domain:npr.org
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
With significantly older generations it was common to go into the military for a couple of years either due to the draft or get your draft obligation out of the way. Then they'd try to be a real novelist. After failing at that they'd go into screenwriting. Those people are all long retired.
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.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
I think they dialed it to 6
birb_cromble
1hr ago
I'd say Tolkien, Twain, Orwell, Heinlein, and Hemingway clear the bar. Theodore Roosevelt does too, though he was a man who wrote books more than an author.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
1hr ago
There is a whole genre of portable predictive models from companies like Raytheon, Nvidia, IBM, L3Harris, Et Al. But they rarely get discussed because they are not flashy or accessible in the way that LLMs like ChatGPT are. You have to buy the license, download the model, and then train it yourself. But these models increasingly represent the foundational infrastructure behind things like this
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1hr ago
All I ask is that they have the courtesy and common sense to use o3 instead of 4o.
o3 is definitely more capable, but it also has a remarkable ability to hallucinate more believable things, and to communicate ideas in highly technical ways that are hard to understand — and thus fact-check — if you’re not a domain-specific expert. I don’t ask ChatGPT questions about personal medical problems, but when I ask dumb shower thoughts about medical research (“what do researchers think causes Alzheimer’s?” etc) it starts going on about highly technical detail with no introduction or explanation. If it’s right, wow is it smart. But if it’s wrong… I’m not smart enough to know how.
With 4o, I know I’m going to get something overly emotive and excessively buttkissing, but at least I can understand what it’s giving me.
GBRK
1hr ago
Fast crud, not fast blockbusters. Even committees can take artistic risks when movies are cheap. The 1959 Ben Hur only cost about 150 million dollars in today's money. Back that, that was an absurd amount of money. Today, any given marvel movie will hit that figure.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
It's probably related to attributes of people who do go to movies in the evening, pay full price, and don't sneak food in for cheap in their backpacks.
No it is not. While theaters would prefer that studios focus on getting these people to buy tickets(I have, personally, never seen a movie at full price unless it was date night), they are not affiliated with the studios. Studios don't care if theaters are solvent. They care about their licensing fees.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1hr ago
No Alex, as I have told you over and over and over and over and over and over again, what people want is to argue against your perspective. Not defend against your strawman of their perspective. Certainly not defend against your strawman of what Richard Hanania told you is the perspective of people they are aligned with on one issue. When you aren't writing sentence long sneers you constantly structure your posts like a smack down - but for Twitter arguments, not anything said on the motte. But nobody gives a shit what you saw someone say on twitter. Go argue that shit on twitter already.
DiscourseMagnus
1hr ago
...does it count that he's a journalist?
I don't think the extra context actually does change the meaning at all. I'll apply some simplification to distill the meaning of the full paragraph:
This worldview would seem to conflict with HBD theories.
Summary: The "narrative" (as you put it) conflicts with HBD because...
Indeed, one would have to conclude that whites are an inferior race. Guatemalans in their "third-world s***hole" don't just sit around despairing, they cross multiple borders and look for work in a country where they can't even speak the language, while white men who got laid off in their rust-belt factory towns twiddle their thumbs and inject fentanyl, unable to compete with said Guatemalans.
Summary: HBD would require you to see whites as an inferior race...
They see whites like people have long seen the American Indians, a "noble" race who ought to "own" the country but who are ill-equipped to deal with the evils of modernity that more advanced peoples have introduced like liquor or fentanyl.[1]
Summary: They (here now referring to believers in your "narrative" rather than believers in HBD) see whites as a weaker and nobler race, much like the Noble Savage myth portrays American Indians...
But where this worldview makes some sense in the case of the Indians, it is utterly nonsensical to apply it to whites
Summary: But American whites aren't American Indians so the comparison is weak (then why did you make it?)
It seems clear to me that this is actually two statements without much connection between them.
Statement 1: If you take HBD seriously then you should see whites as an inferior race.
Statement 2: "Narrative" believers see American whites like Noble Savage-fans see American Indians.
To be clear, I never thought you were claiming that white people are racially inferior to Guatemalans. You say so in the very first sentence of the quoted section - this is what you believe to be the logical conclusion of HBD, not what you believe yourself. The context is there.
Everyone has understood this from the beginning, including the person you responded to. We know what you meant, and what you meant is precisely what we're objecting to.
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
1hr ago
It's just... forgettable.
The title doesn't describe what the movie is about, the MC is ugly (chimp face, permanent black purple eye) and [if the critics are to be believed, was if not still is] fag-coded, and the aliens' appearance doesn't suggest any interesting personality traits.
So yeah, "I'd let my kid watch it on Netflix, but I wouldn't pay 60 dollars to see it" is a pretty apt observation.
eye patch on a kid character
Eye patches are only appropriate on kid characters if they make him/her look like a pirate for obvious reasons.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
It was putting words in the mouths of a large, vaguely defined political movement which you associated those you disagree with on the forum with.
I wouldn't have banned you for it- although if I made all the mod decisions you probably would have been banned at the time you posted it for one of the personal attacks you got a slap on the wrist for- but it wasn't the post we'd like to see more of. I think you could have written a better version of that post; goodness knows we have enough discussion on native white men and the economy.
We have conservative posters who whine about the mods oppressing them, too. I generally say the same thing to them.
Gaashk
1hr ago
It's a really dense mishmash of a bunch of different things, any one of which might be interesting to explore, but together just kind of form an overcooked soup.
It would be much, much better with one or two concrete rightists as a foil, especially since the people who are worried about disparate impact keeping their kids out of medical school or Yale or something are in a coalition with, but distinct from, the people who are worried about their depressing rust belt family members failing to #learntocode. An adversarial but earnest take on Vance, for instance, would be more interesting.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1hr ago
You're quoting me out of context to make it seem like I'm saying the opposite of what I'm actually saying:
This worldview would seem to conflict with HBD theories. Indeed, one would have to conclude that whites are an inferior race. Guatemalans in their "third-world s***hole" don't just sit around despairing, they cross multiple borders and look for work in a country where they can't even speak the language, while white men who got laid off in their rust-belt factory towns twiddle their thumbs and inject fentanyl, unable to compete with said Guatemalans. They see whites like people have long seen the American Indians, a "noble" race who ought to "own" the country but who are ill-equipped to deal with the evils of modernity that more advanced peoples have introduced like liquor or fentanyl.[1] But where this worldview makes some sense in the case of the Indians, it is utterly nonsensical to apply it to whites
hanikrummihundursvin
2hr ago
What everyone believes of themselves is irrelevant to the fact of the matter. But taking what you say into account, with reporting that has just been displayed here, I'm confident in my statement, comparatively.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
2hr ago
That is not an explanation for:
As a math nerd I seriously despise this line of argument as it ultimately reduces to a fully generalized argument against "true", "false", and "accuracy" as meaningful concepts.
You're arguing that since LLMs are not perfectly reliable, therefore they're unreliable. There are different degrees of reliability necessary to do useful things with them. It is a false dichotomy to divide them so. I contend that they've crossed the threshold for many important, once well-paying lines of cognitive labor.
Besides, your thought experiment is obviously flawed. If you're sampling from a noisy distribution, what's stopping you from doing so multiple times, to reduce the error bars involved? I'd expect a "math nerd" to be aware of such techniques, or did your interest end before statistics?
If I had to rely on an LLM for truly high-stakes work, I'd be working double time to personally verify the information provided, while also using techniques like running multiple instances of the same prompt, self-critique or debate between multiple models.
Fortunately, that's a largely academic exercise, since very few issues of such consequences should be decided by even modern LLMs. I give it a generation or two before you can fire and forget.
I have no objections to my own doctor using an LLM, and I use them personally. All I ask is that they have the courtesy and common sense to use o3 instead of 4o.
Besides, the contraption you describe is quite similar to how quantum computing works. You get an answer which is sampled from a probability distribution. You are not guaranteed to get a single correct answer. Yet quantum computers are at least theoretically useful.
Hell, as a maths nerd, you should be aware that the overwhelming majority of numbers cannot be physically represented. If you also happen to be a CS nerd on the side, you might also be aware of the vagaries of floating point arithmetic. Digital computers are not perfect, but they're close enough for government work. LLMs are probably close enough for government work too, given the quality of the average bureaucrat.
Humans are fallible. LLMs are fallible, but they're becoming less so. The level of reliability needed for a commercially viable self-driving vehicle is far higher than that for a useful Roomba. And yet, Waymos are now safer than humans.
I rest my case.
In my experience, when I believe I have been misinterpreted, it is much more conducive to understanding to rephrase my claim to attempt to address the misunderstanding than just to direct others to reread.
While the fault may be theirs, it may also not be, and even if one is sure it's on them, grace and magnanimity (in extending others a hand even if you think they don't deserve it) goes a long way.
Sunshine
2hr ago
What you actually said:
This worldview would seem to conflict with HBD theories. Indeed, one would have to conclude that whites are an inferior race. Guatemalans in their "third-world s***hole" don't just sit around despairing, they cross multiple borders and look for work in a country where they can't even speak the language, while white men who got laid off in their rust-belt factory towns twiddle their thumbs and inject fentanyl, unable to compete with said Guatemalans.
Sunshine
2hr ago
It "spoke plainly" and provided evidence.
I did not find your original post to be plainly spoken. Actually, I'd like to get into it.
You talk about your evidence, and you did provide some, but it was all in support of the things that didn't need supporting. I would be willing to take your word for it that blacks are more likely to die of opioids than whites, or that most men have jobs. These aren't exactly extreme claims in need of reams of supporting evidence. I would be willing to accept them for the sake of parsing the rest of your argument even if they weren't true.
Here's an example of a part of your post I would have liked to see some supporting evidence for:
The new narrative on the Online Right is that there's a huge mass of white men without jobs who have no choice but to inject fentanyl because of "the border" and free trade sending the factories to China.
The new narrative according to whom? Since when? This is a rather extreme claim, made right at the start, and the structure of the post is essentially arguing that this narrative is hypocritical. And yet you advanced this argument yourself. You aren't arguing against someone else making a coherent argument, you're assuming someone believes this thing and arguing against what you think they must think. So, the part of your post I would most need to see evidence for is that this "narrative" is actually a widespread belief, and you provide none.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
2hr ago
I imagine there is a supervising algorithms engineer somewhere who is torn between finding this absolutely hilarious and cursing the suits for listening to the wordcels in marketing over him.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
I am thinking Braveheart. You care about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce.
The plot does drive the movie (along with certain twists, etc.).
And of course there’s some fun action.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
Maybe a new rule should be "be as polite as possible without being insincere.
Although that is not an official rule, that is encouraged, yes.
As for you, I'm not going to argue with yet another person who comes back from a ban to complain about how unfair their ban was. You know what you're doing.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
2hr ago
What was wrong with it?
I moderated a forum once.
Like many forums it struggled with one of the basic problems of forum moderation — how much niceness do you enforce, which I'll explain by way of some endemic user types in any forum with enough people and anything but the most milquetoast topic.
A: Here's the troll who comes by only to post egregiously offensive "go kill yourself [list of slurs]",
B: Here's the more subtle troll, who keeps toeing the line as much as he can get away with.
C: here's the user who is not a troll. They actually do participate in discussion and are clearly trying to be a part of the community. They're also abrasive and/or obnoxious and/or inflammatory.
D: And then here's the final type of user that's problematic as a mod: They're a sensitive snowflake. Honestly they need to be sub-divided further, because some of them are just born snowflakes that can't handle any opposition to their viewpoint at all, and others are retaliatory snowflakes, because if I got a ban for three days for saying this opinion is dumb then that guy also needs to get a ban for three days for saying this other opinion is dumb.
The forum was one that was trying really hard to be heterogenous in terms of opinions and also to be nice and moderating it was a nightmare, not because of the obvious ban on sight trolls but because inevitably when you want to moderate niceness now 90% of your mod time — and the mod time becomes a balloon that expands to fill all available space — is spent on dealing with constant playground supervision of the snowflakes. Also you've been slowly but steadily banning your type C members when they eventually accrue enough complains from the type Ds, and because they're really annoying you initially don't miss them until you realize that conversation in your forum is drying up a bit and also some of the valuable forum members who were friends with type Cs also got pissed off and left and also mixed into the type Cs and their friends were, inevitably, some of the more useful members of the forum who knew a lot (and hence got into arguments that annoyed snowflakes).
Also it turns out snowflakes are basically never satisfied as long and are just a self eating death spiral of a forum culture.
After my experience moderating that forum and swearing off moderating ever again, I ended up lurking the notorious kiwifarms. It was full of people who engaged in what would definitely be termed elsewhere as hate speech against me. Now, I never actually made an account there, and I also stopped visiting a few years back so idk if things have changed, but at the time I remember being struck by how much less of a threat I felt reading kiwifarms, because yeah slurs were being thrown around but users were actually arguing, you didn't just have someone with the viewpoint that was the forum consensus and then everyone else against that consensus gets to tiptoe around what they can say or get banned. Everyone shared their most idiotic opinions and had other people arguing with them no holds barred, the forum also had reaction emojis so you could freely post your insane conspiracy theory but wou would get 50 "lol look at this insane conspiracy theory" reactions.
I remember a few years ago people were still making fun of t*kt*kers and how they would asterisk everything or use idiotic word substitution like "krill myself" because otherwise they'd get blackholed by the TikTok algorithm.
Meanwhile I took a long long break from reddit and only recently returned, to a forum dedicated to a game I play, and discovered that in the interim reddit has added some kind of probably AI based site-wide moderation against violent language (or actual human beings are being this dumb idk) and it's impossible to talk like a normal person there anymore, because if you say, in a joking and friendly fashion perfectly understood by you and the person you are talking to to be friendly, "you said my build was bad, I'm gonna have to shove you off a cliff" (this example is not great because I forget the actual exchange, but whatever, fill in something more normal) then you get banned from all of Reddit and the poor guy you were talking with gets to post your exit speech from the discord you're both in as well. It does appear to be a strike system where first you get warned, since I got my first warning for telling someone who posted about a pedophile moving into their neighborhood that hopefully the pedophile would die suddenly.
It's hard not to turn this into some kind of doompost about how the internet is turning into a horrible little hellhole where no one has a normal argument anymore just constant barricading themselves into their own opinions lest they be offended by the not niceness of having to hear someone else's opinions, each little forum and its own narrow band of acceptable ideology, all while the biggest social media sites are enforcing the most transparently fake bullshit kindergarten language upon us all. It brings out the free speech absolutist instincts in me, it really does.
But what if you don't want an aggressively anti-censorship forum that will involve a forum culture of calling everyone slurs? You want the veneer of respectability and gentility but also the ability to have an actual conversation?
Well I already listed the shitty experience I had trying to moderate such a forum, against what was not bad faith actors but just human actors acting predictably human hence this being a pattern you can see all over the place, and now I have to address the flip side of the coin.
Let's by analogy discuss locker room culture. I don't actually know if locker room culture is a real thing irl so I'm going to discuss hypothetical locker room culture.
It's a group of like fifteen guys in a guy's only space. They're basically all normal guys, plus rapey Kenneth and edgy Doug. Sometimes rapey Kenneth makes a joke about how some girl in the school really needs to be fucked into her proper place in society and Doug will make some follow up joke and everyone else is maybe thinking "c'mon man can we not do this" if it's been like too many times that day but usually you're just trying to finish getting dressed and maybe John also is like "that's not cool man" and pushes back. But like, the rest of the time the atmosphere is just a comfy men's only space plus the occasional rape joke or comment about how women suck or are all gold-diggers or are responsible for everything wrong with society.
Anyway, if for whatever reason that locker room decided it wanted to actually be a co-ed discussion space instead, it would have a little problem, which is that any individual woman walking in would get the vibe — they're the barely tolerated outsider — and then leave unless they're like extra autistic/socially challenged.
Because there's just the microculture of what kinds of things are ok to say there and what aren't, and sometimes what's ok to say is anything negative about group A and what's not ok to say is anything negative about group B, and it's not really about an active policy one way or another it's just this is the overall culture of the social group, read the room and get out.
This is, unfortunately, the part where I admit that I've spent weeks now debating if I should just quietly show myself the door. I didn't mean to enter themotte under false premises, I just decided my first post wouldn't be some "here's all my labels and opinions" and would be an actual post about a controversial topic I wanted to talk about. And then before I had the chance to like, casually drop the relevant information about me and get it over with (I despise sharing personally identifiable information online, but it was nonetheless something that needed to happen eventually if I wanted to talk about any number of topics I wanted to discuss), my government did a surprise attack on Iran. 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).
And in the meantime I got to have the uncomfortable sensation of listening in on conversations I felt were very obviously not meant to include me. For several days now I've been debating doing a rip the band-aid off kind of post (how? What framing?) to get it over with and be able to discuss things again or to just... Leave.
Because of course the alternative is to figure out the correct, respectful way to tiptoe around the conversation over whether Jews control the American government/assassinated Kennedy, since we aren't doing kiwifarms style dialogue where someone talks about the kikes ruining everything and someone else responds by calling him a retarded autist, you've got to politely request sources and carefully have respectful mutually productive dialogue.
Or to just like ignore that the conversation is even happening? Stick to discussion of feminism and essentially continue faking being a normal non-Jewish mottizen...
Polite respectful mutual dialogue.
But only for some opinions, because others are an "immense pain in the ass".
Yes this is the actual reason I ended up writing this comment instead of continuing to waffle over if I should just leave. Because it is actually really annoying, if I need to play nice with the neonazis and have polite and measured conversations — I am willing to do this, even though conversations with people who are (only theoretically!) interested in me and my family being dead are a "pain in the ass" to conduct civilly — and to then see someone else express some opinion that is more objectionable to the baseline motte culture, but expressed according to all the rules of the site, and get banned (temporarily) for it. Because it just means setting the lines around what kinds of people are in the locker room, which is pretending to be a co-ed discussion space, but isn't. And yes I'm biased by being more inclined towards free speech over banning and thinking that it's better to have the opinions and talk it out then constantly police what people say, sure, but if the forum can tolerate holocaust denial I think it can also stretch itself to tolerate libtards. I'm not interesting in doing some tit for tat thing where I'm like "well if you banned them for this, why didn't you ban that other person for that" because like I stated up front that's just the path to a death spiral where almost no one interesting sticks around. But still, come on, you didn't ban them for constantly sticking their conspiracy theories into every discussion couched as consensus building obvious fact. Apply the same low bar consistently. Let people have an actual conversation with actual disagreement.
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