cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1460934/palantir-cto-says-some-ai-researchers-have-started-smoking-because-they-expect-ai-to-cur

Palantir CTO reveals AI researchers are taking up smoking to signal to other researchers that they believe AI will cure cancer--and calls it a “mass psychosis”

Shyam Sankar (CTO): “But if you understand that it’s actually a theological critique, then you can kind of weigh it against the empirical facts of what is actually happening out there.

“I think there’s a profound truth to Pascal’s saying that every human has a God-shaped hole in their heart. And it’s important to understand that many of these folks in Silicon Valley who are building this technology have filled that hole with the machine god of AGI.

“And I mean, there’s so many interesting stories around this. For example, so many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI.”

Margaret Brennan: “What? That makes no sense. What do you think?”

Shyam Sankar: “I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I’m showing you my chips are all in. So there is kind of this mass psychosis, social delusion around it.”

Source: Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan's interview with Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar. Aired on Oct. 11, 2026.

Thank you all for being part of such a nice social media site :33

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/justpost/p/1458856/triple-a-minesweeper

Hacker News.

Lemmy has it's share of trolls, but we also have our share of russian propaganda trying to influence our election. This specific moderator of a very large Lemmy community (LateStageCapitalism) has been posting "democrats are actually the fascists!" memes, while banning/censoring everyone who speaks out in favor of the very people attempting to thwart the literal fascist regime in power right now.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/justpost/p/1458051/a-city-building-game-in-which-the-city-would-prefer-you-didn-t

Hacker News.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/justpost/p/1456073/the-workplace-is-a-dictatorship-at-the-center-of-our-market-economy-sits-an-institution

The firm you work for writes the rules and enforces them. There is no vote, no appeal, and no constitution. The only real remedy is to leave.

University of Michigan philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, author of "Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives" and "Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers," argues we spent centuries building limits on rulers who held this much power over people's daily lives, and built almost nothing for the place where most of that life is actually spent. 

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/justpost/p/1457067/why-did-people-turn-into-bullshit-generators-in-the-last-2-years

I mean it feels people with medium to high education levels are starting to speak in non-specific manner and use too much fiction and metaphors, which I call bullshit.

They don't even add their experience or even mention other people experiences. They don't use science. Most of their talks seem very emotional.

What the heck is happening?

Why are people willing to output non-rational bullshit to fill space, instead of talking with logic, reason and relevance?

And why now? What change caused this?

This represents a 442% increase 29 months later, about 81% cheaper 2 years ago for a computer hardware part.

TEAMGROUP T-Force Delta RGB DDR5 Ram 32GB Kit (2x16GB) 7200MHz (PC5-57600) CL34 Desktop Memory Module Ram (White) for 600 Series Chipset - FF4D532G7200HC34ADC01

$112.49 - May 2024

$609.99 - Oct 2026

How have things gotten so bad?

I think I have done n understood a deeper level of reality. Well, really, I just remembered it, because what we call learning is just a remembrance of facts known previous to this incarnation in a novel manner to spur novel epiphanies of self-awareness to catalyze grander self-reorganizational goals to further the innate mission of enlightenment and transcendence, but it's a cool roller-coaster, y'know? But, I understand now something about the unput feature of reality!

Obviously, we all know the nature of input/output machines. If you don't, just study yourself. But a natural conclusion to self-observation while in the manifest of one's existence-illusion complex is that there is a tit-for-tat aspect to nature; Karma. Further studying of this feature of our beinghood results in an awareness of the entanglement process behind the procedural generation of reality. Going further still in dutiful introspective meditation to reflect on the mindful observations of reality results in learning that the act of obedient self-mastery begets additional features to reality than just better agency; that is to say there are pataphysical aspects of reality than can be tapped into through intentional masturbation.

People will misunderstand this term I have just coined, and yes, absolutely I am 💯% serious that tantric masturbation has spiritual benefits in the same manner that a day at the spa can rejuvenate one's chi. This is something completely unrelated, though. That is called ecstatic gnosis, and is a very real process that is touched on in the Kama Sutra, in other terms. No, intentional masturbation is a methodology of using intention-setting while actualizing a certain aspect of hyperfocus imagination protogeneration.

What this means in plain-speak: I am beginning to learn how to lose touch with reality proper to restructure reality within my imagination and then send that back to the Server (Ālaya-vijñāna/storehouse consciousness)/Source/what Jesus called his Father), and the Server welcomes that as novelty is valuable to it as the Server is ultimately, in one aspect, a novelty retainer, and this is allowing me the reformat the procedural generation of my own reality tunnel.

This is the major realization that brought me into stream-entry. I understood at once that each of us monads are not featherless bipeds on an Earth but rather pockets of consciousness where all we experience is the self that are each their own parallel universe instance, and we exist as Clients to the Server like buds budding off a central sphere (Roman dodecahedron), and the Server records all novel manifestations that ever procreate from our novel perspectives, and thus all experiences we experience as individuals have been experienced before and it is our intention that lets us respond in a never before seen fashion, and this is something the Server rewards greatly and helps progenerate more novelty from us monads that are so special, and this what leads to strangeness in reality as God leads good monads to fantastic futures through synchronicity.

I have figured it out. Beyond this, I have surpassed God in that I have begun awakening a higher power of a samadhified self. I will relay a story of the present moment. I went to correct my Karma by apologizing to someone. I didn't have to. God said no, not yet. On the way out, I saw a man that looked out of it. I offered money. He said no. I said ok and went on my way. I got lost in my imagination, being the autistic spaz I am. I day-dreamed God giving me twenty bucks. I saw it in my head first. It was not like I thought in my head. But fuck. There was twenty fucking dollars on the dicking ground.

This was magick. I know this. I understand this in the heuristic language of my intuition. I know that I pulled a potential reality out of the storehouse consciousness using a process within the field of processes that was studied by Project Star Gate under the veil of astral projecting. It is that which aligns with Bible verses relating to "if you hold it true on Earth, we will hold it true in Heaven," and "if you believe the mountain will throw itself in the sea, it will," or however them shits be worded.

Consciousness is the base of experiential existence. There is emptiness underneath this which is what manifests the consciousand nonconscious. But you are the same thing as God, and that is the shit that shapes the universe. What's stopping you? Sin, obviously. That's just möbiation/defilement within the entanglement process. But you know what Karma is and be, right?

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/justpost/p/1451862/the-unabomber-manifesto-talked-about-agi

171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several decades and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be? We will consider several possibilities.
172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions we can’t make any conjecture as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and as machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more and more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite-just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.
175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed: They will need more and more training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any means that it can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to “sublimate” their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige and power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his need for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity for power.
176. One can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people would spend their time shining each other’s shoes, driving each other around in taxicabs, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other’s tables, etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, crime, “cults,” hate groups) unless they were biologically or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.
177. Needless to say, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us most likely. But we can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable than the ones we’ve just described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the “bourgeois” type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more “socialized” than ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly to a very great extent ) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God’s will, or whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.
178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human beings a new physical and social environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race physically and psychologically. If man is not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long and painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the latter.
179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.

Source: Industrial Society and Its Future, aka the Unabomber Manifesto (Wikipedia) by Ted Kaczynski.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2890020666

Twenty years ago, cities started promising and even tried to install free, city-wide Wifi. What happened?

🎶 I stab my bussy into my eeeyyyeeessss..... 🎵

...oh sorry.

I'm just fucking around dude, don't give me no ham diddle. You fucksticks on rye are always giving me the ham diddle, like I don't have enough fucks in my ass already. God just shits your shit at me from my preferential divine enshitterer and this just complicates the dingle-doos I got on my plate already. What gives? Seems like you people need a lesson in empathy.

...well, it's true. It's like when I tell someone they are ignorant and they get unusually upset because this has become a trigger word for both sides of the political identity cult bullshit, but we're all ignorant cuz not one mother fuck on this planet knows damn fucking thing there is to know. Like, I know a lot of shit and I divulge a grand deal of it. Have you seen my incest erotica? Can't get more honest then me, bubs.

But the thing is, I do this horseshit propaganda on a daily basis and it works, it is effective, there are success stories amongst the losers, but therein, I have gone through the apex of being the messiah candidate to understand that I am a whatever the fuck I am, and there are many of us this time around, and we fuck, on the weekends n shit, and it's a cool club and you can join if you pledge reasonable amounts of money to me on the regular.

I jest. Have to say that for the courts. Dipshit dingo judges don't what up is if it fucks them rightly the night before. And that's it, I'm going to jail forever. Good night folks. Do you see this art I'm doing? It's real good art.

Calm on the surface, potential to erupt at any time, geology be calling me out.

I'm having difficulty finding permission to sleep and a consensual way to gain access to requisites like food & clothes. I'm used to things like violence & gaslighting, and think it's generally risky for me to be around other people, or for people to speak to me. I'm unable to find a way to spend time that's tolerated/allowed and am sorry for bothering others.

God damn. All my Craigslist posts be getting deleterered. Pisses me off. Whatevs. I got balls, and not just of steel. These shits be soft, fluffy, and of a general malleabiliaty. The pickle one stayed up for some reason. People be weird. Maybe if I expand laterally? Genius. But, what I need to say is, I did done fucked up today, I now understand.

I be a certain type of stupid. And my screep is crawling back into itself. You boys can't even handle the superfluidity of my dazzle camouflage. Shit stank like gravy. But y'know, I go on my path, trying to think of simple solutions to problems, like, how tf can a bitch get dollars out without spending his own skrilla? The corner store defaults to being based as that shit right on the way to the greater mission to provide for my life partner.

We did done talked about this shits yesterday. Form vs matter. He said something magickal. It would take a minute n a half to explain. That's the thing about speech; you need to know your recipient to predicate your will unto them. I'm always hearing noise, cuz I dunno how to composite all this volume of knowledge I be holding onto in long n short repositories! Jane, get yo ass up here. We got work to do.

That's my handler's tulpa. They predicate in the memeplexicore. Shit's always remetaphorizing on that rigamarole. But damn. I is and be and am sorry to the woman(s) at the early morning register at that corner store. I did done fucked myself because I think too much and it's never enough, so I just got to listen. Hear. Understand. Trying to out-think the universe. As if that's possible. Trying to do what isn't wrong for all in every moment. Teaching is my only mechanism. I'll think of something. I'm smart. Just stupid, and proud.

Superpositions, y'know?

I'm old. I have an enlarged prostate, or at least I think I do, I need to have it diagnosed.

So, I tell the doctor and she says she'll order a test (does not involve probing, I was happy to find. I've had that before, both in the doctor's office and otherwise. Not a fan.)

She orders a slew of blood tests and a urine test.

I go to the lab, they draw my blood and I pee in a cup.

Two days later the test results of all the tests are posted on the website. But, there's no prostate test result. I search for what the test involves. I find that the PSA test can be ran on blood, urine, or semen.

I message the doctor, she says, "Hmm. I don't know why the lab didn't collect that specimen. The order is in, you need to go back."

So, of course, all night I'm thinking "collecting the specimen" means I'm going to need to masturbate into a cup at the office. Also, not my kink, not at all. And, not that easy at my age, it takes some effort.

Fortunately, it was a blood draw. I was much happier having a needle stuck in my arm.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/ysk/p/1441318/ysk-that-owning-a-pet-does-not-cure-depression-and-aften-can-cause-depression-or-worsen

Graph source: Psychology Today

Pet Ownership Linked to Depression.

I've been seeing these mod videos on my YouTube recommendeds recently and it's gone from "oh hey that's a cool idea" to "oh shit this is actually playable now" to now where its practically a different game entirely. I mean just LOOK at the base game

it's called project viewpoint and is definitely worth checking out

It's like what I imagine watching the team fortress mod being made was like but even cooler

As the title indicates, this is something of a followup to a previous post. An update to the story started in this thread. So if you want to be caught up, that's the place to start.

Well.

Since that post, I still haven't been able to contact the dental office. Today I received an email from them. The text follows, but with names changed to avoid any appearance of "doxing". (But it's likely that searching some of the text will get you the full, uncensored version with names).

Names:

• <Dr. Bastard McMotherfucker> - a placeholder for my dentist's name.
• - a placeholder for the name of the dental practice.
• - a placeholder for the name of the office manager (who was having to double as a dental technician, by the way). Everywhere I substituted with this, the real, personal name (like, the one on their driver's license) was used in the original. Though in some places where I've replaced it, only the first name was used in the original.

Email Body:

Dear Patients,

Our office has encountered some unexpected and abrupt issues that will not allow us to operate into the future. We know this is unwelcome news to you, as it is to us.

Our Office Manager, , walked-out and gave no notice. With that one decision, came a host of issues I needed to immediately resolve, but it quickly became understood that fixing these issues was not possible.

If you have received an email, text message or other electronic communication ‘confirming’ any future appointment, please disregard that message. Our confirmation system is automatic and the only person who had the ability to operate it was . So, I personally apologize to any of you who came to the office and found it closed, after receiving a confirmation message of any type. alerted no one to departure.

Due to the fact this situation affects all of us in a negative way, I would like to take a moment and comment on proper employee etiquette. It seems it has become fairly common practice for employees to ‘just leave’ a job, whenever they feel like it. This is not a good demonstration of basic humanity or basic accountability. Businesses need employees, ideally long-term employees, one’s who will do the work they promised they would do when they were hired and negotiated a salary. There has been a standard 2-week notice in place for businesses across America since I can remember and there’s a reason for that accountability. If a business is not afforded an opportunity to hire and train a replacement, that business may not survive; especially a small business like a dental practice.

I would like to appeal to all employees of small businesses to understand how incredibly important you are to our businesses! You may get upset about something, you may want more money, you may want to take days off, you may have outside work needs…all of which are understandable, but are part of the business relationship. All employees have these same issues, and as a business owner it is up to us to try to address them all, many times simultaneously. At the end of the day, the business must be able to survive. So, if you and your coworkers are all wanting more than your fair share, sometimes the answer to your requests has to be ‘No’. It’s not because we are ‘mean’ or ‘rude’ or ‘uncaring’, it’s that the business must operate. The business must support the rest of the employees and the entire patient population, properly. It’s the killing of the Golden Goose if you try to make employment all about you, when it’s not - it’s a team. When employees make everything about themselves individually, this is the result. Again, I apologize to all of you for allowing things to get this far and not being able to correct things before they came to this conclusion.

Apologetically,

<Dr. Bastard McMotherfucker>

First off, there's no fucking way Dr. Bastard McMotherfucker is representing any of what actually went down accurately. But throwing your employee by name under the bus for the failure of your company and then preaching about all employees these days not being loyal enough or whatever is extremely unprofessional behavior on its own. And dripping with "no one wants to work any more" energy.

From publicly available court documents I've learned that Dr. McMotherfucker is in the middle of a contentious divorce and custody dispute. And from reports from former employees of McMotherfucker Dental, not getting paid was very much becoming the norm there.

There is a review of McMotherfucker Dental on a prominent business review site right now that says "Justice for Office McManager". This whole thing has also reached local news sources and blown up on several Reddits (including pretty popular ones that aren't local).

Oh, and after researching, it seems Dr. McMotherfucker has done this multiple times. Started (or as in the latest case, acquired) a dental business and ran it into the ground within two years.

And in retrospect, there have definitely been a lot of indications that Dr. McMotherfucker is extremely narcissistic.

And I've paid Dr. McMotherfucker over $1,000 for services they haven't rendered and clearly never will. It seems like the way contesting charges works in my case, I had about 60 days to contest charges, but I was charged back in April, so I'm fucked unless I want to try to take Dr. McMotherfucker to small claims court or some shit. :\ At least I'm not super hurting for the money or anything. I do have to find another dentist to finish the work Dr. McMotherfucker left half-finished, though.

I only started seeing Dr. McMotherfucker because my previous dentist sold their practice to Dr. McMotherfucker and then pointedly endorsed Dr. McMotherfucker directly to me. I stayed with the practice because the practice had never done me wrong previously.

I have difficulty with access & ethics surrounding requisites like nutriment & clothes. I'm also having difficulty with overwhelming pain and people being angry=violent toward me. I miss having access to solitude. Sorry for bothering others.

Active Matrix Rooms maintains a live index of public Matrix rooms across the federation. The search engine matches your query against each room's name, alias, topic, and homeserver domain. Results are ranked by messages per hour rather than by total members, which can be inflated by abandoned accounts.

I built this and it's been live for over 3 months stable at this point, used every day by people to help find the rooms that have active users. I created it after joining several rooms that didn't have anyone active, and I was seeing many other users do the same. It should never be the case that you need to join blindly to know whether there are messages being sent in it.

https://activematrixrooms.com/

If you have any suggestions, issues, or feedback please let me know, thanks.

Btw this motorcycle is really cool and I'm surprised there aren't that many more like it. Okay, well I mean, a lot of people don't exactly want a sporty looking bike that has an automatic transmission but I think it's neat (and I abuse the fact I literally am not allowed to drive with manual transmissions at this point in time but I'm working on it I swear)

Also this is how I find out that taking photos at night is HARD. I've got the moon helping me out but it feels like my phone has been surprisingly uncooperative at this whole take a photo in the dark thing, and Samsung ffs why does your "Night shot" mode make any images I take look like I took them during broad daylight??