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Summary

part 1 of a 2 part podcast

Sleaze and anti-sleaze

Paul is with Samantha in a zero-prep podcast.

Paul talks about a book which he says should be titled "how to live your life as a level 9 douchebag", which he feels sums up a lot of what happens these days.  This last week there's been an unprecedented amount of sleaze.  

Paul used to donate blood when he was young, but they gave him a health warning which turned out to be a false positive, which put him off it.  Later, he decided to go donate blood again.  He had to fill in a long form but apparently the system had him flagged due to the previous issue so he wasn't allowed to donate.  After spending 45 minutes on the phone he thought it was cleared up, so he went back to the red cross but they still wouldn't accept his blood.  Nobody seemed to care enough to fix it.  

Now he donates blood in Couer d'Alene, where he's not flagged by the system. However, recently their online system refused to let him make an appointment, and it seems it wasn't easily possible to fix that, nor could he talk to an actual person to discuss it.  The sleaze is evident in the poor quality of the systems, and the lack of interest shown by the employees.

Paul hopes that permies does better than the blood donor people to handle issues that may arise.  He feels that at least in the USA it's at least four times sleazier than 10 years ago.  People seem to only care about themselves rather than doing their job.  In this way permies staff are different as they do care.

Paul brings up the topic of spoon theory.  Being exposed to sleaze eats spoons.

He mentions something Des said when he was commander of the boot camp:  In his life before, everything was done from a position of scarcity; by comparison, everything at the boot camp is from a position of abundance.  

Paul relates a recent experience where Harry and Stephen were fixing something in Allerton abbey, and the whole way it was done seemed to generate spoons.

Relevant Threads

Spoon theory - Wikipedia

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COMMENTS:
 
pollinator
Posts: 201
Location: Schofields, NSW. Australia. Zone 9-11 Temperate to Sub Tropical
107
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What a great post. AI is taking away innovative human thinking and feeling and substituting a more isolating, disconnective system - leaving us feeling more useless to ourselves and those around us and generating more mental illness. Humans need purpose, AI and robots take this away without any realisation of the consequences.
Good on you Paul for making us think about the global result when human purpose is taken out of the equation.
 
author and steward
Posts: 59959
Location: missoula, montana (zone 4)
hugelkultur trees chicken wofati bee woodworking
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I think the sleaze I am suffering from is many flavors of human apathy.  A human doesn't care that there is an error in the (non AI) computer.   Several people involved in the software development and quality don't care. The human that is paid to care, doesn't.  For the newer blood donation organization, the (non AI) computer has several errors.   Again, developers and QA peeps do not care - even though it is their job.  The organization struggles to get donors, yet it is their (non AI) software that impedes this goal.  And their own human created policies and human created mistakes that prevent me from talking to a person.  Of course, they probably implemented these policies because they were flooded by people behaving poorly, because they don't care that they behave poorly to the lowly servants of the blood donation organization.  

Sleaze compounding sleaze compounding sleaze.  

It has nothing to do with AI.  It has everything to do with "gaming the system", rewarding hostility, and people working hard to find a high paying job where they phone it in.  And all of this lack of decency makes things sleazy.  

This is the problem I attempt to explore.  And in the podcast I think the solutions are excellent.
 
pollinator
Posts: 1444
Location: Milwaukie Oregon, USA zone 8b
171
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I enjoyed the podcast and your invention of the term anti-sleeze.
 
I agree. Here's the link: http://stoves2.com
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