The Conspiracy

Also new, unsold books are frequently and in large amounts returned to the printer and recycled.

It’s one of the friendliest programming languages around. If you have written something in VBA then you’ll do fine with Python, except for all the bad/outdated nonsense you’ll have picked up from that language. And there’s interactive interpreters you can just mess around in.

If this doesn’t scare you then give it a look:

things = [4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42]
for number in things:
    print(number * 16)

64
128
240
256
368
672

There’s flowers blooming on the grave in the last panel.

I guess the idea is that yes, machine learning algorithms could be used to solve these, but that’s essentially brute forcing. You can make a simple algorithm learn how to complete Super Mario Bros or how to make a virtual robot walk, it just takes millions of iterations. The promised actual artificial intelligence wouldn’t need that.

Majority bias. It isn’t unique to majority-white places and everybody will be familiar with in-group/out-group bias. It also frames it as a property of the society in question, not something the individual person possesses.

I’m trying to get at the difference between regular websites/search engines and LLMs.

Websites and search engines are about storing and retrieving information. Nothing wrong with that inherently, but yeah, people can write nonsense. Same with books and libraries, except that it’s much easier to store and retrieve data. It’s just a medium used by people and people can be untrustworthy.

LLMs don’t store/retrieve, they aren’t just another medium. In a way it’s the whole Internet except with lossy compression. Sometimes you get good output, sometimes you get nonsense that sounds convincing enough. I’d trust that about as far as 4chan.

Superficially. But Google (or “the Internet”) and Wikipedia were criticized because they are very easily accessible and not curated/high quality enough, not because the technology is inherently untrustworthy. LLMs on the other hand are marketed as thinking machines and they just aren’t.

We have already thrown just about all the Internet and then some at them. It shows that LLMs can not think or reason. Which isn’t surprising, they weren’t meant to.

Morons flocking to it and becoming even better, faster morons in the process. It makes them feel empowered.

They call the honest ones female names and the blatantly lying ones male names!

it’s not that deep

Says the one who has to put layers upon layers of justifications over the simple statement “domestic violence is bad” to make it sound good if one gender does it.

The choices of how crimes are handled are best handled at the local level. The people living in the same places as the victims and perpetrators know best how to deal with each instance. Once you absolve that power to a police force people stop taking personal responsibility for their wellbeing and that of their community. The loss of sense of community is the worst thing that can happen for stopping crime.

Okay, now imagine living in a majority MAGA city. They have a great sense of community and have determined that you are a threat. Specific reasons don’t matter, they know best though.

It took the Germans only 3.5 months to realize he might be a Nazi.

Nah, we knew. And not just from his outfit.

Yup, the way he acted towards the founders of Tesla when he bought their company shows that dude’s had issues for a looong time.

That was a big concern when TPMs first started appearing. I’m glad that that didn’t go the way it might’ve. Yet.

A catapult on every rooftop!

The closest I’ve come in actual conversation is when someone has a habit of bringing up horrible things from their life or past on the most tenuous of connections. I don’t want your depression to depress me, I’m sorry.

I don’t really see how bringing up the possibility of elections being cancelled is more of a downer than planning on voting for whoever is willing to “prosecute the [current] regime at every level”. The whole point is that the Republicans have genuinely, actually, for real turned fascist. That’s horrifying and depressing on its own and I don’t think it’s out of line to at least assume that they would absolutely cancel/rig the elections if they think they can get away with it. Because that’s what fascists do.

Cynicism, nihilism and distancing oneself from everything is not going to build anything good or allow others to succeed.

So no, not correct, not good, just a terrible mindset that will drag everyone down with you.

Yeah, I don’t get it either, why am I supposed to connect with the city? I’m playing a violent criminal in a goofy, arcade-y top-down action game. Setting was perfect.

What I absolutely couldn’t connect with is GTA 5: The mechanics are stale, the game doesn’t respect my time and Michael and especially Trevor are just nasty, unpleasant pieces of shit. Zero enthusiasm for GTA 6 from me, it’s just going to have all the same flaws as any GTA since 3 and will surely be more tailored towards online money extraction schemes.

Meanwhile Cyberpunk 2077, with a somewhat similar dystopian setting, has become my favorite game in large parts because of the characters.