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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)WO
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6 mo. ago

  • Uranus is such a stupid name. The proper name for the world is Caelus. All the other planets use the Roman names of the gods. But for some reason, we decided to go with the Greek name in the one case that would obviously cause problems. The only reason "Uranus" and "anus" sound similar is that they have different roots. "Anus" comes from the Latin, while Uranus is Greek. The ancient Greeks didn't have this problem, as they only had the word for the deity. The Romans didn't have this problem, as they named their god Caelus. But for some asinine reason, we insist on calling the Seventh Planet Uranus instead of its proper Caelus.

    We should rename it. I don't care if scientists at the time of its discovery preferred Uranus. We're allowed to move to more sensible names. We shouldn't be stuck with this forever. In fact, Herschel, the original discoverer, wanted to name it George. Bode came up with the name Uranus, apparently unaware of the Latin/Greek mismatch.

    It's high time we give the Seventh World in our star system the proper respect it is due. The seventh planet is Caelus, not this ridiculous Uranus. We can do better.

  •  
            Cameron Arnold of Dallas, Texas
        Savanna Batten of Fort Worth, Texas
        Nathan Baumann of College Station, Texas
        Zachary Evetts of Waxahatchie, Texas
        Joy Gibson of Dallas, Texas
        Bradford Morris of Dallas, Texas
        Maricela Rueda of Fort Worth, Texas
        Seth Sikes of Kennedale, Texas
        Elizabeth Soto of Fort Worth, Texas
        Ines Soto of Fort Worth, Texas
    
    
      

    These are all American heroes.

  • Ah yes, there is a surprisingly common mutation in Georgia that causes humans to be born with an additional elbow and forearm on each arm. The Atlanta mutation it is commonly called. This is why, famously, people born in the state of Georgia are prohibited from participating in any Olympic event that involves throwing or hurling objects.

  • Yeah, except we'll have thousands of nutjobs running around. Each running their own instance of your New Testament LLM. Each thoroughly convinced they are the messenger of the new digital messiah. According to the text of the Bible, many people walked away from their lives and abandoned everything to follow Him. Considering what we observe in modern cults, that doesn't seem an unlikely historical reality.

    An LLM trained on the words of Jesus won't just tell people to live good lives. It will be telling people, "give everything up and follow Me (the computer.) And if it was a good enough LLM, it would be pretty persuasive for good number of people. The one saving grace is that JesusGPT isn't going to be healing the sick, walking on water, or raising the dead any time soon. But words alone can be quite dangerous.

  • Well, I hereby urge Trump to execute Stephen Falco, the evangelical preacher with the Sure Foundation Baptist Church. He believes in a demonic version of God that creates LGBT people and them judges them harshly for it. He in fact does not actually worship God, he worships the Devil. And he will burn in Hell for eternity for it. He's therefore a heretic and demon worshiper, and he deserves to be executed for blaspheming the good name of the Creator. I believe the traditional punishment is burning at the stake.

    If he can advocate my execution, then I can damn well advocate for his.

  • Oh God, we already have a problem with people believing ChatGPT is giving them divine visions and prophecies. The last thing we need is LLMs specifically trained on holy texts! You'll have a tenth of the population believing in their new digital prophet.

    Jesus Fucking Christ. We're going to have to go full Butlerian Jihad here, aren't we?

  • I think you're confusing fascism with general reactionary behavior and generic racism/bigotry. Fascism is more specific than that. A core part of fascism is that it ultimately doesn't believe in anything. It's just power for the sake of power. You demonize minority groups primarily just a cynical tool to gain power. Do you think Republican politicians actually personally care much about trans people? I'm sure they're not exuberant fans of trans folks, but until very recently, Republican politicians were fine treating trans people with simple neglect rather than overt hostility. But the movement needed a new enemy, and so they all learned to tow the line.

    If you trained an LLM on pre-2015 right wing literature, it wouldn't have monstrous opinions of trans people. That hadn't yet become party orthodoxy. And while this is one example, there are many others that work on much shorter time frames. Fascism is all about following the party line, and the party line is constantly shifting. You can train an LLM to be a loyal bigot. You can't train an LLM to be a loyal fascist. Ironically, it's because the LLMs actually stand by their principles much better than fascists.

  • There are some errors in the "correct" numbers For example, note that the respondents estimated that 89% of Americans have a high school diploma or higher. Yet the chart says the real figure is 65%. But doesn't that seem odd to you? Do you think on average 35% of people drop out of high school?

    No, the source of this error is that the question is poorly worded. 90% of Americans 25 or older have a college degree. The graphic indicates the poll asked specifically about adults. And it seems the respondents had the correct answer, about 90%.

    I don't know where they get the figure that only 65% of adults have a high school degree. My best estimate is that they mixed up "the percentage of adults with a high school degree" and "the percent of people with a high school degree." The latter would count all current K12 students, as they obviously don't have their diploma yet.

    This is one item that really stood as an obvious and glaring error. And if I can see this one, I wonder if other numbers in either the 'correct' responses or the respondents' results are just due to poor or incorrect phrasing/interpretation of questions.

    I have two master's degrees, have spent years teaching undergraduate engineering courses, am working on a dual-major PhD in engineering...and I...apparently...cannot read a plot.

  • There’s a lot more going on in politics than “insert vote, recieve outcome voted for”. Gerrymandering, simply being stuck in an area where you are the political minority, politicians campaigning on an entriely different platform than the actions they take later while in office… I could go on, but I expect my words would be wasted.

    Irrelevant. I speak only of intent.

    The dead girls weren’t even old enough to vote.

    Then they didn't vote for anything, and thus my blessing/curse is irrelevant.

    I wish for people to get exactly what they voted for. If you voted for compassion to others, I wish for compassion for you. If you voted to hurt other people, I wish for you to get every ounce of cruelty you wished upon others to be brought down upon your own head.

    In b4 you start running your mouth off about how it’s okay to wish death on the bad people because of what they’re doing to you/the good people. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and even if it did, you’re aimed at the wrong targets. Get your scope zeroed in properly.

    I wish only that people's cruelty be directed right back to them. If you feel that someone telling you "I hope you get what you voted for" is anything but a blessing, then that says some pretty damning things about you. If you voted for good intentions to others, then I am wishing good things to you. If you voted because you wanted to see people killed, then I hope your wrath falls on your head instead.

  • Honestly, I've been pawing through the list of medical conditions that let you still be eligible for the new covid booster. I have something that I think will qualify. But my funnier goto is that depression is one of the eligible conditions. And nothing makes me more depressed than an anti-science quack running our vaccine system!

  • There is a saying I've been using a lot lately:

    "May you get exactly what you voted for."

    I love it, because It works as both a blessing and a curse. If they voted for kindness and compassion, then I'm wishing them well. If they voted for chaos and cruelty, then I hope that cruelty falls down upon them the hardest. You can tell someone this seven if you're not exactly sure how they voted. Though, if they react poorly, you probably just found out.

  • It's not even a problem of fiction or lies. AIs don't care about truth. They exist orthogonally to truth. They're just averaging a large body of text. If fascists had a consistent narrative and worldview, then this wouldn't be a problem. If they all devoutedly followed the same religion, and defined their whole worldview accordingly, then an AI could be trained on that religion. And it would never stray from orthodoxy. AIs don't know truth; they only know their training data. And as long as you have a large volume of consistent training data, you can train them to repeat anything.

    The problem for fascist LLMs is that fascism isn't consistent through time. It's the Orwellian "we've always been at war with East Asia" factor in play. Fascists don't even try to be internally consistent. What was party orthodoxy today can be unforgivable heresy tomorrow. And AIs just can't keep up with what is supposed to be the story this week. Human fascists can handle that kind of rapid heel-turn. LLMs can't. Once they're trained; they're trained. If you want them to be up-to-date on the latest party lies, you have to be continuously training new versions of the fascist LLM.

    You can't train LLMs to be fascist beyond just very general traits like having overt racial prejudice. But even that's not always useful, as fascists are inconsistent about what racial groups are deserving of annihilation from one week to the next.

    So it's not so much that fascist AIs fail because of reality's liberal bias. It's that fascists don't believe in a consistent version of reality. And without that, LLMs just can't keep up with the whirlwind of lies.

  • I've been on tirzepatide for maybe three months at this point. I highly recommend it. I think the risks are massively overblown. It's predictable fear-mongering that is simply an understandable reaction to how greedy the pharma companies are with their pricing on it. If you can't afford it, it's tempting to convince yourself it would be a bad thing to take it anyway.

    I can't afford it, but instead of spreading FUD about it, I found a third way. I just pirate the shit out of it! I'm not just taking tirz, I'm taking bootleg tirz! So far I've dropped from about 180 to 150.

  • ¿Por qué no los dos?

    I'll take every vaccine I can get. Hell, I would sign up for the smallpox vaccine if I could get it, even though that disease hasn't existed in the wild in decades. I want every covid booster. I want it all! Jab me up, give me that sweet MRNA!

    And I'll take the other stuff too. I love me a good edible. I'm on tirzepatide myself, even though insurance doesn't cover it. How do I afford it? Simple! I pirate the hell out of it!