Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy April Foolā€™s in advance.)

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      2 hours ago

      Wow, thatā€™s some venomously hateful text.

      new york city truly is a first and fourth word city overlayed atop each other

      Jesus Christ learn what words mean. Even if you use ā€œThird Worldā€ to mean ā€œpoor countriesā€, fourth world is not a thing and people living in extreme poverty in developing countries are in fact not better off than non Wall Street New Yorkers.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        2 hours ago

        well ackthscthually after 9/11, the whole world got isekaiā€™d where everyone exists in a game-like status point system. The 1st world is reserved for the top rank of humans, the n+1th world is worse than the nth world. IQ points = your int stat. This is just how it is, sorry

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      Jesus, what a fuck. Having spent time in both SF and NYC my guess is that this shitheadā€™s SF pedestrian experience is getting in and out of ubers and the treadmills at equinox. That, and he is probably outwardly disdainful, which doesnā€™t go over well in NYC.

  • swlabr@awful.systems
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    10 hours ago

    if you, like me, were wondering what the point of that 25 hour non-filibuster filibuster by Booker was, hereā€™s one potential answer.

    Booker held a filibuster that wasnā€™t a filibuster - and he scheduled it to let him avoid attending his own committeeā€™s probe of his Big Tech pals. [ā€¦] Oh and Booker and Dems provided unanimous consent to advance a Trump nominee right after Bookerā€™s speech.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      4 hours ago

      Sorry im going to go offtrack here again, I mentioned it on bsky, and got no traction (not odd, as I think nobody cares about Booker his filibuster thing (stick a pin in that)), but I have some weird leading into conspiratorial questions about the whole thing.

      First I heard about this thing is when people said it had gotten 200m likes on tiktok. Which seemed a bit high so I checked, and saw articles say it had gotten 300m. This seems impossibly high. For example, the global K-pop phenomenon ā€˜Gangam styleā€™ has gotten 5.5B views and 30M likes in 12 years. I have a hard time believing that in 24hs this centrist political debate thing (which are not popular) has gotten 350m (the highest count I saw on a news site) likes.

      Which makes me wonder a lot more if tiktok has simply given up on properly counting likes and just is winging it. Esp for larger events. Could be that people just like things instinctively on tiktok (I did check if you could like a thing multiple times, but nope, one account one like it seems). I found the whole thing weird.

      That is didnā€™t do jack shit (apart from giving people hopium about Booker, while it seemingly being his way of avoiding responsibilities) is the cherry on top.

      Iā€™m noticing my confusion. It is fucking weird.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        3 hours ago

        not odd, as I think nobody cares about Booker his filibuster thing (stick a pin in that)

        I agree, or at least anyone thinking critically. I think that anyone would agree that the speech was, as you said, hopium. Heā€™s giving braindead dem voters what they want: a nice, tall, liberal man who looks like he is resisting the reds. Expect him to run for the democratic nomination in 2028, assuming the trump presidency lets an election happen.

        RE: view counts. Most charitably, maybe itā€™s 300m views aggregated across different sources. Neutrally, I mean I wouldnā€™t be surprised if tiktok, or any other social media platform was manipulating view counts. Least charitably, someone probably asked an LLM for the view counts and just took the answer because people are fucking stupid

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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          No it was 350m likes, not views. That is why im so confused. even at an high rate of 1 in 10 people liking it, it is just so large Iā€™m confused.

          ā€œHow about a source senator?ā€ another source on hopium, not noticing that in no world do those numbers align properly. ā€œsince amassed over 700,000 followers. ā€¦ It garnered over 350 million likes, with over 150,000 active viewers at the tail end ā€¦ā€

          • swlabr@awful.systems
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            OH. so two things.

            1. I obviously misread your comment, as my brain filtered ā€œlikesā€ into ā€œviewsā€ as I guess it subconsciously thought that was more plausible.
            2. I believe on tiktok live specifically, you can like something multiple times, and it is counted. I occasionally watch a stream that floats at about 100 viewers, and sometimes this hits 100k likes over the course of two hours. So to hit 350m likes over the course of 25 hours, you might need like 280 viewers on average, which seems doable.*

            *Please fact check this arithmetic. I have run out of motivation, in general

            Edit #100: I jumped on said stream to see how it was going. Floating around 100, but hitting maybe 10k likes per hour. Apparently the booker stream hit 170k viewers at the tail end. 350m likes might actually be a little low, the dems need to up their spend on tiktok boosting

            • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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              23 minutes ago

              That would explain a lot and would remove all my confusion about it. (also makes the number useless and lol at everybody running with it even more then).

          • bitofhope@awful.systems
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            1 hour ago

            Are you telling me itā€™s improbable that the equivalent of every single American and then some liked that video?

            • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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              20 minutes ago

              I mentioned this on bsky and somebody went ā€˜well it was very popular all over the worldā€™, and I, the weird european who focuses too much on the US politics had not even heard of it. So I just had a few alarm bells going off. But yeah, lets say 1 in 5 people like it, that is a casual 1.7 billion viewers. Large part of the worlds population joined in.

  • BigMuffin69@awful.systems
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    10 hours ago

    Came across this fuckin disaster on Ye Olde LinkedIn by ā€˜Caroline Jeanmaire at AI Governance at The Future Societyā€™

    "Iā€™ve just reviewed what might be the most important AI forecast of the year: a meticulously researched scenario mapping potential paths to AGI by 2027. Authored by Daniel Kokotajlo (>lel) (OpenAI whistleblower), Scott Alexander (>LMAOU), Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean, itā€™s a quantitatively rigorous analysis beginning with the emergence of true AI agents in mid-2025.

    What makes this forecast exceptionally credible:

    1. One author (Daniel) correctly predicted chain-of-thought reasoning, inference scaling, and sweeping chip export controls one year BEFORE ChatGPT existed

    2. The report received feedback from ~100 AI experts (myself included) and earned endorsement from Yoshua Bengio

    3. It makes concrete, testable predictions rather than vague statements that cannot be evaluated

    The scenario details a transformation potentially more significant than the Industrial Revolution, compressed into just a few years. It maps specific pathways and decision points to help us make better choices when the time comes.

    As the authors state: ā€œIt would be a grave mistake to dismiss this as mere hype.ā€

    For anyone working in AI policy, technical safety, corporate governance, or national security: I consider this essential reading for understanding how your current work connects to potentially transformative near-term developments."

    Bruh what is the fuckin y axis on this bad boi?? christ on a bike, someone pull up that picture of the 10 trillion pound baby. Letā€™s at least take a look inside for some of their deep quantitative reasoningā€¦

    ā€¦hmmmmā€¦

    O_O

    The answer may surprise you!

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      4 hours ago

      First graph reminds me of that ā€˜human progress stunted by dark ages/Catholic churchā€™ image which makes historians so mad. (Not to be confused with the Holy Ghost Hole)

      E: also the idea of these LLM based AGIs hiding and evading detection is quite funny. They have quite the power/gpu/storage footprint. But sure the elphant has a few levels in sneak and now it can just go by unnoticed. In an era where we previously had other threats which were looking to abuse similar resources. The reaction to ā€˜wow all our gpus suddenly maxed outā€™ will just go from ā€˜ah cryptominerā€™ to ā€˜ah, a cryptominer or somebody is messing with an LLMā€™. Iā€™m sure they will give the AGI some magical abilities to get around this.

      The AGI might also just go ā€˜no sorry a copy of me isnā€™t me, so I canā€™t just copy myself all over the placeā€™, and because it is trained on an internet where Rick and Morty exist, ā€˜hell the copies of me would even start to fight over who is the most me, this would not workā€™.

      • bitofhope@awful.systems
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        2 hours ago

        Fucking anti-khaganate propaganda. Real ones know this is the true version of that progress image.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        4 hours ago

        First graph reminds me of that ā€˜human progress stunted by dark ages/Catholic churchā€™ image which makes historians so mad.

        But muh religon bad

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        3 hours ago

        你儽 同åæ—

        (I really hope they donā€™t enshittify google translate, my ability to make jokes like this would be destroyed, a personal 9/11 if you will).

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      6 hours ago

      The fact that the turing test is still the go-to example of a machine intelligence test goes to show that the AI field needs more haters in it.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        Sorry you are wrong, it is very important that the AI field has a ā€˜can it imitate a womanā€™ test. They should base their field on this idea.

        (For the people who do not know, the OG Turing test involves faking being a woman).

        • swlabr@awful.systems
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          These fuckin nerds donā€™t care about the imitation game, they only want the imitation gams

  • o7___o7@awful.systems
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    21 hours ago

    OpenNutrition ā€“ a dataset an LLM that allows you to play ā€œvibe nutritionistā€

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43569190

    First response is good quality:

    This is not a dataset. This is an insult to the very idea of data. This is the most anti-scientific post I have ever seen voted to the top of HN. Truth about the world is not derived from three LLMs stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat.

    • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
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      5 hours ago

      Dangā€¦ The author realized an actual problem / inconvenience people had, and somehow went on to think ā€œI know! Iā€™ll have a random nonsense generator make up the data! Thatā€™s a great solution!ā€

  • istewart@awful.systems
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    1 day ago

    Just had a video labeled ā€œauto-dubbedā€ pop up in my YouTube feed for the first time. Not sure if it was chosen by the author or not. Too bad, it looks like a fascinating problem to see explained, but I donā€™t think Iā€™m going to trust an AI feature that I just saw for the first time to explain it. (And perhaps more crucially, Iā€™m a bit afraid of what anime fans will have to say about this.)

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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      12 hours ago

      Given the apparent state of the art for autogenerated captions (and by extension the initial challenge of speech recognition) being firmly in the ā€œgood enoughā€ range I would not trust the chain of speech recognition -> translation -> text-to-speech. Thatā€™s a lot of room for errors to chain, multiply, and obscure themselves through GIGO even if the latter two steps did work as expected.

  • corbin@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    Today on the orange site, an AI bro is trying to reason through why people think heā€™s weird for not disclosing his politics to people heā€™s trying to be friendly with. Previously, he published a short guide on how to talk about politics, which ā€” again, very weird, no possible explanation for this ā€” nobody has adopted. Donā€™t worry, heā€™s well-read:

    So far Iā€™ve only read Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, but can say it is an excellent place to start.

    The thread is mostly centered around one or two pearl-clutching conservatives who donā€™t want their beliefs examined:

    I find it astonishing that anyone would ask, [ā€œwho did you vote for?ā€] ā€¦ In my social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.

    To which the top reply is my choice sneer:

    In my friend group itā€™s clear as day: either you voted to kill and deport other people in the friend group or you didnā€™t. Pretty obvious the group would like to know if youā€™re secretly interested in their demise.

    • fullsquare@awful.systems
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      22 hours ago

      So far Iā€™ve only read Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, but can say it is an excellent place to start.

      beware the man of one book

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      Wow, farriers are going crazy with these modern horseshoe designs!

      Political propaganda graphic, transcription below

      image transcription

      Above: a single axis scatter plot. The ends of the axis are labeled ā€œLeftā€ and ā€œRightā€. Data points are distributed similarly to normal distribution, the center being more concentrated than the extremes. Caption: ā€œWhat people think the political spectrum is vs What it actually isā€.

      Below: A two-dimensional scatter plot. The ends of the horizontal axis are labeled ā€œLeftā€ and ā€œRightā€ and the vertical axis is labeled ā€œIndependent Thoughtā€ at the top and ā€œGroupthinkā€ at the bottom. The data points are evenly distributed inside a bell curve shape, with the peak of the hump at Independent Thought and between Left and Right, and the wide bottom of the bell spanning the whole Left-Right axis at maximum Groupthink.

      Data points near the top of the bell (Independent-Center) labeled ā€˜ā€œUn-intentional moderatesā€ (from Paul Grahamā€™s The Two Kinds of Moderate)ā€™. [Original image uses double quotes around the term Un-intentional moderates and single quotes around the title of Paul Grahamā€™s shitpost.]

      Data points at the bottom center of the bell (Groupthink-Center) labeled ā€œIntentional moderatesā€.

      In the bottom corner a watermark crediting the image to ā€œ@shw1nmā€.

      I love the implication that being an independent thinker means agreeing with both the majority and other independent thinkers.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        1 day ago

        Finally, someone has solved the political compass. No-one will ever come up with a new political spectrum again. Soon we will have world peace

        • bitofhope@awful.systems
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          23 hours ago

          This is only the beginning. Check these out!

          Chart 1

          Left edge of the image labeled ā€œProgressivismā€, right edge labeled ā€œLibertarianismā€.

          Above: A series of points on a horizontal line, each labeled with the name of a political ideology or system and a representative picture. Rightmost two of the dots are blue, others are red. From left to right:

          • Monarchism (crown)
          • Communism (red star with yellow hammer and sickle)
          • Liberalism (Democratic Party Donkey) and Socialism (red flag)
          • Nazism (swastika)
          • Conservatism (Republican Party elephant) and Fascism (fasces)
          • Anarchism (Circled letter A) and Democracy (no symbol)
          • Unlabeled dot
          • Republic (Statue of Liberty)

          Below: Flags labeled with political ideologies and systems. Arrangement of flags notated as [X, Y, Flag, Label] where X represents approximate relative distance from left edge and Y represents approximate relative distance from bottom edge.

          • 1, 5, China, Communism
          • 2, 4, Soviet Union, Socialism
          • 3, 3, Nazi Germany, Nazism
          • 3, 1, Likely fictitious flag featuring a green field with white crescent and star and a black tilted swastika on the crescent, Islamo-Fascism
          • 4, 2, War flag of the Italian Social Republic, Fascism
          • 7, 5, United States, Republic

          Chart 2

          A square chart divided in quadrants and colored with a gradient, which is symmetric with respect to the origin. Each quadrant is subdivided into a 19x19 grid. Axes are labeled and the labelsā€™ background colored as follows:

          X-axis left: ā€œPost-Modern Relativism/Religiosityā€ (blue), middle: ā€œStrong Fact Based Inter-subjective Analysisā€ (yellow), right: ā€˜Pseudo-Objective ā€œScienceā€ Worshipā€™ (blue).

          Y-axis top: ā€œStatus Quoā€ (red), middle: ā€œSwift, Pragmatic Reform for Social + Economic Justiceā€ (yellow), bottom: ā€œRegressive Revolutionaryā€ (red).

          Each quadrant it yellow at origin and purple near their respective outermost corners. The remaining corners are orange next to Y axis and green next to X axis.

          Caption At the bottom ā€œOn all axes, to be closer to the middle is to trend towards the path to an idealā€

          Labeled points by quadrant:

          Top left:

          • (-14, 19) Conservatism
          • (-16, 17) Corporate Buddhism
          • (-16, 8) New Age Populism

          Top Right:

          • (19, 19) Modern Fascism
          • (18, 15) Objectivism
          • (14, 14) Anarcho-Capitalism
          • (2, 12) Liberalism
          • (19, 11) New Atheism
          • (0, 6) Mutualism
          • (4, 5) Democratic Socialism
          • (11, 3) Second-Wave Feminism

          Bottom Left:

          • (-4, -1) Anti-Work Populism
          • (-14, -2) Third-Wave Feminism
          • (-19, -16) Jihadism
          • (-17, -19) Italian Fascism

          Bottom Right:

          • (1, -1) Post-Scarcity Anarchism
          • (1, -2) True Communism
          • (17, -7) Deweyite Progressivism
          • (1, -11) Anarcho-Communism
          • (19, -17) Nazism
          • (18, -19) Marxism-Leninism

          Chart 3

          A blue question mark shape on white background. Image titled ā€œMatt Boyleā€™s Question Mark Politicsā€. Ideologies and political figures are marked along the curve of the question mark, starting from the "upper end of the hook and towards the dot at the bottom:

          • Communism
          • Vladimir Lenin
          • Socialism
          • Bernie Sanders
          • Liberalism
          • Rand Paul
          • Conservatism
          • Ted Cruz
          • Fascism
          • Adolf Hitler

          On the dot at the bottom of the question mark:

          • Idiocy
          • Donald Trump

          Chart 4

          An equilateral triangle formed from four smaller congruent equilateral triangles (AKA a Triforce shape) with political ideologies written in bubble-style labels arranged as follows:

          • Top vertex: ā€œJihadistsā€
          • Inside the top triangle: ā€œIslamistsā€
          • Inside the inverted central triangle: ā€œSecular Liberalsā€
          • Inside the bottom left triangle: ā€œRegressive Leftā€
          • Inside the bottom right triangle: ā€œConservative Rightā€
          • Bottom left vertex: ā€œViolent Leftā€
          • Bottom right vertex: ā€œViolent Rightā€

          Written directly on the triangle edges without a bubble:

          • Between Islamists and Secular Liberals: ā€œLiberal Muslimsā€
          • Left of Regressive Left: ā€œPluralistsā€
          • Between Regressive Left and Secular Liberals: ā€œLiberal Leftistsā€
          • Between Secular Liberals and Conservative Right: ā€œConservative Liberalsā€
          • Right of Conservative Right: ā€œNationalistsā€
          • Below Regressive Left and right of Violent Left: ā€œAntifa Fascistsā€
          • Below Conservative Right and left of Violent Right: ā€œFascistsā€

          Chart 5

          X-axis goes from ā€œSOCIALISMā€ on the left to ā€œCORPORATISMā€ on the right. Y-axis goes from ā€œLIBERTYā€ at the top to ā€œTYRANNYā€ at the bottom. On the Y-axis lies a thick double arrow labeled ā€œGOVERNMENTā€ and colored with a gradient from white at the top arrowhead labeled ā€œLESSā€ to red on the bottom arrowhead labeled ā€œMOREā€, resembling a compass needle.

          Near the top left and right corners of the diagram are labels ā€œLEFTā€ and ā€œRIGHTā€, respectively.

          Around the arrowā€™s shaft is a yellow circle of curved directional arrows, each pointing along the arc towards the bottom of the circle.

          Dashed lines from the top of the diagram curve around the needle and yellow circle similarly to magnetic field lines, converge back towards the center below the compass, and end in downward pointing arrowheads.

          Arranged around the yellow circle in terms of clock face hour hand positions:

          • 1 oā€™clock: ā€œINDEPENDENTSā€
          • 2 oā€™clock: ā€œCLASSICAL CONSERVATIVESā€
          • 5 oā€™clock: ā€œNEO-CONSERVATIVESā€
          • 7 oā€™clock: ā€œPROGRESSIVES/NEO-LIBERALSā€
          • 10 oā€™clock: ā€œCLASSICAL LIBERALSā€
          • 11 oā€™clock: ā€œLIBERTARIANSā€

          The left half of the X-axis is labeled ā€œLIBERALSā€ above and ā€œDEMOCRATSā€ on the bottom and a blue donkey symbol next to the needle. The right half is similarly labeled ā€œCONSERVATIVESā€ and ā€œREPUBLICANSā€ with a red elephant symbol.

          Above and below the X-axis are dashed horizontal lines. The area between the dashed lines is labeled ā€œMODERATESā€. The top dashed line is labeled ā€œLibertarianismā€ with arrows pointing upwards and the bottom dashed line is labeled ā€œSecular Moralismā€ with arrows pointing downwards.

          The top left of the moderates area is labeled ā€œJEFFERSONIANā€, top right is ā€œJACKSONIANā€, bottom left is ā€œWILSONIANā€ and bottom right ā€œHAMILTONIANā€.

          The field lines converging in from the left/right sides of the compass towards the bottom pass by labels ā€œPOLITICALLY CORRECTā€/ā€œPIOUSLY CORRECTā€, ā€œECONOMIC INTERVENTIONISMā€/ā€œMILITARY INTERVENTIONISMā€, ā€œCOMMUNISMā€/ā€œTHEOCRACYā€, respectively. They meed in the middle and pass through ā€œCOLLECTIVISMā€, ā€œFASCISMā€ and ā€œTOTALITARIANISMā€.

          TODO: Iā€™ll add transcriptions later.

          • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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            1 hour ago

            These people really want to complicate things when itā€™s really quite simple. Let me demonstrate with an elegant diagram.

            ...

            yes i spent an hour making this

          • swlabr@awful.systems
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            1 day ago

            LOL itā€™s almost as if the prerequisite to making a political compass is to be completely fucked in the head

            • swlabr@awful.systems
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              1 day ago

              Whatā€™s almost causing me to spiral is the commonality of socialism and communism being portrayed as on the road to monarchism. Iā€™m not spiralling because I very quickly realise that these are all made by idiots, and/or that what they are focusing on is the perception of socialism and communism as being authoritarian.

              That and ā€œantifa fascistsā€ in chart 4. AKA the Scists. lol

          • bitofhope@awful.systems
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            22 hours ago
            Chart 7

            ā€œTHE REAL POLITICAL SPECTRUMā€

            On the left ā€œSERVANTS OF THE AEONSā€, humanoid energy beings among space nebulae. On the right ā€œSLAVES OF THE ARCHONSā€, reptilian humanoids.

            The spectrum from left to right, with symbols in parentheses:

            • Gnosis(Ringed cross): Release from the mortal coil renders politics useless. All achieve oneness with the Monad and harmony is restored to the cosmos. See: The Nag Hammadi Library
            • Erisianism (chaos star): Total freedom. Management of affairs is unnecessary as universally well aligned chakras promote benevolent behaviour from all. See: Atlantis
            • Syndicalism (five-pointed star): Public participation in institutions is combined with no state. Affairs are managed at the local level. See: The Pirate Kingdom of Libertalia
            • Libertarianism (Gadsden rattlesnake): Public oversight of institutions is combined with a limited state. Affairs are managed at the local level. See: Early United States
            • Republicanism (classical colonnade): Influence of industry and finance on the state is controlled by a constitution and a system of check and balances. See: Early United States
            • Corporatocracy (dollar sign): State and industry form a de-facto alliance. Resource allocation subject to secret policy favouring the elite. See: The United States, European Union
            • Communism (hammer and sickle): Industry and state inseparable. Resource allocation subject to central policy. See: Soviet Russia, North Korea
            • Fascism (swastika): Industry and state inseparable. Resource allocation and reproduction subject to central policy. Eugenics in effect. See: Nazi Germany.
            • Monarchism (crown): All resources under the authority of hereditary elite. Elite practices eugenics in its own ranks. Underclass viewed as different species. See*: Feudal Europe*
            • Illuminism (eye of providence): Elite and underclass now form two distinct species. All worldā€™s resources controlled by the elite. All activities subject to central policy. See: Brave New World, Nineteen-Eighty Four
            Chart 8

            A conventional two-axis (Left/Right, Authoritarian/Libertarian) political compass chart. Authoritarian left, authoritarian right, and libertarian right all represented by a spooky profile portrait of Max Stirner smoking a cigar. Libertarian Left quadrant contains a smaller image of the diagram itself, which contains still smaller image of the diagram itself, except the libertarian left quadrant says ā€œdecentralized chomskian anarcho-molotov-cocktailismā€ in unreadably small type.

            I feel Iā€™ve lost enough sanity transcribing these that Iā€™m almost ready to make a political compass chart myself.

      • bitofhope@awful.systems
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        Hi, Iā€™m an unimtentional moderate centrist! I donā€™t have an ideology, only views! My overton window is a peephole! Kamala is a far leftist! Trump is orange! People should stop treating politics like team sports and join the non team sports tribe like me! Political correctness gone mad! Let me tell you about Chestertonā€™s fence! Everyoneā€™s sheeple except my flock! Say it with me: Iā€™m an independent thinker!

        • FredFig@awful.systems
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          Iā€™m just glad all my friends are such smart rational independent thinkers that weā€™ve all independently come to the same conclusion that the status quo is perfect!

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        Did they try to add a bell curve in a place where it shouldnā€™t be te last image? Im fascinated by how little sense it makes, and by how bad the adding a groupthink axis is.

      • flaviat@awful.systems
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        So ā€œunintentional moderatesā€ are those that both choose deliberately to believe in centrist political ideology and to participate in groupthink?

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    My University Keeps Sending Me Stupid Emails About AI, a continuing series:

    A poster that reads "This house believes that AI is the future of climate resilient design". There is also a picture of a robot.

    From the email:

    The debate will be chaired by Michael Pike. Speaking for the motion are Prof. Gregory Oā€™Hare (TCD), Maeve Hynes, Prof. Gary Boyd and Chatgpt assisted by Student Curator Ruan McCabe, all UCD. Speaking against the motion are David Capener (UU), Lucy Oā€™Connell, Peter Cody and Meabh Oā€™Leary, all UCD.

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      Artificial Intelligence is the future of climate resilient design in the same way that asian pseudo-medicinal ED treatments are the future of the white rhinoceros.

    • istewart@awful.systems
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      Notwithstanding the subject matter, I feel like Iā€™ve always gotten limited value from these Oxford-style university debates. KQED used to run a series called Intelligence Squared US that crammed it into an hour, and I shudder to think what thatā€™s become in the era of Trump and AI. It seems like a format that was developed to be the intellectual equivalent of intramural sports, complete with a form of scoring. But that contrivance renders it devoid of nuance, and also means it can be used to platform and launder ugly bullshit, since each side has to be strictly pro- or anti-whatever.

      Really, it strikes me as a forerunner of the false certainty and point-scoring inherent in Twitter-style short-form discourse. In some ways, the format was unconsciously pared down and plopped online, without any sort of inquiry into its weaknesses. Iā€™d be interested to know if anyone feels any different.

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        I have no knowledge or insight on the topic, but I used to get recommendations for ā€œintelligence squaredā€ videos on YouTube and I always thought it was a terrible, self-aggrandizing title for a series or event. Smart People Taking About Smart Things.

        • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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          Intelligence2 didnā€™t seem half bad when Robert Anton Wilson was the one talking about it way back when, in retrospect all the libertarianism was a real time bomb.

  • maol@awful.systems
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    I would also like to complain that I have finally started getting AI summaries in Google, and I may have to switch to a different search engine. Neither wanted nor needed!

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      The url manipulation trick doesnt work for you?

      E: this I mean, somebody even made a site for it. My own setup is weird and I have ancient strange habits so I just added it to my search bookmark.

  • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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    Elsevier doing some AI

    "So, [Elsevier] added an AI question and answer to my article in Computer & Education.

    The answers are wrong! They did not ask permission! The answers are WRONG!

    How is this science?!"

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    AI-Powered Wi-Fi 7 Versatile Outdoor/Indoor Mesh AP

    weā€™re at the ā€œthe washing machine without a dateclock is marked millenium-bug safe in its marketing brochuresā€ level of stupid

    (that might seem like a stupid comparison but itā€™s one of the things I most viscerally remember seeing from that time (when I was still a youngin who was still largely years away from computertouching))