domain:drmanhattan16.substack.com
Totalitarianit
2hr ago
This almost perfectly describes me, but my maintenance is a little more frequent. Haircut every 4 weeks.
No_one
2hr ago
I would agree that intentionality isn't easy for them and is outpaced by their verbal ability, but it's not easy for us either. It's not clear even if it's optimal to represent the world accurately. (We are all at war, after all )
E.g. basically every ideological person in my opinion believes untrue things about the world for instrumental reasons and is unaware of it.
in philosophy, the power of minds to be about something, to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs
Being strategically wrong about the world, that is, to misrepresent the world in the mind is advantageous. Horrifying conclusion yet if you look at e.g. the discussion about tracking and educators..
sockpuppet2
2hr ago
What natural experiments show this for race, controlling for income? That's why this is confusing.
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
You said it better than I could, and with more relevant expertise.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
How curious. I've mentioned many times that people have a habit of reporting posts just because they don't like the argument being made or the person making it, and that we (mods) wish people would not use the report button for that purpose. If you think it only happens when people are going on about Jews, you are deeply mistaken and have not been paying attention.
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
My experience with AI bots has generally been that they are extremely articulate when it comes to producing correct English text, but they have no awareness or intentionality and therefore no sense of relationship to fact, and no sense of context or meaning. What they do very well is string together words in response to prompts, and despite heroic efforts to get their output to be more fact-sensitive, the fundamental issue has never really been overcome.
I call them nonsense because I think that sense requires some sort of relationship to both fact and context. To be sensible is to be aware of your surroundings. That's not the case with bots.
I would add, at least, that this:
Deepseek, however, with a bit of prompting can be completely insane yet rational and easily smarter than most people you see if you go to any place outside of a professional context.
seems to depend on definitions of rationality or intelligence that I don't think I share. I think bots are very efficient at producing English text, even quite complex text. It's trivial enough to show that a bot can produce a better written letter or better poem or what have you than the average man or woman on the street.
But I think that written verbal acuity is, at best, a very restricted kind of 'intelligence'. In human beings we use it as a reasonable proxy for intelligence and make estimations based off it because, in most cases, written expression does correlate well with other measures of intelligence. But those correlations don't apply with machines, and it seems to me that a common mistake today is for people to just apply them. This is the error of the Turing test, isn't it? In humans, yes, expression seems to correlate with intelligence, at least in broad terms. But we made expression machines and because we are so used to expression meaning intelligence, personality, feeling, etc., we fantasise all those things into being, even when the only thing we have is an expression machine.
Bots and LLMs can produce statements that look very polished, and which purport to describe the world. In many cases, those descriptions are even accurate. But they are still, it seems to me, generating nonsense.
SSCReader
3hr ago
This plus the Faculty were two of his major inspirations according to Coogler himself.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
3hr ago
Human Bio-diversity is a thing.
Unfortunately, you aren’t really allowed to talk about these things in polite company, but most people fundamentally understand this.
Thanks to social sorting by occupation/income/class/education I'm not sure that HBD is that obvious to your average layman. The kind of black person that hangs out in lefty college educated millennial circles is not the sort that drives an Altima with a fake paper tag. If anything, your average college educated white millennial might be more likely to know/be related to some embarrassingly white trash types than they would the average ghetto-dweller. Pro football players are supermajority black, but high school football players and more broadly football fans more closely reflect the demographics of the sort of places that are into it.
To give a Trump-coded example I work for a trucking company in the deep south whose employees are almost entirely black and white, and of the pre Ellis Island variety at that. Your HBD guy would argue that our black employees are in fact an above-average sample of the black population of AL/MS/GA while the whites we have mostly aren't (More accurately, there's an age gap. Our white employees are mostly older/from a time where college education wasn't that common and trucking was more widely considered a good job. Our average office guy was a trucker for a decade or few before they switched to the office.) but IRL it looks like a place where "90s colorblindness" (aka. the normie Trump voter position) is accurate. The black and white men (and it's all men) I work with are largely the same: high school educated/some college at most, very Southern/rural-coded, married or divorced with children (Educated incels would rage at the fact that fatass truckers can get laid and they can't.), of average intelligence, and somewhere between fat and fat as hell for the most part. The drivers (and frankly a lot of the office guys; I was hired into the office with no trucking experience based in part on the expectation that as a college educated white guy I'd have superior computer skills) might not be the brightest guys, but we pay well above-average for trucking so we get the kind who are experienced and by and large have their shit together (especially the owner/operators).
SSCReader
3hr ago
I think that's fair. The coda is a little at odds tonally, because vampirism goes from this horrible thing the main characters are willing to die to fight off, to being portrayed as not that bad after all. But Buddy Guy is a great choice for an aged Sammie so it's hard to complain too much.
phailyoor
3hr ago
In my ime "thinking" models such as o-series and gemini pro are much better at certain specific tasks, but aren't overall more accurate.
phailyoor
3hr ago
Even the best models will confidently spout absolute falsehoods every once in a while without any warning.
SecureSignals
Training the Aryan LLM
3hr ago
With the benefit of hindsight, they probably should have taken out Iran instead of Iraq first.
But Israel pressured Bush to bomb Iran although he refused. Iraq + Afghanistan being occupied makes Iran completely surrounded by the US military apparatus. What happened was the collapse of the nation-building narrative due to the failures of the Iraq war that made war with Iran politically impossible.
Rov_Scam
3hr ago
I think the OP's point would be better stated as not so much liberal but liberal adjacent. Few men had facial hair in the 1950s, and those who did were either immigrants, bohemians, or men old enough to have been around the last time beards were in fashion. Then they were adopted by the 1960s counterculture, along with long hair and other fashion choices, as a deliberate rejection of mainstream aesthetics. By the 70s, while some of the hippie fashions had decidedly died, facial hair had become fairly mainstream. But you have to keep in mind how this looked to someone born before the early 1940s: They would have been well into adulthood by the time facial hair hit the mainstream, and would have grown up in an era when it was at least somewhat unsavory. To a member of Nixon's Silent Majority, facial hair was seen as sloppy, and was associated with hippies. Think of Abe Simpson's opinions of Joe Namath's sideburns, or George Steinbrenner's facial hair policy with the Yankees. And what kind of politics were the hippies associated with?
I'm glad you brought up Waylon Jennings here. Waylon has an image as a good 'ol boy, an image that's right-coded today, but that wasn't always the case. The transition of the South from a Democratic stronghold to a Republican one was just beginning when he came to prominence, and it was hard to tell what kind of impact the 1972 election had on the Southern Strategy when Nixon won in such a landslide. The South wouldn't go Republican in a non-landslide election until 2000. While most Southerners weren't liberals in the hippie sense, they weren't stereotypically conservative in the traditional sense either, lingering views on racial issues aside.
Then you have to add the country music landscape into the mix. Nashville was in a bit of a crisis in the late 1960s, as traditional American styles like jazz, country, and traditional pop were being rejected by the new generation in favor of rock and R&B. Mainstream country circa 1967 was defined by a slick, mainstream sound that was decidedly unhip. This was the top country hit that year. It could have easily been recorded ten years prior and was only country by virtue of the acoustic guitar and light pedal steel. It's no surprise that, for how big that song was on the country charts, it didn't cross over to the Hot 100 at all, and Jack Greene isn't exactly a household name today, even among country fans. Even the venerable Johnny Cash was in the middle of a dry spell, putting out crap like this. This isn't to say that there weren't great songs from this era or any crossover success ("Stand by Your Man" being the prime example), but it was clear that things had to change with the times.
This process was an awkward one. Willie Nelson had had a few hits in the 50s but spent most of the 60s drifting, his label not knowing what to do with him, and was thus a prime candidate for the kind of experiments that went nowhere. While the albums he made at RCA with Chet Atkins were certainly interesting, they weren't exactly good. One bright spot was Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison LP, which revitalized his career. The fuck all attitude became a template for the next wave of country stars in the 1970s: Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and of course, Waylon Jennings. Outlaw country was country reclaiming the edge it had lost over the past couple decades, rejecting the nudie suits of the Opry for a countercultural image that glorified outlaws, gamblers, hustlers, and all sorts of other questionable characters at the margins of society. It told stories not just of love and loss but of adultery and murder. Johnny Cash may have hit #1 with Kristofferson's "Sunday Monrnin' Comin' Down, but for my money Waylon recorded the best version of it, capturing the feeling of a sad loser with no place to go. Compare it to Cash's version, which, with it's forced chick-a beat and tacked-on orchestration, sounds out of another era entirely. And there was no easier way to signal the start of a new era visually than for the three icons of the genre to sport beards, combining countercultural associations with images of a romanticized American West.
After ten years, though, long hair and beards don't have quite the same impact, especially since the look has been increasingly adopted by the mainstream, so the youth who want to be hip have to find new ways to freak out the squares, first with mohawks and piercings of the punk era, then the big hair androgynous look of 80s pop metal, just to name two examples. In the meantime, the 1980s has seen the mainstream embrace a more clean-shaven look, and while plenty of normal people still have mustaches and beards, the prototypical yuppie doesn't, and most musicians and media figures don't. In 1992 grunge is starting to replace hair metal as the rock music of choice, and bands like Pantera are entering their heyday in an attempt to reclaim metal from the commercialized dross it had become. And what was furthest from the look of the hair bands? The long hair and beards that were popular 20 years prior, when bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple were making music that actually did have and edge.
What about those pre-boomer squares I mentioned several paragraphs ago? They didn't go away. They're older now, but voting in records numbers. Any mainstream man over the age of 50 probably wouldn't have ever considered growing a beard and wouldn't have had an affinity for any music past the pre-Beatle 60s. To them, all the changing youth hair fads of the preceding three decades were just one amorphous mass of people who didn't know how to present themselves. A guy like Bill Clinton could at least sympathize. He didn't have a beard, but he used beard aficionados Fleetwood Mac for his campaign song, and was the first rock and roll president. The Republicans, on the other hand, ran guys like Bush and Dole in the 90s, who yammered on about family values in a fairly naked appeal to an America that was corrupted by hedonism. Which side of the aisle do you think would have been more likely to listen to Pantera in that environment? Do you think a guy like Dan Quayle would look at Dimebag Daryl as the kind of gentleman he'd hope his daughter would bring home?
The Democrats, of course, weren't much better on this front, with Tipper Gore founding the PMRC and still having to appeal to the kind of older voters that are suspicious of guys with beards. But any way you slice it, there was still an association with countercultural weirdos, whether they be hippies or metalheads, and they were more likely to be worn by rednecks (who were still voting Democrat in large numbers), blue collar union voters (whose jobs didn't rely much on appearance), hippie holdouts, and, yes, college professors, who at that time were largely of the generation that was in college in the 60s and 70s. They were much less likely to be work by the Bible Belt Values Voters and businessmen who made up the Republican base. They still weren't mainstream enough that a politician of either party could wear one without the risk of alienating a sizeable number of voters; even if the stereotype was dying, it wasn't worth the risk (for the record, my grandmother, a lifelong Democrat born in 1925, hated beards, especially the one my uncle occasionally wore). Now that that generation is mostly gone, and anyone under the age of 80 is of the generation that made facial hair acceptable, it's okay for politicians of any party to bring the look back.
hanikrummihundursvin
3hr ago
I suspected it, but I did not think it to be this pronounced or shameless.
hanikrummihundursvin
3hr ago
That's the case for all anecdotes. On top of that, the nature of some questions can deprive us of our preferred tools to deduce fact from fiction. That doesn't invalidate the questions or unburden us from the consequence of the answers. Using heuristics to help guide us towards some sense of rationality is perfectly valid and reasonable.
A key example of this would be military propaganda. We know it was used. We know there were branches within the armed forces and government whose sole purpose was understanding, disseminating and otherwise advancing propaganda for whatever purpose. Seemingly all the major players in conflict hide or obfuscate their casualty numbers in a variety of scenarios. So without evidence we can reasonably claim that news about Ukrainian or Russian or IDF or HAMAS casualty numbers are at best skewed. Why would the US army be different in this regard? Maintaining a narrative of how strong the US specials forces are, how how powerful the navy is seems to fall within the basic purview of a propaganda arm.
Yes, we are missing fact, but the nature of the subject matter kind of has that problem built in. That doesn't make it unreasonable. In fact, the only position on could argue that point from was if one believed one had a better understanding of reason than anyone else. That one is here to finger wag other people as if they can't understand the nature of the question and the inherent problems just overviewed.
At the risk of a self-dox, I have an advanced degree in Applied Math, and multiple published papers and patents related to the use of machine learning in robotics and signal processing. I was introduced to the rationalist community through a mutual friend in the SCA and was initally excited by the opportunity to discuss the philosophical and engineering challenges of developing artificial intelligence. However as time went on i largely gave up trying to discuss AI with people outside the industry as it became increasingly apparent to me that most rationalists were more interested in the use of AI as a conceptual vehicle to push thier particular brand of Silicon Valley woo than they were the aforementioned philosophical and engineering challenges.
The reason i don't talk about it is in large part that i find it difficult to speak honestly without sounding uncharitable. I believe that the "wordcels" take these bots seriously because they naturally associate "the ability to string words together" with intent/sentience while simultaneously lacking sufficient background knowledge and/or understanding of algorithmic behavior to recognize that everthing the OP describes lies well within the bounds of expected behavior. See the post from a few weeks ago where people thought that GPT was engaged in "code-switching". What the lay-man interperts as intent is to the mathematician the functional output of the equation as described.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
3hr ago
That’s even more deportable than the gang tattoos.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
3hr ago
The mustache/goatee combo might be slightly right-coded because it’s popular with certain types of boomers and early Xers, but even that’s a weak indicator.
In my experience goatees are incredibly Trump-coded, but that's mostly because they seem to be almost universal among (mostly) high-school educated Gen Xers and the sort of Millennials (almost always blue collar) that wear them. On that note the only politician I can think of off the top of my head with a goatee is Chip Roy.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
3hr ago
I think beards have become somewhat obesity/soy coded at this point thanks to too many out of shape guys using them to cover up a poor/mediocre jawline. On that note it works for JD Vance and very much does not for Ted Cruz (and it probably wouldn't even if Ted Cruz could grow one; he just needs to embrace his inner Gen Xer and stick with a goatee. See Chip Roy.).
There is a generational bit to it though. I've gone with a beard and just a moustache (the latter briefly because I thought it was hilarious how much I looked like a carbon-copy of my maternal grandfather) and the female millennial bartender was very much pro beard (and is dating a bearded lefty soylennial) while the zoomer barbacks (most of whom can't grow either) complemented the moustache.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
4hr ago
But if you don’t get any hits or very few because your “about me” is full of anime and gaming, im assuming that this is a major part of your life, much like I’d assume that someone who mentions golf on their profile has golf as a major part of their life, and probably will spend most weekends on the course. Someone who’s into gaming enough to mention it on a dating profile is likely going to game at least 25 hours a week, and maybe more. If I’m looking for a person I might want to marry, I don’t see that in a guy who spends most of his free time with a controller in his hands. And I do like gaming, I just don’t want my life to consist of trying to squeeze in all the other stuff around the hobbies of gaming and anime.
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
You don't have to have the same interests as your soulmate. You have to get along and cooperate on tasks and share values.
The happiest couples are ones who know when they bore each other to tears, not ones who never have to worry about it. Because the latter are imaginary.
No_one
4hr ago
...nonsense generators? Have you ever used e.g. Gemini or Deepseek? Both are free. Okay both can be very naive at times, and both are kind of soy with default prompts. Deepseek, however, with a bit of prompting can be completely insane yet rational and easily smarter than most people you see if you go to any place outside of a professional context.
If you want to really see what they can do, install some client for LLMs and hook yourself up with some of the better free models over at https://openrouter.ai/models
(there's a 50 query daily limit if you have <10$ in your account, not sure if there's a better service. )
I think you and @ArjinFerman are both wrong about the point. The optimal amount of fraud is not zero is about how as you eliminate fraud and increase social trust you increase the incentive to fraud and the marginal cost of reducing fraud rises asymptotically such that the last little bit of fraud isn't worth the squeeze. The point isn't that you tolerate fraud as in not police it, it's that you police it but you don't turn panopticon to go from 10 cases of fraud across the whole population to zero. You tolerate it in that you accept cases won't be zero, not that you don't do every reasonably cost effective thing you can do to reduce it.
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