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Zaktor

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Zaktor ,

Oh no, what an insurmountable problem. Everyone knows if you break the rules of the UN, the UN rules enforcers will come from on high to stop you.

The reason Russia isn’t going to be stripped of a veto is naked realpolitik, not because the rules and procedures say you can’t do it.

Zaktor ,

What exactly do you think is going to happen if the rest of the UN decides to break the UN charter? Is Russia going to sue?

Zaktor ,

we know the meanings of the words we use.

Uh, but we don’t? Not really. People use the wrong words all the time and each person’s definition (i.e., encoding) is slightly different. We mimic phrases and structures we’ve heard to sound smarter and forge on with uncertain statements because frequently they go unchallenged or simply aren’t important.

We’re more structurally complex than a LLM, but we fool ourselves in thinking we’re somehow uniquely thoughtful and reliable.

Zaktor ,

They’re both BS machines and fact generators. It produced bullshit when asked about him because as far as I can tell he’s kind of a nobody, not because it’s just a stylistic generator. If he asked about a more prominent person likely to exist more significantly within the training corpus, it would likely be largely accurate. The hallucination problem stems from the system needing to produce a result regardless of whether it has a well trained semantic model for the question.

LLMs encode both the style of language and semantic relationships. For “who is Einstein”, both paths are well developed and the result is a reasonable response. For “who is Ryan McGreal”, the semantic relationships are weak or non-existent, but the stylistic path is undeterred, leading to the confidently plausible bullshit.

Zaktor ,

That’s just not true. Semantic encodings work. It’s not like neural networks are some new untested concept, the LLMs have some new tricks under the hood and are way more extensive in their training goal, but they’re fundamentally the same thing. All neural networks are mimicry machines enabled and limited by their data, but mimicking largely correct data produces largely correct results when the answer, or interpolatable answers exists in the training data. The problem arises when asked to go further and further afield from their inputs. Some interpolation and substitutions work, but it gets increasingly unreliable the more niche the answer is.

While the LLM hype has very seriously oversold their abilities, the instinctive backlash to say they’re useless is similarly way off-base.

Zaktor ,

does not have a model of the objects to which the words refer

I’m not even sure what this is supposed to be saying. Sounds kind of like a bullshit generator.

Words are encodings of knowledge and their expression and use represent that knowledge, and these machines ingest a repository containing a significant percent of written human communication. It encodes that the words “dog” and “bark” are often used together, but it also encodes that “dog” and “cat” are things that are both “mammals” and “mammals” are “animals”, and that the pair of them are much more likely to appear in a human household than a “porpoise”. What is this other kind of model of objects that hasn’t been in some way represented in all of the internet?

Zaktor ,

That likely and correct are frequently the same shouldn’t blind us to the fact that correctness is a coincidence.

That’s an absurd statement. Do you have any experience with machine learning?

Zaktor ,

This is just the same hand-waving repeated. What does it mean to “know what a word means”? How is a word, indexed into a complex network of word embeddings, meaningfully different as a token from this desired “object model”? Because the indexing and encoding very much does relate words together separately from their likelihood to appear in a sentence together. These embeddings may be learned from language, but language is simply a method of communicating meaning, and notably humans also learn meaning through consuming it.

What do things like “love” or “want” or “feeling” have to do with a model of objects? How would you even recognize a system that does that and why would it be any more capable than a LLM at producing good and trustable information? Does feeling love for a concept help you explain what a random blogger does? Do you need to want something to produce meaningful output?

This just all seems like poorly defined techno-spiritualism.

Zaktor ,

Yes, it’s been my career for the last two decades and before that was the focus of my education. The idea that “correctness is a coincidence” is absurd and either fails to understand how training works or rejects the entire premise of large data revealing functional relationships in the underlying processes.

Zaktor ,

Cunningham’s Law may be very helpful in this respect.

“the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

Zaktor ,

no cognizance, no agency, and no thought

Define your terms. And explain why any of them matter for producing valid and “intelligent” responses to questions.

Do you truly believe humans are simply mechanistic processes that when you ask them a question, a cascade of mathematics occurs and they spit out an output?

Why are you so confident they aren’t? Do you believe in a soul or some other ephemeral entity that wouldn’t leave us as a biological machine?

People actually have an internal reality. For example, they could refuse to answer your question! Can an LLM do even something that simple?

Define your terms. And again, why is that a requirement for intelligence? Most of the things we do each day don’t involve conscious internal planning and reasoning. We simply act and if asked will generate justifications and reasoning after the fact.

It’s not that I’m claiming LLMs = humans, I’m saying you’re throwing out all these fuzzy concepts as if they’re essential features lacking in LLMs to explain their failures in some question answering as something other than just a data problem. Many people want to believe in human intellectual specialness, and more recently people are scared of losing their jobs to AI, so there’s always a kneejerk reaction to redefine intelligence whenever an animal or machine is discovered to have surpassed the previous threshold. Your thresholds are facets of the mind that you both don’t define, have no means to recognize (I assume your consciousness, but I cannot test it), and have not explained why they’re important for fact rather than BS generation.

How the brain works and what’s important for various capabilities is not a well understood subject, and many of these seemingly essential features are not really testable or comparable between people and sometimes just don’t exist in people, either due to brain damage or a simple quirk in their development. The people with these conditions (and a host of other psychological anomalies) seem to function just fine and would not be considered unthinking. They can certainly answer (and get wrong) questions.

Zaktor ,

If the US breaks the UN charter, things get really interesting very fast.

Not because “they broke the UN charter”. International laws and diplomatic agreements are game of power and alliances. The US hosts and is the largest funder of the UN, closely allied to most of the other major supporters, and has some form of power over most of the other nations. There are no higher authorities enforcing international laws.

New Mexico officials call for governor’s impeachment after firearms restriction (www.theguardian.com)

New Mexico state representatives Stefani Lord and John Block are calling for the impeachment of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham after Grisham issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public in and around Albuquerque, the state’s largest city....

Zaktor ,

Far too many people feel that Supreme Court opinions, no matter how ridiculous, are unquestionable determinations of constitutionality. The sacred right to carry guns for self-defense didn’t exist until 15 years ago.

Zelensky dismisses compromise with Putin, pointing to Prigozhin’s death (www.cnn.com)

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin....

Zaktor ,

The idea that you can’t judge anyone by actions not in your personal instance is just such terminally online idiocy. Trolls always seem shocked that their behavior might actually follow them around rather than being conveniently compartmentalized so they can start their trolling fresh before burning out a new instance.

Zaktor ,

I assume that was their point? Migrants aren’t actually what’s pushing schools to their limit.

Zaktor , (edited )

New York City has a population of 8.8 million and from March 2020 to June 2021 they had an estimated 130k leave the city. 110k migrants isn’t nothing, but it’s not a city destroying burden and, if anything, might help reverse COVID-related losses. Mayor Cop Liar is playing to his centrist roots and scapegoating immigrants for pre-existing problems.

Zaktor ,

This union didn’t vote to strike. They were fine with the original agreement without sick days and didn’t have anything taken away in the congressional strike breaking.

Zaktor ,

You can’t just take away workers right to their own power and self-determination and then think it’s all good if you help them get some of the things they want. That’s not actually being pro-union.

I support unions and workers right to strike but at the cost of potential economic collapse?

Every strike causes disruptions, and the bigger the disruption the stronger the strike. Accepting that workers get to use their power to decide what deal is acceptable is part of being pro-labor, even if it means your life is disrupted.

But if you for some reason don’t believe that labor can engage in big disruptions to show their bosses they’re serious and decide you simply must intervene in a worker-employer negotiation, then enforce the contract the workers wanted. And if you’re not willing to force their bosses to accept a contract they don’t like, then don’t pretend you had no choice when you forced the workers.

Zaktor ,

IBEW was one of the unions that ratified the tentative agreement without the sick days. This message isn’t a turnaround from the people who wanted to strike.

Zaktor ,

It’s fallout from breaking a big railroad workers strike last year. Breaking a strike is a BIG DEAL, so there’s a lot of well-earned mistrust about his dedication to union power. The anti-union-busting thing is a pretty damn good change, but saying “you can’t strike” cuts at the very heart of worker power and kind of eclipses it.

Zaktor ,

Vital goods and services not getting where they need to, people losing their jobs, homes, health, lives etc. is not.

So your stance is that rail workers work for private enterprises but simply cannot strike. They can have pretend unions that join together to ask for stuff, but there’s nothing they can do if they don’t get it. That’s not pro-labor. No one was going to die because the rails weren’t running. The citations was always “the economy” and we literally just went through a crisis where supply chains were disrupted and people’s jobs were saved by emergency acts. Or if you actually believe the apocalypse proclamations, then rail shouldn’t be a private enterprise, and it certainly shouldn’t be run by sick people who haven’t had a good night’s sleep.

Can the President unilaterally force the acceptance of a contract on either side?

It was an act of Congress. It could do nearly anything. There was an amendment for sick days that failed and Biden could have made that a requirement. Or just temporarily seized the railroads while negotiations continue. Truman nationalized the rails to avert a strike.

You can’t say this is going to be an apocalypse, with intervention by Congress itself, and then say “oh, but the only option is blocking a strike and forcing company approved solutions”.

It’s disingenuous to bring up the strike blocking without also acknowledging action taken afterward.

Oh fuck off with your “disingenuous” insinuation. My initial reply is exactly about how you can’t just give them a present after you blocked their core labor power and pretend it’s fixes the original harm. The stuff afterward is good positive work, but in no way addresses the core harm of blocking a union’s right to withhold their labor. He could have gotten them everything they wanted (he didn’t) and it still wouldn’t undo making a major attack on the rights of organized labor.

Zaktor ,

The fucking irony of this offense after calling me “disingenuous”. It just makes you an unlikable person.

Zaktor ,

Holy fuck, I’ve been on the internet long enough to know when someone is making a personal attack while pretending they’re just objectively describing an argument. I think you’re a “disingenuous” ass who cries about people being rude to you all while doing the exact same thing.

Yeah, Truman nationalized rails multiple times. Do you know what else he did? During the 1946 rail strike, President Harry Truman at one point called for a law to allow him to draft striking rail workers into the military. Even after the strike ended, the House of Representatives passed a bill to draft striking workers (it died in the Senate). In 1950, Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize control of the country’s railroads in anticipation of a strike.

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Presidents can nationalize critical infrastructure in times of crisis. That he also did shitty things other times has zero impact on the ability of a president to handle crises with something other than force acceptance of management’s terms. Unless you’re suggesting we should be happy with a forced settlement because Biden might have drafted the workers into the military instead.

And you call other people “disingenuous”. What a fucking joke.

Zaktor ,

It’s had it for a while, but enforcement was pretty spotty. I believe they’ve recently gotten buy-in from AirBNB to not list properties that weren’t permitted.

Zaktor ,

Yeah, that’s a trash headline. This isn’t something that’s just happening from impersonal natural effects, it’s management trying to kill it. And at least as of March, 35% of workers with jobs that can be done remotely are working from home. This isn’t a “last gasp for WFH”, it’s a few big Silicon Valley employers trying to reassert control and their friends in the business media joining the cause.

I know I’ll never go back to an office and a lot of other WFH employees don’t even live near their companies anymore. Good luck retaining top talent if you treat them like children in need of supervision.

Bernie Sanders Champions 32-Hour Work Week With No Loss in Pay (www.commondreams.org)

As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is “not radical” given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for...

Zaktor ,

Apart from the mystical horse, those aren’t fantastical things. France has a 35 hour work week, many countries have 4 weeks vacation as the norm, and most rich countries have full healthcare coverage. These are policy choices, not impossible dream worlds.

Zaktor ,

Seriously. People must think the $15 min wage and student debt forgiveness just sprung from nothingness to have support across the party. These things start with progressives making the case and saying “this is possible”.

Zaktor ,

What a weird thumbnail. Cape Cod 5 is just a bank. Completely unrelated to the crime except for existing in the same broad area.

Zaktor ,

Wouldn’t be surprised if they were AI generated now. Most of their staff quit last year: www.gawker.com/media/what-happened-at-the-root

Zaktor ,

People get 30 years for having a couple hundred dollars of weed.

That’s the problem, not a 17 year sentence being too light. What’s he going to learn in year 18 he didn’t learn in the previous 17?

Zaktor ,

Hey, person whose been on the internet since doing so involved torturing a modem here. You’re not a wizened authority and people who believe differently than you aren’t brainwashed children. Fuck the Nazis.

Zaktor ,

Requiring arrest to be the correct method of suppressing abhorrent speech is actually way worse than letting ISPs decide to deny it a platform.

Zaktor ,

I think the question then becomes “what happens when the services refuse”. Because the next step up is getting their ISP to kick them off.

Zaktor ,

What a pathetic attempt at misdirection, not the least because the Great Wall doesn’t appear in either this article or the Facebook report.

Zaktor ,

If your job is purposely, wittingly mislead people, you’re a fucking waste of blood and organs.

Not to in any way minimize the evils of propagandists, as they’re pushing much more damaging messages, but that describes most of the advertising industry. It’s just that those liars and manipulators are doing it for a brand so people waste money rather than a political cause.

It’s kind of crazy that we just tolerate an entire massive industry that adds nothing to the world and is based around misleading people. And it’s a business run out of fancy glass buildings out in the open rather than hidden away.

Zaktor ,

It’s really not. Both are “lies, deceptions, and half truths” and neither is “illegal”, just unethical. Propaganda is worse because of the goals, not because it’s clearly separate endeavor.

Zaktor ,

What counts as a “lie” in advertising is incredibly narrow and if that’s your bar almost none of the highlighted Chinese propaganda meets it.

Advertising is an inherently deceptive business. Products aren’t really “#1”, the podcaster or celebrity spokesperson almost certainly doesn’t mean the words they’re speaking, and those claims about “limited lifetime warranties” are intended to imply good lifetime support when the limits are commonly everything that might go wrong after it leaves the assembly line. These lies and deceptions are so routine we think they’re harmless because we’re conditioned to think lying is just a regular part of business and anyone who actually believes an advertisement is a fool.

Zaktor ,

“While I am disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Sackett case, EPA and Army have an obligation to apply this decision alongside our state co-regulators, Tribes, and partners,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a news release Tuesday.

Eh, do you really?

Zaktor ,

“Not enough workers” isn’t entirely due to employers being cheap and workers being more discerning, a lot of people died or were disabled.

Zaktor ,

Your solution is putting the onus on your coworkers to make your work life less “isolated”, not on making your employer update your job description and pay to account for new responsibilities, hire someone for all the random crap that was getting saddled on you, or give you the freedom they had. They and people criticizing you for that aren’t the crab in the bucket impeding worker solidarity.

Zaktor ,

“Sad this guy is being murdered, but what we really should be talking about is the cause I’m interested in.”

Zaktor ,

The bosses are never the irreplaceable part of a sports organization. The woman have talent. The boss is just a guy in a suit.

Zaktor ,

Trump returning to a renamed rightwing Twitter and the NYT giving it breathless coverage is a perfect example of the fucking idiotic media environment we live in. They’ve got about 300 stories about the misunderstood Trump voters in diners planned, stenographers ready to transcribe his every utterance on social media, and a host of “liberal” commentators chomping at the bit to write the next “has wokeness gone too far” piece. The upper class enlightened centrists of the paper may thoroughly disavow him at their dinner parties, but they’re fucking in love with the idea of humanizing fascism, because having the opinion that racism, transphobia, and domestic terrorism are bad and should be fought against is just so boring.

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