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swlabr @awful.systems

Only Bayes Can Judge Me

Posts 34
Comments 1.3K
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2 March 2025
  • A few years ago, maybe a few months after moving to the bay area, a guy from my high school messaged me on linkedin. He was also in the bay, and was wanting to network, I guess? I ghosted him, because I didn’t know him at all, and when I asked my high school friends about him, he got some bad reviews. Anyway today linkedin suggests/shoves a post down my throat where he is proudly talking about working at anthropic. Glad I ghosted!

    PS/E: Anthro Pic is definitely a furry term. Is that anything?

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 2 March 2025
  • OK I sped read that thing earlier today, and am now reading it proper.

    The best answer — AI has “jagged intelligence” — lies in between hype and skepticism.

    Here's how they describe this term, about 2000 words in:

    Researchers have come up with a buzzy term to describe this pattern of reasoning: “jagged intelligence." [...] Picture it like this. If human intelligence looks like a cloud with softly rounded edges, artificial intelligence is like a spiky cloud with giant peaks and valleys right next to each other. In humans, a lot of problem-solving capabilities are highly correlated with each other, but AI can be great at one thing and ridiculously bad at another thing that (to us) doesn’t seem far apart.

    So basically, this term is just pure hype, designed to play up the "intelligence" part of it, to suggest that "AI can be great". The article just boils down to "use AI for the things that we think it's good at, and don't use it for the things we think it's bad at!" As they say on the internet, completely unserious.

    The big story is: AI companies now claim that their models are capable of genuine reasoning — the type of thinking you and I do when we want to solve a problem. And the big question is: Is that true?

    Demonstrably no.

    These models are yielding some very impressive results. They can solve tricky logic puzzles, ace math tests, and write flawless code on the first try.

    Fuck right off.

    Yet they also fail spectacularly on really easy problems. AI experts are torn over how to interpret this. Skeptics take it as evidence that “reasoning” models aren’t really reasoning at all.

    Ah, yes, as we all know, the burden of proof lies on skeptics.

    Believers insist that the models genuinely are doing some reasoning, and though it may not currently be as flexible as a human’s reasoning, it’s well on its way to getting there. So, who’s right?

    Again, fuck off.

    Moving on...

    The skeptic's case

    vs

    The believer’s case

    A LW-level analysis shows that the article spends 650 words on the skeptic's case and 889 on the believer's case. BIAS!!!!! /s.

    Anyway, here are the skeptics quoted:

    • Shannon Vallor, "a philosopher of technology at the University of Edinburgh"
    • Melanie Mitchell, "a professor at the Santa Fe Institute"

    Great, now the believers:

    • Ryan Greenblatt, "chief scientist at Redwood Research"
    • Ajeya Cotra, "a senior analyst at Open Philanthropy"

    You will never guess which two of these four are regular wrongers.

    Note that the article only really has examples of the dumbass-nature of LLMs. All the smart things it reportedly does is anecdotal, i.e. the author just says shit like "AI can do solve some really complex problems!" Yet, it still has the gall to both-sides this and suggest we've boiled the oceans for something more than a simulated idiot.

  • Businesses still don’t know what an ‘AI agent’ is and they don’t really want one
  • Why? Per the poll: “a lack of reliability.” The things being sold as “agents” don’t … work.

    Vendors insist that the users are just holding the agents wrong. Per Bret Taylor of Sierra (and OpenAI):

    Accept that it is imperfect. Rather than say, “Will AI do something wrong”, say, “When it does something wrong, what are the operational mitigations that we’ve put in place to deal with it?”

    I think this illustrates the situation of the LLM market pretty well, not just at a shallow level of the base incentives of the parties at play, but also at a deeper level, showing the general lack of humanity and toleration of dogshit exhibited by the AI companies that they are trying to brainwash everyone with.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 23 February 2025
  • What would some good unifying demands be for a hostile takeover of the Democratic party by centrists/moderates?

    me, taking this at face value, and understanding the political stances of the democrats, and going by my definition of centrist/moderate that is more correct than whatever the hell Kelsey Piper thinks it means: Oh, this would actually push the democrats left.

    Anyway, jesus christ I regret clicking on that name and reading. How the fuck is anyone this stupid. Vox needs to be burned down.

  • Ziz update thread, started 19 February
  • thielbucks laundered through 17 cutouts get used to fund useful idiots for stochastic terrorism to whip up an anti-trans panic

    While this didn’t happen to the letter, thielthoughts stochastically brought about Luigi, and we have the thielsweat to show for it

  • Musk accretes Gebbia, wants to run an AirBnB out of 1600 Pennsylvania

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

    0

    What is the charge? Eating an LLM? A succulent chinese LLM? Deepseek judo-thrown out of Australian government devices

    Original link

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

    1

    OpenAI says stealing is wrong and bad unless they do it

    4

    Musk presses H twice to perform the Nazi salute twice on stage at inauguration.

    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.

    29

    Grimes defends Musk’s gaming honor, for “personal pride”

    xcancel.com 𝖦𝗋𝗂𝗆𝖾𝗌 ⏳ (@Grimezsz)

    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 ey...

    > 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.

    31

    GM avoids reinventing a bus or a train with this one weird trick

    1

    Are we going to see prediction markets enter mainstream journalism? Taylor Lorenz says yes

    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.”

    12

    SF tech startup Scale AI, worth $13.8B, accused of widespread wage theft

    8

    In which some researchers draw a spooky picture and spook themselves

    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.

    *

    !

    9

    Gotta pump tuah and dump that thang

    www.independent.co.uk Hawk Tuah girl faces ‘pump and dump’ allegations as crypto coin collapses

    ‘Hawk Tuah Girl’ Haliey Welch launched her own cryptocurrency, only for it to plummet by 90 percent just hours later

    Hawk Tuah girl faces ‘pump and dump’ allegations as crypto coin collapses
    11

    Elon is constructing a texas compound to trap, err, I mean, house his ex wives and children

    www.nytimes.com Elon Musk Wants Big Families. He Bought a Secret Compound for His.

    As the billionaire warns of population collapse and the moral obligation to have children, he’s navigating his own complicated family.

    Elon Musk Wants Big Families. He Bought a Secret Compound for His.

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

    https://archive.is/XwbY0

    3

    Should a man be allowed to sell his soul on the blockchain? (Podcast ep dated 23rd February 2022)

    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:

    333

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

    556

    Judge 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.

    0

    Playing energy market has become more profitable than mining bitcoin

    www.economist.com Why Texas Republicans are souring on crypto

    Playing the state’s energy market has become more profitable than mining bitcoin

    > On the hottest and coldest days, when demand for electricity peaks and the price rockets, the bitcoin miners either sell power back to providers at a profit or stop mining for a fee, paid by ercot. Doing so has become more lucrative than mining itself. In August of 2023 Riot collected $32m from curtailing mining and just $8.6m from selling bitcoin.

    Archive link: https://archive.md/O8Cz9

    4
    www.euronews.com Microsoft says EU to blame for the world's worst IT outage

    Up to 8.5 million Windows devices were affected by Friday's IT outage after Crowdstrike's antivirus update went awry.

    Microsoft says EU to blame for the world's worst IT outage

    Kind of sharing this because the headline is a little sensationalist and makes it sound like MS is hard right (they are, but not like this) and anti-EU.

    I mean, they probably are! Especially if it means MS is barred from monopolies and vertical integration.

    28
    bless this jank @awful.systems swlabr @awful.systems

    Occasionally my username appears incorrect

    Wish I had a screengrab of this, but occasionally when I open the awful.systems page, it looks like I've logged in as a different user. Just now the username "autumnal" appeared instead of my own. Don't know how to reproduce.

    This has happened in chrome on macosx a few times, haven't seen it elsewhere.

    3
    the-boys.fandom.com VoughtCoin

    VoughtCoin is a cryptocurrency created by Vought International. On December 15, 2022, Vought International announced that VoughtCoin can be used to purchase digital collectible cards of Homelander. Each authentic and non-fungible card be purchased for 777 VoughtCoin. The use of cryptocurrency to pur...

    VoughtCoin

    TIL that television program “The Boys” has an in universe cryptocurrency as a satire of, well, cryptocurrency in general but also specifically that time when DJT was selling NFTs. They occasionally tweet about it.

    It has a listing on the “BSCScan” crypto tracker under the name “VTC” so someone might have actually minted it? It might surprise some of you that I have no way of telling the realness of such a thing.

    11

    Uncritically sharing this article with naive hope. Is this just PR for a game? Probably. Indies deserve as much free press as possible though.

    9
    www.buzzsprout.com "Going Infinite": Michael Lewis Takes On Sam Bankman-Fried - If Books Could Kill

    Peter and Michael discuss Michael Lewis’s bestselling book about the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, a young prodigy whose only flaw was that he dreamed too big.Where to find us: Peter's other podcast, 5-4Mike's other podcast, Maintenance...

    "Going Infinite": Michael Lewis Takes On Sam Bankman-Fried - If Books Could Kill

    As is tradition I am sharing this link without having listened yet.

    10

    “Crypto is already a giant video game — and we are here to make it more fun and rewarding.”

    The video game in question:

    !

    11

    An AI beauty pageant? Miss me with that Miss AI.

    www.forbes.com World’s First AI Pageant To Judge Winner On Beauty And Social Media Clout

    In a contest sponsored by Fanvue, models and influencers crafted from artificial intelligence can now jockey for the title "Miss AI."

    World’s First AI Pageant To Judge Winner On Beauty And Social Media Clout
    9