Then I will entertain you with another Buddhist objection - there is also no "end" since the conditioned "you" exists in the beginningless, endless cycle of samsara, while the unconditioned you (Nibbana) is unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated.

There's an entire profession doing that: traders. But for most people, yes, it is not worth it. No argument there. I just don't like conspiracy theories and that line of thought, it's cheap and stupid.

Do you base your knowledge on anything other than a very mediocre movie?

If an "investor" believes the market will sell off drastically, there are many, many ways they can express that bet in the open market. They can short index futures, buy put options, long volatility... so many options that depend only on the thesis being right. It does not sound as sexy as "look kid, the billionaires rigged the system!", but it's true.

Well, if you are asking for my opinion, the gun stuff in the US is so stupid it could be considered a mental illness. I don't disagree with your points at all

Re: Sweden - according to the article you listed, Sweden is on par with the rest of Europe, worse than other Scandinavian countries, and much better than the Balkans.

Yes, it was very upsetting at the time and unfortunately remains a constant. I guess one has to go through that at least once to recognize a grifter.

> so even in hindsight, none of the concerns seem to have been legitimate.

The point was not only that the vaccines were rushed, it was also that there was a tremendous amount of coercion to force people into taking them. There are a few countries that didn't do that (Sweden comes to mind) and they ended up not having a much worse outcome than anyone else. I think it was a very telling moment in modern history, because it exposed a lot of myths, e.g. the American myth of gun ownership to stand up to a tyrannical government was totally shredded. The government turned tyrannical re: vaccines and mandates, did the guns help?

So the "political football" characterization is itself very political.

Buddha would like a word with you

Not speaking about LGBT related matters; Sex without condom is just like everything else - it depends on the person. For some people there is little to no difference. For others, wearing the condom removes all sensation, reducing the act to physical exercise. So is sex without condoms worth it? For some people, yes, it is.

Of course, and for good reason. The ones who know for a fact they are right, might in fact be wrong or malicious.

This is exactly the same as demanding, that people who post their thoughts always post original, useful thoughts. It's just not going to happen. Making something easy will increase the total volume and the majority of that volume will be junk. It's inevitable. What is needed is a search engine for quality software. Perhaps LLMs can do that, since they are better at understanding concepts than generating them.

My comment about AI psychosis was provoked by this comment in particular:

> AI isn't a tame long term transition - in scale it is bigger than any transition since the first individual cells.

It's such a wild hyperbole. You are casually claiming the stochastic text generator is a greater invention than fire, combustion engine, electricity, a transistor, computers, quantum mechanics... do you not see how unreasonable that is?

You might need to put the phone / keyboard down, take a day off...