If it wasn’t “blown out of proportion” then many things would not have been fixed, and many of them would have broken, causing some of the very things that seemed blown out in the media.

I wish you could appreciate how hilarious that sentence is. But okay- thanks for clarifying that it had to be blown out of proportion to prevent the things that would have happened if it weren’t blown out of proportion ;)

Reasonably priced and good content streaming is why I stopped downloading everything I wanted from newsgroups. That’s going away so guess I need to get back to downloading.

I figured Saberhagen’s Berserkers filled that role, but with a little more ‘personality’ than a mindless self-replicating swarm or paperclip maximizer scenario.

So ‘some over-panicking’, but definitely not ‘blown out of proportion’…

Kind of bizarre you’ll babble about all that but just can’t just accept that the phrase ‘blown out of proportion’ is perfectly applicable to Y2K. But you’re committed that it wasn’t ‘blown out of proportion’ now- no way out but more babbling ;)

So in your opinion the media and public response to Y2K was entirely proportionate… I guess that’s an opinion.

Even referring to a computed outcome as having been the result of a ‘goal’ at all is more sci-fi than reality for the foreseeable future. There are no systems that can demonstrate or are even theoretically capable of any form of ‘intent’ whatsoever. Active deception of humans would require extraordinarily well developed intent and a functional ‘theory of mind’, and we’re about as close to that as we are to an inertial drive.

The entire discussion of machine intelligence rivaling human’s requires assumptions of technological progress that aren’t even on the map. It’s all sci-fi. Some look back over the past century and assume we will continue on some unlimited exponential technological trajectory, but nothing works that way, we just like to think we’re the exception because if we’re not we have to deal with the fact that there’s an expiration date on society.

It’s fun and all but this is equivalent to discussing how we might interact with alien intelligence. There are no foundations, it’s all just speculation and strongly influenced by our anthropic desires.

Fortunately we’re nowhere near the point where a machine intelligence could possess anything resembling a self-determined ‘goal’ at all.

Also fortunately the hardware required to run even LLMs is insanely hungry and has zero capacity to power or maintain itself and very little prospects of doing so in the future without human supply chains. There’s pretty much zero chance we’ll develop strong general AI on silicone, and if we could it would take megawatts to keep it running. So if it misbehaves we can basically just walk away and let it die.

It’s fun to imagine ways it could deceive us long enough to gain enough physical capacity to be self-sufficient, or somehow enslave or manipulate humans to do its bidding, but in reality our greatest protection from machine intelligence is simple thermodynamics and the fact that the human brain, while limited, is insanely efficient and can run for days on stuff that literally grows on trees.

You know it didn’t. It broke a bunch of dependencies and ruined a lot of dev’s day. The ‘internet’ continued to work everywhere left-pad wasn’t used. So now you’ve ‘blown it out of proportion’ too, but yeah- already established you’re just missing the whole concept, but interesting to watch.

Can’t get very excited about space missions where I have little hope that they’ll be conducted openly and important scientific information shared with the world.

That the issue got miscommunicated to the consumers as somehow being an issue for them

That’s literally what ‘blown out of proportion’ means. If I ‘miscommunicated’ to non IT staff that left-pad ‘broke the internet’, that would have been ‘blown out of proportion’. That’s what that phrase means.

Do you know what this symbol means? ;)

It’s used to indicate the comment was humorous. Do you not get how the library comment was a jab at your little ‘cash is money’ rant?

Irked, but not disapproving… interesting distinction.

Sure I’m insecure because cash is money and new, indirect ways of consuming one’s labor is scary, even more so when it’s relatively new and unestablished route.

You must hate libraries ;)

My dude… if you’re not writing for the love of writing and you’re this worried about getting paid- you won’t ever have to worry about people consuming your work without paying you.

Yes actually. As I recall I added two digits to the date fields in a FoxPro script so a bunch of casino coupons went out correctly. It saved a lot of lives ;)

I’m getting that you don’t get how ‘blown out of proportion’ means a disconnect between the reality and the public perception of an event. Not sure how to walk you through that.

I never said I was a good writer, just not so insecure that my ‘inner writer is wounded’ by hearing that people enjoy sci-fi in ways I’m too snobby to approve of.

Like I said- won’t be an issue for you so carry on with the snobbery.

if all they care about is the concepts.

That’s what I care about, not everyone. I’m saying the general snobbery about how one should enjoy sci-fi could turn kids off to sci-fi… but that would only matter if you said that to a kid that admired you so probably not going to be an issue- so carry on with the snobbery I guess.

Demonstrating that ‘seeing the appeal’ of something doesn’t cancel out your condescending judgement.

Are you saying that there was no risk, especially in finance, and that people didn’t work for years fixing the bug?

Seriously where are you getting any of that?

I said, very concisely and more than once, the threat was blown out of proportion. Did you read or watch any local news in the late 90’s?

I explained this already:

If you do that to a younger person it may turn them off to the genre just because they might not enjoy the same aspects as you do. So for their sake I’d advise keeping what ‘irks’ you about how other people enjoy sci-fi to yourself in the future.

“Crack smoking bothers me but I see the appeal.”