Very interesting.
I do wonder if certain architectures/frameworks for machine learning will start to break as they exceed certain sizes, or at least see massively diminished returns that are only partially solved by throwing more compute at them, indicating there's issues with the core design.
It is interesting to consider that no HUMAN can hold the full text of a Novel in their head, they make notes, they have editors to help, and obviously they can refer back to and refine the manuscript itself.
It more likely than not will still fail to rhyme well.
Well this, I'd assume, is because it can't have any way to know what 'rhyming' is in terms of the auditory noises we associate with words, because text doesn't convey that unless you already know the sounds of said words.
Perhaps there'll be some way to overcome that by figuring out how to get a text-to-speech AI and GPT-type AI to work together?
faceh
1yr ago
Yup. Very literal "you are either with us or against us" absolutist false dichotomy at its core.
And then it folds in the "racism is power + prejudice" rhetoric to, handily, allow certain groups to be actively discriminatory and show race-based preferences and yet still retain the 'anti-racist' label.
So guess what? Even if you claim to be against racism and thus actively oppose all forms of race-based prejudice, whether it is aimed at Whites, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, Indians, etc. etc., the mere fact that you believe in the "incorrect" definition of racism and thus oppose prejudice on the part of PoC you are not actually antiracist and are, thus, racist.
Really neat trick for instantly grabbing the moral high ground.
The thing is, being generally opposed to something and yet not actively fighting said thing at all opportunities is usually considered a valid position to hold... but this is not allowed when it comes to racism or fascism, for some reason.
You can say "I don't support fascism, and I am not a fascist" even if you aren't out there trying to track down fascists and beat them or otherwise exterminate their ideology. Okay, maybe it is fair to say that you are not "anti-fascist" by the definitions in play. But the antifascists themselves would say you're a fascist due to your failure to be sufficiently anti-fascist. Same with racism. Failure to be fully anti-racist makes you, by default, racist.
That's the core of the trick which basically imports the assumption that one can only be completely supportive of or aggressively antagonistic to something, rather than holding any nuanced belief on the topic.
I myself severely dislike mosquitoes. I consider myself anti-mosquito, I kill mosquitoes at any opportunity and I take some measures to remove mosquitoes from my immediate environment. I don't spend every waking hour trying to eradicate them or donate all my spare resources to anti-mosquito efforts.
Yet, to use the logic on display by the left, my stated and demonstrable opposition to mosquitoes is insufficient to be anti-mosquito. And if I am not anti-mosquito, I must be pro-mosquito.
Yeah. Or the author includes characteristics that should be considered flaws, but it turns out that its not the character that has to change or improve, oh no, everyone else just had to recognize their greatness/accept them just the way they are. Everyone else had to change don't you know.
Its that failure to include change or growth since that would require acknowledging that a flaw existed that rubs me the wrong way about characters like Rey Skywalker or Captain Marvel, perhaps above and beyond the failure to make them struggle.
Notice that Kim is also a very competent lawyer and likeable person, and this is recognized and remarked upon by almost everyone that encounters her.
If that was all there was to her then she'd be Mary Sue-ish. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with depicting your characters as competent and well-liked! That's not the issue! First it helps that you show their competence rather than having everyone else gush about it, and second they have to struggle with actual problems and even make mistakes, even if said struggles and mistakes are invisible to all but the audience.
I loved that in BCS the only people that knew Kim's personal struggles and demons was herself and Jimmy (and us, the viewers), as far as everyone else was concerned Kim never did anything wrong and rarely made mistakes.
I've felt many recent female characters are basically written like one-dimensional villains, but they happen to always win.
This would be really interesting to unpack just because we could make the point that there are many female villains who are actually well-rounded characters because they have some tragic flaw (usually related to their reasons for being a villain) AND they act in an agentic fashion. Indeed they'd have to, or else the plot wouldn't happen! So they don't end up shortchanged in the character department like a female heroine might be.
And then discuss the point that Disney has recently started making films that examine their (female) villain characters and given them backstory... in a way that tends to explain or justify their flaws that led to villainy as not really their fault. In the process arguably making them less interesting.
Somehow I doubt we're going to get a Gaston movie that explains that his extreme narcissism and borderline obsession with Belle is the result of a traumatic childhood that drove him to be an extremely competitive perfectionist or something.
faceh
1yr ago
I would suggest that the conditions of the medieval age made marriage a more necessary institution for survival purposes, which has been almost lost now.
I'd further suggest that maintaining a middle-class standard of living is one of the few likely benefits of marriage in the modern age, so that might make it a necessary condition for the modern age to bring marriage rates up.;
I feel the same way unless something is very specifically denoted as a gift.
I feel no qualms about accepting a gift freely given, in the spirit it was intended. Similarly, I give gifts with the expectation that such won't necessarily be reciprocated, and that is more than okay. I might feel more affection for a person who gives me a gift, which noticeably makes me more pleasant towards them and more likely to give them a gift in the future, but it doesn't form any sort of obligation which might drive future behavior.
But if someone does a "favor" for me my brain basically forms an entry on a ledger that is even more indelible than the bitcoin blockchain, and I will carry that knowledge around with me until I somehow am able to wipe it clean by returning the favor or otherwise balance the books.
I'm going to take something completely unintended from this article and ask:
Hasn't the official narrative for the past couple decades been that the reason schools in the U.S. underperform is due to lack of funding?
And thus, shouldn't the suggested solution to Yeshivas underperforming state requirements be to give them more money?
I could swear that the argument regarding, e.g. Baltimore, St. Louis, and yes, New York was that there was simply a large gap between how much money the schools needed and how much they actually received.
Perhaps it is fair to peek into how that money is being spent and closely examining the type and quality of instruction being provided to judge the value of such spending?
I'm not trying to make any larger point with this besides noting how interesting it is that the NYT takes up a story which tacitly admits that funding is, itself, not the end-all be-all for improving education outcomes, as the state tends to measure such outcomes.
If the fear is that organized groups with goals orthogonal to those expected of the school system may be seizing too much control and funneling that money towards priorities other than education on the topics society generally considers important, then we can certainly open this debate up to other groups with similar power.
faceh
1yr ago
At the same time, some books are much less likely to see a reprint/new edition anytime soon.
Most books take up so little space I don't think there's much harm in keeping them around so long as you're not actively collecting and hoarding them.
Indeed.
The other narrative killer is when you disaggregate the U.S. so that outcomes across the nation are not squished together and smeared across the entire country as if it represents the performance of every state and city and town.
I have gotten extremely tired of the tactic of lumping in every single state's statistics to create a single metric and then pretending this somehow accurately depicts the state of the union as a whole.
faceh
1yr ago
Its basically a SEEKRIT KLUB for grey-tribers of the general "pro-technology, anti-authoritarian" bent of both left and right variety.
That's the interesting thing. Once you've assumed an extremely high level of coordination in the group you're examining, then you CANNOT assume that the outcomes you're seeing are 'natural' and accurate, because it would be relatively trivial for a highly coordinated group to game a test to produce a particular outcome for outsiders.
I could absolutely see it being simply known wisdom among Yeshiva students that you bomb all the state tests. Perhaps this is to camouflage the students who genuinely aren't learning the material or is itself a coordination mechanism (students who don't bomb the test are looked on with suspicion?) but there's no reason to assume they aren't aware that this test is producing signals that outsiders can see, and thus manipulating it (like everything else in the process) to their own ends.
faceh
1yr ago
Under conditions of serious scarcity those overlap enough to be functionally indistinguishable.
They said this is the most expensive show ever and that the future of the studio itself relies on its success, and yet they decide to check the woke quotas instead of giving Tolkien fans what they want. Did they really just not expect this level of blowback? Its so unfathomable to me that the answer is that simple, could it be something else?
I also find it a bit funny because two of their most popular series recently, Reacher and The Terminal List, were extremely successful acting as straightforward adaptations of their source material with all the problematic themes and messaging included.
Compared to the Jack Ryan TV series which seems to have plopped out two seasons and been largely forgotten, and as I recall it was because hardcore Tom Clancy fans picked apart the show's accuracy to real life and the plausibility of the plots (i.e. the things Tom Clancy was famous for) whilst the casual viewers found it too hard to follow and with too dour a tone.
Turns out, many popular things are popular because of certain elements that can be directly adapted to the screen, and trying to wedge in themes, ideas, characters, etc. that weren't present in the original poses a real risk of crowding out those elements and alienating the audience that actually likes the property.
Experience in recent years leads me to believe we've got less cushion than I'd like.
But yes, cooperation between otherwise self-interested groups is still the dominant survival strategy.
faceh
1yr ago
Fair.
I mean to say, the general, reflexive response to pointing out that a given school (usually public) is underperforming compared to expectations is "they need more money!"
Schools that aren't underperforming are usually just not considered in the question at all.
I've been in there for about two years now and I consider it well worth the time. It's a good cultural fit for me, though.
Its one of those places where occasionally someone with real insider knowledge will post about a really fascinating topic out of nowhere.
And free speech is treated as terminal value, which is nice.
For example, there are temporary chan-style boards for anon commentary, that automatically delete on a timer:
And if we admit that how a school is run is actually very impactful on student outcomes, we can frame the debate in terms other than whether funding is sufficient. Which normally the NYT seems reluctant to do. Yet here they try to imply that the schools in question gets too much money despite failing to produce results. Stripped of context, this sounds like a conservative talking point!
That's the leap I'm willing to make. I think poorly runs schools are poorly run schools, regardless of being private, public, religious or secular. I don't necessarily agree with all the metrics the state uses to determine education outcomes, but basic literacy seems like a fair one. I don't think religious schools are somehow worse at producing literate students, nor that disparate outcomes are attributable to them being religious schools.
However, I think it is completely and utterly fair to say that if a school is performing poorly, then the first step towards a solution should be examining why it is poorly run, and holding those who are in charge of it accountable. Then one should examine if the school is adequately funded and whether increasing funds would be likely to help.
Because throwing more money at a poorly-run school seems like an obvious way to set said money on fire for no real improvement. Dis-functional systems don't magically improve merely by adding more funds.
In short, if we assume that the Yeshivas are failing to educate their students in important subjects, I DO NOT see why we should assume the reasons for this are somehow inherently different than if a public school likewise fails at the task. Which many of them do.
Why should Yeshivas be singled out as if they present a unique problem? Note, I'm not claiming that the NYT shouldn't publish stories about this issue, I'm questioning the framing.
As other commenters have mentioned, Hasidic Jews are an insular community who are politically organized to give little and take lots.
They very much violate the unspoken assumption that a school is trying to make a better American citizen (loosely defined as that is) who will not take from the public more than necessary. I'd say that's deserving of higher scrutiny.
I'm amenable to this argument.
But explain to me why this same line of thinking wouldn't apply to Teachers' Unions. Especially if we swap in 'woke' ideological teachings for religion in this instance.
faceh
1yr ago
Tend to agree. The few bits I liked about Season 1 were gone in Season 2.
I don't mind John Krasinski in the role, and you get the sense that they could have made something realistic, tense, and interesting, but I forgot literally everything that happened in Season 2 less than a week after watching it, and have no desire to follow up on it.
Oh wait, I didn't forget the part where they literally turned the government of the Venezuela-analogue country into a RIGHT-WING dictatorship with a heroic left-leaning female candidate as the country's hope for revival.
Jesus.
I mean, Reacher goes around on a vigilante rampage beating up on criminals of various stripes, including some PoC. Guns are treated as a generally useful affordance for protection rather than a dangerous item to be feared and regulated. Small town rural life is given an overall positive depiction (corruption by the local elites notwithstanding) and race relations are actually shown to be overall peaceful and genial.
I think by current standards Reacher himself represents many aspects of so-called 'toxic masculinity.' Doesn't talk about his feelings much, solves problems through application of brute force (precisely targeted, though), and demonstrates active contempt for authority figures or, indeed, anyone who tries to reign in his behavior. Oh, he also gets to rescue some damsels in distress at the end there.
Its not like it actively seeks to trangress current year norms, just doesn't pay them any respect, either.
But Reacher does end up being more about dumb entertaining violence than any real message whatsoever, which is actually quite refreshing in it's own right.
I wouldn't necessarily enjoy it if it were 'anti-woke' either, is the thing. I don't crave entertainment that validates the opposite of everything SJWs believe, I just want entertainment that doesn't either cram SJW values in where they clearly don't fit OR cowtow to SJW sensibilities to the detriment of its own audience, who may or may not care about such things.
That is, I appreciate works that are 'politically neutral' insofar as the story is able to stand on its own and the messaging isn't overtly designed to push a given ideological lens.
I got a similar sense from Top Gun: Maverick. Somehow that film even managed to downplay the RAH-RAH AMERICAN PATRIOTISM angle! It just wanted people to be able to get some positive emotions and thrills in exchange for their money! And audiences have rewarded the hell out of it, in return.
If there's a reason Reacher isn't a juicy target, I suspect it is because it doesn't have the same cultural cachet of, say, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and of course LOTR so it isn't as valuable a vessel to control. If it does breach into wider popularity, not sure if that'll hold.
faceh
1yr ago
"a public school that is run to spread controversial messaging to kids as truth" and "a privately run religious school which actively tells you to not do more than study religion all day".
From the perspective of outcomes, why should it matter?
At least the Hasids aren't making it mandatory to send other people's kids to their schools.
Moreover, you seem to think that I would support the teachers unions but not the Hasidic Jews.
Well make your position known, if you care.
I'm far from an expert here.
If they want to make the AI 'smarter' at the cost of longer/more expensive training, they can add parameters (i.e. variables that the AI considers when interpreting an input and translating it into an output), and more data to train on to better refine said parameters. Very roughly speaking, this is the difference between training the AI to recognize colors in terms of 'only' the seven colors of the rainbow vs. the full palette of Crayola crayons vs. at the extreme end the exact electromagnetic frequency of every single shade and brightness of visible light.
My vague understanding is that the current models are closer to the crayola crayons than to the full electromagnetic frequency.
Tweaking an existing model can also achieve improvements, think in terms of GANs.
If the AI produces an output and receives feedback from a human or another AI as to how well the output satisfices the input, and is allowed to update its own internals based on this feedback, it will become better able to produce outputs that match the inputs.
This is how a model can get refined without needing to completely retrain it from scratch.
Although with diffusion models like DallE, outputs can also be improved by letting the model take more 'steps' (i.e. run it through the model again and again) to refine the output as far as it can.
As far as I know there's very little benefit to manually tweaking the models once they're trained, other than to e.g. implement a NSFW filter or something.
And as we produce and concentrate more computational power, it becomes more and more feasible to use larger and larger models for more tasks.
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