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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: March 17th, 2025

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  • I moved from a decently sized city (100k inhabitants) to a small city (10k inhabitants) in a different country. I enjoy the more peaceful environment, but I miss being able to casually greet and talk with random strangers, as I don’t know the language here and very few people here know English. It was so much easier to find events and things to do when I knew what everyone around me were talking about, and the posters were easy to read. I oftentimes find myself using a translating app, but it’s a hassle, comparatively.


  • Despite there not being a lot of activity in the communities mentioned in the comments here, I think posting there might still yield some results. Even if just a single individual engages with you, that single individual may very well turn out to be a great conversation partner.

    I’ve personally had some quite deep and dark conversations myself, and one good individual can in many cases be “sufficient”.

    I hope that you find some cool people out there, and keep up the hunt for achievements in both games and life!




  • Thanks for chiming in!

    I’m indeed curious whether it actually has an effect on the training, although my gut tells me that it’s very negligible.

    Tbf, I can agree that the use of þ and/or ð could possibly make the written language a bit easier to translate into spoken (clear distinction between voiced and unvoiced). However, there are worse things about the English language that probably could need some addressing first, like thou, tough, though, thought, and thorough.








  • I have to disagree a bit with the efficacy of this method.

    I myself have been told that I’m very understanding for people who try and learn something new, or do something I already know how to. However when the roles are switched, I can’t help but to hold myself to a higher standard than I hold others, and I end up pissing on myself for having such a hard time doing something others seem to have such an easy time with. Personal example is learning a language: I’m such a slow learner, still being A1 after three years, while I have a friend who got to B1 in 9 months. And I keep thinking things like “why do I struggle so much retaining this simple information? I must be putting a weak effort into this…”, while my friends are like “Keep going! You’re doing great!”. I can’t help but consider it mocking, like “aw, it’s adorable that you try so hard, and are still a noob!”, even though that is something neither of us actually think.

    It works well as a form of motivation though, albeit slightly toxic.

    I try to compare myself with my previous self, but that I find near-impossible, for some reason.



  • I’m also curious about this. If there are any transparency reports, I’d love to read through that.

    The Wikimedia Foundation are trying to implement some AI solutions (for helping humans, not write articles/information), which is likely quite costly, unless someone donates it. However, I imagine many others’ scrapers for AI are constantly demanding a lot from the Wikipedia servers since some years ago, probably resulting in increased costs. Hopefully the AI builders use a local copy of the torrent instead, but I fear they don’t…

    I’m still happily donating though, as I think the Wikipedia Foundation are still doing a solid job, despite me not always agreeing with their decisions.



  • I’ll try and answer seriously, with some non-exclusive options, in no particular order:

    • Feeling ashamed, mostly because they’re realizing they’re either wrong or sounding stupid.
    • Not wanting controversial stuff related to them to be “saved” for others to find and use for scrutiny.
    • Honest mistakes (wrong community, thread, etc.)
    • The post becomes a cesspool in the comments.
    • Other personal reasons (feeling threatened, wanting a clean inbox, question got answered and they don’t care about historic purposes, etc.)

    These are just my guesses though, and I try and not delete anything personally. I’m aware that anything I put on the internet will be immortalized, and that the healthiest thing I can do is own both my mistakes and my opinions, even if I’m convinced of my stupidity or ignorance at a later time. I’m only a human after all, and doomed to talk before I think. Best I can do is to learn as much as possible from it, and hope that others can also learn from my actions.



  • I think you’re right on all these points, though it depends a bit on what part of the Fediverse you’re exposed to.

    On the point of anti-capitalism, I agree, but (again, depending on the part of the Fediverse) there’s also an incredibly high amount of open-minded people here, compared to other more mainstream social media (like Reddit). I speak much from my perspective of being from lemmy.zip, which I’m impressed by the healthiness of the community since I joined. But there are also less “healthy” instances like lemmy.ml which is considered by many to be infested with tankies (anti-capitalism?).

    And yes, the average age seems to be around mid-30s to me, based solely on how people speak and what they reminisce about.


  • I think there are two more questions that need to be answered first, before being able to tell whether we should prioritize the many.

    First question is what is the ultimate goal behind prioritizng the many? Happiness of the population? Infinite growth? To conquer the stars? Depending on what the goal is, there are occasions where minorities should be the focus if we want to approach the goal the fastest.
    Example is moon landing: The amount of resources that was spent on “simply” building a rocket, space suits & equipment, and send a couple of humans over there was prioritizing the few. Despite a lot of people watching with curious eyes, it did not benefit the many’s needs much. There were several goals here: Being before the USSR, explore the unknown, satisfying shareholders, and more. By the many working hard to send the few, we approached all these goals faster than if we would allocate some of these resources towards the many’s needs, like health (prime days of smoking cigarettes).

    The second question is what timeframe are we talking? Is it long-term or short-term success we’re aiming for? Because in many cases, if we want long-term success fast, the many are those who should “suffer”.
    Example is where the long-term goal is the glorious evolution of mankind: In one way, we downprioritize the few who are those born with defects, either by culling them or by ensuring they do not make offspring. In another way, we downprioritize the many who are on- or below-average intelligence/capabilities. But then we get the question of how we quantify the few/many; where do we draw the line? And as we get more smart/capable humans, the average constantly shifts - what is the concrete goal?

    Suffice to say that this is written without emotion, as that makes this discussion the soup it really is: Ethics, benevolence, discrimination, etc., as you mentioned.


  • It’s an interesting thought, one that has crossed my mind a time or two.

    I think in reality, we don’t have anything that is “absolute” mind control, but we come pretty close through long-term exposure to biased information (propaganda). You asked for this to be an exception, so I won’t go into details there.
    There is a famous study done by Olds and Milner in the world of psychology, where they hooked up rats’ reward center in the brain to some electrodes, resulting in incredible change of behavior. The rats were stimulated by them pulling a lever, and this felt so rewarding to them that they couldn’t think of anything else. After the stimuli was given, they kept pulling the lever to exhaustion, not even prioritizing food or sleep anymore. The scientists also attempted the reverse; to inhibit the reward system. The rats became lethargic, and didn’t have motivation to do anything at all, not even eat.

    This is, to much smaller degree, effectively the same that happens with humans that are addicted. Whether it’s to gambling, porn, drugs, gaming, or social media.
    So if one can spontaneously create an addiction in someone, you’re one step closer to mind control.

    One show that caused a bit of a psychological unease with me was first season of Jessica Jones, where David Tennant makes an excellent performance of a character who can make anyone do exactly as he says. I think this is the kind of mind control that we fear, where we are completely aware of ourselves, but cannot help but do what we have been commanded to do.


    Edit:

    I forgot to answer your question: Yes, I think it will be invented (and to some degree already has), and total mind control is probably at least 50 years away, as we research the psychological basis that was found with the aforementioned research.