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Yes, I can hear you, Clem Fandango!

  • 4 Posts
  • 680 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 24th, 2023

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  • I think that’s a fair take, but I believe the person you’re replying to was more looking at how the US under Trump is currently saber rattling with:

    • Greenland
    • Venezuela
    • Mexico
    • Canada
    • Iran

    While it would be one thing if the US was only saber rattling with Canada, but they’re actively courting wars with up to five different nations, including one in the Eastern hemisphere, all at once. I believe the point they were making is that it would be impossible for the US to handle all those wars, even if it’s conceivable that they could invade and take over Canada alone. Greenland is being actively threatened to the point that NATO soldiers are being sent there, Canada is not being actively threatened in the same way. Mexico is also being threatened with military action to “stop the cartels” (which probably means just taking over the cartels).




  • However, when testing the models in a set of scenarios that the authors said were “representative” of real uses of ChatGPT, the intervention appeared less effective, only reducing deception rates by a factor of two. “We do not yet fully understand why a larger reduction was not observed,” wrote the researchers.

    Translation: “We have no idea what the fuck we’re doing or how any of this shit actually works lol. Also we might be the ones scheming since we have vested interest in making these models sound more advanced than they actually are.”








  • This aspect of it being decentralized is so important to remember.

    People sometimes give me quizzical responses when I point them to the repository for the Bypass Paywalls Clean plugin because it’s hosted on a Russian git site (gitflic.ru). The plugin was chased off the Firefox add-ons site/Chrome add-ons site, it was chased off of Gitlab, it was chased off of Github, all over DMCA takedown requests. People act like “well it must be shady because it’s not on a well known git site” and yet is hosted in a country that doesn’t respect the US copyright cabals control over media literally because that’s the only safe harbor for it. The developer even has this snippet on his description of the plugin:

    PS although the add-on was removed from Mozilla’s add-on store (AMO) (because of DMCA Takedown Notice) it’s still signed and manually checked for security by Mozilla (hence the delay in signing).

    Yet it’s super common for people to be absolutely suspicious of it. Including being suspicious of the traffic leaving the plugin when it’s not being used which turns out to be the plug-in checking for updates every time.

    Using alternative gits is so important and is literally what allows programming and especially open source programming, to thrive.


  • We need a world that recognizes this reality and does everything possible to ensure that there is a very low limit to the amount of power that a single person can accumulate.

    And how do you achieve that in a flat structure? That’s basically relying on local communities to all be self-correcting which feels to me like that hippie shit “why can’t we all just hold hands and get along.” Oh I don’t know because some people are going to grow up into Nazis and I am not sure that in itself is a solvable problem about humanity.

    Small communities are more likely to make exceptions for people they know closely. Like church groups absolving abusive men in the clergy and grouping around them to pray for them. Groups allowed to self police rarely police themselves successfully.

    So to me it sounds like you need power structures to help control the populace and stop them from doing that, and power structures invite corruption.


  • I am pro-decentralization but the problem I always come to is education: education is inherently a power discrepancy where on person must teach another something. Some people are just bad at teaching, so leaving education in the hands of just anyone means you end up with less educated population, and a less educated population can’t be counted on to be independent enough to be a reliable citizen that can contribute competently, which perpetuates the cycle even further if the uneducated are expected to teach the uneducated. Flat structure is a noble goal, but I’m not sure we’ll ever truly be able to escape power discrepancies existing at all. Children are simply at mercy of the people educating them. Like you said, power corrupts, and plenty of people use that power over children toward selfish and controlling ends.


  • They’re learning the hard way that it’s a big club, and we ain’t in it. Rooting out corruption is hard because you basically have to have people to replace literally every person in government literally immediately. Also, you have to make sure those new people can’t be bribed or threatened into complicity. Trying to rely on people who seem to have good credentials isn’t a solution if they’re still surrounded by corruption at every level. How are the small number of trustworthy people going to handle an endless stream of corruption running interference and doing their damnedest to make sure no one is held accountable.

    Maybe the old battle cry “don’t trust anyone over 30” wasn’t so wrong at all. Anyone who is already invested in the system as it exists probably can’t be truly trusted to get the job done.

    Anyway, quite tragic and I feel for them.