YoungAchamian
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User ID: 680
YoungAchamian
2hr ago
I might be getting my memory mixed up, checking the wiki, I've not read Interesting Times. I was going from memory of Guards Guards. But apparent it was Suffer-Not-Injustice Stoneface Vimes (what a name) who killed the king and ushered in the age of Patrician-Tyrants. I think Vetinari's general vibe is more that he is supremely pragmatic. Killing and torture, is a tool in his toolbox, I got the impression it's not his favorite but he wouldn't also not. There has a certain moral compass to it, not necessarily evil, but also not really good either.
YoungAchamian
17hr ago
Sigh. I've been getting increasingly tired of arguing with the skeptics, at least on this site. Not all of them are equally as bad, of course,
I hope I am not in this grouping in your mind. I am not a skeptic on AI per se, I am a skeptic on LLMs. Entirely for technical reasons related to training data availability. LLMs perform great on any task that has a large corpus of training data available to. Multi-headed Attention really is a great technique. I think you made the same mistake Dase makes, you think AI == LLMs when really LLMs are a subset of AI, not the whole pinata.
I exist however in a field where there aren't large corpuses of data. There aren't millions of samples on what an IED does to the human body, in a wide diversity of situations, or how a combat medic should respond to various injuries, or the secondary and tertiary blast effects of a nuclear warhead on different locals with different burst patterns, yield dynamics, etc. To date nobody has been able to create reliable wargaming material on actual simulated conflicts that display actual tactical and strategic insights, and trust me they have tried...
We will achieve a super intelligence eventually, and while I am skeptical on a "singularity" (tm) it's probably possible eventually, I just don't think LLMs without serious modifications are really it, and I don't believe brute force scaling is going to achieve it.
YoungAchamian
17hr ago
I mean the point I was making in the original discussion is still not really addressed. The abstraction that I think is wrong here is that everything just reduces to knowledge, and that all knowledge is equally difficult. I didn't watch your video above but I did what the Security Conference one where the Antropic researcher demonstrates Claude/Mythos doing bug bounties. The core bug it was finding was buffer overflows, it found some very tricky buffer overflows, but buffer overflows are conceptually simple. The knowledge required to find them or create them is not high.
It's very much the sort of thing I'd think an AI would be good at: pattern matching in a large bulk of test data after being trained on an even larger training corpus. What is the training corpus of Bio-plague design? As far as I know it does not exist. And this is before we even get into the world of actually creating it. Turns out unlike software, chemical biology is not so simple as adding molecules to a plague like adding legos to building.
This one of those blindspots I think software folks have, we assume that you can just add logic to something, like you would a program.
YoungAchamian
22hr ago
I think you are missing the point, and have somehow attributed the opposite argument to me.
The argument is: Strict Atomic Existence is sole component of reality (Lizzardspawn) vs Non-corporeal existence is still a component of reality (Me)
You seem to be arguing the later while thinking I support the former...
YoungAchamian
1d ago
Technically as former leader(or at least member) of the Assassin's guild, and current leader "behind the throne", it was implied that he killed his way into being the ruler of Anhk-Morpork. He might technically rule now with the current consent of the legitimate king/heir, but he did murder his way to the top in typical tyrant fashion.
Not necessarily the good example of morals.
YoungAchamian
1d ago
I mean are you in support of the original comment? Because just recognizing a phenomena is emergent doesn't mean it has suddenly created atoms of itself. It still does not physically exist.
YoungAchamian
1d ago
This was well written and definitely insightful. Allow me to mirror with an equally broad interpretation. I am however, much less eloquent, hopefully my ideas will make it through my torturous use of the English language.
Your conception of Terry Pratchett as this ex-theist, now atheist author, angry, shaking his fist into the sky at the injustice of existence. Wishing such a god of his youth would exist, so that he could to be taken to task for the cruelly of the world, is pretty close. But I think your view misses a core piece, though I think you touch on the penumbra's of it. Pratchett is at his core a cynical humanist. He might rage against the absence of the divine but he more rages against the follies of mankind.
One of those follies, is our penchant for delusion. We lie to ourselves a lot. We delude our selves into believing we are nobler, better, purer than we are. We divide ourselves along arbitrary boundaries, other each other, create monsters in the guise of man and justify it with copious amounts of bullshit. We call upon gods of every shape, size, and creed to justify our actions, our lies. We pretend the world is complex and complicated, that there is so much grey.
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of grey.” “Nope.” “Pardon?” “There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby.” - Granny Weatherwax, Carpe Jugulum
In this vein, Pratchett positions himself as the magnifying glass, the pickaxe. He does what many comedians of the more cynical bent do. He pulls at that edifice of delusions. He constructs fantastical worlds that at the same time mirror our own, and he uses them to speak truth about the human condition. Sure there is that anger you see, but there is also an unburdening, a liberation to the authentic human experience. I agree Pratchett might have favorites characters like Carrot, and that he really speaks through characters like Sam Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, Havelock Vetinari, and Death. But those characters all to a tee, see through the delusions of mankind.
In a different psychology profile of a section of readers, put yourself in the shoes of a young high-functioning Autist, of agnostic religious belief. Your world is one of lies, people say one thing and mean another. Everyone is constantly claiming this or that faith or creed is perfect, but not that piece of it, that gospel, that word, the "situations" is different, the rules need to be bent, "stop trying to make everything so simple", "can't you see the world is more complex", "stop being so rigid". But in comes fantasy literature. At first: Tolkien & Lewis, their worlds are so much more pure, the good, are noble and good. Evil is bad. The world is black and white, and simple. Complex in its expansive history, its cohesive world, but fundamentally an honest world, full of wonder, and symbolism. More than enough for your extreme pattern-recognizing brain to fall in love with. Then Adams, with his absurdism, you can't help but relate because the real world is so absurd, there is so much bullshit, so much fakery trying to dress itself up. Then you discover Pratchett, cynical, humorous Pratchett. Nobody in Narnia or Middle earth pretends the world is more complicated. Sauron never tries to sell you the "its complicated" argument, Aragon isn't genociding Haradrim while acting like he's a noble king. Gondor's economic policy is not discussed. Discworld however feels closer to reality, it feels more representative of the IRL delusions. And Pratchett peels back the curtain, shows that yes, even the more "complex" world really is simple. In that sense, the fantasy is realer, it requires less make-believe, less suspension of belief, but is still full of wonder and whimsey. It helps that Pratchett is clever and funny.
Of course then in my case, I went onto the darker side, AGoT, Black Company, Malazan, Gene Wolfe, R. Scott Bakker. They help kill the child and prepare you for the cold reality of adulthood in a world filled with the nasty little monsters we call humans.
But the "atom of justice" quote from this lens is not about making our own justice in the world, or even that they train us to believe the impossible in the empty world. It's about the epistemological idea that not all lies, all delusions are bad. There are very real, very important things, to mankind that are not elementary particles. Collective ideas that we have dreamed up. That are core to what makes us human. The unfiltered truth of reality is not some moral bedrock that should be aspired to. It should go without saying, but in case it doesn't, people might not literally believe that justice comes in atoms but they absolutely believe in concepts that don't actually exist in physical reality and they treat denial of those, very not true things, as massively transgressive. So young Autistic child, be less like the Auditors, and more like Death. It is to me, a wonderful expose on how flawed humanity is, how there is beauty in that flaw, and how that flaw is what makes humans, humans.
YoungAchamian
1d ago
Oooo, this might be an interesting conversation, because I like the general outlines of the whole passage. I think it fits well with the general idea of humans as a social, story-oriented species whose need for belief drives our psyche. I think looking through humankind through that lens is very illuminating. Idk about it being aspirational, I take it as cutting, disrobing, shedding of our delusions of rationality.
But I'd be interested in hearing why you think its stupid and a terrible argument?
YoungAchamian
1d ago
haha, it is definitely my favorite quote of his. It has made a tremendous impact on my views.
YoungAchamian
1d ago
And it is easy to prove - take any human, do the thoroughest possible vivisection on them and you won't be able to find a single right.
This applies to a ton of things though. Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, mercy, fairness, god, faith, happiness, race, love, LLCs, etc. The list goes on. Not everything is a physically existing element.
A strictly materialist viewpoint of reality is likely insufferably bleak to the point that no one alive would want to live it.
YoungAchamian
2d ago
Congratulations on the progress. Keep up the grind. I put out something like 260 application in a month, back in 2024 when I was laid off. It's work, it feels hopeless, but just preserve. You got this.
a situation where i get a call back from one of these places 1st, say yes, and then bail once another opportunity comes in
I would recommend not doing this. The boomer response is that companies talk, and sure maybe if its a niche area like the Bay, but realistically it never happens. However doing it essentially is a torching of the commons of the job market. The commons are already pretty torched but I sleep better at night knowing I am not contributing to it. I have friends who do it/have done it, they got some temporary boost, but the company(specifically your boss) knows, they know you are mercenary af, and they treat you like it. Now some companies are shit holes and it doesn't matter but some companies aren't and they care about that sort of thing.
YoungAchamian
2d ago
It means soften support for leftist ideas like socialism, trans-right, closed borders or for the right things like don’t talk about mass deportations and only say Criminal Illegals or leave abortion to the states.
It means to move closer to the center in the left/right dichotomy.
It’s mostly being apolitical and a label people take when they don’t want to have to associate with weird people on either side.
Centrists have political beliefs. You are trying to cast apolitical people, aka people who just call themselves "apolitical" as "centrists" but I have never heard a centrist describe themselves as apolitical. They always express beliefs that are in the middle of the left vs right spectrum.
It’s a big reason for the rise of EA. It gave leftist a high IQ party
EA is dumb, they might portray themselves as "high IQ" but they are "low EQ" naive, idiots. They've just psy-opped themselves into these weird, niche, radical beliefs.
There is an interesting problem in your argument. You "hate" centrists because they lack beliefs or are dumb, but now you are calling them "normal" (opposite of weird), "apolitical", "even-kneeled". You've essentially gone from shitting on them to now glazing them. Word's do have meaning, so stop using the word "hate" to describe that anger you feel that they aren't weird like you. The desperate desire for them to adopt your weirdness.
YoungAchamian
3d ago
Centrists has meaning within the American 2-Party system.
It is almost always a synonym to independent. Because the American 2-Party system exists on a single left vs right axis. They "exist" on the "center" of that axis. Because it's a projection from the high dimensional vector space to that single axis. Furthermore the discussion originally focused on the left-ness vs right-ness of the Motte as opposed to other online internet forums. Not the libertarian-ness vs authoritarian-ness, or other axial-label-nesses.
anarchists libertarian
Except I'm not an anarchist.
But now your a radical libertarian centrists which I guess is something different which maybe I don’t hate but I also don’t know what that entirely means.
The generic problem with niche political labels is that they are hard to understand. The boundaries of them are blurry. In this 2-Party projection I act like an independent, or a centrist. I vote left, I vote right, I vote based on static principles that you would not consider "generic centrist" but from an actual political action-based labeling category I "act" like a centrist. While my actual principles are probably more niche, I do not think my observed behavior is. I think that a lot of "centrist" are just people with different beliefs that don't map cleanly to a 2-party projection.
Multivariate and vector is a bit redundant here fyi.
Thanks for the pedantry Mr. English Teacher... Next time I'll use ChatGPT so I can be less redundant.
2 dimensions captures >80% of variance based on available data. It doesn't lose a lot after describing you as a libertarian centrist.
You got stats to back up that assertion?
YoungAchamian
3d ago
I hate the centrists label because fundamentally it means you have no beliefs.
You can believe this but it would be incorrect. The realistic answer is that political beliefs are multivariate high dimensional vector spaces. And in attempting to project those vector spaces into condensed 2D or 1D projections you condense lots of information. I am a "centrist" in the left vs right 1D projection as the left/right axis has little impact on my political beliefs and values. I am a radical centrist libertarian on a political 2D compass, as can be observed by my very pronounced disagreement with social or governmental authority. On a higher dimensional map, I'm sure there's an even more precise label.
Call it them centrists, call them independents, the terminology is imprecise. Regardless there is a large continent of people, likely even a majority, that don't map cleanly to a right vs left 1D simple axis. They don't have malleable beliefs as you assert, they just aren't binary. You can "hate" them but the only thing you are hating is that the world isn't a simple black vs white one where critical thinking isn't a core element.
YoungAchamian
5d ago
51% German, 48% Autistic. As someone who is diagnosed with Autism, I thought my other score would be higher.
YoungAchamian
6d ago
Fair enough, I have zero risk appetite for options.
YoungAchamian
6d ago
How? Oil futures are up 82% over the past 3 months, very good, but hardly 50x.
YoungAchamian
8d ago
They've been around for 12 years, it has always been a den of scum and villiany but the arguments/discussions were at least more interesting than shit-flinging. Probably 10-8 years ago was peak. so 2016-2018/2019 my memory is a bit weak on the exact period.
YoungAchamian
10d ago
We might have different views on what the interesting part is then. The original thesis that I responded to was "here are the observed forum behaviors on lefty forums" It missed the most interesting extension to me, which was that righty forums behave no differently. The behaviors described are inherent to human tribal politics at a cognitive substrate that extends beyond a left/right spectrum.
I had also inferred a larger thesis that right-wing dominated forums are morally better then left-wing dominated because they don't perform the stated behaviors are anywhere near the same rate. Per-capita rate is then a more relevant factor, because my thesis, is that no, the rates are probably similar. And that principled Libertarians (and the permanence of their values) are the larger factor in the openness and quality of forums than any left/right split. And as this comment pointed out, lots of libertarians are realizing that the righties are not opposed to lefty tactics, they just want different targets.
The rate would be per-[leftist/rightist] comment / per-captia of comments rather than just raw instances. If 50% time a human interacts with a bear it mauls them but you only interact with a bear 10 times, it has a per captia rate of 5/10. If 27k murders by men occur but 3 million interactions happen, it has a per capita rate of 0.0076. The Human male still murders more people but overall interacting with human men is safer than interacting with a bear.
If 70k out of 100k of comments on a reddit forum are "boo-outgroup" vs 800/1k on the motte, the motte is far more "boo outgroup" despite there being overall less motte "boo-outgroup" comments. The rate is much higher. Your stated ""rate" is per instance or total count. This manipulates statistics to give the lower population forum more grace when per-captia is more honest, because it accounts for the confounding factor of the lower population.
There is something deeply ironic and funny about having to explain "per-capita" to a claimed leftist, defending righties.
If you aren't going to weigh into "quality," then all you're really doing is commenting on the lack of equality of outcomes (as measured by things like responses that amount to dogpiling, Gish Galloping, etc.) based purely on left-right-partisanship. And that's just irrelevant here, because the point of this forum isn't to achieve such equity. Quality is highly subjective, but it's also not infinitely so, and there are certainly qualities which are agnostic to partisanship that this forum specifically demands of the comments both by rule and by norms, and it is a good thing that a comment's quality determines, in a large part, the pushback it gets from other commenters.
Give me a metric about quality that we can agree on. Because if the answer is "it is subjective" then it has nothing to do with "equality of outcome". Pointing out tribal behavior is not an outcome, and I doubt anyone at the motte will be super plus-ed when we implemented a quota system for responding to outgroup comments/posts. This entire argument is me saying "it exists in parallel" and you saying "nuh-uh and if it did all those comments deserved it", which I believe is the The Law of Merited Impossibility, aka gaslighting.
YoungAchamian
10d ago
I second the use of them for rubber ducking. I extensively use the ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking model for putting my thoughts down and then having it mostly organize them into something more coherent, relating them to other things, or using them to find literature on arxiv to peruse along my current thoughts.
YoungAchamian
10d ago
I disagree heavily.
Then we disagree. As a centrist, I witness and have experienced it with my own eyes.
The rate at which this happens is orders of magnitude lower than the mirror image in a typical subreddit that has discussion about similar topics as here.
If this is your major point then you are making a point I am not arguing, its not about quantity it's that it happens at all. This place has orders lower magnitudes of people than the mirror image typical subreddit. This is like saying it's safer to be be next to a bear in the woods because bears kill less people then men do. It's bad stats because you interact with an astronomically large amount of men everyday, everywhere. I doubt the Motte has more than 50k-100k active users. Just went and looked at the comparative PurplePillDebate on reddit. It has 121k weekly visitors, and it is very degraded from its heyday.
I'm not really going to weigh into a discussion of "quality". That is highly subjective, to the point, that one could easily just say every post that gets dog-pilled and mass-reported was "low quality". It's a just-so-story.
I agree with the overall schema of how forum cultures work but I think you have a blindspot. The motte is the equivalent to the left-wing dominated forum but for right wingers. Lefties here are absolutely dogpilled, mass-replied, gish-galloped, mass reported, or downvoted. Far more than the reverse happens here. So yes the lefties that stick around here do have a selection pressure, but lets not pretend that righties don't stoop to the same left-forum behavior when they are suddenly the majority.
EDIT: This is straight up just human tribal behavior. Attaching a political label to it is just further evidence.
Yes, in the the utilitarian sense if we include the caveat that he is, without a doubt, an egoist. He does want what is best for Ankh-Morpork, but what is best for Ankh-Morpork is Him. Common failure state of Tyrants in general. The city is lucky he is a philosopher-king. I think he wants competent people doing stuff, idk if its exactly retiring or scapegoats as much that recognizes talent, he's very good at finding and applying leverage, talent working for you makes things easier and better for the city. Happy populaces means less attempts to overthrow him.
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