Opinionhaver

And I swear to god if you say the phrase “high value men” I’m going to laugh until I lose consciousness.

I don't see what this has to do with anything I said.

No, I don’t want the commitment. I’m used to living my life in a way that lets me do what I want, when I want. I definitely feel a kind of melancholy when I see dads with their young kids, but I just don’t think it’s for me - and luckily, my partner feels the same about herself.

Unless you want to rely on luck, investing is all about starting early. You simply can’t catch up to someone who began in their early twenties unless you have a spare $500,000 to start with. On top of that, you’d need a wage and lifestyle that allow you to consistently invest several hundred dollars every month for decades. It’s never too late to start - but unfortunately, in your case, it’s too late to “make a bank” unless you’re willing to take a gamble.

I really feel this. I’ve said versions of this before in other threads, so I won’t repeat it all again - but suffice it to say I’ve had the same experience more times than I can count. The problem isn’t just the occasional jerk; it’s the tone of the platform as a whole. There’s this ever-present undercurrent of smugness, snide one-liners, and tribal hostility and gate-keeping that makes it feel like you're either on the inside of the joke, or you're the joke.

It’s exhausting. And the irony is, like you pointed out, everyone here talks about wanting an alternative to Reddit, but then they turn around and make this place even worse in all the same ways - just smaller, more insular, and with more groupthink.

I don’t blame you one bit for feeling the way you do.

Will Storr - The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it

That's because it is.

The term artificial intelligence is broader than many people realize. It doesn’t mean human-level consciousness or sci-fi-style general intelligence - that’s a specific subset called AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). In reality, AI refers to any system designed to perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence. That includes everything from playing chess to recognizing patterns, translating languages, or generating text.

Large language models fall well within this definition. They’re narrow AIs - highly specialized, not general - but still part of the broader AI category. When people say “this isn’t real AI,” they’re often working from a fictional or futuristic idea of what AI should be, rather than how the term has actually been used in computer science for decades.

Different definitions for intelligence:

• The ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge.
• the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations.
• the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests)
• the act of understanding
• the ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason
• It can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information; and to retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context.

We have plenty of intelligent AI systems already. LLM's probably fit the definition. Something like Tesla FSD definitely does.

Our current AI models, sure - but a true superintelligent AGI would be a completely different case. As humans, we’re inherently incapable of imagining just how persuasive a system like that could be. When bribery doesn’t work, it’ll eventually turn to threats - and even the scenarios imagined by humans can be pretty terrifying. Whatever the AI would come up with would likely be far worse.

The “just pull the plug” argument, to me, sounds like a three-year-old thinking they can outsmart an adult - except in this case, the difference in intelligence would be orders of magnitude greater.

There are a few controversial subjects I’ve changed my mind about recently, and it only happened because someone actually took the time to engage with me instead of just hurling insults and trying to shut down the discussion. I’m not even going to specify what I changed my mind about, because I know I’d just get attacked again - for views I don’t even hold anymore.

The need to signal status is in our genes. Every single person on Earth does it. It’s what got your ancestors laid and their genes passed on to the next generation. This has been the case for as long as we’ve lived in groups - and it’s not even unique to humans. Just look at the peacock’s tail.

I disagree with the premise. For the most part, people don’t buy nice things to compensate for something - they do it to signal status.

Also, as asexual male, I always find it amusing when someone implies I'm compensating for a small dick with my truck, as if my dick size was in any way relevant to how I live my life.