07mk
3d ago
The problem is that that is literally, objectively, what LLMs are doing.
Sure, and also, we can say that what both LLMs and humans are doing is having the atoms and energy (but I repeat myself?) that make them up following the laws of physics in a way that creates physical motion. That's something that's literally, objectively true. Now, what the atoms and energy that make up the LLMs are doing can be, in aggregate, described as "next token prediction." We don't know if what is creating human cognition is something that is meaningfully analogous to "next token prediction," because the atoms and energy are aggregated in very different ways in forms of things like "neurons" and "neurotransmitters" and many many other things. But given that human cognition arises from a bunch of dumb atoms and dumb energy dumbly following a dumb algorithm that we call physics, it's evident that a bunch of dumb things following dumb rules isn't necessarily incapable of producing the equivalent of human cognition.
07mk
3d ago
I disagree, another possible reason is that simply makes a good (but imperfect) guess as to what's likely to be the next move after a sequence of moves, based on all the chess games stored in its database.
That's not another possibility, though; that's just describing actually how the LLM works for generating the model of chess (via the training) and the chessboard (via the text input) and then using the model to generate next moves (the generated text).
07mk
3d ago
In another thread, I echoed the idea that LLMs don't model the universe. So for example, if you play chess with an LLM, there's no model of a chessboard in the system, which is why it sometimes makes illegal moves.
I've seen this kind of notion argued in many different contexts, and I don't understand what's the disconnect. Because OF COURSE the LLM has an internal model of the chessboard in the system; that's the only reason it could possibly make moves that are correct at a rate better than chance. That model almost certainly doesn't looks like a model that any human would recognize, such as containing a grid of 8x8 with pieces each representing a team, a position, and a set of allowed moves, which is why it makes mistakes in ways that no human would. But the fact that the model of chess - or the world - would be incomprehensible to humans and isn't based on any real empirical or experienced understanding of physics or rulesets doesn't make it not a model.
07mk
4d ago
Baby Daddy material means that the man is so attractive that you're willing to fuck the long-term negative consequences in favor of fucking him. Husband material means that you'll fuck him only because of the long-term positive consequences that follow.
07mk
5d ago
Yes, I would wager there's a significant such bloc, though I'd also wager that the bloc of former-Dems or borderline-Dems who would be heartened by such a report to such an extent as to influence their vote positively in the Dem direction is even more significant. If not in absolute numbers, then certainly in the effect on votes. It's almost certain that such a report would cause a significant bloc of current Dem voters to peel away, but they don't have a mainstream party to go for, and I'd also wager that a very significant number of that group are concentrated either in blue states or blue enclaves of red states where the POTUS election, at least, would have minimal negative impact.
07mk
5d ago
For a lot of people, and not necessarily fully blind tribalists, their side is better because of prior assumptions that are not in question.
I would say that this sentence is essentially self-contradictory. The "fully" can sorta save it, but even then, to whatever extent these people are only partially blind tribalists, it just doesn't touch on the actual, meaningful thing about not being a blind tribalist, which means being open to questioning such prior assumptions.
07mk
5d ago
Well, I understand that a lot of Democrats are blind tribalists, but a lot of them still do value the idea that our side should win because it's actually better than the other side, not merely because it's our side. If we can't openly analyze the "soul of the dnc," then we can't be confident that our side actually is better.
07mk
5d ago
Every poll on this I've seen has shown significant split between the two choices, at most maybe 70-30 one way. This has convinced me that, if this were done IRL, there's basically no way that Blue would get 50%, and I'm skeptical it'd get over 20%. If the voting is split when there are no consequences and you can choose whatever makes you feel virtuous knowing that you won't ever have to walk the talk, then in a situation of fatal consequences, there's simply no plausible way that the "don't die" button wouldn't have overwhelming victory. Given that, I don't see how I could justify adding one more body to the pile, instead of gritting my teeth and accepting the responsibility of keeping society running after it's been approximately decimated.
07mk
5d ago
I'm in the DNC and want the party to have success in the future, the best situation is to move on entirely from anything that had to do with Biden.
Hard disagree. The best situation is to highlight it so much that every Democratic politician has no choice but to learn from it. Prove to the electorate that this party is actually better than the other one, because it actually learns from its mistakes and takes punitive actions, even against its own ego, to make sure it doesn't happen again. Losers who don't learn usually stay losers, and people usually don't like to side with losers.
07mk
5d ago
If the Democrats were to release a report like that, the fact that the DNC would put their names on such a pathetic ego-protecting report is something every Democratic voter would find immensely valuable, for deciding how much reform the party leadership needs. Because a DNC that would produce such a report is one that is neither interested in getting things right nor in winning, and those are important characteristics for any supporter of any party to consider.
07mk
6d ago
I'm not sure what the point of your comment here is, because all your points seem entirely orthogonal to the phenomenon I talked about. So I'll just directly answer the direct questions that were in your comment.
men will praise women for having big, natural tits
In their face? Not the best strategy unless you're already having sex.
It's probably not the best strategy, but it's absolutely a very common one, and for good reason. Men complimenting women for their great figure or other genetically-determined aspects of their physical appearance, such as their "big beautiful eyes" as part of flirting is pretty much cliche.
Or among the boys?
AND among the boys, not OR, though in all-male settings, they'll often feel more free to use crude language, such as using the phrase "tits."
Don't women also fawn about a guy in non-personality ways when among trusted female friends?
I'm not a woman, so I lack any meaningful insight into this, but I'd guess that this is probably the case.
No one's talking about rubbing anything in here. The conversation is about praising others.
Also praising makes sense in relation to stuff you did. You expended effort and achieved a positive result, that's laudable. You deserve no cookies for how your face looks or similar.
Why not? Someone having a prettier face due to luck of genetics makes things more pleasant for others around them, almost by definition. If such people receive praise that they value, that provides incentive for such people to show their faces more often than those who aren't genetically lucky, which makes the lives of those around them, including my own, better.
But even before we get into the logic of incentives, by default I'm going to praise people based on how I appraise them. Proving you can accomplish things with effort is one way of raising my appraisal of you, but also proving that you are genetically gifted in a way that makes my life more pleasant is another way. This is why, again, women praise men for things like being tall and assertive and men praise women for things like having big, natural tits. They don't care about how much effort these people put into accomplishing these things, they just care about the effect they have on themselves.
07mk
6d ago
Same reason men would prefer a woman who's naturally beautiful over a woman who uses tons of makeup and cosmetic surgery to "fix" her looks.
I've noticed this cliche and also the mirror cliche in both sexes where men/women will tend to praise other men/women for looking good in ways that are the results of effort, not genetics. E.g. men will praise other men for successfully bulking up at the gym, whereas women will praise men for having a "great personality," and women will praise other women for doing such a bang-up job with their make-up, while men will praise women for having big, natural tits. I think there's a heavy influence of selfish interest in both sexes here, where if you can bootstrap your way into convincing the other sex (or at least bullying them at least long enough for you to escape the game) that [effort-based] rather than [genes-based] (everything is based on both, of course, and this is a matter of degree) things are greater contributors to one's attractiveness, then you individually have more control over your own destiny.
07mk
6d ago
I don't think this requires psychological self-awareness. It only requires self-interest. It doesn't take someone particularly self-aware to notice that, when someone fails spectacularly and then tries to hide it or ignore it or otherwise try to minimize it, this lowers their esteem in the eyes of people who aren't already predisposed to liking them. Or the opposite, that someone who takes full ownership of their failures, in a way that credibly signals that they're not doing so for the purpose of image, tends to have their esteem raised in the eyes of people who don't particularly like them but are open to the possibility of liking them.
I do get that the market voter-base can stay irrational tribal longer than you can stay solvent the next election cycle, but also, if my side decides that embracing tribalism over responsibility is fine, then that substantially lowers my ability to believe that my side is actually better than the other side. The entire and only reason my side is better than the other side is because we actually did and do the hard work of finding our errors and correcting them, and the only way to credibly do that is to, again, be so much more concerned with correcting one's faults than concerned with one's image to others that one welcomes any humiliation that follows from highlighting one's faults.
07mk
6d ago
I tend to disagree with this for a couple of reasons. First, pretty much everyone is obsessed with looks, SMV and (indirectly) biological clock. Perhaps not at a conscious level, but certainly at a subconscious level.
This seems like unfalsifiable typical-minding. Glancing at the world outside TheMotte suggests that many men do, indeed, have rich interior lives, are capable of deep emotional attachment and lifelong, mutually self-giving marital love and commitment.
Then there are the men memorably described as "likes boobs, but doesn't like women." Those are the ones who tend to develop elaborate theories of dating as free-market exchange.
Now this looks like unfalsifiable typical-minding. Glancing at the entire world, including TheMotte, it seems clear to me that there is nothing contradictory or even slightly conflicting about having rich interior lives with deep emotional attachment and lifelong, mutually self-giving marital love and commitment while also having theories of dating as free-market exchange. Empirically, those seem positively correlated in my experience, but there's no a priori reason why they would have any correlation, positive or negative.
07mk
6d ago
That you would describe the situation as a "living hell" when it would be something, if not approaching heaven, certainly in the same neighborhood to it, to vast swathes of humanity is what I find fascinating here.
07mk
6d ago
That is likely the ultimate explanation, but also, it's not individual women individually making this particular error. I'd wager that many (possibly most?) women are easily intelligent and thoughtful enough to figure out how wrongheaded such thinking is, but for the environment in which they were raised. Which is the same environment in which boys are raised, of course, which is basically exclusively filled with messaging about how any man who ever judges a woman by her looks and not only by her accomplishments is a subhuman misogynist, to such an extent that even a significant proportion of boys, despite their innate biology, have managed to live it. Girls, seeing this, reasonably believe that they're growing up into women representing the vanguard that destroys the Old World Order where women were judged by their looks more than their accomplishments. And thus they suffer.
The same thing happens with boys, too, believing that qualities like being aggressive, toxically masculine, accomplished, or rich will not be as important a factor as how kind or emotionally available or Good Person they are. And thus they suffer.
07mk
6d ago
Obviously Martin is in a difficult position (indeed, I wouldn't envy any white man attempting to lead the Democratic Party) because 1) everyone knows the autopsy will be humiliating for Harris, 2) Harris may be a future presidential candidate, and 3) donor funds rely on the DNC or their candidates not being revealed to have acted incompetently.
But really, Martin going back on his campaign promise is not of note here - keeping the autopsy to themselves is likely the right move to retain any dignity.
This is the perspective that I see commonly but disagree with vehemently. As a Kamala voter who wants the Democratic Party to have success in the future, the most dignified thing to do here would be not only to release the autopsy but to point highlights at the dirtiest of the laundry that gets aired out in the process. When one fails, there's no dignity in hiding or obfuscating the failure. Dignity is in owning the failure in a way that makes it clear that the most important thing to you about the failure is your wrongdoing or errors that caused the failure, to the extent that you welcome any and all humiliation that public ownership of that failure brings you.
If Harris's 2028 POTUS run's viability is dependent on the dirty laundry of her 2024 campaign not being public, then may her 2028 POTUS run not be viable, for the sake of the success of the Democratic party.
07mk
6d ago
But if you're trying to actually find a partner to settle down and have kids with, how do you not take all of these into account? Not only does it reek of impracticality, but on an even deeper level, it appears that any attempt to practically model the dating world at all produces a negative female reaction.
I think you're like 99% of the way there to getting it. The goal, as you allude to, is very specifically not to "find a partner to settle down and have kids with." It's "find a partner to settle down and have kids with while fulfilling [other, more primary goal]." The more primary goals usually include things like "believing that oneself is so high status that she attracts the right mate without having to put in effort into finding the right mate." The best among us can find great mates without putting in effort specifically towards finding great mates, and so many of us who are not the best among us try to cargo cult our ways into finding a great mate.
The same kind of thing happens on the male side as well, just not with looks and youthfulness, but rather with male markers of status like wealth and power. It's just that the consequences for failing to adapt for males tends to be far harsher, and more consistent, and so more males have adapted (in the long run, whatever genetic cause of such behavior in males, if different from such in females, is far more likely to be adapted out through the generations, which we could be living through the result of, as well).
07mk
6d ago
How would men appreciate it if women started discussing frankly "Look, you'll be 35 in two years. That's way too old if I'm thinking of having kids with good prospects. You better set your sights lower, some 40+ woman done with childbearing will probably take you if you smarten up, get rid of those awful clothes, and hit the gym" 😂
"Would?"
07mk
13d ago
I think "reigned in" might have reached status of being a correct version of the phrase due to popular use, with an invented-etymological explanation being that it's like a king ordering someone to pull back. It's like how "could" now means the same thing as "couldn't" when part of the phrase "could care less," due to how people have been confusing the terms (or rather, it seems that people have made up the explanation that "could care less" is a reference to the fact that they care so little that it's less than anyone or anything - they "could care less [than some arbitrary X, and they do indeed do what they could]"). Or like how "literally" now means "emphatically" or "severely" in some contexts.
07mk
13d ago
Furthermore, I do not think that the SPLC are actually mustache-twisting villains who want to enable far-right violence to justify their own existence.
I don't think mustache-twirling villains tend to do this, and I think people who tend to do this don't metaphorically twirl mustaches. It seems to me that a common tendency of any activist - to the point that it should be taken as the default presumption unless there's overwhelming evidence to the contrary - is to overestimate one's own importance in the activism and the importance to society of the topic around which one's activism is. As such, believing that keeping one's activist organization well funded and running, no matter what, is something that any activist who genuinely, in good-faith, believes oneself to be doing good, can easily fall into.
07mk
13d ago
I think seeing it as just 2 teams is more simplistic than is warranted here. I see this not as Trump or his ill attacking my side, but rather shooting out a cancer that's been rapidly and successfully killing the healthy parts of my side for decades. It'd be preferable to go to a surgeon who has expertise and incentive to keep the rest of us healthy and alive, but when all the surgeons have decided to join the cult of the cancer that values the cancer itself over the host, that's hard to come by.
Fortunately for the "battle of the sexes," it seems evident that plenty of women don't consider having a one-night stand to be intrinsically analogous to using a man and then throwing him away like a snotty tissue.
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