domain:parrhesia.substack.com
Throwaway05
12hr ago
My biggest fear is that people will notice this. It will become a Thing...and more will do it.
It may be better that he wasn't found.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
12hr ago
So, literally nothing you can point to. Thanks, you made my point abundantly clear.
A decade ago everyone was saying more or less the same thing about autonomous vehicles, yet a true AV seems further away now than it did then. Sure, progress has been made, but the most we have to show for it is incredibly slow robotaxis operating in geofenced areas within a few select cities that don't have weather, which taxis are under constant monitoring from central command. As far as consumer products are concerned, the best we have is the Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot, which allows you to take your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road while traveling on mapped highways during daylight when there is no rain or snow in traffic 40 mph or below. In other words, nowhere outside of urban freeways during rush hour. I'm not trying to knock technological advances, but there's no realistic timeline on when I'll be able to buy a car that will take me practically anywhere my current car will and allow me to zone out on the way, or be drunk.
And that's for a technology that has paying customers, an obvious use case, and has spent significantly less money in the past 15 years than the AI industry has spent in the last 5. A half trillion dollars later and a rep from the largest (or at least most prominent) AI company can't even tell customers what they're supposed to be using the product for, just that they need to be using it more. They can't provide any technical assistance, other than that they should be doing it better, and the next update will totally solve the problem, whatever that is (something tells me that they would have said the same thing before the last update). And this is for one of the few companies that's actually paying for it. I used to subscribe to specialized, expensive legal software for my firm ($1,000/year), and the sales rep was an expert. She (and her competitors) offered an in-depth demo at which they were able to answer all of my questions, and after I bought in I could call at any time and get help. How long do you think it will be before @dukeleto's boss realized that all this is doing is costing the company money and cancels the subscription?
But that's neither here nor there; if this were normal technology like AVs I'd be more optimistic about the industry plodding along gradually. The bigger problem is that we're talking about an industry that's spent 500 billion on a product that doesn't sell, and I've read various places that the amount of planned spending the next few years is in the trillions. By comparison, the year with the highest AV investment was 2021, with somewhere around 13 billion. OpenAI alone plans to spend more than that on training next year, after spending 9 billion this year.
The point I'm making is that the amount of money necessary to keep this train going simply doesn't exist, or at least doesn't exist without them convincing people to actually pay for their product. ChatGTP has about a 3% conversion rate. "Well," the optimists say, the real money is in enterprise sales and software integration. Well, Microsoft has a similar 3% conversion rate for its Copilot add-on. This is Microsoft we're talking about, a company so good at selling its products that they're the industry standard in both business and home use, present in hundreds of millions of computers worldwide. And Spotify had a conversion rate 8 times higher its first year in the US.
So what happens after the bubble pops? I don't want to speculate on how it will unfold because I can imagine any number of scenarios, but I'm pretty sure about a couple things. First is that free access to LLMs will either go away entirely or be severely limited. Whoever is left in the business isn't going to be able to afford to lose money on every query. More dramatically, though, I don't think R&D can plod along gradually like it did with AVs; it's just too expensive. When training a new model costs billions, it's not something you can throw money at from the R&D budget. And in the wake of the bubble bursting, even the idea of it might turn people off. I may be wrong insofar as there may be a future for it similar to AVs, but even then, it's a far cry from what we were promised.
OliveTapenade
12hr ago
I've never run into a torrent of the like on Hinge either - I have a few deal-breakers, obnoxious politics are one of them, and after hitting X on a number of people the app seemed to figure out that I don't want to see more of them.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
12hr ago
No. And I don't think they need to - to a degree that is honestly remarkable. The barrel scraping people have to go to to find examples of ICE fuckups is amazing. In the videos of confrontations I've seen, it's almost always been ICE agents showing commendable restraint in the face of unhinged provocation, occasionally capped by swift bursts of force when the unhinged protestor escalates to assault.
The simple fact that protestors feel safe and confident physically standing in front of ICE vehicals, doing Karen harassment of ICE officers, and going on psychotic, spittle-flecked rants directly in the faces of armed federal agents tells me that every one of those protesters is a LARPing retard who knows perfectly well that nothing Nazi-like is going to happen to them. In the absolute worst case scenario they get bruised comparable to getting tackled in a game of football. I find their behavior vastly more anti-social, and I lowkey hate the fact that their actions make me desire stricter laws against their bullshit.
tl;dr: Anti-ICE protestors look far more reprehensible and contemptible than the officers do.
OliveTapenade
12hr ago
I think that's a bit different - that's presenting a non-central member of a class as if it's the centre. That's something like what I'm talking about, but I have a process in mind.
Moral dilution, maybe?
Non-central fallacy is a related concept I remember coming up on SSC.
Motte-and-bailey is also a related concept.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
12hr ago
TRON bike lighting update.
(1) Unfortunately, 3M VHB tape doesn't adhere to bike helmets very well. It sticks okay to the bike helmet, but not at all to the silicone tubing the LED strips are inside of. I guess I'll use zip ties for prototyping while I try to find something else.
(2) In the meantime I was displaying each kids' personal logo in an OLED display on their respective ESP32 chip and I thought this would be easy-peasy to drive while updating WS2815 strips since FreeRTOS has "tasks" but it was crashing mysteriously when I tried to run both the light sequences and update the OLED display in separate tasks. So I just gave up and decided to make a single task state machine that would poll (with a 50ms sleep) to see if it was time to update each one. This mostly meant taking apart top-level loops to drive animations and replacing it with big switch statements that can do a small increment of work at each time. Usual game programming loops.
Got it 99% working nice and good before figuring out there was some underlying bug that was crashing my tasks in FreeRTOS in the first place and I could actually have simplified the logic quite a bit by using tasks. But whatever the single task state machine approach is working so I'll just roll with it.
All this applies equally to the dog.
It doesn't, because the dog has been bred for hundreds of thousands of years for subservience. Not attacking its owner is in its bones. Is that how you view yourself?
KMC
lurk moar
12hr ago
Within the North Woods, between 102nd and 105th Street, assailants were reported attacking several cyclists, hurling rocks at a cab, and attacking a pedestrian, whom they robbed of his food and beer and left unconscious.[12][13] The teenagers roamed south along the park's East Drive and the 97th Street transverse, between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.[12] Police attempted to apprehend suspects after crimes began to be reported between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. Michael Vigna, a competitive bike rider, testified that, at about 9:05 p.m., he was hassled by a group of boys, one of whom tried to punch him.[12] At about 9:15 p.m., Antonio Diaz, who had been walking in the park near 105th Street, was knocked to the ground by teenagers, who stole his bag of food and bottle of beer.[12] And Gerald Malone and Patricia Dean, riding on a tandem, said that a group of boys tried to block their path on East Drive south of 102nd Street at about 9:15 p.m.; Malone said that he and Dean sped towards the boys, causing them to scatter, though Dean said that a few grabbed at her; the couple called police after reaching a call box.[12]
At least some of the group of teenagers traveled farther south to the area around the reservoir, and, there, four male joggers were "set upon" between 9:25 and 9:50 p.m.[13]: ¶ 7 David Lewis testified that he was attacked and robbed about 9:25–9:40 p.m.[12] Robert Garner said he was assaulted at about 9:30 p.m.[12] David Good testified he was attacked at about 9:47 p.m.[12] And, between 9:40 and 9:50, John Loughlin was "knocked to the ground, kicked, punched, and beaten with a pipe and stick"; he sustained "significant but not life-threatening injuries".[13]: ¶ 7 At a pretrial hearing in October 1989, a police officer testified that when Loughlin was found, he was bleeding so badly that he "looked like he was dunked in a bucket of blood".[14]
According to a later statement by District Attorney Nancy Ryan, "[a]ll five implicated themselves in a number of the crimes which had occurred in the park."[13]: ¶ 10
I don't think I got anything wrong. Hitting someone with a pipe doesn't leave DNA evidence, and the fact that someone else raped her at some point doesn't mean these five are innocent.
As to the five defendants, the [2003 Armstrong] report said:
We believe the inconsistencies contained in the various statements were not such as to destroy their reliability. On the other hand, there was a general consistency that ran through the defendants' descriptions of the attack on the female jogger: she was knocked down on the road, dragged into the woods, hit and molested by several defendants, sexually abused by some while others held her arms and legs, and left semiconscious in a state of undress.
I also believe this. Hang 'em high.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
12hr ago
I’m willing to accept that I’ve been too flippant over the past week. Maybe that really is a newfound streak of partisanship. But I’ve never been shy about my distaste for Trump’s strongman governance. I’d like to think my position here is its natural extension.
FWIW, I'm not particularly judging about the change. You're becoming more like me, if with a different valence. But one of the things I've learned over the years is that, even for topics that fill me with molten-veined partisanship, there are going to be incidents where my side just has to take the L (even if I think it doesn't change the overall conclusion). And when I see people talking about some new Happening, it's worth at least finding out what they're on about before coming in hot with a take. In the worst case, where it's something that goes strongly against my priors and makes my side look awful, I can always just not talk about it.
Rhiow
12hr ago
Demanding a dog stay on a bed too small for it to even turn around for 4+ hours is deranged according to my values.
daguerrean
12hr ago
You, in fact, are not obligated. You can quit and live off welfare. You can live on the streets. You can find another job. You can, as the kids say, keep yourself safe, if no other options are open to you
All this applies equally to the dog. It can attack Piker and go out in a blaze of glory, mouth red with his blood. We can observe from its behavior it is not unduly burdened by this obligation. If he had to shock it every minute to maintain compliance then that would be evidence this was extremely burdensome for the dog. Your dog mind reading act does not impress me
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
12hr ago
Could you elaborate your point?
I think most people are not actually aware of the sort of person John Brown was, and the sort of things he actually did. I think those who are aware of him generally regard him as a hero, and if informed of his actual actions, would consider them justified, because he was Fighting Evil. I think this prediction would hold increasingly true the more latent social pressure it's tested under.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
12hr ago
Okay, whose house is it then?
My house is my house. Your house is your house. The nation isn't a family, and the national territory isn't a house. Avoid Mummy Party and Daddy Party frames where possible. If the Mummy Party was a real mother, it would be a divorced wine mum with four different mental health diagnoses. If the Daddy Party was a real father it would be a deadbeat dad with a DV restraining order.
Who does have the right to exclude?
Sovereign states have the legal right to exclude people - that isn't in doubt here. The question I was arguing with @Lizardspawn is whether this is a matter of ethics, such that illegal immigration is a malum in se crime and possibly even, per Lizardspawn, an "abhorrent" one, or whether it is a matter of politics such that illegal immigration is a malum prohibitum crime.
The basic argument for why illegal immigration (assuming otherwise well-behaved, gainfully employed immigrants) is malum prohibitum rather than malum in se is:
- In the absence of immigration laws, immigration for the purpose of working in a foreign country is not immoral.
- Illegal immigration and illegal work are, in and of themselves, victimless crimes and victimless crimes are generally malum prohibitum.
- The actual criminal acts involved in illegal immigration and illegal work are generally morally unproblematic acts (crossing a morally arbitrary line on the map, mutually beneficial commercial transactions) carried out without the correct paperwork - that is the paradigmatic example of malum prohibitum.
quiet_NaN
12hr ago
So you support the death penalty for attempted felony murder for 14yo perpetrators (given that you are annoyed that the CP5 are still breathing).
Our different ideas about standards of evidence aside, do you have a lower limit on the age a perpetrator in a similar situation? If an 8yo brother of one of the CP5 had tagged along and taken a minor part in the act as you believe it took place, would you also hang him? What about a 5yo who just finds an unsecured pistol, says "bang, you are dead" and shoots someone?
Or take the severity of the crime. Most of the other 25 were not accused of crimes as severe as the CP5, WP talks of muggings. So the 14yo mugger gets the noose, should the 14yo pickpocket hang next to him? Or the copyright infringer? At what point should society decide that a kid is beyond redemption?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
12hr ago
I’m obligated to sit at my computer and code for 8 hours per day when working.
You, in fact, are not obligated. You can quit and live off welfare. You can live on the streets. You can find another job. You can, as the kids say, keep yourself safe, if no other options are open to you. You, not somebody else, have the ultimate control over your life. Don't make the foolish argument that, since you aren't free to do literally whatever you want, you are forced to do what you currently do.
Is my life net negative?
Since you have the benefit of making yourself understood, i don't need to speculate and you can just tell me. For animals whose lives are placed in our care, we must speculate.
I see no evidence this dog experiences its life as a net negative.
I do. Sitting in Piker's basement for hours in a corner with no autonomy, stimulus, or even, as far as I can tell, daylight is a profoundly unnatural lifestyle for the dog. The dog is not able to engage in any ordinary dog behaviors (such as, uh, walking two feet) without being shocked. I view that as an obvious case of a net negative existence.
John_Doe_Fletcher
anarcho-heretic, Quokkit guy
12hr ago
It is every red-blooded American's moral duty to resist and repel invaders.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
12hr ago
This unchosen role into which you are born comes with equally-unchosen duties and obligations to which one is bound.
Where the Traditionalist view fails now is answering what equally-unchosen duties and obligations apply to women, what mechanism is attempting to enforce their application to women, and what society's duties and obligations towards men are. The answers to those three questions seem to be a hat trick of "nothing," which makes the Traditionalist view less than compelling.
daguerrean
12hr ago
I’m obligated to sit at my computer and code for 8 hours per day when working. Is my life net negative? I see no evidence this dog experiences its life as a net negative.
OliveTapenade
12hr ago
This perhaps a bit of a tangent, but for a while I have struggled with the idea of 'conversion therapy'.
At the one end, it's easy to understand a minimalist definition of it, and why treatments that meet that minimum definition should be banned - we're talking about things like using electric shocks to artificially create aversions to certain sexual stimuli.
On the other, I have seen the phrase 'conversion therapy' to refer to any kind of treatment or even just conversation around the idea of a person abstaining from same-sex sexual contact. Some time ago I read a document with some personal stories from two progressive Christians describing their experiences with 'conversion therapy', and in both cases the so-called conversion therapy was just another Christian telling them that they shouldn't have sex with someone of their own gender. That kind of maximalist definition of conversion therapy is clearly absurd, and would ban certain kinds of speech.
I feel as though I have seen this gambit many times and that it ought to have a name. Definitional expansion? You start with something that is obviously bad, and you have a word for the thing that's obviously bad - conversion therapy, violence, racism, genocide, child abuse, and so on. Then you want to draw attention to some issues that might be related to the bad thing, but don't quite fit under the same heading, so you just use the same word, but expand its meaning, hoping that the negative affect the word is already loaded with will come along with you. So meat is murder, or words are violence, or immigration is genocide, or your pastor telling you that homosexuality is bad is conversion therapy, or telling your kids that Santa Claus is real is child abuse. Trivial use of the word eventually weakens its meaning and even attempts to use it in the original context, for the obviously bad thing, fall flat. This is why telling Republicans that they're racist is pointless now.
I can understand the initial impulse, from the activist direction. If you want to expand a cause or mobilise people, trying to hook into their pre-existing moral logic is a good idea. "Meat is murder" is a cliché now and I think it's ineffective, but I can see how it is a shorthand for a serious moral argument: meat-eating depends upon killing living creatures in a way that a vegetarian could argue is morally analogous to murder. But the more you use that tactic, the weaker the words become, and you undermine yourself.
Is there a word for this process? Or at least something to say when you notice somebody doing it?
View the dog as a working animal, its job is essentially to perform as an actor contributing to his streams. In exchange it receives food, shelter and so forth. It seems like a fair deal for the dog, I see nothing wrong with this.
I'd probably rather be dead than alive as a prop dog like that. Given that the dog was almost certainly artificially bred rather than a stray, I find it repugnant to create and perpetuate a net negative life like that.
I don't see why the fact that he keeps the animal alive means that it's a fair deal.
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
12hr ago
It is your born duty as a male to work, suffer, and sacrifice for women, children, and society with absolutely no expectation of reward for it, simply because it's part of being a man, and if you don't do it, you're not a man.
Which is why feminism is, despite the pretense of its practitioners, the ultimate successor to traditionalism.
In an environment of equality- where both sexes can hold the male role thanks to progressively increasing mechanization (it's been going on since the steam engine, but ramped up hard in the early 20th century thanks to a revolution in lightweight portable mechanical power generation)- men are as a consequence owed the inherent dignity of women human beings.
We have a name for people like this: up until about the mid-1960s, they were called "liberals". That whole "rights and dignity of man" thing is pointing at precisely this moral hazard.
I think the "chaotic" you slipped in with no justification there is doing basically all the work in holding up your position.
They're projecting themselves as competent, efficient, confident, inevitable, and actually having a great time doing it.
All of those things seem pretty fine for law enforcement.
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