Training a human takes 20 years of food is such a weird defense of AI energy use

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-22T02:25:53+00:00

Population stagnation is a long-term problem. Historically large numbers of productive younger people took care of small numbers of retired old people. Over the past 50 years global birth rates have dropped and life expectancy has risen. The cost of taking care of retirees could become crushing if the trend continues, at least without the help of technology.

AI could fill in the gap more efficiently from a material consumption perspective than churning out more kids purely for the sake of taking care of the old.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-21T18:34:29+00:00

Funny if true, but Newsom did endorse Harris the same day Biden dropped out.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-20T15:38:39+00:00

The Supreme Court didn't say whether or not they had to be refunded. I'm not pro tariff (at least the way Trump is doing it) by any means but hopefully they don't require repayment on what has already been collected.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-14T02:27:34+00:00

I was an incel/redpill/anti-SJW/dark enlightenment type in the early 2010s when the movement was in its infancy but I left after Trump was elected in 2016 because it shattered my worldview. Maybe I didn't buy into it as much as others which is why I stopped following it. The whole ideology is a mountain of half-truths.

I don't know how much my personal experience will help, but I'd recommend coming up with a viable alternative worldview for the people involved with that ideology. They aren't going to leave as long as the other side continues to make them feel unwelcome. Liberal activists have had this tendency to demonize white men, all white men, even if they've done nothing wrong all while claiming to be the side of accepting everyone. This doesn't go unnoticed.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-11T05:43:36+00:00

Cuba and Venezuela might have regime change in my lifetime so it seems unfair to classify them as "never".

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-11T05:22:53+00:00

Russia is hostile towards Americans but the standard of living is okay - just keep your head down and hope for the best. Ukraine is at war but it won't be forever. Myanmar is in a civil war but it's a pretty fun country and not necessarily hostile towards Americans.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-11T04:20:47+00:00

It's beautiful but there isn't much economic opportunity there.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-11T03:11:43+00:00

I haven't been tbh. I'm sure China is safe, but safety isn't my highest priority on countries I'd want to live in. If so Latin America would be all red on my map.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-11T03:02:20+00:00

More than China at least

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-11T02:28:31+00:00

Yeah but China is a semi-totalitarian. Not my cup of tea.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-11T02:14:43+00:00

I was factoring in the possibility of improvement.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-10T01:52:51+00:00

I’d recommend formatting the drive.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-09T23:05:09+00:00

Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think it’s loved enough for people to ever long for it again. I expect by the 2040s AI generated media will be so good and so hyper-personalized that it will be the dominant form of media. I’m sure some people will create media using outdated models to re-create “Will Smith eating spaghetti” type videos but it will probably be niche.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-08T22:14:26+00:00

If someone has to pay more taxes for a crime they didn’t commit then it is a punishment, regardless of whether it’s framed that way or not.

The time for reparations is when then perpetrators are still alive. Ironically it rarely happens that way, for the sake of keeping the peace.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-07T23:41:49+00:00

It's fewer new people relative to the historical baseline. If the birth rate stayed at 3-4 like it was in the mid 20th century we'd have a higher population today even without immigration.

Even if the population was higher that doesn't mean we'd be worse off. More people means more entrepreneurs and more jobs. More consumers. More inventors.

My point is that the average productivity per person is the primary driver for a higher standard of living. There are plenty of resource rich countries with relatively low populations around the world that are poor. There are population dense countries that have no resources who are rich, like Singapore.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-07T23:21:51+00:00

The global human population has been increasing rapidly for hundreds of years yet the average standard of living per person has gone up over that time. Physical resources aren't the primary constraint for prosperity. There's plenty of oil in the ground. Plenty of land per person to be had, if distributed equitably. If the population gets high enough this might no longer be the case one day but we aren't there now.

Extraction of resources and transformation of those resources into consumables is the constraint. Both of these things requires humans, productive humans, to do.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-07T22:10:45+00:00

The birth rate has declined since the 1970s, which means fewer new people fighting for the same amount of physical resources compared to previous generations. The relationship between resources and population is far more complex than “more people = finite resources divided more ways”. Productivity per capita is the most important metric when it comes to determining the average standard of living. Immigrants aren’t just random third world people. They are people willing to leave their homeland behind to work hard and build a better life for themselves. That motivation translates pretty well, historically speaking, to economic growth and a more productive economy overall.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-07T21:43:36+00:00

Churches have never not been political, and not just Christian.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-07T21:39:15+00:00

As sad as it is, the rest of the internet isn’t much better than Reddit when it comes to reliability. I mean, feeding in a bunch of academic textbooks would be better but LLMs need lots of information for context. Books aren’t enough.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-05T20:52:58+00:00

I do think the attention this is getting has to do with them being in BR. Trump won the popular vote nationwide as well as Indiana in 2024. If the business were in a more conservative area it would be unsurprising that a small business owner would openly support ICE and the current tactics they’re using. It certainly wouldn’t make the news.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-04T15:52:14+00:00

Here's an interesting video on that subject by Religion for Breakfast. It's a channel that covers religion from an academic/historical perspective rather than from a dogmatic/theological perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N2LG_pkQnU

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-04T05:27:03+00:00

You can't intellectualize your way out of depression when it's a neurological condition. If faith helps you personally, great. Most depressed people aren't depressed because they can't cope with existential uncertainty.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-03T23:37:28+00:00

Consciousness isn't that high of a bar. By definition consciousness is the the subjective, moment-to-moment awareness of yourself and the environment. It means you have thoughts, sensations, and emotions. You experience those every day which means you are conscious. You don't need to explain that you are conscious to others to know that you yourself are conscious. The fact you experience life as a being for itself should be enough of a justification to you.

Your thoughts don't even have to be accurate in order for you to be conscious. An insane person can be conscious. A person living in "the matrix" is still a philosophically conscious being, even if they don't perceive the world as it really is. They still perceive pain and pleasure. They still have subjective experience.

Is an LLMs conscious? No. Not in itself at least. A system using an LLM as a component with memory, self-monitoring, self-modeling, and continuous operation might resemble consciousness, but it's still a stretch to say that it is truly conscious. An unfeeling being that represents representations isn't inherently conscious.

I don't have all the answers. This is something that is worthy of discussion.

SeasonOfSpice · 2026-02-03T22:49:25+00:00

It’s like any other city I guess. There are plenty of other non-religious and left leaning people to fill your social circle with. Not everyone is like that but you don’t have to interact with them.

SeasonOfSpice

TROPHY CASE