Usually I try to run Linux “on a potato” but if I wanted to “run a potato” as my OS I’d just install Windows.

I really should have waited for this release to use a random Debian code name as my user name.

Edit: May 4, 2013. Damn I’m fucking old.

Yeah. That’s more my frustration. That it’s implented poorly by most people. I don’t think that trying to change the standard by “adding another standard” would be helpful. Just minor frustration. Which usually leads me to putting all my organized directories and shit in a dedicated location. And I just let /home be the clutter that it is.

Unfortunately. I really wish $HOME was reserved for files I create myself. I know. I can create my own shit for that. But, I really wish every single random project I download to fuck around with didn’t drop a config directory or file in there. ITS MY HOME.

It was always running on a free base (Slackware). Unraid sells because of its ease of use and reliability. It’s selling the features on top of the OS. It wouldn’t be as popular or as functional as it is if it wasn’t running Linux under the hood.

If there is one piece of software I’ve not regretted buying a lifetime license for, it’s been Unraid.

It may not be for everyone. And it has its quirks like anything else. But I’ve been running it for years now and have even had to experience the dead drive recovery process. It’s solid.

Could I use something free? Probably. But, I’m getting old. I just want something that has good community support, has an nice interface, and also still allows me to get my hands dirty with bash or programming when I need to.

I’d ask yourself why you’re sensitive to a “stereotype” being used to explain the outcomes of capitalist exploitation. I would ask you if you’d understand and agree with the same type of comment but with replacing “generation” with “white privilege”? Would you be so quick to defend the white working class from a “stereotype” in a frustrated rant?

My comment was off the cuff and crude. I think we can both agree there. But, I don’t think I was being unfair. Maybe a bit hyperbolic. My comment was definitely weighing in heavily to the “fuck boomers” feeling of the younger generations. But, it was not without a point of class structures, capitalist exploitation, and understanding that the stereotype is not all inclusive, but simply a venting of those frustrations.

I think the “no war but class war” crowd has fallen pray to class reductionism and the methods in which to communicate with the working class. The “no war but class war” is literal, not figurative. I think people forget that.

In the same way that “white privilege” in a vacuum is insufficient in describing the entire picture of of working class exploitation. Without it, it is insufficient in understanding how to address the issues of intersectionality in order to communicate with and radicalize the masses.

Also, let’s be clear, “Boomers” as a term is never referring to black or otherwise oppressed people of that generation. I would hope that anyone reading a comment like mine would assume that in good faith.

The issue is of class, the issue is of privilege, but for some reason i get more people ready to fight back against a criticism of “boomers” than I do when criticizing “white people”. When the term is literally specifically about the most privileged generation of white people that ever existed.

For me, I’m ok with using stereotypes of privileged groups to vent frustrations. I think it’s a way normal people communicate. And it’s a lot more popular than a comment like this that is much heavier with leftist vocabulary. And I don’t think it’s a bad way to communicate to the masses and vent a frustration with capitalism.

The “good” boomers. They are just as frustrated with their generation as we are. You think they love the Senate with an average age of 65? Fuck no.

They aren’t offended by a classification and frustration that they feel as well. And as long as their is a bit of understanding (that I gave in my original comment) that the stereotype is not all inclusive there is no problem with it.

If there is one category of people I’m NOT communicating to, it’s the “boomers” that would be offended by my original comment. There is no hope for them at this point. And it’s ok to accept that and use the language of the current generation to direct their frustrations towards class conflict.

Long comment. Sorry. But, I do respect the criticism. I was not communicating in a way that was meant to reach out to someone with your perspective. But I hope you can at least understand where the original comment came from in the first place.

Edit: Just realized I gave you a wall of text previously from another comment and didn’t get a reply. Second times a charm? I’m in a better mood tonight at least.

This is like saying it’s bad to acknowledge white privilege because it divides the working class.

You’re being a class reductionist. It’s not bad to use language that normal people can understand. Especially when doing it in the context of a criticism of capitalism and class conflict. Which is what I did. It’s why you quoted “boomers” and nothing else. You’re not responding to the content of my comment. You’re pointing to a label that the working class uses AND understands and then telling me not to use that label.

I’d agree with you if a generation argument was being used to mask class conflict. But I did not do that at all. Not in the slightest.

Reread my comment and reply to some actual substance if you want. Otherwise all you’re doing is policing a word.

Edit: Actually a different user. But, really, the same mindset as the original. My original comment below with the assumption it was the same user.

When you just make a conclusion without any argument you can get away with only writing a single sentence. I don’t enjoy responding with thought terminating cliches. I instead write a comment that takes all of 30 seconds to read. But, I guess that’s a “wall of text” for you.

You’ve now spent two comments just responding with conclusions. If you want to convince anyone, beyond yourself, of that conclusion; you might want to try writing a bit more. Its not 2020 anymore. No one is impressed by your ability to label something as an “ism” in order to shutdown discussion. If you have a problem with a specific point I made. I’m willing to listen. But you’ve done nothing but put a label on things Ive said without any justification for that label.

If what I said was “Ageism” point to the part you think is, and why you think it is.

If I have a “double standard” actually say what that double standard is.

I’m also still waiting for an example of the systemic Ageism that boomers are facing that I’m advocating for. But I guess you can’t be bothered to even engage in defending your own baseless accusations.

I’m sure I’ll just get another single sentence response with a thought terminating cliche.

Rascism has systemic backing. The systems of white supremacy are upheld by the institutions of our government, police and society.

The same goes for sexism and the systems of patriarchy that are upheld socially and systemically.

Ableism, class, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

For any I can point to systemic and material examples that are not just founded in individual hatred; but foundational to the structures of American society.

Hell, Ageism, I could point to examples of the poverty draft, entrapment of student loan debt, gig economy work replacing jobs that once offered benefits and retirement plans. Free healthcare for the old but not for the young. Adults defining their entire political identity around their need to bully trans kids out of a sense of normalcy and comradery through playing sports. Though that last one is a part of intersectionality. Though the victims of it are primarily cis kids on “genital inspection day” with their pedo gym teacher.

I really would love an example of Ageism from a systemic level of oppression that impacts the boomer generation. Not related to intersectionality. Not “well older black woman experience…”

I can think of maybe a couple. End of life care being one. A medical system that milks people not for a quality of life but for the profits of a parasitic healthcare system. I’ll give you that.

But, Ageism is not “being mean to old people”. Any “ism” or “phobia” is not that. It is a system of oppression that holds and maintains power by creating hierarchical structures.

The current hierarchical structures of class are extremely weighed in the favor of a generation of the elderly that have spent an entire lifetime closing the door behind them with every opportunity and benefit that they themselves enjoyed.

I will never judge an individual person based on their age alone. But, when that old person is talking about their hatred for the younger generation that is fighting against a world of capitalist exploitation, that is literally setting our entire planet on fire, I’m going point to the material conditions, propaganda, and literal lead poisoning that has made that generation (at least in general) so parasitic.

I swear to God boomers hold nothing sacred but their own self satisfaction. The two brain cells in a tug of war that are operating their brains fucking LOVE AI slop.

Like, his wife probably sees this as “a remembrance” of him or whatever. She probably has no fucking clue and got convinced by a suit to allow it.

But, holy shit, if this isn’t a perfect example of that generations continuing brain rot.

Like, isn’t it a human instinct as you age to look to handing the torch off to the next generation for leadership, making sure they are guided and educated well; but at the same time sacrificing your own importance and recognizing your story is reaching an end? Planting trees for which you know you will never enjoy the shade of. That kind of thing?

Boomers. Boomers are currently in denial of their own mortality. Their own denial of it in combination with the massive wealth gap is a plague on this world. The median age of the US Senate is fucking 65. These fuckers will not let go.

And AI slop is allowing them to find “new” creations of whatever reminds them of a time when they were important. Talk about pulling the ladder up behind you. They can’t even let an icon from their generation rest in peace.

I heard this shit on the dumbass that is Dave Ramsey recently.

https://youtu.be/eGfOSJ40HnI

Listen to this shit. Listen to this. This is the brain rot of the boomers. This is the brain rot of capitalism. A lady with so much fucking brain rot from capitalism that she has lost the maternal instinct to ensure the success and safety of her own children. Like, you can’t make this shit up. She deserves to die alone.

I’m sorry. I’m not usually a “generation” basher. But I needed to rant. There are good boomers out there. But, the average representative of that generation is an absolute narcissist that cannot let go. Too much fucking lead poisoning.

That’s been my solution. The nerd in me just wants to know. I feel like windows and “windows debloat scripts” or the like have gotten worse together. It’s like all the people that use to write cool programs or apps for Windows left for Linux and never looked back. (Except the game cracks I guess? Maybe that’s even dead now though idk)

I mean, it’s a good thing. But, it surprises me how awful the nerd support is for Windows now. I guess it’s so annoying to work with that no one even bothers anymore.

It just feels like something that should have a universal solution by now.

Is there no solution to this?

My first thought is an IP ban list outside of the computer itself. Put it on your home router maybe.

I guess it could be getting installed from a binary that exists on the OS already.

I haven’t used windows in a long time. But it’s wild how much work people have to do to decide which programs are or are not installed on their PC.

Thanks. Before my edit was my original comment before I realized their was a PDF of the paper available. Should have answered my own question. Appreciated.

I definitely hyper-focused by analysis on homework and exams like math, engineering, science. The study itself separates these into different analysis. The use in writing is actually significantly less, I think because of how obvious the use of AI is in any type of creative writing.

AI is good for bull shitting an email at your work. It’s awful for writing of you’re trying to not get caught using AI. You can generate a paper with AI. But, if you want to actually write it like a human, check sources, verify claims, and remove hallucinations. It’s literally just awful and likely more time consuming than just writing a bull shit paper in your own words to start.

Have you ever read an article or paper of any reasonable length written by AI? It’s very obvious and horrible writing that no human would ever write. And the survey was done in China. Natural sounding writing in Chinese is significantly more difficult for AI to generate than in English. Partly due to the dataset bias, but also because the language is just more complex. The “floor” for writing in the Chinese language is much higher from what I know about it an AI writing.

True. It could factor in the response if the students don’t believe the survey is anonymous. It would be dependent on how the survey was given out. Electronic surveys are less likely to have students believe that. They have no way of knowing if the survey is truly anonymous. It’s full trust based.

Paper surveys with no names and just simple bubble filling that they see immediately go into a stack of papers usually removes this worry in collecting data. Though this is much more expensive to collect survey data this way. Thankfully, for students this can be done for free in class.

But, yes, this fear of “being honest” could hurt the dataset if the students don’t feel it is truly anonymous.

Good survey collectors will collect data both ways in order to compare the two methods to see if their is any bias in one data collection than another.

It’s a problem. But it’s one likely the paper accounted for already by comparing datasets. The problem I mentioned (positive categorization bias) is a potential flaw to the survey that they did not account for.

Though, I just realized you might be talking about a positive categorization bias for students that performed badly. A student not wanting to admit they used AI so they select “no ai” even though they did use it and scored poorly on exams. This is likely negligible though. A student that performs badly knows that they performed badly. This actually makes the positive selection bias favor them to be honest. People will select “used AI” as it lets their bad performance be attributed to something other than themselves. It’s basically the same reasoning for the other bias I mentioned.

A bad exam score student that used AI has a positive personal bias to be honest and attribute their failure to AI use. They are likely to blame AI use for their failure. Answering honestly if they feel anonymous.

A good exam score student that used AI has a positive personal bias to attribute their success to their hard work and less about their use of AI in homework. The survey answer offers them no option to categorize themselves in this way without being categorized in the same way as bad students. So they “lie” and select the “no ai use” option as it better categorizes what they attribute their success to. They attribute it to their hard work. And there is no option that allows them to express this with these binary options.

Given OPs axis definitions.

The max homework score for nonai is 115. But there are AI users scoring 115+? I’m confused why there are no better scores above 115 for nonai. Is that data insignificant? Are students with scores higher than 115 just being flagged as AI? It makes the data look unreliable.

I’d also really like to know if the data range that isn’t comparable 115+ is at all meaningful data. Because that’s where there is a major dropoff. There is obviously a dropoff of significant before 115. But, just from looking at how the data is being presented with this massive dropoff but with zero data for nonai.

I’d be interested in knowing what fraction of the total population is actually being represented in the 115+ dropoff. The way it’s presented it could literally be like 10 students.

This is not a defense of AI use. But more a criticism of how the data is being presented.

Also, Any student could be using AI as a resource similar to how I would use solutions manuals or previous tests to study back in my education. The good students aren’t gonna copy it verbatim and get flagged. Their going to get the right answer, and use it to learn the process so they can present their own work and actually learn the material.

AI is trash. But this is nothing different than before AI when students would copy the solutions manuals blindly or their peers work. Those students have always existed. AI just makes it slightly more accessible. But, really only slightly. And, honestly, Chegg was just as easy to copy back in the day.

Edit: This graph isn’t in the paper that OP linked. So, probably why it’s presented so badly. I’m assuming it’s from some click bait article then. There is a similar graph in the paper that is much more clear.

But the paper clarifies that this is an actual survey of students. So it’s not just from flagged AI homework. Which is good and bad in its own way.

The paper itself in section 5 supports what I hypothesized above. It’s not really about AI making students dumb. It’s about making it easier for students that already don’t want to learn to finish the homework. Same as the people that would copy solutions manuals.

Quote from section 5.

In this section, we show that the majority of AI students exhibit behavior consistent with homework outsourcing, spending little time completing homework assignments and experiencing learning losses. The remaining AI students spend as much time completing homework as non-AI students, receive higher homework scores, and have similar exam scores. In other words, they are learning as efficiently as the non-AI students.

The paper doesn’t argue it from what I read. But I’d also argue there is some bias in the survey from the questions themselves. Or at least how the paper lumps categories. The students scoring well in both exams and homework are less likely to consider their use of AI as meaningful enough to answer “used AI for homework”. It’s a problem with the survey. The survey is asking the students that actually learned the material to attribute their homework to AI alone in the same way the “copy and paste” AI users would.

The survey would probably benefit from having No AI, Some AI, All AI as it’s responses. Even in anonymous surveys people make these own interpretations of the questions in their head. And a student that used AI as a resource to learn is very likely to just choose “No AI” when presented with questions of how they got their final answers to homework. Because in their head they are thinking of the students that copy and pasted AI responses and think “I’m not like that”.

It’s likely why the double high scoring AI user sample is so low (paper says this). The survey is not allowing the response for this set of users to categorize themselves as using AI without feeling like they are like the copy and paste students. So those people are likely just self categorizing as “no ai” because the survey doesn’t allow them to distance themselves from the other population. Surveys are hard to write. Even ones where the users know it’s anonymous. Good students that use AI will see themselves as good students and the copy pasters as bad students. Human emotion plays a role and most people will not self categorize themselves further negatively than they feel they should be. They are more likely to select the imperfect category that is more positive.

Bad students don’t care though. They’ll admit to AI use. They already don’t care enough to learn the material. They have no reason to lie. So they’ll select “used AI”.

If you want a good survey you need very simple and minimal answer categories that the majority of the population will be able to self categorize themselves well. But, you don’t want to minimize to such a degree that your survey introduces self categorizing bias. I would argue that’s what happened here. The most important category is an extremely low sample size compared to the rest of the data.

And I’d also say it’s likely the majority of people in reality. They just self categorized as “no ai” because the survey didn’t allow them to categorize themselves more accurately without being associated with what they see as negative.

The entire paper seems to not address this strict categorization in its data that is likely introducing bad response data. But I’d have to look at the actual survey questions to know.

I think it’s a good paper that suffers from an overly strict self categorizing bias in its survey data.

Carlin can answer this.

https://youtu.be/tetndXjHG1U

The major thing that has changed since he said this is that people are noticing now and people are caring and most importantly people are organizing.

Likely why I have taken up sewing and leatherworking. Just working with your hands is very liberating. Making real material things for others; that I can see the product of my labor - it is significantly more fulfilling than any type of wage labor could provide.

Gonna be unpopular here but here it goes anyway.

The promotion of free thought and “using your brain” was a remnant of lies told to you in your childhood. We are (correctly to a degree) associating this with AI because it is the current evolution of working class control. However, it is not unique in its goal. You are an adult now. You are seeing the reality of living under a capitalist society and what it rewards. It rewards serving capital. You were supposed to stop thinking after you entered the workforce. As your parents and grandparents did.

Your parents and grandparents experienced this in similar ways. Sometimes the carrot and sometimes the stick. But, we romanticize the past so we focus on previous generations “having it easier”. And, again, there is truth to this, clearly. The material conditions of the current and upcoming generations have declined. But, this is only because the ruling class of society has grown more confident in their ability to distract and corral it’s laboring class.

For no generation in recent history have we been encouraged to “use our brains” or “think freely”. That was all nonsense they told you while you grew up. There was just a lot more carrot previously than there was the stick. The bread and circus was better maintained. So, there was really no reason for most of population to keep thinking. They accepted their single family home and ignored the few that suffered.

AI is not primarily used to keep you from thinking. No, the systems that existed before it worked and are working quite well for that. It may have that side effect and it’s welcome for the capitalist class. But AI is meant primarily to empower “the stick” with constant surveillance and control over each and every individual that dares to ask what happened to “the carrots”.

AI is more about the ruling class being able to say “yeah, you can see how things are. But, you can’t do anything about it.”

And they’re wrong. Their confidence will be their undoing.

OP, your feelings of alienation are not unique to living in a world of AI. They are just being allowed to be realized without any distractions because of the degree of hubris that AI has given the capitalist/ruling class. It is a good thing in a way. Allow it to give you clarity and class consciousness where your parents lacked. It is through this class struggle we can free ourselves from this alienation you are describing.

Edit: Appreciate the upvotes. Have been use to downvotes anytime I try to explain why AI feels so awful. It’s not just AI.

OP is so focused on AI that they didn’t even get that. It’s weird to be flying on a plane and concerned about the environmental impact of a single person using AI for (at least) a positive position.

Their is more irony in OPs own situation than there is in the person they were attempting to criticize.