self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.
At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!
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User ID: 454
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
While in Scotland? I'd frequent the pub about twice a week, and drink more than I know is good for me. On average, two pints of beer and a few double-strength shots of some kind of spirit. This was for about a period of 4-6 months, outside of which I barely drank more than once a month.
I realized this wasn't great for me, and cut down significantly. It was also out of character, before, and after, I'm mostly a social drinker. I'd drink hard maybe twice or thrice a month, but only with company. I usually make it a point not to keep liquor at home or drink by myself, while I'm usually solid about not giving in to temptation, it's not easy during a bout of depression. The fact that I was self-administering alcohol use screening tests and squinting at the results was enough to make me desist.
Then again, it's Scotland. I'd have my visa revoked if I didn't engage in the cultural highlight.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
Claude Opus 4.7 knows who I am, by name, and without access to web search.
It also pegged me more often than not from an excerpt of text I'd written half a decade back, once again, without internet access. Well, fuck. I did always harbor aspirations of becoming famous enough a writer to be known to LLMs by name, but this also confirms my previously stated belief that privacy on the internet is on the way out. Pseudonyms won't save you, stylometry is all you need.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5hr ago
I haven't noticed that, and I do use all of them regularly. If you have some kind of formal benchmark to point at, I'd be more receptive.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9hr ago
This strikes me as a fool's errand. TFR is cratering worldwide, even in the Global South. There's not much point marrying into an Indian, Nigerian or Subsaharan African community and going native, when the results will be indistinguishable in just a generation or two. My dad had 8 siblings, and then he and and the rest of his brothers and sisters had 2 or 3.
You're better off trying to go Mormon, for a certain definition of "better".
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
17hr ago
The most plausible reason for changing the tokenizer is that a more fine-grained tokenizer increases model performance, at the cost of more compute per token (we're breaking up the same input into more tokens). My understanding is that you don't even need a new base model to do this, and that the gains are particularly pronounced for arithmetic and coding. It's not a free lunch, but there are pros and cons that don't just amount to Anthropic nickle and diming their customers.
Even if AGI is actually possible with LLMs (or at all, but I'm not trying to start a discussion on metaphysics here), it looks like the capital needed to achieve it is drying up before it can be reached. Anthropic's move here (combined with them handicapping Opus 4.6 a few weeks ago) seems to clearly be an attempt to achieve profitability. The free/subsidized rate train for end users has pulled into the station, and now you have to pay more for the same (or worse) capabilities you were enjoying before.
Anthropic is, by far, the most compute strapped frontier LLM company. They are also not the only frontier LLM company. Until at least Google and OAI engage in the same putative enshittification (which I am far from sure is even happening wrt Anthropic), then you're kinda jumping the gun here.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Met my criteria, thanks for the reminder!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
Eh? Do you think I don't know the difference between the practicality of emulation and the theoretical feasibility of emulation? What do you think physicists use for their modeling? There is a very real tradeoff between the accuracy of models and their compute requirements, you wouldn't try to predict the weather with QCD. Fortunately for me, the brain is an incredibly stochastic entity, which means that you can cut plenty of corners while being reasonably confident you aren't losing something vital. We are extremely unlikely to need to simulate things down to the atom to make a functional brain emulation, which takes the computational demand down from ludicrous to merely concerning.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
We can simulate that too, I'm quite confident. It's not like we can... rawdog baseline reality, what's another layer of abstraction? The brain works on the laws of physics, so does a standard computer, and the latter can model the laws of physics.
At the end of the day, I'm an abacus that doesn't mind. I'm happy as long as the numbers add up.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
Yup, looks like you're right. Thanks!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
Agreed. We've usually gotten a second dog/puppy while the first one is getting a bit grizzled, and the increased interaction and energy are good for them.
My lab was middle aged when my older Shepherd died, and that, plus me no longer being home? The best way to describe his behavior was depressed. The golden my family got to keep him company probably made him lose some hair from the stress, but they all shed like maniacs anyway. I find dog hair on my clothes months after every trip home. Now they get along great, and the older dog can often train the younger one with minimal human input required.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
I'm torn between German Shepherds, labs and goldens, but yes, goldens are adorable. Poor breeding has reduced their life expectancy by a year or two, but I suppose the cancer risk depends on where you're getting them. They're very good dogs, and I wouldn't let that stop me.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
I lost several dogs growing up, and while it was saddening, 99.99% of small children can handle the truth. I know I wouldn't lie to my own (hypothetical) kids about what death means, since my parents never did that to me. But you know your kids better than I do, and it's not the end of the world either way.
If you do want another dog, then it's probably not a bad idea to get one now. It will probably soften the blow, though make sure to give your elderly dog extra affection just so he doesn't feel sidelined. I'm sure you won't, but it's still worth mentioning just in case.
Losing my own German Shepherd, who I owned and adored from the moment he was born? That broke me for days man, especially since I wasn't in the country. I had this bad feeling I wouldn't see him again when I was leaving for Scotland, and the only way I can console myself is by acknowledging he had a good life and went painlessly. If you cry, cry. But while he's still alive, make sure you let him know how much you love him. The crying is for you, not for him.
I'm suspicious that they're not using any vatniks conscripts at all right now, but leaving that aside, getting a significant fraction of your own young men killed in a pointless war causes too much damage to even remotely be worth it, especially given Russia's senile demographics.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
Thanks! For what it's worth, you might not be aware that Garry is going through what's best described as LLM psychosis, which I say despite being rather sympathetic and bullish to their utility for coding purposes. I'll mosey around, and see if I can find something useful in there!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
I'm leaning towards DNS, though it could still be a turbinectomy. Don't worry about it kitten, take a deep breath, which I expect you're in a better position to do now, hah.
Look, Jack, here's the deal, and I'm not joking. leans into the mic The thing about the AI, with the, you know, the writing thing, and how it figures out who you are from the commas and whatnot. I was talking to Barack about this just the other day. Well, not the other day. But recently. Recent-ish.
My dad, God love him, he sat me down when I was a kid in Scranton, and he said, he said to me, he said "Joey, a man's words are his bond." Now what does that MEAN, folks. whispers It means they can catch ya.
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