Corvos
10d ago
The Piccadilly area is pretty nice for shopping: it’s got a couple of good, big bookshops (Hatchard’s especially), Fortnum & Mason’s for food, and Jermyn street etc. for top-end clothes, jackets etc. (I think you were quite interested in fashion but maybe not that kind?)
Very crowded and expensive obviously, but nice.
Or there’s the historical stuff: go to Bank and see the old City of London, or to Westminster/St. James’ Park.
Corvos
11d ago
It tracks both of those things. How were you using that data?
the little suggestions it gives me are kind of useless ("take a breath", "go on a walk", buddy if I was the kind of person to do those things I wouldn't need you to tell me to do them
Yeah, this was basically my big problem as well. I think it can work, it just needs to accept that mood management requires more than a ping and a condescending message.
Corvos
11d ago
I tried to make this, combining smartwatch data on heart rates and variability to detect energy levels and combining it with an LLM to generate useable recommendations.
It was surprisingly difficult for multiple reasons: your heart doesn’t differentiate between ‘low stress’ and ‘depressed heart rate because you’re recovering from a massive exertion’, or ‘high stress’ vs ‘happy drinking with friends’.
Then it was even harder to do anything with the data. Obviously LLMs don’t integrate with anything meaningful without lots of extra work and the moment you get into health they just start relying on the teams of feel-good bullshit in their training set. No, I would not like to do an hour of yoga followed by a gratitude exercise.
Corvos
11d ago
I want to make a todo list that automatically makes each item concrete:
You type in ‘buy flowers for anniversary’ and it whirrs for a bit, does some research and turns it into ‘buy roses from Mr. Weds’ Flower Emporium ten minutes away’.
Likewise for ‘find language Meetup’. ‘Make lamb curry’ automatically retrieves a recipe and list of ingredients.
Basically just reducing the cognitive load and bar for taking action to be as low as possible.
Corvos
11d ago
People are tired. The idea that one can put in endless effort for as long as one is awake is an idea that I slowly grew out of in my twenties. There are a few people who seem to be able to do it but I don’t think they’re physiologically or psychologically normal. The rest of us just about get by at our job and then are mostly pooped and have to slip in bits and pieces of effort where they can.
Now, I think that modern media hasn’t helped with this. I’m playing Elden Ring at the moment and I’ve noticed that it can pretty much perk me up even when I’m basically dozing off, which of course means that it’s overdrawing my reserves when I really ought to be resting. It’s also harder to focus on semi-interesting skills when very-entertaining stuff is available instead, but everyone knows that already.
Corvos
11d ago
That’s interesting, I didn’t know. Thanks :) All ancient history now but an interesting case.
Corvos
12d ago
This happened to a friend of mine. He had a very good case, and the lawyer said, "Look, you've got a 95% chance of winning this. But the other side is going to hire the very best, most expensive guys in town. There's a 5% chance you'll pay millions in damages - can you handle that?" And of course they didn't have that kind of money.
Corvos
13d ago
Avoiding the tendency of the hobby to suck you in and make you more and more devoted to the game at the expense of work or social life.
Corvos
14d ago
I was thinking of the SNP (Scottish National Party) myself. They got rid of male Salmond in favour of hip female Nicola sturgeon.
Corvos
15d ago
the Southport murders (committed by a born British citizen)
Committed by Axel Rudakubana, child of two Rwandan immigrants, picture here.
I wouldn't normally make a point of it, but frankly Mr. Rudakabana is a very non-standard 'British citizen' and that is clearly and directly relevant to both the country being on edge and the Southport riots. The brackets here strike me as deliberately burying the lede.
Corvos
16d ago
1 can chilli con carne: £3
1 can black beans: £2
Rice
Easily 2 meals for £5/2=£2.50 and you can be more strict if you want to save more money. Got me through postgrad.
Corvos
16d ago
I’ve read all five. Don’t worry about it. The quality is a bit uneven IMO but that’s not going to be a big part of things going forward.
Corvos
17d ago
Broadly, the Hanania perspective is:
- Woke identity politics and the takeover of important positions by unqualified tokenism has been a disaster. Running the world’s premier empire and scientific machine requires strong competition to acquire and promote very intelligent, very knowledgeable people.
- Therefore we need a correction.
- Trump and his voters are not that correction. They don’t like woke identity politics and minority tokenism, but they want to replace it with rural white identity politics and affirmative action for the deluded. This is even worse than wokeness.
- Woke correction will not come from the left. Therefore attempt to destroy the MAGA right so that a smarter right can rise in its place. This right should encourage coloyrblindness, high immigration, low taxes, eugenics and globalism, and discourage white identity politics, conspiracy theories, religion and nationalism.
Corvos
17d ago
Oh, I agree. I spent a big part of last year trying to create a personal assistant and the biggest reason for its failure was that I had no real way to judge its output.
What annoys me is that they seem to have ignored all of the ways you might optimise for this, let alone produced different products that you could trade off against each other. I would love to have one AI optimised for being lauded by literary critics, one for maximum mid-wit upvotes, etc. And you could always mix and match weights afterwards.
I am skeptical that optimising for maths and engineering ability will produce intuitive social machines because, well…
Corvos
17d ago
I find meditation really cool and its promises really interesting, and then every time I look further into it I’m reminded that the end goal is, essentially, voluntary ego death.
You talk about meditation a lot, so please forgive me for asking directly: does it not creep you out that this practice is supposed to end in you realising that you don’t really exist? Am I mistaken about the end result? Not the rhetoric, but the actual purpose of realising that theee isn’t a real you.
Corvos
17d ago
True, but what I mean is that LLMs have been moving AWAY from fluid verbal intelligence and back towards the comfort zone of code and maths IMO.
I value the kind of writing ability and ‘everyday intelligence’ that the models indicated and Claude 3.7 had but I don’t think that’s the direction they’re moving in.
Corvos
17d ago
True intelligence is about ambiguity, creativity, and language.
To be fair, LLMs have been moving away from this towards coding, engineering and maths because their success is easier to judge and rewards for RL-produced reasoning are easier to define.
I was watching some clips from the Thick of It and it seemed slightly… off. The broad plot points and the characters seemed realistic enough but the overt and graphic threats, and the fucky fucky speaking style seemed to be very much written to pander to the audience rather than to be realistic.
(Who would be caught dead saying something like ‘fuck you very much’? It makes you sound like a five year old.)
I know some of us have experience in this environment (e.g. @SSCReader). What do you think? Which bits basically ring true and which bits don’t? Is TToI just outdated?
I have some experience but it’s all student politics on the one hand and dealing with civil service type people and procurement on the other hand.
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