mandolingual

I just finished the tome that is "The House of Government" - a look at the founding, arrangement, and domestic habits of/in the Soviet House of Government across from the Kremlin. It's a really fascinating look into Bolshevik psychology/culture at the highest level and shows how it really was practically an atheistic religion at that level. So much of the framing is centered around what books people are reading, how they are living (and indulging in the petty comforts of "bourgeois domesticity"), and so on. It has some sections that are a bit of a slog, going into boring details of domestic routine, but needless to say it picks up as it progresses into the late 1930s...

The Dark Forest continues a storied scifi tradition of conveying mind blowing ideas via wooden, chauvinistic characters.

His encyclical on AI goes into his position in a lot more detail and is a pretty interesting read (except for a couple lengthy institutionally in-the-weeds sections).

https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/docume...

Even if it's flawed, adding any friction at all to the effort of deception is a positive step.

At that point you've earned the fruits of your deception, just like the tricksters who spent time doing physical photo editing.

A small third party at the junction of two giants is infinitely more powerful than a small third party obliged to be the client of one.

"The unit above is the citation, not the claim." The RPM of the slop ouroboros ever rises.

Mid century American and Soviet space art had transparent political purpose, as does solarpunk. Futurism is rarely if ever just "it's the future, and that's neat!". It comes with the inherently political baggage of "We got from where we are to the glorious future, by way of (ideology)". Star Trek is a great example of this.

It's just Consciousness of the Gaps. Quantum mechanics are mysterious and are a frontier of science, so surely consciousness must dwell there.

These are indeed seven of the kinds of books I would expect to see in this kind of post shared on HN.

All those who voted for him and all those who didn't vote against him are equally complicit

So it is decreed! 'Cyberpunk aesthetic' is hereafter an incoherent concept! Well done, sir. Objective truth is defended.

And an aesthetic. You can google it if you're unfamiliar!

It's aesthetically extremely cyberpunk.

Fuck Trump and the slavering dolts who support him.

Flaw become aesthetic all time. People faked butt bandage follow Sun King fashion. Ugly as sin, still aesthetic.

And computers used to fill a room and require stacks of punch cards to use.

Trying to carry out a good thing (neural assistive technology) can open the door for the expansion of oppression (literal thought policing, in ?? years) in the same way that trying to stop a bad thing (terrorism, CSAM) can. It's not an immediate threat, it's a foot in the door.

Seattle's not really known for noise. The opposite, if anything. Rain (caveat it's not the rain it's the dark and it's mostly mizzle blah blah blah) and traffic though, sure.

Always interesting/uncanny when AI is tested with human cognitive tests https://www.psychdb.com/cognitive-testing/clock-drawing-test.

I think it's easier to square the circle about this by focusing on 'internal voice' - For those with an internal voice, where do the words come from? We don't pick them from a conscious word bank (mostly), they arise from the subconscious brain thinking about the topic at hand. So to sever the 'internal voice' step of thinking and go from the sub/semi-conscious to the page is if anything just more efficient. It's interesting to think about what we actually gain from conscious articulation of words and images - the benefits of visualization seem more clear cut(though more limited than non-aphantasia-havers might assume) than internal vocalization.

'If you could see a photographic-quality image in your mind, you could answer questions about it the way you’d answer questions about a photograph in front of you'

...yes. I wouldn't describe it as photograph-quality, for me it's fuzzier and lower fidelity than that, but yes.

The judicial system rolls up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court is compromised. It's not a matter of weakness.

"Consciousness" is an overloaded thought killer that swerves all conversation into obfuscated semantic arguments. One person will be talking about 'internality' and self-image (in the testable, mechanical sense that you could argue Chain of Thought models already have in a petty way) and the other will be grappling with the concept of qualia and the ineffable nature of human experience.

Questionable value of AI datacenters aside, I'm on board with any push for ramping up more nuclear power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp... .

You believe there are kinds of research that people should not be mad about being deleted. Reflect on that.

Any survey (as opposed to horoscopes which aren't up to user choice) can be used to convey information about a person, even if that information is what they think about themselves. "I took a survey and I'm a Slytherin" conveys plenty, and no one feels the need to point out that that's unscientific.

From what I recall the main narrative was "it's neck and neck but we could be a single polling misstep from a blowout in either direction" which is about as safe a stance as you can take (understandable considering the blowback they got previously).