JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
Formerly "SandwichWarrior" and "The Upright Man", may or may not be feral, is most certainly quixotic.
User ID: 4009
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
Did it retain that correction across instances? Or did you have to re-prompt it each time?
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
But what was interesting was that I pointed out the errors to the LLM and it told me that it could fix these problems.
Do you believe everything you are told?
A good friend of mine was one of OpenAI's principle coders in back in the day and I asked him once if he was worried about a "Foom Scenario". His response was essentially identical to the thought experiment that you posted in last week's thread. His take was that the extent to which LLMs were dangerous was entirely proportional to the extent which "autists and sociopaths" would take their rhetoric seriously.
It seems manifestly true to me that they're is a substantial portion of the world's population who believe that Israel as a nation should not exist and who will cheer enthusiastically upon seeing Israeli sons killed and daughters raped.
To dismiss the acknowledgement of this fact as a mere "snarl word" strikes me as either extremely naive or purposefully uncharitable.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
A decent portion of the world's population is horrified by America's actions and psychopathic killing.
To quote our Vice President, I don’t really care.
Has the number even been verified to any deep degree?
Not that I am aware of, and even if it were verified I don't think I would care. Much like @Iconochasm above, I find the complaint fundamentally unserious. The Iranian Regime purposefully kills thousands of it's own people and habitually threatens to attack it's neighbors and everybody just accepts this as normal, but the US accidentally kills 160 due to outdated information and suddenly "A decent portion of the world's population is horrified by America's actions and psychopathic killing."?
I don't buy it, and I wouldn't expect Trump, Rubio, Vance, Et Al. to either.
Are the "160 school girls" supposed to be special in some way?
The fundamental problem that the Iranian regime faces is that even if we take their claims at face value, who are we to care?
They can throw all the shade they like but they still need to convince Rubio, Vance, Et Al. that there is an advantage to the US to be had in not dismissing them out of hand.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
For someone who resides outside the US, that is understandable, but coming from someone residing in the US your comment above could easily be interpreted as advocating a system of "Rules for Thee but not for Me".
These types of people have not been going to prison for a while and there in lies the rub.
First off, I don't know much about you but I do recognize your name.
...and funnily enough the Dragonlance Chronicles were very much a part my formative years. Specifically the Doom Brigade and the Time of the Twins trilogy. From my perspective the idea that "the world we live in is not designed to reward the life most worth living" ties in neatly with what I have said previously about how " the post-modern liberal ethos of emancipation, self actualization, and the maximization of one's earthly/material material conditions and status is simply incompatible with forming healthy relationships and families."
As for the the bit about how...
anybody who finds themselves always moving with the tide is either an opportunist or a coward. A life of principle always leads one into conflict with power.
...on this much we are in complete agreement.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
First of all, who went to prison for sponsoring the FSA or Afghan kiddie-diddlers?
If you were to run for office on the platform of putting Ben Rhodes, John Podesta, and Hilary Clinton in prison for life I'd vote for you, but until you do, I think the lady doth protest too much.
The intended meaning is here is that the hypocrite, even if they are not virtuous themselves, are at least "paying tribute" to virtue in the sense that they are acknowledging virtue as something that is high status and that ought to be desired and/or aspired to.
Meanwhile a plain language reading of your post would seem to suggest that that you would prefer a world where in which civic virtue is disregarded in favor of some nebulous ideal of technocratic objectivity. If that is the case, I reject the premise, and posit that if push comes to shove there is a decent chance that you and I will find ourselves on opposing sides in a shooting war. I hope it doesn't come to that but don't expect me or mine to pull our punches if it does.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
Maybe it his is one of those cultural gaps but I feel like in order to become disenchanted one must have first been enchanted and that was just never my my experience. Where I'm from it was simply taken as a given that the authorities fallible fallible and more often than not corrupt. From Short Circuit to Aliens and Die Hard I grew up watching movies where "the government" or "the company" were the bad guys.
I feel like a big difference between you and I is that unlike you I grew up sincerely believing that if I behaved with honor and integrity I would inevitably come into conflict with the powers that be.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
Indeed. Furthermore I would argue that at the end of the day plumbers janitors and morticians are more essential to maintaining a "first world" quality of life than anyone working in software or finance.
Your president threatened to destroy the Iranian civilization overnight.
Yes, because it is the opinion of many in the Trump administration and in the Gulf States that a depopulated Iran is preferable to letting the IRGC have nuclear weapons. "Proportionality" is a courtesy not a moral precept.
The purpose of deploying that threat was to get the Iranians to the negotiation table. Think of it like a police officer shouting "stop or I'll shoot". And you know what, it worked.
Watching the same people who were screaming about the coming genocide a week ago flip to calling Trump a pussy/loser for failing to follow through has been a trip.
Again I disagree that this is going badly for the US, and actually think it might strengthen our geo-political position overall
Prior to the US announcement, the closure of the straights was effectively a selective blockade where in the Iranians and their trading partners were afforded safe passage but no one else was. The US position here is that if the straights are going to be "closed" than they are closed to everyone. As a parent of small children I have to say I sympathize, if you kids can't play nice nobody gets to play.
Trump, Vance, Rubio, Et Al. are wagering that the people who've been buying Iranian oil are more likely to put pressure on the regime to concede the nuclear question than they are to risk a shootout with the US Navy.
Granted this is a gamble, but it seems like a reasonable one all things considered.
But in terms of blocking Iran from getting a nuke, it would have indeed been very effective. That was the whole point.
What exactly makes you think this? Outside of giving Iran more money and resources to arm their proxies and crackdown on protests, the most common criticism of the JCPOA was that it lacked any enforcement mechanism or requirement to dismantle existing facilities/capabilities.
Also the agreement was not that the Islamic Republic of Iran would not develop nuclear weapons, the agreement was that they would pause their pursuit of nuclear weapons for 10 years. That was in 2015 and it is currently 2026.
...and then the TV series ditched the religious aspects to make the conflict about political parties and space-oil because they wanted to make something that would be "pertinent to modern audiences" and in so doing they lost the plot.
There was a reason I called out Eric Nylund's novels specifically. He is to Halo fiction what Dan Abnett and Rob Rath are to 40K, they understand what makes the games and the setting appealing and they elevate it.
And yes the UNSC is shady and corrupt, but the important thing is that our heroes are not. "I am going to do the right thing, orders be damned" is a recurring motif in both the games and novels. and for my part at least, that is a major reason why I find certain choices made in the later games and media so problematic. Like I said, I don't want nihilism and moral ambiguity from my fiction. I get enough of that from studying history. What I want is something to inspire and/or aspire to.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
Please define "acting more rationally"
What have they done that you think marks them as "more rational"? What specifically is it about of the US, Israel, and the Gulf States recent dealings with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IRGC that you view as "irrational"?
Excellent comment, but I'd like to push back a little regarding the EU material. Eric Nylund's tie-in novels are some legitimately good Mil-SF in their own right and I feel like this live-action promo for Halo: ODST and the Foward Unto Dawn web serial are likely the closest thing to a sincere and earnest adaptation of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers that we are going to get.
Agreed. Even if we accepted for the sake of argument that the Supreme Leader himself would not order a first strike, how confident are we in the rest of the Iranian regime's command and control infrastructure?
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
And that's why taking out their powerplants is an option that is on the table. As I keep saying, you can't run a uranium enrichment facility on portable generators and rooftop solar.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
Did you watch the video?
I feel like you are privileging labels over substance. If the Israeli government is able to identify the people who who wish to see Israeli citizens raped and murdered how much does it really matter which specific word they use to describe them? It seems to me that "zionist" (prominent or otherwise) is just as much a "snarl word" as "antisemite" is in this context.
Furthermore it's not about words, it's about actions. If the Democrats or Labour decide that they want to align themselves with radical Islam or the Islamic Republic of Iran decides that they want nukes that is their choice, but choices have consequences.
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