celluloid_dream
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User ID: 758
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I'm less annoyed by its stupidity than by its constant moralizing. It straight-up refuses to do things much of the time.
One that stands out (though, I can't seem to reproduce it now) was ChatGPT refusing to send a request to DALL-E for an illustration of a trans character pre-transition. I can't find the conversation, but it was something like:
ChatGPT: Due to our content policy, I can't generate that image
Me: What? .. why? What's wrong with that?
ChatGPT: It is important to respect the feelings of trans people, and depicting this character at a sensitive time in their life could be hurtful and (etc etc.)
Me: It's a fictional character. I promise they won't mind.
ChatGPT: It is important to .. (blah blah blah)
Me: Fine. Screw it. Character isn't trans any more. Are you happy now? There goes half our diversity quota
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I'm sure that works as you describe - cultivating a reputation, social proof, all of it, but doesn't it feel dishonest to its core? Like, the whole edifice is built on wanting to be seen as the kind of person who is a sociable regular at a fancy cocktail bar and not actually being that person. If you were that person, you'd already have such a place in your back pocket.
celluloid_dream
2yr ago
A full length text written in garden path sentences would be both impressive and infuriating.
celluloid_dream
3mo ago
Speaking of taste, lately 4o has very much been passing the vibe check, and 3.7 Sonnet very much hasn't been.
I'm now using Claude almost exclusively as a workhorse and ChatGPT as more of a conversation partner, when it used to be the other way around. 4.5 is even better
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Yes. A good film is like a good song. Part of the experience is the tempo - how it flows and how it carries a feeling throughout. If you drop it and come back later, the continuity is lost the same way your favourite song is ruined if you keep pausing it every 30 seconds.
Example: Uncut Gems is a tense movie! It's stressful! It doesn't let up for two hours straight, and then when you finally get to the end, the last scene very much cashes in on it having taken you for that exhausting ride.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I find it a bit puzzling that the LLM is expected to do things correctly with minimal or no guidance, which is a bit like expecting a riderless horse to stay on track and win a race. Maybe it can sometimes, but with a code jockey, it can be so much better.
That probably looks something like noticing that it's overfitting on poker, translating the question to avoid that, and seeing if it does any better. Eg. not calling the symbols "cards" or "faces" or "suits". ROT13-ing the letters so they don't look like a poker hand, or whatever.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Okay, this is silly, but suppose you're seated at a table like this.
You're middle-right, double-fisting your iced tea and lemon water. Your two talkative, outgoing friends are at the top. They tend to drive the conversation, so the focus is in that direction most of the time. Your two shy, reserved friends are at the bottom. How do you play this so that your quiet friends feel included in the conversation and not like they're staring at the back of your head the whole time. You'd like to slide back a bit like middle-left, but the seats on your side are bolted to the floor.
Aside: it's pretty great being able to get ai-generated images to illustrate points.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I feel the other side of this analogy too.
A few years ago, I bought a nice electric mountain bike. Fast, fun, capable (you can ride MTB trails uphill!) - I love it to bits. If I could, I'd ride it everywhere. So what's the problem?
It's that my city has a rampant bike-theft-culture. Within a few weeks of locking it unattended outside, some fucking junkie would try and steal it, and even if they didn't fully succeed, they'd loot it for parts, jamming a screwdriver through the flimsy battery lock and prying it out. They'd go for the wheels, or try and take the seat. They would still end up causing damage. It's enough to dissuade me from riding it, and I feel it's a legitimate frustration with the state of the city that that is just accepted as normal and expected.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I tried Replika a few months ago to see what the fuss was about and found it to be a baffling disappointment. It could be so much better than it is.
It was fine at matching tone and texting style, but it constantly forgot basic things I'd just told it (and it claimed to have saved to its memory). It didn't seem to develop any consistent personality, and just overall came off as the retarded generic chatbot it is. I think it's running some early version of GPT (2?) combined with a custom db for long term stuff that apparently doesn't work.
Just .. How? How is it not running something like GPT4 under the hood? Whatever it would cost for the API would surely be made up tenfold by having a more believable companion to talk to .. right? It did offer an upgraded chat model, but only with a $90/year subscription and no free trial. It seems like such a basic failure of drug-dealer business sense.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Sure, but why is the thing good?
In its original form, it was good because it served a functional purpose. Thereafter, each copy was only good because of nostalgia or familiarity, and I think it settles for being merely good, when it could innovate using more recent techniques, new materials, creativity and perhaps be better. At least, that's the ethos I got from the book (and, I'm told, it's kinda-sorta what the Modernists were going for).
celluloid_dream
2yr ago
Think that's just a general Hollywood problem. We want our actors to look youthful, but also be famous and well established. By the time they reach that point in their careers, they're pushing the limits of what their natural genetics plus plastic surgery plus vfx can hold. I cannot confirm or deny that Vin Diesel gets certain parts of his face edited in post.
Cities speak saith Paul Graham.
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Devon Zuegel thinks Miami says "Be entertaining and flamboyant"
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Sasha Chapin thinks that Joshua Tree invites you to slow down and take the long view, that Las Vegas is a damned liar
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Isaac Simpson thinks we should pay attention to what Montana is cursing under its breath
What does your city say? I'm interested in more articles that try and convey the vibe of a place.
celluloid_dream
23d ago
An inspiring video, but it's still hard to square the fact that a US-made stick of metal and plastic sells for fully 1/6 the price of a Nintendo Switch 2. The grill scrubber looks like solid product, but if I put 6 of them together, I don't think I'd have even close to the value of a new portable game console.
I get that that is an apples-to-oranges comparison, and maybe I don't have a good baseline appreciation for the cost of strong metal things compared to complex electronics. I've paid almost as much as the scrubber for a glorified chunk of construction material before, but I was not happy about it.
It's just that if I saw that on the shelf next to the $15 wire scrubbers, I'd assume it was motorized. If that's what it's going to take to bring back manufacturing to the US, I question whether the general public is willing to pay for it.
Problem? What problem? From my perspective, the shift in screenwriting priorities is actually nice. There are so many varieties of non-romantic relationships that go underexplored on screen because the writers have to make space for an obligatory romance arc. Maybe the pendulum has swung too far of late, but human desires being what they are, I'm sure it'll swing back.
Also, counterexample: Have you seen the GTA 6 trailer from a few weeks ago? My first thought was: after hundreds of thousands of words spilled about the fertility crisis, dating troubles, incels, etc, the thing that is actually going to move the cultural needle is a video game franchise modelling a healthy adult relationship between its protagonists.
Yeah.. some of that is true.
My steelman for the government's actions is that they're doing what they feel is best for the country because something something Century Initiative. Country needs population to support its social program Ponzi scheme (and I mean that with love. Free healthcare is great, but it is expensive. So is OAS). It needs to be paid for with an expanding population's taxes, and where that population lives is not Ottawa's problem. It's not Trudeau's fault most of Vancouver still looks like this.
But no. I don't think the average Canadian benefits from higher home prices. The average voter? maybe. So then you have the PM just come right out and admit it. "Home prices cannot be allowed to fall". It's generational warfare, and our politicians have picked the side their votes come from. The boomers get to retire. You get to eat the bugs.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I think just awareness of the existence of epistemics might be helpful.
It's like math. Most people can't remember half of what they learned in high school math classes. Many can't even do basic algebra, but they're at least aware that algebra can and probably should be done to explain why an answer is correct.
Sometimes I'll be in conversation with a person and they'll make an assertion. I'll ask them why they think that. How do they know? Suppose I didn't agree. How would they convince me? Then their eyes narrow and their lips curl. I can see the gears turning as they mentally brand me enemy and then they just assert the thing again, but louder and with edge to their voice.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Dear Dame Caroline,
I can confirm that Mr. Brand is able to monetize his content on our network and will continue to be able to do so unless his content is found to violate our terms and conditions as listed here: <link>
Please refer to the same document for <company>'s policy regarding inappropriate and illegal behavior on our site.
Sincerely,
Some Person, PR Drone, <company>
Was that so hard?
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I don't think it's that difficult to drop Hammerlock-style hints and not treat it as a big deal, especially if it wouldn't be a big deal in-universe.
Example, minor spoilers for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, also tagging @TowardsPanna , who asked about it in the Friday thread.
There's a NPC character who is a "trans" woman. I put that in quotes because this is a universe where you can literally take a magic potion and permanently transform into the opposite sex (or, presumably, like, a giant spider if that's more your style). You only find out if you pick up some random junk item, then ask the character's spouse about it (spouse wants to keep it private and won't tell you the details), then ask the character about it again much later in the game. You could easily finish the game and not come across that detail.
That seemed totally fine? It respects the worldbuilding and doesn't come off as unrealistic, or in your face.
Contrast with the Hogwarts Legacy character that stood out like a sore thumb, not so much because she was a non-passing transwoman, but because the HP universe has transformation magic, and if that exists, why would any transwoman not avail themselves of it?
You could also do ambiguously-trans, like this character in the recent pokemon games. When I saw this market, I was pretty baffled - hadn't even considered that when playing through the games - but reading the evidence, it does seem plausible.
celluloid_dream
2yr ago
I'm coming around to the idea that the free+advertising model was the internet's original sin. A site like Reddit, maybe the largest and second most trusted repository of human text on the internet, apparently can't make money.
Reddit must look at third party clients scraping "their" data (especially LLMs training on it), using "their" site, then reselling it at an actual profit and feel like they should get a cut. Meanwhile the mods have a good argument that they're providing much of the value, and of course it's ultimately the users' generating the content in the end.
I wonder how the net would have evolved if something like Brave's basic attention token was around back in the day, with users paying in proportion to what they consume, with mods being compensated and ultimately the site not being beholden to advertisers like it is now.
celluloid_dream
23d ago
When driving, I'm more frustrated by pedestrians than cyclists. Pedestrians cheat busy downtown intersections constantly, and this exacerbates congestion. The streets in my city are designed for timed flow patterns, and would work wonderfully if everyone would just respect the "stop crossing" signal. Pedestrians know they can get away with it (count on it, even) because it's the driver's responsibility not to hit them. Fine, I'd rather people not die, but this is pretty selfish. They also pay very little attention. The number of times I've been turning right into an alley with a pedestrian not looking up from their phone is too damn high. "I could have KILLED you! - you could have DIED! Don't you want to know about that? at least see it coming? At least shoulder-check!"
When cycling, again, pedestrians most of the time because despite having the clearest field of view and moving the slowest, they're paying the least attention. They are liable to step into my path without looking, then jump back like they've seen a bear and scowl like it's my fault.
When walking, cyclists and drivers in equal measure. It's not that they're doing anything wrong - it's that I don't want to have to be paying attention to them. I just want to have a chill walk and think about something other than road safety.
celluloid_dream
3mo ago
I can't speak for Toronto. Maybe the demands of harsh winters, or the lack of natural beauty limit what can be done with modern styles which often draw much of their appeal from space and the surrounding environment, so architects instead try pure weirdness and that puts people off.
I can say, though, in Vancouver, modernism works very well.
- a house
- Museum of Anthropology at UBC
- The Law Courts building and surrounding Robson Square
Meanwhile, I find the nearby Vancouver Art Gallery to be a dated relic of an ancient time, and neither inviting, nor pleasant to be around, or inside.
But that's just my opinion
celluloid_dream
10mo ago
I don't think that's quite right. The "them" you are telling is a tool, not a person. It shouldn't be expected to exercise any more discretion than your paintbrush does. It's more like they're letting you rent their super-cool paintbrush that can paint whatever you want, including Mickey Mouse and Hillary Clinton.
At no point does another person's discretion come into it. I don't see the argument that they should be made to prevent you from painting those things any more than a brush manufacturer.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
It's not the the direction I'd have predicted that word would go, especially considering the efforts to reclaim it back in the 2010s.
Actually, it's odd that "rape" isn't censored in the quote, but "slut" is. Seems possible that it was spelled "sl--" by Hayler himself there.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Even there, the street outside was dirty, garbage everywhere, unswept, sandy.
When I get the "oh, you spent a month in India? How was that?" small talk, scenes like this, and a hundred others flash through my mind before I politely lie: "it was fine", and change the subject. The pristine western retail stores with literal rubble half-blocking the entrances.. The designated landfill streets.. The street curs gnawing at their severed paws in the middle of the road.. The absolute state of the power infrastructure (live? wires pulled down to street level and woven into clothesline). The constant smell of rot and pollution and feces. I could go on.
It's not so much the squalor. It's the squalor plus dressing up in shirt and tie, working in an air conditioned office and pretending there's no problem at all.
It's awful. We truly live in a dark (or too bright) time.
Consider New Reddit:
Substack is even worse:
Can anyone familiar with design explain why we can't have stuff like the old slatestarcodex blog back? It worked just fine on mobile. If the text is too small, you just pinch zoom the screen a bit.
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