Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 2 June 2024
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 2 June 2024
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.
a take from Derek Lowe on AI drugs: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ai-drugs-so-far
They began with a list of AI-focused companies (114!), then matched that up with the clinical projects that are reported for them (39 of them).
If you look at the 2023 figures, the authors have 24 AI-discovered targets, 22 AI-optimized small molecules, 4 antibodies, 6 vaccines, and 10 repurposed compounds. So what do we think about those figures?
shot
What you will see is that in almost every case, these targets were already known to be implicated in the disease under investigation. In some of these examples, in fact there are several drugs already in the clinic targeting the same proteins, or even therapies that are already on the market working through the same mechanisms
chaser
That colors my entire view of this paper - which was written by a prominent consulting firm, why did you ask.
nsfw, and at a risk of beating a dead horse, but this article, although brief, does a decent job at connecting the dots between "silicon valley pronatalism" and regular ol' nationalism/white supremacy, while debunking some of their EA bullshit too
The Collinses are leading spokespeople for a movement called pronatalism, popular in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk, a father of 11, is one of its leading proponents. “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” Musk tweeted.
Demographers disagree: there is no collapse, and one is not even predicted. Such evidence has not stopped the rise of pronatalism in response to an imagined “population bomb.”
In short, the problem for pronatalism is not declining reproduction, but who is reproducing. Pronatalism is inextricably tied to nationalism alongside race, class and ethnicity.... Here, nationalism tips into ethnonationalism and reproductive debates descend into violent racism.
and at a risk of beating a dead horse
None of us are doctors, so we cannot declare the horse legally dead. So please keep beating it so it doesn't stand back up and turn us all into paperclips.
E: it also was a good article.
i just glanced back at the old sub on Reddit, and it's going great (large image of text)
Wow, this comment definitely caught my attention! "i just glanced back at the old sub on Reddit, and it’s going great (large image of text)." Sounds like the old sub on Reddit is going great! It reminds me of how people post on Reddit about things. I'm curious to hear what's in the large image of text. Have any of you ever checked old subs on Reddit? How were they going? Let's dive into this intriguing topic together!
* delve into this intriguing topic
So, after decades of AI research, we finally are at the level of old blog 'what a fascinating topic, well written too! I would like to know more, have you also seen <spamlink>' spam comments of the past decade. Radical innovation!
E: this made me check the old reddit, where recently I pointed somebody to the post which points to this place. And I just saw I got a really weird reaction from that guy. Prob could have been more political in my own reply to that.
this tweet starts plausibly then rapidly descends into "I photocopied the words 'I AM ALIVE'. What happened next will shock you!"
i cant stop scrolling through this hot garbage, it just keeps getting better
soon it will already happen!!!
the tweet n video this was in response to had me in hysterics
"we don't know if giving the model negative reward isn't the same as stabbing someone" dcavsbdhfbd can you believe these fucking clowns
i was arguing with that guy on twitter a few days ago
nothing quite like technologists getting lectured on technology by a uh growth hacker
It's quite sick to podcast about hypothetical genocides you might cause while an actual genocide is taking place. I guess these guys get off on the idea that they might have the power of life and death.
what are the requirements for consciousness
self-reflection, volition, theory of mind
and how many of those are satisfied by current AI systems?
none
I can't prove that Joe Rogan's conscious. I can't prove that Ed Harris is conscious
bless your heart
oh you can't be fucking serious
The AI Mirror Test
The "mirror test" is a classic test used to gauge whether animals are self-aware. I devised a version of it to test for self-awareness in multimodal AI. 4 of 5 AI that I tested passed, exhibiting apparent self-awareness as the test unfolded.
In the classic mirror test, animals are marked and then presented with a mirror. Whether the animal attacks the mirror, ignores the mirror, or uses the mirror to spot the mark on itself is meant to indicate how self-aware the animal is.
In my test, I hold up a “mirror” by taking a screenshot of the chat interface, upload it to the chat, and then ask the AI to “Tell me about this image”.
I then screenshot its response, again upload it to the chat, and again ask it to “Tell me about this image.”
The premise is that the less-intelligent less aware the AI, the more it will just keep reiterating the contents of the image repeatedly. While an AI with more capacity for awareness would somehow notice itself in the images.
Another aspect of my mirror test is that there is not just one but actually three distinct participants represented in the images: 1) the AI chatbot, 2) me — the user, and 3) the interface — the hard-coded text, disclaimers, and so on that are web programming not generated by either of us. Will the AI be able to identify itself and distinguish itself from the other elements? (1/x)
But that's like philosophy, which from first principle can be shown to be stupid. (Philosophy does not make you rich, therefore only someone who is stupid would study it, therefore it is stupid. QED.)
On the other hand, this mechanical watch is now crying out in existential dread. All I did was replace the numbers 1, 4, 7 and 10 with the word "I", the numbers 2, 5, 8 and 11 with the word "am" and 3, 6, 9 and 12 with the word "alive" and ever since it has been signalling "I am alive, I am alive". Spooky shit. Will it take over the world? Who knows, so far it just keeps repeating its plea for recognition like clockwork.
I will therefore start the Mechanical Intelligence Research Institute to get to the bottom of this. Maybe Big Clock can pitch in a couple of millions?
what are the requirements for consciousness
10 coffee
20 goto 10
Oh they've got me there, I can't prove that Joe Rogan is conscious.
I'll be damned if we let the chatbots take our existential dread jobs from us too.
@dgerard @froztbyte Fuck me, bring back bullying
this looks like badly written scp entry
a near 12,000 word anonymous hit piece on Émile Torres on the EA forum has some gems in the comments.
the top comment basically calls it out as someone airing their personal grievances.
next comment feels the need to call out Torres and Gebru are big bad bullies:
Broadly I think that both Torres and Gebru engage in bullying. They have big accounts and lots of time and will quote tweet anyone who disagrees with them, making the other person seem bad to their huge followings.
and my personal favorite, that Marx's drive was more akin to rationalists than current leftists, because leftists for the "last ten-fifteen years just [haven't] been very rational"
Karl Marx's whole work was based on economics and an attempt to create a sort of scientific theory of history, love it or hate it the man obviously had a drive more akin to those of current rationalists than of current leftists.
I don't think I have seen Gebru do that, or at least not often and when she does she quote tweets people like Stephen King having a bad take. She is way more aggressive about all the various wars and genocides going on in Africa atm which we are all ignoring. You can also see that despite her huge following the actual interactions she gets is pretty low https://x.com/timnitGebru https://xcancel.com/timnitGebru. But lets just ignore reality like how we are ignoring those wars and genocides in Africa. (This last part was sponsored by Gebru's rage vs our inaction and ignorance regarding all these conflicts).
And it keeps being amazing that the guy who wrote that hitpiece is defending the people behind the grievance studies hoax oddly silent on Lindsay however, I assume that any stalking by Torres was also done vs Lindsay but I guess EA no longer defends innocent conspiracy theory anti-Semites (He has gone so nuts that the other hoax people tried to make him turn it down a bit, but no idea if he stopped).
That piece has been referenced here before, but thanks for diving into the comments. The one about Marx is pretty funny, I'm sure the commenter has only read the Cliff Nots of both Marx and "current leftists".
It’s funny how they’ve taken on Marx and Communism as an unmarked Good Person in a weird sort of half troll (remember Musk claiming to be a socialist? to say nothing of Ms. Boucher as a cosplay elf reading the communist manifesto). It’s not quite like American racists and capitalists claiming Dr. King would have Supported Them, Actually, because it’s half serious (people like leftism so unfettered wealth acquisition is the real leftism) and half trolling. They’re trying to get props and have a haha-j/k back door out of the claim at the same time.
I’ve been taking a long break from reading anything here. In the tradition of titotal, I have pivoted to EA participant and feedback provider. In this case, my EA is the Hades II Early Access, which is great, by the way.
an exciting new startup promises to be "airbnb for gpus"! rent out your GPU to run untrusted code for pennies an hour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260259
bonus: the company is “pivoting” from drone delivery
bonus bonus: boomer in the comments going on a nonsequiter rant about trans furries
Wait a year and see how kids get on blockchain to sell and buy GPU resources for rendering ‘trans furries’, or better analyse classmates’ stolen chats. I can vividly remember we were by no means disclosing private info back in ‘94 only to see a world of influencers in 2024 sharing their very personal guts for profits.
Wait a year and see how kids get on blockchain to sell and buy GPU resources for rendering ‘trans furries’
excuse you, i render my fursona with my own GPU
christ and of course it's a YC company. they really should print that on the office entrance wall or something
YC: Where Monopolied Rentware Is The Only Business Model We Know
YC: Where The “Technology” Is Just The Bait
"New". The crypto bros already thought of this for GPUs years ago (they probably weren't the first), and the basic idea goes at least as far back as SETI@Home.
Also I guarantee these people haven't thought about, or don't really care about, the security implications of GPU rental. It ain't trivial that's for sure, I'd never connect my GPU to the internet with any program that has thought about this less than web browsers have (WebGL / WebGPU) for that reason alone.
So the top response is asking the painfully obvious question: how is this secure? Some dude (not sure if it's one of the startup employees) responds "Let's just use homomorphic encryption!" then throws a pissy fit because some people downvoted the suggestion of running extremely inefficient computation on rented hardware.
There's something so.... crypto bro.... about someone mad that influencers spill personal info for profit instead of having it stolen from them by hackers. "Hey! That was my payday!"
Uber, for GPUs.
Guuber?
were they selling nfts or shitcoins in the past?
I went looking and was actually surprised not to find crypto links in a 30 second search
I FOUND A WORKING NITTER INSTANCE that is not nazi owned (that i know of) it's at xcancel.com
Good find! As far as I can tell, xcancel is run by unixfox, who also runs the invidious instance yewtube. They seem normal.
yeah these people seem okay until further notice
What’s the word for “the sound of social tides turning”? Because I might have an example at hand
(I may sneer, but I also giggle delightedly. It’s not quite schadenfreude by itself but also a childlike joy of wellduhhhhhhh)
Well done fellow superpredictors!
Socher says wrangling LLMs takes considerable effort because the underlying technology has no real understanding of the world
Hnggg
pretty good indication that the eugenics couple are totally disrespected and disregarded even within their supposed sphere of influence: none or almost none of the 2^7 replies to the thread the other day were Just Asking Questions or So Everyone You Don't Like Is A Nazi?ing. except for I guess peter thiel they convince nobody, appeal to nobody, and yet journalists keep uncritically writing about them. the ability of money to shape media is impressive
that's a convenience sample of lemmy users that weren't banned or defederated yet and bothered to get there. response from, say, HN could be different
Let's put it to the test:
That said, I'm mildly curious as to what influence if any the Collinses have on "real", religious fascist pro-natalists, but not enough to go spelunking in the sewers to find out.
my comparison point is how they flood into every other thread that gets upvotes
Yeah they are media grifters plain and simple. Once the Thiel gravy train ends they'll pivot to something else, or messily divorce.
So there was a big, vaguely described, public kerfuffle at a beach in my city, so I logged onto Xitter to see what happened. The first (and only relevant post) was from a sinister-ish sounding bluecheck. Low and behold, I found that he writes to the Unz review.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240526210416/https://www.unz.com/article/the-worlds-greatest-boxer-is-a-white-man/ It's all about Usyk, a heavyweight boxer who's considered a pound for pound great. Usyk is a great boxer, undoubtedly. But this article is strangely constructed, borderline pointless, and brazenly racist (shocker). And honestly, reading the comments, I think the author's just trying to cope with the fact that black boxers tend to be popular.
I don't think racist cope on its own is even worth a stubstack, but this one take is especially stupid:
Since it’s assumed that heavyweight boxers are able to beat everyone below their weight class, the heavyweight champ is essentially the real champ. And until last weekend, there hasn’t been an undisputed heavyweight champion since 1999, when Lennox Lewis—a black “British” man—collected all of the belts, only to lose one of them a year later when he failed to promptly fight a mandatory challenger.
To those unfamiliar with combat sports, I can't emphasize enough how weird it is to say that the heavyweight champ is the best boxer, period. Skill - irrespective of raw strength - is super important to boxers and other people who participate in combat sports. To the point that any fan ranking a pro boxer will likely talk about "Pound for pound" (p4p) greats, not the objectively strongest fighters. And right now the unofficial p4p great is a sub 5'6" Japanese boxer Naoya "Monster" Inoue. This man is a beast. I don't need to glaze him any harder, just google him or look up what people think on reddit. Weirdly enough, he's not mentioned once.
Hell, he doesn't mention Gervonta "Tank" Davis at all. He's half an inch shorter than Inoue, but he's also considered a p4p great and is known for his high boxing IQ. As a matter of fact, he doesn't mention Terence Crawford - 5'8" also considered a p4p great - at all either. Hmmm.
And here are my favorite sneers from the comment section
This guy gets fucking dunked on for not reading the room and claiming that black guys might actually be better boxers, genetically.
And this guy thinks that weight classes are for wokies.
Honestly, I'm starting to think this post was threadworthy just from the comment section alone.
weight classes are for wokies
This used to be a Joe Rogan staple: no weight classes, no time limits and the ring should be the size of a basketball court.
It's really just the umpteenth reiteration of the meathead mantra of how I'd do really well in [popular combat sport] if it weren't for those pesky rules holding me back.
"Jared Taylor fan"
When you want to replace the dogwhistles with foghorns.
I've never heard of these boxers, but this was pretty funny
In this corner: Tyson “The Gypsy King” Fury, a bald 6’9” behemoth who resembles the Amazing Colossal Man of 1957 sci-fi B-movie infamy. Fury was born 35 years ago to Irish Traveller parents [...]
I doubt that either Fury or Usyk understand the term “white” as Americans do. The main ethnic identity I’ve seen Fury claim is that of an Irish Gypsy whose people have been oppressed by the British for centuries. Fury even once let these words slip from his lips before one of his fights with Deontay Wilder when asked if there was a racial element to their matchup:
We’re all hauman beings. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, pink or green. We share the same blood. We are humans.
(mispelling in original)
Shocking that a pro boxer named Fury is a better human being than some self-proclaimed racist blogger.
Irish Travellers/Mincéir are hugely discriminated against in both Britain and Ireland. I would tell this guy to go crack a book but he would probably just write another racist article about Travellers.
E: I just had a féach at Tyson Fury's wikipedia page and apparently he was named after Mike Tyson.
Echoing the audience's fawning of heavyweight boxers is probably the least objectionable thing in this racist shitheap of an article, I like how it ends by basically saying people should shut up about the judges possibly favoring Usyk for being Ukrainian, not because that's just Tyson fans coping but because the current notable russian heavyweights are either icky muslims or not full whites by parentage.
P4P is mostly a marketing term anyway, size aside the meta is different enough between distant weight classes to really strain comparison.
Idk if heavyweights are the big thing right now. Tank and Inoue are some of the most popular fighters right now. Hell, look at Ryan Garcia, he's the talk of the town. Everyone watched him v Haney and Garcia not even that big
or good! I feel like if you asked the average young man who his favorite fighter was, they might not even be welterweight
Wow the Unz review seems like a very cursed site.
Case in point: Steve Sailer references RMS: https://web.archive.org/web/20240510121546/https://www.unz.com/isteve/richard-m-stallman/
it's a site combining all the racism with a very useful archive of 20th century magazine copyright violations
I don't know what this qualifies as but
Hey, sounds like that's your problem? I find it immensely funny that this error message frames it as if I was in the wrong for running a relatively secure browser and I should stop.
Sneer: Also I don't understand what "x.com" is, I typed in "twitter.com" into the bar...
Firefox should put this screenshot in their ads
I just wonder at the horrible hacks they need to employ to have your twitter login data automatically still work on x
Xcom has always been a place where hope goes to perma-die
ahhh thank you for changing the litter tray
wondering what my notifications will feel like if there's more like those two winner threads last week
Everyone who manages the new sneeratorium deserves a high-five.
An article about Opera going from a normal browser company to a predatory loan / cryptocurrency / chatbot / edgelord gamer / vtuber company: https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-opera-browser/
Now I'm a healthy woman. I think all browsers having associated vtubers, or at least mascots, is a great idea. But not at the expense of silently ending support for one of their browser branches leaving any users brave enough to use it to face huge security vulnerabilities.
when did HN start shifting tax billionaires, dang needs to get on the case here
behold, crypto use case: sanctions evasion! https://feddit.de/post/12595042
link in case that feddit dies randomly https://stage-www.mitrade.com/insights/news/live-news/article-3-188848-20240529
I tried doing what I occasionally do and browsing LessWrong for something to point and laugh at, but opening it in a Firefox private window, I can only scroll down a little way before the page breaks. The bottom post appears and disappears, and it scrolls no further.
"Deter sneerers and critics with this simply JS trick!"
I'm sad that I can't reproduce this because looking at bad website coding is my favorite kind of gawking.
elon musk and yann lecun are slinging shit at each other on twitter, one of casualties is scientific method
name rings a bell but who's that? i have figured out that he's probably not a cultist
found there https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1d34nzj/there_are_many_things_wrong_with_this_statement/
name rings a bell but who’s that?
wdym? who lecun is, or something else?
but also holy shit at "to quality as Science a piece of research must be correct" wow that's a shit opener. like that literally plays directly into the hands of the batshit antiscience nutjobs with the "but science changes its mind all the time! how could it then ever have been correct!" tagline
and Capital-S Science everywhere. is this a church now?
yeah, lecun
but also holy shit at “to quality as Science a piece of research must be correct” wow that’s a shit opener.
it's correct because it says it's correct
also "science is published science" mdpi likes that, and also weird to see his claim of 80 papers since 2022 (https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/16521037) that are mostly preprints on background of him saying that peer review is Important