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YoungAchamian

We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.

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joined 2022 September 05 18:51:23 UTC

				

User ID: 680

YoungAchamian

We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.

1 follower   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 05 18:51:23 UTC

					

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User ID: 680

I wonder if there is a psychological parallel around belief? I can envision humans having this, for lack of a better phrase, "coping mechanism" for when we expend effort towards a particular narrative, a narrative that divides. It causes the narrative to become deeply meaningful, to infect our psyche despite how banal, or weak it might be. Video games in general do a lot of cognitive hacking of the human mind, some of which is undoubtedly deliberate, but I wonder if this narrative adoption aspect is, or if its merely accidental?

maybe, but that feels like a poor predictive answer, it relies on a very "simple" understanding that seems to be more of a "disparate impact" on outcomes sort of view.

Yes I have noticed this. I know 2 types of conservative-ish women. Those who think that since they are the woman, the man should come to them, and the type that knows what they want, and puts themselves in positions where the more compatible men are.

However I've noticed this equally applies to a sub-section of picky men, who refuse to make some level of actual effort that might require some sacrifice to get themselves into a place where their preferred partners exist. So "women are low-agency" has become more just-world fallacy to me.

Fascinating, so rules as written yes, but rules as intended? Haven't the mods clarified many a time that they define single-issue posters as "obnoxious" and "non-stop". My model for this is that you'd have to cluster closer the SS, or EC (might be remembering wrong) style of posting rather than this fairly timid mostly-lurker that occasionally comes in to vent about how homeschooling + feminism + Leftism fucked up his brain. He is essentially not prolific enough, aggressive enough, or obnoxious enough to seriously catch mod attention on the topic.

Seems like a case of: "Rules are a blunt hammer, sometimes you need the enforcer to recognize when they should be applied" or that you can't make rules for every situation that are 100% effective.

Possibly, though maybe an embarrassing admission, I've never read Hegel, I know nothing of his philosophy, or what a "Hegelian Dialectical view of History" is. As far as remember wasn't Hegel the one who funded Marx?

But that is how my old world history textbook was written, very dichotomous. I've been musing that maybe humans are just built for viewing things as two sides. Good vs Evil, Insiders vs Outsiders, Black vs White, Us vs Them, Red tribe vs Blue tribe. Idk it seems like everything devolves into a binary. Probably just due to how the human brain evolved to handle socially complex situations effectively or something.

In the red vs blue tribe thing specially its complicated because chud gamers are not how the example red tribers are portrayed, in the traditional use of the term (it's definitely evolved), gamers are almost always blue or grey tribers, who through politicization of games have become, anti-blue tribers, not necessarily red tribers.

board games (but not too much)

What constitutes too many board games but not too many video games? I've never heard this qualifier constructed in that way.

I've always been vaguely jealous of the Indian arranged marriage setup

I second this, having watched my socially awkward Indian friends fail at western dating but then have the cushion to fall back on arranged matchmaker setups, and get marriageable, family-approved women with good jobs and prospects, often fairly attractive with such comparatively low effort, I can't help but being a bit jealous. I went through the fucking trenches of the dating wars to find my girlfriend.

If any staff member would like to ban me, I think I'm going to keep using this forum for venting, at least as context and drive permits, and that is trite.

Why? Nothing you said seems remotely objectionable. You are sharing your experience, which is not against the rules.

One would wonder why no women from NYC go to SF/Seattle. Why do we never reach equilibrium between two unequal states unless transfers are one sided or the transfers that are happening aren't the problem population.

It's a well-known phenomenon.

Theoretically, but among my remaining friends in SF/Seattle, including some who took 6 month hiatuses to NYC for this reason, I have not seen drowning. It's hard to prove or disprove this as phenomenon with relying on anecdotal data because while its theoretically possible its too multivariate to quantically determine it.

high quality mates. See: San Francisco.

Sorry to burst your bubble but if wealth + intelligence is your only metric for high-quality mates you have a weird skew. As the saying goes: "The odds are good but the GOODS ARE ODD". Autistic nerdy men who happen to make 7 figures do not high quality mates alone make.

It's almost a tautology at this point, but the Bay has been known for this sort of male population for a long time. So if men in the Bay are still struggling then it would behoove you to update your model on what is actually considered high quality (different than high status) instead of what autistic nerds would like to be considered high quality

You are of course correct, Though, the undead lore is a bit all over the place. The real soyboys are undoubtedly Blizzard for being unwilling to write consistent, good characterization of the two sides in a way that is appealing without being cookie cutter. It's funny how a decision made almost 20 years ago on Ally vs Horde still burns a fire in my stomach.

That said, after thinking about it, some of my more local friends are much more lefty/blue tribe, they are joining my hometown chud friends in playing (I wonder if this is going to be a disaster) and they are also diehard Horde gamers. In that sense, maybe Blizzard has created an effective lore, with the goal being to create good narrative anchor points for a wide swath of diverse mindsets on both factions rather than make interesting lore/characters.

I haven't read the manga, but in the anime, it's spelled out that intelligence is Aqua's dump stat. It's pathetically low and she is "max-level" so it's never improving. It's also strongly hinted that basically all of the problems in the world have all been caused by Aqua, through various short-sighted acts. Several of her previous choices for reincarnations created civilization-ending disasters, her followers/cult are pretty much responsible for the demon-king, and I read some theory that the demon-king is actually someone she reincarnated.

Essentially Aqua is on the hot-crazy scale where her crazy-selfish-stupidity needs to be graded on a log scale, relative to her hotness. That's the joke.

My tender year chuds from my hometown, grew up playing WoW together in McBumFuckville Midwest-edition . It looks like there is some desire to get the band back together for WoW Forever. I've been seriously considering it, even going so far as to look at the talents calculators, and skills changes. We've dabbled in classic servers occasionally, we started playing late TBC, early WotLK, though I don't think anyone has been playing retail classic for a bit.

On the same note, I'm curious how other players map Horde vs Alliance to red tribe vs blue tribe. In my mind, the Horde is obviously blue tribe: a mix of indigenous refugees, freed slaves, alt lifestyle burnouts, history's victims trying to make good. The Alliance is obviously red tribe: your classical trad heroes joined by traditional religious belief and racist hatred of the Other. But I could equally see the alternative: Horde is masculine, aggressive, ugly while the Alliance is effeminate pretty do-gooders.

It's fascinating to me that you see horde x alliance as blue tribe vs red tribe. I know that a certain famous streamer of "Gamer-Chuds Rise Up"-mentality has some massive ally guild in beta, which confuses me. I see the opposite. Horde is straight up the bad guys in most cannon lore and they give as good as they get, underdogs they are not.

  • Alliance is full of soyboy NPCs who just want to larp Tolkien as basic bitches and need the lore to coddle them as the "good guys". You are playing the same races as 4 decades of fantasy. They are all "peace and understanding, nature woo-woo". Their warcry is this paltry: "For the Alliance!" like some limp wrist fanny.
  • Horde is the Mongol horde, its full of the rough barbarian races, the literal undead hordes. It's playing industrializing Sauron, Golgatterath, the Black Company. It's masculine, aggressive, original, authentic. No need to borrow 4 decades of fantasy NPC sensibilities. "Horde rapes, tortures, and kills poor humans and Elves - YesChad.jpg", It's made for the chud-gamers who cast off the school-marms and the church lady sensibilities. Part of their warcry: "Lok’tar Ogar" literally means "Victory or Death", and whole cry goes fucking hard. The Horde is civilized for now, but always that savagery underneath the surface.

As I type this, I do wonder if this is however a split between the different types of reds. The problem with the red vs blue dichotomy is that it only works on a our post-modern level. It is all together too binary, too simple. My inchoate thought is the divider is that in modern era "Christian" is red tribe, but in pre-industrial societies it was undoubtedly blue-tribe. Since WoW is pre-industrial-ish fantasy, values/themes are being projected on an imperfect axis.

some of the other participants were probably drunker than her

you silly goose, don't you know consent is only applicable to women, men always consent even when intoxicated! /s

Classic case of male hyper-agency and female hypo-agency.

for instance the question of if River is meant to be in Slough House

Yes he absolutely deserves to be there.

Putting aside the actual political incident the landed him in Slough House. The major reason he deserves to be there is that he is a bad spy. He's a great law enforcement agent, but a horrible spy. He really leaps before thinking, goes off half cocked, and routinely makes big messes or gets himself into really horrible spots because he doesn't think things through.

The incident with the glasshouse in the 2nd season is a peak "Cartwright" moment. He's just too moral, too much of a goody two shoes, a righteous knight to be an effective spy. He idolizes his grandfather but from all accounts, David was a right bastard. Lamb's a bastard, Lady Di is a bastard, Teerny is a bastard, Every good spy/spymaster we see is, morally, a piece of shit, because thats what it takes to play in that world.

I don't know, I think Slow Horses is pretty good.

I think this is a pretty shallow read. SH is a spy thriller, what is happening on the surface is not really the entire plot. The whole first season is about how the #2 in MI5 essentially created a situation so they can get money/prestige, but that situation goes off the rails. They instigate, fund, and organize a false flag with some local domestic disgruntles. If you are mad about "Right wing terrorists ends up being a false flag op of a bunch of glowies plus an actual nutter organized by girlboss" because it is "unrealistic", I point you to the Whitmer Kidnapping Plot, in which there is good evidence that the entire thing was setup by different alphabet soup agencies. If you are mad because its Hollywood making right-wing terrorists the big-bad, I recommend you chill the f out, and learn how to actually analyze cinema.

The institutional MI5, and the elites are the source of a the majority of the problems/villians throughout the series. They are portrayed as incompetent, Machiavellian, toxic, rife with abuse and mercenary behavior. This is not 24, or james bond where its a classic good-guy spies vs evil villains, its far too modern. The heroes of the entire series are the "Slow Horses", a cast of actual colossal fuck-ups, everyone of them being an actual loser for some reason or another, but who because they don't get with the toxic culture of the institutional MI5 have been exiled to a waste dumping zone. Being a spy thriller deconstruction, River Cartwright is what James Bond acts/looks like, and he a colossal fuck-up. Jackson Lamb is what actual spies operate like. Using actual wits, brains, tradecraft, and covert actions.

In addition this is an actual book series that is being adapted, and to my knowledge a fairly close adaption. So no, this is not Hollywood being Hollywood and taking the "shit on the right wing".

When scientists study pain in humans they construct the experiment so there is only a single unknown variable, and they perform both positive and negative expressions to deduce the full range of confounders. In this case they have 2 unknown variables and performed only a the positive application. They then went on to claim that their theory was correct but they did not look for confounders and they did not consider that the 1st variable was not what they thought it was.

Its poor scholarly work and bad science.

I don't think you understand what 'a priori' means. It means without regard for evidence.

No I understand what it means and am using it correctly. Yes, you believe LLMs are Human-level cogitators without evidence. You start with the belief and then find evidence to support that belief. And when people point out how you are misconstruing the evidence in a way that is unsupported, you reach for increasing convoluted metaphysical arguments to back up your belief. Those metaphysical arguments are unfalsifiable. Our last argument was about LLM-agentic behavior, your argument was: "LLM-Agents are human cogitators so the abstract of their behavior systems is that of humans behavioral systems". Do you understand how backwards that argument is? You assume a conclusion, a-priori and then find evidence that supports that conclusion.

It's like arguing with a flat earther, no evidence provided will ever dissuade them from the belief the earth is flat, they believe it a-priori. Any evidence you show them will be twisted and construed as evidence in their belief.

You very clearly believe AI's are at some level human-level cognition, up to including some nebulous sentience definition. After repeatedly discussing this topic with you, I'd go as far to say you believe it a-priori. And you are clearly working backwards from that to describe that the AI is just a human-like mind in silicon. It's pretty much unfalsifiable woo. You didn't logic your way into this belief, it comes across as strongly-value/first principles derived.

The channeling vs innate possession is pretty interesting conceptually. I might borrow that turn of phrase.

Humans have strong reasons to over-anthropomorphize.

I'd go farther and say humans have strong cognitive biases that force us to unconsciously over-anthropomorphize. I think it's built into our cognitive firmware.

Red flag #1: Their vector causes the model to output a button-pushing action. Removing the vector measurably stops this behaviour. They try to relate that to suffering animals trying to find relief, but, uh, all it really shows is the vector was correlated with pushing the button.

This is the one I most want additional experiments on. The 79% on "sham" button with no-label points strongly in the direction that increasing the direction vector just resulted in an increase in choosing 1 of 2 outputs. They construct this as seeking relief from "pain", but if that direction was instead "pleasure" does it do the same thing? What about if the button is random? Or always stops the steering after N total presses?

Red flag #2

Continued steering could increase the probability of repeating a particular choice, while stopping steering reduces that tendency... Revolutionary.

It's not scholarly at all.

Well put.

The Actual Paper Link

I'd recommend before anyone goes to far off the deep end, they go read the "Limitations" section

Nothing can describe the unimaginable existential pain I feel from having read this paper. Is this the torment nexus? Being stuck with people like this in the world is like being stuck with Gary from Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell. Hell is just a cross between a human centipede and Ouroboros? Endless "doukies" shoveled in as experiments to AI Slop machines, passed off as serious world ending horror. I feel like Morty realizing this is just a human-zoo, that's the bit. I finally get the Cult Mechanicus, bar the layfolk from participation!

Anyone have a benign explaination here

Model has learned a semantic latent axis for "pain" in human language. This is actually still not 100% certain. They run word queries through the model and collect activations, then do PCA on the activations. They do some control correlations, an some other statistical things to try and separate out the "pain" axis from the "not pain". Without really digging into it, my first read is that the dataset supports a measure of pain-related representations, but not exclusively "pain".

The button-pressing part is where this gets hokey and annoying. The LLM “presses” a button by generating its label. The authors have added the extracted “pain” direction to the transformer’s hidden activations. The later layers operate on these new "pain-ed" activations, which changes the probabilities of the model’s outputs. If the button works, the system stops injecting the vector. If it’s a sham, the injection continues. The model subsequently behaves differently under those two conditions. This demonstrates that continuing versus stopping an internal perturbation affects behavior. describing this as the model seeking and experiencing relief inserts an anthropomophizing explanation that the experiments haven’t established.

There are a number of experiment question I immediately have, one being: if they vary the actual direction, such that it correlates to a distribution of "feelings" but label them all as "pain" to the model, do they get similar results? The paper's authors honestly did not design their experiments well because they did not ablate out confounders. They make claims of outputs that aren't directly measured. They also had really inconsistent results with the "no labels" approach but that was pretty core to actually determining if their interventions were doing anything to the model.

DK where you are going that meads are in style

Idk places around me, there are 3-4 meaderies in my local area. I consider them beer adjacent because it's really only craft beer drinkers that tend to get them. Wine drinkers just get wine. Yeah Trappists as in Doubels, Tripels, and Quads, as the beer type. From the sparkling-ale region of my local breweries. And Sours, Farmhouse Ales, Goses, etc have absolutely flooded my local beer stores that it's almost gotten to the point that if I see a barrel-aged bottle of expensive beer, its a 50/50 flip between an Imp Stout and a Sour.

Whereas whenever I go to a restaurant since the dawn of the millenial, I typically have twenty disgusting IPAs with colourful labels

Depends on how hip honestly. We have local beer stores and local breweries that have wide varieties. When I was in Chicago I frequented Beermiscous and Beer Temple a lot. Restaurants around here often have locals which are fairly wide in variety, my current favorite is a nice ESB that is spreading, but yes boomer establishments where the average age of the clientele are 50+ stock mostly disgusting domestic/Macrobrew IPAs

Please, Millennials brought the resurgence of German Beers, Meads, Trappist, Darks, and Sours back into style. Just because hop ODing is easier does not define our grain-juice palette.