psi's recent activity
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Comment on Some of my family members aren't convinced that ICE isn't overstepping and that they are just deporting people that broke the law, can you help me share unbiased links that proves they are? in ~society
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of February 9 in ~society
psi Link ParentThe Trump admin blamed Cartel drones, but per the New York Times, it appears that CBP fired off anti-drone lasers without coordinating with the FAA. "What We Know About the El Paso Airspace...The Trump admin blamed Cartel drones, but per the New York Times, it appears that CBP fired off anti-drone lasers without coordinating with the FAA.
Multiple people briefed on the situation said the abrupt airspace closure was prompted by Customs and Border Protection officials deploying an anti-drone laser in the area without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial planes.
Further, according to multiple people familiar with the situation, the F.A.A.’s move came after immigration officials earlier this week used an anti-drone laser shared with them by the Defense Department without coordination with the aviation agency. The C.B.P. officials thought they were firing on a cartel drone, the people said, but it was a party balloon.
The Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The F.A.A. declined to comment.
According to the people briefed on the matter, at the time the F.A.A. closed the airspace, it had not yet completed an assessment of possible risks posed by the new anti-drone technology to other aircraft. Two of the people added that F.A.A. officials had warned the Pentagon that if they were not given enough time and information for their review, they would have no choice but to shut down the airspace near the anti-drone system.
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Comment on Why computers won’t make themselves smarter - Ted Chiang in ~tech
psi (edited )Link ParentMore compute doesn't necessarily translate into better results, however. Anyone who's ever trained a neutral network knows that the loss tends to level off eventually, and that if you want to...Whoops! Compute-scaling.
More compute doesn't necessarily translate into better results, however. Anyone who's ever trained a neutral network knows that the loss tends to level off eventually, and that if you want to improve performance, you either have to retune your hyperparameters or obtain better data. But tuning hyperparameters can only take you so far, and there is only so much quality data that exists. That implies an upper limit somewhere.
Perhaps LLMs, having been trained on human text, will plateau under optimized circumstances to the theoretical upper limit for human intelligence. That would be incredibly useful, to be sure, but definitionally not superintelligence.
Or to be even more speculative, perhaps human-level intelligence is near the theoretical upper limit of biological or even "computational" intelligence. (One can always wonder why humans didn't evolve to be cleverer.) Under this regime, superintelligence would be impossible to achieve regardless of technique or technology.
For now we're squarely in the non-superintelligence era. LLMs can augment human work, turning the output of a non-expert to something more advanced, but it doesn't produce results that are unachievable by human cognition. The LLM responses might come faster, but for the same reason that you can't "run" a rat faster and have it produce quantum mechanics, the near-instantaneous responses of an LLM don't prove that LLMs are more capable. We won't be able to conclude that superintelligence exists until LLMs (or something else) can produce objectively correct results whose derivations are inscrutable to domain experts.
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Comment on Humble Choice - February 2026 in ~games
psi Link ParentIn general, I'm okay with different prices in different regions from an equity standpoint, but it doesn't really make sense in this case. If anything, a key from Europe might cost more than a key...In general, I'm okay with different prices in different regions from an equity standpoint, but it doesn't really make sense in this case. If anything, a key from Europe might cost more than a key from the US, as the prices tend to be exactly the same numerical value except with the $-symbol replaced with a €-symbol.
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Comment on Humble Choice - February 2026 in ~games
psi (edited )Link ParentHey, sorry for your bad luck. I also had a similar experience with region lock screwing me over. I purchased a Humble Choice bundle a couple years back specifically for an advertised 20% discount...Hey, sorry for your bad luck. I also had a similar experience with region lock screwing me over.
I purchased a Humble Choice bundle a couple years back specifically for an advertised 20% discount on Metaphor: ReFantazio, but I didn't check the expiration dates for any of the items since I had planned to redeem the keys/coupon later that day. So you can imagine how annoyed I was when I tried to use the Metaphor: ReFantazio coupon a few hours later -- you know, the thing I had specifically bought the bundle for -- and realized that the coupon had just expired. Like, it wasn't even the end of the month yet! How could you have a Humble Choice item that expires before the bundle does?
But I still wanted this game, and at this point I was already 12 euros in the hole, so I made my way to Fanatical for some sort of discount. I made the purchase. I went to Steam. I clicked redeem. And Steam told me: Thanks, but no thanks. The item was region locked to Germany.
I was no longer annoyed but outright pissed. I had been living in Germany for a couple years and had bought quite a few things on Fanatical, but this is the first time I had encountered a product that was region locked. It had never even occurred to me to check. (Lesson learned!)
Luckily, there was a fix: I just needed to change my region from the US to Germany. Unfortunately that means I have to deal with slightly higher prices forever more and am unable to access the occasional region-blocked game. But at least I can use my German bank account.
Anyway, this was really just a long way of saying: I feel you. But also, if you still have that Resident Evil Village key, I will totally take it.
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Comment on The film students who can no longer sit through films in ~movies
psi Link ParentTo be clear, I also don't think it's as simple as "Tiktok and pretty colours in my phone", either. I think it would be very difficult to disentangle the impacts of the pandemic, social media, and...To be clear, I also don't think it's as simple as "Tiktok and pretty colours in my phone", either. I think it would be very difficult to disentangle the impacts of the pandemic, social media, and LLMs on the current generation of college students. I also remember teaching during the pandemic (a physics lab no less!) and can personally attest to how awkward it was for me and my students.
But I think what made virtual learning even worse was that it was so easy to distract yourself. It's much more acceptable to check your instagram reels in the privacy of your own home than in the middle of a physics lab.
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Comment on The film students who can no longer sit through films in ~movies
psi Link ParentRight. I will remind people that one of the subplots from Requiem for a Dream -- a movie famous for its depiction of drug abuse -- involved a mother who was "addicted" to her television programs....Right. I will remind people that one of the subplots from Requiem for a Dream -- a movie famous for its depiction of drug abuse -- involved a mother who was "addicted" to her television programs. My parents, daycare, etc imposed time limits on television when I was a child, so yes, it was a widely discussed issue then.
But these concerns feel so quaint compared to our relationships with phones. Not only do most people carry today's dopamine dispenser with them everywhere they go, virtually everyone expects you to have one, making it infinitely more difficult to navigate the real world without one. It's just such an obvious recipe for disaster.
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Comment on Does anyone else find CBS News particularly stressful? in ~tv
psi Link ParentA particularly timely article: "Inside Bari Weiss’s Hostile Takeover of CBS News." The New Yorker. Probably the most egregious example of her tenure so farA particularly timely article:
Probably the most egregious example of her tenure so far
A few days before Christmas, “60 Minutes” was set to air a report on CECOT, the prison in El Salvador where the Trump Administration had sent more than two hundred deportees in March. The men, most of whom were from Venezuela, had been spirited out of the U.S. on a series of late-night flights, in violation of a federal judge’s court order. Sharyn Alfonsi, a “60 Minutes” correspondent, had interviewed two of them. The stories were harrowing. “There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” one of the men told her. She had reached out to the Trump Administration for comment but received only a cursory, two-sentence response.
Like all “60 Minutes” stories, the CECOT segment had been fact-checked and vetted by the network’s legal department. Five separate screenings were held for various editorial stakeholders. Weiss was supposed to attend the final screening, on Thursday afternoon, but she had missed it. She didn’t see the segment until late that night, e-mailing suggestions for a few changes that were incorporated into the piece. The network promoted the segment as the lead story for that Sunday’s episode. Alfonsi flew home to Texas.
The CECOT story was being finalized almost exactly as Ellison was pursuing another major expansion of his growing media empire. Earlier that month, he had launched a hostile takeover bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, the film-and-television conglomerate that had already announced a deal to be acquired by Netflix. In many ways, the outcome depended on Trump, since regulatory approval would be required for either sale to go through. “I’ll be involved in that decision,” Trump had told reporters.
For Ellison, this was suddenly a problem. “60 Minutes” had recently aired an interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Trump ally who had fallen out with the President over his resistance to releasing the F.B.I.’s files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP,” Trump posted on Truth Social after the interview aired. “Since they bought it, 60 minutes has actually gotten WORSE.”
On Saturday morning, Weiss, who reports directly to Ellison, told “60 Minutes” producers she was concerned that no officials from the Trump Administration had been interviewed on camera for the piece. Specifically, she wanted to include the Administration’s argument for its use of the Alien Enemies Act, an eighteenth-century law that Trump officials claimed allowed them to deport Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador without due process. “We should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority,” Weiss wrote in a note to the producers. “There’s a genuine debate here.” She had “tracked down” numbers for Tom Homan, the border czar, and Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief immigration adviser, which she sent to the “60 Minutes” team.
On Sunday, three hours before broadcast, the CECOT piece was officially pulled from the lineup. “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be,” Weiss said in a statement. “Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason—that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices—happens every day in every newsroom.” Alfonsi felt betrayed. “In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” she wrote in a note to her colleagues. “Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”
The next day, the Ellisons announced a significant sweetening of their bid for Warner Bros.: Larry would personally guarantee $40.4 billion of the funding. Weiss didn’t come to the CBS offices that day. She joined the morning’s daily editorial meeting via Zoom, beginning with what seemed like a rebuke of Alfonsi. “The only newsroom that I’m interested in running is one where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters and do so with respect, and, crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues,” Weiss said. “And anything else is absolutely unacceptable to me and should be unacceptable to you.”
That afternoon, during a “60 Minutes” staff meeting, Scott Pelley, a longtime correspondent, expressed frustration that Weiss hadn’t attended any of the screenings of the segment or communicated directly with Alfonsi. “She needs to take her job a little bit more seriously,” he said. A former CBS staffer was soon circulating an open letter to Ellison, expressing alarm at “a breakdown in editorial oversight” that risked “setting a dangerous precedent in a country that has traditionally valued press freedom.” A former CBS executive told me that, even if Weiss’s concerns had been valid, her decision to cut the segment at such a late hour had opened her up to charges of corporate interference: “It makes you wonder, Did someone call once they saw the promo on the air and then she spent more time on it because there was some big complaint?” Sources close to Weiss and Ellison said that Skydance leadership had zero involvement in the story and did not screen the piece.
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Comment on Scott A. on Scott A. on Scott A. in ~comics
psi (edited )Link ParentI would generally agree that Scott Alexander's post is the one people should read. (Other than the clever title, Scott Aaronson isn't contributing much to the discussion -- it's basically just...I would generally agree that Scott Alexander's post is the one people should read. (Other than the clever title, Scott Aaronson isn't contributing much to the discussion -- it's basically just blog spam.) But this particular excerpt makes me role my eyes. Alexander's complaint that "some percent of washed-up gifted kids compensate by really, really hating nerdiness, rationality, and the intellect" reads more like a whine than an observation, as if the only reason more people don't identify as rationalists is because of their own self-loathing (instead of, for example, being adverse to a movement that reduces the "super woke" to "self-hating nerds").
But otherwise there is some really fascinating stuff in that post, and I think Alexander's reasons for being interested in Scott Adams' life probably overlaps with at least some of our own reasons. Adams considered himself a reasonable person (who doesn't?), but he failed to understand why others saw the world differently from him. Rather than attempt to meet people in the middle, Adams dismissed their perspectives and assumed them intellectually inferior and victims of propaganda.
I think most of us here can relate to Adams' feelings to some extent, particularly in this time of political crisis. It's hard not to think that all Republicans are either propagandists or irrational when Trump calls Renee Good a "domestic terrorist" and Republicans double-down with the rhetoric. But identifying the breakdown is easy; moving forward is hard.
Adams' solution was to fully embrace the propaganda. He trained himself in the ways of hypnosis, writing quasi-religious treaties in which he would subconsciously "attempt to produce a feeling of euphoric enlightenment in the reader". Adams believed that, although reasoned discourse should guide policy, most people were not capable of reason and therefore should only receive the propaganda while their betters made the actual decisions. It is, to be sure, a perverse worldview, one that infantilizes anyone with a difference of opinion.
But if you categorically distrust those who disagree with you, then you probably also lack the self-awareness to realize when you're out of your depth. Adams' tragic irony was that he found himself drawn to conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific beliefs, going so far as to take ivermectin after his cancer diagnosis, despite the lack of medical evidence, which might well have accelerated his death. I consider his downfall, cancellation, and death a reminder to practice epistemic humility, that is, to acknowledge that while nobody ever intentionally believes something false, we are all certainly wrong about some things; and that if we automatically dismiss those we tend to disagree with, we risk locking ourselves out of the march towards truth.
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Why on earth have I seen the same Broadway show thirteen times? An investigation. (gifted link)
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Comment on Texas A&M, under new curriculum limits, warns professor not to teach Plato in ~humanities
psi Link ParentI think @FishFingus's point is that academics don't use the term "gender ideology" (Wikipedia redirects to the anti-gender movement instead). It's an intentionally nebulous term, similar to how...I think @FishFingus's point is that academics don't use the term "gender ideology" (Wikipedia redirects to the anti-gender movement instead). It's an intentionally nebulous term, similar to how the right throws around the term "critical race theory" (albeit with the distinction that critical race theory is, in fact, a thing, just not the thing conservatives think it is).
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Comment on Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit in ~tech
psi Link ParentFor what it's worth, Casey Newton (the author of the article) co-hosts the podcast Hard Fork, and I 100% expect them to discuss this story on this week's episode.For what it's worth, Casey Newton (the author of the article) co-hosts the podcast Hard Fork, and I 100% expect them to discuss this story on this week's episode.
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Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society
psi (edited )Link ParentI think it is both more and less nuanced than that, if you would permit the possibility. The NYT had a pretty good summary of the different schools of thought within the administration: "How Oil,...I think it is both more and less nuanced than that, if you would permit the possibility. The NYT had a pretty good summary of the different schools of thought within the administration:
[The campaign] reflects overlapping drives by Mr. Rubio and Mr. Miller, who have worked in tandem on policies against Mr. Maduro. Each has come to it with a focus on long-held goals: for Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, a chance to topple or cripple the governments of Venezuela and its ally, Cuba; and for Mr. Miller, an architect of Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration policies, the opportunity to further his goal of mass deportations and to hit criminal groups in Latin America.
Larger excerpt
This account of how Venezuela moved to the center of the administration’s foreign policy agenda this year — to the point of a possible war — is based on interviews with current and former U.S. officials, almost all of whom agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because of sensitivities about national security. Among the findings:
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Mr. Miller told White House officials in the spring to explore ways to attack drug cartels around their home countries in Latin America. Mr. Miller wanted attacks that could draw widespread attention to create a deterrent.
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The focus on Venezuela intensified after late May, when Mr. Trump was upset about tough negotiations involving Chevron. Venezuela’s oil has been more central to Mr. Trump’s deliberations than previously reported.
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In meetings in the early summer, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Miller talked with Mr. Trump about striking Venezuela. The president appeared swayed by Mr. Rubio’s argument that Mr. Maduro should be seen as a drug kingpin.
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Mr. Miller told officials that if the United States and Venezuela were at war, the Trump administration could again invoke the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law, to expedite deportations of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans the administration stripped of temporary protected status. He and Mr. Rubio had used it earlier in the year to summarily deport hundreds of Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador, only to be stopped by court rulings.
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The secret order for military action against the cartels that Mr. Trump signed on July 25, calling for maritime strikes, is the first known written directive from the president on such strikes. Administration officials referred to the boat attacks as “Phase One,” with SEAL Team Six taking the lead. They have discussed a vague “Phase Two,” with Army Delta Force units possibly carrying out land operations.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth kept many career uniformed military officials and lawyers from the drafting of the “execute order” that guides the boat strikes. As a result, the order had problematic holes in it, including a lack of language on how to deal with survivors.
Some want to topple Venezeula for its oil reserves, others (like Marco Rubio) are philosophically opposed to the Maduro regime, while Stephen Miller is doing it for the most reprehensible reasons possible (as an excuse for mass deportations).
Of course, none of those people have the final say. That would be Trump. But I honestly doubt Trump could articulate any of these justifications. My guess is that Trump has rotted his brain on conservative ragebait, which has for years demonized Venezuela as a socialist hellhole. And now Trump is being driven entirely from his id, reflexively drawn to the conclusion that Venezuela is bad and its government is bad and its people are bad but unable to explain why or to formulate any sort of long term strategy, instead choosing to offload the cognitive effort to others in his administration. The result is that there is no real justification, just a vibe and an all-you-can-eat buffet of pretexts.
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Comment on Stranger Things finale discussion in ~tv
psi (edited )Link ParentFor what its worth, I think the reveal with El is meant to be ambiguous. Personally I thought it was a nice touch, as it simultaneously gave the ending real stakes while also leaving room for hope.For what its worth, I think the reveal with El is meant to be ambiguous. Personally I thought it was a nice touch, as it simultaneously gave the ending real stakes while also leaving room for hope.
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Comment on Stranger Things finale discussion in ~tv
psi (edited )Link ParentI also thought it was pretty weird. I understood that this was supposed to be Joyce's cathartic moment, but the execution almost felt like a lynching. Like, here is a person who transgressed the...My biggest dislike with it was the gratuitous beheading of Vecna.
I also thought it was pretty weird. I understood that this was supposed to be Joyce's cathartic moment, but the execution almost felt like a lynching. Like, here is a person who transgressed the social norm, and rather than dealing with him through an act of justice (which probably actually means killing Vecna -- he was very dangerous after all!), the showrunners have Joyce kill him in this overtly violent manner while everyone else gives their silent approval.
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Comment on Stranger Things finale discussion in ~tv
psi (edited )Link ParentI tend to agree. Some episodes in the later seasons became extremely bloated, lasting as long as a feature-length film while barely trudging the plot forward. (In particular, I'm thinking of the...The show suffers from an immensely large cast. No plot point or relationship receives the appropriate attention it deserves because they have to move things forward for 20 different pairings, multiple friend groups, age groups, B plots, C plots, and the main story thread.
I tend to agree. Some episodes in the later seasons became extremely bloated, lasting as long as a feature-length film while barely trudging the plot forward. (In particular, I'm thinking of the parallel plot lines of season 3: Jim enduring a Russian prison, El regaining her powers, the hunt for El, the hunt for Jim, the hunt around the mall....) I wish the showrunners had dedicated episodes to subsets of the cast instead of constantly interrupting the pacing by switching back and forth between five ensembles.
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Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society
psi LinkThe US just kidnapped a head of state for reasons it can barely articulate. Wow.The US just kidnapped a head of state for reasons it can barely articulate. Wow.
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Comment on Backing up Spotify in ~music
psi (edited )Link ParentOn the other hand, they explicitly solicit donations from those wishing to use their catalog to train generative models, so it's not like their preservation efforts are exactly pro-author/-artist....On the other hand, they explicitly solicit donations from those wishing to use their catalog to train generative models, so it's not like their preservation efforts are exactly pro-author/-artist. From elsewhere on their site:
LLM data
It is well understood that LLMs thrive on high-quality data. We have the largest collection of books, papers, magazines, etc in the world, which are some of the highest quality text sources.
Unique scale and range
Our collection contains over a hundred million files, including academic journals, textbooks, and magazines. We achieve this scale by combining large existing repositories.
Some of our source collections are already available in bulk (Sci-Hub, and parts of Libgen). Other sources we liberated ourselves. Datasets shows a full overview.
Our collection includes millions of books, papers, and magazines from before the e-book era. Large parts of this collection have already been OCR’ed, and already have little internal overlap.
How we can help
We’re able to provide high-speed access to our full collections, as well as to unreleased collections.
This is enterprise-level access that we can provide for donations in the range of tens of thousands USD. We’re also willing to trade this for high-quality collections that we don’t have yet.
We can refund you if you’re able to provide us with enrichment of our data, such as:
- OCR
- Removing overlap (deduplication)
- Text and metadata extraction
Support long-term archival of human knowledge, while getting better data for your model!
Contact us to discuss how we can work together.
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Comment on What are some of your "life hacks" you use regularly? in ~talk
psi Link ParentAlternatively, you can use some of that new age math. Given that 1 mile = 1.609 km, you get a fairly good estimate by calculating K = M + 1/2 M + 1/10 M So, for example, 13 miles = 13 km + 6.5 km...Alternatively, you can use some of that new age math. Given that 1 mile = 1.609 km, you get a fairly good estimate by calculating
K = M + 1/2 M + 1/10 MSo, for example, 13 miles = 13 km + 6.5 km + 1.3 km = 20.8 km (real value is 20.917 km).
Similarly, 1 km = 0.6214 miles, so the following is a pretty good estimate (but not quite as good as converting the other way)
M = 1/2 K + 1/10 K -
Comment on What are some of your "life hacks" you use regularly? in ~talk
psi (edited )Link ParentKind of a pedantic point, but it's worth keeping in mind that this trick only works if the function is linear. (And not merely affine; that is, the function should be like y = a x with the origin...Kind of a pedantic point, but it's worth keeping in mind that this trick only works if the function is linear. (And not merely affine; that is, the function should be like
y = a xwith the originb = 0preserved.) So you can't use this trick to convert degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius (f = c *1.8 + 32), for example.
I would highly recommend this piece. It thoroughly dispels the notion that they're only targeting "immigrants that are criminals or that didn't immigrate legally", and in fact makes the opposite point: ICE is illegally detaining and deporting immigrants that are here legally.