100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
21hr ago
Fair and good reasoning. I commend your internal consistency.
So, again, genuine question, what do you see as the end state of capitalism?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
23hr ago
Or would you prefer a method far more biased and value driven?
Yes, absolutely.
I'm getting the sense that what you're advocating for a kind of State management system that relies heavily on empiricism for governing. I think this is incredibly foolish advocacy for technocracy and a kind of political Scientific Management.
On the hard problem side of things, this fails because of complexity. Society, a large economy, the legal system etc. simply interact too dynamically and in too complex of a network for any central authority to effectively model the current state of things. Let alone the idea of being able to create policy and accurately predict it's outcomes. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Social Security began as a well intentioned program to help out the poor elderly. It has metastasized to be an intergenerational grift. There are simply too many variables changing too often and interacting in non-obvious ways to able to come close to accurate modeling. When the State tries to do this, not only does it fail at its own stated goals, it often actively harms its own citizens, albeit in subtle ways.
This is why I want a state that is 100% value driven based on deontological principles. The original American Constitution is a great start, but was gradually altered by amendments and fundamentally corrupted by the 14th. It isn't a very long or complicated document and has little to nothing prescriptive to say.
but it is the least arbitrary and most self-correcting method available for grounding state action in basic reality
I don't disagree with the logic of this statement, I just think it's impossible to implement. History is full of governments of various kinds saying, "no, this time it's different. We're going to be able to run the country based on hard facts and data." Number one, they can't in a very functional sense. Number 2, all decisions are at some level value based decisions. Humans can override their own hardwired instincts for self-preservation in extreme circumstances (family protection, self-sacrifice in combat, heroic deeds even beyond those two).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
23hr ago
There are counterexamples, right? To be sure, they're small scale and niche - mostly traditional religious communities. I'll be specific here in that I do not mean the loudest groups (i.e. evangelicals) but those with the strongest and deepest tradition - Amish, Traditional Catholic, Orthodox, Haredi Jews.
I guess the counter to the counter here is that these groups are often not exactly capitalist and are also often somewhat techno-skeptic.
Curious your thoughts on that
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
Find me the engineer with hair long enough to bun in this photo.
I rue the day that a short sleeved button down shirt + dark tie became code for "McDonald's manager" instead of "NASA meat eater that shoots his load at the moon"
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
you'd get handmade zines
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
I disagree with you, but I don't want to argue because it won't get anywhere new and interesting.
Instead I genuinely want to ask you to what extent you think culture and local community degeneration are responsible? Or, in your model, is that downstream of capitalism?
I'm a capitalist and always will be. I am also - very roughly - what might be called a technological accelerationist. More succinctly, I think capitalism+technology = overall massive material improvements for society. That being said, I do admit that as technology progresses and as the capitalist machine turns, there are some folks who will end up on the short end of the stick. My solution, or, the idea for it, has always been that local first communities work to support the stragglers and that things like family formation and, especially, extended family mutual reinforcement would do a good job of evening out the rough edges of capitalism for all who aren't repetitively highly anti-social (i.e. criminals and drug abusers).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
Or you get drunk salarymen snacking on sushi while also binge drinking and smoking
You mean @George_E_Hale?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
I always thought this was also due, in part, to shows like Cops wherein arrested male suspects ended up handcuffed wearing the tank top? Because many of these were related to domestics, the fashion-guilt-by-association emerged.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
They want something simple and affordable which they can enjoy, heavily based online since that's where they spend their time.
In my own small-ish town, I've encountered old teens / young 20s somethings having conversations that are, without exaggeration, just the trading back and forth of what I assume are memes or Very Online references and meta-references. There's no "Hey, did you go to the movie with Jeff?" levels of basic fact exchange.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
or at least, the least amount of unhappy - about the outcome.
This sentence scares the shit out of me.
If you can not find a way to do it, then probably the partnership is not going to work out.
But then what happens? It's a very nice and good and smart modernist idea to think that when a married couple realizes they aren't good for one another that an amicable and professional divorce takes place.
In reality, however, divorces are some of the most (figuratively) violent experiences people have. Many, many divorced people never truly recover. Most, I'd wager, have, at least, a year or two of personal and financial setback. And, of course, outcomes for children of divorce and uniformly inferior to their stable household peers.
My whole point is that I want discourse around relationships to actually be helpful to them instead of milquetoast generalities that do nothing but sound and or feel good. Dating is one thing and breakups are fine. But when the marriage contract is signed, it's such a massive commitment that you need all the tools and good information you can get.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
What's the actual claim here?
That "AI", more specifically, LLMs, shouldn't be thought of as minds or cognitively aware "beings" or any other such "conceptions" because we know exactly, precisely, specifically what they are.
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand.
Again, let's use a toy analogy. You see a house and say "That house is really a landscape for a family to build dreams. It's a compassion and bonding machine" Well, that's fine if it works for you, but what the house really is is a house. It's made of lumber, sheetrock, shingles, and various bits of metal and plastic. I have no problem with you dressing it up with whatever emotive map you like. But it's just a house. These other responses seem to be arguing that the basic definition of "house" should be discarded in favor of these highly subjective mappings.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
Yeah I'm not going to base my evaluation of a product on the marketing materials.
Also, again, they're not minds. There are hundreds of high quality write ups of how transformer architectures work.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
James Damore was fired because of wokeness.
Subtext matters. As anti-woke as I am, sometimes it isn't the true believers standing on principle, but normies getting rid of weirdo under the auspices of righteous indignation. The Salem Witch Trials started with at least a few people who really thought the devil made them do it, then developed into back biting and score settling for petty offenses.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1d ago
There are a lot things the state operates on that are not objective reality
As a general rule, I probably don't want the state to have much to say about these things.
religion, psychology, conspiracy theories/misinfo, fiat currency, borders, markets, etc.
With the notable exception of fiat currency, I'd prefer the state to have minimal involvement in all of these.
None of these the things exist in basic reality, they are all fictions
Play semantic games, win semantic prizes; I think I quibble with your definition of "exists"
You mentioned in the AI-thread about your big problems with science
Include specific reference, I am not following.
The scientific method seems like a very basic fact of reality.
Ha. It's more one - of many - epistemic methods. Again, the problems of empiricism alone are well documented.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
For a few years now, I have been more and more worried about the youths. Sitting on my porch, in front of my lawn (get off!), I watch the they/thems scuttle by and think to myself, "kids these days!"
The aesthetics don't actually worry me. This is kids doing what kids do; picking fashions and accessories deliberately to freak out the squares. Long haired hippies, punk rockers, grunge, glam, goth, emo. It's all branches from the same trunk.
What worries me is the response to it by their peers. For most of post WW2 western history, there were normie aesthetics that were obvious and represented the median of teenage expectations. Think of your preps or in-crowd. Jocks and cheerleaders. Perhaps those were the zenith of normie expectations, but it filtered down. Being counter-culture was deliberate and carried real costs. If you had green hair and piercings, you'd be looked at weird. Peers would make fun of you. You might be bullied. You then got to respond to this in a number of ways;
You could endure the bullying and double down on your identity as a goth/punk/emo/sensitive kid. Good for you. These are the kids who go on to art school or something and at least maintain their weirdo integrity. You probably open up a Banh Mi shop in Portland years later and dabble in polyamory.
You could decide being bullied sucks and that conformity actually isn't so bad. You ditch the piercings and black clothing and get a decent pair of jeans, a polo, and a leather wristwatch. Later, you laugh at some old high school photos you find years later as you logon to your 10:30 zoom call and greet your peers with "Happy, Friday, gang!"
Or, least preferable, you let bullying soak into your soul. You maintain your goth aesthetic but develop anxiety and depression. Barely graduating High School, you self-medicate through your 20s and wake up at 35 as a committed misanthrope. You either turn into a hardcore burnout or find religion.
This spectrum is continuous, not discreet. Most kids experiment with some level of "rebellion" in the teenage years but shake out towards the median. That's fine and good. With that last example, of the committed burnout, I'm being a bit intentionally hyperbolic. This is also why I still am against extreme forms of bullying.
I am not, however, against all bullying because the alternative is worse. The alternative is what has resulted in these so called Dinergoths.
Total and radical acceptance means there's no cost to defecting from norms and median social aesthetics. If I come into 9th grade with cat ears on my pink dyed hair, black lipstick, a rainbow flag choker, and am met with a shrug from my peers and "you do you" milquetoast encouragement, I haven't encounter a real social cost function. This is a massive societal failure to the Youths. Childhood and adolescence is where you have unlimited (mostly) do-overs for social situations. You awkardly ask someone out, you make a bad joke, you make a poor outfit choice, you experiment with various identities. It's all (well, most of it) fine because the folly of Youth is expected and you can reset as many times as you like.
In adulthood, this isn't the case. The stakes are high. Being socially malformed can have real negative impacts on career and personal development. Of late, being an autistic weirdo male can even get you fired from your job (See: James Damore). I think these Dinergoths are what they are because they didn't encounter real social cost until it was too late and they had no emotional means of dealing with it, so they retreat to basements and discord servers.
To use a physical health analogy, it's always been folk wisdom that letting kids get a little dirty is a good thing for their general immunity. I don't know how accurate that is (although I believe exposure to peanuts has been proven to reduce or eliminate peanut allergy severity) but I think it is still useful. Likewise, it's good to let a kid make a few social faux pas - and to let his or her peers inform of this. Sure, there may be some tears and hurt feelings, but how many childhood embarrassment stories become the stuff of humorous remembrances later on?
Taking this useful and necessary feedback mechanism from kids makes them brittle and turns them inwards as they enter adulthood.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Why? What does it matter to you if the state calls her a woman or man, mother or father?
It is important to me that the state has a grasp of basic facts of reality. If it does not, then all sorts of things become fraught; evidentiary standards being a big one.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Loved this post.
You cannot hate the Government enough. They create a perverse incentive program that has obvious failure modes and then scapegoat the only people (finance sector) who can actually perform what they incentivized. Crooks and liars.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Without any constraints, I agree with you. I think we're going to hit data center and power availability constraints, however. And, we're already seeing luddite political resistance to building out capacity
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
This is an angle I wish I would've thought to include in my original post. That of LLMs as very, very, very, very good targeted search engines. That's, actually, probably where the most immediate disruption will occur. There's a graph going around of StackOverflow traffic and its decline is remarkable.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
But if you actually want to win, you have to model it as a Grandmaster-level opponent.
No, I don't. I can just think about the best move to play given the conditions on the board and my own knowledge of chess. In fact, I'd believe that is what most chess players do. If you get into the mindset of "Okay, I have to model Magnus' mental model of the chessboard so that I can preemptively counter him" you're playing against an incomplete set of data built on a lot of assumptions. It's classic autist overthinking when the real data is the board in front of you.
Daniel Dennett
Miss me with that new atheist bullshit. This a guy who would trust The Science (TM) because of its rationality and empircism. You know, two philosophical stances that have no holes in them whatsoever.
From your quote of him;
the domain of software and minds, which requires no knowledge of either structure or design
Lol, what. Why do you think there's a bias towards open source or reviewing source especially in security communities? You want to know the structure and design of software to ensure it's performing as expected and safely. The various "neuro" fields (neuropsych, neurobiology, neurochemistry) are all about doing the best we can to understand the incredibly complex structure of the brain and, from it, how "mind" might emerge. Dennett comes along and hand waves it all away - "not necessary!".
As I've taken pains to explain, conceptualizing LLMs as a bunch of weights is correct
It's not conceptualization, it's definition. That's what they are. This is like saying "you can conceptualize a pair of dice as plastic cubes, but, really, they're living, breathing probability gremlins."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
I might be mixing you up with someone else. My apologies.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
This reminds me of one of my favorite personal anecdotes ever.
In 2022, I was, for about six months, living in a big city on the east coast. I had previously worked in this city, hated it, and moved away. When I came back, I contact some friends and colleagues with the standard, "TollBooth is back in town, who want's to party."
One guy invites me to meet him, his girlfriend, and one of her friend's at a bar. I text him asking if he's trying to slyly set me up on a blind date. He responds cheekily, but the intent is clear (yes). L-to-the-O-L. I get ready and meet them.
Old buddy is outgoing and affable. Somewhat like a human golden retriever. Girlfriend is a great complement. A little more dryly humorous. The straight man to his goofball. Blind date girl is ..... swing and a miss. Although quite pretty, the personality type was immediately offputting - liberal but brittle. Not a loud and proud wearer of pussy hats, but an anxious NPR type who sometimes has a meltdown loading and running the dishwasher. If You've seen School of Rock, think of the female principal (before she turns cool. Whatever. I'm not going to ruin the vibe.
Conversation is happening. Lots of references to memes and The Office. It's not like mentally jerking off discussing topics of high importance on The Motte, but it's not a bad way to spend a Friday evening. I've also been drinking, which helps.
Old Buddy brings up space. I think he'd been watching a document. Starts to really geek out over all the cool stuff SpaceX may be able to do. Nods from TollBooth, girlfriend seems pleased her man has a non videogame passion.
Blind date hits the table with your "Whitey on The Moon" vibe; _"I just think it's kind of insane, actually, that we're spending, what, tens of billions of dollars on these hobby projects while people are LitErallY StARVing out there."
I'm no veteran, but I know a landmine when I see one. Not stepping into this one. Just give a sincere seeming nod...and maybe flag down the waitress for another drink or four.
Old Buddy can't help himself. In the most gentle way, he asks Blind Date if, perhaps, maybe, just maybe, poverty and space exploration aren't zero sum tradeoffs? And that, perhaps, advancing the species' exploration of the cosmos may deliver some auxiliary benefits to the economy as a whole?
Nope. She holds the line. Moderate escalation. Girlfriend finds a way to change the subject. Rest of the evening is pretty much fine. I got pretty nicely drunk without getting sloppy. Old Buddy and girlfriend get their uber quickly after we all pile out of the restaurant. I'm ready to give an awkaward ass-out hug to Blind Date and then stumble to an Irish Bar to finish off the night solo.
"Want to come over to my place?" She asks. I'm stunned, and not only because I'm drunk. I haven't ... talked to her for the past 2 hours. But, years, later, I learn tall, plain guy is a fantastic pickup routine. All of that non-committal non-communication, paired with disinterested heavy drinking was irresistible!
Or not, who knows. I declined the offer, honestly informing her I was pretty wasted. I think I registered a mix of confusion and revulsion on her face.
The kicker to the story is that Old Buddy texts me the next day; "Great seeing you! Sorry Blind Date was such a weirdo"
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Most successful entrepreneurship is unproductive
This one was hilariously ignorant. Literally 9th grade "intro to econ" levels of "akshually, I'm pretty sure Adam Smith was wrong."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Your response is incoherent throughout.
Right from the jump;
And yet... a tiger being made out of atoms doesn't make it any less capable of killing you.
As opposed to what? A tiger not made out of atoms? This isn't even strawman, it's just a weird thing to say presented as an argument.
You complete lost me here;
All models are false, some models are useful. That's a rationalist saw, but for good reason. What actually matters is whether a model constraints expectations, in other words, is it useful?
Regarding;
They process language, they exhibit something that looks like reasoning, they have distinctive response patterns that persist across contexts.
That something looks like, sounds like, and walks like a duck doesn't always make it a duck. For example, is Donald Duck a duck?. Well, we can yes and know that he's a representation of a conception of a duck with human like personality mapped onto him (see where I'm going ...) but it doesn't make him a duck made out of atoms - which seems to be, like, important or something.
So, to save one's soul, the option would be to become a literal monk. If you have a family ... move to outside the monastery and live as survivalists? Not trying to be hyperbolic or sarcastic here. It just seems like the stakes are high in your model.
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