Because religion evolved to thrive in us.

It’s like a parasite, and our mind is the host. It competes with other mind-parasites like other religions, or even scientific ideas. They compete for explanatory niches, for feeling relevant and important, and maybe most of all for attention.

Religions evolved traits which support their survival. Because all the other variants which didn’t have these beneficial traits went extinct.

Like religions who have the idea of being super-important, and that it’s necessary to spread your belief to others, are ‘somehow’ more spread out than religions who don’t convey that need.

This thread is a nice collection of traits and techniques which religions have collected to support their survival.

This perspective is based on what Dawkins called memetics. It’s funny that this idea is reciprocally just another mind-parasite, which attempted to replicate in this comment.

An (intuitively) working search would be a great step ahead. It should find and show things if they exist, and only show no results if they do not. That a plethora of external tools exist to meet these basic needs shows both how much this is needed, and how much it is broken.

I also feel I have more luck finding communities if searching for ‘all’, instead of ‘communities’. Don’t make me add cryptic chars to my search to make it work. Do that for me in the background if necessary.

It’s been long since I’ve been using it, but iirc, it’s impossible or painful to search for a specific community in your subscribed list.

That’s like post #10 I see from random users proposing we should somehow run ads or whatever to finance big instances.

I haven’t seen a single statement going in that direction from big instances themselves. None of those posts referred to anything.

Is it just overconcerned people worrying about things which are not their problem? I assume people who can run a big instance would notice if they are getting into financial troubles. As long as they don’t speak up, I would conclude we don’t have to worry. The current model (whatever it is) seems to work well enough. Did they ask for advice, do they need advice?

Maybe it’s that people are so used to being forced to see ads and pay half their wage for insulin that they cannot imagine nice things exist.

I think we should try to keep it nice, and not revert to capitalist enshittification prematurely, without any necessity.

We currently have more than 1000 instances on Lemmy. Maybe some do run ads, who knows. You can join them if you like, or host your own.

Show the problem exists which you try to solve. Point to instances who struggle financially, who consider running ads, something like that.

AFAIK it was posted to asklemmy without posing a question, so removing the post is fair play.

We can speculate if they gladly removed the post, but let’s not hype it for more than it is. Posts should adhere to community rules.

If it has the information, why not?

Naive altruistic reply: To prevent harm.

Cynic reply: To prevent liabilities.

If the restaurant refuses to put your fries into your coffee, because that’s not on the menu, then that’s their call. Can be for many reasons, but it’s literally their business, not yours.

If we replace fries with fuse, and coffee with gun powder, I hope there are more regulations in place. What they sell and to whom and in which form affects more people than just buyer and seller.

Although I find it pretty surprising corporations self-regulate faster than lawmakers can say ‘AI’ in this case. That’s odd.

Headline:

TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENED TO MONKEYS AFTER GETTING NEURALINK IMPLANTS, ACCORDING TO VETERINARY RECORDS

What are these terrible things?

Up to a dozen monkeys suffered grisly fates after receiving a Neuralink implant, including brain swelling and partial paralysis.

First is the case of the monkey “Animal 20.” In December 2019, an internal part of the brain implant being inserted into the primate “broke off” during surgery. Later that night, the monkey scratched at the implant site, drawing blood, and yanked on the implant, partially dislodging it. Follow-up surgery discovered that the wound was infected, but that the placement of the implant prevented treatment. The monkey was euthanized the next month.

Before that, a female monkey designated “Animal 15” began to press her head against the ground after receiving the brain implant, pick at the site until it bled, and eventually lost coordination, shivering when personnel entered the room. Scientists discovered she had brain bleeding, and in March 2019, she too was euthanized.

The following year, a primate called “Animal 22” was put down in March 2020 after its brain implant became so loose that the screws attaching it to the skull “could easily be lifted out,” according to a necropsy report.

“The failure of this implant can be considered purely mechanical and not exacerbated by infection,” the necropsy states.

As Wired notes, that statement alone seemingly contradicts Musk’s claims that no monkeys directly died from Neuralink brain implants.

And so would the account of an ex-Neuralink employee, who told Wired that Musk’s claims that the monkeys were already terminally ill are “ridiculous,” even a “straight-up fabrication.”

“We had these monkeys for a year or so before any surgery was performed,” the ex-employee said.

The testimony of an anonymous scientist conducting research at CNPRC seems to corroborate the ex-employee’s allegations.

“These are pretty young monkeys,” they told the magazine. “It’s hard to imagine these monkeys, who were not adults, were terminal for some reason.”

Started smoking cigarettes.

As per the article, it goes like this:

1. AI is trained on publicly available data
2. AI does not credit or compensate original authors
3. People don’t like their work being used without
4. People share less publicly
5. Public spaces desert

And simultaneously, AI content of poor quality drowns what is left.

In terms of arguments, have you heard about control / alignment problem or x-risk?

Personally there is no way I would ever pay for a service that has ads.

Somehow we got used to it when it comes to sports events, a long time ago.

But yeah, I get you, and fully agree. Seeing no ads is like the major selling point.

if we could just “drain” the existing battery quickly and load in new pre-charged fluid

That would be huge!

For this, of course, it matters a lot how energy dense the battery is. Also for the environmental impact. If I have to exchange three gigatons of liquid for my trip to the grocery store, a rolling coal truck might have the smaller footprint.

It’s not some struggling hospital in a poor country, but an award-winning, Xbox-equipped premium institution in Michigan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S._Mott_Children’s_Hospital

They obviously do good work and probably could use more money and, sure, I want sick children to have an Xbox, but I’d still feel misled by calling that ‘charity’.

The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.

I read it as: ‘They embraced, extended and extinguished what you held dear’.

It’s not the device whis is made obsolete (objectively). It’s a very specific group of users who perceives it as obsolete (subjectively), since they want to always have the newest thing. Other people are different, and will be happy to pick up one of those “obsolete” phones at a discount and use it until they physically fall apart.

For example, I’m just switching phones after having used a 2nd hand phone for 8 years. Screen was broken for years, battery is struggling more and more, freezes are getting too frequent to ignore. Another reason for the switch is, there’s more and more apps I cannot install because my phone is too old.

The last point is a good reason for your argument, discontinuation in support. When they stop supporting my old device, that is making it obsolete. But whatever new stuff they release in the meantime does not affect me at all.

there’s something in our consciousness that gives you identity and defines who you are

Identity, personality, soul … I feel these terms are somewhat synonymous, if we exclude the spiritual connation, which I’d like to.

why you perceive the flow of time and the sequence of events that happens to a specific person (you).

Not sure what that means or wether that question makes sense. As I see it, all the above mentioned synonyms emerge from the brain doing it’s thing. A human brain working under normal condition creates a ‘you perceive the flow’.

I think a system like that would be perfectly fine here too. You don’t really need to bring all your posts over to a new profile, they’ll still be there and accessible on your old one if you need them.

Unless the old instance goes offline forever. Your posts and comments would still exist on remote instances, but the user profile they point to is no longer accessible.

Yes, copying subscriptions is probably the most important step, but ultimately I hope to see the ability to move everything, including history and notifications to old stuff.

you will likely need to work on it yourself, or find someone who can.

This is the feature in question:

Moving user profile to a new instance #1985: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985

I’m wondering if a DIY middle ground can be reached with the API and some scripting

There is a script somewhere which allows people to export/import their subscriptions. It did not work for me, hence I did not save it. But in theory, workarounds should be possible.

You won’t be able to move your posts, but you could link to your old profile in your bio.

You can already do that, or do I get you wrong? Probably does not help when your old instance ceases to exist.

Did you just propose a community challenge? Now whenever someone happily posts stats how the lemmyverse has grown, I need to subtract 1k because of you (and potential contesters) :(

There’s no general answer, it depends on your personal preference.

If you want to have most content available, register on an instance which has an according policy; which federates with anybody and is federated by everybody (both directions can make a difference).

The downside however is, this also opens the door to all sorts of bad actors, including bots and spam.

So I personally tried to strike a balance and am so far quite happy on lemm.ee.

This tool is pretty handy to make informed decisions: https://fba.ryona.agency/ It allows you to check federation status both ways.

There should be a place to document all the nuance around hosting an instance plus some tips and tricks.

The Wiki: https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Lemmy%3F

Hopefully it gets new contributors and maintainers from all the new users.