I’ve rewritten this post several times over the years. It’s hard for me to present both sides fairly. I’m completely biased because I’ve been through it, so keep that in mind. This initial post does NOT describe how to cope with the aftermath of this choice. Here I’m trying to provide someone who is considering this operation with the knowledge I wish I had before the surgery. If this post has a positive response, then I’ll publish a followup where I describe how my life changed as a result of the surgery.

Disclosure: I’m not a doctor. This isn’t a clinical survey of postoperative outcomes. I can’t tell you what you should do. I can only tell you my experience and share what I wish I had known prior to the procedure. If you are considering this procedure, gather as much information as you can before making a decision that has permanent consequences. …

Information is power

Information is power. The next big shift in society will be a data revolution. It will go beyond “being woke” about injustice in society to correcting injustice in society. We are not here to “call out” what’s wrong, we are here to fix it. Listen to what the President has said on this topic:

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”

“If I tweet that you didn’t do something right … then I can sit and feel pretty good about myself because, man, you see how woke I was, I called you out … That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far.” …

Prologue

I decided to take Google’s Technical Support Fundamentals course online via Coursera because I wanted to encourage another close friend to finish this course. I’m at the end of week 4 and up to this point the content was very good. But as everyone knows, there’s nothing more frustrating than taking a multiple choice quiz when some of the answers on the quiz are wrong. Please Google Developers, Coursera, and Design@Coursera fix these questions.

Question 2

Why TandaPay is new

If you want to access GPT-3 this is what you can do:

1. Go to https://play.aidungeon.io/
2. Sign up and create an account
3. Upgrade from Griffin to Dragon
4. Select a new single player game
5. Select option “(6) custom”
6. Paste any random starting prompt you want

My reason for selecting this prompt

I want to try to find the hardest thing I can think of and have GPT-3 respond to it. So I figure I’d give general relativity a go.

Initial prompt provided to GPT-3

Formal mechanisms for processing grievances

Don’t argue

When you are trying to win over the other side arguing is not the way.

Focus on their values and beliefs

Forget what you value and believe. Focusing on what is important to you will not allow you to convince others of anything. Find out what the other side values and leverage their values to show them that that their argument is in conflict with their own values and beliefs.

Case in point

Sometimes I hang out with people from diverse backgrounds. Two of my friends start arguing about pornography. The following question comes up, is pornography bad? …

TandaPay can allow any community of people to submit and verify their own insurance claims locally within their group. The protocol was designed to provide a guaranteed attestation to outside parties as to the validity of an insurance claim. It excels as a system which provides outsiders a record as to how the community reached consensus on a claim’s validity. It can allow communities to verify the contents of a whistleblower claim while simultaneously providing anonymity to the whistleblower. If an invalid claim is approved for payment then the community should collapse. The protocol provides specific guarantees for a group’s collapse based upon specific assumptions. The power of the protocol is that these assumptions result in guarantees which can be formally verified. …