A busy day to day but looking forward to the end of the shift. What amazes me are the number of people who ring up who normalised the idea that they’re helpless and their first port of call is to ring up for help rather than attempting to resolve the problem themselves. I can understand if it is something that they cannot do themselves but many cases the solution is updating their browser, updating their operating system, clearing cookies and cache etc. basic skills that you should have acquired. This is the one thing I loath about the rise of AI where it’ll create a whole generation who will end up like an aristocrat who cannot cloth themselves because they’ve been had others do things for them their whole life.
Which goes onto the bigger problem which is the focus on the achieving the end goal while ignoring that the journey of getting to that end goal is just as important. Through the process of researching, of finding sources, verifying those sources, looking into the background of those sources then understand the context in which those sources were created etc. it gives one a better understanding of what is being researched. The problem is with AI is that it flattens that process and you miss out on the nuance, you end up with a reductionist understanding of the world, a simplified understanding of why something happened to the point it becomes “why did x do something?”, “because x is evil”.
Working in an area of counter extremism which would put to use my degree in Religious Studies and Philosophy. I find interesting how people think and how seemingly normal people can go down a rabbit hole to extremism – what primes them for that? what compels them to keep going down the rabbit hole where as for others they’ll realise that they’ve ended up in a really dark place and then pull themselves out of that hole. What compels someone to remain within that rabbit hole, what need does it fulfil that isn’t being met within mainstream discourse. I guess it coms down to a curiosity of wanting to know how people tick – what makes them do what they do.
Matisyahu's Blog 
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