dpb

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• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Elderly Cynic brought it up....
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  As Robert Miles pointed out in one of his talks, all you need to do is correctly define what "harm" means, and at that point you have essentially solved ethics....
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  I would assume that most consultants were possessed by demons and act accordingly. Much the same as I do now....
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Most demonic incursion plots bother me, because it's the sort of thing you would expect to happen almost immediately after demons are discovered, well into the past of most plots. I'll give Ian Tregellis a bit of a pass for...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Ted Chiang's "seventy two letters" featured a universe that ran on a mix of "magic" and thermodynamics. A magic system that apparently lacked supernatural entities and was subject to investigation up to a point. The degree of data compression was...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Ha! I recently started ground work on a new project. One of the things I added to the design was automatic test generation, with constant checking of invariants as a runtime option. "Why would you want to do that?" "Because...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I'll be honest, the thing that surprised me most about this was that you could do London to Edinburgh in 48 hours. I would have expected it to take longer....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Capitalise Them All And god Will Know His Own....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Stupid question. As someone who can't taste the Bad Thing in brassicas and doesn't much care for botany, is there a handy online crib sheet for things to avoid when I'm cooking for someone who disagrees. Obviously anything that looks...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  My first guess was "well meaning amateurs", as the typical Putin false flag provocation involves far more civilian casualties....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Of course the correct way to deal with using a phone while driving is the same as the way to deal with drink driving. Make it socially unacceptable and increase the likelihood of getting caught. Socially unacceptable is the important...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Today it has been deemed newsworthy that Princess Anne doesn't think it's a good idea to "slim down" the monarchy. Clearly an entirely objective viewpoint. Discussion closed. /s...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  No need to stick to one problem at a time. Multitasking is possible. On the coronation itself, I'll take the bank holiday but I shall be escaping the orgy* of forelock tugging the nation appears intent on indulging in. *I...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Yeah I know all that. I was responding to the "if you like it so much why don't you go live there" type comment above. Luckily for me I /do/ still have freedom of movement to EU, via citizenship of...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Because the only options available are approve of everything or emigrate....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  that's easy. Just legislate that all dependencies that formerly ended at the crown now end at X. let X := Nyarlahotep....
• Commented on Minor updates
  All that means is that no strategy works forever and the brain parasite needs to do something new to handle the current circumstances. Clearly those who have been blessed by the spirit should be waging war on education and secular...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  Yes, but not for a few years....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  It's pretty easy to set up optical paths to make diffraction and interference effects calculate fourier transforms for you. I see no reason* why a sounding board couldn't be optimised to perform a particular computation and summon cthulhu with the...
• Commented on Place your bets
  And this is why I hate typing on a phone....
• Commented on Place your bets
  In Meal Stephensons "anathem" AI stood for Artificial Inanity, and it's main function was to crap flood computer networks to make them unusable and force people to buy filtering software. It's definitely a business model...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  I believe that the best practice is to invest in a diversified portfolio of Ponzi schemes....
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  Oh dear. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/23/crypto-firm-with-links-to-parliamentary-groups-appears-to-have-vanished...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  All this talk of the inefficiency of resistive heaters and the sci-fi possibilities of using the aircon system misses the fact that some ev manufacturers have been using heat pumps for years. I have one. It works. Can't match the...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  One thing I have learned from watching talks about AI safety and deceptive optimisers is that you probably can't reason with machines, but they can reason with you. Sympathy gives them an edge when they need to talk you into...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  Good point about artificial stupidity. ChatGPT could almost be invented for troll farms. Doesn't have to be paid, never gets tired....
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  Children's books - particularly in combination with AI art. It appears that at least some people are doing brisk business. The children I have encountered are quite discerning, and know the difference between a decent book and a crap one....
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  Asking it about quaternions, the nature of the Frenkel line or similar technical subjects will cause it to emit some very confidently worded bullshit. Anyone who tries using ChatGPT to cheat in a physics exam is going to be in...
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  The "at least" should not be taken to mean I approve in any way, just that I have something even worse....
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  Forklift drivers are useful at least. Entertainment is where it gets really nasty. I can think of half a dozen game genres that would be livened up by sentient NPCs. Can't think of any that wouldn't traumatise them...