Raspcoffee's recent activity
-
Comment on Here’s what the world had to say about the AI economy in ~tech
-
Comment on So it turns out I was cheated on in ~health.mental
Raspcoffee LinkI'm so sorry for going through this. I've been used myself in different contexts and being betrayed by people you're supposed to trust like this cuts so deeply. Of course it's hard to not feel...I'm so sorry for going through this. I've been used myself in different contexts and being betrayed by people you're supposed to trust like this cuts so deeply.
It is hard however not feel that utter sense of betrayal in my gut and soul like a knife.
Of course it's hard to not feel that way, I'd argue it's impossible to not feel that way. You have been betrayed. You have been used. It is just such a painful truth to come to terms with, I don't blame you if you're still in denial. Especially since this has been happening for nearly a year for you. I'm so sorry.
-
Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 30 in ~society
Raspcoffee Link ParentYeah this is probably going in the folder of him throwing a tantrum because of not getting what he wants and causing a lot of pain in other ways instead. Unless the rule of law crumbles even more...Yeah this is probably going in the folder of him throwing a tantrum because of not getting what he wants and causing a lot of pain in other ways instead. Unless the rule of law crumbles even more which would have other consequences than 'just' NATO of course.
-
Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 30 in ~society
Raspcoffee LinkNormally, anything the Cheetolino says should be taken with a grain of salt nor worth a post in a thread but still. This one is yet another big blow to the transatlantic alliance: Trump says he’s...Normally, anything the Cheetolino says should be taken with a grain of salt nor worth a post in a thread but still. This one is yet another big blow to the transatlantic alliance:
Trump says he’s considering pulling out of NATO
Pretty sure it's the first time he's said it this explicitly. Though it's not surprising given his attitude to NATO as a whole.
-
Comment on MIRAGE: the illusion of visual understanding in ~tech
Raspcoffee Link ParentI wonder if this also says something about how these models use the 'tone' and 'vibe' with lack of better terms to generate an answer that satisfies not just the user but also the engineers. And...I wonder if this also says something about how these models use the 'tone' and 'vibe' with lack of better terms to generate an answer that satisfies not just the user but also the engineers. And what consequences that can have for us mentally.
Delusions and such are already well documented, but considering that things may be more subtle than that I'm (now even more) concerned about people who use LLMs for day-to-day tasks without much thought. If it can fool tests this subtly, I could see the models having effects on us without it being easy to measure and taking a long time to notice.
I hope this is just doom thinking though. We don't need more issues as a result of genAI.
-
Comment on MIRAGE: the illusion of visual understanding in ~tech
Raspcoffee LinkMy first reaction was a pretty big surprise but when I think about it a bit more, in a sense I suppose it could be an example of Goodhart's law applies to machine learning. Though this is a bit...My first reaction was a pretty big surprise but when I think about it a bit more, in a sense I suppose it could be an example of Goodhart's law applies to machine learning. Though this is a bit trickier than that as you may not even be aware of doing that or worse yet, think you're actively work on not making passing benchmarks the goal while the algorithm is still doing that but making you believe you're designing the system to counter that.
It makes me wonder if there are limits to how we can train systems such as these because of how good they become at deceiving humans, not just technical limitations.
-
Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (March 2026) in ~health.mental
Raspcoffee Link ParentI relate to this feeling a lot. I'm actually in a rather comfortable position in many ways. In some ways even moreso than you. At the same time, it's difficult to not get affected with the way the...I have a decent life. I have own house, an amazing partner, great friends, and a fulfilling career. In so many ways, I find myself blessed, privileged and fortunate. However, I am frequently find myself doing my damnedest to not be crushed by the unreasonableness of this world.
I relate to this feeling a lot. I'm actually in a rather comfortable position in many ways. In some ways even moreso than you. At the same time, it's difficult to not get affected with the way the world is right now. Hell, I've actually managed to improve my mental health a lot the past year. Which is disorienting given the direction the world is taking.
This all doesn't make your problems any less, mind you. You have a lot going on and deserve to be affected by those problems. Hopefully you don't need to hear that from an Internet stranger. Sometimes we need reminders like that, though.
Take care. It is rough out there. 🫂
-
Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (March 2026) in ~health.mental
Raspcoffee LinkComplicated. I'm untangling some core issues of mine. And funny enough, I now have to live in the moment more instead of managing myself. Which, after more than a decade of recovery, is difficult....Complicated. I'm untangling some core issues of mine. And funny enough, I now have to live in the moment more instead of managing myself. Which, after more than a decade of recovery, is difficult. Letting go of what helped me improve so much is difficult.
There's also an issue with my ex-crush. They're not doing well, and we're not in contact. I really want to remain friends, and they've expressed the same.
I can only wait for them to contact me again as they wanted space until my crush is gone. Now that it's gone, which I communicated, they said they wanted to wait for a bit because they're tired. And I now can only wait.
But I just miss them so much. :\ We used to talk nearly every day and it still feels like something got ripped out of my life.
-
Comment on The Possessed Machines: Dostoevsky's Demons and the coming AGI catastrophe in ~society
Raspcoffee Link(reading through it as I'm writing) ...man, this actually describes a lot of powerful positions in our society. Where the people ending up in charge are not the ones who can make the sound moral...(reading through it as I'm writing)
The AI safety community has developed elaborate frameworks for thinking about existential risk, but these frameworks assume a kind of normal moral psychology that cannot be assumed in the people making the key decisions. Expected value calculations do not help when the person doing the calculating is incapable of feeling that the values in question are real.
...man, this actually describes a lot of powerful positions in our society. Where the people ending up in charge are not the ones who can make the sound moral decisions.
I have watched similar dynamics play out in AI safety organizations. The people who leave are not merely disagreed with; they are reconceptualized as having been flawed all along. Their previous contributions are reinterpreted in light of their eventual departure. The group's self-conception requires that anyone who rejects it must have been mistaken from the beginning.
You can see this dynamic in social media, where political opinions are treated as a kind of being morally right/wrong, but even taken further into an extreme. It makes disagreement not just more uncomfortable than it already is, but downright terrifying.
Consider the actual topology. Researcher A at OpenAI dated Researcher B at Anthropic; they met at a house party in the Mission thrown by Researcher C, who left DeepMind last year and now runs a small alignment nonprofit. Researcher D at Google and Researcher E at Meta were roommates in graduate school and still share a group house with three other ML researchers who work at various startups. The safety lead at one major lab and the policy director at another were in the same MIRI summer program in 2017. The CEO of one frontier lab and the chief scientist of another served on the same nonprofit board.
This is not corruption in any conventional sense. It is simply how small, specialized communities work. The number of people with the technical skills and intellectual orientation to do frontier AI research is measured in hundreds, perhaps low thousands. They attend the same conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, the various safety workshops). They post on the same forums (LessWrong, the Alignment Forum, Twitter/X). They read each other's papers, cite each other's work, argue in each other's comment sections. Many of them live within a few miles of each other in the Bay Area or London.
This goes, if you ask me, well with my point above: Sometimes you need the opinion of an outsider. To make sure you, or any group, aren't going down a wrong path somewhere. I hadn't considered this dynamic before within AI research, and I don't know enough about the internal world, but I can certainly see that dynamic there. It almost reminds me of how aristocracies in Europe used to justify their own existence with, well, their own existence. Basically being self-evident. That might be a rather extreme example, but still.
I want to be careful here, because describing these dynamics in detail would identify individuals in ways that might cause harm. But the general pattern is visible enough to anyone who pays attention. The AI safety community has its aristocracy—the founders of the field, the authors of the canonical texts. It has its ambitious climbers, its fallen stars, its heretics, its gossips. The social machinery is remarkably similar to what Dostoevsky describes in Demons, adjusted for a San Francisco context.
...Oh. Didn't expect the same word to be used in such a manner. <_<; Kind of makes me hope that the author's description is geared towards that conclusion rather than it being a proper description. Though so far I don't get the vibe that this is for attention or something similar, unfortunately.
Open Philanthropy has given more than a hundred million dollars to AI safety research.18 This is, in one sense, admirable—they have identified a problem they believe is important and they are trying to do something about it. But their funding creates dependencies. Researchers who want to continue their work must remain in Open Phil's good graces. This is not necessarily corrupting—Open Phil seems to be relatively hands-off—but it creates structural incentives that shape the discourse in ways that are difficult to perceive from the inside.
This is why separation of power is so, so important. It prevents that kind of dependencies, and I've actually been wondering if we need something akin to that with economics given the current issues in our world, but that's a story for another time I suppose.
I felt this dynamic when I was considering leaving. The decision was not just professional; it was about identity and belonging. My entire social world was the AI industry. My friends, my romantic partners, my sense of purpose—all of it was bound up with the work. Leaving meant not just changing jobs but changing who I was.
Honestly? Props to the author for leaving. It's easy to think you would do as such in such a situation, but when your entire identity is intertwined with it, that becomes easier said than done.
I do not know how to translate this into the AI context. I am suspicious of easy answers. But I am also increasingly convinced that the purely technical and policy approaches to AI risk are insufficient—that they treat symptoms while ignoring the underlying disease.
I want to highlight this because it's important to admit we don't have all the answers, and admitting as such in a text like this requires a lot of courage imo!
Perhaps the AI industry is possessed in this sense. Not by ideology, not by any single vision, but by the spirit of acceleration itself—the drive toward "more" and "faster" that has no end point and no criterion for success except continued motion.
I hadn't thought about it like this before, but it makes sense when you consider how much of a bubble it is. Keeping investing in it not only due to sunk cost fallacy, but out of pure inertia due to the structures ending up having, well, that structure.
Confession can be self-serving. It can be a way of claiming moral credit for acknowledgment while avoiding the costs of action. It can even be a form of action-substitution—the feeling of having done something when in fact one has only talked about doing something.
Never thought about confessions like that before, but yeah. They can very much be like that. Venting is similar actually, you may feel like you've provided relief for yourself - and you sure did at that moment - but that doesn't mean the problem itself is automatically tackled, even if it feels like you did.
...
I may need to read through this again. Perhaps my initial thoughts will be very different from what I'll think about this later but nonetheless, thanks for sharing. If nothing else, this has been a good read. I'd like to write down more thoughts immediately but I feel like I need to digest this first.
-
Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (February 2026) in ~health.mental
Raspcoffee LinkFelt like making another post about this. I recently learned that I have this believe that I'm not just replaceable, but also disposable. Like a tool. I have therapy in two weeks but I've had so...Felt like making another post about this.
I recently learned that I have this believe that I'm not just replaceable, but also disposable. Like a tool.
I have therapy in two weeks but I've had so many things stacking up and I'm exhausted.
Self love did make the earlier stages of depression way more easy. The difference between feeling depressed and being depressed were way greater. But I am incredibly down right now.
I just want to live my life but so much has been going on and I'm fucking exhausted by all this bullshit.
-
Comment on France becomes first EU country to open a consulate in Greenland in ~society
Raspcoffee LinkAdded the politics.usa tag as this involves American politics. Even if this is more symbolic, it nonetheless is yet another sign of the EU slowly but surely acting against Trump being himself.Added the politics.usa tag as this involves American politics.
Even if this is more symbolic, it nonetheless is yet another sign of the EU slowly but surely acting against Trump being himself.
-
France becomes first EU country to open a consulate in Greenland
7 votes -
Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of January 26 in ~society
Raspcoffee LinkSouth Carolina measles outbreak is largest in US since measles was declared eliminated (CNN) While not particularly being 'surprising' given RFK Jr., I still wanted to post this given the graph in...South Carolina measles outbreak is largest in US since measles was declared eliminated (CNN)
While not particularly being 'surprising' given RFK Jr., I still wanted to post this given the graph in the article. That alone is a huge warning.
-
Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of January 19 in ~society
Raspcoffee Link ParentThe descriptions of what ICE does gets worse and worse by the day and reminds me more and more of what happened in my own country during Nazi occupation. Like, by this point it feels inappropriate...The descriptions of what ICE does gets worse and worse by the day and reminds me more and more of what happened in my own country during Nazi occupation. Like, by this point it feels inappropriate to NOT use that analogy.
We have a lot of small monuments engraved in streets here. Sometimes you won't even notice them - stones before the houses, with the names of the family inside that were abducted, put in a concentration camp, and later on, murdered. It's difficult to not think about them right now... :\ Stay as safe as you can, please. God fucking damnit.
-
Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news
Raspcoffee LinkQueensland woman wakes up to find carpet python on top of her Don't mind this. Just Australia being Australia.Queensland woman wakes up to find carpet python on top of her
Don't mind this. Just Australia being Australia.
-
Comment on Struggling in my relationship in ~life
Raspcoffee Link ParentI've been less active here lately, and am dealing with my own heartbreak but. I still wanted to express my solidarity. This is a very rough separation, when you have other harsh situations going...I've been less active here lately, and am dealing with my own heartbreak but. I still wanted to express my solidarity. This is a very rough separation, when you have other harsh situations going on. While I can't pretend to know what this combination must be like, I can only imagine the stress, heartbreak and more it gives you.
I wish you all the strength you need right now, and hope you can still find moments of rest in this whirlwind that is your life at this instance. Because we all need that.
-
Comment on European nations to send troops to Greenland as US annexation threats escalate | Several NATO countries are deploying small numbers of military personnel to Greenland in ~society
Raspcoffee Link ParentNow, to be fair, while the fermented mandarin hasn't always been consistent to say the least, I think it's worth to note that he recently stated that obtaining Greenland is psychologically...Now, to be fair, while the fermented mandarin hasn't always been consistent to say the least, I think it's worth to note that he recently stated that obtaining Greenland is psychologically important to him.
So, unfortunately, I consider it unlikely that this is mission accomplished in his mind. It's difficult to predict anything coming from him, especially since he seems more and more unstable by the day, but there's a good chance that escalation will continue.
-
Comment on "Ai ni, laoji": China's Gen Z is breaking tradition by learning self-love (English) in ~health.mental
Raspcoffee Link ParentAt the same time, that is wonderful. On the other hand, I can't help but feel sad(mourning by proxy?) about what may have been lost in the mean time. All the strength and wishes to them though, of...and possibly thousands of years overdue
At the same time, that is wonderful. On the other hand, I can't help but feel sad(mourning by proxy?) about what may have been lost in the mean time.
All the strength and wishes to them though, of course!
-
Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (January 2026) in ~health.mental
Raspcoffee Link ParentI get that, and have often felt the same in situations in the past. Accepting that the Universe is only fair in its unfairness also takes effort. Our brains love to try to make sense out of things...I get that, and have often felt the same in situations in the past. Accepting that the Universe is only fair in its unfairness also takes effort. Our brains love to try to make sense out of things even if you know it 'just is'.
Sometimes I wish I could believe in karma though, given, well... vaguely gestures at the world on fire
-
Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (January 2026) in ~health.mental
Raspcoffee Link ParentI'm really sorry you're still dealing with this amount and intensity of stress-inducing situations for no fault of your own. :\ Rationally you most likely already know this but: it is not selfish...I'm really sorry you're still dealing with this amount and intensity of stress-inducing situations for no fault of your own. :\ Rationally you most likely already know this but: it is not selfish for wanting to go on a trip, your situation is natural to want to have a break from. That doesn't mean you don't desire to help those you loved, it means you also want to take care of yourself.
Take care. 🫂
Considering how they're algorithms designed to give satisfying-sounding answers at its core, even if you have stuff like guardrails and guidelines etc, I don't think it's that strange if you're not familiar with how they work.
In a sense producing a sense of trust is in their design, regardless or whether that's justified or not.