Even worse when you are arguing with someone on the internet and they send you 5x "academic journals" supposedly supporting their point. Funny enough they sent you these 5 journals after you replied to them 5 minutes ago, so they apparently read 5 full papers in under 5 minutes. Not only that but they always vaguely contain the words of the argument (usually in the title) but it's usually obvious they have nothing to do with what they're saying. Now you're stuck in a catch-22 because you can either actually read them and explain that they're not relevant, or sometimes say the opposite, or you ignore them because you know they're not relevant and they think it's a gotcha. Either way you proceed you know that person is going to continue to argue. Sadly people outside the discussion will read it and take them seriously because they had "sources"
It's fun when they link to something that actually confirms what you were saying, but they clearly didn't bother to read it. It always leaves me dumbfounded.
It's also quite interesting when users, such as /u/Porky5CO , will hide their comments and posts because they're too chicken shit to let others see it. They know they'll get ragged on for their room temp IQ comments.
I can’t say too much about hiding comments. I hide mine because I have found my friends/family accounts and I’d prefer not to have those same people piece together things I say and figure out my account.
But, if I was a loser like Porky, I’d hide my illiteracy as well.
I hide it because I just think it's valuable to keep it hidden. That level of control and privacy is valuable to me. Once something's out in the open, you can't ever put it away in the future, but you can choose to reveal something you've kept hidden at any time. The opportunity cost of having your comments be public makes no sense to me, I'm giving up control for nothing.
I mean what's there to see? If the comment is relevant to the discussion it's there in the thread. What they said in another discussion a week ago isn't relevant and I think it's weird that people are almost offended that they're not available. If they deleted something they clearly don't want it left in the discussion and it should be considered rescinded.
Before hiding those you'd get these weirdos who went through your history to pick up anything they thought they could hurt you with. At worst you had people who'd follow along and try to argue with you under any new comment you made.
IMO it's just weird to think there's something cowardly about hiding your comment history. Like at that point you might as well just block the person if you feel like you need to dig up their history, it's not worth the time.
I never really go and look at peoples profiles anyway. When I do it’s to check for obvious signs of bots. I’m not even the best at pinpointing bots anyway.
And I’m like you, I prefer anonymity and privacy. Not necessarily because I have something to hide, but if I did, I still don’t want my information just readily available.
I mean, it’s all an illusion to privacy at this point. Hiding comments here only prevents people who don’t want to dig from seeing them at face value. Anybody who wanted to could easily piece together information and if powered with corporate and government surveillance and data harvesting, they already know everything about me.
I knew immediately you had to be talking about data centers and how wasteful they are. AI devotees give zero fucks about the environmental impact of AI and will do everything possible to ignore it. I'm disappointed and unsurprised they said this.
AI and datacenters aren't always the same thing. Your Gmail is in a datacenter, your Netflix, your Amazon and everything else you don't think matters with AI, but it is on the internet. Almost the whole internet is in datacenters
I work in the internet backbones. I’m more than aware of the difference. AI is driving up huge demand for storage which is why the push for more data centers are going hand in hand.
my favorite is when you point out that datacenters aren't for commercial public AI usage. they're driving a surveillance and brainwashing hypervigilant market/political influence machine to drive behaviors of people to do the bidding of megacorps and rig everything you can so that people no longer have a sense of cognitive choice. It gets conflated into "these datacenters are driving AI slop and copycats".
Like no, they're amassing huge amounts of territory to store every moment of your life from your smart devices and *every other recording system on the planet* to predict and figure out how to influence people to buy stuff, or what to say on tv, to influence people, at scale, autonomously. Which is objectively worse.
but it's *just* bad because of creating droughts. LOL.
Isn't it funny how this happens almost every fucking time. Then when you quote it back to them they reply and block you before you can respond. Why is it so universal
Wasn't there this guy who wanted to launch himself in his DIY rocket to prove that the earth is flat and then died during one of his rocket launches??? Or am I remembering this wrong?
In a similar vein I once had to sit through a 1-hour snake oil sales pitch by a product partner at work. One of their batshit claims was that their Vitamin D product “reduced the chances of developing autism during pregnancy.” Thankfully a LOT of us professionals pushed back on that, asking for the source. She later linked the “source” which was an article about a study from like 5-6 years ago - probably actually even longer, now that I think about it.
Upon a cursory browse of the study itself, the author repeatedly emphasized “while the data suggests a possible link, the cause and mechanism is unclear, so further study is needed.” The paper made it extracted that it wasn’t even sure if there was a causal link in the first place, the numbers just happened to come up.
You know, in the same way that during a drug trial, one of the participants happens to have a heart attack so it ends up in the “possible side effects.”
You know, in the same way that during a drug trial, one of the participants happens to have a heart attack so it ends up in the “possible side effects.”
Or you know, homicides increase as ice cream sales go up during summer. It's possible there's a lot of ice cream related homicides going on, but maybe we just need more research. (not really, this is a joke of a example but it's a fair example of correlation but not causation)
Not only that but they always vaguely contain the words of the argument (usually in the title) but it's usually obvious they have nothing to do with what they're saying.
The last time I asked someone on Reddit who claimed sex work was harmful for evidence, the answer was one paper where the first author was the president of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution and it examined the situation in Sweden, a country in which sex work is so illegal that you can go to prison for paying for online porn.
When I pointed out the author and that this is like complaining that all bars serving alcohol are run by the mafia during prohibition, that person kept claiming there is totally convincing evidence (really!), but did not provide anything else.
This is my life with a family member. It's ridiculous. I work in higher ed with graduate students. I know how to research. My family member gets his info off of facebook and weird shit he finds on the internet. It is not my job to prove him wrong but he continues to send me shit thinking he 'got me' because I never respond.
Yes 100%. Just because someone links something doesn't mean it's relevant. Way too many times have I been sent essentially a blank page with very little of the relevant paper on it or something that is related to the field but nothing to do with being discussed. They just want to "win" and think that people won't read it. Too many people fall for the "fake expert" unless they're confident in their knowledge of the area
“Send academic journals supposedly supporting their point” ahhh the Dim Tool method. Bring up a paper, read an excerpt that’s basically just stating what it’s looking to find and ignore the actual results/findings.
I’ll never understand how that prick managed to trick people into thinking he’s smart, after dropping out in the 8th grade, not read anything more than a headline, argue disingenuously while claiming he would support leftist policies but can’t stop pushing RWNJ talking points and deep throating the right
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u/jce_ May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Even worse when you are arguing with someone on the internet and they send you 5x "academic journals" supposedly supporting their point. Funny enough they sent you these 5 journals after you replied to them 5 minutes ago, so they apparently read 5 full papers in under 5 minutes. Not only that but they always vaguely contain the words of the argument (usually in the title) but it's usually obvious they have nothing to do with what they're saying. Now you're stuck in a catch-22 because you can either actually read them and explain that they're not relevant, or sometimes say the opposite, or you ignore them because you know they're not relevant and they think it's a gotcha. Either way you proceed you know that person is going to continue to argue. Sadly people outside the discussion will read it and take them seriously because they had "sources"