this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post, there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I tried doing what I occasionally do and browsing LessWrong for something to point and laugh at, but opening it in a Firefox private window, I can only scroll down a little way before the page breaks. The bottom post appears and disappears, and it scrolls no further.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

I'm sad that I can't reproduce this because looking at bad website coding is my favorite kind of gawking.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

"Deter sneerers and critics with this simply JS trick!"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What’s the word for “the sound of social tides turning”? Because I might have an example at hand

(I may sneer, but I also giggle delightedly. It’s not quite schadenfreude by itself but also a childlike joy of wellduhhhhhhh)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

Socher says wrangling LLMs takes considerable effort because the underlying technology has no real understanding of the world

Hnggg

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

Well done fellow superpredictors!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

a take from Derek Lowe on AI drugs: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ai-drugs-so-far

They began with a list of AI-focused companies (114!), then matched that up with the clinical projects that are reported for them (39 of them).

If you look at the 2023 figures, the authors have 24 AI-discovered targets, 22 AI-optimized small molecules, 4 antibodies, 6 vaccines, and 10 repurposed compounds. So what do we think about those figures?

shot

What you will see is that in almost every case, these targets were already known to be implicated in the disease under investigation. In some of these examples, in fact there are several drugs already in the clinic targeting the same proteins, or even therapies that are already on the market working through the same mechanisms

chaser

That colors my entire view of this paper - which was written by a prominent consulting firm, why did you ask.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

a near 12,000 word anonymous hit piece on Émile Torres on the EA forum has some gems in the comments.

the top comment basically calls it out as someone airing their personal grievances.

next comment feels the need to call out Torres and Gebru are big bad bullies:

Broadly I think that both Torres and Gebru engage in bullying. They have big accounts and lots of time and will quote tweet anyone who disagrees with them, making the other person seem bad to their huge followings.

and my personal favorite, that Marx's drive was more akin to rationalists than current leftists, because leftists for the "last ten-fifteen years just [haven't] been very rational"

Karl Marx's whole work was based on economics and an attempt to create a sort of scientific theory of history, love it or hate it the man obviously had a drive more akin to those of current rationalists than of current leftists.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't think I have seen Gebru do that, or at least not often and when she does she quote tweets people like Stephen King having a bad take. She is way more aggressive about all the various wars and genocides going on in Africa atm which we are all ignoring. You can also see that despite her huge following the actual interactions she gets is pretty low https://x.com/timnitGebru https://xcancel.com/timnitGebru. But lets just ignore reality like how we are ignoring those wars and genocides in Africa.

And it keeps being amazing that the guy who wrote that hitpiece is defending the people behind the grievance studies hoax oddly silent on Lindsay however, I assume that any stalking by Torres was also done vs Lindsay but I guess EA no longer defends innocent conspiracy theory anti-Semites (He has gone so nuts that the other hoax people tried to make him turn it down a bit, but no idea if he stopped).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The promptfondlers have learned (by way of multiple public thrashings) not to get into technical arguments with The Parrot Posse, so tedious innuendo about communism and cancel culture is all they have left.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But cancel culture is real, see what they did to the guy who leaked Scotts emails. ;)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Did that dude get canceled?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

iirc he retracted his leaks after pressure from the community, it was all very shooting the messenger.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

they deleted the leak tweet shortly after it was posted but after it was already firmly archived

I don't recall them commenting since

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That piece has been referenced here before, but thanks for diving into the comments. The one about Marx is pretty funny, I'm sure the commenter has only read the Cliff Nots of both Marx and "current leftists".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It’s funny how they’ve taken on Marx and Communism as an unmarked Good Person in a weird sort of half troll (remember Musk claiming to be a socialist? to say nothing of Ms. Boucher as a cosplay elf reading the communist manifesto). It’s not quite like American racists and capitalists claiming Dr. King would have Supported Them, Actually, because it’s half serious (people like leftism so unfettered wealth acquisition is the real leftism) and half trolling. They’re trying to get props and have a haha-j/k back door out of the claim at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

Ms. Boucher as a cosplay elf reading the communist manifesto

Apparently she wasn't reading it, it was a troll, she had borrowed the book for the photo-op. So it is actually worse.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think a big part of Marx' appeal back in the day was that he was fully slotted into the rationalist milieu of the time. Identifying an impersonal, inevitable "march of progress" that wasn't religious was a powerful idea for some people.

(btw the Communist Manifesto is 150 years old and could have been written yesterday, at least the first part)

By all accounts, postwar Soviet union was a pretty sexist and racist place. It's no wonder the "old guard" communists look at today's blue-haired leftists and sound just like crusty old fascists.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you see a reactionary impulse as a desire to go back to an imagined past, the "old guard" communists (who mostly didn't seem to have lived under communism) aka the tankies, being similar to crusty old fascists (who also didn't live in a fascist regime, or in the world depicted by 50s americana postcards/commercials) makes a lot of sense.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's ironic that there is a "good old days" of (state) Communism, seeing that it was supposed to be the end of history.

(side note, back in HS I saw a graph illustrating the Marxist theory that successive revolutions lifted human civilization up a series of stairs (pastoralism -> city states -> feudalism -> centralized kingdoms -> bourgeois capitalism) up until Communism where these steps became an ascending straight line... and I though "hey, why does the line straighten out just there???")

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

...it was supposed to be the end of history.

They never said which end

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

Obviously the arse end.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

pretty good indication that the eugenics couple are totally disrespected and disregarded even within their supposed sphere of influence: none or almost none of the 2^7 replies to the thread the other day were Just Asking Questions or So Everyone You Don't Like Is A Nazi?ing. except for I guess peter thiel they convince nobody, appeal to nobody, and yet journalists keep uncritically writing about them. the ability of money to shape media is impressive

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

that's a convenience sample of lemmy users that weren't banned or defederated yet and bothered to get there. response from, say, HN could be different

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

my comparison point is how they flood into every other thread that gets upvotes

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Let's put it to the test:

That said, I'm mildly curious as to what influence if any the Collinses have on "real", religious fascist pro-natalists, but not enough to go spelunking in the sewers to find out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you refuse to teach the kids category theory and queer communism there's no point. Have all the kids you want. The empire is still going to collapse. Knowledge has moved beyond the empire.

this but unironically but ironically but not in the way they're being ironic

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

If you refuse to teach the kids category theory and queer communism there’s no point.

perfection

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

Yeah they are media grifters plain and simple. Once the Thiel gravy train ends they'll pivot to something else, or messily divorce.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

nsfw, and at a risk of beating a dead horse, but this article, although brief, does a decent job at connecting the dots between "silicon valley pronatalism" and regular ol' nationalism/white supremacy and debunking some of their bullshit

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

@jax @froztbyte

small domino: Scott Alexander confessing to his friend that he's learned a lot from the reactionaries, including that beating children up is the best way to educate them

(dominoes toppling...)

big domino: "And a Guardian journalist witnessed Malcolm [Collins] strike their two-year-old across the face for misbehaviour, a parenting style they apparently developed based on watching “tigers in the wild”. "

just rationalist things

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

I don't understand why the wife does not simply consume her husband, a parenting style I've developed from observing the noble praying mantis in the wild.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah.

I had parents that did this shit (and more). Emphasis on “had”: I walked the fuck away from the whole goddamn lot.

Does my fucking head in to see this kind of shit not only being given airtime but done so without criticism in the coverage.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

At the risk of being sincere in the snark pit, hugs. Good for you for taking care of yourself.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

and at a risk of beating a dead horse

None of us are doctors, so we cannot declare the horse legally dead. So please keep beating it so it doesn't stand back up and turn us all into paperclips.

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