Just two weeks til’ Halloween now.

Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’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 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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

    • lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems
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      18 days ago

      I really dislike how he believes that LLMs and fascism are “separate axes”. Where does he think the LLMs come from? Does the stork deliver them? Is ChatGPT powered by magic fairy dust? Does he think that Sam Altman is a great defender of liberalism and democracy who definitely hasn’t donated tons of money to Donald Trump?

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
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        5 days ago

        I really dislike how he believes that LLMs and fascism are “separate axes”. Where does he think the LLMs come from?

        valsorda worked at google for a very long time, well past when it became clear that they were no longer the good guys. his motivation for this was (only very slightly paraphrased) “well, it’s better than whatever else I might get in my home country” (italy)

        he’s also had a few choice other takes over the last few years, enough such that I stopped following his work. I would not be too surprised if he turns out to be quite a shit in some years to come

      • istewart@awful.systems
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        18 days ago

        I can’t help but think it’s another instance of the unquestioning Californian Ideology assumption that all new technology is inherently liberatory.

  • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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    19 days ago

    Decent monday morning take from robert evans:

    Schrodinger’s double-think.

    transcription

    Quote skeet:

    This is a researcher at Anthropic. Some of these people have lost their minds! What is mainlining Claude all day doing to them?

    there are basically two possible futures at this point. either we’re all going to die of[sic] the future is going to be Good beyond our wildest imagination. the trick is to hold this duality in your head and not be driven insane by one side.

    Robert Evans (the only Robert Evans):

    some of these people get so locked into a labyrinth of Rationalist thought experiments that they are no longer really capable of interacting with reality 1/2

    you can in fact limit the horizons of possibility in your own mind so severely that you are no longer able to “think” in a useful way 2/2

      • lurker@awful.systems
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        18 days ago

        They’re also incredibly horny about creating conscious digital slaves for some godforsaken reason

    • lurker@awful.systems
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      18 days ago

      Ah yes ‘only these two things are possible, dont consider any other outcome’ truly rational thought

      • lurker@awful.systems
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        18 days ago

        Also, ‘it’ll be Good beyond our wildest imagination’ is just the vaguest thing ever. ‘yeah bro AI is gonna make everything super good. How? Why? uhhh i dont know it just will’

          • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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            18 days ago

            We could unironically live in this world if only the powers that be would allow it. I’ve personally radicalized at least 3 basic bitches with this fact.