New(ish) piece from Gary Marcus: AI has (sort of) passed the Turing Test; here’s why that hardly matters
Ended up reading it a couple times, thinking of turning my thoughts into a full-length post.
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
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OpenNutrition -- ~~a dataset~~ an LLM that allows you to play "vibe nutritionist"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43569190
First response is good quality:
This is not a dataset. This is an insult to the very idea of data. This is the most anti-scientific post I have ever seen voted to the top of HN. Truth about the world is not derived from three LLMs stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat.
Just had a video labeled "auto-dubbed" pop up in my YouTube feed for the first time. Not sure if it was chosen by the author or not. Too bad, it looks like a fascinating problem to see explained, but I don't think I'm going to trust an AI feature that I just saw for the first time to explain it. (And perhaps more crucially, I'm a bit afraid of what anime fans will have to say about this.)
That image needs a content warning for YouTube Face. Jesus H. Fuck.
Those tariff rates, and especially the targets, were 100% pooped out by grok.
Today on the orange site, an AI bro is trying to reason through why people think he's weird for not disclosing his politics to people he's trying to be friendly with. Previously, he published a short guide on how to talk about politics, which — again, very weird, no possible explanation for this — nobody has adopted. Don't worry, he's well-read:
So far I've only read Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, but can say it is an excellent place to start.
The thread is mostly centered around one or two pearl-clutching conservatives who don't want their beliefs examined:
I find it astonishing that anyone would ask, ["who did you vote for?"] … In my social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.
To which the top reply is my choice sneer:
In my friend group it's clear as day: either you voted to kill and deport other people in the friend group or you didn't. Pretty obvious the group would like to know if you're secretly interested in their demise.
So far I've only read Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, but can say it is an excellent place to start.
beware the man of one book
"Drink deep, or taste not the fanfiction spring"
Wow, farriers are going crazy with these modern horseshoe designs!
image transcription
Above: a single axis scatter plot. The ends of the axis are labeled "Left" and "Right". Data points are distributed similarly to normal distribution, the center being more concentrated than the extremes. Caption: "What people think the political spectrum is vs What it actually is".
Below: A two-dimensional scatter plot. The ends of the horizontal axis are labeled "Left" and "Right" and the vertical axis is labeled "Independent Thought" at the top and "Groupthink" at the bottom. The data points are evenly distributed inside a bell curve shape, with the peak of the hump at Independent Thought and between Left and Right, and the wide bottom of the bell spanning the whole Left-Right axis at maximum Groupthink.
Data points near the top of the bell (Independent-Center) labeled '"Un-intentional moderates" (from Paul Graham's The Two Kinds of Moderate)'. [Original image uses double quotes around the term Un-intentional moderates and single quotes around the title of Paul Graham's shitpost.]
Data points at the bottom center of the bell (Groupthink-Center) labeled "Intentional moderates".
In the bottom corner a watermark crediting the image to "@shw1nm".
I love the implication that being an independent thinker means agreeing with both the majority and other independent thinkers.
Finally, someone has solved the political compass. No-one will ever come up with a new political spectrum again. Soon we will have world peace
This is only the beginning. Check these out!
Chart 1
Left edge of the image labeled "Progressivism", right edge labeled "Libertarianism".
Above: A series of points on a horizontal line, each labeled with the name of a political ideology or system and a representative picture. Rightmost two of the dots are blue, others are red. From left to right:
- Monarchism (crown)
- Communism (red star with yellow hammer and sickle)
- Liberalism (Democratic Party Donkey) and Socialism (red flag)
- Nazism (swastika)
- Conservatism (Republican Party elephant) and Fascism (fasces)
- Anarchism (Circled letter A) and Democracy (no symbol)
- Unlabeled dot
- Republic (Statue of Liberty)
Below: Flags labeled with political ideologies and systems. Arrangement of flags notated as [X, Y, Flag, Label] where X represents approximate relative distance from left edge and Y represents approximate relative distance from bottom edge.
- 1, 5, China, Communism
- 2, 4, Soviet Union, Socialism
- 3, 3, Nazi Germany, Nazism
- 3, 1, Likely fictitious flag featuring a green field with white crescent and star and a black tilted swastika on the crescent, Islamo-Fascism
- 4, 2, War flag of the Italian Social Republic, Fascism
- 7, 5, United States, Republic
Chart 2
A square chart divided in quadrants and colored with a gradient, which is symmetric with respect to the origin. Each quadrant is subdivided into a 19x19 grid. Axes are labeled and the labels' background colored as follows:
X-axis left: "Post-Modern Relativism/Religiosity" (blue), middle: "Strong Fact Based Inter-subjective Analysis" (yellow), right: 'Pseudo-Objective "Science" Worship' (blue).
Y-axis top: "Status Quo" (red), middle: "Swift, Pragmatic Reform for Social + Economic Justice" (yellow), bottom: "Regressive Revolutionary" (red).
Each quadrant it yellow at origin and purple near their respective outermost corners. The remaining corners are orange next to Y axis and green next to X axis.
Caption At the bottom "On all axes, to be closer to the middle is to trend towards the path to an ideal"
Labeled points by quadrant:
Top left:
- (-14, 19) Conservatism
- (-16, 17) Corporate Buddhism
- (-16, 8) New Age Populism
Top Right:
- (19, 19) Modern Fascism
- (18, 15) Objectivism
- (14, 14) Anarcho-Capitalism
- (2, 12) Liberalism
- (19, 11) New Atheism
- (0, 6) Mutualism
- (4, 5) Democratic Socialism
- (11, 3) Second-Wave Feminism
Bottom Left:
- (-4, -1) Anti-Work Populism
- (-14, -2) Third-Wave Feminism
- (-19, -16) Jihadism
- (-17, -19) Italian Fascism
Bottom Right:
- (1, -1) Post-Scarcity Anarchism
- (1, -2) True Communism
- (17, -7) Deweyite Progressivism
- (1, -11) Anarcho-Communism
- (19, -17) Nazism
- (18, -19) Marxism-Leninism
Chart 3
A blue question mark shape on white background. Image titled "Matt Boyle's Question Mark Politics". Ideologies and political figures are marked along the curve of the question mark, starting from the "upper end of the hook and towards the dot at the bottom:
- Communism
- Vladimir Lenin
- Socialism
- Bernie Sanders
- Liberalism
- Rand Paul
- Conservatism
- Ted Cruz
- Fascism
- Adolf Hitler
On the dot at the bottom of the question mark:
- Idiocy
- Donald Trump
Chart 4
An equilateral triangle formed from four smaller congruent equilateral triangles (AKA a Triforce shape) with political ideologies written in bubble-style labels arranged as follows:
- Top vertex: "Jihadists"
- Inside the top triangle: "Islamists"
- Inside the inverted central triangle: "Secular Liberals"
- Inside the bottom left triangle: "Regressive Left"
- Inside the bottom right triangle: "Conservative Right"
- Bottom left vertex: "Violent Left"
- Bottom right vertex: "Violent Right"
Written directly on the triangle edges without a bubble:
- Between Islamists and Secular Liberals: "Liberal Muslims"
- Left of Regressive Left: "Pluralists"
- Between Regressive Left and Secular Liberals: "Liberal Leftists"
- Between Secular Liberals and Conservative Right: "Conservative Liberals"
- Right of Conservative Right: "Nationalists"
- Below Regressive Left and right of Violent Left: "Antifa Fascists"
- Below Conservative Right and left of Violent Right: "Fascists"
Chart 5
X-axis goes from "SOCIALISM" on the left to "CORPORATISM" on the right. Y-axis goes from "LIBERTY" at the top to "TYRANNY" at the bottom. On the Y-axis lies a thick double arrow labeled "GOVERNMENT" and colored with a gradient from white at the top arrowhead labeled "LESS" to red on the bottom arrowhead labeled "MORE", resembling a compass needle.
Near the top left and right corners of the diagram are labels "LEFT" and "RIGHT", respectively.
Around the arrow's shaft is a yellow circle of curved directional arrows, each pointing along the arc towards the bottom of the circle.
Dashed lines from the top of the diagram curve around the needle and yellow circle similarly to magnetic field lines, converge back towards the center below the compass, and end in downward pointing arrowheads.
Arranged around the yellow circle in terms of clock face hour hand positions:
- 1 o'clock: "INDEPENDENTS"
- 2 o'clock: "CLASSICAL CONSERVATIVES"
- 5 o'clock: "NEO-CONSERVATIVES"
- 7 o'clock: "PROGRESSIVES/NEO-LIBERALS"
- 10 o'clock: "CLASSICAL LIBERALS"
- 11 o'clock: "LIBERTARIANS"
The left half of the X-axis is labeled "LIBERALS" above and "DEMOCRATS" on the bottom and a blue donkey symbol next to the needle. The right half is similarly labeled "CONSERVATIVES" and "REPUBLICANS" with a red elephant symbol.
Above and below the X-axis are dashed horizontal lines. The area between the dashed lines is labeled "MODERATES". The top dashed line is labeled "Libertarianism" with arrows pointing upwards and the bottom dashed line is labeled "Secular Moralism" with arrows pointing downwards.
The top left of the moderates area is labeled "JEFFERSONIAN", top right is "JACKSONIAN", bottom left is "WILSONIAN" and bottom right "HAMILTONIAN".
The field lines converging in from the left/right sides of the compass towards the bottom pass by labels "POLITICALLY CORRECT"/"PIOUSLY CORRECT", "ECONOMIC INTERVENTIONISM"/"MILITARY INTERVENTIONISM", "COMMUNISM"/"THEOCRACY", respectively. They meed in the middle and pass through "COLLECTIVISM", "FASCISM" and "TOTALITARIANISM".
Chart 6
Blue circle labeled "Patriarchy" partially covering a pink circle labeled "Matriarchy". Left side represents "Gender Atheism", right side "Sexuality Atheism". Yellow arrow pointing from top left to bottom right labeled "Axis of Care". Red arrow from bottom left to top right labeled "Axis of Knowledge" The intersection of the axes of Care and Knowledge is labeled "Market Economy".
Left of the Patriarchy circle is "Men's Rights Movement" and to the right of the circle is "Fourth-Wave Feminism". Left of the Matriarchy circle is "Radical Feminism" and to the right "Liberal Feminism".
Labels connected by small black arrows are arranged on the circles like so:
Near the bottom end of the Axis of Knowledge is "Cultural Marxism", from which an arrow points along the axis to '"True" Anarchy'. Slightly further along the axis, close to the overlapping edge of the blue circle is "Soft Sciences" from which arrows point in two directions. The first one points towards the arrowhead at the bottom end of Axis of Care. On the arrowhead is "Welfare State", which leads to "Left Totalitarianism" at the tip of the arrow, then to "Marxism-Leninism" to the left and back to Welfare State.
The second path from Soft sciences is three consecutive arrows following the edge of the Patriarchy circle to "Positivist Materialism" at the tip of the Axis of Knowledge arrow, which leads to "Real Anarchy" on the arrowhead. Between Market Economy and Real Anarchy on the Axis of Knowledge is "Hard Sciences", from which another three arrow chain along the covered edge of Matriarchy circle leads to Cultural Marxism.
Opposite to Real Anarchy, on the Patriarchy side of Axis of Care is "Theocracy", which leads backwards on the Axis to "Right Totalitarianism", to "Austrian School" on the right, and again through Positivist Materialism to Real Anarchy.
Transcriptions for the last two will be in follow-up reply. I'm hitting the character limit.
none of these are complete without posadism
Charts 5 and 7 in particular are giving Pyramid Power and/or Flat Earth.
LOL it's almost as if the prerequisite to making a political compass is to be completely fucked in the head
What's almost causing me to spiral is the commonality of socialism and communism being portrayed as on the road to monarchism. I'm not spiralling because I very quickly realise that these are all made by idiots, and/or that what they are focusing on is the perception of socialism and communism as being authoritarian.
That and "antifa fascists" in chart 4. AKA the Scists. lol
yeah the "antifa fascists" absolutely sent me
holy shit some of these are beyond cursed
Chart 7
"THE REAL POLITICAL SPECTRUM"
On the left "SERVANTS OF THE AEONS", humanoid energy beings among space nebulae. On the right "SLAVES OF THE ARCHONS", reptilian humanoids.
The spectrum from left to right, with symbols in parentheses:
- Gnosis(Ringed cross): Release from the mortal coil renders politics useless. All achieve oneness with the Monad and harmony is restored to the cosmos. See: The Nag Hammadi Library
- Erisianism (chaos star): Total freedom. Management of affairs is unnecessary as universally well aligned chakras promote benevolent behaviour from all. See: Atlantis
- Syndicalism (five-pointed star): Public participation in institutions is combined with no state. Affairs are managed at the local level. See: The Pirate Kingdom of Libertalia
- Libertarianism (Gadsden rattlesnake): Public oversight of institutions is combined with a limited state. Affairs are managed at the local level. See: Early United States
- Republicanism (classical colonnade): Influence of industry and finance on the state is controlled by a constitution and a system of check and balances. See: Early United States
- Corporatocracy (dollar sign): State and industry form a de-facto alliance. Resource allocation subject to secret policy favouring the elite. See: The United States, European Union
- Communism (hammer and sickle): Industry and state inseparable. Resource allocation subject to central policy. See: Soviet Russia, North Korea
- Fascism (swastika): Industry and state inseparable. Resource allocation and reproduction subject to central policy. Eugenics in effect. See: Nazi Germany.
- Monarchism (crown): All resources under the authority of hereditary elite. Elite practices eugenics in its own ranks. Underclass viewed as different species. See*: Feudal Europe*
- Illuminism (eye of providence): Elite and underclass now form two distinct species. All world's resources controlled by the elite. All activities subject to central policy. See: Brave New World, Nineteen-Eighty Four
Chart 8
A conventional two-axis (Left/Right, Authoritarian/Libertarian) political compass chart. Authoritarian left, authoritarian right, and libertarian right all represented by a spooky profile portrait of Max Stirner smoking a cigar. Libertarian Left quadrant contains a smaller image of the diagram itself, which contains still smaller image of the diagram itself, except the libertarian left quadrant says "decentralized chomskian anarcho-molotov-cocktailism" in unreadably small type.
I feel I've lost enough sanity transcribing these that I'm almost ready to make a political compass chart myself.
Hi, I'm an unimtentional moderate centrist! I don't have an ideology, only views! My overton window is a peephole! Kamala is a far leftist! Trump is orange! People should stop treating politics like team sports and join the non team sports tribe like me! Political correctness gone mad! Let me tell you about Chesterton's fence! Everyone's sheeple except my flock! Say it with me: I'm an independent thinker!
I'm just glad all my friends are such smart rational independent thinkers that we've all independently come to the same conclusion that the status quo is perfect!
Did they try to add a bell curve in a place where it shouldn't be te last image? Im fascinated by how little sense it makes, and by how bad the adding a groupthink axis is.
So "unintentional moderates" are those that both choose deliberately to believe in centrist political ideology and to participate in groupthink?
It is some Paul Graham thing apparently, i have not read that blog post.
My University Keeps Sending Me Stupid Emails About AI, a continuing series:
From the email:
The debate will be chaired by Michael Pike. Speaking for the motion are Prof. Gregory O'Hare (TCD), Maeve Hynes, Prof. Gary Boyd and Chatgpt assisted by Student Curator Ruan McCabe, all UCD. Speaking against the motion are David Capener (UU), Lucy O'Connell, Peter Cody and Meabh O'Leary, all UCD.
Artificial Intelligence is the future of climate resilient design in the same way that asian pseudo-medicinal ED treatments are the future of the white rhinoceros.
Notwithstanding the subject matter, I feel like I've always gotten limited value from these Oxford-style university debates. KQED used to run a series called Intelligence Squared US that crammed it into an hour, and I shudder to think what that's become in the era of Trump and AI. It seems like a format that was developed to be the intellectual equivalent of intramural sports, complete with a form of scoring. But that contrivance renders it devoid of nuance, and also means it can be used to platform and launder ugly bullshit, since each side has to be strictly pro- or anti-whatever.
Really, it strikes me as a forerunner of the false certainty and point-scoring inherent in Twitter-style short-form discourse. In some ways, the format was unconsciously pared down and plopped online, without any sort of inquiry into its weaknesses. I'd be interested to know if anyone feels any different.
I have no knowledge or insight on the topic, but I used to get recommendations for "intelligence squared" videos on YouTube and I always thought it was a terrible, self-aggrandizing title for a series or event. Smart People Taking About Smart Things.
Intelligence^2^ didn't seem half bad when Robert Anton Wilson was the one talking about it way back when, in retrospect all the libertarianism was a real time bomb.
Intelligence Time Cubed now, that's the real deal.
I would also like to complain that I have finally started getting AI summaries in Google, and I may have to switch to a different search engine. Neither wanted nor needed!
The url manipulation trick doesnt work for you?
E: this I mean, somebody even made a site for it. My own setup is weird and I have ancient strange habits so I just added it to my search bookmark.
I should probably give it a go!
It works for me, if that means it also works for you I don't know. Not sure how much of this stuff is also region blocked etc.
"So, [Elsevier] added an AI question and answer to my article in Computer & Education.
The answers are wrong! They did not ask permission! The answers are WRONG!
How is this science?!"
misread as Eliezer, semantic content unchanged
AI-Powered Wi-Fi 7 Versatile Outdoor/Indoor Mesh AP
we're at the "the washing machine without a dateclock is marked millenium-bug safe in its marketing brochures" level of stupid
(that might seem like a stupid comparison but it's one of the things I most viscerally remember seeing from that time (when I was still a youngin who was still largely years away from computertouching))
An AI faceswapper/nudifier's database got leaked thanks to its nonexistent security - unsurprisingly, its loaded with explicit images, including massive amounts child porn and almost certainly some revenge porn.
WIRED tried reaching out to the company behind the "imagery", but they nuked everything and closed their doors in response.
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