Corvos
2hr ago
This reminds me of Scott A saying that in terms of giving a good impression:
- it’s great to be cool and charismatic and self-confident
- it’s… fine to be normal and a bit diffident and insecure
- it’s really bad to be a slightly shy and insecure person pretending to be cool and charismatic and self-confident
Corvos
3hr ago
I can’t imagine that Anthropic would voluntarily sell exclusive access to the US government.
Corvos
11hr ago
Speaking as someone who’s weighed up automating some processes versus hiring some manual workers to do it, there seems a world of difference between “we’d rather automate this because hiring a team will open us up to lots more compliance, plus it’ll be really inconvenient if they drop out or aren’t any good or demand more interesting work or we decide to end the project” versus hating people and wanting them to suffer.
Corvos
17hr ago
In complete seriousness, I don’t think you understand the visceral worries that parents have of whether their children will do well.
Your economic analysis of what would happen to the money is correct but I know enough parents to know many are genuinely trying to do their best for their children rather than living out some pompous caricature of the PMC, and are desperately afraid their children will fall into an unhappy state.
You may think those fears are misguided but parental worry is something that it’s hard to reason away.
Corvos
1d ago
Eh, the male equivalent is the treatment of idols and people like that. Less an Anglo thing but actresses (and actors) have often been expected to comport their sex life in such a way as to not shatter the fantasies of their fans.
Elder Race is one of my favourite books and I don't recognise this description at all. There's one bit where she realises she's formally put herself in the debt of an ancient and largely incomprehensible (to her at that point) being. Since she's very sheltered and inclined to think in story plots, she wonders if this is going to be a story about how a princess got spirited away by a wizard. Nothing comes of it because he's a clinically depressed basket case who regards her as primitive, and because he's still kicking himself for totally fouling up a budding romance with her long-dead great-great-grandmother.
The plot is mostly about her growing up and getting a clue, while he reconnects with humanity. (Also realising that being a 'wizard' is much cooler than being a shut-in old man and the Ethics Committee can go hang, they’re all dead anyways.)
I can’t speak for his books in the generality but Elder Race doesn’t have any of that kind of thing, or even any romance.
It’s primarily a story about the (platonic) relationship between an ancient nanoaugmented ethnologist stranded on a colony world that has regressed to medieval tech, and the spunky princess fifth in line who’s going on a Quest in order to make people take her seriously and thinks he’s a wizard.
The other novella I read, The Expert System’s Brother, doesn’t have that kind of thing either.
Corvos
3d ago
A pretty loaded bet, I think, they charge a big premium. It makes people feel safer though.
Corvos
3d ago
Do you, though? Look at Chinese open-source AI. It's un-cucked (along the lines most of us here care about) because what the Chinese government really cares about you don't, and vice versa. Likewise Japanese manga and anime provided an escape hatch for every man sick of relentlessly feminist media. Things like Sci-Hub and Pirate Bay are based in the 'stans and the Netherlands respectively. Do you really want your countrymen to get final see on everything you're allowed to access?
Corvos
3d ago
They have submitted to the authority of the government. They’re arguing that the government’s demands should be reasonable, untargeted, and not sprung on us out of the blue.
Corvos
4d ago
Some restaurants or hot spring resorts have "no foreigners" or "Japanese only" posted at their entrance.
FWIW in practice that means, "guests must speak Japanese and respect Japanese mores". If you're fluent to a reasonable level and behave yourself they're perfectly happy to have you.
Corvos
4d ago
Almost certainly. More conspiratorially, it’s related to the discussions around government investment in OpenAI. But I think it’s punishment beatings.
Business owners can have political beliefs without being noxious about them. Refusing to patronise a restaurant because the owner didn’t put the correct BLM/whatever flag on their Twitter bio is one thing, refusing to visit one that has a massive tribal flag on the wall and makes a big deal out of raising funds for something you dislike seems entirely acceptable.
Corvos
4d ago
My proposal is to go back to PS2 graphics for use as art direction, then let AI handle the full render. Maybe conditioning it on the concept art too somehow.
The small client didn't set a limit because another salesman/contractor set it up for them without a limit. They are not technical people.
That seems to represent severe negligence on the part of the person who set it up, with foreseeable consequences. The limits are AFAIK turned on by default so the salesman must have turned them off. There's a decent chance they could get their money back in the courts IMO. Especially if it was a salesman for a larger company not a contractor.
Corvos
5d ago
Right, but that wouldn't fly for me. His Sikhness is directly related to the relative leniency of his sentence. Our society bends over to accomodate the Digwa's of the world whilst when Keir Starmer needs white rioters and people who say racially inflammatory things on Twitter to disappear, they disappear into extremely punitive jail sentences with magnificent speed.
Corvos
5d ago
Of course, go ahead, and thanks for being open. FWIW I read the judge's comments directly.
I meant he was going for 2 by wearing the fedora. Better a weirdo than a weirdo who’s taken correspondence courses on how to look like a DC mover and shaker.
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