domain:alexepstein.substack.com
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
13m ago
life extension, replacing workers, treating disease
But all of these problems are reducible to text generation. In some sense every conceivable problem is, because solving the problem means writing out the solution, in language.
For “solving” medicine, just have the LLM print a formula for the drug you want. A lot of remote work just is text generation in a sense, but for physical labor, a sufficiently intelligent LLM would be able to accelerate progress in robotics significantly.
Whether LLMs can actually achieve these things though is an open question.
TequilaMockingbird
20m ago
But I really would rather not see my family divided. I would much rather political battlelines become White vs non-White than man vs woman.
...and this is the difference between you and people like Fuentes.
MartianNight
20m ago
There is an AI track in the Meta Hacker Cup this year. I don't know exactly how it works, but it might be helpful to check which techniques the more successful participants used.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
23m ago
And both of you can be honest with your feelings rather than bottling them up.
Never believed this nugget of folk psychology. If emotions were truly something that are better dealt with outbursts of profanity rather than "bottled up", it would imply people most eager to use profanity and insults would be the most emotionally balanced. After all, if the folk theory is right, they should have nothing bottled up because they regularly let it all out? In my experience, it is rather the other way around. It is the constantly decently mannered, outwardly respectful people who are most likely to show good quality of character, are more likely to do genuinely nice things and avoid gossip, rude comments and dominance plays. More constant the decent behavior, more honest the character. More profanity-prone person, less likely you want to stay around them.
It is an observation that plays nicely with CBT that I've been exposed to: emotions are more like habits or a muscle than pressure cylinders you can't control: the purpose of the therapy is to build habit of not entering the destructive or unproductive mental states. Not far-fetched that embracing a behavior playfully makes it easier to habitually access associated mental space in other context.
SkoomaDentist
28m ago
Of course. I'd estimate that using synthetic data results in an overall worse performing AI but I could see it being used to fill specific gaps in the real training material (probably using a specialized model that's good at that specific type of data and possibly not much else).
Howard University.
They may not like it, but she's probably now like a Top 5 or 3 alumni. Also, Black Women voted for Harris something like 90-10%. Howard University is 70% female. So this lines up well for her to bring in donations.
Probably also some sort of leadership role with The Links. She's literally listed in the opening paragraph of the Wiki page.
TollBooth's Top 5 All Time Howard Univ Alum (in no particular order)
- Thomas Sowell
- Thurgood Marshall
- Zora Neale Hurston
- Toni Morrison
- Nick Cannon (I don't even know If I'm joking)
TequilaMockingbird
32m ago
I care about race, since race correlates with behavior
No, you care about race because you made a choice to care about race.
The cucked liberal runs every socially relevant institution in America.
And again, how has that been working out for them? and how has it been working out for those institutions?
Mine is not the "cucked liberalism" of 30 years ago, mine is the cucked liberalism of 200 years ago.
So black population centers aren't the most violent and poorest?
Define black, define poor, define violent. Alternately just take a walk through San Francisco, Chicago, or Minneapolis and then take take the same walk in Atlanta, Mobile, or Jacksonville and tell me which seems more dysfunctional.
I understand that you will likely disagree but i would contend that a reduction in social status is a small price to pay for clean streets and relative peace.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
33m ago
I think I agree with you? I find your prose to be a little serpentine and hard to follow at times.
The short version is that the people who don't need sexual ethics for the sake of sexual ethics (and their "sexual ethics" comes more from practical constraints than anything handed down from on high) came to power and re-made marriage laws in their own image.
Could I request you try rephrasing this so that I can better understand. Again, I'm pretty sure we're on the same page.
jeroboam
38m ago
I'm assuming more land per farmer was a superpower.
This would allow a farmer to have a large number of animals which both provide food directly and create fertilizer.
Chesa Boudin didn't have a machine of his own and they gave him an entire department at UC Berkeley after his disastrous recall loss. A department specifically made for creating propaganda for his policies the voters rejected.
There's a larger machine at work, much greater than the petty personal ones individual politicians can build. There's a chance she gets nothing, but I expect they'll at least give her a nonprofit doing $10000/plate "rich women's issues" dinners. That was her key demo, and they need to send the signal that they take care of their own.
sinecure
Where do you think she'll land? Unlike Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama she doesn't have her own political machine. So there's not really much to be gained for anyone to ingratiate themselves to her.
And speaking engagements will be thin. No one wants to hear from a loser, especially a midwit who is by all accounts a deeply unpleasant individual.
Clearly, she'll land somewhere. But the fall is going to be steep.
gattsuru
56m ago
... the language is "I want to flirt with your dad" and "I did your dad," both of which are like 5th-grade starter-pack level in the scale of "fucked your mom" jokes.
That, uh, says as much about what I'm willing to link (and what can be posted on youtube/twitch/yada) as much as it does about behaviors in certain social circles. I'll admit I haven't seen double-fisting specifically brought to offer, but neither does it stop at teabagging jokes.
While we're in this media sphere, another thing I've been genuinely curious about: what's the standard level of sexual violence theming in gay porn (of the sort actually made for gay men)?
I think aoiislove overstates the extent it shows up in all gay male sexuality, but it's definitely present, and pretty common. It's a little hard to calculate exactly, because there's a lot of stuff that's sexual violence to women and also has gay men lining up (sometimes literally) to receive. (and conversely, a few things that are more appalling to gay guys.)
Like, does popular gay porn do "dumb twink rammed until he CAN'T WALK STRAIGHT" or "Ten portly bears PUNISH this bratty man's BLEEDING ASSHOLE while he begs" style videos at the same rate as straight porn
Can't walk straight, definitely, along with a lot of similar stuff ('guts rearranged' is popular right now, 'wrecks hole' been along since before I knew I was bi, sometimes just 'dominates' or even just outright 'bullies'). Ten portly bears definitely, and while it's a little hard as a direct comparison because there's a lot of gay guys for whom that sounds like a great start to a Friday night, there's enough where it's not supposed to be attractive or appealing directly that is pretty comparable. Bleeding is a bit unusual: there's commercial restrictions for mainstream credit card sites that are more intended for actual knives-and-beatings BDSM edgeplay, but mainstream merchants still avoid it. The closest common gay male porn term would probably be some variant of 'gape'.
and are there similar levels of theming about men getting choked and hit,
Yeah. Not my thing, but slapping, choking (with hands or dick), hitting, spitting, markings, comically oversized sex toys, (usually fake) 'insufficient lube', that sort of rough sex has enough of a following you have to put some effort on mainstream sites to avoid it.
... getting stuck in tight places and begging for help, having guys cum on their face and chest...
These ones are hard to compare directly. The latter in particular is extremely common ('painting', straight-up bukkake), but it's... probably not something most people think about as sexual violence?
I'll point to Braeburned's Room 609 (llama guy puts himself in a hole in a door, gets eiffel tower'd by his roommate and whoever his roommate taps on an app to take the other side) comic as an example of the problem: it's easy to frame what's effectively a gay-male-variant of the 'free use' fantasy that in its het form is very much built around ignoring women's consent and physical integrity... but Braeburned and quite a large portion of the fans of the series are preferentially bottoms, and even in his other comics that have a guy getting a surprise train run on them (eg Gay For Play, where the main character gets roped into a football team prank that ends up... where you'd expect) can credibly make it seem consenting because it's pretty clear the author would love it. That's a furry example, but there are non-furry and conventional-porn ones, just harder to track down names and personalities involved.
That's not to say clearly eroticized sexual violence using these themes is unusual -- I'll point to NakedSav's "Marked Prey" as one that's very much presented from an mdom rather than msub perspective, and the msub side is about as degrading as the author's willing to go. It definitely shows up as a thing in certain types of gay-for-pay or masc4masc genre 'normal' porn. But it may not be useful as a metric, compared to other traits in the work.
Stuck in tight places is kinda a goofy 'plot', even by porn plot standards, and thus pretty rare, but it definitely shows up, including the begging (or at least pretense of it for a couple seconds). There's a mostly-gay-specific thing about (ruiadri just posted a great one today!) about making a sub paint themselves, but I dunno what the comparable het thing would be outside of pegging/pretty heavy femdom.
TIRM
1hr ago
I listened to Pod Save America after the election and they were saying this election shows us that we need to get money out of politics. I immediately thought they were talking nonsense since they are the side that spends the most by far. These are smart, informed, experienced Democratic operatives mindlessly parroting "money in politics" talking points when the exact opposite is clearly true.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
Hype can certainly help. Without some positive attention even the best product will sit on the shelf. On the other hand most people will be smart enough to notice when the sales pitch is overselling the actual product.
Kamala had a lot of negatives that were pretty obvious. She’s annoying and has a nervous laugh that’s obnoxious. She can’t give interviews, and when she does, her obvious non-answers are barely comprehensible. She cannot generate enthusiasm for her own ideas. Her rallies needed concerts just to get people to show up. At the end of the day, all the marketing in the world can’t make New Coke taste good.
sciuru
1hr ago
I mean is it? Quantitative Realism doesn't exactly seem self evident.
Isn't Computational Complexity Theory supposed to tackle questions of this kind?
Scott Aaronson offered the following highly evocative metaphor:
The best definition of complexity theory I can think of is that it’s quantitative theology: the mathematical study of hypothetical superintelligent beings such as gods. Its concerns include:
- If a God or gods existed, how could they reveal themselves to mortals? (IP=PSPACE, or MIP=NEXP in the polytheistic case.)
- Which gods are mightier than which other gods? (PNP vs. PP, SZK vs. QMA, BQPNP vs. NPBQP, etc. etc.)
- Could a munificent God choose to bestow His omniscience on a mortal? (EXP vs. P/poly.)
- Can oracles be trusted? (Can oracles be trusted?)
And of course:
- Could mortals ever become godlike themselves? (P vs. NP, BQP vs. NP.)
Although I doubt such general questions and theories are that helpful in guiding our research: they provide boundaries for what is possible, but what is practical typically lies far away from those boundaries.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
I think pure data is a directionally useful way of looking at the world, and useful for most problem-solving purposes. I am a theist so I think there’s more beyond just physical reality, but whether or not it’s true, I think that for most projects, reducing the universe to data is going to work just fine. Consciousness is produced in the brain, and definitely experienced there, so I think you can get something like a conscious AI simply by recreating a brain. Might be easier to start with a dog or something like that, but I think even though there’s a metaphysical aspect to consciousness, that doesn’t mean that there’s no point to studying it in brains.
Corvos
1hr ago
I heard that Muslims consider Jesus a genuine prophet and messenger, just not the Son of God. (Whereas Jews believe he was a maniac). So Christians are directionally correct, they just need to learn how important Mohammed is.
edmund-nelson
Filthy Anime Memester
1hr ago
You can easily imagine such forecasts
for example imagine this forecast
Trump wins every swing state but nothing else (30%) Trump wins Every swing state plus some extra (5%) trump wins split of swing states and wins election (15%)
Harris wins every swing state (25%) Harris wins split decision of swing states (20%) harris wins swing states + some extra (5%) (where swing is GA, NC, Mi, Wi, Penn, NV, AZ)
basically this forecast would be 50/50 and forecasts correlated polling error being a very strong effect.
sulla
1hr ago
it has failed to live up the hype otherwise, like life extension, replacing workers, or treating disease, imho.
Tesla is all-in on reinforcement learning for their next generation of Optimus robots, but they only spun that team up this summer. When I heard this news the stock price was at like 180 and I bought some calls for 230/250/270 for next June. After some movement I pushed these up to 300. Yet this still looks way too pessimistic. I think some exposure to $500c by the end of next year might be warranted.
TequilaMockingbird
1hr ago
If you believe that you've received this message in error, please contact your system administrator at t0.yahweh.root.
FeepingCreature
1hr ago
I mean, that kind of sounds like you're saying it's provably not a 1:1 simulation of a human brain.
What you're describing is measurable evidence of new physics. Every physicist in the world would want to buy you a beer.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
He hasn't been confirmed as gay, but screencaps of his gay porn browsing habits were accidentally released to the public and there are a lot of weird stories - I'm not going to explicitly detail the "Nick Fuentes: Cum Detective" story here for obvious reasons, but I give it a >90% chance that the guy who hates women, looks at shirtless images of athletic boys etc is gay.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
This is explicitly the case - if you watch the video he put out about he goes on to say "I'm your republican congressman", a direct quote from those advertisements.
What? Of course it isn't.
AI is used all the time in a whole bunch of "invisible" applications that have nothing to do with text or content generation. Take a photo with a phone camera? You're using AI. Use Nvidia RTX voice? AI. Deal with pharmaceutical molecule research? Fair chance of AI being used. Play guitar and use the newest generation of amp modelers? That's AI again.
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