lel's recent activity
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Comment on US President Joe Biden raises tariffs on $18 billion of Chinese imports: EVs, solar panels, batteries and more in ~finance
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Comment on Everything is Sludge, art in the post-human era in ~humanities
lel Link ParentFor what it's worth, my experience is the reverse. Right now is definitely the first I've seen anyone refer to AI content as sludge (though I've seen people talk about content sludge to refer to...For what it's worth, my experience is the reverse. Right now is definitely the first I've seen anyone refer to AI content as sludge (though I've seen people talk about content sludge to refer to human generated content before so I get where it's coming from), but I've seen people use the phrase "AI slop" regularly for easily a year now. Searching on Twitter seems to give me far more instances of people saying "AI slop" than "AI sludge", not that that means anything at all. I'm not saying you're wrong about the popularity of sludge, just saying that slop is definitely in vogue in a lot of circles too.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel Link ParentYes, if you want to get the most out of your vote, and your goal is to disincentivize the Democratic Party from committing further genocide, you should not vote for Biden (whether you then vote...Yes, if you want to get the most out of your vote, and your goal is to disincentivize the Democratic Party from committing further genocide, you should not vote for Biden (whether you then vote for a third party or not), because the alternative is to directly incentivize the Democratic Party to commit further genocide. There is a groundswell of support already, and it is reflected in the polls you have posted. The national narrative right now is entirely about Gaza, turn on the nearest TV or ask your coworkers what the big issue is right now. If Biden loses, it will be widely attributed to Gaza. I don't know how you think that's even debatable.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel Link ParentI don't know what to say to this except that if you don't think people are really withholding their votes due to Gaza, you don't have anything to worry about. So that's good!I don't know what to say to this except that if you don't think people are really withholding their votes due to Gaza, you don't have anything to worry about. So that's good!
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel Link ParentI would take those things too, but given that protests related to this have sucked all the oxygen out of the media atmosphere for weeks now, and the genocide for months now, probably yes. I would...I would take those things too, but given that protests related to this have sucked all the oxygen out of the media atmosphere for weeks now, and the genocide for months now, probably yes. I would also direct you to the results of question 2 in your first link.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel (edited )Link ParentYeah I don't think I can keep going with you because I'm having a hard time convincing myself you believe any of the things you're saying and the tone will only get more aggressive, but when I...Without a doubt. But the fact that there will be harm in the future is no reason to allow greater harm now.
Yeah I don't think I can keep going with you because I'm having a hard time convincing myself you believe any of the things you're saying and the tone will only get more aggressive, but when I said that Republicans would
eventually win an election, I was not saying any of the stuff you're implying I was saying. I was pointing out that the political horizon you're describing is that the apocalypse is coming the next time a Republican wins and this is unavoidable but could maybe be delayed, and the political action this has led you to is rewarding the Democrats for committing genocide indefinitely. If its your actual belief that the options are Democrats win indefinitely or Republicans destroy the country forever, the politics that leads you to is a politics where the Republicans and Democrats both continue to do genocide. The alternative is a project of reforming the Democrats to not commit genocide. Your original argument that this is wrong because the Democratic Party would instead learn the lesson that voters want fascism doesn't make sense, since they have at their disposal ample polling data showing that their own voters are in revolt over the genocide, and not because they secretly want fascism. Have a nice day and I'll see you in Nineteen Eighty-Four I guess. -
Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel Link ParentYes, as the system selects for results that receive the most votes (ignoring the electoral college, and all that does is mean that Dems need even more votes). I don't know what your argument is...Yes, as the system selects for results that receive the most votes (ignoring the electoral college, and all that does is mean that Dems need even more votes). I don't know what your argument is for why the Democrats would see an electoral loss with low turnout from their own voters who have expressed through polling that this issue is significant and they overwhelmingly disagree with Joe Biden doing genocide, and conclude something other than that doing a genocide cost them the election.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel (edited )Link ParentAlright, that's certainly fair. Obviously I'm not denying that deontologists exist, although my personal experience is just that all of the many Dems in my life who say they're withholding their...This is precisely an expression of the utilitarian worldview rather than some unique property of voting
Alright, that's certainly fair. Obviously I'm not denying that deontologists exist, although my personal experience is just that all of the many Dems in my life who say they're withholding their votes consciously perceive it as an act of protest aimed at the end of the Dems not being genocidal anymore. All I was saying in the last post was that someone referring to their own endorsement doesn't point to a deontological motive given that endorsement is a universal description of what a vote is, independent of moral framework. If I wanted to phrase it more precisely I should have said
the thing is that voting is conceptually about expressing endorsement or discontent. But not NECESSARILY as its own end.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel Link ParentYou're getting a Democratic Party that knows that in the future it can't fund a genocide and expect its voters to show up afterward, and who will thereafter be disincentivized from doing so....If you're further left than Biden and Trump wins, you're not getting anything you want.
You're getting a Democratic Party that knows that in the future it can't fund a genocide and expect its voters to show up afterward, and who will thereafter be disincentivized from doing so. That's more than a little something. Whether you think that outweighs whatever you imagine to be the consequences of Trump winning is another question, but it's very clear what Democrats who are withholding their votes are hoping to get, and it's a Democratic Party that doesn't do genocides.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel (edited )Link ParentWelllll, I think outside the context of voting this is a fine way to separate deontological motives from utilitarian ones, but the thing is that voting is conceptually about expressing endorsement...On the one hand, there are people who say "I cannot bring myself to vote democrat": I think it's clear that in most cases, those people feel that they don't want to be complicit, that their vote is morally an endorsement. This is a deontological thing to do.
Welllll, I think outside the context of voting this is a fine way to separate deontological motives from utilitarian ones, but the thing is that voting is conceptually about expressing endorsement or discontent. But not as its own end. The idea is supposed to be that collective expressions of endorsement and discontent impact government policy (how little or much is more than debatable), which is how you get to people concocting complicated trolley problems in their head about the impact of individual votes on that policy. In the context of voting, expressing endorsement or discontent is a means aimed at some utilitarian end, or you wouldn't even go. I've never heard someone say that they go and vote purely to indirectly imply some expression of their beliefs on paper. Maybe voting is all about pouring out your heart on paper for some people but I don't think that's as obviously implied by those kinds of statements as you do.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel Link ParentWhat I'm saying is that I think you're seeing people say "I won't vote for a party doing a genocide" or "I won't participate in the Democratic Party", and ascribing deontological motives onto it,...What I'm saying is that I think you're seeing people say "I won't vote for a party doing a genocide" or "I won't participate in the Democratic Party", and ascribing deontological motives onto it, and I'm not certain why given that the utilitarian motive of not wanting the Democratic Party to do a genocide is already implied in those statements.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel (edited )Link ParentLike I said, to anyone who is thinking about this election as a referendum on whether the US should keep doing a genocide, it very much is mutually exclusive, because in utilitarian terms...Asking those questions is necessary but is not in any way mutually exclusive with spending a moment to pull the lever.
Like I said, to anyone who is thinking about this election as a referendum on whether the US should keep doing a genocide, it very much is mutually exclusive, because in utilitarian terms answering those questions avoids harm and pretending those questions don't exist causes it. Again, I'm not really planning to start a fight on here where we spit random facts at each other to try to convince each other that one of the tracks will have more corpses on it. But your argument for why we can't try to tell Democrats to stop doing genocide seems to be some kind of weird conspiracy theory about how the next time a Republican becomes president they will become a dictator forever? I don't really think that is coherent enough to demand a response, but if that's your argument, is your plan to make sure a Republican is literally never president again for the rest of time? I have news for you, a Republican will some day be president again, maybe even this time around. They're a large and popular political party! You can think that when that happens they're going to enshrine dictatorial rule immediately or whatever you believe, and I guess I can't do anything about that, but I don't think any of what you're saying matches with reality or makes much internal sense.
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Comment on Macklemore - Hind's Hall (2024) in ~music
lel Link ParentThis is going to be very long and I'm sorry. But I think a large part of it is that it's arguably a more complicated situation than the trolley problem as it's depicted in that simplistic cartoon...- Exemplary
This is going to be very long and I'm sorry. But I think a large part of it is that it's arguably a more complicated situation than the trolley problem as it's depicted in that simplistic cartoon people sarcastically post, or as the trolley problem is traditionally posed in ethics classes. Abstract away issues other than Palestine for now. If you think that the choice is between "guy who is funding a genocide" and "guy who will likely also fund a genocide", that's not really an obvious decision. Will Trump winning help? Almost certainly not, but we know Biden winning will at best keep things the same. Meanwhile, the argument that Biden losing will actually hurt is just vague "obviously Trump would be worse, he's, like, a bad guy" speculation, which seems to be pretty clearly undercut by the factual reality that both of these guys have been the president before and only one of them actually did anything like this. To repeat, Trump will not be better, but Biden is infamously far more pro-Israel than basically anyone else in American politics and has been for his entire career. It was pretty widely understood back in '08 that Biden became Obama's running mate in part because the Israel lobby was scared of Obama (for both racist reasons and reasons related to Obama's very mildly pro-Palestinian-lives politics) and they wanted to balance him out with a true believer. Which track is worse? All of the facts suggest Biden, all of the vibes (I totally agree, and I feel it too!) suggest Trump, even though it's pretty hard to imagine how that's even conceptually possible.
So the mere reality that a situation can be modeled as a type of trolley problem does not make that decision obvious, even if you take utilitarianism as a given, because the choices of how you evaluate each track are completely speculative and on some level vibes-oriented. But then you can move beyond even that to the structure of your trolley problem. Sure, you can model the situation as the trolley problem, but all trolley problems are not made equally. Here, for example, you can just choose to see it as a bogstandard trolley problem: the thousands of people we imagine Biden is going to continue to kill because it is what he has been doing all along are weighed against the thousands of people we imagine Trump is going to start to kill because he's also pro-Israel and feels like a worse guy. Both tracks just sort of awkwardly end in 2027. Under this model, if you (again) choose to imagine that the number of thousands Trump is going to kill is greater than the number of thousands Biden is going to kill, then I guess that gives the problem an easy answer.
But you could also, maybe even accurately, choose to model it as a modified trolley problem where after each track with thousands of people on it there is another switch with another pair of tracks. The two tracks have, again, comparable and ill-defined numbers of corpses on them. But now, on the track where Biden wins, Democrat politicians learn that they can do a genocide and get away with it, and both of the downstream tracks get substantially worse. Meanwhile, on the track where Biden loses, polling shows (as it does already) that this is a massive issue, everyone in his own party was mad at him about it, and many people who held their noses and voted for him in 2020 were unwilling to do so in 2024 because he did a genocide. If that happens, both downstream tracks get substantially better, because it has been established that teaming up with Israel to commit a genocide is not something that is politically survivable. If you're someone who finds this model more convincing, then the simple model is not only wrong but also actively harmful, because, if believed by a critical mass of people, it ensures that all of the downstream tracks get worse every election forever.
And then you might even move beyond that to the artificiality of the trolley problem as it has been imposed on this situation to begin with. When the trolley problem is posed in an ethics class, "Wait, why the hell are there people strapped to these tracks, and why is choosing between these two tracks my only option?" is not an interesting question, because it's a thought experiment so that's not the point. When a situation comparable to the trolley problem happens in real life, the question of who strapped everyone to the tracks and whether your behavior is rewarding or even incentivizing them to continue strapping people to the tracks becomes very real and has practical downstream consequences that can be modeled as their own separate trolley problem.
You can choose to see people saying "my values are that genocide is too far" as deontological, but you could just as easily see it as a utilitarian choice, a trolley problem weighing a future where "Palestinians keep dying at an accelerating rate" is written on both tracks in the cartoon in every future election against a future where that isn't the case. You don't have to agree with any of the arguments I've given -- you might have some set of facts that you think makes it obvious that Trump would be worse, or that Democrats won't stop doing genocides just because of their voters revolting, or whatever other specific point you want to disagree on. That's a fight that's hard to have on Tildes and I'm not going to get into it because it will inevitably turn into a demented flamewar.
But the point of what I'm saying is that what you imagine the structure of the trolley tracks to be is necessarily subjective, how and in what terms you evaluate the utility value assigned to each track is necessarily subjective, and your choice of how far along the track to stop looking for tied up bodies is necessarily subjective. That is all within a perfectly utilitarian framework, whether you think people who answer those questions differently than you are right or wrong. To suggest as you have that all of the people who refuse to vote for genocide are just choosing to make bad things happen in order to assert their values seems nonsensical -- they have an argument in their head for why voting for genocide makes bad things happen and not voting for genocide avoids those bad things!
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Comment on Report: Potential New York Times lawsuit could force OpenAI to wipe ChatGPT and start over in ~tech
lel (edited )Link ParentIt's so interesting how AI written text always feels like AI written text, no matter who it's told to copy. I think part of it is its unwavering but utterly neutered positivity, like an HR email...It's so interesting how AI written text always feels like AI written text, no matter who it's told to copy. I think part of it is its unwavering but utterly neutered positivity, like an HR email or something, but that doesn't capture the whole thing. Part of it is the way it structures every output like a middle school hamburger essay -- it goes so far as to say "In conclusion" to start the last paragraph of the "New York Times" article. And when it's told to try to be someone funny, the way it does that is by tactically inserting what it thinks are jokes at regular, precise intervals, like someone writing their first ever standup set after doing a full scansion of a Bill Hicks appearance or something. But even when someone does that, it feels clumsy, not deeply unnatural in the way AI's attempts are. And usually its attempts at being funny are just saying things in a weird way or using a goofy word like a middle schooler.
I dunno. The most intriguing part about AI text to me is that I don't think I've ever seen an AI text output that doesn't ooze "this is an AI text output" from every line, in the same way I don't think I've ever seen an AI image output that doesn't ooze "this is an AI image output" from every pixel. But the human uncanny valley spidey-sense is really only geared toward images, so the uncanny valley presents itself far differently in text form with AI text than it does with AI generated images.
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Comment on This is how we finally kill TurboTax in ~finance
lel Link ParentYeah, it's a crime to give them incorrect information intentionally.Yeah, it's a crime to give them incorrect information intentionally.
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Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 is causing some developers to panic in ~games
lel Link ParentIf anything, it feels to me like the title has some serious risk of hurting it, honestly. I know, as someone who has never played Baldur's Gate but knew it was a '90s RPG game series, that I saw...And lastly, this reoccurring point I see about it being successful because it has the name "Baldur's Gate" on it is kind of silly. BG2 came out almost 24 years ago. It is not the powerhouse name that older gamers think it is anymore.
If anything, it feels to me like the title has some serious risk of hurting it, honestly. I know, as someone who has never played Baldur's Gate but knew it was a '90s RPG game series, that I saw the 3 in the title and let air out through my nose and then never bought it because it can be intimidating getting into any franchise with a continuing story in any medium 25 years late, especially one that has a metatextual story spanning several videogames and dnd game books.
Obviously the popularity of it means they must have made it very easy to get into 25 years late, and I'm more tempted now, but I have to imagine there are people out there who saw that it was the newest entry in a 25 year old franchise (or for a lot of people that it was the direct sequel to a game that looks like this) and figured it was inaccessible to them.
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Comment on Backward compatibility, Go 1.21, and Go 2 in ~comp
lel Link ParentJesus, I used to use lobste.rs and I kind of forgot how much of a colosseum it is in there. Now that I see all the people yelling at each other in that thread, I do remember a period of a few...Jesus, I used to use lobste.rs and I kind of forgot how much of a colosseum it is in there. Now that I see all the people yelling at each other in that thread, I do remember a period of a few years where any mention of Go anywhere in any thread on the entire website would lead to whatever thread it was in becoming a massive Go vs. Rust brawl for no reason. Just goes to show that making your site invite only doesn't necessarily create what Tildes has absent moderation and a community that is interested in keeping that kind of stuff in check.
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Comment on Batman is a jerk in ~comics
lel Link ParentWhich is funny because this is the exact opposite of the argument made in Bill's monologue at the end of Kill Bill. I've never read comics but one of my old roommates was into them, and when he...Which is funny because this is the exact opposite of the argument made in Bill's monologue at the end of Kill Bill. I've never read comics but one of my old roommates was into them, and when he first saw that scene when I showed him Kill Bill he started yelling that it was wrong. I wouldn't know. My understanding now is that apparently Clark Kent is best understood as Superman's alter ego in like golden and silver age comics, but that this characterization seems to have flipped since then?
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Comment on Unicode thanks Blue Blocker, our newest Silver Sponsor! in ~tech
lel Link ParentEverything he has done has been so funny. He bought an asset that essentially got its value from three places: (1) Being advertiser-friendly and having one of the biggest userbases of any website...Everything he has done has been so funny. He bought an asset that essentially got its value from three places:
(1) Being advertiser-friendly and having one of the biggest userbases of any website in the world to draw advertising revenue,
(2) Having an existing code base that was solid and worked, and
(3) Being one of the most famous and recognizable brands to literally ever exist, with multiple dictionary entries, etc.And he (1) drove away oodles of users while also pissing off advertisers by getting rid of verification for companies and turning the website into a nazi / child porn-friendly nightmare realm, so now all the ads are for dick pills, pyramid schemes, and fake colleges, (2) fired every employee which then broke the code base so the website crashes every day and everyone can only view a few posts a day, and (3) just replaced, again, one of the most recognizable brands to ever exist with something completely unmarketable.
It's a crash course in how to bring an asset's value to zero.
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Comment on ChatGPT's odds of getting code questions correct are worse than a coin flip in ~tech
lel Link ParentAccording to the paper they used 3.5. That being said, in my experience with GPT-4, it is overhyped and hallucinates just as often, though I would really like to see this repeated with 4.According to the paper they used 3.5. That being said, in my experience with GPT-4, it is overhyped and hallucinates just as often, though I would really like to see this repeated with 4.
It doesn't affect you as an American citizen beyond how it affects you as a consumer. It doesn't affect you as a consumer beyond ensuring you can't get affordable EVs for the foreseeable future. On a wider level, it doesn't affect anything at all except in how it plays into our overall economic cold war with China, which is to say that it's in the US's economic interests and against China's, as you point out. If either good things happening to the US or bad things happening to China make a little happy light flick on in your head, you will like this decision. If not, then not.
This is why the argument you got back to your rebuttal about slave labor in this discussion about EV manufacturing was an irrelevant but fair point about China being cruel to Uyghurs. The way China manufactures EVs has little to do with this decision, except to the extent that it risks allowing China to outperform the US on the market. But the manufacturing of EVs has nothing at all to do with people's reactions to this decision. From the US's perspective, the point is bolstering the U.S.'s economic interests relative to China. From powerless online posters' perspective, the point is team sports. This is equally true of those who say their problem with China is irrelevant moral concerns, those who say their problem with China is that it manufactures EVs in the same way they're going to be manufactured now, and those who say their problem with China is ... that they're going to put backdoors in all of their technology to destroy the US in a coordinated cyberattack.
I can more than understand someone having problems with China. If your politics are "fuck China for reasons x y z" and you perceive this decision as fucking China, then approving of this decision is merely behaving rationally. If your politics are "fuck the US for reasons x y z" and you perceive this decision as helping the US, then disapproving of this decision is merely behaving rationally. If your politics are "fuck China, fuck Trump", then approving of this decision and disapproving of it when Trump did the same thing is merely behaving rationally. Other concerns are factually irrelevant to the reason Biden made the decision, and logically incoherent when applied to people's responses to it. These are the actual terms of the debate.
As you have shown, the possibility of underpaid or slave labor being used in the process is factually not something anyone factored into the decision, nor could it factor into anyone's reactions to it. Due to the way Chinese manufacturing is structured, there would be plenty of underpaid and slave labor involved in producing EVs if we bought them from China. Due to the way non-Chinese global manufacturing and American domestic manufacturing are structured, there will be plenty of underpaid and slave labor involved in producing EVs when we do not buy them from China. Taking underpaid or slave labor out of the equation is not actually a proposition on the table here, was not a factor in the decision-making process of those in power, and is not a factor in the libinal spectator response of anyone out of power.
Trying to take moral sides on dry economic positional contests between two world powers doesn't really make any sense unless you're just acting out your moral priors with respect to one or both of those two world powers, which is precisely why moral arguments about this decision inevitably devolve into debates about the parties' unrelated moral priors on the US and China. Otherwise, I guess you might be mad about it because it is going to impede your ability to personally buy an EV or might debatably hinder world climate goals. Otherwise, the most that really makes any sense to say about this decision is that it is economically and geopolitically correct from the US's point of view and is therefore unsurprising. And it's fucking international economic policy so I'm still not sure why we're expecting more than that. Countries impose tariffs in response to perceived economic threats all the time. Anyone struggling to contort their mind to imagine how it's secretly a brave humanitarian intervention just seems like they're firmly in the grip of ideology to me.