FaceDeer

So if something isn't perfect it's not "useful?"

I use LLMs when programming. Despite their imperfection they save me an enormous amount of time. I can confidently confirm that LLMs are useful from personal direct experience.

What exactly are they "wasting?" Ethereum switched to proof-of-stake on 15 September 2022. If you are still criticizing NFTs for their environmental impact you're a year and a half out of date.

And let's not pretend that the US isn't a two-party system.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Your choices are Trump or Biden.

It's useful because it does the stuff we want it to do.

You're focusing on a very high level philosophical meaning of "usefulness." I'm focusing on what actually does what I need it to do.

But NFTs aren't wasteful. They're run on a proof-of-stake blockchain, no big computing power is used to back them. Your point about NFTs is false, I didn't mention NFTs in the first place, I don't see the relevance of any of this.

I think it's likely a reference to this video.

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. The comment I responded to said:

We really need to tax energy used by GPU-burning projects differently. AI training, blockchain, whatever. Such a wasteful endeavour.

And I pointed out that blockchain doesn't use GPUs any more. NFTs weren't even mentioned specifically. Then the thread went further into discussing AI specifically, not even blockchain at that point, and you jumped in to say "people still use nfts". It was almost a non-sequitur.

I'm not saying anything about NFTs. You don't need to jump in and "defend" them.

I wasn't. I pointed out that no significant blockchains used GPUs (especially not Ethereum, the main NFT-supporting blockchain, which has transitioned to proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work). That puts them outside the question of "wastefulness" altogether, and irrelevant to the subject at hand.

You're talking like we're gonna be building a Dyson sphere (or swarm) in the next 20 years?

Hardly. We have plenty of time for that, there's no rush.

Or colonize outer planets? It's science fiction...at least for next few 100 years.

Again, a few hundred years is nothing. The sun won't become problematic for a few hundred million years.

We can't rely on a deus ex machina save.

Things like Dyson swarms and star lifting are not "deus ex machina", they're scientifically rigorous proposals.

if we aren't strong enough for that, I don't think we're getting anywhere near K-II.

Getting to K-II means not needing the planet we evolved to live on.

They licensed Reddit to do what they want with it by agreeing to Reddit's ToS.

No, they're useful because they produce useful machine code.