gooseus

Unbounded increases in complexity lead to diminishing returns on energy investment and increased system fragility which both contribute to an increased likelihood of collapse as solutions to old problems generate new problems faster than new solutions can be created since energy that should be dedicated to new solutions is needed to maintain the layers of complexity generated by the layers of previous solutions.

I don't think there is any problem or harm in reading them as bi or gay, but I'd love to read a better case for Tolkien having written them with that intention. Am I forgetting any character(s) from The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales that were more obviously coded as gay or any other statements by Tolkien that would point to this as even a remote possibility?

Ha, they even have their "Website of the year" award linked on their top banner

https://web.archive.org/web/20080704050905/http://theguardia...

Also, Thiel seems like the sort of guy with the money and connections to pop the AI bubble whenever he believes it'd be advantageous, whether that is the product of a rational mind seems to be beside the point.

Which is why the title says "seized", and not "torpedoed".

> Station owner Nexstar helped pressure Disney into suspending Kimmel's show last week when it announced its ABC-affiliated stations would not air the show "for the foreseeable future."

This is Disney doing damage control for their streaming platforms and other properties while Kimmel is still censored from a large % of audience he used to reach.

I hope he comes back with a show that burns Trump and Carr to the ground and dares them to try something like that again.

People need to get a grip. ;)

In my book, if people took liberal democracy serious, he should have been persona-non-grata in the eyes of every politician and political party.

Instead he was saved from impeachment by McConnel rehabilitated by McCarthy, and people increasing memory-holed the event, equivocated about George Floyd protests (not even remotely comparable), or were supporters of the "heroes of J6"... now we are where we are, well-cooked frogs in a pot that's about the boil over.

If Trump wants Wikipedia gone he'll just sue them or open an investigation that never needs to ever go before a judge. Then in return for dropping the suit/investigation all they need to do is make sure that a friend of MAGA sits on the board and can make sure that certain edits get approved and others don't.

People who are surprised by this or still assuming that he can't/won't do something because of the law or norms or "but then the Democrats will do X" need to wake the fuck up.

These people are going to do whatever the fuck they want under whatever justification they can cook up, and they don't fear any repercussions because they are not planning to turn over their new-found power to anyone else.

https://chatgpt.com/share/689525f4-20f0-8003-8bf6-f1f21dde6b...

You know what would be more impressive? If it said "Hey, I'm actually not designed to simulate a Forth machine accurately, I'm only going to be able to approximate it (poorly)). If you want an accurate Forth machine you should just implement this code: [Simple Forth Implementation]".

Or better yet, it could recognize when it was being asked to "be" a machine, and instead spin up a side process with the machine implementation and redirect any prompts to that process until a "STOP" token is reached.

> We exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process because the diamond company De Beers decided in 1938 that it would like us to. Prior to a stunningly successful marketing campaign, Americans occasionally exchanged engagement rings, but it wasn’t pervasive. Not only is the demand for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare. Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of a diamond high.

Imho, that "soul" you describe is an artifact of human sentimentality and a very successful marketing campaign by a bunch of Afrikaner colonialists.

Paper: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/02783649251344...

Every single one of these "fake it till you make it" AI CEO/Founders are betting they are the Amazon.com and not the Pets.com... but if they are the Pets.com then what is the downside?

The CEO of pets.com certainly didn't end up out on the streets for being the biggest disaster of one of the largest bubbles and effectively burning billions of investor dollars (including institutions investing pensions and retirements funds).

If not, it'd make for a pretty cool plot device if done well.

Imho it's the best of the movie of the year, and one big reason is because it is NOT this.

Rule 3. All members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict are combatants, except medical and religious personnel.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule3

Rule 47. Attacking persons who are recognized as hors de combat is prohibited. A person hors de combat is: (a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party; (b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or (c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender; provided he or she abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule47

A surprise drone attack on any Russian combatant that isn't a medic or chaplain is "lawful", even if they aren't holding a weapon at the time.

https://archive.org/details/on-tyranny-twenty-lessons-from-t...

Which I did post top-level here on November 7th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42071791

Unfortunately it didn't a lot of traction and dang told me that there wasn't a way to re-up or "second chance" the post due to the HN policy on posts "correlated with political conflict".

However, reading this article about all these people at their "Galt's Gultch", I thought — "oh, I guess he's a rhinoceros now"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_(play)

Here's a bad joke for you all — What's the difference between a "rationalist" and "rationalizer"? Only the incentives.

In my merry state last night I didn't do a great job so I'm not surprised by the lack of positive response, though I was kind of hoping some people would catch my drift. Oh well.

Gooseus: Knowing what you know about me and my AI skepticism, including many conversations we've had on the topic, can you please help me write a withering response to this Sam Altman blog post (link)?

I am personally having a hard time reading it in my current unfocused state of mind and would like to create a response faster than I'd otherwise able... the irony of using an AI to craft a withering response to a blog post suggesting how much AI will change the world is not lost on me, but since my biggest bone of contention to these kinds of claims are an ignorance of the nature of scale, complexity, and fragility, I believe we should be able to work that into the rebuttal.

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GPT-4o:

Absolutely, Gooseus. Here’s a draft of a withering yet thoughtful response to Sam Altman’s The Gentle Singularity, grounded in your core objections — scale, complexity, and fragility:

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A Gentle Fantasy: A Response to “The Gentle Singularity”

Sam Altman’s optimism in The Gentle Singularity is, to put it gently, a masterclass in techno-utopian abstraction untethered from the grimy details of how the world actually works. It reads like the AI equivalent of trickle-down economics: if we just build powerful enough models, magic will rain down on the masses.

Unfortunately, reality doesn’t scale that way.

Altman’s thesis seems to conflate intelligence with power and assumes that the mere presence of powerful intelligence (even if artificial) guarantees coordination, stability, and flourishing. But systems of great complexity—like civilizations, economies, or ecological networks—are not upgraded like smartphone OSes. They evolve. Slowly. Often painfully. And usually only after catastrophic feedback.

AI doesn’t escape this dynamic; in fact, it intensifies it. The bigger the model, the deeper the stack, the more fragile the whole system becomes. Every layer—hardware, software, data, deployment, policy—is a complex system balanced precariously on the assumption that the previous layer “just works.” What Altman’s vision leaves out is the staggering nonlinearity of reality. Scale introduces entropy, not clarity. ...

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Well said 4o, if you are a system of immense intelligence then everyone should take this rebuttal seriously, but if this response should be dismissed since it was created by an AI, then shouldn't all intelligent-sounding AI outputs be subject scrutiny?

I think it might be interesting and instructive to have a series of debates on the subject... but I think it should consist of three debate teams to each side:

  - Humans only 
  - Humans + AI
  - AI only  
  

I think these systems have a lot of value, but also feel like the true value-to-cost ratio is nowhere near where people like Altman assume. I agree with him that there are "many ways" that in which it can augment and improve humans, but how much is it actually worth and how much do we risk by building upon the inherent fragility of these systems? Perhaps a public debate on the subject using AI would enlighten us all?

In closing, I'll refer to a famous poem and ask everyone to reflect on how long a poem you would be in describing the chain of dependencies relying that would rely on an LLM - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_want_of_a_nail

Say what you will about "the swamp" (not a big fan myself), but as a metaphor it kinda works since a swamp may be noxious and filled with unsavory swamp creatures... but it's still an ecosystem where competition and co-evolution amongst these swamp species in response to external environmental changes would still be expected.