A relevant sociology book is Jane Ward's "The Tragedy of Heterosexuality", which could be subtitled "Are the straight women okay?"
Spoilers, but the answer is no, because have you seen patriarchy? I mean, dear gods.
I mean, other than the upcoming cleansing of queer people, we have it easier.

The disgust emotional suite evolved to keep us safe in the era prior to medicine by judging when other humans were "off" enough to be sick. Disgust is behind the Uncanny Valley, when something is just off enough from human that "someone else is ill". The PWE is the Uncanny Valley of agency.

Of course, I can only be talking about traffic. Those who run ahead in a closed lane and then jump in front of others are using their agency to attack the social contract. Those who let them in are using their agency to make it worse for everyone behind them and enable bad behaviour to be viable.

As a neurodivergent person, I *get* that a large chunk of "communication" is non-lexical exchange. When someone says "how are you?" they don't care, it is just the rote symbol. LLMs also don't (can't) care, but since the importance is the exchange, the text activates the recipient's context anyway

I get that writers (whose job is to be creative and novel) are threatened by the inapplicable use of these regurgitation programs. I agree! But I disagree with the thesis that language has to have illocutionary force.

Socrates was upset at the Sophists who were (pearl clutching!) paid teachers for the upcoming Athenian middle class. Sophists weren't there to make their students into philosophers, but to do practical education. And for that purpose, mediocrity is good enough.

It's not wrong, but I think the mediocrity is part of the point. Anyone using this to think they are writing quality text is delusional, but at the same time, do we need to devote brain power to writing text that is only for mediocre purposes?

www.newsweek.com/catholic-chu...

Whoa. They've gotten the modeling uncertainty below the observational errors? That's wild. I'm always amazed with how far astronomy has come since the +-50% days

Added because it is one of my favorite and most depressing clips:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDPU...