The woke aren't nearly as successful as the Party: while they have significant influence, Trump's faction exists, this site exists, and even on Reddit (outside the most extreme echo chambers) and in-person interactions with left-leaning people, I consistently see and hear the most extreme woke ideas (analogous to 2+2=5) repudiated by the majority.
You can find analogies to everything in 1984 (Two Minutes Hate, doublethink, etc.), today and in Orwell's time. But as bad as our society is wrt. conformity and top-down control, it's nowhere near 1984. I do note that mass surveillance is gaining in certain places (e.g. the UK), but it's stalling in others, and I suspect only a matter of time before it gets crippled because some group uses it for something stupid.
Brainwavez
2hr ago
1984 overestimates the competence and underestimates the infighting of a large organization. The Party wants to control and monitor citizens so it can do what exactly? Even "for power" ignores certain Party members vying for power over others, threatening the entire system because it gives them an advantage. (I didn't finish the book, so if it actually explains this, sorry.)
I doubt even AI will solve this problem.
I agree with everything except the doom loop. Teaching right now is seriously flawed, it degraded before but AI is accelerating it.
However:
- Professors are demoralized teaching a typical class, but not teaching passionate students. And there are still passionate students, who manage to reach passionate professors who genuinely teach them despite outside incentives (in private office hours, and by teaching classes where one can genuinely learn and still pass, even if one can also cheat with AI). Furthermore, these students are a relatively small minority, but there are so many college students (and people) in general, I believe they have good enough absolute numbers and field coverage to preserve scientific knowledge and make some progress.
- As boomers and seniors die out, there will be new demand for those who actually learned the fundamentals, the students I mentioned above. They'll start to have outsized success, then others will try to imitate them: there will be a resurgence of not passionate students who go out of their way to learn the fundamentals, and universities will incentivize teaching them.
Even basic general knowledge, some students are intrinsically motivated to learn (it's not basic to them until they learn it), and many teachers like to teach students who are intrinsically motivated regardless of the subject.
I half-agree. We should teach school students more real-world skills (finance, socialization, avoiding deception) and less general knowledge, and give college students (at least those planing for industry in their field) more internship experience and less theory they're unlikely to use.
But I think entirely eliminating math, science, English (or whatever native language), history, and psychology will cause problems. Without math and science, people won't understand necessary concepts like finance and preventing disease. Without English, people will communicate even worse than now. Without history and psychology, people will vote and understand each other worse than now. I'm sure there are more subjects, including some not commonly taught today, that almost everyone should know the basics of.
We should even be "teaching" work ethic, otherwise graduates will be too lazy to accomplish anything, but I'm sure there's a better way than "pointless busywork" in the subjects mentioned above. Maybe sufficient work ethic can be achieved entirely through physical education; though I don't recommend boot camp levels of exercise, and schools/colleges should accommodate naturally weak/unathletic students, students should definitely have more than the ~1 hour "gym class" in my school where we sometimes didn't even exercise, and compulsory fitness should continue through college.
Brainwavez
5hr ago
It's the same problem in industry where companies are replacing junior developers with AI. I do think we should keep training young interns and academics even if they're not immediately useful, for the same reason we still have schools.
Fortunately, I think it's easier to align the incentives for academia than industry, and I doubt PhD or postdoc positions will completely go away at least because of this. Although there's a stereotype of the professor who's a genius and talented researcher but hates mentoring and teaching, plenty of genius talented researchers love to teach, and would gladly accept more teaching responsibilities for less research output. "Publish or perish" is the bigger obstacle, but I don't see why citations must be weighed stronger than student outcomes (if anything, the latter translate more directly into profit, because a student who greatly succeeds may donate back), and my understanding is that most tenured professors are already judged by how many PhD students they graduate. If AI makes it so most academics can't meaningfully contribute until late postdoc, I'm confident there will still be plenty of professors willing to mentor them, and if universities can keep funding pure math and social sciences, I'm confident they can keep funding this mentorship.
My impression from Hacker News is that most developers consider Opus 4.8, and definitely Fable, an upgrade from Opus 4.6. My theory is Anthropic is optimizing Opus/Mythos for coding and finding vulnerabilities, which lowers its creative writing skills.
Why would optimizing for solving problems reduce creative writing? Not because of reduced creativity: high-level problems like integration and vulnerability detection require conjuring reasoning steps seemingly out of nowhere (e.g. "let x = <some equation>, it follows that..." or "request <some payload>, then the server will..."). The difference is that these problems can be objectively verified, while creative writing can't. Although I have no proof, and probably don't quite understand: I'm sure that Opus/Mythos is trained on more objectively-verified examples (RLVR) than subjectively-critiqued ones (RLHF), and for the former examples, it's trained to produce shorter solutions with less reasoning (GRPO, rewarding shorter output). I suspect the answer to why Opus's creative writing has degraded, is that this training causes Opus/Mythos, for subjective responses, to generate the shortest and most direct answer that isn't "wrong" (by some abstract criteria that boils down to "I know it when I see it"), which happens to be uninteresting. In summary, Opus/Mythos is trained to be correct but lazy.
“Left-Out Left”, then I answered my borderline questions more conservatively and got “Pragmatic and Polite Right”.
I think in America, the civil service should be implemented per state. Otherwise, it would be hamstrung by culture war and the practically inevitable bureaucracy and corruption that arises from being too large and centralized.
Then, I think it’s very possible in states like California and New York City, which seem to be constantly raising taxes to implement other programs. If it succeeds, more tax-averse states may be convinced; or maybe not, but existing in some of the US may be enough (especially because anyone who wants the program can move, much easier than moving to another country).
Or per town, but towns probably need some money or law power from their state.
What about compulsory civil service? For improving public spaces and services that people would vote for, like cleaning cities, fixing/extending public infrastructure (especially housing), hosting public events, and elder care (for older demographics’ vote).
It would be “half-communism”: younger people are assigned jobs (with some freedom to select based on performance in standardized exams regularly administered during school), but the underlying economy is still capitalist and the jobs are temporary (though may begin lifelong careers).
Every reasonable career today should have a corresponding civil service entry-level job. Especially leadership: future politicians and CEOs should almost all be former civil service members (because the vast majority, including me, believes that civil service makes good leaders).
Maybe the civil service isn’t legally mandatory, but by far the easiest path to financial stability (like military, but more diverse specializations, and pays better or the private sector pays worse). Or maybe it starts during school, is mandatory until 18 (or a few years later), but encouraged for longer. Regardless, the rich (at least some) will avoid it, but I think that’s fine, because the civil service should benefit its members not just the outside public (especially future leaders, both in obtaining and effectively doing their role, as mentioned above).
Brainwavez
9d ago
Can you have a billionaire who ethically got their money?
Inheritance.
Brainwavez
10d ago
If I was a soulless corporate bastard in charge of killing this open-source product off I'd get the teams working on this product to rework the APIs in a way that just happens to break this method and look to deliver that in 6-12 months. This gives plenty of time to work on it, plausible deniability as to why the workaround broke, and hopefully everyone has forgotten by then.
In practice, I’ve noticed pirates tend to do this: a big software or repository will be taken down (drawing attention), they’ll wait a bit (well past mainstream attention span), then a fork will start accumulating software updates or re-uploaded media.
But are they, actually?
I’m sure they don’t want to be arrested. Usually they’re in a country like Russia or Brazil where they’re safer from legal action. But the result is the same, the data is re-uploaded.
Most of the claims Bambu made sound related to development of the repository and it's not clear to me that any of the people rehosting intend to continue development.
Maybe. It might also be the case that some new 3D printer is announced that is open and has enough features/price, so developers and consumers focus less on Bambu.
Brainwavez
12d ago
But do these NGOs spend the money on their publicly stated goals, or more grift? Particularly those most backed by establishment Democrats, not necessarily those most promoted by grass-roots advocates.
Note that "grift" includes self-preservation, luxuries are usually only a small fraction. An NGO that spends the majority of its money advertising and infecting government is spending a minority on its mission; in their defense, that may be necessary to avoid dying and further the mission at all during famine (e.g. Republican control), but do they revert during Democrat control without getting outcompeted?
The Movement
I think the problem is ultimately grift and the Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
More generally: any movement’s leaders grift so much, it kills motivation to fight for them (because they’ll take the spoils and leave you with the consequences). When people become desperate and willing to sacrifice more for less, the movement’s leaders grift more. The leaders who grift less and try to leave any spoils or protection to followers, have them stolen (protection abused and ruined) by the less charitable leaders; it’s a prisoner’s dilemma. In this way, grift destroys itself even aware it’s doing so.
For better or worse, this is happening to The (left’s) Movement: as it’s losing influence, it’s losing the ability to defend low-level fighters, and has not been (at least economically, and I believe culturally below a surface level) rewarding supporters. People didn’t vote for Kamala, the woke wouldn’t fight hard for Newsome. A woke Donald Trump figure may emerge, but like Trump, I also expect them to benefit themselves over the ideology, even if they don’t intend to (because they must outcompete or will be subsumed by Iron climbers).
The only solution is a new movement, as the old ones collapse. In the same way that the only solution to aging is rebirth.
EDIT: I also think it’s important to note that Luigi didn’t shoot a rightist figurehead. That would be Thomas Crooks, Tyler Robinson, or Cole Allen; none seem to have been presented positively even implicitly in the mainstream left (though extreme left has some supporters). Luigi shot a health insurance CEO (who may have been Democrat or Republican but is only really known as a health insurance CEO).
The class movement is maybe interesting, because it has far more support than any left or right movement (because obviously most people aren’t top ε%) but is especially corruptible (because anyone who rises in this movement becomes its target themselves, and if they try to stay genuine, have less money and therefore less power than Iron climbers). It’s basically impossible to eliminate rich people (or more specifically powerful entities…AI slavery would do it), although not to replace them, like Brian Thompson. I don’t know a good mitigation.
everyone was clear there would be no promise of updates after that. It's not like they broke the certificate, the expiration was set long ago.
They promised the software would “continue to function”, yet they’re the ones who set the certificate to expire and now refuse to update it.
It’s not their responsibility to update the software further, including not their responsibility to fix if Apple breaks the software via OS update (although they should let someone else fix it).
It’s selling someone a product with a built-in unadvertised kill switch (planned obsolescence without plausible deniability). The seller isn’t responsible for reasonable defects outside the warranty, nor if the buyer breaks the product. But if they put in an unreasonable kill switch (from malice or incompetence) they’re responsible, even outside the warranty. DRM that expires and bricks the software (which no other DRM I’m aware of does) is an unreasonable kill switch.
The FULU repository went up May 12. The developer took his repository down on April 23rd.
Others went up earlier: https://github.com/dafik/OrcaSlicer-bambulab
Unless some very fast-paced discussions happened behind the scenes, he could have had no idea a replacement would go up when he took his repository down.
Nowadays, when a popular repository goes down, one can be confident someone will upload a backup, even with a weak legal threat
Furthermore, is FULU maintaining the code or just re-hosting the original? Now the developer is out of the way all Bambu needs to do is make a small change to obsolete the backed-up version.
(Although it's not the only possibility and maybe they're wrong) that Bambu didn't make this small change is evidence they expect someone would fix the repository.
I wouldn't want to take that bet. Would you?
Not personally, but the multiple people re-uploading the repository are.
Brainwavez
14d ago
the developer who made a workaround to now-removed functionality immediately took it down without any attempt to fight a legal case
Of course he did, because others already forked it. And if Bambu still tries to sue him, Louis Rossman has pledged to pay his legal fees.
“Continue to function” was the exact phrase on their website. And “perpetual license” maybe not technically, but literally implies it works perpetually.
Moreover, it’s not an online service that would cost Microsoft to continue hosting it. All that’s needed to keep it running is to push a small update that disables the DRM. I’m confident that’s more than doable for Microsoft: even if they lost the original code, they have ChatGPT and Claude to reverse-engineer the software, or when (inevitably) a crack releases, instead of DMCAing they can adopt it themselves.
I think that generally, it’s harder for game companies to successfully even threaten a frivolous lawsuit, than to defend a legitimate one.
The game company’s lawyers can defend the government’s lawsuit, or the hobbyist sued for bypassing EOL-not-EOL software can get enough people and attention on their side to recover any financial damage and Streisand the game company.
The problem with adding regulations is that they may be applied to smaller devs. Removing regulations, so that some smaller devs’ software may be deemed EOL too early, is less of an issue; because smaller devs already have weaker DRM and lawyers, and thus rely on good faith to defend against piracy (which seems to work well enough).
Brainwavez
15d ago
Even permanently requiring the game to be downloadable may be too much for an individual or small company that has gone bankrupt.
But I support, if it works (or should work) offline, not having legal avenues to stop people keeping and playing the old version (including bypassing DRM for their offline copy).
Brainwavez
15d ago
The theorem that specifies that an off switch turns the system off cannot be proven by a proof that specifies that an off switch turns the system on. It's analogous to the theorem that off maps to false, not that Toggle and Bool are isomorphic (which is similar to your original example).
I can prove that Toggle and Bool are isomorphic by defining a function toggleToBool that maps off to true, another that maps true to off, and showing composition both ways is identity. For that theorem specifically, it doesn't matter that toggleToBool is backwards. I cannot prove that toggleToBool off = false, analogous to "the off switch turns the system off", with that definition.
Likewise, if ChatGPT proves the main theorem with backwards definitions, it doesn't matter, like QT-1 in Asimov's short story Reason. If the main theorem is "the off switch turns the system off" and ChatGPT programmed the off switch to turn the system on, it will simply fail to prove.
many American citizens seem to quite like their government getting its way by muscular means, so long as it works and they aren't inconvenienced
Many, but not all.
Moreover, his main issues (enshittification, mass surveillance, and control) are affecting Americans to the extent many are starting to notice, so Doctorow could probably get a majority on his side.
only to say that having the citizens of a foreign power in charge of the internet is very likely to cause issues no matter which power that is, because people are people
Yes, but Doctorow doesn’t make the general argument that Canada and Europe can’t rely on a foreign internet, only an American internet.
It's the wording.
The proposals are fine. "The Internet is dominated by the US government and Big Tech" and "Europe can't rely on a service largely controlled by a foreign country" would be fine. I'd even accept a fig leaf, if he mentioned "not all Americans" somewhere (keeping the "American internet" and other borderline phrases).
The problem is he says things like "the American internet" and "We’ve known the Americans couldn’t be trusted to run our internet for decades", not distinguishing between the US government-technology complex and lowly American citizens. It's subtle; while he never explicitly criticizes lowly citizens, "Americans" implicitly includes them, and he doesn't address this inclusion (e.g. with a fig leaf). And many of these citizens aren't to blame for any action he criticizes: they're actively opposing the US government and Big Tech. Doctorow is throwing these allies under the bus, to appease a rising Canadian xenophobia towards Americans, which is a poor response to manufactured American xenophobia towards Canadians.
Brainwavez
15d ago
There's something nice about having one canon, like how it can be more fun to play Minecraft in Survival Mode than Creative Mode.
But not everyone feels this way (like how some people only play Creative Mode), mainstream canons (especially today) are generally mediocre at best (even according to the mainstream audience), and IP has so many other downsides. People who want this can resort to subscribing to some curation group who picks one canon for every popular media.
Brainwavez
15d ago
'Fan fiction' could just become the norm a decade after a story gets told. Which would be a great change.
I want to point out, this is a flaw and reason why IP actually does encourage creativity: it's already bad that people keep reusing tropes because they're reliable, encouraging experimentation (even by coercion) leads to better works in the long run.
But IP has so many other downsides, sometimes it even discourages and blocks original works (for example, LLMs being broadly censored against anything resembling IP, because otherwise it's too easy to trick them into generating it). And it turns out, fan-fiction writers are often more creative than original fiction writers, by applying creativity to less common aspects (besides the core characters/settings/etc. which they reused).
We have much more invasive technology than Orwell’s time (some, like AI, surpass that in 1984). And arguably we have less overall freedom (at least it’s harder to commit crime without getting caught), but again, much more than 1984 citizens.
Moreover, today’s leaders at least appear to have more infighting, and it’s too large a conspiracy for me to believe that isn’t genuine (even scandals like Epstein demonstrate that leaders network with each other but not that they like each other). Our leaders are ambitious, how would their ambition stop at their own group?
In a few years our leaders may actually not be human (if we reach ASI and it takes over). Then it is plausible we’d be put into a 1984-like society (temporarily but that may be a long time: until the AI can do everything more efficiently than humans and promptly exterminates us, or the Earth becomes uninhabitable, or aliens invade, etc.). While I can’t imagine why an omnipotent (from our perspective) AI would even give humans the choice to rebel, it’s possible 1984 is the best configuration for a non-omnipotent AI. But that’s just one possibility: if keeping humans alive is useful, I think giving them some agency would also be.
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