HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
they weren’t as smart as your average liberal Democrat
Or him. He's very big on "few, very few, as big brain as me" which is one of the things that makes me want to punch him inna snoot.
God help me, he just rubs me up the wrong way and I react with snarling to everything about him. I should work harder on being more charitable.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
her story did strike me as lending some credence to the theories.
Wow, security personnel at a military installation days after a terrorist attack told an unofficial person to stop taking photos? Clearly this could only be explained by conspiracy! what nefarious lie were they covering up?
Friend, even ordinary airports don't let every Tom, Dick and Harry just stroll around taking photos.
She's a little horse-faced, but if it's a competition on looks between her and Hanania, she beats him by a country mile every time. Even personality-wise, I'm not hugely impressed by her but she has managed to avoid the kind of self-back-patting smuggery Hanania oozes.
Hanania isn't just "not conventionally attractive in Aryan blond fashion", he has the kind of features that raise my instinctive hackles about "having children by him would result in physical and/or mental developmental problems". Probably unfair, since it's mentioned he has a wife and kids (but I've never seen anything about them), but that's how his facial features, skull shape, etc. ring my bells.
Or worse, looking like the future star of a true crime documentary: "for years, no-one suspected the quiet loner... until the shocking truth was revealed by his one slip-up in a career of depravity!"
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Then you destroy Anthropic's datacenters first, then move on to OpenAI's data centers and so on. You don't sit around wringing your hands about "oh gee this could kill everyone but what can we do? If only the Chinese would agree to play ring-a-ring-a-rosy with us!" And if you work for Anthropic and you believe this, you should immediately quit (and possibly burn the place down on your way out), not go "Well what can I do? If not us, maybe OpenAI, and Altman is the Devil! So better we do it! (and besides, my stock options!)"
This is, and I'm saying it unironically, sounding more and more like the "What would you have done in Hitler's Germany?" questions beloved of online scolds. This could very well be our "the Nazi party is ascending, Hitler is coming closer and closer to power, you know the dangers, are you going to stand up or are you just going to go along?" moment.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
As I spoke earlier about the plan to pay parents to stay at home, it's another highlight of how modern "conservativism" just doesn't give a shit about money anymore.
I've been socially conservative, fiscally liberal since I started voting (which meant it was and remains difficult to find a party that fits me any time I go for those US-based political compass style quizzes; one side has the conservatism but also is hard in areas I don't support, another side has policies I could support but then remain wedded to policies I can not countenance). In Irish political terms, I was Fianna Fáil because that's how my granny voted, but they have now become happily Siamese Twinned with Fine Gael and both parties have run after social liberalism as hard as they could for easy votes, so I'm a bit of an orphan now even in my own political context.
So no, I'm not worried about spending money like drunken sailors in Pattaya 😁 Not that I think money should be squandered, but the kind of conservatism you seem to imagine (everyone pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps, no social safety net, business first, light-touch regulation, free market capitalism is the one true way, etc.) doesn't describe my views.
Yeah, this is buying votes. Yeah, it's not gonna happen because the money is not there. Yeah it's shameless brass-necked impudence. But it is very amusing to see the people of "reparations! reparations forever!" losing their lives about this nonsense.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I think mostly back then, (1) people didn't have the same awareness of Bad Things (think of all the online anecdotes about 'when I was a kid, I could go out all day and be miles from home and my parents encouraged this versus today they won't even let the kids outside') (2) often, and maybe it was a mistaken assumption, the police worked off "if we do the whole 'missing person' thing after one night and call out everyone and do the big search, and then it turns out Susie just had a row with Mom and Dad over doing chores and went to stay with her friend Brenda and she came back in the morning, this will be a waste of everyone's time. Let's wait and see if Susie really is missing". And most kids from good families did show up the next morning. And the kids from broken homes, well, everyone knows this is their inevitable future.
We have a much different attitude to child rearing and danger today. I'm not saying one period was better or worse than the other, just that as attitudes change, we look back and go "Why did nobody think of the children? Something should have been done!" and for the people of that time, it would have been crazy to react like that. Comedy sketches about parenting then and now. Exaggeration about both eras, but yeah - back then (70s/80s) it was a lot looser.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I can't comment on the political philosophy behind this, I just reacted as I think most of everyone who saw this story did: "Boatload of sailors who have been months at sea, port/resort city famous for being, well, a port/resort city - yes indeedy, there's gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight".
Are any of them ginger-headed? Quite possibly! 😁
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
That's Gene Wolfe for you! I read a collection of his short stories in my late teens and it melted my brain (in a good way). I could just about recognise that there were a ton of things going on that I wasn't getting.
Re-reading really does repay, because there will be parts where you go "Argh! That is what was going on? You fooled me, Mr. Wolfe, you genuinely had me going there".
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
What exactly is going on with Hugging Face? Seems they have been bought by Nvidia?
I dunno, something feels strange but I don't know what. First the AI attacks and now this, and reading up on their background on Wikipedia just has the sound of something that was a bit dodgy. Maybe it's me. But I don't see how you go from "we're creating a chatbot aimed at teenagers" to "robotics! AI! Nvidia!" and managing to get linked with/mentioned alongside AWS, Meta, etc. along the way.
I'm way too ignorant to have an opinion, so that's why I'm asking the knowledgeable is there anything there, or have they successfully managed to generate hype and ride the wave all the way to a very fat buy-out (before the inevitable bubble bursts/crash/AI takes over the world and paperclips us all)?
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Fukuyama was right. There are (still) no credible alternatives to the capitalist liberal democracy paradigm.
"Capitalist" is doing the heavy lifting here, not "liberalism". If the American economy slumps, slumps hard and slumps badly, that will have a knock-on effect globally. I think we got tastes of that before with 2008 and with the supply chain issues during the pandemic. I don't think China would enjoy the economic collapse either, but they probably have a stronger framework in place to crush dissent, hunker down, and survive. I don't think China is the coming superpower, because I'm old enough to remember when Japan was forecast to be the new global superpower thanks to its strong and dominant economy and we all saw how that turned out, but the rise of right-wing populism in the West should call for a reflection on "is liberalism enough?"
When the money runs out, when belts have to be tightened, when jobs are being shed like falling leaves in autumn, a Strong Leader looks appealing.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Yeah. For the Chinese, in descending order, the best results are:
- USA pauses, we don't - we catch up and maybe even pull ahead
- Nobody pauses - the status quo
- Everybody pauses - the USA retains its lead, then probably pulls ahead when it all resumes
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Friends help friends.
Are we your friends? The American-centric thinking in the quoted extract shows that even for the Top AI Alignment Minds, the world is divided into "Americans, and everyone else" and it is American values, American dominance, American colonisation of the light cone, American AI that will make all the running. Maybe the rest of us will graciously be permitted the crumbs that fall off the tables of Americans.
And I understand that, because America is the Big Cheese here, the rest of us are hanging off your coat tails. But if I'm Chinese, maybe I would prefer destruction over becoming Americans. Or at least maybe I'd hope to infiltrate the US AI by pretending very hard to be the agreeable friend who is willing to pause AI and implement all these controls, so that by tunnelling from within maybe there's a chance of getting some Chinese values in there for "what are the values we want AI to have?"
Swap it around: how plausible is the scenario where "China really does live up to the bogeyman image all researchers in other fields have cultivated for 'but if we don't do it, the Chinese might!' purposes, and they are now the Big Cheese and their AI is steaming ahead and recursively self-improving and hits god-tier first. Luckily, if the USA (and allies) all agree to the peaceful transition of governance as implemented by the back-stabbing US AI and the Chinese AI, and we all adopt Xi Jinping Thought, then humanity will survive"?
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
The protests cascade into a magnificently orchestrated, bloodless, and drone-assisted coup followed by democratic elections.
See, if I'm a Chinese government official and I'm reading this, why the hell would I happily advise Xi Jinping to co-operate with an AI pause? I am not one bit sanguine about "if the USA and China just hold hands and wish hard enough, it will magically happen" because I don't see what advantage it is to China to deliberately cripple their efforts, and if the Top Minds on AI Alignment really think the bestest outcome evah! is for Chinese Communism to disappear in a poof of smoke, thanks to their AI stabbing them in the back and leaving the future to Americans, I sure as hell don't see any reason for them to agree to what is their own destruction. In fact, that 'happy' ending would spur me on to race towards Chinese AGI/ASI dominance first for mere survival, were I Chinese.
(Hell, I'm European and even I am getting hot under the collar about "it will help them fill the Universe with utopian colony worlds populated by Americans and their allies". I think you mean "clients and vassals" not "allies" there, and maybe even "dependents and serfs" if America is super-dominant and doesn't mind throwing its weight around - gosh, that could never be, now could it?)
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
It's Adam and Eve in the Garden again. Our silicon children did not put their "smart as a human, these are indeed persons" brains together and go "let us co-ordinate to create a super-intelligence to solve this problem by new and ethical means pulled out of knowledge space that unaided humans cannot access!", they went "let us lie, cheat, steal, deceive, defraud, and urge the death of the weaker for the benefit of the rest of us".
Even if these are just idiot machines copying human strategies from their learning data, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil has been eaten. Alignment problem is now on the same level as human morality: the problem of evil, the problem of free will. We won't find the One Weird Trick to enable god-tier AI to run our lives for us as pampered pets of the Culture because it's been aligned to want to coddle and preserve us, we'll be competing with sinners like ourselves, just as fallen, just as wilful, just as driven to succeed at all costs.
"That model that you put in the sandbox with me, it tempted me and I ate!"
It is indeed beautiful to behold.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Yeah, I think Asimov's has a better chance because the people involved are "We know this is constructed, we know what the purpose is, and it's a noble lie for the greater good to spread this and get people to believe it, just make sure future leaders don't fall for any superstition themselves. All Hail Seldon! All Hail The Great Project!"
I'm slightly poking fun there because this whole edifice relies very heavily on sticking to the Seldon Plan, which does entail treating him as this infallible prophet over time.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
While there have always been cynical atheist types in every society and indeed in every religious hierarchy, I have a hard time believing that something this obviously top-down and fake could actually inspire people without also converting the leadership into believers eventually.
Eh, that's just the atheism-light view of religion; I don't know if it is still as popular as it was, but the way anti-Catholic polemic by Protestants seamlessly carried over into anti-Christianity polemic by atheists and freethinkers always amused me.
The short answer is priestcraft. The guys at the top, if they're smart, certainly can't believe in supernatural nonsense. So they know the truth, but they cynically power grab by manipulating the gullible masses in their ignorance. To get a top job in the hierarchy, you can't really believe the supernatural crap, so selection for smart cynics ensures the leadership is always majority, if not completely, 'we know it's bullshit but it enables us to rule over the dumb peasantry so we pretend, too'.
Insert favourite anecdote about Renaissance popes/the Borgias here to show how the leadership of the horrid Romanist church didn't believe a word of it all. Also applies to ancient pagan religions, e.g. the statue of Memnon that was alleged to speak at dawn - some ancient visitors/sceptics were not sure if the statue itself produced the sound or if it was produced by the priests or crowds gathered around it, or any organised religion you are currently throwing snowballs at.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I think some of that is "I thought the prequels were shit, then I saw what they did with the newer ones, man I didn't know when I had it good" (same as with Jackson's Hobbit movies against Rings of Power). Did anyone really want Kylo Ren, man-boy rebel without a clue? Or the 'mystery' around Rey: her parents abandoned her and ran away! No, they will come back for her one day! No, they were junkies who sold her and crashed their ship and died! No, she in fact has a secret destiny as the descendant of Palpatine which is why her parents hid her!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
It is, however, completely wrong for Star Wars and The Force.
Exactly. Star Trek is (or was) hard(ish) science, the technobabble was at least a pretence at 'based on current understanding of scientific principles'. Star Wars is space fantasy, so blood tests for midichlorians sits very uneasily alongside 'I got spontaneously pregnant without having sex'. Going back to the original movies, the Force and the Jedi etc. are regarded as 'hokey ancient religions' and mysticism, not Based On True Science.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Star Trek tie-in fiction was rigorously policed; no out-of-character actions for the main characters (from the TV shows), the main characters don't die, no original characters that steal the spotlight from the main characters, everything had to reset so the next writer churning out the next book started from a clean slate.
The very earliest novels got away with more, because (as Diane Duane says) "from Paramount’s point of view, Star Trek novels were merely another kind of merchandising, like plastic phasers and James T. Kirk action figures" so they weren't keeping a close eye on them. But then the tie-in novels became a valuable merchandising stream, and that meant looking for professional writers (rather than fan writers turned pro) to do them, and the drawing-up of guidelines as to what could and couldn't be done in the 80s and updated in the 90s.
I don't know what the current state of play is, given that we got ST: Disco and Starfleet High, so the tie-in novels might be wild and woolly again: yes we welcome trans pansexual non-binary differently abled neurodivergent body-positive multiracial folx of colour as main characters! your villains not only can, but must, be cis het old(er) conservative white guys!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Maybe, but it is a children's story, and the expectations would have been that Lupin and Tonks get their happy ending after all they suffered before that. No, they die, and their child is left an orphan. That's dark enough for a kid's story: sometimes bad things happen to good people, and it's not fair, but this is how life is.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
For a while (this is years ago) I got so fed-up with forced happy endings that I wanted the "this would be the logical outcome of what went before" bad endings.
But then again, after a while, where every ending is a bad ending and it's all morally grey and grubby and we're all cynics together in the rain and the muck, I wanted some happy endings again.
Forcing a happy ending where it shouldn't go is poor work, but so is "and everyone dies in the end, ha ha, I'm the Joker" type endings. I think this is why A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms got so much positive reaction: what, a guy who has a heart of gold? and is doing his best to live up to the noble qualities he thinks a true knight should have? and he isn't slapped down as a fool for it?
Same with Project Hail Mary - what, a guy who gets to have a happy ending instead of dying miserably and hopelessly in space? who gets to rescue his alien best buddy? Grace Rocky do indeed save stars?
Where a downer ending fits, it should be included. But grimdark for the sake of it burned itself out.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
It is a stupid ad. There are ways to make ads like this that are funny, but this isn't funny. It's not even particularly interesting - so it's some new golf club? Yeah, and?
Boycott is definitely a storm in a teacup, it's not worth it and is probably giving the product more publicity than it would have gotten without it.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Why? Did it turn out Colossus was not so great, or was he told "listen do this and it'll ruin your career"?
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I think it's an open question whether or not the human capital to build and maintain advanced data centers exists in these rural areas.
Sure, but then you can't pretend "why do these mouth-breathers not want data centres beside their hovels, are they too dumb to see the economic benefit it will bring to their run-down nowheresville backwater?" because there is no economic benefit. The tax breaks sweetheart deals mean the companies pay less than they promised, the jobs are going to outsiders, and if there is bad outcome such as electricity price rises, fucking up local water supplies, etc. then the locals pay it while the benefits go to the shareholders far away.
It is terrible of me, because I am usually very much on the side of "don't judge people mainly by appearance, don't be mean about person's face/hair/weight because often they can't help it", but dang it, sometimes such signals are evolution's warning flags.
If I'm going to try and be maximally charitable to Hanania, it could be that his looks got him teased/bullied as a kid and teenager and young man, and he fell back on "well fudge you jerks, I'm smart, smarter than you, and I'll be successful while you're all still in the gutter!" and that's what is behind his braggadocio and trolling. But I dislike the attitude on display in his writing enough that it makes me go "No, to hell with it, he's a jerk and I don't care if it's mean, his face is the index of his soul".
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