I've had a stressful week. My sleep study results came back as inconclusive, so the specialist wants me to undergo another one using a different machine. I tried to tell them that I don't think that's going to make a difference because the reason the study was inconclusive is because I could not sleep for the last third of the test. The pressure going through the mask was too high and made natural breathing difficult. Perhaps there are some people out there that can manually control their breathing while asleep, but I am not one of them. What I was hoping would be the best night's sleep that I've had in years ended up being the worst, so I am not looking forward to trying it all over again.

Elsewhere, I got into a heated discussion about AI in a community that I had thought would approach controversial topics with a more level discussion, but other users immediately resorted to insults, swearing, and at least one outright blocked me. I spent a lot of time trying to make each of my responses measured and level, and I repeatedly reassured other users that I understood their position and that I wasn't asking to change their feelings. My position was that AI has the potential to be one of the best tools humanity ever built, but currently it's being used for all the wrong reasons. Most other users were insistent that there's no nuance: all AI = bad. Because my premise did not 100% align with the community's gestalt, they strawman'd me as a stand-in for all of their frustrations and anger towards the entire AI industry. Only one other user approached the conversation substantively, and they explicitly avoided making the disagreement personal, but they exited once the other users began resorting to absolutism, misattribution, and personal attacks.

I want to find a place where people can discuss differences and disagreements and remain calm. I want to become better at having real dialectics. But most people seem more interested in winning arguments and filtering out perceived contaminants.