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zogwarg

@ zogwarg @awful.systems

4
309
3 yr. ago

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2nd August 2026

  • I think he falls under the category of "does too much all the time" and "vaguely techo optimist" which definitely put him at risk. I'm not too sure how harshly I should judge him yet, I guess it depends on what he does next.

  • Random Positivity Threads

  • Congrats.

  • if LessWrong bans insufferable twats just because they make everyone miserable, who's next?? me??????

  • It continues to amaze me how much digital ink they can spill about this issue.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 7th June 2026

  • You've gotta love falling for the reverse 1 grain of sand shtick. I don't think anyone anyone serious would deny that a large amount of sand is a heap.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 31st May 2026

  • Encyclical from the pope about the dangers of AI, mostly sane actually: (provided link skips quite a bit about social justice and referencing previous literature)

    https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html#Artificial_intelligence

    EDIT, snippets:

    1. We cannot be satisfied with [...] the so-called “alignment” of AI [..] without [..] openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice. Otherwise, those who control AI will impose their own moral vision, which will become the invisible infrastructure of these systems. A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few. [...]

    1. [ about post and transhumanism ] From the perspective of the Church’s Social Doctrine, the key issue is not the use of technology as such, but the vision that underlies it. If the human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy. In the name of progress, “necessary sacrifices” may begin to be justified, placing the burden on the most vulnerable in pursuit of a supposed optimization of the species. [...]

  • arXiv bans academic authors for AI slop papers

  • Also what is even the meaning of adding citations if you never came across the source?

    [I vaguely understand that there is a lot of window-dressing that comes with writing papers, but this is too perverse.]

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 24th May 2026

  • The dreaded midnight hour of oblivion!

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 3rd May 2026

  • Agreed, agreed.

    EDIT: Though as far as ambiguous anarchist utopias go, I think I'd rather live on Anarres in "The Dispossessed", even though the material welfare and personal freedoms are much much lower.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 3rd May 2026

  • You've gotta love finding fault with "not preserving heritage" over "imperialistic complete lack of democracy".

  • Why do many rationalists like cryptocurrency?

  • I would phrase this as "good marks" and "foolish" rather than "stupid", it's important to stay humble enough that no one is safe from a con.

    Echoing something that has been said here before (too lazy to find proper credit sorry): "Rationality™ is a get smart quick scheme", falling for one family of scams makes you more likely to fall for a similar one.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 3rd May 2026

  • There are some amazing justifications from many amongst the red-pushing side:

    • "But if everyone presses red, nobody dies!" (As if that would every happen. Funnily enough strong overlap with the group that claims that "< 90 IQ can't reason about hypotheticals", although that is also just that part of twitter.)
    • "People who press blue are just blackmailing us!" (I think this accounts for a large portion, ie: not liking to depend on others).
    • "The number of people choosing blue can't be that high! (It would be lower in a true-stakes scenario!)"
    • [Many others, but these are those that come to mind.]

    It's a bit baffling how many strongly they refuse the "blue-selection" as possibly moral/rational. Even so far as calling people pressing blue evil or subhuman, simply baffling.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th April 2026

  • Random Positivity Thread: Movies and TV Wishlist

    • TV Show: Extraordinary, quirky take on the superhero genre, cancelled after 2 seasons.
    • Anime: Because I like space battles anime, the Honorverse by David Weber (not great sci-fi, but one of my guilty pleasures).
    • Obligatory Movie: "Le Roi et l'Oiseau" [The King and the Mockingbird] (animation edition)
    • I want my long version of the thunderbird edition of Stargate sg1 (see episode 200).

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th April 2026

  • I don't meet that many people either, but I get the general vibe that people understand that it's somewhat shitty, but it still fills a social need (compare/contrast horoscopes).

    Completely anecdotally, I recently saw a short video of a french woman, saying to an impressive know-it-all-tv-quizz-champion [intended as a compliment I think]: "Wow you sound like Chat GPT!"

    Too me that was very illustrative of the perception of Chat GPT from a less tech-literate perspective.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th April 2026

  • Shame alone isn't enough though, especially not for the stuff people do in private, like ask LLMs for advice. Push too much shame and people might just end up simply doing it without telling anyone.

    I think rephrasing the main point of the essay "Teach people enough, and they will understand that any use is misuse" can be a very powerful idea.

    Teach people about germs, contaminants and proper technique, before shaming them into washing their hands.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th April 2026

  • Ahh sh*t if all my rent-seeking employee-reducing dreams come true, i'll lose money on my product subscriptions rents! Quick! I should come up with bullshit that will solve everything!

  • Associated Press dumps journalists for AI

  • 🤓☝️ technically AP is a non-profit providing a (worldwide) public utility service. (On paper and mostly in practice it's a journalist co-op). Her Job is to report factual information correctly, that's (at least historically) the whole selling point of wire services.

    Looking at her wiki page:

    [...] spent two years at The Tampa Tribune before joining the Associated Press (AP) in 2007 as a video producer. She was the AP's first multimedia political journalist. Pace covered the 2008 presidential election and began covering the White House [...]

    Definitely a journalist by training, given her career journey, it makes sense that she champions video content. But still, amongst the six senior VPs at AP, she has title the "Executive Editor", arguably the most "Journalist" title of all of them. (Chief Technology Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, General Counsel/Corporate Secretary, Executive Editor, Chief Financial Officer, Chief People Officer)

  • Associated Press dumps journalists for AI

  • One funny (definition of funny not included, conditions may apply) bit from the AP article:

    The AP is trying new forms of fact-checking, including use of video, and more often putting its journalists in public to explain how they got particular stories, she [Julie Pace, Senior VP at AP] said.

    Call me crazy, but that isn't fact-checking right? At the most charitable this is education/fact-conveying, not the actual important groundwork of fact-checking and editing.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th April 2026

  • The replausibility crisis.

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    zogwarg @awful.systems

    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 15 September 2024

  • TechTakes @awful.systems
    zogwarg @awful.systems

    AGI Sparklings proponents rejoice! Finding a literal map(*) means LLMs have a world model.

  • SneerClub @awful.systems
    zogwarg @awful.systems

    Humble EY can move goalposts in long format.

    twitter.com /ESYudkowsky/status/1706872347876352115
  • SneerClub @awful.systems
    zogwarg @awful.systems

    If learning incorrect things is EY's only definition of trauma, his existence must be eternal torment.

    nitter.net /ESYudkowsky/status/1701689314189725802