There has always been a tendency to switch to methods of doing things that are easier and worse. That does not make it okay, but it is a consistent pattern.

Don’t question it too much, they’re drunk /j

As big as some individual corporations are, the world (including every other massive corporation) is much bigger.

as long as your drinking literally fucking anything

Time to take a trip to the auto shop and get me some oil.

That’s precious

You also started thinking about it, you started trying, and with some practice you’ll learn how to stop when you need to. It’s not about stopping, it’s about… a bunch of complex stuff because nothing in our brains has a simple straightforward explanation as much as we like to pretend it does.

I did say that it’s another avenue to influence how people think. Even if it were a small net positive right now, which I would argue that it’s not but I digress, it’s only serving to strengthen people’s dependence and trust of the systems which will overwhelmingly likely be used to control them in the future.

I’m going to assume you’re saying this in good faith. The problem with handing thinking over to a computer is not just about computers being worse thinkers, it is also about the fact that these computer systems are being conditioned to reflect the views of the organizations that created them. This creates a concentration of power issue as it’s another avenue to influence how people think, and it’s a pretty strong one at that if people are literally handing over their thinking. This problem is likely to get worse over time as selling this influence in the same way much of the internet sells ad space will likely be quite profitable, and we’re probably not seeing it as much now because AI companies are trying to get their LLMs integrated into society so people become dependent on them.

A few nitpicks

Subpixels would not be perfectly monochromatic unless they were laser displays. Quantum dot can get kinda close though.

if mixing light additively didn’t create new colors then mixing paints subtractively wouldn’t either. the results of those processes still result in light that can activate our cones with combinations of wavelengths in the exact same way.

I think the semantics of what color light is doesn’t matter which wavelengths are used to produce it, but what it looks like. We don’t say something is yellow because it has wavelengths of light that look yellow on their own, we say something is yellow because it looks yellow. Likewise people use the term white light all the time when there’s no single wavelength that produces white.

Absolutely. There is no single wavelength of light being produced that would look yellow on its own, but yellow is the word we have for when our long and medium cones both get activated, and a display does produce light that does that. Yellow exists in our brains, so I think it’s pretty reasonable to say that either yellow exists somewhere in this process or no colors do.

I do have a couple questions. How should I categorize and structure civil rights issues in my head, is it just by demographic? Where does intersectionality fit into that? Are there easily accessible websites I can look at regularly that will kind of just keep me aware of things that are happening?

I am immersed in groups that are focused on consumer rights and privacy, but I would need somewhere to ease me into civil rights until I have a lot of the baseline knowledge in my head already. Most of the civil rights issues im clued in on are just issues that people who I know personally, and people they know, have to deal with, as well as things I come across on the internet naturally.

Yeah, I am very oblivious to many civil rights issues for instance. I guess it’s probably safe to assume I’m that kind of person to somebody out there, isn’t it?

It’s insane to me how little thought people put into things in their daily lives, because you’re right. So many people see a thing and they’re like “Oh, I see the thing. I’ll do the thing. Coke flavored mouthwash on my TV? Yeah, let’s do coke flavored mouthwash.” Literally just the first unfiltered, uncritical reaction they feel.

I had someone the other day tell me they didn’t want to use Firefox because when they did it gave them a bunch of security issues. When I asked what they meant it turned out the security issues in question were the browser asking them if they wanted to let different websites know their location, have access to webcam, etc. “Well I just don’t like that it does that”

Can you fill me in on what that means? Searching for mud doesn’t give me useful results.