> whereas the purpose of a chat bot is to help people.
I'm flabbergasted you'd say such a thing.
The purpose of a chat bot is to have an interesting experience with an AI. That it may help you is secondary (and perhaps necessary for the provider to make a profit).
As a sibling comment pointed out, the medical community consider prevention part of the medical system. It took me a while to understand what I thought was some weird (and potentially intrusive[1]) behavior of some doctors/clinics that they indeed do feel it is within their purview.
Not just discussions with a patient, but advising the government, pushing for regulation on things related to obesity, working with schools, etc.
Arguably, the problem in the US isn't that these are outside the control of the medical system, but that most Americans believe they should be outside the control of the medical system.
In (some) other countries, your comment would be a real "WTF?"
[1] Throwing in questions like "Is there a firearm in your house?" and "Is there a swimming pool in your house" intermixed with "normal" medical questions.
If you want to do stuff yourself, use a manual toothbrush, learn how to wash your own clothes without a washer (people do this all the time, BTW), wash your own dishes without a dishwasher, don't use dry cleaning services, and use a bucket to take a bath. Also, don't use a vacuum cleaner.
> but I can't shake the feeling that you lose something about being a living, breathing being when you give up these mundane chores.
Say that when you have 3 kids, and cook most of the meals (i.e. no takeouts).
Maybe things have changed but finances mostly forced my kids and those in the neighborhood to grow up this way. No dishwasher, bidet (we're in the US anyway), electric toothbrush, and definitely cooked all meals. Maybe takeout pizza or chinese every couple months? Is this really so outlandish to you?
No - it was the same with us (OK, we had a dishwasher, but for much of my adult life I didn't).
The key is this:
> finances mostly forced
For a while I even hand washed when I did have a dishwasher. Then I realized that was a mistake and I started utilizing it (the dishwasher uses less water, and less energy to heat the water compared to my running the tap on warm).
The point is that after N kids, it stops being therapeutic and merely something you just have to do, and you're happy if you can afford a way not to do it.
Weird leap. If we go by your logic, then broom is replaced by a vacuum cleaner. Automating something completely, aka getting someone to for it for you is a completely different thing.
I call that harpoon logic or half-dimensional logic. Works this way:
A subject is at the top of a cliff, facing the sea.
"I'd like to see the sea scenery better by approaching the edge".
A step is undertaken. The harpoon enters the mind.
"Oh, so I took this step, I've got to take another one".
N steps are undertaken. The subject is at the very edge right now.
"But hey, one can't stop the progress. Red lines, enough is enough, notions of overdevelopment etc are all excuses for luddites who don't value the merits of automation, easing the humankind's burden and removing all obstacles on the way to the best sea view".
A step more is undertaken.
Thunderous applause, turning into a standing ovation. And... Curtain!
I could be completely wrong about this, but I think a lot of women causal clothing specifically recommend dry cleaning, compared to men (unless you are in a field that wear suits everyday).
This is maybe sort of true, but few garments that say "dry clean only" actually need to be dry cleaned. This has typically more to do with laziness on the part of the manufacturers.
Things like lining, interfacing and structure are often strong indicators that a garment actually has to be dry-cleaned. I think those are at best only very slightly more common in women's casual clothing.
If you want to do stuff yourself, use a manual toothbrush, learn how to wash your own clothes without a washer (people do this all the time, BTW), wash your own dishes without a dishwasher, don't use dry cleaning services, and use a bucket to take a bath. Also, don't use a vacuum cleaner.
On the flip side, Claude is at fault in not letting you choose which tools on which MCP servers to keep in context. When I first starting using MCP about a year ago (not on Claude Code), my tools actually let me selectively turn on/off individual tools.
Crazy that the company that invented MCP is not putting basic features like this in the product.
I'll start with your home example. I grew up in a hot environment. Everyone had window ACs and fans (way more efficient than central AC for many types of homes - but that's for a subthread).
With a separate AC and fan, you have two variables you can tweak to get your comfort: Speed of air, and temperature. Believe it or not, some people are not comfortable in a cool room if they're not getting air (and likewise, many/most people are comfortable in a warmer room as long as they get air).
Then you move into a house with no fans and just a central AC and ... it sucks. So you buy pointless table top fans to compensate.
Same with cars. It's not just about the temperature. It's about air. With modern EVs, as I pointed out here[1], it's (almost) impossible to get warm air blowing on your face in cold weather.
Finally, there's the "obvious" reason that applies both in homes and in cars. The temperature you need to feel comfortable keeps fluctuating, and depends on outside conditions. In cold weather, I need to set the car at 70-71F to feel nice. In hot weather, I'll throw up if I drive at those temperatures - I need 60-65F. Same with my house: In winter, I set it to 68-70F to feel comfortable. In summer, I just get cold at those temperatures.
Having a constant temperature in the car doesn't help me if I make a turn and suddenly the sun is coming on my half of the car. Being able to quickly dial down the temperature and have air on my face will cool me in under 10s. Merely dialing down the temperature will take several minutes. Similarly, 10 minutes later when the sun goes behind the clouds, I'm suddenly cold because I don't have the sun compensating for the AC. Merely turning the fan away doesn't help. I need to raise the temperature and keep the air on me to normalize (again - the difference between seconds vs minutes).
If you've never gotten used to that, I can see why you'll settle for something vastly inferior.
A simple example: With my car, I can remotely start the AC. When I've parked the car in the sun, I can start the AC (max cool) 10 minutes before I get in, and it's still a bit warm (but at least not hot). If instead I get into a really hot car with no AC pre-conditioning, it will take at most 1 minute for me to feel cool if I have the AC blowing right at me.
I've been meaning to write a post entitled: Things you could do with cars that you can no longer do.
The top of the list is "Maintain a constant (vent) fan speed".
With all the EVs I've tested, if I want to get warm air on my face at a consistent speed ... it's just not possible. "Auto" is disabled, I've set the fan at a certain speed, and set it to blow only in the top vents. Dial up the temperature, and the fan speed can drop markedly.
Such a simple thing that's worked for decades. And they've made my driving very uncomfortable. I've had an EV for only a few months, and I keep thinking of trading it in for an older Honda. I've installed a USB fan, but ... why? Why am I paying so much more to get an experience I hate?
You can definitely do it with a Tesla. Disable Auto, select the airflow direction and vents, select the fan speed you want (1-10), select the temp you want. Fan speed will not change with temp if manually selected.
I haven't tried it in a Tesla - will try it the next time I'm in one.
The key is to set the temperature to something much higher than the ambient. If you're already in a warm place, the experiment won't work. I've had multiple EV owners claim as you, and then demoed it to them on a cold day.
There are some good designs which prevent them from getting dirty. For example, Mercedes and VW put them in the rear badge and they're only exposed when needed.
Weird comment. This whole thread is about them. Of course I know it's a thing. My question is how do you look in the rear when mud is on the camera? Or lots of water droplets?
I don’t understand what you are asking. I drive in very rainy Miami and I haven’t had an issue, but not much mud here. I do have a rear wiper and the mirror can be switched to analog.
Apologies, I didn’t grasp that the Luce didn’t have an actual rear view mirror, the kind with mirrored surface. I couldn’t find any pics online. My Hyundai I5’s just flips between analog and digital with a pull on the housing. So does my brother’s Blazer EV and my dad’s Lexus TX, this isn’t new.
I’d think lacking an analog mirror would run afoul of some regulation, but then there’s that Polastar that doesn’t have a rear window:) Cheers.
I see this on all sorts of non tesla cars and it makes no sense. I saw it even on brands like Fisker (although that was a solar panel that apparently didn't work).
Just a nice metal roof that won't make me expend more electricity for nothing would be nice.
My 2008 Audi A3 had it and I loved it. First, the roof was black so it breaks down the shape (mine was white/black). Second, it makes the car feel more airy. Yes, it got hot when parked, to each beholder his own.
Tesla is an outlier in that the car is designed only with a glass roof. It's not a hole in the existing roof panel like other cars. The lower trim Tesla Y bizarrely has a glass roof that's covered on the inside with a headliner.
> Tesla is an outlier in that the car is designed only with a glass roof. It's not a hole in the existing roof panel like other cars.
Lots of cars have followed Tesla's lead: Ioniq 5, Mach E, etc.
I'm claiming that Tesla is an outlier in that they're not giving a choice. With the Ioniq 5 and Mach E, you can choose whether you want the glass roof or not.
You can't in the Ioniq 5 (US). You have to give up many useful features if you do not want the roof because the roof is part of the Limited trim. Luckily, I like the roof.
Everyone with Teslas around where I am recently discovered that this is super inconvenient when a nasty hail storm happens. I mean, all of our cars got totaled anyway, but they had the added insult of no longer having a roof and needing to tarp more of the car until insurance could do their thing.
With the cost of the bespoke glass, damage to it basically means the car is guaranteed to be totaled even in a less extreme scenario.
On the Polestar2 (and other models) it's not mandatory, but you can't get other imperative things -- like the heat pump (major efficiency concern) -- unless you get the Plus package that has the glass roof.
I'm flabbergasted you'd say such a thing.
The purpose of a chat bot is to have an interesting experience with an AI. That it may help you is secondary (and perhaps necessary for the provider to make a profit).
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