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SubstantialFrivolity

I'm not even supposed to be here today

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joined 2022 September 04 22:41:30 UTC
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SubstantialFrivolity


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
I'm not even supposed to be here today

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 22:41:30 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 225


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
							
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				Wellness Wednesday for October 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you. I know what you mean, when my brother in law died my wife was so despondent that she wouldn't even eat. I had to beg and cajole her just to get her to take a few bites of food. Thankfully she is well past the worst of it; she has moments where she feels sad but she is also able to enjoy life more days than not. And I guess in the grand scheme of things a year(ish) isn't so much time that you would expect everyone to be completely back to 100%. It'll just take more time for the wounds to heal, I guess.


I'm sorry to hear about your situation as well. Having had front row seats to watching an addict circle the drain... I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. I think there's something uniquely awful about seeing a good person get their brain hijacked by the addiction, because you know that the original person is in there somewhere, and you want to see them come back out again. Hopefully your wife doesn't blame herself; that is one of the things I have to keep trying to encourage my wife on. Reminding her that she did everything she could, and that she isn't at fault for the choices someone else made. Good luck to you and yours, man... I wish your family a speedy recovery.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've been dealing lately with grief from the loss of my brother in law (back in December, 10 months already) to alcoholism. It's honestly been pretty hard and I wonder if it'll ever feel ok. Sometimes I'm angry at him for not making better choices. Sometimes I'm sad that we won't hang out any more. Sometimes I'm worried for my wife, for whom this is 10x harder than it is for me (he was her brother, after all). Mostly I just wish that we, his family, could have him back. Fuck alcoholism you guys. It is the worst thing I've ever seen someone go through, including fatal illnesses. I wish that he could've beaten it. :(


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To be clear, is support of Hitler acceptable from politicians and staffers or is it not?




I think you are confusing someone saying "I support Hitler" in a private, friendly conversation with actually supporting Hitler. Of course everyone who supports Hitler would say they support him, but not everyone who says they support him actually supports him. That is part of the point @cjet79 is getting at, I think.


For example, I have cracked jokes in the presence of friends to the effect of "slavery was great, we need to go back to that". But I do not actually want slavery to be practiced, it is just an edgy joke. One I would probably get turbo canceled for if I were a public figure, no doubt, but still just a joke.


I get the sense that with these Republican messages, you're taking them completely at face value (because they are your outgroup and it's just human nature to believe bad things about your outgroup). But you can't just assume that at the start, and then ask pointed "wait so supporting Hitler is ok?" questions. First we need to come to an agreement whether these dudes actually support Hitler, or if they were making edgy jokes. Only then can we have a well-founded discussion about "is that ok for them to do".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
With all due respect, I wasn't asking for an opinion on whether he's correct. I was asking if there is a way to tactfully ask him to lay off.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The solutions usually require relatively simple debugging steps that build off of basic foundational knowledge, but the LLMs don't have the ability to reason through this foundational knowledge well, and I don't expect the transformer architecture to ever get that reasoning ability.




That is one of my big skeptic points with LLMs. They don't (and can't) reason, they are producing what is likely to be correct based on their training data. When having this discussion with my boss he argued "they know everything about networking", and I don't see how they can be accurately said to know anything at all. They can't even be counted on to reliably reproduce the training data (source: have witnessed many such failures), let alone stuff that follows from the training data but isn't in it. Maybe we will get there (after all, cutting edge research is improving almost by definition), but we aren't there yet.


Thanks for the story, as well. I hadn't considered an explanation like that so I'll have to take a look at that if we ever want to dig deep and find the root cause.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, I'm not saying that a bad CEO can't destroy the company. I'm saying that we do not have reason to believe that paying so much gets you a good CEO. Notably, even a CEO who destroys the company tends to get paid a bonus for his trouble. That is the exact opposite of rational, and so we would expect to see such clauses get eliminated, but if I'm right (and CEO compensation is driven by good old boys helping each other out) it is completely expected.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
cc @dr_analog


The thing which motivated the question was that we were doing iperf tests from one location on our network to others, and observed that there was a significant difference in speed between one stream and 10. With one stream we might see a 200 Mbps speed, but with 10 we might see 400 Mbps. That seemed odd because like I said, you would think a single stream would be faster due to less overhead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ok, fair. There are definitely degrees of heathen and that is way further than watching stuff on your phone. I'm honestly surprised people are rude enough to do that, but maybe I shouldn't be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I watch the majority of movies and shows on my phone. I'm also not a heathen...




You can't tell us how you do heathen shit and then expect us to believe you when you say you aren't a heathen. :P


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That has happened a few times, but has not yet deterred him. He does generally accompany his "I asked $model and it says" statements with an acknowledgement that one needs to check because it might be hallucinating, but so far it hasn't really changed his habit to always ask AI first on every single topic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's certainly true that human output can be incorrect. But it's incorrect at a much lower rate than an LLM is, assuming you ask a human who knows the topic. But that aside, it seems to me like "have you asked AI" is the 2025 equivalent of "let me Google that for you", and is just as annoying as that was. If I trusted an AI to give me a good answer I would just ask it, I don't need someone else to remind me that it exists.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there a tactful way to ask your boss to lay off something? My boss, a smart guy whom I respect, has become obsessed with LLMs. Literally every conversation with him about work topics has become one where he says "I asked (insert model) and it said..." which adds no value to the conversation. Worse, he responds to questions with "have you tried asking AI?". For example the other day I asked him if he knows why multiple TCP streams are faster than one (when you would naively think they would be slower due to TCP overhead), and he asked if I asked AI. Which of course I didn't, because I actually wanted to know the answer, not get something plausible which may or may not be correct. And he's like that with every question posed lately, even when we had legal documents we had questions on he was like "did you try feeding it to Gemini and asking?"


It's frankly gotten incredibly annoying and I wish he would stop. Like I said, I actually have a lot of respect for the man but it's like he's chosen to outsource his brain to Grok et al lately. I suspect that my options are to live with it or get a new job, but figured I'd ask if people think there's a way I can tactfully address the situation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It would be rational if there was any evidence that paying that much gave you any meaningful increase in how good your CEO is. But I don't think there is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"arbitrarily small" is really just the hypothesized "this person accomplishes nothing" with different wording.  That sort of mathematical language makes sense if you're doing a proof, but we aren't.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You, @sarker and @TitaniumButterfly have all made that point and I will admit it's persuasive. So I will amend my statement: it is possible for one person to produce infinitely more value than another, but only in the degenerate case where one of the people is doing nothing or is a net negative to productivity. I don't think it's possible for that to occur in a normal case (where both people are actually producing value), however.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Technically undefined, I think? Because it would be dividing by zero to determine how much more someone is producing than that worker.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm pretty sure Elon Musk and Warren Buffett produce more than 1000x the value I produce.




Personally, I don't believe it's possible for one person to produce 1000x the value of another. I think that CEO pay is not driven by actual value provided, but from the fact that CEO compensation is set by boards of directors who are... executives themselves, so it's just a good old boys' network. But certainly whether you think the arrangement is fair depends upon if one  thinks it is indeed possible for one person to provide that much more value than another.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Your mistake is thinking that this has anything to do with math. People aren't upset because the CEO's pay causes them to get underpaid, they are upset because it is ludicrously, wildly unfair to pay someone over 1000x what you pay the people who actually drive the company's ability to make money. It's a question of justice, not one of "how much would we benefit from cutting this guy's salary".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well. How much would you demand to be CEO of Starbucks?




I would do it for a paltry $1m/year, almost 1% of what they are paying the current guy. I don't promise to be a great businessman who can turn the company around, but it sounds like he isn't either. So if they're going to have someone who is bad at the job, they may as well at least have someone who is cheap.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Santa is a harmless fantasy that kids get to believe in for a precious few years. I don't think it's in the least bad to encourage the belief.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I definitely believed Santa was real. I can't speak for the internal thoughts of anyone around me, but they didn't seem to be just going along, they seemed to believe it as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the point was that soup is cooked, not brewed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


you realize that as much as you love this girl, she will never be a 100 ft tall dragon who will take you into her dragon womb, connect an umbilical cord to you, and genetically rewrite your body so that you too become a dragon.




Is, uh... is that something you are looking for in life?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm sympathetic to your argument, but even if porn is disgusting that doesn't mean one should show disgust for the young men who watch it. You need to show them compassion to get them to change, not go "ewww" as so many tend to do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 5, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Spanish is #2 by far. #3 is hard to say, but maybe Korean? I see Korean writing on some businesses and churches in my part of town, but can't think of any other foreign languages I see while out and about.