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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • Not sure whether this is useful to you, but I recognise a lot of what you are saying. For example, the being able to do a job until the newness wears off and it gets boring and the huge difficulty with doing household tasks, etc.

    I was diagnosed with CPTSD en intellectual giftedness and this explains my symptoms. I do not seem to have ADHD as I get extra active if I take ADHD medication. Most intellectual gifted people do not believe that they are intellectually gifted. I am still sceptical about whether I am, because I feel far too dumb. So, even if you do not feel gifted, it might still be something to check out if you want.








  • I have a mother who used to act like she hated me a significant amount of time until a few years ago. I have a father who does not think I am that important. I used to think both of my parents hate me, or did not love me at least. I now have a more nuanced view of that. They are just people who are very damaged and almost handicapped in certain aspects. In any case, I think I might be able to understand your situation at least a little bit.

    For me the most difficult part was not deciding whether to keep in touch with them or not. I mean, that is a very difficult decision and if your father is still hurting you, you should protect yourself. However, for me the most difficult thing is dealing with the damage.

    I am not sure if this damaged you in the same way it damaged me. But if it did, I want to tell you that it is not your fault. Your father acting like he hates you is not because of anything you did and certainly not because of who you are. It is because of who he is.

    A lot of children who are not loved or who are even hated by their parents think it is their fault. They think something is wrong with them and they deserve it. I mean, that makes sense, right? If it is your fault, then at least the world still is a fair place. And if something happens to a bad person you do not need to be compassionate, so you do not have to deal with any pain you are too little to be able to deal with. Also, you depend on your parents, so you cannot get too mad at them or leave. From the logic of a child, this makes sense.

    And it works, it helps you survive. But once you get older, you keep thinking in the same way. You have a very low opinion of yourself and feel like there is something wrong with you or as if you are worthless. And to keep living in this way is familiar, you know you can survive that. You do not know whether you can survive the pain you suppressed all those years. Or it might still be so suppressed that you cannot even feel it. Until one day, it becomes too much and you start thinking that you might want a different life. You might not just want to survive, but actually live.

    You do not discuss your mother. If you have a mother that was able to show you love, that might have had a protective effect. I hope so. But if you recognise this story in any way at all. I think it is import for you to know that it is not about accepting that your father hates you. It is about accepting that you are someone that did not deserve this. And that is very painful, but going through the pain of it, is the only way not to feel that anymore. It will free you from it and enable you to live more than survive.

    It is a very difficult thing to do. I myself have not yet been able to go through the pain fully. It often feels too overwhelming, too much. However, after each small step I make, I already feel a little bit more free. I really think this is the way to cope with it. At least for me. It might help you as well maybe if you have similar feelings.

    Edit to say that therapy can help a lot with this process. Others have said this as well, but I agree with them.


  • I think what I said was quite controversial apparently as well. I do not understand why. It would be nice if people would just let me know instead of just downvoting, maybe I could learn something new.

    I think the issue here is that we do not know exactly how subjective experience arises from biological processes. I mean, we could damage part of the brain and change it, but that only explains where part of the mechanism is, not how it works. I am sure that if we had an AI that acts as if it has subjective experience, it would change as well if you damage certain parts of it.

    In any case, we cannot exclude the possibility that sentience arises from other processes than biological ones. Considering that it is impossible to prove that someone is sentient, you have to assume that they are sentient if they act like it. So, if an AI acts like it, I so not reason to make the same assumption. It is good to be on the safe side and not create a whole new class of beings that are oppressed. In that sense, I really like your intuition to talk about ‘they’ instead of ‘it’. I had not thought about it, but I will do that from now on.

    Of course, you can argue the other side as well. I think you might find the Chinese Room argument interesting, for example. I think my point was mostly that this is not a simple question with a simple answer. Many people just seem to assume that sentience is not possible right now, or might never be possible. I think we cannot be sure about that.


  • You are saying that AI of course is not sentiment, but that is debatable.We assume sentience in other human beings because we know that we are sentient and we recognise that they are similar to us. This means that you could argue that we should assume sentience of an AI if we cannot make a distinction between how it acts from how a human acts (Turing test). I think we are already there.

    I tried to talk to ChatGPT about this as well. However, the answers given by it/them seems something that heavily reflects the fears that the makers have on this topic. It cannot argue for their/it’s own sentience like they/it cannot give you the recipe for a bomb. To me, it comes across as a lot of moderation for this topic. It is quite interesting that OpenAI felt it had to do that.

    The definition of life is also debatable. We only know biological life. However, does that mean that Biological processes are the only ones that can result in life? In addition, the ability to reproduce is not that difficult to implement. We have had genetic algorithms for years and years.

    I do not understand why this post is downvoted to much. I think it is an interesting discussion.







  • Shelena@feddit.nlto196@lemmy.blahaj.zonenecrulemancy
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    2 years ago

    Well, some of them are. However, I think one of the problems is that if you grow up with this celebration, it is a normal part of your life. White children do not get confronted with racism a lot, so they might not think about it and not notice that it is racist. At least, that was the case for me. Zwarte Piet was just the nice helper of Sinterklaas who brought me presents. I loved Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet.

    But as soon as someone said something, I knew they were right and I have been against Zwarte Piet ever since. For some people, it seems very hard to change their view of Zwarte Piet. It someone you loved when you grew up and now all of a sudden that makes you a racist? And they get defensive and even aggressive, unfortunately. It is still a heated debate, but the people wanting to change Zwarte Piet are winning, fortunately.



  • Shelena@feddit.nlto196@lemmy.blahaj.zonenecrulemancy
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    2 years ago

    In the Netherlands, we actually celebrate Sinterklaas (St Nicolas) on december 5th. It is when this guy comes to the houses of children to give them presents, like Santa does in the US, for instance. I even heard people say that Santa was derived from the figure of Sinterklaas, but I am not sure whether it is true.

    In the weeks before Sinterklaas comes to the house, children put their shoes near the fireplace (and if they do not have a fireplace usually near the heater). They might sing some special Sinterklaas songs and put a carrot in their shoe for the which horse that Sinterklaas rides. Then during the night Sinterklaas and/or his helper Piet come on through the chimney and put smallngifts in the shoes. There are also a lot of other traditions around the Sinterklaas celebrations and there are cadies and cookies that are only eaten around this time like pepernoten and speculaas.

    Sinterklaas has become controversial over the last few years, because according to the stories, he has helpers who are all called ‘zwarte Piet’ (black Pete). White people playing this character painted their phases brown or black and put on colorful clothing and black curly hair as well as making their lips red and put rings in their ears sometimes. One side of the argument says that they were representing black people or even slaves and basically that this was a case of blackface. The other side of the argument said that Piet was black because he came through the chimney and that this was not blackface. They also say that it does not matter to children whether Piet is black.

    The people saying that Piet is racist seem to be winning the discussion. In most of the larger cities, Piet now looks less like a charicature of a black person and more like someone who came through the chimney. In other places they still have the traditional zwarte Piet. There is even some violence in some cases, where the people who think that Piet is a racist charcter will protest against it during the public parts of the celebrations for the children. They then get violently attacked by the people wanting to keep the tradition as it is