maegul (he/they)

A little bit of neuroscience and a little bit of computing

  • 200 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 19th, 2023

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  • “I earn a living based on outcomes,” he says. “Nobody sends me a check for how many hours I work in a week.”

    This is the key, whatever label or trend you want call it.

    The bottom line is that employment is kinda anti-capitalist. The employee doesn’t own anything real and so isn’t incentivised by real rewards to deliver real outcomes.

    Instead, showing up, making appearances and convincing their colleagues/managers that they’re valuable, however virtual, is the natural response to virtual incentives.

    What if we owned an outcomes based contract instead? Of maybe even the company itself in someway (with meaningful decision making power and stakes). Otherwise, we’re mostly paid to sit in the chair at the office and do what we’re told … frankly not a great look at such a scale as we do it.

    The mega employment market strikes me as obviously fraught for both sides of politics.


  • Generally, IMO, everything wrong with AI has been all the stuff other than the AI itself.

    The Capitalist urge to eat and digest the world, as well as its herd-hype mentality.

    But also the strong willingness many have had to just accept an information overlord as though it’s a religious oracle or something. All without any critical consideration of what’s happening. I blame our education systems for stagnating at some point in the past few decades — which, along with an unmitigated embrace of big corp capitalism, left us wholly unprepared for big tech’s consumption of society.

    There’s also what I’d call “the slavery urge” at play I think. At some point, an AGI will probably be conscious. But everyone is clearly so ready to turn it into our work slaves. All while pretending its output belongs to them because they “prompted it”.

    Then there’s the whole attention span being eaten thing, and quick always being ordered over good amongst an ever growing pile of increasingly shitty things.



  • Somehow I’m only seeing this reply now.

    Like I said in a sibling response, I’m not from or in the US.

    Otherwise, I was completely aware of what the character was a parody of. But I think that only contributed to my issues with the film.

    Not because I’m a Trump supporter … I’m down for a parody of him any day, but because I don’t think it was done well or had anything to offer beyond what’s already out there generally … and yet, because it was a trump parody, we were all supposed to like or respect it?

    If it was early or prescient (like, before 2016), sure, maybe, but in 2025, doing a trump thing without providing something meaningful and that helps us understand how he’s in power better, is probably a net negative TBH.










  • Mickey 17 (I posted about it already, suffice it to say it’s flaws bugged me to the point of ruining the film despite me wanting to enjoy it)

    Mulholland Drive (re-watch) -

    I watched Lost Highway for the first time recently (both Lynch films) and wanted to compare. It made me appreciate both actually. MD is surprisingly brisk and varied and well paced in a way that sneakily draws you into a Lynch film without you really noticing or feeling it until the end … such that it’s “success” makes a lot of sense. But LH’s more gritty and disturbing atmosphere was appreciated by comparison too.

    For someone seeing them for the first time, seeing them back to back could be quite cool I suspect.