It’s an interesting idea. Reminds me a little of some parts of Christopher Langans CTMU theory in that everything serves to simply further develop intelligence in the universe.
While I'm unskilled with CTMU theory, what you mentioned could be considered a consequence of the first law of thermodynamics, right? Intelligence might decrease entropy locally, but they always increase entropy globally to do so. Ie we accelerate the natural process of increasing entropy.
Not here to argue your point, just to note that McDonalds fries are not as natural as people think, ie. most people assume they’re just potatoes fried in some oil.
> Five Guys Style [Fries]: Potatoes, Refined Peanut Oil, Salt
Its gonna make you fat and clog your arteries either way.
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My point is that "processing" food doesn't seem to make it more, or less, healthy. The amount of "processing" that Pasta has (Dry the Flour, Wet the Flour, Dry the Pasta, Wet the Pasta/Boil it, and sometimes further Drying+Wetting steps after that) is one of those running jokes in culinary circles.
More processing usually equates to more refining which means removal of micro nutrients. So yes, while five guys fries will make you fat if you eat too many they at least contain the normal micro nutrients of potatoes without added preservatives that may cause other problems
Are you saying French Fries (Simply cut Potatoes, oil + salt) are healthier for you than Pasta? (Ground grain, dried, wet, combined with Eggs, dried again, combined with various sauces made from oils, often dried herbs and other such ingredients)
Because Pasta is a hell of a lot more "processed" than a typical French Fry
Not only are they cooked differently but you've added extra non processed stuff to the pasta and culminated in using a simple sweeping term of "healthy"
You can also add herbs to fries and cook them in an air fryer. What about if I add broccoli to the fries and throw some hot sauce on?
Both of those things have a place in a well balanced diet
Bleached, fortified white flour is an incredibly processed ingredient.
It's also got nothing to do with health (or lack thereof).
I guarantee you there are fewer processing involved in Five Guys French Fries compared to white flour alone, let alone all the extra steps before you have a good meal.
Do you think there is a Pesto recipe that has less processing than the typical oils used for French Fries?
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I'm simply pointing out that a Bowl of Spaghetti + Pesto on it is highly processed. To far greater degrees than highly unhealthy and fattening foods we already know about.
Your last quote also reminds me this may be true for everything else, especially our diets.
Technology has leapfrogged nature and our consumption patterns have not caught up to modern abundance. Scott Galloway recently mentioned this in his OMR speech and speculated that GLP1 drugs (which actually help addiction) will assist in bringing our biological impulses more inline with current reality.
Indeed, they are related. A 2006 book on eating healthier called "The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness" by Douglas J. Lisle and Alan Goldhamer helped me see that connection (so, actually going the other way at first). And a later book from 2010 called "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose" by Deirdre Barrett also expanded that idea beyond food to media and gaming and more. The 2010 essay "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" by Paul Graham also explores those themes. In the 2007 book The Assault on Reason by Al Gore talks about watching television and the orienting response to sudden motion like scene changes.
In short, humans are adapted for a world with a scarcity of salt, refined carbs like sugar, fat, information, sudden motion, and more. But the world most humans live in now has an abundance of those things -- and our previously-adaptive evolved inclinations to stock up on salt/sugar/fat (especially when stressed) or to pay attention to the unusual (a cause of stress) are now working against our physical and mental health in this new environment. Thanks for the reference to a potential anti-addiction substance. Definitely something that deserves more research.
My sig -- informed by the writings of people like Mumford, Einstein, Fuller, Hogan, Le Guinn, Banks, Adams, Pet, and many others -- is making the leap to how that evolutionary-mismatch theme applies to our use of all sorts of technology.
Here is a deeper exploration of that in relation to militarism (and also commercial competition to some extent):
https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ... The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."
Conversely, reflecting on this more just now, are we are perhaps evolutionarily adapted to take for granted some things like social connections, being in natural green spaces, getting sunlight, getting enough sleep, or getting physical exercise? These are all things that are in increasingly short supply in the modern world for many people -- but which there may never have been much evolutionary pressure previously to seek out, since they were previously always available.
For example, in the past humans were pretty much always in face-to-face interactions with others of their tribe, so there was no big need to seek that out especially if it meant ignoring the next then-rare new shiny thing. Johann Hari and others write about this loss of regular human face-to-face connection as a major cause of depression.
Stephen Ilardi expands on that in his work, which brings together many of these themes and tries to help people address them to move to better health.
From: https://tlc.ku.edu/
"We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life. (Stephen Ilardi, PhD)"
GPT-4o, by apparently providing "her" movie-like engaging interactions with an AI avatar that seeks to please the user (while possibly exploiting them) is yet another example of our evolutionary tendencies potentially being used to our detriment. And when our social lives are filled-to-overflowing with "junk" social relationships with AIs, will most people have the inclinations to seek out other real humans if it involves doing perhaps increasingly-uncomfortable-from-disuse actions (like leaving the home or putting down the smartphone)? Not quite the same, but consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
Related points by others:
"AI and Trust"
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/ai-and-trust.... "In this talk, I am going to make several arguments. One, that there are two different kinds of trust—interpersonal trust and social trust—and that we regularly confuse them. Two, that the confusion will increase with artificial intelligence. We will make a fundamental category error. We will think of AIs as friends when they’re really just services. Three, that the corporations controlling AI systems will take advantage of our confusion to take advantage of us. They will not be trustworthy. And four, that it is the role of government to create trust in society. And therefore, it is their role to create an environment for trustworthy AI. And that means regulation. Not regulating AI, but regulating the organizations that control and use AI."
"The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI - Maggie Appleton"
https://youtu.be/VXkDaDDJjoA?t=2098 (in the section on the lack of human relationship potential when interacting with generated content)
“The computer is rumored to be one of the largest and most advanced data centers in the world. It could take up several hundred acres of land, and require up to 5 gigawatts of power”
Multivac!
I’m not that familiar with current supercomputers and datacenter footprints - but this sounds like it would be a lot bigger than existing setups?
It sure felt that pronounced the first time I tried to follow a Tesla up a freeway onramp while riding my motorcycle and it just ghosted me. I had never seen a four-wheeled vehicle move like that before.
> Regardless of the reason why you're giving up caffeine, you're best off gradually reducing your consumption vs. going cold turkey, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
This method never worked for me. I've stopped drinking coffee a few times in my life for a various reasons and cold turkey was the most effective method. Yes, there were headaches for a couple of days, but after that I felt great. I suppose it could've also just been that my attempt at gradual reduction wasn't steep enough.
On my reason for quitting coffee, t's exactly as the article states, we shouldn't become reliant on something, and for me, I could tell I was getting reliant on coffee due to the fact that if I ever missed my routine cup I would crash pretty badly.
> Chord it in, air beated fenn. Aurous to the Pan, mimic and bold. As it steep, chunns at the bun. Keive the dells, the stars to run. No wane, all gleam, in big das brund. Sky high, stout in the hale. Woods to fetch, flied in the low.
I think all that talk of music pushed Chaz into some kind of trance and it just started jamming!
I don’t think this is limited to software engineers.
I feel like change is happening more rapidly, and there is more being created than ever before.
That makes it difficult for anyone to go deep on anything. We are spread thin across vast landscape of languages, tools, and platforms - with new ones being added every day.
On a similar note, I sometimes think about what it takes to be a movie or music “buff” these days.
I was born in the 80s. Being a movie or music buff back then meant gaining deep knowledge in a much smaller catalogue of work.
Thanks to advancement in audio production technology and access to affordable software for home studio producers (plus the rise of streaming and sharing platforms), the catalogue of music in the world exploded. The same applies for TV and movies. As a kid, it was possible for me to listen to pretty much the majority of my favorite genre (metal) available to me and be a “buff” with deep knowledge of that genre.
If I was a kid today that would be much harder, I might have to stick to certain sub genres or focus on only the most successful artists.
To come back on topic, I used to have deep knowledge of a certain type of software - Flash actionscript. Who remembers that?
These days I just get by with what I need to get the job done.