea for shopaholics -- automatically don't buy / cancel random or exceeding-monthly-budget items without telling the user.

> Ugh I hate this new-age woo slant the tech industry has these days.

As opposed to the Macintosh era? ;)

The only reason the early web hype didn't have woo was because it's hard to wax poetic about a bunch of gray pizza boxes spinning in a closet.

> randomness felt more like a skin - not affecting gameplay much.

DF is a great comparison, because it speaks to the composability of properties and systems as a key requirement.

2,000+ variants that still funnel through one predesigned interaction system is not variety.

The variants need to actually compose with each other into meaningfully unique experiences / systems for the player, which is much harder to align.

Weird. It's almost like synthetic content is less fulfilling to humans than friendship.