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The longer I spend here, the more I understand why @DaseindustriesLtd got so fucking mad at some of the quality of the takes on AI and decamped to fairer lands. I mean, I'm still here, and I'm not really going anywhere, but I've already said I'm largely bowing out of the conversation.
That's probably because I am less Russian and more patient than he is, but some of the bullshit I've heard has driven me towards drink*, and my patience is at an all-time low. I just get where he's coming from.
*Making me spiritually Slavic, or at least Scottish. There are no shortages of European nationalities with a national fondness for drink.
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?
I think every forum has some Gellman Amnesia (and déjà vu), unless it's heavily moderated like r/AskHistorians. And real life small talk has much more. If people only stuck to their domain expertise, more forums would be barren (see next paragraph), and people don't know what they don't know (Dunning–Kruger).
At least most replies point out the errors. Domain experts are often too busy, lazy, and private to browse and reply to random internet questions; except they miraculously find the time, effort, and public interest once someone else responds with a wrong answer (Cunningham's Law).
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Hey, at least Hlynka is gone (suicide by mod). While he's enjoying his retirement, my blood pressure does much better.
We were supposed to at least be midwits? I got 70 on my IQ test, which must be 70% of the maximum and a passing grade!
Your joke made me wonder if redefining IQ as the percentile would make it more legible. Or 50+the percentile, to keep 100 as the middle ground. Probably not, IQ90-110 would be mapped to IQ25-75, that's fifty points reserved for midwittery. I can already imagine people claiming they are 3x smarter than their opponent.
Aww, it's sweet that you thought I'm joking. No. I have brain damage from too many exams, including having to memorize all the fun properties of a normal distribution, as well as the abnormal ones.
I think the properties of the Cauchy distribution are much more fun.
I'm couching my words carefully: I'd rather stay in my couch and let the experts handle these things. I have few neurons left to distribute to even the most normal of tasks.
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Bad takes on AI seems to be the one commonality across creed, race, and IQ. This one from theringer is a particularly egregious example, but its rare to find anything both sufficiently technical to understand how it does and could work, and sufficiently "big picture" to understand societal impacts. (Of course, many others would consider my AI takes to be just as bad).
My current modus operandi is to be whatever the other person is not. If they are an AI maximalist I am the pessimist. If they are the doomer I am the optimist. If they think this technology is all hype I become the autistic technologist with in-depth details and explicit examples.
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It's actually one of the best ways to bait me. I thought that now that I'm old and wise, I would stop taking bait, but they're just so wonderfully confidently wrong and I cannot resist. It makes me so tilted, but the "I told you so" as we stand in the breadlines is going to hit so nice.
Brother, insight without action is as worthless as the spectacles it came with. Don't take the bait, at least if it comes at the cost of your sanity. Or do, if you end up feeling some degree of catharsis, idk, I'm not your shrink. I'm not doing a very good job at being my own shrink.
Perhaps it does serve a useful function to point out when people are being pigheadedly wrong about things. Someone's got to do it, or ought to do it, and I'm just glad that someone is very rarely me these days. I've got booze to drink, and Scottish women to introduce to the single mother lifestyle.
But yes, if we meet in the breadlines or in the intake unit for the paperclip factor, I'll save an understanding nod for you. Fist-bumps wouldn't be befitting.
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Better question would there be any without a national fondness for drink.
Terrible driving and a fondness for alcohol is something that unites just about every culture and demographic.
Bostonians often openly admit that the nationwide reputation of Boston drivers as being especially awful is true. Is this just a form of self-aggrandizement, and, actually, every locality believes their drivers have reputations for being the worst?
I can't think of a single demographic group of humans who are considered "good drivers"
Similarly, I've never once heard anyone say "yeah the drivers in my $LOCAL_AREA are great! I love it! We all get along on the roads :)" and I've heard every version of the opposite, so I'm assuming everyone sucks everywhere.
Back when I was a young lad I would have told you "yeah the drivers in Germany are great". Nowadays, between Germany getting diversified, and the driving culture in my country improving, the contrast is not so stark. Some time ago I also saw a video from an Indian guy saying that Italy, of all places, has good driving culture (though I suppose it makes sense if India is the reference), and when he was driving there he felt this subtle pressure to perform up to the standards of the rest of the country.
You're right that everyone might complain about their neighbors, but different groups definitely perform differently.
Italy was the only country where the drivers would change lanes to speed past the car than stopped in front of me on a pedestrian crossing. I can't imagine what India is like if that's good driving culture.
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