But what have you specifically learned from it to now be able to do if you no longer had it? That’s the question…

it was closed because it’s the same question that was asked 20 other times, and all the solutions don’t actually work.

This has absolutely been my experience as well, yeah. I rarely go straight to LLMs first but sometimes I’m not comfortable with simply posting my problem on Reddit and waiting (or posting on Lemmy and waiting forever lol), since it isn’t always that simple or convenient to first anonymize data before getting public help, nor do people even always reply, leaving me back to square one with time wasted. I am by far the techiest person in my company (and I barely know anything relative to full-time programmers), so there sure isn’t anyone at work who I could ask for help, haha.

I don’t go to LLMs often, and they sure messed up a lot even just 2 years ago, but they’ve come an impressively long way from the unintelligible-text and six-fingers era (despite still occasionally messing up nowadays) and have legitimately optimized my formulae dramatically in both function and legibility, such as by showing me LET() that I didn’t even know existed. While I’ve been meaning to take an online course on spreadsheets and just haven’t gotten around to it yet, I try to learn from how the model did XYZ right away but it’s nice to have a personal, on-demand tutor, as long as you’re always aware of the fact that what it says could be garbage, despite it speaking so confidently. I think for actual, entire vibe-coded products, it’s much harder to learn what the heck it’s doing versus just simple one-liners. Anyway, on-device and FOSS LLMs make for better compromises, I think, though their quality is noticeably poorer.

The reason I try to avoid “AI” use is not The Dumbening™ but because of the ecological impact, yet I contend that spending hours and hours trying to traditionally solve a problem in frustration is also harmful in its own ways… It’s a decent tool of last resort and the Stupids are merely the ones treating it as a line of first defense against everything.

I don’t own the game and don’t think it’d be my type, but if you ever wanna play Hellcard, I’m down!

Hmm, fine, then… uh, quarks and dark matter? lol.

You’re seeking the word “label,” not “thing.” At what point does it stop being a table, for example? When you take away 1 leg? 2, 3, all 4 (or more if it’s a weird kind of table)? What if the removed legs are right next to it? What if the legs are on the other side of the world and new observers of the former table are unaware of this fact? Will they still call it a table or will the legs’ absence alter their perception of the label? What if the legs are simply destroyed? What if an object was not originally built to be a table but someone said, “Hey, that’s a table,” and others around agree with them? Unga-bunga: the invention of language, the messy art of labeling. There is no real, objective table, just as there is no corner; we merely label it as such. Even for a long time I myself confused desks and tables until I realized that desks are basically tables meant to only be used from one side. They’re all just made-up labels, every single noun out there.

And even with corners, at what point does it become no longer a corner? When 1cm is shaved off to round it? 2, 3? It therefore actually has substance because you can round it out, but all of these are ultimately labels/descriptors just driven by group consensus to make sense of the world.

The Greek Ship of Theseus comes to mind (fully renovate a dilapidated ship, piece by piece; in the end, is it still the same ship?). These are all human labels based on feelings. Nothing exists independently apart from conscious, sentient minds that apply, and remove, such labels.

The elements come to mind…

Interesting, that sucks. The only change I experienced was the loss of Google rewards surveys (which is fine, meh), after Google sent me several surveys asking if I was, in fact, researching XYZ items with the intent to buy. They picked up on it but my physical mail never changed, as far as I know.

you have specific interests and regularly and mostly exclusively go to websites related to them

You just described me quite well…

cowards

Haha, keep going. I’m sorry, but news flash, they don’t care. To them, even a live dog is better than a dead lion.

I’m surprised I’m getting downvoted… I’m framing it from the view of what they probably believe, not me!