Unfortunately Americans remain too comfortable to bother with any serious push back. The destruction of democratic traditions in America will continue and the president will keep using the office to legitimise his scams.
Or at least, the tech-bro subset of the general population. It's possible that they're disproportionately vocal on HN, but I think overall it's a reasonably accurate presentation of that (narrow but powerful) demographic.
I dont support Trump, but the conscious part is closer to me.
Why would you think LLMs are not conscious? Maybe a link to an article that is aligned with your views? That would help me understand your viewpoint.
Are dogs conscious? Maybe not, or a bit so. LLMs are more conscious than dogs.
LLM are deficient in certain memory aspect - particularly a gap between the generation cycle and the context window. So they seem forgetful. But people with memory loss or damaged hypocampus are still conscious. LLMs are dumb in certain aspects, do weird errors, but we still agree that dumb people with weird errors are conscious.
Theory wise thinking is likely substrate independent. Unless you think that biological tissue holds some life force that allows to transend comoutation limitations somehow.
Thats probably not what you wanted to read, Im aorry. Just really curious in how do you reconcile all of this.
Do you think diffusion models or models that generate video and image are conscious? I'd say most people who think LLMs are conscious don't think the same way about non-chattng models ( unless you ask them then they might say "sure" in an attempt to remain consistent).
My point is it's the interaction medium that's causing the confusion and causinf this psychosis that's tricking people into feeling like they're talking to someone.
LLMs are not conscious, sams as google chrome, same as GTA 5, same as your latest python script.
If the rest of the world stayed still, that's a hard "maybe". Since the rest of the world isn't, what we're actually watching is the "Western Flavor" of the Soviet collapse. The fact that these destructive policies are being repeatedly selected - over and over and over again - means that the collapse is systemic; indeed, this could even be seen as a part of a larger "End of the West" which kicked off with World War 1 and then the utter self-immolation of the secular colonial period in WW2.
Future historians, with the benefit of hindsight, will probably date the beginnings of the collapse[1] to 9/11, with the actual ceasing of the functional economic system somewhere around the 2008 econopalypse. COVID was something like our Chernobyl. I think Trump is, quite honestly, our version of Yeltsin: the buffoon who ends everyone's faith in "the system".
Americans should mentally prepare for an equivalent collapse in, well, everything, from public health to aviation safety. Of course, by the numbers, "you're already soaking in it".
[1] The American side of it, anyway. The larger end of the West, World War 1 is a logical place to draw the line, but honestly it started when Europe ran out of profitable/exploitive space on the map.
Post WW2, the US set up some fantastic levers of power that let it establish and maintain its hegemony at arms length: the United Nations and the UNSC. NATO. The petrodollar. Pax Americana could've gone on forever.
However, those levers of power are subtle enough that once the US voted ignorant jackasses into power, they wrongly thought that's just how the world is, they can do what they like, including -- critically! -- dismantling the levers of power.
It's like that image of the idiot sawing off the branch he's sitting on. How else can you explain the US trying to fuck up the UN and NATO?
Japan and Germany made it illegal to put the evil assholes in power. The US will do no such thing, we're going to keep voting for the evil assholes and every attempt we make at progress will simply be undermined and undone.
I don't see a way out of this without a fundamental transformation of the US. At the very least that looks like a Constitutional convention, repeal of FPTP and the electoral college, maybe even changing to a parliamentary system without a powerful executive. At worst it looks like civil war. Nothing on a lesser scale than than that is going to suffice. Expecting to simply return to normal with a vote for blue and pretend this never happened isn't going to work.
just wondering, do you want the US to be hated "forever"? or what is it that you are arguing for?
i thought it was a fairly obvious statement that over the thousands of years of history, many bad things have been done, but after several generations, we are able to heal.
if you think that in the year 2200, the world will still hate the US because of today, i disagree.
the year 2500? i doubt the people of that time, excepting a few ancient historians, will even know it happened.
The US will suffer from this era on the international stage for generations, in a completely self-inflicted blow. Its continued existence as the present-day USA is by no means guaranteed, either.
Present-day Germany isn't Nazi Germany; I certainly hope people will hate Nazi Germany forever.
A good proportion of the older generations still disdain or mock Germany as nazis-in-waiting. There may be an end to the damage done to their global reputation, but it's not here yet 80 years down the line.
> There may be an end to the damage done to their global reputation, but it's not here yet 80 years down
Let's not forget that in the early part of the 20th century, Germany was the powerhouse of mathematics and sciences such as physics and chemistry, to the extent that top scientists basically had to learn German (1) and/or study in Germany (2).
How long did it take Germany to recover that preeminent position?
> to the extent that top scientists basically had to learn German
That reverberates even toady -- I had a physics professor who who learned German precisely because he wanted to read some original texts written by Boltzmann. Apparently he thought he was missing some nuance in the translations.
As if Trump was the first to print trillions and start a new war. Americans are so enchanted by their 2 party duopoly, it's not even funny. Bizarre how people view reality.
You mean they didn't save 25 trillion dollars a year from the 7 trillion annual spend?
I cant believe they would lie about this ... i am sure that this is a totally isolated case and they have been straight forward and honest about everything else.
The DOGE refund cheque is due to arrive any day now.
Eh, I'm not going to dispute the validity of Cleek's Law, but ~everything Trump, et al, are doing has been an extremely popular idea with different segments of the right for thirty, forty years.
That goes for DOGE, both the idea of "drowning the government in a bathtub" and the specific cuts they made (eg, wrecking foreign aid), that goes for ICE, even the Iran War, which is widely regarded as the unpopular thing that might actually sink the administration, is something a solid 30% of the base has been salivating over since Reagan and are only upset that he hasn't "finished the job" yet.
If you think it's all purely reactionary you haven't been paying attention for the last 40 years.
But they didn't drown the government in a bathtub. They cut a bunch of tiny programs that they were ideologically opposed to, at a savings amounting to a rounding error. All of the things that could be counted as "big government" were left untouched, or expanded.
They didn't even pretend to reduce the size of government. They just engaged in some petty grudges.
Which is, as you say, exactly what his voters want. They just pretend that it's "small government", but it absolutely is not.
They'll just extend the forecast horizon when questioned:
"Oh, those projections were over the life the expected costs,forecast out 10/15/20 years into the future. Everyone knows this is how you calculate such savings..."
It's a good thing we can now all agree that the US federal government is completely devoid of corruption and taxpayer money misuse, and that all future attempts to discover and curtail any of such are irresponsible and futile!
The goal wasn't to save money, but to destroy the administrative capacity of the government. And to eliminate programs Musk, Trump and their cronies disliked, while circumventing the legal procedures.
Of course it didn't save any money, and it was obvious from the start that the numbers they put out were entirely fictional.
people were saying this literally as the cuts were happening, we need to get over the delusion of powerful men knowing something the general population doesn't
If there's a government watchdog left, then Trump, Musk, DOGE, etc... haven't done their jobs. They are all too incompetent to even do a proper work of destruction. Or did someone fail to bribe them right?
Last night a jam was canceled in Brazil: "bee-conservation musical". People say it's a waste of US tax payer funds (USAID), but they don't understand the real cost. 600 people are now suffering from PTSD and attending survivor therapy after being deprived of the bee-conservation musical. Our homeless can wait, the "bee-conservation musical" must go on.
