[-] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 15 hours ago

If Paris Marx is the little domino that causes total collapse of US hegemony, I’ll join the patreon at the highest tier forever

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Early covid (july 2020) interview:

https://archive.is/Sesfj

charitable take: he has the good sense to not make any major claims about the pandemic, other than to speculate that it would worsen his go-to metric of “extreme poverty”, which is… fine, i guess.

neutral take: nothing extraordinarily damning other than his usual takes.

uncharitable: this is of course early pandemic, so maybe pinker hasn’t found the angle to sell his normal shit with.

Side note: does pinker ever wonder about why extreme poverty has been reduced? I can’t imagine he thinks it’s anything other than liberal democracy and US foreign interference, when the real answer is like, China (a country that Pinker definitely believes is counter to said liberal democracy and the US) continuing to develop economically. Basically i want to him to squirm as he tries and fails to resolve the cognitive dissonance.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 20 hours ago

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2018/08/comic-steven-pinker-certified-grief-counselor

I don’t keep this link on hand, I just google “pinker comic” and find it.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 20 hours ago

Pinker tries not to be a total caricature of himself challenge: profoundly impossible

specifically this caricature:

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

Has Klezra Ein ever used the term “useful idiot”?

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

David Gerard: keikaku.jpg

Tracing Woodgrains: malding

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

Well, I can see the distinction being important. I'm sure the adult baby/ageplay crowd don't want their good reputation stained by these chuds

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago

Only big dum-dums wouldn't buy Dr. Swlabr's Brilliant, Life-Extending Snake Oil! Use it in a poultice, as a liniment, or as an emollient! The smartest use it instead of the fertility-sapping seed oils!

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 22 points 1 day ago

a startup offering IQ screening for IVF embryos

Is this… the perfect grift?

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

the answer is yes, in a self-own sort of way

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

Wasn’t there some big post on LW about how pattern matching isn’t intelligence?

11

Original NYT title: Billionaire Airbnb Co-Founder Is Said to Take Role in Musk’s Government Initiative

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submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by swlabr@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

Original link

OFC if there were any real sense or justice in the world, LLMs would be banned outright.

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No link given because it's all over the news. If you ask for proof you're going to have to eat my ass.

A lot of people are going to say it wasn't intended as a Nazi salute, and to that, I say: it doesn't matter. Was it a dog whistle? A variation of a Nazi salute from a South African neo-nazi party? Or just the vanilla salute? Such pontification is a waste of time. Fokker is a Nazi; you didn't need to see him salute. To all the regulars here, Musk being a Nazi is just an axiom of his whole deal. I mean, it's not called technofascism for nothing.

58

Just for my personal pride, I would like to state that the father of my children was the first american druid in diablo to clear abattoir of zir and ended that season as best in the USA. He was also ranking in Polytopia, and beat Felix himself at the game. I did observe these things with my own eyes. There are other witnesses who can verify this. That is all.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by swlabr@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

original link

“If all of this sounds like a libertarian fever dream, I hear you. But as these markets rise, legacy media will continue to slide into irrelevance.”

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by swlabr@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems

Abstracted abstract:

Frontier models are increasingly trained and deployed as autonomous agents, which significantly increases their potential for risks. One particular safety concern is that AI agents might covertly pursue misaligned goals, hiding their true capabilities and objectives – also known as scheming. We study whether models have the capability to scheme in pursuit of a goal that we provide in-context and instruct the model to strongly follow. We evaluate frontier models on a suite of six agentic evaluations where models are instructed to pursue goals and are placed in environments that incentivize scheming.

I saw this posted here a moment ago and reported it*, and it looks to have been purged. I am reposting it to allow us to sneer at it.

*

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Didn’t see this news posted but please link previous correspondence if I missed it.

https://archive.is/XwbY0

16

This is somewhat tangential to the usual fare here but I decided to make a post because why not.

I’ve been listening to the back catalog of the Judge John Hodgman podcast, and this ep came up. This ep is the second crypto based case after “crypto facto” in ep 333.

John Hodgman is a comedian, probs best known for being the “I’m a PC” guy in the “I’m a Mac” ad campaign from ancient times. In the podcast, he plays a fake judge that hears cases and makes judgements. In this ep, “Suing for Soul Custody,” he hears a case in which a husband wants to sell his soul on the blockchain, while his wife does not want him to do that.

Some good sneers against the crypto bro husband (in both this case and the other I linked). Brief spoilers as to the rulings in case you don’t want to listen:

333Judge rules that the husband should continue to mine ETH until his rig burns down his house.

556Judge rules that the guy shouldn’t sell his soul, for symbolic reasons.

Note: I like John Hodgman. He’s funny. He’s not really inside the tech space, but he is good friends with Jonathan Coulton, who is. If all you know of him is the “I’m a PC” ads, he has an entertaining wider catalogue worth checking out.

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swlabr

joined 2 years ago