domain:nunosempere.com
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1m ago
I've got an idea swirling around in my head about how the draft is necessary(not sufficient) for a free, western society, in a way that goes back to the beginning of time. I think mass culture is just one expression thereof.
The period where the Anglosphere countries had a peacetime draft was very short (20-30 years after WW2) and coincided with a low point for freedom. The model of democracy that emerges from the French Revolution was based on the idea that democracy (which is related to, but not the same as, freedom) requires a draft, although empirically that has turned out to be false in a number of Continental European countries including France. But I don't think France is noted for having more freedom than the Anglosphere.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
9m ago
I didn’t care for Luca much. In general, I think Pixar does best at movies that show “the world within the world”, where there are non-human characters who are related in some way to humans and we see what the “human world” is like from their perspective. Once you notice that pattern, you realize all of Pixar’s best movies fit that pattern.
Toy Story is about toys who have to navigate the world of children playing with them. Monsters inc is about monsters who scare humans, but are deathly afraid of them. Finding Nemo is about fish having to navigate the world of commercial fishing and aquariums. Wall-E is about robots who have to clean up after lazy humans. Inside Out is about internal emotions who have to try and regulate themselves to deal with the problems of their host person. (Not actually the first time Disney developed that concept.)
Luca, Brave, Elio, and Coco are the opposite: about humans exploring the inner world. I find that inherently less interesting. Coco is by far the best out of the bunch I really like; day of the dead has such color as a cultural festival, and the idea of an elderly grandmother with memory issues remembering her father is such a raw and poignant human experience that I’m not sure anyone left the theater with dry eyes. But I liked Elio more than most people seemed to have; I’m considering an effortpost review since it came up.
Soul and Turning Red (never saw that one) I guess are like that, but less about a world and more about a transformation? Not considered Pixar’s best.
There are also the “non-humans as a human allegory,” like Cars, A Bug’s Life, Onward, Elemental. These are, at best, controversial. I think humans need to be in a Pixar movie, but not as the main characters.
I never saw Lightyear, and I think that was their worst ever concept for a film. I hated that they made a 3d Pixar movie as the in-universe buzz lightyear movie; I prefer the original 2d galactic command TV show. Toy advertisement media is far more silly and zany than a Pixar film.
In general, Pixar is at their best when we get to imagine non-humans “inside” our world and what they might think of us. If I were an exec, I would be demanding that creatives pitch more of those ideas.
07mk
15m ago
Also, given the falls he survives in 3 and 4, it seems that the bulletproof-ness applies to all impact. I was actually reminded somewhat of the Die Hard franchise, where John McClane went from a competent off-duty cop barely making it out of his depth in 1 to a Marvel superhero taking down a fighter jet with a Mack truck followed by surviving sliding down a crumbling bridge in 4. Hollywood might have somewhat of an issue with making everything bigger and more over-the-top with sequels.
philosoraptor
16m ago
I quite vividly remember someone posting a comment about there being a siren and someone else saying "can't find any news confirming it" and not piping in with "it's me, I'm the news, posting from the spotty internet in the bomb shelter". And then it became just increasingly not the right moment for it (also I was quite sleep deprived and dealing with lots of other more immediate concerns).
Those posts from the shelter would probably have been awesome, actually, though I completely understand you having other concerns that were far higher priorities at a moment like that.
07mk
21m ago
Now if you feel that I've been unfairly dismissive, antagonistic, or uncharitable in my response towards you then perhapse then you might begin to grasp why i hate the whole "bUt HuMaNs ArE FaLaBlE ToO UwU" argument with such a passion. Im not claiming that LLMs are unreliable because they are "less than perfect" i am claiming that they are unreliable because they are not only unreliable, but unreliable by design.
I don't understand why anyone would hate that argument. Humans are also unreliable... not by design, perhaps, but intrinsically due to the realities of biology. The point of the argument is that, even though humans are intrinsically and inescapably unreliable, we still manage to make reliable systems based around relying on them, and as such, the intrinsic, inescapable unreliability of LLMs doesn't make them incapable of being used as the basis of unreliable systems.
There are good arguments to be made against this. It's possible that we can't get LLMs' unreliability to be lower than humans at the same cost. It's possible that even if that were possible, the nature of the unreliability of LLMs will always remain less predictable than that of humans, in such a way as to make making reliable systems based on them impossible. The fact that LLMs can't be shamed or punished based on failing in their reliability could be a fatal flaw for creating reliable systems based on them. And there are probably a myriad of other better reasons I haven't even thought of.
But I'd like to actually see those arguments actually being made. Maybe that video you say you linked makes them, but I'm one of the users of a text-based forum like this who don't have either interest or ability to view long-form videos during normal usage of this forum.
ulyssessword
32m ago
Let's try a concrete example. Excerpted from here:
The o1 model identified the exact or very close diagnosis (Bond scores of 4-5) in 65.8% of cases during the initial ER Triage, 69.6% during the ER physician encounter, and 79.7% at the ICU
65.8% accuracy isn't that great, but buddy, have you seen humans?
—surpassing the two physicians (54.4%, 60.8%, 75.9% for Physician 1; 48.1%, 50.6%, 68.4% for Physician 2) at each stage.
The state of the art for generating accurate medical diagnoses doesn't involve gathering the brightest highschoolers, giving them another decade(-ish) of formal education, then more clinical experience before asking for their opinions. It involves training an LLM.
You did not say "no", as such i find it disingenuous of you to suddenly back-pedal and claim to care about reliability after the the fact.
Buddy, have you seen humans?
Humans are unreliable. You are a human are you not? You have not given any indication that you care about accuracy or reliability and instead (by chosing to use the trick calculator over doing the math yourself) have strongly implied that you do not care about such things.
Now if you feel that I've been unfairly dismissive, antagonistic, or uncharitable in my response towards you then perhapse then you might begin to grasp why i hate the whole "bUt HuMaNs ArE FaLaBlE ToO UwU" argument with such a passion. Im not claiming that LLMs are unreliable because they are "less than perfect" i am claiming that they are unreliable because they are not only unreliable, but unreliable by design. I know its long but seriously watch the video essay on Badness = 0 I posted up thread. It is highly relevant to this conversation.
Lorian_Aristedes
36m ago
I would be very interested to read that if you ever do a write up.
Fixed the link.
It's this one.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NDWKRFSZlCM&t=64
This scene in the Mario Movie has NO REASON TO EXIST, they don't resolve anything, it lasts less than 2 minutes, there's no real danger, and they just solve the problem without even thinking about it, and get back to the storyline. Literally the next scene leads into the final showdown.
The whole movie feels like this.
YE_GUILTY
56m ago
When you moderated a forum, what did you do about posters who threatened to leave and take their valuable perspectives with them if they didn't get their way?
(I promise that thought came to mind before I realized it would come off as accusing you of doing so. I can say I hope you're not.)
You see, moderators do not have the power to keep members in a community: they can only ban/punish or not. Members have their right to decide to stay or go. And here, many left-wing posters have left not with a permaban but with a flounce: a public door-slam denouncing the moderators, and/or the posters, and/or whomever, for tolerating the wrong kinds of people too much and the right kinds of people not enough.
Or they just didn't make the jumps: there are still plenty of well-known left-wing posters from the /r/slatestarcodex Culture War Roundup days still seeming to post their same views under the new "no culture war" regime. (Speaking of which, it occurs to me this community has twice been sent off into exile, both times on account of outside demands/threats over too much right-wing activity.)
But what do you do about flouncers? The most obvious solution is to give them what they want: give them special treatment, "affirmative action for left-wingers," as Scott did on SlateStarCodex. You can do that, but, in this case, affirmative action doesn't prove effective at healing underlying divisions. The majority ends up rankled and chilly towards the officially-favored minority, it seems.
Offhand, I don't have any other policy proposal options based on the history of the Scott-sphere. Now, I thought about asking about your experience handling intractable disagreements, not as a forum moderator, but as an Israeli, but that seems like it could get really pessimistic really quickly, so maybe we shouldn't get into that.
faceh
57m ago
Thats the one addition I simply cannot defend. If he can tuck his head behind the suit and be instantly bulletproof (regardless of the weapons being used against him) then whats the risk?
plural
1hr ago
They used to rewrite movies until the execs thought they were good. Maybe they didn't have to do that to make money and that's why they stopped or maybe the execs that did that were replaced and the newer execs don't because they don't care or it's become harder to do something like rewriting a movie four or five times until you get something that you think is right like Gladiator. But it used to be a pretty common thing, Tom Stoppard would punch up all the dialogue in The Last Crusade or Aaron Sorkin for the Rock/Enemy of the State but I don't here about script doctors anymore and not really about things like Gladiator where they just couldn't stop rewriting it. I don't hear about studio meddling anymore, do you?
I look at things like Smile today (many days ago, I guess) and I can see that the execs knew they had a hit there with the idea alone. They got a really fancy production team on board, they got Cristobal Tapia De Veer for the music, They got decent to good actors, they marketed the shit out of it but they didn't try to fix the CW-level plot that existed in the middle for some reason. Maybe the execs that were artists themselves and could see what made something good or not are gone and now we're left with people who can only see what makes money because the two things are so far apart now. There's nobody like Roger Corman looking at your movie and telling you its shit because it doesn't have enough explosions and then shrugging and giving you carte blanche to go out and shoot the movie again with more explosions. But everyone's an auteur. There's some kind of allegory or symbolism. Can you imagine someone trying to fix the extra hour that exists in the Substance for some reason nowadays? They'd get quiet cancelled or something like that like that for "being a piece of shit."
But I suspect the main reason is that it makes no difference. Maybe it did at one point but there's no reason to try to fix Love and Thunder when it will probably piss Taika off and all the people who have to come for reshoots and you won't make any more money. Who'd want to take charge of something like that anyway? Joss Whedon was basically cancelled for dealing with the people on the Justice League reshoot and trying to get a black person to say lines in the script.
Though it's also clear that there are many major executive decisions at studios to not make things good. You can look at Amazon or Netflix, they didn't try to get good writers or even lovers of the material they were making for The Witcher or Wheel of Time. Why would Disney continue to employ Russel T. Davies to take a massive shit on Doctor Who again? Maybe its cheaper but Russel T. Davies is probably more expensive than the CW also-rans that seem to be able to get their hands on best-selling book franchises, so I expect there's a lot of cronyism or simply just lack of any understanding or care about the things they're making because known IPs don't have to be good they just have to exist so give The Witcher to that girl that wrote a few episodes of Riverdale or let's reboot Buffy with someone that wrote an episode of Poker Face. If it fails who cares we made some money and we can just reboot it again later.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Elite human capital is pretty clearly code for Bush era democrats with moderately libertarian economics. They're very concerned about increasing religious right influence(lol, LMAO even), and think constantly sounding the bugle on it is a necessity. They support gays but not trans, may have some skepticism of- but mostly a vague idea about- US foreign policy. They're very pro-abortion, very concerned about conspiracy theories. Compared to current day progressives they don't seem to care much about drugs or criminal justice much, they might even be (moderately)conservative on the issue, it's hard to tell.
Gaashk
1hr ago
Edit to add: the title of the movie was pretty awful as well. Like who (or what) the hell is “Elio”? It gives you absolutely nothing to work with, nothing about space or aliens or anything. So matching that up with the bland art and the minimal marketing gives no hook at all to actually want to go out and see it.
I don't necessarily think that was a problem, considering how well liked Coco is, but Coco has a much better hook. There are school field trips to see live musical performances inspired by Coco, for instance, which they organize around Day of the Dead.
Luca was at least very summery, and came out when the art style was a bit fresher. I thought it was cute, and my four year old liked it a lot.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
My jalapeno and cheese sausage turned out well; I'm probably going to try my hand at andouille if I can bag a hog this year. It's probably my last batch before deer season opens in the fall.
Apply the same low bar consistently. Let people have an actual conversation with actual disagreement.
I am not aware of any banned person who was trying to have an actual conversation with actual disagreement. People mainly get banned for being obvious bad faith trolls who are just here to deliver drive-by insults and then vanish without making any arguments for their position.
Sure, there are some people who do that and don't get banned, but that's not quite the same thing, is it? I don't think it's so terrible to err on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt. There are few enough posts here that tolerating a few more won't take away attention from anyone more deserving.
And for the record, I would be willing to bet that >75% of this forum is non-antisemetic (is there a word for that?) and a commanding majority support Israel over its various Muslim rivals. There are a few antisemites lurking about darkly Implying Things, but much like the leftists they tend to scurry away when you shine a spotlight on them rather than actually stand and fight.
It is not a consensus opinion that smothers dissent, it's the opposite. It's an embattled minority opinion that no one is willing to stand up and openly defend. You don't have to tiptoe around anything.
Here, watch: I think antisemetism is stupid. Much like a primitive savage who thinks thunder is caused by an angry god, antisemites anthropomorphize the impersonal forces of politics and economics. When confronted with a phenomenon they don't understand, they assume it must be caused by a cabal of scheming humans. They do this because they're superstitious idiots. They're also poo-poo heads.
I've called you out, antisemites of the Motte! I've called you all poo-poo heads! Show me how fearsome and numerous you are! Dogpile me into oblivion!
Bartender_Venator
1hr ago
This is why the whole Elite Human Capital thing has already flashed in the pan and gone as a memetic trend. There's no register used by its proponents other than shallow antagonism towards broad swathes of (usually caricatured) outgroupers. Beyond Hanania's mild advocacy of orthodox liberal/libertarian economics, it's incredibly rare to find any positive platform whatsoever buried in all the mud-slinging - as shown on this forum by the complete confusion of many posters as to what positive ideas you actually believe. Out of politeness, I'll refrain from speculating on the psychological motives or personality types involved. But I suspect there just isn't any positive platform because, when people are motivated by one, they're usually excited to win others over, to learn how to convert with argument and rhetoric. If that's what you're trying to do, rather than sling insults because they feel good, then I suggest revising your approach.
On the other hand, if you're looking to antagonize people, here is a guide on how to do it while being as polite as possible.
Goodguy
1hr ago
A little bit, but I doubt it's very significant. Granted, I don't know much about the comics, but from what little exposure I have to Superman, I've never seen any reason to think that the way Superman behaves as a journalist is particularly Jewish. If an Irish-American guy wrote a story about a space alien who comes to Boston and becomes a cop, I wouldn't view the cop as particularly Irish-coded unless he did, well, Irish-y things as a cop. But like I said, I don't know much about the comics, so I could be missing something.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
Then you are poor at evaluating evidence or unable to look past your biases. I assert confidently and objectively that you are wrong.
erwgv3g34
1hr ago
Okay, so why don't studios make movies for less? We know fully well it is possible; Super Mario Bros and Oppenheimer were both made on a budget of $100 million, and both did great at the box office ($1.361 billion and $975.8 million, respectively).
Why are the budgets so out of control? What possessed Disney to invest $250 million on Snow White, or Warner Bros to drop $200 million on Joker 2?
self_made_human
C'est la vie
1hr ago
That's fair, o3 has a conversational style that is rather unique, even when considering other SOTA reasoning models. It's like a bright zoomer intern with ADHD who will try just about anything.
if you’re not a domain-specific expert
I would hope that a doctor using o3 would be able to parse the jargon! If not, they have bigger issues than merely using an LLM. 4o might be more conversational, but for knotty problems, I'd rather use o3 itself to explain arcane terminology or have another model break it down for me.
DiscourseMagnus
1hr ago
Epstein very likely killed himself in a physical sense, but there's a non-zero chance he was coerced/blackmailed/bribed into doing this
One would think that if they went to all the effort of making him commit suicide instead of just murdering him, they would have made the scene of the suicide less suspicious.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Screenwriting is a specific skill on which the screenwriter's guild has a monopoly. My guess is this'll get disrupted by AI eventually(remember that I am on record as thinking AI will have relatively minimal impacts to the economy), but that skill is mostly about formatting. Except these people refuse to acknowledge that they aren't creative professionals and have a monopolistic guild backing them up, so they can wreck filmography trying to 'express themselves'.
Revolt of the woke embarrassed elites, sure, but I don't think the proximal cause is shoving too much gayness in.
Gaashk
1hr ago
I agree with this take.
In my experience, the people who are really worried about decaying former company towns are also worried about places like Detroit, which used to have a higher proportion of functional, employed black men with families (they say, I'd be open to an argument that this is a myth I suppose).
The people who are really worried about good New York schools crowding out white and Asian kids in favor of racial quotas because of disparate impact are different people, much more likely to go on about "HBD," but they're probably just as upset about being yelled at on the subway by black, white, or hispanic druggies. I think these are the ones who are tired of trying to solve the druggies' problems for them, and would like them to be locked up or denied expensive, repeated medical care, and would be completely unsurprised at the stats about their average demographics.
I think honestly we need to renormalize tge idea that not every thing and every place is for everybody. It’s not really workable. If you’re constantly offended, maybe a debate isn’t where you want to be. On the other hand if you chafe at the thought of living in a hugbox where everyone is super nice and gets along, then you want the debate forum.
The internet of 2025 feels much much smaller and less diverse in a lot of ways than the early internet where you might go to a forum for gaming discussion and it might be the kind of place where you need to cite in game books to talk about Elder Scrolls lore. Or you don’t like that you go somewhere else and trash talk about Fortnite and drop lots of Fbombs.
I don’t mind having rules and standards for a forum. You need to keep the discussion under some control just to keep everyone mostly on topic and avoid excessive vitriol. Just make the rules simple and post them so people can read them, and be viewpoint neutral.
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