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Joined 18 days ago
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Cake day: June 3rd, 2026

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  • To me this trivializes the word “sentience” to begin with. Which I do consider to be a reasonably meaningless word. Sentience requires a somewhat randomly defined definition–is sentience using tools? Crows and monkeys are sentient. Is sentience experiencing and expressing emotion/loved experience? My cat is sentient. Is sentience simply experiencing? Grass is sentient, it will respond predictably to external stimuli. Although grass also seems to communicate experiences, too. Freshly mowed lawn smell is grass “screaming in pain”, in the sense that it is the response to bodily harm, much like I imagine I’d scream in pain if my arm got taken off by a lawnmower. If we look at predictable responses to stimuli, I think one could make the argument that the planet itself is sentient, in that there are predictable geological and environmental results governments by the same physics that causes our brains to respond to stimuli. And then we’re just panpsychists.

    The generally accepted definition of sentience seems to be requiring the use of tools of a certain complexity (often governed by the complexity of tools we have seen animals we don’t want to consider sentient use), as well as communicating on what we would consider a normal human timescale, i.e. ain’t nobody gonna sit and listen if a tree takes a week to say hello.

    But this definition is pretty arbitrary, and can be easily misused. A bit like how “freedom” is somewhat arbitrary and means different contradictory things to different people. Your freedom to not get punched violates my freedom to punch you.


  • I’ll be honest I don’t know how much the advice will work.

    The advice is simple: do social stuff, be social, and you’ll end up in a social group.

    That being said, the advice is (a) mind-numbingly “have you tried putting one foot in front of the other foot” for someone that knows how to make friends, and (b) the advice is damn near useless/impossible for someone that doesn’t know how to make friends.

    Personally, I’m in group B. I don’t know how to find clubs where people do stuff. I don’t know how to find a place to volunteer.





  • Alex Jones was partially correct, they are in fact turning the frogs gay, and this extends to people as well.

    Specifically, endocrine disrupting chemicals, which are commonly used as plasticizers and flame retardants, disrupt your endocrine system. I.e. they fuck with your hormones.

    Exposure to environmental stimuli, including such chemicals, can cause changes in sexual behavior and characteristics. This was the driving force of the plot of Jurassic Park.

    This cannot be proven without seriously unethical human trials, but exposing a every other animal to EDCs during development can and does cause changes in sexual development.

    Edit: other pollutants are causing societal effects as well, there was a study on crawfish out of NC a while back that found significant behavioral changes (less aggression, more foraging) among males that lived in a stream which was exposed to sewage, and therefore low level antidepressant medication.





  • Without dogging too far, it seems like the law is broadly worded enough to open the door for all sorts of SLAPP-type takedowns, a bit like how DMCA is weaponized against people that don’t have armies of lawyers.

    Also, the other source (not the bill itself, mind you, so might be wrong) says “digitally generated”, not “AI generated”, which could be stretched to apply to any image manipulation, like cropping.

    Then of course there’s the question of reliably differentiating between AI and non-AI. Which basically means whoever has the biggest legal cannon to fire at the other guy wins.