Notices by Jeremy Kahn (trochee@dair-community.social), page 8

@inthehands it's provoking a certain humility in my assessment of how difficult it is to be a member of the bullshitter class

To be fair, it's almost certainly a position earned by accident of birth, not skill

@inthehands even this pithy observation — which I agree with — conforms to the pattern though

LLMs always seem to be good at someone else's job -- usually somebody who I treat as a cost center.

and somehow never good at _my_ job (I am a true creator of value)

Okay for a minute here i confess i got

Kate McKinnon
and
Catharine MacKinnon

confused, and I thought there was a big career shift going on for at least one of them

@wcbdata @futurebird I'm also willing to believe the results but draw nearly opposite conclusions:

Food security in childhood — and the trustworthiness of adult food promises to you — are strongly correlated with intergenerational privilege

which *also* correlates (causally!) w lifetime earnings

If you grew up aware that caregivers might not be *able* to keep food promises, the test is harder, even if you trust the caregivers equally

Kids are rational risk assessors

@inthehands @Theorem_Poem

yes; leaning into the metaphorical figure:

"also there needs to *be* places to escape the cruelties of the cool-kids dance floor"

@inthehands

oh well done. The Imperial Waltz has a much floatier vibe than the Imperial March

@inthehands i think i can make it 6/8 in my head if i think towards waltz

@inthehands i think this is disturbing and awesome. Next year do the Imperial March Forth in/on 3/4

This section in particular seems like loading up a footgun for armchair linguists

> Because these systems cannot explain the rules of english syntax

is a _humongous_ self-own. it suggests that Chomsky & co believe that the determining factor of intelligence is _the ability to explain English syntax_

I believe these three factors are orthogonal & distinct:
(1) be intelligent
(2) be able to explain English grammar
(3) be able to correctly deploy English in context

Aaand there's the footgun part (h/t @leon)

https://twitter.com/jayelmnop/status/1633635146263052288?s=20

@ricardojmendez @rysiek "those entitled workers, with their cushy perks like 'weekends' and 'medical care' and 'pensions' and 'schooling for children' — we may be ruthless coal barons, but that's definitely oversteering too far in the direction of labor" — Industrial Revolution pundits, no doubt

"desperate to reframe the last two years as somehow a condition of a lazy, entitled workforce, rather than vulgar, borderline pornographic capitalism"

Ed Zitron rants (accurately IMO) about what's really going on in tech layoffs. (Ce sont pour encourager les autres.)

https://ez.substack.com/p/techs-elite-hates-labor

If the utilitarians took themselves even a little bit seriously, they'd be proposing redistribution of all but a $1M annual stipend from every one of our planet's top ten (10) richest people.

That's about $1T; a $1000 windfall for every human alive (assuming some shrinkage in distribution).

Billions of people live on $3 a day or less

Imagine the aggregate utility of giving half of the world a YEAR'S PAY.

https://wandering.shop/@annaleen/109922218219654269

@JoeUchill nothing about the utilitarian worldview is achievable, even when it's a lightly reheated apologia for the status quo

TFW Oblique Strategies gets you thinking about the Fourth Amendment and the surveillance state
#ObliqueStrategies

https://botsin.space/@oblique_strategies/109978111942705698

Every few years i learn something awful (misogyny, racism, queerphobia, eugenics, etc) about another white, usually male, SFF author who I read in my callow youth (OS Card, HP Lovecraft, W Ellis, JK Rowling, etc)

Lately, my best source for these unpleasant revelations has been The Midnight Society, as in this one for Dan Simmons

https://sfba.social/@bitterkarella/110244426073606374

At this point I'm not really willing to stan for white straight dudes in SFF; imma wait for them to die before canonizing (IM Banks).

My dad sent me the Chomsky article in the NYT today and I'm, uh, so exhausted by that rhetorical style

It's not even that i disagree with much of it, it's just so pompously mansplainy.

I agree chatbots aren't thinking. Not sure I agree about what thinking actually _is_ , or that language is some kind of gift special to humans

they blow it bad on discussion of moral intelligence; that the chatbot's opinions are mostly-indifferent banal evil doesn't rule out the possibility of intelligence

The space in one's heart reserved for the veneration of saints and honored ancestors -- who's in it for you?

I'll start. Today, I'm honoring some Speculative Fiction elders who speak (and spoke) for what matters

Ursula K LeGuin
Iain M Banks
Fred Rogers
Octavia Butler

Who's there for you? @bookstodon

what's the right word for the technical debt that comes from some piece of technical knowledge that is transmitted orally (instead of in documentation or source control, etc)

the "oh yeah you'll want to talk to Barbara about how that works" technical debt.

It's not quite "bus factor" (and bus factor has the unfortunate problem that I can never decide if the bus goes in the numerator or the denominator).