domain:slatestarcodex.com
ControlsFreak
1m ago
Good questions! You're the one who tried to make this the way we make the determination, so I'll be interested to hear your answers.
thrownaway24e89172
Death is the inevitable and only true freedom
4m ago
Does the fact that the US Army maintains its own fleet of ships make it a navy? Are the aircraft that are still directly under the US Army unconstitutional? What about the aircraft that are part of the US Navy?
Dean
Flairless
8m ago
No: what I’m saying to Freddie is that his analysis, even if true, doesn’t fucking matter. It’s irrelevant. It could well be the case that 100% of the AI maximalists are only breathlessly touting the immediate future of AI on human society because they’re too scared to confront the reality of a world characterised by boredom, drudgery, infirmity and mortality. But even if that was the case, that wouldn’t tell us one single solitary thing about whether this or that AI prediction is likely to come to pass or not. The only way to answer that question to our satisfaction is to soberly and dispassionately look at the state of the evidence, the facts on the ground, resisting the temptation to get caught up in hype or reflexive dismissal. If it ultimately turns out that LLMs are a blind alley, there will be plenty of time to gloat about the psychological factors that caused the AI maximalists to believe otherwise. Doing so before it has been conclusively shown that LLMs are a blind alley is a waste of words.
Disagree. If it was true, it would matter quite a bit.
If deBoer was right- both in his conclusion and his reasoning as to why- it would be really relevant. It would mean, among other things, that deBoer had an actually, insightful, accurate, and predictive model of notoriously difficult fields of technology and human pyschology that can all be used to know results in advance. It would not only bolster his credibility on many other topics, but could help refine public policies, discourse, and even technological evolution itself, because here would be a man who can see what is coming before it happens. It would be a demonstration of the quality of his conceptions vis-a-vis would-be public luminaries like, well, Scott. DeBoer would demonstratably be a man who not only knows Scott's interests better than Scott, but also knows Scott better than Scott to a degree that he can accurately predict where Scott will be wrong, and why, before Scott does.
But it's only useful / relevant if it's a prediction made in advance of it being realized. There's no particular value in accurate psychoanalysis with the benefit of hindsight, except when/if it helps with the next future prediction. There's no particular economic/technological understanding why something failed after it already did so, except to help with a future effort. It'd be like be proud about how you totally knew a war would be won or lost after it was resolved- the value of knowing which way the war will result is to affect it before it is a matter of history, so that you can change the future.
But this, in turn, requires being right. deBoer isn't useless here because being right is irrelevant- deBoer is useless because he isn't, and he spends far too many words being useless.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9m ago
In retrospect, it would be shocking if AI therapy didn't take off. Probably the biggest barrier to getting therapy is cost and availability. Chatbots are available 24/7, essentially free, and will never judge you. The rate of mental illness is rising particularly among young people so the demand is there. But it's not just that, the idea of therapy is ingrained into today's culture. There's a sense that everyone should get therapy, who among us is truly mentally healthy, etc. I could easily see it becoming as ubiquitous as online dating is today.
I think the huge issue here is that without an underlying pathology, mental health treatments might do more harm than good. The therapeutic process is designed to help people get over a specific set of problems, say pathological depression (by which I mean depression that doesn’t come from a negative life experience or generally poor living conditions). If you take someone who’s depressed because they’re legitimately grieving the loss of a loved one, or because the just got a cancer diagnosis or something similar that makes feeling sad and empty the normal human response to such a thing. And if you don’t allow yourself to just be sad when life sucks, you don’t grieve what was, or the dreams you have or whatever, I think that’s a bit dangerous long term. It’s likely good for you to be sad when granny dies, it means you cared deeply about a human being — one you carried a close, loving relationship with — and you need to work through that.
This seems like cope.
I am not surprised it seems like cope to an account created specifically to defend this OP's premise.
Welcome to the Motte, by the way, totally new person. I look forward to your long and completely independent posting patterns.
No, it is about Israel because nobody is getting deported over DEI. Top federal officials aren't devoting their full attention to girls yelling at guys wearing USA shirts. Not a single person has had the book thrown at them for "anti-white racism".
I believe what the Trump Admin does, not what it says.
'Believing what the Trump Admin does' would entail recognizing that no one is getting deported over FEMA funds at all, which is what this is about, whereas this exact event is proposing non-joo-related basis to throw the book at people.
These may not be the doings that the OP and/or you wish to acknowledge, but that is the sort of thing the OP is typically inclined to obfuscate.
Of course, Trump also is pitting the interests of his Jewish donors against the interests of "America First" voters who didn't sign up for endless glazing of a foreign country. The Democrats didn't need any help to provoke a civil war, Joe Biden did that all on its own. By wading in he's provoking an avoidable Republican civil war instead.
There is no Republican civil war about using Democratic Party shibboleths as a potential legal action trigger against members of the Democratic Party.
There has been plenty of wishful thinking by would-be leaders of the right that [their special interest] would be the straw that broke the Trump coalition's back since theirs was the Truly Popular position, but such as it has long been and so it will be going forward.
On the contrary, it looks like Trump is himself being baited into an untenable position by his donors/blackmailers. Unconditional support for Israel to the point of punishing American citizens is taking the 20 on a 80-20 issue.
'Trump is being bribed / blackmailed into unamerican activities to the disgust as all' has been a political attack line longer than his time in office. It remains as credible as ever.
ControlsFreak
26m ago
Do ports and shipyards make it so that the US Navy is a land Force, since it probably doesn't matter whether some of its units are temporarily waterborne, in the same way that a US Army soldier swimming across a river wouldn't make it a naval Force?
thrownaway24e89172
Death is the inevitable and only true freedom
36m ago
It is obviously a land force as demonstrated by its fixed assets (bases, airfields, etc). That some of its units are temporarily airborne doesn't change this fact anymore than the fact that a person who is running temporarily loses all contact with the ground would make running soldiers no longer part of an army.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
42m ago
You can actually get a good explanation by asking an LLM (preferably a good one) Something like Deep Research will at least give you the hooks to get into. I'm not saying this just because I'm lazy, but because I expect you to get a good answer out of it.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
45m ago
rather than affirming whatever feelings you might have without challenge
I've heard plenty of horror stories about therapists who do, in fact, behave in this way. I have no strong opinions on whether they're representative, but they're certainly not rare.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
47m ago
Funnily enough, I have an AAQC on the Dodo Bird model.
It seems like the most parsimonious explanation, but I would say that it doesn't disqualify therapy as a valid therapeutic intervention. A lot of the people being sent to therapy do not have access to a discreet, thoughtful friend who will keep secrets. That might well be a service worth paying for. What isn't in dispute is that therapy works in the first place, even the models that use bonkers frameworks.
I see no reason LLMs can't make for okay therapists, and they are definitely better than the quality of some I have personally met.
At the end of the day, I'm just glad that therapy isn't the only tool in my arsenal, and I can dish out the fun drugs. Psychologists are so painfully restricted in what they can do.
ChickenOverlord
50m ago
Summary execution for not picking up your dog's shit, for not returning your shopping cart, and for dropping gum on the ground (or sticking it under a table, etc.). All of society's other problems would self-correct quickly after I implemented these rules.
JarJarJedi
59m ago
Finished The Moveable Feast. I enjoyed it, though I am not sure I could say why or what it was about. Maybe that was the point.
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
Do you think it also satisfies the clauses that describe "land and naval Forces"? Is it a land Force or a naval Force?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
If you're stuck in a permanent war against an enemy you profoundly outclass militarily, economically, culturally, and politically, at a certain point you are responsible for the ongoing outcomes.
Certainly you are not responsible for the enemy. They're the enemy.
I think the answer to this is some flavor of Marshall plan + perhaps a rather invasive CCP-style police state to give young Palestinians a taste/goal of a better life while ensuring that the smallest possible % of GDP is turned into ballistic rockets.
You cannot have a Marshall plan until the enemy surrenders. They have not and will not. I do not believe Israel has the capacity to take them over and completely remake their culture, nor would the "international community" accept them doing so.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1hr ago
Computationally, maybe all we are is Markov chains. I'm not sold, but Markov chat bots have been around for a few decades now and used to fool people occasionally even at smaller scales.
LLMs can do pretty impressive things, but I haven't seen convincing evidence that any of them have stepped clearly outside the bounds of their training dataset. In part that's hard to evaluate because we've been training them on everything we can find. Can a LLM trained on purely pre-Einstein sources adequately discuss relativity? A human can be well versed in lots of things with substantially less training material.
I still don't think we have a good model for what intelligence is. Some have recently suggested "compression", which is interesting from an information theory perspective. But I won't be surprised to find that whatever it is, it's actually an NP-hard problem in the perfect case, and everything else is just heuristics and approximations trying to be close. In some ways it'd be amusing if it turns out to be a good application of quantum computing.
Throwaway05
1hr ago
I suspect if you know a PsyD or other actual psychotherapist they might have more helpful advice but my quick lit review didn't turn up anything useful.
I do generally suggest that everyone in medicine read Nancy McWilliams Psychoanalytic Diagnosis for an understanding of personality structure since it has broad application to life and general medicine still needs to know how to deal with personality dysfunction.
Some of the chapters are still fun to read with zero background (ex: Anti-Social).
It won't answer your specific question directly but will provide a lot of context and peck at it a bit.
phailyoor
1hr ago
oh oops, I misread your comment, I thought you said that 4o was not sota when it was released. Yes it was obsolete when the paper came out.
LLMs only get better, they're "good enough", and that this is a net improvement over the status quo.
Won't change the fact that people who use them wrong will still do worse than not using LLM at all.
phailyoor
1hr ago
ルイズ！ルイズ！ルイズ！ルイズぅぅうううわぁああああああああああああああああああああああん！！！ あぁああああ…ああ…あっあっー！あぁああああああ！！！ルイズルイズルイズぅううぁわぁああああ！！！ あぁクンカクンカ！クンカクンカ！スーハースーハー！スーハースーハー！いい匂いだなぁ…くんくん んはぁっ！ルイズ・フランソワーズたんの桃色ブロンドの髪をクンカクンカしたいお！クンカクンカ！あぁあ！！ 間違えた！モフモフしたいお！モフモフ！モフモフ！髪髪モフモフ！カリカリモフモフ…きゅんきゅんきゅい！！ 小説10巻のルイズたんかわいかったよぅ！！あぁぁああ…あああ…あっあぁああああ！！ふぁぁあああんんっ！！ アニメ2期決まって良かったねルイズたん！あぁあああああ！かわいい！ルイズたん！かわいい！あっああぁああ！ コミック1巻も発売されて嬉し…いやぁああああああ！！！にゃああああああああん！！ぎゃああああああああ！！ ぐあああああああああああ！！！コミックなんて現実じゃない！！！！あ…小説もアニメもよく考えたら… ル イ ズ ち ゃ ん は 現実 じ ゃ な い？にゃあああああああああああああん！！うぁああああああああああ！！ そんなぁああああああ！！いやぁぁぁあああああああああ！！はぁああああああん！！ハルケギニアぁああああ！！ この！ちきしょー！やめてやる！！現実なんかやめ…て…え！？見…てる？表紙絵のルイズちゃんが僕を見てる？ 表紙絵のルイズちゃんが僕を見てるぞ！ルイズちゃんが僕を見てるぞ！挿絵のルイズちゃんが僕を見てるぞ！！ アニメのルイズちゃんが僕に話しかけてるぞ！！！よかった…世の中まだまだ捨てたモンじゃないんだねっ！ いやっほぉおおおおおおお！！！僕にはルイズちゃんがいる！！やったよケティ！！ひとりでできるもん！！！ あ、コミックのルイズちゃああああああああああああああん！！いやぁあああああああああああああああ！！！！ あっあんああっああんあアン様ぁあ！！セ、セイバー！！シャナぁああああああ！！！ヴィルヘルミナぁあああ！！ ううっうぅうう！！俺の想いよルイズへ届け！！ハルケギニアのルイズへ届け！俺は実はサイト萌えなんだっ！！
It is trivially an army: it was originally the Army Air Force and was only separated from the Army for bureaucratic convenience.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
The paper seems to have been published on April 2025.
Gemini 2.0 Pro and 3.7 Sonnet came out in February 2025. Claude 3.5 Sonnet came out in June 2024 and was better than the version of 4o out then.
At the very least, the authors should have made a note that they weren't using the SOTA, or that the SOTA would have moved significantly by the time of publication. To do less is mild dishonesty. This isn't 2022, the pace of progress is evident.
4o is also what powers chatgpt.com so it's the model that most casual users will get the output from.
True, but that's OAI being cheap, and not an indictment of the utility of LLMs for translation. It's akin to claiming TVs suck, and then only using a cheap and cheerful $300 model from Walmart as the standard.
My criticisms stand, namely that LLMs only get better, they're "good enough", and that this is a net improvement over the status quo. It remains to be seen how much better the SOTA is over 4o or DeepL.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1hr ago
it's always possible OpenPhil is actually bad at their stated mission for whatever reason, including design flaws.
OpenPhil might be the 800 pound gorilla funding EA, but it is useful to remember that OpenPhil is not particularly EA.
Scott has addressed this kind of thing--how much altruism is mandated or what is sufficiently pure--multiple times.
While in the past Scott has written about the burden being easy and the yoke light, he went on to donate a kidney and wrote that one should keep climbing the tower. I am skeptical that his past writings on addressing the questions of purity are, uh, pure.
charlesf
1hr ago
I actually opt into a service with Google where they track where I am at pretty much all times through my phone. I can go to a dashboard and follow myself through the past going back to when I first opted in. I assume they do this for everyone and I'm only opting into the tools to see the data myself. My wife can also see where I am at any given time, which is also intentional. I have issues with my health and get holes in my memory; I've needed others to be able to locate me before when I'm not well.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
Usually I unhelpfully reply "do a lit review!!!" to these sorts of questions
I had considered adding the caveat of "I am happy to do my own research, but if you have any pointers of where to start that would be much appreciated" but then got distracted and just clicked "Comment".
I appreciate your thoughtful answer
That's all true, but the best argument against Freddie deBoer isn't a bunch of words but just to point out that he suffers from severe mental illness and is desperately trying to shed that reputation he's gained by attacking overly enthusiastic nerds.
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