TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
There was a time circa early 2025 when the good models were something like ChatGPT-o3 while the bad/free models were ChatGPT-4o mini, where the former was a reasoning model while the latter wasn't. In that case you could really tell the difference like it was night and day. But yeah, nowadays everything is good enough that I doubt people would be able to tell between one model or another without using them both for weeks or months. The fact I don't hear my coworkers or other SWEs on the internet complaining about needing the latest and greatest is another indication that the models mostly blur together now.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
I popped in and watched a bit. It's a lot smoother than the old Claude Plays Pokemon but it still doesn't make for particularly great viewing since there's still so much dead time in between most actions. Notably there's not dead time between every action now though, like just clicking A through end-battle dialogue. I wonder if that's a harness thing? I presume so.
It's good to know this is being streamed so there's at least some semblance of honesty enforcement, though I'd still really prefer if the vods were just dumped on youtube so people could skim through them.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
I hadn't heard of Tumbler Ridge. I'm kind of surprised it's not a bigger deal among the AI-hating crowd.
But I was thinking something more along the lines of the AI doing its own actions that ends up killing some kids, not just failing to notify authorities when a mass shooter has conversations with it.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
As someone who uses these models to code every day, I also don't intuitively feel the jump from model to model. I suspect the people who pop out of the woodwork to say there's a huge difference are mostly just disingenuous engagement farmers at this point, with the occasional normal user who just happened to have a specific niche use-case that randomly got big improvements from one model.
Though I will say that I can still feel the difference in the long term. The models today are a step up in terms of coding compared to the models from a year ago, though many issues around context length and basic computer usage still persist.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
custom harness
BS like this is way, way too common in benchmarks.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
The rhetoric is mostly aimed at tech billionaires, but then why do regular codemonkeys feel the need to defend them?
They largely don't. The modal tech worker's thoughts on political economy are essentially those of a factory worker in 1850. They're distrustful of management, and they don't adore billionaires. They worry about foreigners (H1Bs) coming in and stealing their livelihoods. The fact that Yarvin happened to be a tech worker before his writing took off is mostly a coincidence.
But I can't shake the feeling that all of this debate about "techno-fascism" (or whatever) is operating at a high simulacrum level, concealing the true reasons why people get so animated about this and why they choose the sides that they do.
It's mostly illusory. It's a blob of vaguely interrelated stuff:
- The populist left hates billionaires like the populist right hates immigrants. Peter Thiel is a billionaire and also happens to have right-wing political ideas, so he serves as a foil for them to get really angry about.
- There's some latent animosity at "nerds" (especially the weird-looking, awkward ones) for becoming elites. Some of it is elite overproduction, while some of it is subconscious (or sometimes quite blatant) physiognomic prejudice.
- There's lingering hatred over SSC-adjacent "gray tribe" for not becoming fully woke.
Wrap up all of those with cherrypicked examples and you can make a bad political book on the "threat of the nerds" it seems.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
Thanks for the link. That seems like a fairly significant increase in capabilities, though
- I wish they streamed it and had vods, and
- I wish they were doing it on the old Red/Blue for a more direct comparison.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
It's not AGI, and we'll never have AGI until we have an AI that can do everything better than humans can, at which point it will be ASI. Anything less than that would be prone to being made fun of on social media as "if it's AGI then why can't it do [thing] that is totally easy for humans???" E.g. the best AIs can only barely play Pokemon games that are meant for toddlers, finishing them in 10x-100x the usual playtime that a human would require.
Scoring well on one benchmark might be interesting but it's unlikely to be a step-change in overall capabilities. AIs still have big issues with context limits and real-world interaction, even just in terms of computer use. Progress in those areas remains relatively anemic, and is probably a requirement for lots of other capabilities.
Expect regulations to be nonexistent until it does something to shock the public out of thinking AI is useless. The median voter hates AI but thinks it's just a slop machine, and how could a slop machine ever do anything harmful if it's so stupid? Eventually an AI will do something that can sort-of somehow plausibly be linked to something like killing children, and thereafter the regulations will be swift, extensive, and unreasonable.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Affirmative Action can exist and be bad and also not really matter to the employment prospects of any individual white person
Yep, thanks for making my point for me.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Sure, I mostly have a US perspective.
I'd say it's probably mostly still untrue in the rest of the West. Even for the UK which has been stagnant for the last decade or so, I doubt that people actually had better or even equivalent standards of living just looking at the data. Though this data isn't quite at the quality I would like (inflation-adjusted median wages).
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Very much an open question, and I presume it differs significantly from person to person. A lot of it is young men not being able to status signal like they would like to.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Sure, young people eventually become old people.
The problem is that young people don't want to pay for old people, but they want still have someone pay for them when they get old. They want to keep SS + Medicare, and have little inclination to fight against NIMBYism. But they don't like high taxes or high housing costs that come along with those. So they use criticism of "the establishment", or "society", or immigrants, or billionaires in place of the real culprit.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
I said society and culture, not state, so I don't know where you're getting this from.
You're right that you didn't say "state". But your advice in the third to last paragraph was mostly pointed at things that would affect the country/nation which is what I meant.
The degenerate "my group is oppressed" narrative is extremely attractive for most people, and it leads to vicemaxxing where being an awful person is recast as getting karmic justice for perceived inequalities. Blacks went down that path in the US and it turned their culture into something worthy of nothing but contempt. It's insane to me that the online right wants whites to also go down that path. Your post is echoing similar sentiments.
Young men become old men. It wasn't old men in their capacity as men who caused a lot of these problems.
Wokes were responsible for a lot of terribleness that afflicted Western cultures recently. They're getting a lot of hate now, which is well deserved.
But the Olds have rigged the welfare state in most Western nations far more than feminists or wokes ever have. If you want to complain about taxes, we should compare the amount of money going towards groups like feminists vs how much is going towards the Olds. It's not even close. Then we'd also need to throw in all the problems caused by NIMBYism, which is a defacto subsidy for Olds.
People hate high housing prices and high taxes, but for some reason that doesn't translate towards animosity towards the actual source of the problem.
I said they have been betrayed, not that they are overall poorer than 100+ years ago.
Saying there was a "betrayal" is weak without backing it up.
If your argument was "our money we once had was stolen!" then OK. But that's not true as I've pointed out.
If your argument is instead just "we're much richer than we were before, but not quite as rich as I wish we were", it's hard to call that a "betrayal".
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
[citation needed]
Nostalgia economics is totally wrong.
So if you were some rando making say 60k a year, he should just quit his job, forego his bills, drive far out of his way and somehow live on the countryside?
By "countryside" I meant more of "anywhere outside the urban core". It doesn't have to be the complete boonies. There are plenty of low crime areas out there still relatively close to cities, and it will usually actually be cheaper to buy a house out there than it will be in the city. The downside is a longer commute.
Maybe freedom of speech is a corny idea.
"Freedom of speech" has always been fairly limited if your idea is actually "freedom to express prejudice". It's true that you probably can't expect to shout the word n!gger 20 times in a professional setting today... but I doubt you could get away with that 30 years ago either.
I know about wokes wanting to make any political opinion to the right of far-left verboten in polite society, and I agree that's bad. But your "freedom to express prejudice" is just a complaint about the Overton Window, which has always been mushy and ever-shifting.
There’s nothing “stopping you,” from having the same opportunity to become as good of a Basketball player as Michael Jordan.
What? There's genetics which is a hard-stop, and a ludicrous amount of effort too. That's very different from simply moving somewhere else. I really don't understand your point here.
If someone wanted to move across the country, it's far easier today to apply for jobs before moving than it would be in the 1990s or 1950s. There are of course things that could stop people from moving, but the point of this discussion is what's changed over time for the worse.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
If you're trying to get your first job and have no better options that spamming resumes online then OK I can see your point, especially if you were unlucky enough to choose computer science.
If you're mid-career or later though, with a STEM degree and 135 IQ then this is really just a skill issue.
Seems to mainly go to people of preferable ethnicities.
There is just no way someone with a 100 IQ can do what you're saying
It was never trivial to support yourself, especially as a midwit or worse. The point is that it's easier today thanks to technology than it ever has been.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Sexual access dominates a huge portion of the mindshare of men, especially young men. Obviously it's not the only thing they care about, but it's a huge aspect of their lives. I don't think this post reduces men unfairly in that way. And this post is correct that the sexual marketplace has gotten much worse for the average man, though I'd chalk that up more to how much more efficient the internet has made sorting, although feminists certainly haven't helped things with their occasionally insane demands.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
absence of financial insecurity
It's never been easier for the average person to make enough money to not feel financial insecure.
the absence of neighborhood crime
If this is critical you can move to the countryside, which is much less crime-riddled than it was during the frontier days.
the ability to express prejudice without retribution
This is a pretty corny idea of freedom
being empowered to get up on a whim and move somewhere else.
There's nothing stopping you from moving except a way to support yourself financially, and it's easier than ever to save a bunch of money and/or get a remote work gig.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
The idea that young men are somehow financially worse off than they were previously is just dead wrong. It's another example of the demand for bad economic news being much higher than the supply. There's never been more opportunity in an absolute sense. Taxes paid to foreigners is a total red herring. Taxes sent to the Olds is definitely a problem, but it's a problem that even the young infuriatingly don't want to solve -- trying to get people to slash SS + Medicare is almost a nonstarter, even though I've been pushing for it for years. The average 20 year old man still sees himself as a temporarily embarrassed septuagenarian.
Sexually, this piece is more defensible, although I still wouldn't support what it's saying unconditionally.
The other big problem with this post is the target. Saying "the West" or "the state" is at fault is wrong in the sense that it treats the government as some ultimate entity that must ensure fairness. The state just does whatever the people tell it to do in a democracy. Feminists and wokes have co-opted it a little bit, while Olds have co-opted it a lot. If you think it's doing something bad, then the solution isn't vicemaxxing, it's to change the government to something better. There's been quite a bit of success pushing against feminists and wokes, but much less success pushing against the Olds because people have not mobilized against them.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Trade and business ties really don't do that much to deter conflict. There is a long history of people hoping that stuff would make war less likely or even impossible, and they always end up being disappointed.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
it is a world-historic foreign policy fuckup and unparalleled humiliation
It's a clear loss by Trump compared to what came previously, but I don't think it's that bad. What Trump will get is likely just going to be a more watery version of the JCPOA in terms of the nuclear stuff.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Absent a long-lasting deal, they can just rebuild any facilities that were destroyed (and most were just damaged).
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Iran’s nuclear weapons program is being destroyed!
This is less true under Trump's negotiating than it was under Obama's Iran deal. The deal Trump tore up, mind you.
Also, for some reason Trump decided to lift sanctions before hammering out the specifics, thereby kneecapping any negotiating leverage he had.
That said, the direction Trump is going is better (less bad) than where he was previously. Small mercies I guess.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3mo ago
My issue with you isn't your actions as a moderator, it's your response style when you're acting as a normal user. I looked through a few pages of your comments here and all of your moderator actions were taken against posts that either clearly deserved, or were at least reasonably defensible. I'm pretty sure I've never gotten what felt like an unreasonable mod action from you either, even as I've gotten a few from other mods that were a bit iffy. I don't doubt that No_one probably got what he deserved.
But then I get warned for this while you're doing something very similar here and it feels like the traffic cops are speeding.
That's a small example and we could chalk it up to a one-off. My main issue is how often you devolve into making personal attacks when you're having a regular discussion with other people. I've seen you ban other people when they start swearing at each other -- which you should! But then you consistently get right up to that line with some of your posts doing so in practically every other paragraph (accusations of dishonesty, insults, mockery, sarcasm, etc). I'm sure you get a lot of unnecessary flak as a moderator and that can make you want to lash out, but as a moderator you should be held to a somewhat higher standard and not use that as an excuse.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3mo ago
My estimation of your reasonableness and sincerity has been trending upward of late, so let me put a little more effort into this.
Thank you for this, not just for the compliment but the longer post as well that makes for a far better discussion point.
My overall philosophical retort is this post.
To this point specifically, I'm not appealing to the "majesty of the law". I agree that if one side is selectively enforcing rules against you while exempting themselves, then unilaterally disarming is suicidal. I essentially said that in the hypocrisy post, that some hypocrisy is justified when refusing to reciprocate leaves you permanently disadvantaged.
But the point where I disagree is the jump from "the outgroup abused power" to "there is not law to uphold" or "our side now gets a blank check and none of our sins count" as I've been effectively hearing from MAGA apologists on this site and on others. Most of Trump's corruption doesn't directly advantage MAGA as a movement, and in fact does some amount of harm. MAGA as something other than just a Trumpist personality cult would be stronger if everything else was the same, except that Trump didn't sell off pardons. There would be some momentary discomfort as the right had to undergo self-criticism, but it would emerge stronger for it. The fact that it mostly refuses to do so is a cancer that eats it from the inside.
My position isn't "never fight back", it's that people should be very clear about what counts as fighting back, and not trying to launder every act of corruption as defensive necessity. If the claim is "the law is already dead", then the burden is on you to explain why a specific escalation improves the situation rather than just helping to bury it.
In your view, does the Trump administration get points for not engaging in this particular "arms race to see who can be worse?"
Yes! Or rather I'd frame it as Trump not losing points in this instance while Biden would have.
This tracks. I don't hate Zuck / Bezos / Musk either, though I don't like them. Musk in particular was a massive disappointment when he let his mind go to the gutter with all the Catturd-esque right wing brainrot. Though I'd still prefer a cabal of tech oligarchs in charge over Trump or a deranged Woke-pusher, mostly by process of elimination (i.e. tech oligarchs would be the least-terrible). I'd vastly prefer Obama to any of those losers but the median primary voter hates people like that now.
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