Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh facts of Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
> The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > >Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
And be careful that you don't lose yourself in the eyes of a pig.
First, learn the difference between scorn or disdain and hate.
Second, read the comments in the thread already made about those "'sort of' correct" predictions.
Bumping this up from the comments.
"Computers will be really good at chess" was already a trope in 1960s science fiction. HAL 9000 is canonically so good that he was instructed to throw the game half the time so that his human opponents don't get bored. The Enterprise computer is so good that Spock being able to beat it — Spock — is a major plot point.
You know what? "Go fuck yourself" is way out of line for a conversation about cameras. Bye now.
Some of Kurzweil's predictions in 1999 about 2019:
A $1,000 computing device is now approximately equal to the computational ability of the human brain. Computers are now largely invisible and are embedded everywhere. Three-dimensional virtual-reality displays, embedded in glasses and contact lenses, provide the primary interface for communication with other persons, the Web, and virtual reality. Most interaction with computing is through gestures and two-way natural-language spoken communication. Realistic all-encompassing visual, auditory, and tactile environments enable people to do virtually anything with anybody regardless of physical proximity. People are beginning to have relationships with automated personalities as companions, teachers, caretakers, and lovers.
Also:
Three‐dimensional nanotube lattices are now a prevalent form of computing circuitry.
And:
Autonomous nanoengineered machines can control their own mobility and include significant computational engines.
And:
ʺPhoneʺ calls routinely include high‐resolution three‐dimensional images projected through the direct‐eye displays and auditory lenses. Three‐dimensional holography displays have also emerged. In either case, users feel as if they are physically near the other person. The resolution equals or exceeds optimal human visual acuity. Thus a person can be fooled as to whether or not another person is physically present or is being projected through electronic communication.
And:
The all‐enveloping tactile environment is now widely available and fully convincing. Its resolution equals or exceeds that of human touch and can simulate (and stimulate) all of the facets of the tactile sense, including the sensing of pressure, temperature, textures, and moistness. Although the visual and auditory aspects of virtual reality involve only devices you have on or in your body (the direct‐eye lenses and auditory lenses), the ʺtotal touchʺ haptic environment requires entering a virtual reality booth. These technologies are popular for medical examinations, as well as sensual and sexual interactions with other human partners or simulated partners. In fact, it is often the preferred mode of interaction, even when a human partner is nearby, due to its ability to enhance both experience and safety.
And:
Automated driving systems have been found to be highly reliable and have now been installed in nearly all roads.
And:
The type of artistic and entertainment product in greatest demand (as measured by revenue generated) continues to be virtual‐experience software, which ranges from simulations of ʺrealʺ experiences to abstract environments with little or no corollary in the physical world.
And:
The expected life span, which, as a (1780 through 1900) and the first phase result of the first Industrial Revolution of the second (the twentieth century), almost doubled from less than forty, has now substantially increased again, to over one hundred.
"Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle" (if you don't count the people that the drones are blowing up)
Some of Kurzweil's predictions in 1999 about 2009:
- “Unused computes on the Internet are harvested, creating … human brain hardware capacity.”
- “The online chat rooms of the late 1990s have been replaced with virtual environments…with full visual realism.”
- “Interactive brain-generated music … is another popular genre.”
- “the underclass is politically neutralized through public assistance and the generally high level of affluence”
- “Diagnosis almost always involves collaboration between a human physician and a … expert system.”
- “Humans are generally far removed from the scene of battle.”
- “Despite occasional corrections, the ten years leading up to 2009 have seen continuous economic expansion”
- “Cables are disappearing.”
- “grammar checkers are now actually useful”
- “Intelligent roads are in use, primarily for long-distance travel.”
- “The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) software”
- “Autonomous nanoengineered machines … have been demonstrated and include their own computational controls.”
And then there's this asshole:
"AI is using all of our energy and water" is just an attempt to translate an aesthetic revulsion into a common unit of measure. It's "I don't like this" expressed in watt-gallons.
To avoid confirmation bias and subjective interpretation, we decided to leverage language models for a more objective analysis of the data. By providing the models with the complete set of notes, we aimed to uncover patterns and trends without our pre-existing notions and biases.
... the Hell?
The smug presumption that any brand of spicy autocomplete is a viable tool "to summarize information, simplify language, or test their knowledge" is so fucking galling.
More broadly, (ie not just in relation to Cory Doctorow), I’ve seen the take floating around that’s like “hey, what the heck, artists who were opposed to ridiculous IP rights restrictions when it was the music industry doing it are now in favor of those restrictions when it’s AI, what gives with this hypocrisy?” which I think kind of… misses the point?
I've noticed that too, on occasion. I think the "hey whoa, artists are copyright maximalists now?!" takes tend to miss how artists are coming from concerns about what is morally right and how they can make a living, not copyright as a principle. The latter is, at most, a tool to achieve the former.
With that in mind, a lot of the artist outrage over AI feels much more in line with artists getting mad about, say, watermark-removal tools, or people reposting art without credit, than it does with the copyright battles of the 00s.
This says it better than I was going to.
In the first Foundation story, there's a weird mention of applying symbolic logic to human language that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. Campbell insisted upon it because
he felt in our discussions that symbolic logic, further developed, would so clear up the mysteries of the human mind as to leave human actions predictable. The reason human beings are so unpredictable was we didn't really know what they were saying and thinking because language is generally used obscurely. So what we needed was something that would unobscure the language and leave everything clear.
Clear being a fortuitous choice of wording on Asimov's part there, given, well.
TESCREAL and Scientology don't just share methodology; they both descend directly from "Golden Age" science fiction. In this essay I will
"And a waifu is only a waifu, but a good cigar is a smoke."
Mastodon has Reply Guys. Lemmy has Cater To Me Whilst I Am Literally, Not Figuratively, Taking a Shit Guys.
If we trace one ancestry path back to science-fiction fandom, well, there's John W. Campbell.
I'm trying to think of a polite way to say "in short, no" and "the linked tweet having "effectivealtruism" in it twice should have been a clue", because I'm not that mean, but I probably need more coffee too.
Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
> The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
> The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
I apologize if you’ve been asked this question before I’m sure you have, but how do you feel about AI in writing? One of my teachers was “writing” stories using ChatGPT then was bragging about how go…
> Many magazines have closed their submission portals because people thought they could send in AI-written stories. > > For years I would tell people who wanted to be writers that the only way to be a writer was to write your own stories because elves would not come in the night and do it for you. > > With AI, drunk plagiaristic elves who cannot actually write and would not know an idea or a sentence if it bit their little elvish arses will actually turn up and write something unpublishable for you. This is not a good thing.
Owners will have to wait until April 20 for deliveries to resume.
> Tesla's troubled Cybertruck appears to have hit yet another speed bump. Over the weekend, dozens of waiting customers reported that their impending deliveries had been canceled due to "an unexpected delay regarding the preparation of your vehicle." > > Tesla has not announced an official stop sale or recall, and as of now, the reason for the suspended deliveries is unknown. But it's possible the electric pickup truck has a problem with its accelerator. [...] Yesterday, a Cybertruck owner on TikTok posted a video showing how the metal cover of his accelerator pedal allegedly worked itself partially loose and became jammed underneath part of the dash. The driver was able to stop the car with the brakes and put it in park. At the beginning of the month, another Cybertruck owner claimed to have crashed into a light pole due to an unintended acceleration problem.
Meanwhile, layoffs!
Google said it will continue to evaluate its approach “as the world of book publishing evolves.”
> Google Books is indexing low quality, AI-generated books that will turn up in search results, and could possibly impact Google Ngram viewer, an important tool used by researchers to track language use throughout history.
Elon Musk's Boring Company has only built a few miles of tunnel underneath Vegas — but those tunnels have taken a toxic toll.
[Eupalinos of Megara appears out of a time portal from ancient Ionia] Wow, you guys must be really good at digging tunnels by now, right?
The Microsoft-powered bot says bosses can take workers’ tips and that landlords can discriminate based on source of income
> In October, New York City announced a plan to harness the power of artificial intelligence to improve the business of government. The announcement included a surprising centerpiece: an AI-powered chatbot that would provide New Yorkers with information on starting and operating a business in the city. > > The problem, however, is that the city’s chatbot is telling businesses to break the law.
a lesswrong: 47-minute read extolling the ambition and insights of Christopher Langan's "CTMU"
a science blogger back in the day: not so impressed
> [I]t’s sort of like saying “I’m going to fix the sink in my bathroom by replacing the leaky washer with the color blue”, or “I’m going to fly to the moon by correctly spelling my left leg.”
Langan, incidentally, is a 9/11 truther, a believer in the "white genocide" conspiracy theory and much more besides.
Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut'n'paste it into its own post, there’s no quota here and the bar really isn't that high
> The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
If you've been around, you may know Elsevier for surveillance publishing. Old hands will recall their running arms fairs. To this storied history we can add "automated bullshit pipeline".
In Surfaces and Interfaces, online 17 February 2024:
> Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:Lithium-metal batteries are promising candidates for high-energy-density rechargeable batteries due to their low electrode potentials and high theoretical capacities [1], [2].
In Radiology Case Reports, online 8 March 2024:
> In summary, the management of bilateral iatrogenic I'm very sorry, but I don't have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model. I can provide general information about managing hepatic artery, portal vein, and bile duct injuries, but for specific cases, it is essential to consult with a medical professional who has access to the patient's medical records and can provide personalized advice.
Edit to add this erratum:
> The authors apologize for including the AI language model statement on page 4 of the above-named article, below Table 3, and for failing to include the Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in Scientific Writing, as required by the journal’s policies and recommended by reviewers during revision.
Edit again to add this article in Urban Climate:
> The World Health Organization (WHO) defines HW as “Sustained periods of uncharacteristically high temperatures that increase morbidity and mortality”. Certainly, here are a few examples of evidence supporting the WHO definition of heatwaves as periods of uncharacteristically high temperatures that increase morbidity and mortality
And this one in Energy:
> Certainly, here are some potential areas for future research that could be explored.
Can't forget this one in TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry:
> Certainly, here are some key research gaps in the current field of MNPs research
Or this one in Trends in Food Science & Technology:
> Certainly, here are some areas for future research regarding eggplant peel anthocyanins,
And we mustn't ignore this item in Waste Management Bulletin:
> When all the information is combined, this report will assist us in making more informed decisions for a more sustainable and brighter future. Certainly, here are some matters of potential concern to consider.
The authors of this article in Journal of Energy Storage seems to have used GlurgeBot as a replacement for basic formatting:
> Certainly, here's the text without bullet points:
In which a man disappearing up his own asshole somehow fails to be interesting.
So, there I was, trying to remember the title of a book I had read bits of, and I thought to check a Wikipedia article that might have referred to it. And there, in "External links", was ... "Wikiversity hosts a discussion with the Bard chatbot on Quantum mechanics".
How much carbon did you have to burn, and how many Kenyan workers did you have to call the N-word, in order to get a garbled and confused "history" of science? (There's a lot wrong and even self-contradictory with what the stochastic parrot says, which isn't worth unweaving in detail; perhaps the worst part is that its statement of the uncertainty principle is a blurry JPEG of the average over all verbal statements of the uncertainty principle, most of which are wrong.) So, a mediocre but mostly unremarkable page gets supplemented with a "resource" that is actively harmful. Hooray.
Meanwhile, over in this discussion thread, we've been taking a look at the Wikipedia article Super-recursive algorithm. It's rambling and unclear, throwing together all sorts of things that somebody somewhere called an exotic kind of computation, while seemingly not grasping the basics of the ordinary theory the new thing is supposedly moving beyond.
So: What's the worst/weirdest Wikipedia article in your field of specialization?
Hi everyone. Chris, Jairaj, and I wanted to let you know that we’ve heard and have been listening to all the views being expressed about how Substack should think about the presence of fringe voices on the platform (and particularly, in this case, Nazi views). I just want to make it clear tha...
The day just isn't complete without a tiresome retread of freeze peach rhetorical tropes. Oh, it's "important to engage with and understand" white supremacy. That's why we need to boost the voices of white supremacists! And give them money!
With the OpenAI clownshow, there's been renewed media attention on the xrisk/"AI safety"/doomer nonsense. Personally, I've had a fresh wave of reporters asking me naive questions (as well as some contacts from old hands who are on top of how to handle ultra-rich man-children with god complexes). 🧵1...
> With the OpenAI clownshow, there's been renewed media attention on the xrisk/"AI safety"/doomer nonsense. Personally, I've had a fresh wave of reporters asking me naive questions (as well as some contacts from old hands who are on top of how to handle ultra-rich man-children with god complexes).
Flashback time:
> One of the most important and beneficial trainings I ever underwent as a young writer was trying to script a comic. I had to cut down all of my dialogue to fit into speech bubbles. I was staring closely at each sentence and striking out any word I could.
"But then I paid for Twitter!"
> AI doctors will revolutionize medicine! You'll go to a service hosted in Thailand that can't take credit cards, and pay in crypto, to get a correct diagnosis. Then another VISA-blocked AI will train you in following a script that will get a human doctor to give you the right diagnosis, without tipping that doctor off that you're following a script; so you can get the prescription the first AI told you to get.
Can't get mifepristone or puberty blockers? Just have a chatbot teach you how to cast Persuasion!
Faced with new legislation, Iowa's Mason City Community School District asked ChatGPT if certain books 'contain a description or depiction of a sex act.'
