YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
No bio...
User ID: 680
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2hr ago
So is Japan and Korea to my knowledge. I hope America will do it before we approach the TFR they are at.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
3hr ago
I personally think this is a place for a public option to step in, and I say that as a libertarian. Society has a vested interest in solving this problem. One of the sole purposes of governments is to solve collective coordination problems. This is absolutely a collective coordination problem. There is just no profit mechanism for a private company to match people well, it destroys their usebase, and I don't think there is a solution to that, one that also doesn't act as a roadblock to users joining in the first place.
Obviously the traditional approach is to do this at the local community, but that ship has been sailing for awhile now. It's hard to create local communities that last if nobody is getting married and starting families. It also requires members with social prestige/authority in the community to organize it, and so runs afoul of the same problem third-spaces do, too many free-riders not enough organizers. And lastly it ignores the simple fact that we are just that much more socially atomized in this day and age.
Hell I'd make the app/algo if anyone knows a hookup to the FedGov to get it funded
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4hr ago
This is the sort banal AI future I will find hilarious. Death by AI bureaucracy. Can you imagine the dark humor of AGIs taking 4 days to decide which agent will feed the human slaves a single ration? With increasingly bizarre names far beyond what our small-minded "sanitation engineering" minds can come up with. It's like a Douglas Adam's scene. Reinventing social intelligence from scratch.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4hr ago
Interesting, and interesting idea to mull over. We are increasingly a more navel-gazing, narcissistic culture. However without really distilling and stewing on this yet, I can tell you that the projections of the Mottean purpose for its posters rings hollow for my personal perspective. And despite enjoying that idea that I'm some special unique snowflake (some nice tasty narcissism) I know I am not. So I'd extrapolate my own motivations towards others as well. I come here because I enjoy the search and discovery of Truth(tm). What truth that is? Well that's the fun part. It's like internet archeology/anthropology, there are so many truths, so many narratives that everyone believes. Shaped by their culture, their personality, their identity. So many different flavors to taste.
Why do I post here? Originally because some people have wrong/dumb/misguided ideas and it rose to an emotive level that I felt it best to tell them that. But I also enjoy an argument, I'm a disagreeable contrarian, and because a discussion is the anvil upon which ideas are tempered. I'm not playing for the cheers of the crowd, I'm not in the arena for their adulation. If I was, it is possible I would post more tho... so maybe it's not the worst thing. I think one of the worst corruptions of the principles of open-discourse is the devolution into debatebro crowd-based arguments. The one where arguments are soldiers, you aren't fighting to understand or even to test your own ideas but to win the adoration of the audience.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
5hr ago
I'm not sure how to say this without coming across as an Asshole, but I do not intend to be one.
It's more that he takes an extremely maximalist position on a technically unknowable topic. He seems to lack any sort of epistemic humility towards his understanding of ML. This comes across to me as a layman's problem, but its not exclusively so. Having a career in the field, you tend to run into a recurrent problem that the SotA, headline-making approaches, often don't work for the actual practical problem you are trying to solve. Lack of compute, lack of data, lack of labels, lack of CONOP similarity, often a ton of unknowns, and commonly funding. I have trained and modified transformers till I've been blue in the face on a large number of sequence problems, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, sometimes they are just ok and are beat by simpler models. It is essentially a irregular applicability manifold. I think as you work experiments like this you get a better appreciation for how hard it is to predict whether a particular approach is going to bear fruit. Dase doesn't seem to have that, and it's telling to me.
Take for example this recent ban. I'm not digging too far into the offending thread, but what stood out to me was his assertion that "Brute Force AI is stupid and believing it makes you a retard" which is rich because a year ago, he and I got into it about the exact same topic, but his position was reversed! "Moore's law for AI is the future and believing otherwise makes you a retard!". I can keep going with examples, some of them I find really annoying. Anyway it's the sort of maximalist behavior the "recent converts" display, this sort of zealous maximalism that erodes nuance, uncertainty, and wisdom. Recent is probably a load-bearing word in our disagreement, but I'm thinking of the behavioral analogy more than the temporal element. I'm sorry if that is not clear.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
5hr ago
For a moment there I added an extra 0 to that number and thought "damn!!" but 25k is not enough for me to try what I assume is a part time job engagement farming for followers. Someone pointed out that WaltBismark was on here a couple of years ago, reading his comments I got the impression that writing the way they do goes beyond just putting your opinions in text, it really feels like they are deliberately crafting their posts to be engagement hooks.
But in general I agree with what I think is your general thrust. I think the push to monetize destroys the authenticity of one's opinions. Reading folks opinions here, I generally frame them as honest without ulterior motives. Beyond the usually annoying behavior of treating every conversation like its a debate-me-bro spectator sport, repeat with sleazy moves to convince the audience, not the conversant, similar to what George_Hale mentioned in some other thread(I swear it was this but I can't find it). After all why lie on some obscure forum beyond lying to oneself? There isn't much social cachet to be gained, there isn't money to be earned, I doubt anyone generates a significant following from Motteposting. I can believe this is someone's actual unfiltered thoughts on a topic. That changes when money becomes involved, and it destroys something precious.
I never understand who is paying anyone on the internet. I am suitably too autistic to understand following others or hero worship. Idk who pays for OnlyFans, Twitch Streamers, Substacks, Twitter Premium, Linkedin Premium, etc. I have no idea why anyone cares what influencers think, and who even pays them enough money for it to be full time.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
20hr ago
I enjoyed reading the user viewpoint series.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
1d ago
Despite disagreeing with poster above, I think in this case data is missing a fairly straightforward element: Dating preferences are highly localized, Aggregate statistics is highly not. The locality has a lot to do with local culture, local norms, local socio-economic factors, and local attractiveness. The problem cuts both way. Opt-out is making sweeping generalizations projected from his hyperlocal data but the reverse is also true, people making sweeping generalizations from aggregate statistics towards highly specialized local regions.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
1d ago
Narcissism of small differences I suppose.
Very much so. He has very strong opinions on the topic. I would liken him to a the zeal of a recent convert.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
1d ago
Wow this is how I find out he was banned from jousting with RR continuously for a whole year.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
1d ago
When the anecdotes and the data disagree usually trust the anecdotes. I don’t know anyone in same-age relationships. My date today I have 20 years on.
Sure but that goes for the reverse. I'm a couple states north of you and I know about 14 long term relationships/marriages with a 1-2 year age gap and only 1 with a 10 year age gap. But I'm in my mid 30s for context and I'm guessing you are over 40, unless...
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
1d ago
One of the thoughts I had (very protean) about the evaporative cooling/abstract topic discussion is that in a large part we have lost a bunch big names that went on to write Substack articles for the more populous internet: Tracy, Yassine, Kulak, Dase, etc. If many of those posters engaged in more abstract, or prolific topics and find that engagement on those topics draws interest, power, fame, and status, is it any small wonder that they move offsite to something that benefits them more? It's not something we as the community can really fix.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
1d ago
Yeah Akka is my favorite character too, as evidenced by the user name. I guess I considered it more like "putting him through the ringer". I never really saw it as singling him out or as gratuitous. He lives in a very hard and unfair world, and at times feels like only sane one. Sanity in an insane world is a curse.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
1d ago
The Huxlean Capitalistic Ommnissah is a new liturgical schism that I was not aware existed. Please tune in to your local MMORPG streamer to know more about exciting shareholder value increasing opportunities near you. Flesh is weak brother, not like this new artificial endocrine system.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2d ago
Praise be the Ommnissah! The Sacred Liturgies of the Machine God are reserved for the priests of the Valley of Silicon. If you want your light bulb turned on please consult your local Ad-Mech tech priest in the sacred operation of illumination.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2d ago
Might be a move, though I am a reading addict. I guess find a suitably boring book that isn't too cerebral
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2d ago
I'm an ex-swimmer, I have negative coordination on land. My hand-eye is particularly bad lol
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2d ago
I executed a DNS block on my laptop to block Youtube and Instagram. I've been having a problem doomscrolling low-energy entertainment for years. It got really bad this year to the point that I'd come home from work and just rerun Youtube shorts of movies I've already seen a thousand times at this point before heading to the gym. This is week 2 of my Youtube block and week 1 of my Instagram block, which I seem to have started doing more to compensate for the lack of Youtube. It's going well so far but my large problem seems to be that I want something "low-effort" to do. Hard to put it to words, but I feel like my brain is craving filler things to do between "high-effort" things. Something to take a break on mentally. Anyone on here ever run across this and have any suggestions for some non-addictive filler mental consumables?
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2d ago
There's not really a lack of foreshadowing here. I think its pretty well foreshadowed. It's the character trope that is being subverted. It just becomes a lot more clear after you understand the weird inconsistencies that you saw but were missing understanding for. One could argue, that Abercrombie is not a good enough writer if the big twist is not deducible prior without knowledge of the ending, which is fair, and might be true. But I do think the idea that its a "series of completely unforeshadowed unlikely coincidences" is wrong.
Spoiler:
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2d ago
Fair enough. Different strokes for different folks and all. Second Apocalypse is probably a top 5 fantasy series for me and I consider Bakker to be a great author.
FPV drones can be flown, just with in line of sight. It's pretty much just a usecase deployment bottleneck, which would already be too late for FedGov interference. You can still test and develop your FPV drone if you just stand in a field and fly it.
The Trump administration banned many drone parts using the FCC
I might be misremembering but wasn't this mostly a DJI company ban? Drone parts themselves are producible, and manufacturable/craft-able. You just can't order cheap chinese drones and deploy from those. Only American-Made(TM) domestic weapons.
the limit remains getting the grenades.
Yes agreed. I'm shocked we haven't seen a jailbroken LLM finetuned on chemistry textbooks and old anarchist-explosive making books developed for the purpose of democratizing energetic creation and particularly blasting cap development. I suppose they could exist out there but aren't being publicly advertised.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2d ago
a character becomes king through a series of completely unforeshadowed unlikely coincidences.
You are slightly wrong here, though I think the reveal is at the end of this book. I thought it was kinda of foreshadowed but in general the character responsible is generally subtle and is very much part of the grim-dark element trope subversion element. I think thats a pretty core part of his writing theory. He wants to subvert fantasy tropes in a dark/grim way. As Tanista said below, Bakker does it better.
The king doesn't rape his wife because he's a coward. That's the whole point of why he was chosen to become king.
Overall I don't think you are wrong about your reading that Ambercrombie really throws a ton of modern anachronisms into his writing. His prose is essentially Sanderson-tier and his worldbuilding is not that good. Lots of inconsistent values. I do think the second series on the industrial revolution is better, mostly because the values are a bit more aligned with his apparent blindspot. But I don't think consistent worldbuilding is his forte. He seems to be a character-oriented writer. And the three characters he wants to write are Logan, Bayaz and Old Sticks. Everyone else is weaker, but still enjoyable.
The guy who was a monk and mastered himself and then was able to get anyone to do anything he wanted by psychological manipulation, able to learn other languages in hours of listening to someone speak it. That guy. Who then also psychologically manipulated the rape victim.
He's essentially a strong AGI in a human body. Essentially a conception of the Ubermench or the Kwisatz Haderach but laudered through a very bleak and dark philosophy about human's blindness to cognitive functions and innate biases. I wouldn't go so far as to say he's not a person but he is very close to a plot device + philosophical exploration than a real character.
The second series makes this even more clear by completely removing him as a POV character.
Edit:
I felt that I was just reading the author's barely disguised fetish
Bakker is on record for deliberately doing this to target the moral convictions of the modern reader in a way that grates. Not entirely for edge-lordism but to push the reader to consider their own moral blindspots. If anything his fetish is being a contrarian (tho apparently his politics are super normie boomercon by some recent blog posts of his).
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
3d ago
Not rules as written. At the same time FPV drones are only regulated by the FAA and no where near the level of regulation of firearms. Realistically any domestic civil insurgency against the US Government will be predicated on drone-based arms. The success of the new UAV paradigm against traditional combined arms and mechanized infantry is plain to see for anyone paying attention. We'll see if the FedGov ever finds a realistic option to ban civilian UAVs but the conversion from civilian UAV to military UAV is as simple as attaching an energetic to them with a detonator. I think it will be border line impossible to to ban them.
Just because the cowards in the government don't want to be at the mercy of the people at whose consent they govern doesn't mean the intent of the 2nd amendment isn't clear. UAVs meet that intent. The rules just haven't caught up yet.
Why does the government need to decide who gets dates? It's not like they can't opensource the algorithm and the methodology. This isn't going to be "Here's your certified date, go on it or you will be fined" or anything They just need to run the app and maintain it.
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