Unholyguy

Recent Actions

• Commented on Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
  There is a huge amount of data available on the private market in the US at least. It’s a major mistake to think that major tech companies have to have to personally collect data....
• Commented on Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
  I don’t think they intend the data to be immediately useful, I think the intent is to gather training data for a couple years and then train a model Right now Windows is around 12% of Microsoft’s revenue, they could...
• Commented on On mistaking a transient state for a permanent one
  Completely off topic but we are over 300 Ran into this today and holy shit. If true this is some next level dystopia. I kinda think true it seems imminently feasible and the details really lead credibility https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/...
• Commented on On mistaking a transient state for a permanent one
  I think one of the reasons SpaceX is doing well is X and Tesla are doing so poorly and hence eating up all of Elon’s time. Gwynn Shotwell is amazing, and more then capable of hitting a home run with...
• Commented on The coming storm
  A few observations Iran just dropped missiles on Iraq and Pakistan so it might be a bit optimistic to think they aren’t going to further destabilize the Middle East. A general war there may well happen in 2024 Xi on...
• Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
  It's also important to note that Google pulled a bit of a PR swindle with their recent Bard announcement. They talk a lot about how good the new Gemini is, provide metrics and cool demos, but that is not what...
• Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
  Yeah you can’t take factual responses at face value that is for sure The general workflow these days seems to be 1: ask chatgpt some stuff get some nicely formatted answers 2: use search engines like Google to run targeted...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  +1 to the board game Daybreak. It’s from the same designer who did “Pandemic” and is a really fun cooperative take on how to combat global warming. Played it a couple days ago and the science is reasonable It’s also...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "Yes. I"m reminded of noted non-humanities humanitarian Bill Gates, who applies engineering approaches, to non-engineering problems, sometimes with disastrous results. I will point out that engineers aren't alone in their arrogance. My suggested cure for engineers, physicists, computer scientists, and...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Christianity was rising while Rome was falling, Gibbon covered that quite a lot. It’s pretty much impossible to talk about that period of history without talking about Christianity and The Church I don’t think that the Second Foundation was a...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  I think Global Social Mobility Index and "getting rich" are not at all the same thing. GSMI has a bunch of stuff baked into it, many of which (like Fair Wage Distribution) the US does not do well on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  s/"Europe modernized and democratized/"Europe was democratized by force, and then the rubble was rebuilt"/g if you think about Eastern Europe the platitudes are only a few years out of date, places like Poland were most certainly "envying our freedoms" as...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Maybe there are just three kinds of stories - Stories that can be verified via experiment (Science, Engineering) - Stories that can be verified via proof of internal consistency (Math, Logic) - All other stories (Humanities)...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "ideas and their consequences" is just a story we tell. Nothing more....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "No doubt STEM work is hard, but anyone who wanted to actually learn in the Humanities was working pretty hard as well. " What does 'hard' even mean in this context? One definition is "hours of study the class required...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "Compared to that beacon of cost effectiveness and schedule keeping that is the SLS project you mean?" More likely the intent is to compare to SpaceX....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "Think about the phrase "nanny state". Many of the "freedom" folks think that Europeans like being told by the government how to wipe their butt and how many sheets to use and how many swipes. That is is not true...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "benevolent Mentalics of the second foundation ruled the Galaxy, was rather fascist " I always read the Second Foundation as a direct metaphor for the Catholic Church. And the first three books as a scifi retelling of the fall of...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Couple of rebuttals I don’t think people like Musk exist ‘Because Sci-fi’ or that sci fi has anything to apologize for. Sci-fi has always been pretty eclectic in its political and social philosophies, for every Starship Troopers there is a...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Tl;dr Sci-fi author flips out when billionaires try to actually implement sci-fi tropes and concepts. Unclear whether he is more concerned that they will fail or succeed....
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  All this complexity is going to be beyond the reach of most people And there ARE intelligent demons out there that will happily manage it for you For a price of course The most likely outcome of all this is...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  “ pre-gunpowder hand to hand combat ” was a period that even you only start the clock at the Bronze Age encompassed thousands of years During that time period pretty much all “real fighting” was various flavors of heavy infantry...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Ok that made me laugh...
• Commented on Place your bets
  “The problem is, they're a tiny percentage of the number of people who lived.” I really don’t think there is any plausible way to support that statement but I am very curious to see if you have an argument there....
• Commented on Place your bets
  The killer ape theory is pretty batshit but the idea that pre Neolithic revolution humans didn’t kill eachother pretty regularly is pretty batshit too, IMO. And they probably killed Neanderthals too. There is even some fossil record there. Whether Homo...
• Commented on Place your bets
  “As stupid as they are with it, I'm kinda wondering how THEY acquired it in the first place?” It’s an interesting question. I think the answer is two fold 1: the stock market is also a stupid herd beast so...
• Commented on Place your bets
  If you find yourself running it 24/7 you need to buy your own hardware However that is not a thing that is inevitable or even very likely to happen. Not more likely then you find yourself moving houses every week....
• Commented on Place your bets
  “ No. What happened with "the cloud" is that it shifted CPU cycles from the capital expenditure side of the balance sheet to an operating cost.” Sure that’s literally what I said Renting is often (dare I say usually) a...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Stephen Wolfram had an intersting take around teaching Chatgpt the difference between fact and fiction https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/01/wolframalpha-as-the-way-to-bring-computational-knowledge-superpowers-to-chatgpt/...
• Commented on Place your bets
  “That raises an interesting question. Are there any startups out there who specialise in content curation for ML/AI or is that not sexy enough to attract the dumb VC cash.” Content curation for certain specific use cases, sure. Lots of...