domain:mattlakeman.org
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
57m ago
I replied already but wanted to address a different point more fully. I don't think public education changes that much if we embrace HBD. E.g. even if we can't turn inner city black youth with 75 IQ into doctors, it still probably is worth sending them to public school to try to get them up to 90. What's the alternative?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
59m ago
When you say new do you mean you've done it twice or do you mean you've been doing it for two months?
New things always lead to exhaustion, it's the nature of the body, and as they become old things they'll lead to less exhaustion.
So my advice would be to enjoy it while it lasts, the ecstacy of being truly drained by an activity is increasingly difficult to reach as you get better at your favorite activities.
Just in six months, it takes a half hour of straight rolling in BJJ to reach the level of exhaustion I used to hit in one round, and twenty minutes later I'm fine again, where when I started a morning class could ruin my whole day.
If you've been doing it for a while and you're still that exhausted, assess and address: sleep, hydration, increasing protein/carbs/calories, general stress, injuries/mobility, consider maybe the activity isn't for you. In more or less that order.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
59m ago
I also disagree with the ban, but I do understand the frustration.
We have a history on TheMotte of people who show up and intone in a solemn voice, "I'd like to play a game..." At which point they begin constructing an elaborate series of arguments and hypotheticals that are high on word count but light on content, the aims of which are never entirely clear. And when people point out that it seems like they're being evasive about their own genuine beliefs, and they're not being entirely forthcoming about their intentions, they respond with "oh don't mind me, I'm but a humble explorer of political thought-space, my only aim here is to educate..."
For obvious reasons, interacting with these people is very obnoxious, and their threads generate more heat than light. So tolerance for these characters is low. And Turok, while not one of the more extreme examples, does pattern match to this sort of archetype.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
1hr ago
Well, I'm not bothered that we might lose our ability to cook, even though that's technically possible.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1hr ago
Any right-winger acting like him would be instabanned
Extremely not true. I've had many discussions with MAGA folks here that degenerate to them doing little more than making a series of personal attacks, I report it, and then nothing happens. Making personal attacks against other people here is far worse than vaguely shaking one's fist at broad political movements, which was what AlexanderTurok did here. Again, I ask as to what exactly was the banworthy part of his post? What specific sentences were the issue that if uttered by right-leaning people ought to similarly catch a warning or a ban in the moderators' eyes?
Jazzhands
1hr ago
For reference, the average hive supposedly has about 30,000 bees. Enough to fill half a five-gallon bucket.
I understand. My point is, every generation has always had this complaint about the one following it. Everyone's parochial about the technological level with which they're familiar, and suspicious about every one following. We can even acknowledge that some of the doomsaying predictions made about this or that new technology were right on the money, and yet that the technology in question was still a boon to the human species on net.
"Now that they're written down, no one's able to recite long passages of text from memory anymore!"
"Now that we have guns, no one knows how to hunt animals with a compound bow anymore!"
"Now that we have player pianos, our vocal cords will atrophy from disuse!"
"Now that we have internal combustion engines, everyone will become fat, slovenly and sedentary!"
"Now that we have cheap and reliable medicine, there's no incentive for people to live secularly healthful lives!"
"Now that we have slide rules calculators, no one can perform complex arithmetic calculations in their head anymore!"
"Now that Word automatically spellchecks your writing, no one can spell anymore!"
"Now that Google Maps navigates for you, no one can read an OS map or perform basic orienteering anymore!"
That's not to say that I'm not at all concerned about the impact of ChatGPT on literacy and logical thought, particularly on developing brains - if I had children, I wouldn't be giving them smartphones until they were of age.
But at the same time, I don't feel like I've lost out that much because I don't know how to hunt game, or that I can travel a few hundred kilometres in three hours rather than several days, or that I've outsourced the task of navigation to Google Maps. When it comes to ChatGPT, it's important to bear in mind that this technology is very new. We may soon find that having it at our disposal affords us the ability to perform intellectual tasks we couldn't do otherwise, or frees up our time which would otherwise be wasted on time-consuming and labour-intensive tasks. Or maybe it'll turn all our brains to mush. At this point I think it's too soon to say, and I'm not yet at the point of wanting to wage Butlerian jihad.
And to return to my previous point: the advent of weaponry did result in us becoming physically weaker than chimpanzees. But I kind of - don't care? Doesn't seem like that big a deal in the scheme of things.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1hr ago
"Ownership of the means of production" is a niche academic definition that typically isn't used in real-world contexts. Example: Bernie Sanders is a "Democratic Socialist", and most people no matter whether they're for or against him think the label is reasonable. Yet most of Sanders' proposals have nothing to do with the means of production, and are rather just the standard "spend more on social services" like Medicare For All.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
And my argument is that they're not functionally the same. Any right-winger acting like him would be instabanned, he was actually given a lot of leeway.
You're trying to claim that all the instances of different people occasionally being assholes somehow add up, if they come from the same ideological background.
Wohlfe
1hr ago
I use my truck for daily driving and light to moderate hauling, keep it outside, and frequently have my dogs in the back. I wash the whole thing by hand when there's so much stuck on crap it starts to bother me. I clean the windows about once a month whenever bird poop, pollen, sap, etc. starts to hinder my view. Road salt is the only thing that motivates me to wash my truck more frequently because I consider that preventative maintenance, for that I run it through a car wash that gets the underbody. I do appreciate a beautifully kept car but I find giving it a deep cleaning 1-2 times a year while spot cleaning as needed is plenty.
oats_son
1hr ago
Dude, grilling! I have been enlisted to grill this weekend for extended family. What a momentous occasion!
The original line of thought was that grandma wants ribeyes, and I have a portable charcoal grill (two of them, actually). Now I'm wondering which foods and how much I should make (and, potentially, if I want to start both grills (probably not)).
- The ribeyes will be seasoned at least an hour in advance. Last time I cooked steaks (also my first steak cooking attempt since my grill awakening), I missed the mark on salt on at least one of them, so I will leave the seasoning to someone else, especially since grandma is sensitive to salt. Shooting for 130F internal temp. I don't have the best thermometer (a serviceable Weber one, not a Thermapen like everyone raves about), but it seems to work okay. If anyone wants something more than medium rare, they can just microwave it.
- Pork chops get seasoned salt an hour in advance, along with garlic powder and ideally a bunch of black peppercorns crushed with a rolling pin. I used to not trust the USDA and always tried to cook to 160F for pork, but this time, I'm going to do 150F, since I know some people who really love pork at 145F and it, apparently, is safe enough. I love pork loin. It is so cheap and the seasoned salt make it create the tastiest juice afterwards.
- Brats are pretty straightforward. 160F is needed.
- I haven't done teriyaki chicken thighs on the grill before, but I am very tempted now, somehow. Apparently you cook it most of the way on the grill, and then add the reduced teriyaki sauce to them and leave them on the indirect side for a bit. 160F. I think a dry salt and pepper brine would be fitting, as that's what Just One Cookbook recommends for before the first round of cooking teriyaki chicken thighs on the stovetop.
Now, the question is: is that too much food? I think we've got 6 people in total. The chicken will likely be three pounds, since that's the package size from Aldi. Pork chops, I thawed out 8 that are about as thick as my palm, so I'm estimating 4 or 5 pounds. Brats and ribeyes have not been purchased yet. Leftovers are okay.
Anyway, what are you grilling? What else should I be grilling? What are you drinking when you're grilling? I like Shock Top's Twisted Pretzel lately.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1hr ago
The statement "happened to get away with it" seems like it's doing a lot of work here. My entire point is the right-leaning posters seem to "get away with it" quite regularly in ways that functionally give them a different set of rules.
FtttG
1hr ago
I think that level of imprecision is pretty darn normal when describing preferences.
Is it, though?
- Vegetarian: a person who does not eat meat.
- Vegan: a person who does not consume animal products.
- Pescatarian: a person who doesn't eat meat, but does eat fish and seafood.
All of these concepts are simple enough that a child can understand them. They get misused by people for stolen valour reasons, but that's not to say the concepts themselves are imprecise.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
I’m not convinced that most people make decisions on that timescale.
It’s the kind of sentiment that convinced communists the world revolution was coming any…minute…now.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Plant your stick in the ground and say you'll have no part in it if you must: the great tide of technological progress will sweep on just fine without you.
I for one happen to think we can just choose to not commit collective suicide.
Perhaps in the far future there will be people who have been dependent on external software peripherals for so long (generations of them, in fact) that their native pain receptors have atrophied to the point of disuse, like the appendix
I don't know about pain receptors, but the general process we're talking about is already happening. Kids growing up with smartphones are getting their brains fried. ChatGPT will fry them even more. It's not going to be like cooking, with the ability to start a fire being passed down culturally. It's not even that they'll become dependant on ChatGPT, or whatever, and will have to outsource their thinking to it. ChatGPT will just suck their skills out, and but won't be able to offer an appropriate replacement.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Probably not.
AI is on the part of the hype curve where it will get included in press releases for any and all reasons. If the news is bad, AI will be mentioned as a mitigation strategy. If it’s good, it becomes a growth plan.
My company had a little mini-reorg recently. It also consisted of shuffling some matrix management, and it also gave lip service to new AI tools. I hope no one expects a defense contractor to lead the charge in adopting AI-driven requirements.
Rov_Scam
1hr ago
I think the next frontier is the rights of midgets. It's been simmering for a while, and I assumed it would happen as soon as the trans thing died down, but that was ten years ago and the trans thing lasted longer than I would have thought.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
(From your link)
"It highlights the dangers of engineer overconfidence[2]: 428 after the engineers dismissed user-end reports, leading to severe consequences. "
This is AI-coding in a nutshell.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
We get stuff posted here of a similar level of snarling, but pointed at the left, and it regularly doesn't catch these types of bans.
If I ask you for examples, are you going to point desperate ones by different posters that happened to get away with it, or ones coming from the same posters in a consistent fashion?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
Is this personal software you build and sell on your own? Or is this part of a corporate / small biz code base.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
I feel like I was more productive with them a year ago than I am today.
I don't think this is just you or even a mystery. I've noticed the same thing, but I was talking to a friend and he came up with what I think is an excellent theory.
Through about mid 2024 (this is a rough timeline), the major AI companies were focusing totally on model performance broadly defined. The idea was that whoever could "break out" with the absolute best model would capture a $1 trillion+ market. Then, as open source and/or cheaper models began to not only keep up with the Big Boys but, depending on how you evaluate them, actually surpass some of them, the realization dawned on OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini; model performance is a race to commoditization. Commodity products can't sustain valuation and growth desires for companies with tens of billions in investment.
What's happening now is that they're all re-using their tried and true playbook; build products for customer engagement. The models from the Big AI firms today, I believe, are developed to maximize engagement instead of developed for maximal performance. I don't mean that they intentionally dumb them down or force them to produce knowingly inaccurate responses. I think it's more in the structure of the response. Take software development for instance. A response nowadays for "how do I design an API for my database" comes out in a nice, concise little five step plan. The LLM will conclude by saying "let me know which section you want to dive into first!" It all feels so "on rails." You think, "shit, this might be pretty easy" and you start to whip something up. Flash forward several hours and ... well, you said it.
My memory seems to tell me that asking that same API question last year would've produced a fairly technical blueprint for designing APIs in general. I would've looked at it and thought, "okay, that helps, but it looks like this is still going to be work." And, here's the important part, I may have then gone to a different website to research good API design. I would've disengaged with the LLM.
It's no surprise to me that a lot of the recent hype cycle has been "LLMs are replacing google as the primary means of interacting with information on the internet." Google's cash comes from the fact that most people don't even navigate directly to the URL they're interested in but, pop open google and type "nytimes" and hit go. It is actually "the front page of the internet" (sorry, reddit). If you have that same situation with OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini where people start at those chatbots everytime they want to do anything on the internet, it will support the user growth and engagement numbers that might be able to support the valuations of these companies (although I have some serious doubts about their unit economics).
That's the sleight of hand I mentioned: because qualia are so mysterious, it's a leap to assume that RL algorithms that maximize reward correspond to any particular qualia.
On the other hand, suffering is conditioned on some physical substrate, and something like "what human brains do" seems a more plausible candidate for how qualia arise than anything else I've seen. People with dopamine issues (e.g. severe Parkinson's, drug withdrawal) often report anhedonia.
That heavy philosophical machinery is the trillion dollar question that is beyond me (or anyone else that I'm aware of).
this leads you to the suspicious conclusion that the thousands of simple RL models people train for e.g. homework are also experiencing immense sufferring
Maybe they are? I don't believe this, but I don't see how we can simply dismiss it out of hand from an argument of sheer disbelief (which seems just as premature to me as saying it's a fact). Agnosticism seems to be the only approach here.
I don't think it's impossible, but the people who object to the process remind me of King Canute. Plant your stick in the ground and say you'll have no part in it if you must: the great tide of technological progress will sweep on just fine without you.
Perhaps in the far future there will be people who have been dependent on external software peripherals for so long (generations of them, in fact) that their native pain receptors have atrophied to the point of disuse, like the appendix. Maybe we'll find that the concept of "pain as a warning to avoid injury and death" has been wholly consigned to the dustheap of history. Would that be bad? Sure. But in a list of things that make me unnerved when thinking about fates that might befall humanity in the distant future, it wouldn't crack the top ten, probably not even the top fifty. I'm far more worried about e.g. humanity signing over our ability to feel anything for the sake of economic progress than merely our ability to feel pain, especially when the threats that pain evolved to protect us against (predators, fire, poisonous food etc.) are becoming increasingly irrelevant for humanity in general and for Westerners in particular.
It is the latter group which won’t even exist. The choice of existence becomes rarer thé longer it has been a choice. Those transhumanists will produce few young, lose most of them to soma, and then burn out the few that remain with oriental bugman academic grinds. Keeping that civilization going requires a reserve supply of mark I humans to replenish it and modernity does not supply it.
Say what you will about the Amish and similar, they hang on. In 3000 AD there may not be a Silicon Valley but there will be Pennsylvania Dutch.
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