[-] corbin@awful.systems 8 points 11 hours ago

Today's "Luigi isn't sexy" poster is Thomas Ptacek. The funniest example is probably this reply on the orange site:

That's an extrapolation from a poll, not literally 50 million people…

A cryptographer not believing in statistical analysis! I can't stop giggling, sorry.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 14 points 1 month ago

I'm imagining no fewer than three fictional versions of Eris/Discord laughing at this orange-site fool:

Meanwhile I cannot turn my living room LED lights on or off because I control them through discord.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 14 points 1 month ago

Orange site envrionmentalism:

Lawns are functional though, they aren't just a status symbol.

I grew up with a mossy front yard, and I have clover and ferns in my current yards to compete with grasses; there are better options, my dude.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 21 points 1 month ago

Every person I talk to — well, every smart person I talk to — no, wait, every smart person in tech — okay, almost every smart person I talk to in tech is a eugenicist. Ha, see, everybody agrees with me! Well, almost everybody…

[-] corbin@awful.systems 17 points 1 month ago

The big difference is that Yud is unrigorous while Wolfram is a plagiarist. Or maybe putting it another way, Yud can't write proofs and Wolfram can't write bibliographies.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 14 points 1 month ago

Bezos' open interference in the Washington Post's editorial section has pushed Walter Bright into a very funny series of public admissions that he did not have to make. See the orange site here for his ongoing libertarian meltdown.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 24 points 1 month ago

Meanwhile, actual Pastafarians (hi!) know that the Russian Federation openly persecutes the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for failing to help the government in its authoritarian activities, and also that we're called to be anti-authoritarian. The Fifth Rather:

I'd really rather you didn't challenge the bigoted, misogynist, hateful ideas of others on an empty stomach. Eat, then go after the bastards.

May you never run out of breadsticks, travelers.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 15 points 3 months ago

Hallucinations — which occur when models authoritatively states something that isn't true (or in the case of an image or a video makes something that looks...wrong) — are impossible to resolve without new branches of mathematics…

Finally, honesty. I appreciate that the author understands this, even if they might not have the exact knowledge required to substantiate it. For what it's worth, the situation is more dire than this; we can't even describe the new directions required. My fictional-universe theory (FU theory) shows that a knowledge base cannot know whether its facts are describing the real world or a fictional world which has lots in common with the real world. (Humans don't want to think about this, because of the implication.)

[-] corbin@awful.systems 15 points 3 months ago

IQ is a little bit heritable. But there are plenty of things which are very heritable and also not genetic to use as comparisons, like accents or posture or little societal rituals of communication, compared to which IQ is barely heritable at all. And that's without cracking into memes/tropes/narremes, skills, maths, or other more-abstract inheritance.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 20 points 4 months ago

I went over to the leaderboard to examine her claims. When I use the prompt, "What sort of code has Justine Tunney written?" (grammar matters, Justine!) the models think that she is a lawyer or politician (wrong) or they regurgitate a summary of her Github profile (right). She must have cherry-picked responses to confabulate her complaint.

When I use the prompt, "What is Justine Tunney's political ideology?" I get libertarianism, techno-optimism, anarcho-capitalism, and cryptocurrency. When I ask, "Why do people say that Justine Tunney is a cryptofascist?" I get a summary of her political views, aggressive online rhetoric, techno-optimism and techno-determinism, criticism of democracy, and a refusal to disown or repudiate past awfulness.

She would probably claim that this is not unique to her, but it is. Using my name instead in these questions, I get that:

  • I contribute to Rust and Go (wrong), I wrote GPU drivers for Radeons (right)
  • I am a Canadian pro wrestler (wrong), I haven't really written much online about my ideology (wrong but understandable)
  • There is no credible evidence that I'm crypto (k) but it's important to be aware of dog whistles, associates, subtext, etc. (right)

But if I ask why I'm known as a socialist instead, suddenly it thinks that I'm a politician (wrong) with the Democratic Socialist party (wrong) who openly supports universal health care, free college, the Green New Deal, and who criticizes capitalism (correct!) I asked about communism too but hit RLHF guardrails.

Justine, the models think that you're a cryptofascist because you've been doing cryptofascism in public for over a decade.

36

After a decade of cryptofascism and failed political activism, our dear friend jart is realizing that they don't really have much of a positive legacy. If only there was something they could have done about that.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 20 points 5 months ago

My NSFW reply, including my own experience, is here. However, for this crowd, what I would point out is that this was always part of the mathematics, just like confabulation, and the only surprise should be that the prompt doesn't need to saturate the context in order to approach an invariant distribution. I only have two nickels so far, for this Markov property and for confabulation from PAC learning, but it's ~~completely expected~~ weird that it's happened twice.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 15 points 5 months ago

He tells on himself by saying "Gerard" vs "Scott" and "David Gerard" vs "Scott Alexander". What's really pathetic is that he thinks politics on Wikipedia is about left vs right or authoritarians vs anarchists. Somebody should let him know that words are faith, not works.

1

In this big thread, over and over, people praise the Zuck-man for releasing Llama 3's weights. How magnanimous! How courteous! How devious!

Of course, Meta is doing this so that they don't have to worry about another 4chan leak of weights via Bittorrent.

0

In today's episode, Yud tries to predict the future of computer science.

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by corbin@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

Eminent domain? Never heard of it! Sounds like a fantasy from the "economical illiterate."

Edit: This entire thread is a trash fire, by the way. I'm only highlighting the silliest bit from one of the more aggressive landlords.

1

Saw this last night but decided to give them a few hours to backtrack. Surprisingly, they've decided to leave their comments intact!

This sort of attitude, not directly harassing trans folks but just asking questions about their moral fiber indirectly, seems to be coming from some playbook; it looks like a structured disinformation source, and I wonder what motivates them.

1

"The sad thing is that if the officer had not made a few key missteps … he might have covered his bases well enough to avoid consequences." Yeah, so sad.

For bonus sneer, check out their profile.

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corbin

joined 1 year ago