quarrk [he/him]

  • 41 Posts
  • 281 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 30th, 2022

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  • Microsoft is also pursuing power from nuclear fusion, a potentially abundant, cheap and clean form of electricity that scientists have been trying to develop for decades — and most say is still a decade or more away from generating electricity. Microsoft has signed a contract to purchase fusion energy from a start-up that claims it can deliver it by 2028.

    Lmao what a way to close out the article

    I mean, if the AI arms race gets us over the hurdle for cheap fusion energy in the next three years, then I will consider AI to be a net positive for humanity. But I’m not holding my breath.
















  • I get what you’re saying but also disagree on the conclusion, if I’m reading right. Feels like a form of solipsism which is just … navel-gazey.

    Imagining oneself in another’s position is simple empathy, an evolved trait foundational to human civilization. The point is not to be able to perfectly imagine that other life, or to understand it in full detail. The point is to recognize common humanity between yourself and that other person.

    In empathizing, I make a basic assumption about another person’s experience, in its intelligibility to myself, despite not having experienced it directly myself. It is like how in physics, we can’t prove beyond all doubt that the laws of the physics are the same in other galaxies (although there is of course strong evidence, e.g. spectral lines). I am reasonably certain of a baseline humanity shared by all humans, and on that basis I feel valid in empathizing.