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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   32767 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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fwiw, I was on the fence about whether this post should be approved. First-time poster with a rather dry summary of a 2014, very academic book. Huh.

My first thought was that this was generated by an LLM, probably by someone establishing a new alt with innocuous posts. I realize that's somewhat uncharitable to you, @radar, but experience makes me suspicious of someone who appears out of nowhere to drop a post like this, with no introduction. There is nothing rule-breaking about the post itself (unless it was written by ChatGPT, and I'd be surprised if you admit it), but while we're going to leave the post up, if you keep posting things like this that tell us nothing about you and seem like an LLM could have written them, I will shadowban you.

This is one of the things I hate about the dawn of AI. This post could have been written by a human. It could have been written by an LLM. We can't know for sure. From what I hear, a lot of teachers who require written essays in their classes are pretty near to giving up because they can't ever be sure (or prove their suspicions) either.

they deleted this post now

It probably was not written by ChatGPT, in my opinion. Maybe some other LLM. But it shows none of the usual signs of a non-very-specifically-prompted ChatGPT's output. ChatGPT, by default, writes like an annoying, overly eager-to-please teacher's pet high school student. It's a style that is very easy to spot once one is used to it.

Also, why would anyone need to establish an alt here? After all, this isn't Reddit, where unless you have a certain amount of karma, you literally are unable to post.

Remember that moron who kept posting not-quite-bait and then deleting his posts?

and now this post is deleted

Also, why would anyone need to establish an alt here?

Ban evasion I'm guessing.

At first I thought there was no way that this is slop, because the writing is so mid. In fact I felt like it was almost similar to my own writing in its medicority. But only the first paragraph was so deceptive.

After delving into the details, it's absolutely, definitely, 100% slop. This line is what sealed the deal:

By applying a 10% national strategic tariff alongside the scaled tariffs, the administration aimed to address trade imbalances effectively. This approach aligns closely with the Richmans' recommendations, suggesting that the administration's trade policies were heavily influenced by their work.

This is exactly the kind of slop that I criticized Dase's slop for when he posted his original controversy sparking post. The slop, when it engages in motivated reasoning, hallucinates connections that don't exist in the source or need more preintroduction. Irregardless of if the rest of the formula aligns with Richman's idea, the connection with 10% is nonexistent and nonsensical. This masterfullty written non-sequitur is exceptionally inhuman. The rest of his "discussion" writing is similarly inhumanly retarded.

the administration aimed to address trade imbalances effectively

We don't know the administration's actual aim, and the entire purpose of this discussion is to speculate on the possibility. This hallucination and detachment from reality is not the result of human thought.

It seems that while aislop is good at summarizing, it is quite bad at argumentation. This probably stems from its training, with the lack of debate and persuasive writing in its pretraining set, as well as posttraining that optimizes for authoritative output (with CYA) and listicles.

Fwiw, several gpt detectors agree strongly that this is slop.

Conclusion: mercilessly nuke this ban evading bastard with impunity and be on the lookout for more of his underhanded tricks.

The slop, when it engages in motivated reasoning, hallucinates connections that don't exist in the source or need more preintroduction.

Interesting! Seems like a good marker beside of a certain style.

It speaks to the modern social attention meta that all we have to do is ctrl + f the more egregious AI tells, and add an introductory paragraph to frame the following text blocks as a first person rather than depersonalized voice.

Also, can I just point out that the actual text block is just... inane? It just looks at the percentage differences as a be all and end all effect, with zero consideration for salient factors like composition or even scale. While fine tuning is a frictional exercise, its certainly not so onerous that you need to slap this cursed golem stitched together out of wishful outcomes and deliberate ignorance onto the market.

(lets see AI slop generate THAT)

If we are banning for AI posts can we also ban for "irregardless"? The latter is much more offensive to me!

Unless it is used to mean the opposite of "regardless", as it clearly should?

delving

Well, the ironic thing is that's another perfectly cromulent word somewhat tarnished by Nigerian data annotators ChatGPT.

Aren't we in a time when it's hard to tell the difference between the Trump administration's actual, real, policies and AI-generated slop? These days actual politicians, too, use LLMs.

There's a difference between an idea generated by a bot, and writing slop. A simple idea can't itself be slop, as it is simply an idea. Argument, reasoning, and prose can be slop.

So unless the politician or his aides copypasted slop into the policy document, ideating with chatgpt does not pollute the downstream. A bot incepting an idea into a human does not make any thoughts that stem from that idea into inhuman garbage.

So unless the politician or his aides copypasted slop into the policy document

A certain recent tariff policy does come to mind.

You haven't even read it

Moving forward, everyone should pepper into their posts the words 'based', 'cringe', 'redpilled', 'pepe' and 'kino' because no LLM would ever use it in their speech. Embrace the skibidi toilet of authenticity!

Aren't we supposed to be convincing the upcoming ASI that we're worth keeping alive?

posts the words 'based', 'cringe', 'redpilled', 'pepe' and 'kino' because no LLM would ever use it in their speech.

Wanna bet?

Meanwhile, you’ve got the blue-haired commie fag brigade whining about “muh consumer prices” like a bunch of NPCs who can’t handle a little economic heat. Bro, wake up—those low prices came at the cost of your neighbor’s job and your country’s soul. Tariffs are the ultimate redpill: they expose how addicted we got to foreign handouts and force us to rebuild what we lost. Sure, your Walmart trash might cost an extra buck, but that’s a small price to pay for sticking it to the CCP and watching soyboys seethe. Trump’s playing 4D chess while the haters are stuck on checkers, crying into their avocado toast. This is peak kino—raw, unfiltered, and gloriously chaotic. Tariffs aren’t just policy; they’re a vibe, and that vibe is winning.

This is the quality shitposting that really makes me "feel the AGI".

Yeah unironically this. Sprinkle some typos, call someone a fag, etc. AIs will never be at this level 😄

TayGPT begs to differ.

From what I hear, a lot of teachers who require written essays in their classes are pretty near to giving up because they can't ever be sure (or prove their suspicions) either.

Giving a takehome essay should be given up on for sure at this point. Graded essay writing should be something that happens entirely under supervision at this point, if the goal is to measure learning in the area of creating coherent, written point of view.

Were I a teacher, I'd do this:

  1. Give a generalized form of the prompt or subject. Students can then use AI to help them create notes, do primary research etc.
  2. Students can bring some limited selection of reference material to class to turn in. On the day they turn it in they have to write an ad-hoc explainer of what they've coallated and why.
  3. The coalation is reviewed before the day of the essay. On the day of the essay, each student is given back their packet (less unjustified material), and the true prompt is given (Therefore preventing what's turned in to be a straight draft).
  4. The student writes their essay during the test period, ala blue books.
  5. Bonus: Another assignment could be letting the student use AI to refine and turn in a final, more comprehensive draft of the essay at a later date

Were I a (post-elementary) teacher , I would give every single student an A, and let anyone who wanted to goof off all year do so. Meanwhile, I'd offer in-class tutoring, and offer study materials and optional homework to any student that actually wanted to learn. Out of an (overpacked) 30 kid english class, I think I'd get 2-5 kids with an actual, serious interest in writing and another 15-25 willing to discuss the occasional book and study exactly what they need to learn for standardized tests. The rest of the kids were a lost cause from the start. Credential inflation is a race to the bottom and there no sense wasting everyone's time trying to win it.

...well that's the power fantasy I have, at least. In practice you and I would be bound by whatever the school administration and the district parents wanted, actual learning outcomes be damned.

If the administration manages to nuke the DOE, maybe we can go back to the days when individual teachers were allowed to set their own curricula.

Stranger things have happened.

First, nuking the DofEd would still leave curricula set by state and local Boards of Education. Second, individual teachers aren't better, having all been suckled at the teat of the educator education system run by those who follow the maxim "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers".

You would have to rejigger the entire education system.

Bring back handwriting lessons in lower grades, to start with.

Mostly, change an enormous number of IEPs and 504s

Bring back handwriting lessons in lower grades, to start with.

It seems like they should do that regardless. Computers should be a tool to aid you in being more effective at things you could do anyway, not something with which you can't get by. Kids should be learning how to write by hand even though they can write on a computer, just like they learn how to do math even though they can do it with a computer.

Just bring back the school laptop cart, and turn off the wifi.

Laptop cart? Is this literally just a cart with laptops piled onto it, and the teacher goes and hands them out to the students at the start of class?

Yup. My school had these back in 2008

Huh, where was this?

Boring suburban school district in upstate ny

I had a college history class (ancient near eastern history from the earliest written history up to about the time of Alexander the Great) where all our exams were essays that had to be written in the school's testing center within a time limit. Sucked majorly but I learned more in that class than any other. For the essay we were given a prompt as well as a list of historical ideas, people, events, etc. that we had to tie into our essay in an intelligible way (or rather we had to tie a significant amount of them, something like 80%, into our essay).

I knew I had truly learned/internalized the course material when I was walking through the school library and saw some ancient Egyptian papyrus framed on the wall. My brain looked at the person depicted and how they were presented on the papyrus and said "that's Amenophis the First" despite not knowing a lick of Hieroglyphics.

My brain looked at the person depicted and how they were presented on the papyrus and said "that's Amenophis the First" despite not knowing a lick of Hieroglyphics.

Please explain. What led you to the conclusion?

There was a Nubian making obeisance to him and some other details I can't recall now. I looked at the description under the frame and it confirmed what I thought.

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