site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3240 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 10, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I wouldn't think I needed a coding LLM to look up basic statistical data from government sources

You don't at all. AI doesn't unlock this ability for you, it just means you can say "get me XYZ data from ABC source" and then go jerk off and it's collected (hopefully) when you're back. The unlock in many many cases is the automation, not the capability.

try it and get crap for a result, we get pissed off

I'm a big AI fan and it pisses me off all the time. It's simultaneously very smart, and simultaneously very retarded, sometimes on the same task.

No. This software hasn't given me any indication that it's worth $20/month, let alone $200.

That's fine if you don't think so. Don't pay for it? The $20 plans are insanely good value, although they are in the process of enshittifying them as we speak. I currently pay for the $200 plan as I'm using a lot of tokens right now as I code myself some websites/tools I always wished existed, but I do not plan to pay for it much longer as I'm (hopefully) almost done.

I also use it a TON at work, it's deeply useful and changing everything I do at my white collar finance type job.

The $20 plan and the $200 plan basically only differ in the amount of compute you get. Although both OpenAI and Google offer a smarter model at this tier. I quite like ChatGPT "pro" and it is noticably better than their "thinking" mode but not 10x better.

The real capability gap is those using the free vs those paying $20. What you get on the free tier is worse than useless. Instant mode should never be used by anyone. To

to develop an expensive product with limited commercial use.

Have you missed the whole "agentic coding" thing? Or all the stuff about Mythos (is a lot of it marketing? Yes. Is a lot of it also real? Yes).

Instead they've created this world where they've spent more money than they could ever hope to earn creating products that don't make money and still have pathetic monetization rates that they've gotten into the habit of offering to the general public for free.

This does seem like a silly call on their part, we'll see how that shakes out.

"inference is profitable". Really? Because when I hear that, I hear "If we ignore all of our expenses except one category, the company makes money"

You're kind of being ignorant here. They make money selling AI compute, then they spend a bajillion times that on R&D. The implication here is that if they stopped training models, they could comfortably sell ChatGPT5.x or Opus4.x at a tidy margin.

Of course, they can't right now, because any company who stops setting giant piles of money on fire to train a better model will lose market share to those who do. Which also kind of proves the point that there's utility here...

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats