A healthy measure of my personal skepticism comes from the fact that GenAI represents the convergence of so many historically negative (and frankly idiotic) influences.
- AI hype-mongers. We've dealt with these for decades in academia and industry, through countless boom/bust cycles. Yes, there's progress, but reality is boring and selective.
- Tech Bros. NFTs? The MeTaVeRsE? The CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and SpaceX have proven repeatedly to be dishonest grifters chasing all and only money. They're like the tobacco industry of laughably dishonest at this point (and consistently wrong).
- Singularity grifters. The Kurzweil cultists flooding the ranks of lesswrong feel suddenly emboldened. They've been issuing batshit proclamations and navel gazing about AI alignment to anyone who will pay attention to them (and write them a check) for decades. It's no more connected to reality now than it was then.
- The LinkedIn hivemind. If you aren't transforming your organization to meet the new GenAI future, your company is BEHIND and you are FAILING AS A LEADER. Be the one firing white collar workers, not the one being fired. Make sure you look good on paper with bullshit performative AI initiatives or your ass is dust. Oh, no ROI? No problem. Read my book on NAVIGATING THE ENTERPRISE AI TRANSFORMATION. It's skin-deep and filled with empty platitudes and clip art, but it will make you look like a big brave tech leader, just like Steve Jobs or Dario.
- Investors. Yes, we're in a bubble. Yes, we've been in a bubble before. Yes, it's going to pop. Yes, that's going to be bad. Really bad, probably. Remember the financial crisis? Investors don't. And this time, there won't be a deep-pocketed government to bail anyone out, because debt is already sky-high and we're still recovering from COVID.
So while I get there's something there, and I'm keeping abreast of it and extracting the best and leaving the worst, it is an exhaustingly negative experience. My guard is up and I have absolutely run out of patience for bullshit. It's not funny or smart or interesting. It's not even fun to complain about. The forces in the mix are awful and I don't want anything to do with them.
If a craftsman injures themselves or a co-worker with a faulty tool, the tool manufacturer is very often liable for damages. I struggle to see GenAI any differently.
Indeed, and similarly, if a craftsman injures themselves or a co-worker with a perfectly good (non-faulty) tool, then it's entirely on the craftsman. Same goes for "AI". Misuse the tool, suffer the consequences.
Fans have no cooling effect once the ambient temperature exceeds human body temperature, so "making do with fans" is literally making do with nothing.
Those citizens "making do" generally have freedom of movement, free access to cool water, air-conditioned businesses or vehicles, and are not locked down in a concrete facility.
Please take 5 seconds to fact check yourself with a very quick query against your information source of choice.
Over ~95 degrees, a fan blowing on a human acts as a convection oven, increasing body temperature while dehydrating the body.
This is greatly exacerbated in extreme heat.
CDC guidance is to avoid using a fan in extreme heat conditions unless it is combined with a cooling source and careful hydration. Once again, not exactly an option in a Texas prison.
My statement above is basic science: wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperatures are only equal at 100% humidity, below 100% humidity wet-bulb is lower than dry-bulb.
The reason humans do not drop dead when they go outside in >100 degree weather is because sweat evaporates and lowers the temperature of humans skin below the temperature of the air: sweating skin is wet-bulb temperature and the reading on a thermometer is dry bulb temperature. This is dependent on hydration and evaporation, which is why you must hydrate and wear breathable clothing in order to avoid heat stroke, and it is why high ambient humidity is more dangerous.
You don't want to put a fan in your face, but gentle circulation of air helps to aid evaporation. Have you felt the difference between stagnant air and a gentle breeze on a hot day? As you sweat, the air immediately around you absorbs the water from your skin and increases in humidity. Gentle circulation helps to move this higher humidity air away from your skin and replace it with dryer air that has a greater capacity to evaporate more water and therefore remove more heat from your skin.
The prevalence of air conditioning is a very recent thing and for most of human existence on earth people survived in hot areas by taking advantage of evaporative cooling.
That, of course, doesn't mean we should treat prisoners poorly. But we don't need to misrepresent the science.
That's a very dodgy etymology. The use of "slop" to refer to trashy content dates back to the late 19th/early 20th century, long before the advent of the internet.
I think our tendency to attribute "novel" word usage to 4chan might reflect more on us than on our language.
Hard disagree about "more intelligent". They are playing a financial game using a combination of leverage and reptilian ruthlessness to EBITDA hack.
They buy one (or more) companies, often with only the slimmest understanding of what those companies do, slash opex by gutting the company with layoffs (yay EBITDA), maybe staple a few such companies together with leveraged buy-outs, then resell the whole bundle for more than they paid.
From experience, they don't give a single crap whether the resulting mess still functions. They care about selling the company for more than they bought it for. That prospect is only tenuously and at best accidentally related to whether the company still functions.
The private equity companies I've had to deal with were full of braindead MBA spreadsheet monkeys and used car salesmen. Their chief differentiator was that they worked 80 hours a week and were enthusiastic about laying people off without much deliberation.
Thinking private equity is "more intelligent" than business owners is like thinking house flippers are "more intelligent" than home owners. No. They know how to rip out carpet and replace it with laminate on the cheap. They know how to cut corners and hide it. They know buyers will over value a fresh veneer of paint. They don't give a shit about the long-term health or value of the house. They are not better stewards of houses. They specialize in short-term profit maximization and that is literally it.
They have suffered from abuse because of unregulated police. They have not suffered because of police simpliciter.
Police perform an important function. Unregulated, unchecked, untrained, militarized police taught that they are immune from prosecution for crimes against citizens do not.
Drawing an equivalence between these two muddies the waters in an extremely unhelpful way.
A well-regulated police force drawn from the population it is sworn to protect is a good thing. It's a hard, important job.
And yes, it's obvious Flock was going to be abused and no I don't think a well-regulated police force should have access to pervasive surveillance. But that doesn't mean I want to do away with police in general.
The whole ACAB narrative is one of the most deeply unpopular views of the American left, polling at something like 80% disapproval. I guess ACAB people think my friend who went to the police to report sexual abuse by her step father (leading to his arrest and incarceration) should have hired a... community councilor? A mercenary? Gotten out the community pitchforks? Because that ends well as a mechanism for justice? I genuinely don't know, but I think people who want less policing (as opposed to accountability, transparency, and demilitarization) aren't thinking very clearly.
> They have not suffered because of police simpliciter
They also suffered from a lack of point to point teleportation. Or, I mean, they would if that existed.
The point being that it's not terribly useful to talk about things that only exist in theory.
Police, rather by definition are regulated by the people with money because they can afford it. The people in "poor neighborhoods" can't afford to pay for police.
> Drawing an equivalence between these two muddies the waters in an extremely unhelpful way.
Says the person trying to change the topic of discussion to hypothetical ideal instead of the world we actually live in.
As for ACAB and its polling, well, that's like saying "socialism polls badly", it probably does, but also nobody answering the polls actually agrees on how to define it.
There is an absolutely massive amount of (american) propaganda devoted entirely to portraying police in the best possible light and influencing people towards that end. We have endless movies and tv shows and books and cable news shows and radio talk shows and on and on.
> I guess ACAB people think my friend who went to the police to report sexual abuse by her step father (leading to his arrest and incarceration) should have hired a... community councilor?
No, literally nobody thinks that and it's a pretty sad attempt at rhetoric to suggest it.
> but I think people who want less policing (as opposed to accountability, transparency, and demilitarization) aren't thinking very clearly.
I'm not sure why you're trying so hard to draw a distinction here, if you actually look at americans, you can pretty easily divide them into two groups, one of which that wants "transparency and demilitarization" and one of which wants a police force with more military style weapons and equipment, and if you are on the side of demilitarization, then guess what, you're on the same side as everyone yelling acab.
You aren't some kind of special person who can some how see the perfect compromise between all positions that everyone else has missed.
"Police should be monitored by a complete separate agency with no chain of command in common with the police force, answerable to voters in a more direct way, as well as trained to de-escalate situations and held accountable for their crimes" doesn't fit on a placard and it's hard to chant. ACAB is a lot shorter.
Also, as a final takeaway, the phrase is "a few bad apples SPOILS THE ENTIRE BARREL" not "a few bad apples are perfectly fine and nobody minds them".
I'm sure most police aren't actually committing crimes and abuse of power. But they also refuse to hold the ones that do accountable and are therefor 100% complicit with all the abuses.
Why would it require explanation? It was stupid beyond belief to begin with. It would be like rescinding a policy profiling soldiers using phrenology or waving some scientology wand over them or something.
The fact that people think there's anything even worthy of discussion on this is alarming to me.
Why not? If the agency is doing a poor job you might be better of defunding it or disbanding, or forcing smarter, cheaper, more efficient testing. If money fixed problems we'd have great schools and great health care.
- AI hype-mongers. We've dealt with these for decades in academia and industry, through countless boom/bust cycles. Yes, there's progress, but reality is boring and selective.
- Tech Bros. NFTs? The MeTaVeRsE? The CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and SpaceX have proven repeatedly to be dishonest grifters chasing all and only money. They're like the tobacco industry of laughably dishonest at this point (and consistently wrong).
- Singularity grifters. The Kurzweil cultists flooding the ranks of lesswrong feel suddenly emboldened. They've been issuing batshit proclamations and navel gazing about AI alignment to anyone who will pay attention to them (and write them a check) for decades. It's no more connected to reality now than it was then.
- The LinkedIn hivemind. If you aren't transforming your organization to meet the new GenAI future, your company is BEHIND and you are FAILING AS A LEADER. Be the one firing white collar workers, not the one being fired. Make sure you look good on paper with bullshit performative AI initiatives or your ass is dust. Oh, no ROI? No problem. Read my book on NAVIGATING THE ENTERPRISE AI TRANSFORMATION. It's skin-deep and filled with empty platitudes and clip art, but it will make you look like a big brave tech leader, just like Steve Jobs or Dario.
- Investors. Yes, we're in a bubble. Yes, we've been in a bubble before. Yes, it's going to pop. Yes, that's going to be bad. Really bad, probably. Remember the financial crisis? Investors don't. And this time, there won't be a deep-pocketed government to bail anyone out, because debt is already sky-high and we're still recovering from COVID.
So while I get there's something there, and I'm keeping abreast of it and extracting the best and leaving the worst, it is an exhaustingly negative experience. My guard is up and I have absolutely run out of patience for bullshit. It's not funny or smart or interesting. It's not even fun to complain about. The forces in the mix are awful and I don't want anything to do with them.
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