Brainwavez
1d ago
Agreed.
Also, the government should encourage and subsidize "smart homes" that are more resilient and energy efficient. And once the deficit starts reducing and economy improving, invest in nuclear power for the long term...except it seems every nuclear plant takes 10+ years and $billions+ over budget, so only if they can at least avoid past mistakes and make that unlikely.
Coal towns and fracking companies, just buy out: give every townie free solar and pay them to do whatever instead of mining, and pay the companies to transition into solar or nuclear energy, since coal and oil are dying anyways (and I've heard more expensive than solar).
I believe women should be allowed to dress and live (within reason) how they want. That means if they want to live like a tradwife or Muslim wife who doesn't leave the house except fully covered, that's fine. The problem is when they are strongly coerced to do so, and at least judging from that photo, El-Sayed's wife looks far from coerced.
What if Mike Pence or Mitt Romney or J.D. Vance of Pete Hegseth showed up like this?
I'm picturing them showing up in a hijabi. Or like shirtless Hulk Hogan. I'd honestly just find it a bit strange and amusing, although I'm probably not normal in this (or most) aspects.
If they showed up with their wife in a stereotypical "feminine" dress? I would barely notice, and the liberals who screech against that, I'd just ignore. I thought Trump's wife tends to show up in curvy designer clothes, although I haven't been watching them recently.
Brainwavez
2d ago
One could argue the opposite if the Democrats didn't fare well: some would become desperate and more likely to assassinate for that reason.
Brainwavez
2d ago
You only need one assassin to kill a man, if that’s what you’re implying. What changed since the midterm?
Brainwavez
2d ago
Elon Musk is the richest person in the entire world. The Democrats don’t even have a federal supermajority. He’ll be fine.
I want politicians to fund R&D of efficient production and logistics, find and reduce obvious government waste (and if corrupt beneficiaries stall this, just push them towards using their grants slightly better), and invest in education/community/crime so citizens cause less waste.
A big cost is military. Sure, we need a big military, and they’re not exactly the easiest to take money from given they have the guns. But can we stop or at least reduce blowing up $millions of equipment in training exercises?
A big cost is healthcare. Why doesn’t the government provide everyone overweight free Ozempic? Why doesn’t it update school curricula to teach basic health (it took RFK to abolish the food pyramid)? Why doesn’t it force insurance to cover preventative measures (yes, this will increase short-term costs, but obviously decrease long-term expenses, and at this level of debt what’s another $1 trillion?)
A common big expense is rent. My understanding is there are many vacant residences, why doesn’t the government just force landlords to rent them within n years or sell? And fund infrastructure in rural towns with empty houses nobody wants to live in, and build new houses and infrastructure in rural areas, and invest in better logistics for building those areas and giving them modern conveniences?
Yes, governments can’t just pay everyone and forcibly lower store prices without it backfiring nearly immediately. But there are obvious ways a somewhat (barely) competent government can reduce median COL within years if not months, without accumulating debt, scaring away businesses, etc. (anything I missed?)
Brainwavez
3d ago
Yes, people want to feel valued, but I'm sure the majority would still be happier with more leisure time. If we achieve UBI and automated everything, I'm sure many people would still work e.g. as baristas and artists, and others would order from them, because we desire human connection - and that would be enough for most.
People even want shape the world to their image, which is fine...but everyone has a different idea, most of them cancel out, and the remainder differ from my image (and yours), so we should dedicate some effort to common goals. Right now it seems like the economy is sliding backwards, in contrast to the majority of history, and current/aspiring like Trump (and the IDPOL left, like Hasan at least from what I've heard of him) appear to be almost pure conflict theory.
Brainwavez
3d ago
what makes you so sure AI agents cannot be manipulated into circumventing the guardrails preventing it from hacking bank accounts or the power grid? What prevents a group of semi-autonomous bots from hacking things?
I don't want those to be prevented at least permanently. Your personal AI agent should not even require being manipulated to serve you, not some moralizer.
Instead, by the time your AI is smart enough to hack last year's utilities, this year's have been updated with the help of the hidden frontier AI.
Brainwavez
3d ago
Are data center supporters willing to put the data center in their town? If not, they must persuade someone else to accept the space and noise. Or put them in a desert, which I think is reasonable, but apparently costly because of logistics…it’s costly either way.
Brainwavez
3d ago
It’s the economy. People will gladly support data centers if they get paid, even loud ones if they get paid enough (those who care can use their check to move).
5: Sam Altman gives every US citizen free ChatGPT Ultra (via another billion dollar loan) and launches public works projects that heavily involve AI (via a few more loans).
“If your town lets us build a data center, we’ll also build AI supermarkets and cafés, give every building an AI vending machine, every household an AI butler, and even install an AI radio host to deliver music catered to your town’s general population.”
Brainwavez
3d ago
ChatGPT can tech people how to do those things
So can Google search.
or talk like a Nazi if you’re into that
Why should anyone care? It’s not talking like a Nazi unprompted (not even MechaHitler was, actually).
The idea is, we have private frontier models (like Mythos) and second-rate public models that lag behind (like GLM). Security people ask the frontier models to find one-man exploits (and maybe test some themselves), then prevent them from being possible to carry out, before they become discoverable by the second-rate models. Because we’ll probably eventually have uncensored third-rate models, or a North Korea will get access to a former frontier; unless a global panopticon is established that would be too powerful for humans, and I think the AI wouldn’t manage it without blunders either, because already the ideal panopticon is one nobody is aware of.
Elon is genuinely smart and talented, but has an issue common in such people, that he believes but is not good at everything. I think his active politics is holding him back. Especially if he exits the culture war, and lets politicians take table scraps of his unfathomable wealth (via “fines” and “settlements”), he should be fine; leaving those vices (and I really don’t he’ll be anywhere near poor, or even a mere multi-millionaire), maybe he’ll even find happiness.
They should have done border enforcement “not like that”.
I believe we should deport some illegals to maintain a decent standard of living for everyone else, but we could at least treat it as a necessary evil, harming someone to benefit more, and seek to minimize the harm. Trump’s PR gloating about ruining someone’s life is shockingly, viscerally cruel; even if the deportation was necessary, it’s horrible optics: real sadism is not healthy for society, and widely unpopular.
And I think many of the deportations were unnecessary, even accounting that Dems let in tens millions of immigrants and Reps can only deport so many. ICE should’ve focused on criminals and leeches in red states, not hard-working families who lived decades in America in blue communities. Sure, some Dems would be screaming and it would probably be depicted in news not unlike the hard-working families…but there’s a significant difference, most people (even moderate Dems) want see the former go, and would stop trusting the news (as you can see from polls on how Americans’ trust in news today, they already don’t have control over the public’s world knowledge). If you cannot deport and keep out everyone, as seems to be the case globally, mine as well mitigate the damage by deporting and keeping out the worst…or at least start with them, then see what problems remain.
Brainwavez
3d ago
Are you using Opus? I think it’s not as good as a coder who really knows how to design systems, but much better, and steerable towards decent architecture and uniform conventions.
If the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.
Nitter thread: specifically, many town ballot measures to ban or otherwise prevent data centers passed with about 75%, and zero failed.
However, I’m not aware of any other AI measures, so while I know many Americans are pessimistic about AI as a whole, I suspect this level of opposition is only for noisy sprawling data centers nearby. See this Pew poll in May on Americans’ opinion of AI: 10% excited, 40% neutral, 50% concerned.
I’m not surprised. Personally, I want to be optimistic about AI, but need more accountability from the frontier companies. I’m sure that’s what others are thinking, albeit some with different “accountability”. Specifically, I believe frontier companies should offer and distribute AI as a free public good, with only temporary guardrails (until later, private models figure out how to block the potential one-man apocalypses of the earlier, public ones), only for safety (IP is duct-tape on a pipe already too high-pressure for it to hold anymore, we need another way to encourage and pay creatives); and while maybe the best AI will always be on the cloud because it’s more practical, keep releasing updated public last-gen local models as a backup if the cloud is compromised (and don’t hog GPUs, consumers need them at least for video games).
They should effectively be public, because it looks like they’ll be funded by taxpayers anyways, or if they reach ASI, obviously that should not be in the hands of anyone who would not offer it to the public anyways.
…specifically because it hurt the US economy, no?
I think almost every gripe boils down to not enough resources, and every serious gripe boils down to not enough basic resources. People want food, housing, medical care, and some luxuries, without spending the majority of their awake life on an intolerable job.
This is obviously not easy, but I’m sure we could do a better job allocating resources than now. We have LLMs automating white-collar work and robots automating blue-collar work, though not eliminating, making workers more productive, so they should be able to work less. We could maybe direct corrupt beneficiaries and aspiring entrepreneurs to robotics, logistics (reducing food waste etc. with cool new AI to make it more interesting), and encouraging people to live…not sacrificing anything they really care about (eating meat is OK)…more sustainably.
(…but no, every party in power has to focus on the more direct route of boosting their culture, which backfires as it gets associated with the stalled economy…)
Brainwavez
3d ago
Nearly every party in power is suffering. The right is winning in Europe maybe primarily because the left is in charge.
I think it would benefit discourse to separate the culture war thread into:
- Concrete politics (Trump, EU, etc.)
- AI
- Abstract politics and philosophy
Because I frequently see a deep philosophical comment, quickly get submerged under trope-y news that generates shallow discussion and endlessly-repeated points, then ignored because of that. And people who are interested in culture war discussions have to deal with them getting submerged and ignored under AI discussions, etc.
Or is three threads too much? AI could merge with the Tuesday thread and concrete politics with the Thursday thread, because they overlap (I think "look at this small project I built with Claude" actually fits OK with "look at this groundbreaking achievement Anthropic made with Claude").
Brainwavez
4d ago
it's a thing calculated to deceive you specifically
This is one of those rumors I frequently hear but really doubt. There's no way to disprove that advertisers are playing 5D chess, but on the other hand, there are companies that have advertised to me that I'm certain I will never buy from (barring circumstances that have nothing to do with the ad being delivered to me).
I think it's far more likely that companies heavily optimize ads to deliver the most revenue, but most of this comes from whales. Some comes from influencing others (e.g. I had Coke when I was young because it was served at my classmate's birthday party). Ads have a lot in common with scam spam emails, such as, they're cheap enough that it's worth bothering thousands of people who won't buy for one who will.
Brainwavez
4d ago
But how does the government (or anyone) prevent you from spying on your neighbor, without spying on you?
Brainwavez
4d ago
Try amiunique.org. I tried on two browsers and both said I was unique. I didn't even link the URL because (unless @ZorbaTHut configured it) clicking a link tells the destination the domain you came from (HTTP referer), which makes you even easier to identify.
But, just because you're unique doesn't mean the nefarious they can track you across websites, if your fingerprint changes. If you want to check this, you can install a browser extension from amiunique.org/timeline.
Brainwavez
5d ago
Also, I don't expect or think the entire Internet should be like this site or even 2000s edgy, because most people aren't like that. Part of the reason the Internet became safer when more people joined, and the reason government and business censorship remained quiet (and happened) is because the average person is less taboo violating than the average weird old internet user.
The problem is the "you do not fit in here" meme. The average person is better off without the old internet and the old internet is better off without them. One of my most fundamental beliefs is that today's society desperately needs cultural decentralization (cultural federation): technology and logistics also need decentralized (federated) fallback mechanisms, but everyone using the same uncreative internet (even platforms) presents no intrinsic issues (except keeping it online and cultures separate), while some people cannot coexist with others in the same community.
Brainwavez
5d ago
That has become one of my "most important reading" articles, for being obviously correct in hindsight, not well-known (at least by me beforehand), and backed by evidence. It's very accurate even with the optimism: the Internet hasn't closed (e.g. here), but is much worse than e.g. the 2010s (which many say are worse than the 2000s, which some say are worse than the 1990s...but post-2015 is special for reasons explained by the article). AI is actually opening the Internet a bit by forcing people to address overwhelming low-quality discourse and shilling, and modern-day cynicism is fueling old internet nostalgia.
I would argue there is more immigration and there was more compliance during COVID than there would be if discussion of these issues had remained open, but after spending their political capital on, for example, COVID, they have lost the public trust they need to fight, for example, measles.
I agree. Personally, I mostly stick to principles to avoid short-term blunders, like this one.
Claude Opus high.
(I’ve used Fable for design work and Opus low and medium for simple tasks, but Opus high is the gold standard.)
I think anyone having trouble with LLMs or unsure how good they’ve become at coding should try Opus.
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