For Yarvin, it always is and always will be someone else’s fault

It is very important to notice and continually point out that these people appear to believe more fervently in their chosen demons than they do in their proclaimed god

I feel like I’ve seen chud weirdos ranting about seed oils suppressing testosterone levels, but I could be hallucinating

ChatGPT’s got what intelligence craves… it’s got neurons

As I noted on the YouTube video, this is doubly heinous as a lot of CA community college instructors are “freeway flyers” - working at multiple campuses, sometimes almost 100 miles apart, just to cobble together a full-time work schedule for themselves. Online, self-paced, forum-based class formats were already becoming popular even before the pandemic, and I’ve been in such classes where the professor indicated that I was one of maybe 3 or 4 students who bothered to show up to in-person office hours. I have to wonder if that will end up being a hard requirement at some point. The bottom rung on the higher-education ladder is already the most vulnerable, and this just makes it worse.

I have to agree. There are already at least two notable and high-profile failure stories with consequences that are going to stick around for years.

1. The Israeli military’s use of “AI” targeting systems as an accountability sink in service of a predetermined policy of ethnic cleansing.
2. The DOGE creeps wanting to rewrite bedrock federal payment systems with AI assistance.

And sadly more to come. The first story is likely to continue to get a hands-off treatment in most US media for a few more years yet, but the second one is almost certainly going to generate Tacoma Narrows Bridge-level legends of failure and necessary restructuring once professionals are back in command. The kind of thing that is put into college engineering textbooks as a dire warning of what not to do.

Of course, it’s up to us to keep these failures in the public spotlight and framed appropriately. The appropriate question is not, “how did the AI fail?” The appropriate question is, “how did someone abusively misapply stochastic algorithms?”

Yeah, Phoronix is somehow a tier below even below HN. The Gamergate freaks of Linux enthusiasts. At least on Slashdot or HN, you might occasionally get someone with actual technical expertise posting. Phoronix just seems like a playground to push whatever the latest “I got this software for free and I hate it” grievance is, which is a profoundly pathetic thing indeed.

I did in fact have fun! If the quick-hit format turns out to be worth your time, I have to say I quite enjoy it, and I hardly count myself as a TikTok-obsessed zoomer.

I’ve been a little bit sad that Ed Z dropped the rapid-fire 15-minute format once he hit the podcast big time. I really appreciated that format’s conciseness; not sure if you’d want to pick that sort of thing up. I have to wonder if it’s easier or harder to book people for such a delimited time slot.

The Maoist version of Misesian goldbuggery, absolutely fascinating.

Isn’t this guy still mainly relevant for jailbreaking the PS3? Pretty sure he flamed out during the Muskification of Twitter

I’m convinced that these people have no choice but to do their next startup, especially if their names are already prominent in the press like Sutskever and Murati. Once you’re off the grift train, there is no easy way back on. I guess you can maybe sneak back in as a VC staffer or an independent board member, but that doesn’t seem quite as remunerative.

So, with Mr. Yudkowsky providing the example, it seems that one can practice homeopathy with “engineering mindset?”

Folks may want to close OpenAI accounts if they don’t want Oracle billing them someday.

geez, at least spoiler-tag a jump-scare this big

Bruce Wayne asserts to Alfred in The Dark Knight that “Batman has no limits.” But what if, and this has gone totally unconsidered by anyone up until now… Buttman also has no limits???

Central Preference Vector seems like a fantastic band name if some producer was trying to mainstream industrial music

It helps sanewash their own prejudices. “See, this guy could be talked down from the worst of it, aren’t we reasonable by comparison?”

They’re going to be headline sponsors of Fyre Festival II

lol wow, I’m cackling at Gackle. Perhaps we can call his brand of caping for polo-shirt fascism “gackin’ off”

Once again, the Yuddites pine for MODOK

Never got too deep into Hossenfelder, but I gradually got the impression that Woit was taking a bit of an online-influencer tack, even starting before influencers were really a thing. The whole “not even wrong” flap seemed to draw in people who wanted to have strong opinions about high-energy physics and string theory without really studying them in any detail.

If we’re casting eugenics warriors, at least Ricardo Montalban had some bodacious pecs