sohois
10hr ago
Because that is within his potential remit, while the hard maths of alignment is well outside his potential remit
sohois
11hr ago
Yudkowsky, MIRI, and related orgs sure, but why would Scott, a psychiatrist who happens to be interested in ratsphere ideas, be responsible? That's like saying a random Trump voter should already have solved the Iran crisis.
But at least on the former, I would agree with post by RandomRanger above that it's not clear what value creating a benchmark 10 years ago would even have in the current environment. I'm pretty sure that MIRI were working on solving alignment itself, rather than working on hypothetical benchmarks for potential future AI technologies. Unless there is a demonstratable link, why would you ask them to do that?
sohois
16hr ago
Scattered thoughts on this:
- Marshall's failure to get behind the KMT and defeat the CCP really could be the greatest blunder in American history
- As with AI 2027, this seems like it was written primarily as a PR piece, something to appeal to politicians, decision makers, etc., rather than as a completely serious forecast. And as with AI 2027, I expect there to be a lot of people who either don't understand this or don't agree that this was how it was written, and start nitpicking things obviously intended to appeal to Washington rather be maximally truthful. Case in point: in the comments, Scott says they deliberately didn't use "UBI" as they were advised it would turn off Republicans
- Looking at it as a forecast, I think I'd agree with OP here and give it no real chance of success. Politics is too fractured, China is too untrustworthy, and there are too many dangerously retarded people like Marc Andreesen arguing for the other side. I don't think Trump is necessarily a point against; in fact, I would argue that "only Trump could go to China (to regulate AI)". You have to have a leader with strong control over his own party, who doesn't give a shit about the attacks of his enemies to get this through. But this feels like something Trump 1 could have done, back before he wasn't nearly so senile.
- Although I stressed above that this was written for a political audience, I'm a bit disappointed they weren't more imaginative in their economic predictions. I can't really comprehend their future in which 100% of industries are really quite rapidly fully automated and constantly growing, while at the same time there is still standard capitalism with some redistribution. Who are the buyers in this market? How is cash moving around the system with sufficient velocity, particularly when it comes to more third and second world countries that might have far more difficulty arranging fair redistribution?
sohois
17hr ago
When you say "they" are you referring to the authors of this piece?
What is the value of having a benchmark to judge progress?
sohois
14d ago
I never got around to playing the Wolfenstein sequel, so grabbed it for the low price of £3 and started the game.
I remember there being a fair bit of culture war furore around this when it released, but based off my surface impressions I always thought it was just typical blown out of proportion bullshit, particularly given the febrile atmosphere at the time.
But starting it out and... maybe the chuds had a point. God this is a terrible opening. Awfully paced, with a ton of cutscenes before you do anything, and the most eye rolling, stupid scenes as evil backstory man berates your child self for being friends with a black girl and beats your mother for being a jew. And to be clear, this is not a wolfenstein nazi character, this is just your american father.
sohois
14d ago
Aside from the preorders point, I'm pretty sure that GTA5 is still constantly showing up in top sales charts even today, more than a decade since the original release.
It doesn't even need to be good - and it won't be, given Rockstar haven't made anything good since San Andreas - because all the kids play GTA online, and they just need a good sandbox, more up to date sandbox to play in.
sohois
18d ago
A reference solely to a mayorality would work if this was someone like Sadiq Khan, who hasn't done anything save be mayor of London, but Burnham had plenty of time as an MP before being banished to Manchester. In fact this isn't even the first time he will run to be leader of the Labour party, having been trounced by Corbyn back when he emerged as leader.
He was just as much an empty suit in his first time round as an MP as he is described now. The time in Manchester might well have given him essential experience and he will burst forth with vim and vigour, but I wouldn't bet on it. All signs point to him basically being leader by default, as one of the only vaguely popular Labour politicians around (aside, perhaps, from Khan, though I suspect Labour are wise enough to realise what a disaster he actually is).
I think your point about the Tories leaving such a disaster behind is well known by Labour, but it is this exact thing which is dragging them down. They have been sucked into the same fallacies that blight most online discussion, assuming that people who hold different views - especially right wing views - are not just wrong, but stupid and evil as well. Otherwise why would they believe in these things?
As such, the answer to all the country's problems are simply to not be the Tories. To be, as the now infamously embarrassing tweets say, the adults in the room. Keir Starmer and his supporters no doubt fancied that he was a sombre, serious politician who would succeed by sheer virtue, no need for leadership or ideas. Burnham will almost certainly be much the same
sohois
20d ago
Same. I assume one day that Bannerlord will get conversion mods of that level again, and I'm pretty much waiting for that to return. Vanilla was fine for a few hours but I didn't want to get stuck in the endless grind
sohois
21d ago
I played and beat 1000xResist. Or rather, I watched and completed it, given it's very much a visual novel with limited interactivity or game elements. Good story though. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it from a motte point of view is that it might be the best example of a good "woke" game with a big focus on themes like motherhood, immigration + assimilation, the inevitable sad lesbians, and, as much as I hate the term, 'intergenerational trauma'.
I didn't fully buy into those themes, mostly because I have a bit too much familiarity and found it hard to believe (you're telling me a Chinese family found it hard to settle in 2030s Vancouver, really? I could have bought the high school bully angle if it were all mainlanders attacking the Hong Kong ren instead of a story 25 years out of date), but they did a good job at marrying those themes into what was a fairly classic sci-fi story and world.
If anything, the major weakness in the story was not the woke aspects, but their attempt to shoehorn in an anti-authoritarian message with Chinese characteristics in the second half, when none of it made any sense within the world they had built.
sohois
24d ago
If it were a different leadership in charge of the White House, I honestly think this would be a possibility for Anthropic (though a different leadership probably wouldn't have thrown a hissy fit in the first place).
sohois
27d ago
This is nonsensical. Anthropic could have avoided signing up to supply the DoD altogether if they wanted to attract anti trump people. And OpenAI could have avoided walking into a pretty obvious trap.
Claude has been crushing GPT for enterprise use for way longer than this case as well
sohois
29d ago
I've not seen a single proper source for that 500m claim either, but everyone seems to just accept it at face value.
The one time I saw something like an original image for the claim, it was from an Indian subreddit (or twitter, I can't remember exactly) and had no currency attached. So if it were 500m rupees, that would only be 5m USD. That would make a lot more sense to me
sohois
1mo ago
What exactly is new here? "High class escorts" have existed for many years (see Pretty Woman in 1990). The incredible earning power of female sexuality has been known for not quite as long but a very long time. OnlyFans blew up more than 5 years ago, and the top OF models make far more than the earnings quoted. Even if we're talking only the sale of intimacy, I'm pretty sure pornstars have been selling themselves for very high fees online for quite a while. Or see the numerous stories about Instagram models going to the Middle East for some "Dubai Chocolate". As another poster mentioned, the media has a peculiar fascination with the sex lives of Silicon Valley, but that's the only unique thing about this.
sohois
1mo ago
Lawyers and doctors are a rather special case though (and self-driving cars appear to have been solved given Waymo's rapid expansion). When a company hires a product manager, a customer support person, an executive assistant, a marketing executive, a salesperson, a software developer, or the myriad other back office roles that fill a standard corp, they are not especially worried about potential liabilities (financial roles excepted). You don't need many of those roles to be replaced before serious economic consequences become apparent, and the protection of law or medicine is rendered moot.
That being said, I do think there will be a lot of inertia just by the nature of corporations. Most big corpos are already too big and could probably have slashed 20% of their workforce even before AI. It's part of the nature of the firm and not something easily shaken off.
sohois
1mo ago
I've got to say, I really don't understand the relation between Google Maps and the election here.
Maybe I'm in a bubble, but I've never met anyone who doesn't have the default maps view on all the time. Is satellite view more common in the US?
Also, are people using google maps to make voting decisions? Do voters not go near the burned areas ever, and one day scroll through maps - for fun perhaps? - and see it all rebuilt and just go huh, must have been rebuilt since I last checked?
sohois
1mo ago
The aftermath of the case seems like a classic Toxoplasma of Rage situation - not the controversial, toxoplasmic one that gets everyone whipped up, but the Eric Garner style. The murder, the police behaviour, the family behaviour: everything is so cut and dry terrible that there is no controversy. Even on UK reddits, which are as fortified progressive as you can get, there is almost universal outrage here.
Unlike George Floyd, where his past criminality and the fentanyl accusations gave plenty of meat for culture warriors to help spiral it into a national emergency, Nowak's murder looks destined to fizzle out. There's not even some low sentence for the murderer, while the authorities have been quick to recognize the blowback against his family and sought to charge them with related crimes.
Ironically, if the police had actually found some spicy memes or similar in Nowak's phone, it probably would have helped the overall cause.
sohois
1mo ago
I get a distinct feeling of Gellman Amnesia reading a few of the recent top level posts in this weeks thread. And I wouldn't even class myself as a particularly knowledgeable person when it comes to AI, I simply keep up with the news and developments. It's really something to see the number of posters, whether here or the ssc reddit or similar locations, who confidently spout complete garbage when it comes to AI, seemingly unaware of things that happened even months ago.
And now I can't help but worry that many of the other posts on the Motte are similarly compromised. Have we become (or always been) just another midwit debate site?
sohois
1mo ago
I lived in Dongbei - well, Heilongjiang - when I first moved out to China, living mostly in Daqing (also tier 3) and a bit in Harbin (tier 2). Later on I moved down to Shanghai, and eventually met my wife, a Henanren. Her family lives in a town, still 500k people of course, though technically their original home is in a tiny farming village an hour outside of the town.
Nonetheless, short of the villages, no matter where in the country I've gone, no matter how big or small the city or town is, it really is striking just how similar they all are when it comes to architecture and design. And I'm not just talking about the communist blocks. In every place, there is always a "Computer City". Probably even with the same name. There is always a once shiny, now dilapidated mall. But the mall always has the same rows of clothing vendors and dodgy sellers as in your pictures. I originally wrote a sentence that you were just missing the plaza with massed granny dancing, before seeing you had indeed mentioned it at the bottom of your post.
I also have the same appreciation for Chinese KFCs, though in my case the far inferior version I'm comparing them to are in the UK. I assume it's mostly because KFC is still relatively pricy for China: 40-50 kuai is hardly expensive, but compared to the 10kuai you would pay for a bowl of noodles or whatever, it does position them a bit more upmarket. So they can afford to get better quality in comparison to the Western chains, who are very much positioned as the cheapest tier of food around
sohois
1mo ago
According to the linked tweet, he lost his job, not merely wages, so you'd have to compensate for future wages lost and possibly reputational damage?
sohois
1mo ago
That there are some stories of dogs penetrating humans doesn't really tell us much about this particular story. There are going to be extremes in every species, much as the existence of Usain Bolt doesn't demonstrate that every human can run a 10-second 100m.
The question is: can you train presumably multiple dogs to do it on command? Can they even do it, given the size and difficulty of anal penetration? The extent to which the woman+dog meme is true it would very likely involve vaginal penetration.
sohois
2mo ago
I agree, but Elder Scrolls isn't actually a great example. The fact that they still haven't released a new mainline title seems to be largely down to the stupidity (or genius, depending on how you view the extra juice they squeezed from Skyrim) of their development choices. After Oblivion, it was 2 years to Fallout 3, 3 years to Skyrim, 4 years to Fallout 4, 3 years to Fallout 76, and 5 years to Starfield. Pretty consistent
sohois
2mo ago
First I'm gonna go ahead and nitpick your summary of the Far Cry series.
I really don't agree that Far Cry 2 codified anything genre-wise. It was a really interesting game, to be sure, but ultimately an interesting failure, and it was 3 that defined all of those successors you name. The original Far Cry isn't worth mentioning here; its sequel was Crysis, and the only reason Far Cry 2 shares a name is because it was easier for Ubisoft to slap a recognized IP on an entirely new FPS (worth mentioning as well that Ubi made like 4 FarCry:Spinoff titles in between Far Cry and Far Cry 2. I really liked Far Cry:Instincts)
It's been a long time since I played Far Cry 2, but I don't think anyone would recognize it as being a game of "crafting and collectables". It was a really ambitious game, and I was super hyped leading up to the release. I think the closest parallel was probably GTA4. Both made big promises of being much more realistic, grounded games, with a strong emphasis on story and loads of interesting interactivity and AI. Both failed to deliver, with mediocre stories and gameplay that got so bogged down in realism it made them bad to actually play.
Second, I don't really agree that Far Cry 3 is particularly essential. There's a lot to recognize of 2 in Far Cry 3, but they are still quite different games. 3 used 2 as a base, but cut out a lot of fat, and a lot of good stuff, for something much more streamlined and 'gamified'. I remember an anecdote on a podcast once where someone was getting involved in this important, sombre cutscene. They get control back, and immediately the first thing they see is this big, jarring "Gun Vending machine" and it immediately throws them out. Far Cry 2 was at pains to craft a fully believable world for the player and would never have placed something like that. Which did mean a lot of irritation, but the storytelling was stronger for it.
My abiding memory of Far Cry 3 is rescuing Jason's girlfriend. You end up in this cave, and I can't remember why but the girlfriend ends up bursting into tears. You regain control with her quietly sobbing, and all you can do is leave to go back to killing. Except, except, there are also these optional flashbacks in the cave, which you can access by finding pills and going on a 'trip'. And it just so happened I found one, went on a drug-fuelled trip, and obviously passed out in the cave. But when my character came to, there was still the girlfriend, still sobbing away. And all I could think about was the hilarious juxtaposition of this traumatised girl crying her eyes out while her boyfriend is just trippin' balls 20 feet away, before he finally comes down and goes out to buy more guns from the gun vending machine.
Anyway, I do think it is a much better game than 2, but I don't think it's really interesting beyond the fact that it influenced so many other titles with the approach to open world crafting and collectables. Like other responses have mentioned, there are other titles like Spec Ops which did the whole player agency story a lot better.
sohois
2mo ago
Just ignore the mails. You can go online and state that you don't need a licence, but it's easier to just do nothing, and ignore any attempts at contacting you. The enforcement group has zero power and it's basically impossible for them to ever demonstrate you have watched the BBC unless you literally let them in your house while you're watching it.
sohois
2mo ago
I agree on the Shield. I think it came out just a bit too early to really benefit from being 'prestige TV'. Breaking Bad's popularity exploded in later seasons thanks to the growth of the internet and social media, but more than that it had the room to focus on Walt. The Shield was too long, bogged down with a lot of aimless plotlines; it felt like the production was still caught between making a serious character study, and a procedural cop show at times.
This is what we would term uncharitable thinking on any other post
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