HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
This kind of thing is why I'm finding the current tizzy over AI doom so hard to believe. Because the same companies that are dressing up in the robes of Cassandra and crying "Doom, doom, unless there is a pause!" are...
... building biolabs for Claude to frolic and play in, doing research (to cure all human ills, of course!)
In a Reuters interview on Tuesday, Anthropic's head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, confirmed the startup's wet lab.
"We believe that to do biology, the final test is still and will be for a while in real lab work," he said. "We absolutely are doing that today, and I would describe our approach as being typical of what you would see in most biotech companies, where there's some amount of that that we're doing in our own facilities and some amount of that that we're working with external partners on."
A spokesperson later clarified that Anthropic's lab is not for drug discovery specifically, declining to elaborate.
...Like other biotech companies, Anthropic is embracing physical automation, said the two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The startup wants to push how its Claude AI can direct robotic units to carry out science experiments with limited human intervention, one of the people said. Still, Anthropic believes that human oversight and involvement are essential for safety, its spokesperson said.
Gosh, it is so reassuring that Dario Amodei isn't doing anything to hasten the chances that AI will create some kind of bioweapon to kill off humans, like the doomers fear!
Do you see why people think all these calls for a pause are only some kind of scam by the big companies to get regulations passed that will favour them and copper-fasten their positions as the only sources for AI in general?
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I find myself going back to older books. A lot of Golden Age detective stories, which can be an acquired taste. Most recent is a collection of short stories from 1925 about a forensic surgeon for Scotland Yard called Reggie Fortune. The tone is very much of the time, and it could be grating in large doses, but for example I found this exchange very funny (of course the big cheese at Scotland Yard is a minor sprig of the gentry, of course the style of badinage is very of its day, of course it is about the well-off upper classes, of course it is very much Entre Deux Guerres and before the Great Depression and economic crash):
In a day or two Reggie made a call on the chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. He was received with a cry of joy. The Hon. Sidney Lomas pranced round the table holding out his arms.
“Reginald! My innocent child! Embrace me! I thank Heaven for your deliverance. Not a stain upon your character, they tell me. Wonderful!”
“You know all about it, do you?” said Mr. Fortune morosely.
“These little things will get about,” Lomas chuckled. “I wish I’d seen you at the police station. The fair young hero, falsely accused, defying calumny. ‘Where are my emeralds?’ says the villain hoarsely. ‘Search me,’ the noble youth cried, ‘search me, varlet!’ And his innocence was proved in the fair light of Heaven.”
“Yes. I wasn’t taking any risks,” said Mr. Fortune. “You see, I’d had the beastly things in my pocket.”
The face of Lomas changed like an actor’s from mirth to gravity. “The devil you had! And what have you been up to, Fortune?”
“I wish I knew. I was stuck in that show behind a woman who was having a spasm of the heart. When we moved on I thought I felt something at my coat-tails. I found that emerald pendant in my pocket. I dropped the beastly thing under the table and looked about for anybody suspicious. All very ordinary people. And then Mr. John Good, of the International Detective Service, was arresting me. Queer sensation, Lomas. Ever tried it?”
“Nobody has arrested me yet,” said the chief of the Criminal Investigation Department modestly.
What's interesting is that this is in the approved style where murder is treated more or less as a lark for the quirky investigator to have fun solving, but the stories are not like that. They're often about serious effects of the crimes on the people involved, and Fortune is more concerned with justice (so far as he can manage it) than the requirements of the law. He's also fully aware of the results of his investigations: if he catches the bad guy/proves his guilt, he gets that person hanged. It's not all fun and games.
The language and behaviour of the characters may be that of the "silly ass" from Wodehouse's Drones Club, but they are in fact intelligent and capable people. Though nowadays describing a male character as "prancing", "conspicuously jaunty", or "sitting in front of his dressing-table perfecting that work of art, the wave in his hair" we would have a very different impression of his, er, personal life.
Maybe the same applied in the 1920s!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Looking at cultural commentary online, Canada does seem to have been doing its damnedest to kill any sort of national identity because that involves the cursed notions of patriotism and colonialism and all the bad things white people have done. They've fallen over themselves jettisoning British identity and links, but have not replaced it with a Canadian identity, instead it's all "We are re-naming 'Bufton Park' because that was named for a former Governor-General Sir Dedlock Bufton - boo, hiss! - and now it will be called 'Qqikwikll' Memorial Gardens' for the tribe of 120 people who died out about 300 years before ever an Englishman set foot on these shores". Never mind that all the locals will still call it Bufton Park and nobody could tell you who, what or why the Qqikwikll' were.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Re: Canada and the EU, I have no idea what the hell von der Leyen is doing there (and I don't think she does either). We already have countries in Europe that don't want to be part of the EU, why are we going outside with some kind of associate partnership nonsense? This is like having Australia in the Eurovision. I don't know why either, apart from they have a big TV audience who watch it.
Maybe it's a straight swap: Greenland left the EU in 1982 and is now going with America, so maybe we get Canada in (belated) exchange?
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
The FSSP shows the church would have let them exist and be trads just fine.
Yes, so long as they accepted oversight. They insisted on "eff you" and this is what happens.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Denmark apparently has confirmed this, but as ever 'details remain unclear'.
Denmark and Greenland – an autonomous Danish territory – both hailed the agreement and said they would sign it on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next week.
“A long period of uncertainty will hopefully be replaced by a binding agreement that strengthens security in the Arctic and North Atlantic,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a social media post on Saturday.
The deal respected Denmark’s “red lines” and was “important” in light of a changed security situation, he said.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
SSPX
Who managed to blow up any remaining goodwill for them and are now excommunicated, meaning they can dwindle into yet another schismatic tiny sect out there competing in the marketplace of religion, just like any American non-denominational ministry where the founder decides he is now a bishop, demands to be addressed as such, and needs all your donations for his private jet.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Those stories are already out there, from the weird sex cults (yes, that was part of the coverage of the FTX scandal) to the weird spiritual cults (this story from 2026, this one from 2023).
Honestly, "Sam Altman is just your usual megalomaniac CEO who wants all the money and control" is the most reassuringly normal figure in the current AI landscape in the US, at least if presenting this to ordinary people.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Oh, that's a good parallel!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
an aspiring member of the conservative elite
Who would still not be Catholics (the working class religion of the Irish, Italians, Poles, etc.) but more likely Episcopalians, Catholicism-Lite but with Anglican class 😁 Look at St John the Divine in New York, with its list of famous funerals, or the National Cathedral in Washington - that's an Episcopal Church building, not a Catholic one. The Episcopalians have been influential amongst American elites out of all proportion to their numbers.
Lutheran churches may still have strong roots in national churches, but a move upwards from being a redneck Fundie to a progressive Lutheran? That would help in political ascension, reassurance that you're not going to wipe your boots on the tablecloth or spit on the floor.
Though possibly I'm looking at this through a British Isles lens, where Margaret Thatcher moved from Methodism to Anglicanism as she rose in the Tory party.
In the 2024 election cycle, employees of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, have overwhelmingly donated to the Democratic ticket, with approximately 98% of their contributions going to Kamala Harris
How smart can they be if they backed the no-hoper? That's snarky, but it's all of a piece with the Carrick Flynn election effort. Two minutes reading about the candidates there had me going "The union candidate is gonna get it" and lo, so it came to pass. All the smart, well-meaning, hopeful people with the FTX (ahem) money were looking in the wrong direction - at what they thought was The Mostest Important Issue Ever (pandemic prevention, remember those days? today they'd probably run someone on AI doom) and not "what are the voters in this new district in this state likely to feel are important to them?"
That's the trouble. "We are really really smart and we think this is the most urgent thing so everybody should think it's the most urgent thing and we don't need to know the views of others who don't think it's the most urgent thing because they're not as smart as us".
To quote "The Man Who Was Thursday":
Then all Bull’s boiling good sense and optimism broke suddenly out of him.
“Oh, this is all raving nonsense!” he cried. “If you really think that ordinary people in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must be madder than an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these fellows, the whole town would fight for us.”
...“I think,” said Dr. Bull with precision, “that I am lying in bed at No. 217 Peabody Buildings, and that I shall soon wake up with a jump; or, if that’s not it, I think that I am sitting in a small cushioned cell in Hanwell, and that the doctor can’t make much of my case. But if you want to know what I don’t think, I’ll tell you. I don’t think what you think. I don’t think, and I never shall think, that the mass of ordinary men are a pack of dirty modern thinkers. No, sir, I’m a democrat, and I still don’t believe that Sunday could convert one average navvy or counter-jumper. No, I may be mad, but humanity isn’t.”
... Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea.
“There never was any Supreme Anarchist Council,” he said. “We were all a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the dynamiters. I knew I couldn’t be wrong about the mob,” he said, beaming over the enormous multitude, which stretched away to the distance on both sides. “Vulgar people are never mad. I’m vulgar myself, and I know. I am now going on shore to stand a drink to everybody here.”
To get anywhere, AI issue people are going to have to deal with and convince ordinary vulgar people, and they won't do that by appeals that work for a particular set of 'modern thinkers'.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I genuinely think that for these people, the world does not exist outside of the Bay Area/Silicon Valley bubble. Oh sure, Washington because the politicians, maybe New York for money, but the 'real world' is only the one they personally inhabit and the people they interact with, the rest of us are just NPCs.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Because that's not the thing they want. "Make sure AI is aligned with human values" always, from the start, had the unspoken but clear assumption "where human values means San Franciscan liberal values".
I'm not one bit surprised China is refusing to get with the AI slowdown. I've always asked "What's in it for China? Why should China agree?" If the idea is "Make sure all AI globally is stuffed full of the kind of anti-everything bad, pro-everything good where 'bad' and 'good' are judged by "what would get the San Francisco Board of Supervisors seal of approval?" then is anyone really surprised the CCP is "Um, we're not so sure about that"?
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
If the work stopped being done for a week, how badly would that inconvenience you?
I have a feeling a lot more people would be inconvenienced by "they didn't renew the cleaning contract" than "oh no the person using AI to vibecode SEO was out sick all week!"
Speaking as a damned Papist who is going to sizzle in Hell along with the other misguided led astray by the Roman Church 😁
Taking No. 2 first, if you have doubts or qualms but are required to teach it from a position of belief, I would say don't. Depending of course on the severity of your doubts; if it's "absolutely do not hold this belief" then you'd have to do a lot of twisting and turning to get to "I'll teach it as part of the job", if it's "not too sure but it's not a deal-breaker for me" then okay.
Taking No. 1, dispensationalism/the Rapture etc. is so little a part of church teaching outside of certain denominations that I had no notion what position, if any, we damned Papists hold and had to look it up. Turns out officially we're amillennialists.
I can't snark too hard here, as it turns out it was an Anglo-Irish clergyman who kicked the whole thing off (in modern times), so apologies on behalf of my nation for that!
Darby is noted in the theological world as the father of "dispensationalism", whose eschatology was adopted and later made popular in the United States by Cyrus Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible.
...Darby has been credited with originating the pretribulational rapture theory.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
When it comes to sporting events, such as rugby matches, the (unofficial) national anthems are great. Flower of Scotland for Scotland, Land of My Fathers (harder to sing in Welsh) for Wales.
We got stuck with Ireland's Call for the rugby (due to the all-island nature of the team) which is okay, but it's no Amhrán na bhFiann. Which is why Irish crowds tend to sing The Fields of Athenry instead at such events.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
The Marseillaise is always a good one. Generally, the older anthems which were big on "let us crush the foe beneath our feet so that their blood flows in streams" are bangers, unlike the modern tendency to be all wishy-washy and inclusive.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Eh, I tend to give Vance the benefit of the doubt because he converted from evangelical Protestantism. If he had merely been chasing clout for the "smart people" version of Christianity, he'd have gone to one of the mainline denominations - Episcopalians for most snobbery value but they probably would all have turned green and had a fit of the vapours at the very notion, so one of the Lutheran or Methodist liberal churches. Bill Clinton is Baptist, but American Baptist, the northern and more liberal sibling of the Southern Baptists. There are progressive Baptists, and one James Talarico is doing his best for the Democrats in Texas by being a (liberal) Presbyterian (heavy on the liberal, less so on the Christian as anything stronger than "Jesus wants us all to be nice" doctrines).
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Yes.
The Resurrection? Yes.
Jesus is the Son of God? Yes.
The Trinity? Yes.
Virgin Birth? Yes.
Garden of Eden? That's the "yes, but" one. Literally a garden etc.? No (but the apple pun is too good to give up). However, that we had First Parents, that they were the first true (ensouled) humans, and that we lost our relationship with God through misuse of our free will (probably but not limited to disobedience as pride was doing a lot of work there too)? Yeah. But here we're getting into the senses of Scripture and how to (and how not to) interpret Scripture. Sometimes you should take it literally, sometimes not, and the questions are where to make the distinction.
The fun one there is "Original Sin - yay or nay? transmissible or not?"
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I just found it strange phrasing where I would have expected him to say either "my wife didn't want to worry about this while on maternity leave" or "while I was on paternity leave". The way it was written made it sound like the wife was on paternity leave, and since it's in the Californian context, I would not have been surprised if some woman (perhaps in a same-sex marriage, but not necessarily) had taken a court case that denying her paternity leave was sex/gender-based discrimination and won 😁
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
hire somebody else to "do that kind of work".
That's the kind of unconsciously classist/condescending attitude that annoys me in EA discourse about the most effective and rational way to donate, and where the people involved would be highly insulted if you flat-out told them they think they are a superior class/caste of people and the lower orders are merely there to do the dirty work. But "hire someone of less value than you to shovel the shit out of the cages" is precisely that attitude at work. Manual labour is not worth much, even if we need it, because it is low paid (and besides soon we'll have robots to do it, so all the manual workers can... evaporate into thin air? get UBI and become creative artists? go back home to Central and South America?)
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
a publication designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a hate group
Oh well, if the SPLC says it! At this stage, I wouldn't trust the SPLC if they said "This new German politician with the first name Adolf seems a bit dicey", given their track record on "scaring the crap out of older people is a perfectly cromulent fund raising technique" and "the supply of hate groups fails to meet the demand, let us redress that balance".
Reggie is definitely a forerunner to Lord Peter. He writes a telegram in Latin to tease the CID boss, and another story has his knowledge of Ancient Greek be a plot point.
But so far, I'm amused. Though in the first story he's thirty-five years old, which everyone treats him as being "just a boy". And we think extended adolescence is a modern phenomenon!
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