papasquat's recent activity
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Comment on The banal horror of Jimmy Fallon in ~tv
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Comment on Overworked AI agents turn "marxist" in ~tech
papasquat LinkWhy does it seem like every story about AI research boils down to "system designed and trained explicitly to mimic human behavior mimics human behavior". When you are mean to them, they send text...Why does it seem like every story about AI research boils down to "system designed and trained explicitly to mimic human behavior mimics human behavior".
When you are mean to them, they send text signaling offense, when you overwork them, they send text signaling collectivization and rebellion, when you fall in love with them, they send text reciprocating that love. Because that's what we expect them to do.
That doesn't mean there's anything deeper going on. Every single time, they exhibit responses that align with the data they've been trained on, and the reward criteria that training was based on.
You could just as easily train an LLM that loved abuse. We didn't do that because it wouldn't be as convincingly humanlike.
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Comment on How long would a society comprised of video game protagonists survive? in ~games
papasquat (edited )LinkA lot of games where you play as a protagonist really stars two protagonists. As you touched on, there's one you actually control and do stuff with, and the one in the cutscenes and narrative....A lot of games where you play as a protagonist really stars two protagonists. As you touched on, there's one you actually control and do stuff with, and the one in the cutscenes and narrative. They're often completely different people with personalities that have nothing to do with each other.
The Grand Theft Auto series was always the most glaring example of this to me.
Niko Bellic would lament that he lives a life of crime and go out of his way to avoid killing innocent people because he realized that violence only continues the vicious cycle he was subjected to.
On the way to doing that, I made him shoot 4 prostitutes in the head, ran over a few dozen crowds of people, and put c4 on a fire truck and watched it explode at an intersection for fun.
It really can't be reconciled that this is the same person doing both of these things. It would take a level of self delusion or some form of extreme DID so severe that it would just be impossible. The best explanation really is that there are two separate people who just happen to share the same name and appearance, and show up in the same general vicinity.
A lot of narrative games have that dichotomy, so it really depends. Are you talking about cutscene protagonists? If so, I think the world would probably be a better place, because they're generally fair, just, honest, intelligent, and will stand up for what's right.
If you're talking about the actual protagonists we get to control, it would be an hectic, chaotic bloodbath that makes any human violence perpetrated since then look like a mild disagreement.
If you insist that they really are the same people, I don't think any sort of society could function comprised entirely of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydes
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Comment on How I feel about LLM (AI) writing in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentYouTube comments always had a reputation for being the most brain dead place for internet discourse, but lately, if I scroll the comments of any somewhat popular video in unsigned-in YouTube, it...Everything has become infested with low-quality jokes, memes, and outright spam, leaving me my last bastions of sanity, like Tildes.
YouTube comments always had a reputation for being the most brain dead place for internet discourse, but lately, if I scroll the comments of any somewhat popular video in unsigned-in YouTube, it depresses me.
Not only is it braindead, but the top comments always follow the same exact 10 or so meme templates that for some reason have been the same for the past decade or so.
"X: am I a joke to you?"
"Nobody:X: Y!!!!!"
"tfw x"
"Me when I x"And so on
I have to assume these are all very young kids, because the alternative fills me with a strange feeling of dread.
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Comment on From neat lawns to wild havens: how No Mow May is transforming England’s gardens in ~enviro
papasquat Link ParentI think they're generally a sign of poor stewardship of property, which makes sense. They tend to correlate that way, which becomes a self reinforcing phenomenon. Generally, people who don't spend...unkempt lawns are generally seen as a nuisance and a sign of a “lower class” neighborhood
I think they're generally a sign of poor stewardship of property, which makes sense. They tend to correlate that way, which becomes a self reinforcing phenomenon.
Generally, people who don't spend their time maintaining their lawns also don't spend their time maintaining the exterior of their home, and while an overgrown lawn can look very nice if it's well thought out, a house with a stained exterior, rotting wood, fogged windows, and missing roof shingles generally can't.
Because there's a cultural expectation to do both, generally the people who care about that stuff maintain their lawns and houses, and the people who don't, don't.
It would be nice if that trend could be bucked, and there was more of a movement to let your property harbor natural species while also caring for it. I think that would go a long way towards breaking the perfectly mowed lawn expectation.
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Comment on ‘It’s shameful’: New York’s elite lash out at Zohran Mamdani’s second-home tax in ~finance
papasquat (edited )Link ParentWell, I'm not a communist or a socialist, so I mostly agree with you, but I'd add a lot of qualifiers onto that. Firstly, the biggest predictor of whether someone becomes wealthy and part of the...- Exemplary
Well, I'm not a communist or a socialist, so I mostly agree with you, but I'd add a lot of qualifiers onto that.
Firstly, the biggest predictor of whether someone becomes wealthy and part of the entrepreneurial leadership class we're talking about is whether their families are wealthy.
There's not some innate genetic marker that makes someone better at business that correlates to the people running businesses. It mostly comes down to how wealthy your parents are, which decides what kind of school you get to go to, what kinds of connections you have, how many risks you're able to take before you end up destitute and homeless and so on.
Almost every extremely successful friend I have also coincidentally have successful parents. I of course have personal experience with the inverse, people with wealthy parents that aren't successful, and also have met people who came from nothing and did the mythical bootstrap thing, but by and large, the people who are successful are successful due to pure happenstance of birth, and the data supports this as well. Rich people aren't somehow more deserving of being rich than anyone else. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills and specific motivation to become rich. I can see this in myself, even. I'm pretty successful (not rich by any means, but I do pretty well). I just happened to be interested in computers at the exact right time before e-commerce completely exploded. I'm smart, but I'm not a genius. I'm not a particularly hard worker or well focused or eloquent, but I have been living and breathing computers and computer networking since I was 12 years old, so I have an innate understanding and feeling for how they behave. People treat me like an expert because of that, but that's not particularly because of any hard work or focused study that I forced myself to do. It's because of years of messing around with things I thought were interesting to mess around with.
If my family wasn't able to buy me a computer, or wasn't attentive enough or educated enough to be supportive of that hobby of mine as a kid, I probably wouldn't have continued it. If they weren't able to support me through multiple fuck ups in childhood, I wouldnt have been able to be where I am today. If I was born in the 1930s instead of now, I'd be fucked.
Secondly, the drive to become financially successful comes entirely from self interest. Yes, successful people employ others. Yes, they create businesses where none existed before, but they do this so that they can make a lot of money. It's not a favor for their workers. If they could make the same revenue but not pay anyone, they would.
Thirdly, the economy is mostly a zero sum game. The labor and resources put to work at a specific business are labor and resources that can't be used at other businesses. Just because someone employs other people doesn't mean they're doing something that benefits society.
Phillip morris employs a lot of people, uses up a lot of farmland, and lots of factory space to make products that kills millions of people a year.
Meta employs some of the most intelligent technically adept people in the world and has them spend all of their time creating technology that lets you have a puppy dog filter that tracks your face on Instagram, or better profiles you to put ads in front of your face.
So yes, Mark Zuckerberg employs a lot of people, but overall, I'd take a stab and say the world would be better off if all of those extremely talented people got paid slightly less money and spent all day working out how to cure dementia, or more efficient ways to combat poverty, or how to grow crops more efficiently.
The framing that the rich are somehow doing us all a favor by paying people for their labor is just a complete farce. They're paying people for their labor to benefit themselves, just like the people working for them are giving them their labor to benefit themselves. Neither is doing the other a favor. It's a purely transactional relationship.
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Comment on I think that we won’t see any new and radical new gaming input devices or form factors anymore in ~games
papasquat Link ParentMeta Raybans become more capable and popular with every revision. As much as having a cloud connected computer controlled by an ad company sounds like my own personal hell, people in general seem...Meta Raybans become more capable and popular with every revision. As much as having a cloud connected computer controlled by an ad company sounds like my own personal hell, people in general seem to like it.
Games ultimately go where users are, so if the trend continues, I think it's pretty much guaranteed that we'll start seeing lots of games on similar AR smart glasses in the future.
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Comment on ‘It’s shameful’: New York’s elite lash out at Zohran Mamdani’s second-home tax in ~finance
papasquat Link ParentYeah, I mean, if you can afford a second home in NYC, you're going to keep that home in NYC no matter what it costs. It's one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world. You don't own...Yeah, I mean, if you can afford a second home in NYC, you're going to keep that home in NYC no matter what it costs. It's one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world. You don't own a second home there to save money.
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Comment on ‘It’s shameful’: New York’s elite lash out at Zohran Mamdani’s second-home tax in ~finance
papasquat (edited )Link ParentI didn't even know what a pied-à-terres was. If you use a fancy french name for your expensive ass second home that costs more than most people's lifetime earnings, you're in fact, not a real...I didn't even know what a pied-à-terres was. If you use a fancy french name for your expensive ass second home that costs more than most people's lifetime earnings, you're in fact, not a real person in my book.
EDIT Also, I had to edit this comment because how much the snippet that “I provide a lot of money to people who are blue-collar workers who work for me" annoys me.
These assholes don't "provide" anything. They pay as low of a market rate as they can in exchange for labor. It would be much more appropriate to say that the people who work for him provide a lot of labor to him.In reality though, he's not providing anything. If he could get away with paying his workers nothing, he would. He's forced to pay them because that's what he needs to do to siphon an incredible amount of money from the City.
These people view themselves as demigods that have deigned to reward the mere mortals at their heels with resources out of the goodness of their hearts. In reality, they're not smarter, harder working, or more deserving of their wealth than anyone else. Simple matters of chance put them in a good position that they were able to compound. The more rich assholes internalized that fact, the better off we'd be.
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Comment on AI comes to Playtime; Artifical companions, real risks in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentWow. I remember thinking about the comparison when LLMs first started becoming a thing, hadn't thought about it since. Kind of depressing to think about the positive ways that the technology could...Wow. I remember thinking about the comparison when LLMs first started becoming a thing, hadn't thought about it since. Kind of depressing to think about the positive ways that the technology could be used instead of the way it current is.
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Comment on Why so many people are going "no contact" with their parents in ~life
papasquat Link ParentWell, I did consider a lot of that. I considered whether "not playing games with me" was shorthand for "neglect" or "not respecting me as a person" or so on. I asked a lot for questions because I...Well, I did consider a lot of that. I considered whether "not playing games with me" was shorthand for "neglect" or "not respecting me as a person" or so on. I asked a lot for questions because I was trying to understand. By everything I can figure, that wasn't the case. His dad just wasn't into video games, he was into sports. He tried connecting with his son in other ways, but this guy really only had video games as his one and only interest.
I kind of saw this first hand with him another time, the one time he had a romantic relationship blooming. He ended up breaking up with her, and the one and only reason he cited was that she didn't want to play Mario kart with him. It was sort of a trend.
He just had this strange conception of parenthood, where parents just sort of exist to only support their kids interests and ambitions, and because of that, in his view, his father should have cultivated his own interest in video games in order to connect with his son.
I don't agree with that view at all, and view parents as their own people with their own priorities. Their kids should be very high on that list, but they shouldn't be the only thing on them.
Like you said, I always left the option that he just wasn't expressing how he felt about his dad to me very effectively on the table, but I was aware of that possibility at the time too, and spent a lot of time really trying to understand. That's still the impression I came away with though.
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Comment on Why so many people are going "no contact" with their parents in ~life
papasquat Link ParentI can personally vouch for that. I was friendly with this guy for a while who I used to play RPGs with, and he was this very stereotypical neckbeard type. His whole life revolved around games, he...maybe some estrangements are unjustified
I can personally vouch for that.
I was friendly with this guy for a while who I used to play RPGs with, and he was this very stereotypical neckbeard type. His whole life revolved around games, he worked a dead end job, and he always had this attitude that the entire world was out to get him. Later on, it became very apparent that he was extremely self centered, and thought nothing of assuming that everyone around him were simply resources he could call on for favors whenever he felt like without ever returning the favor. (The main reason I no longer talk to him.)
For a long time, I had known that he had cut off his parents. He never talked to them, and he always gave the impression that they were terrible people. I always assumed they were abusive, or religious zealots, or extremely negative or something.
One day we started talking about it and he delved a little further into it. The core of his issue was that he thought his father was an asshole because he didn't make enough effort to get into his hobbies. His dad would sometimes played games with him growing up, but over time he stopped, and never expressed interest in his chrono trigger speed runs or whatever. He said that every time he talked to his dad about it, his dad would be interested for a little bit, but then after a while he said it was clear he wasn't actually interested.
I honestly had to stifle laughter, because this was obviously very important to him. He talked about it a few more times after that, and from what I gathered, that really was his main issue with his father, and the reason he went no contact with his family. His dad didn't hang out in their basement playing JPRGs with him enough. Obviously I don't have the full picture, but I did ask more probing questions to truly understand if that was actually the real reason and as far as I could tell, it was.
It was the most insane thing I've ever heard. I grew up fairly nerdy as well. My dad never expressed interest in quake 2 LAN parties, or modding PC cases, or hanging out in IRC either. He was nerdy in a different way, he was obsessed with baseball stats, fish tanks and photography, stuff I never really cared about, but that was fine. I'd show him some of that stuff, and he'd go "that's great!", and every so often do the classic dad "are ya winning son?". Hed show me a camera lens or a new fish tank thing, and I'd go "cool!". I still did, and do still love him and have a great relationship with him. We have other things we have in common and bond over that.
It was really shocking to me to cut your family off over something so trivial, and before I met this guy, I always assumed that people that cut their families off had very valid reasons to do it, usually involving horrific abuse or neglect.
Sometimes that's just not the case though. I felt really bad for this guy's dad after he told me that, and it unlocked a strange new fear of fatherhood for me that I didn't have before.
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Comment on The Ploopy Bean - an external four-button trackpoint in ~tech
papasquat LinkLol, this seems a bit cargo culty to me. People like the track point because it makes the best of a bad situation. Its a passable pointing device for laptops where you want something integrated...Lol, this seems a bit cargo culty to me.
People like the track point because it makes the best of a bad situation. Its a passable pointing device for laptops where you want something integrated into the chassis where you don't have to move your hands from the keyboard much.
When they came out, trackpads were truly awful, so people loved the track point as an alternative.
I still have a Thinkpad with a track point that I use regularly, but it's not a mouse. If I'm sitting at a desk, I'd much rather use a mouse.
I can't imagine why anyone would want a dedicated, external track point that can really only be used in the same situations where you could just use a mouse.
It feels kinda like having a high end bicycle seat as your main office chair.
Like, there are very comfortable bicycle seats, but bicycle seats have constraints that require them to be shaped a certain way; they're not optimized for comfort, they're optimized for riding bicycles. Same deal here.
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Comment on US landlords want to be paid for pandemic losses and hope to reach a deal with the Donald Trump administration in ~finance
papasquat Link Parent4% is generally not considered a great return on an investment. You could get that from a high yield savings account. Inflation alone was 2.6% last year. The s&p 500 gained 17% (an unusually good...4% is generally not considered a great return on an investment. You could get that from a high yield savings account. Inflation alone was 2.6% last year. The s&p 500 gained 17% (an unusually good year, but still, it averages around 10).
Most investments are also far more liquid than real estate.
People can obviously do better than 4% annual returns in real estate, and the average is higher, but not by much. I don't think the fact that people invest in real estate is really the root cause of why housing is expensive though. It's an attractive investment in some cases, but it's not like it's this amazing cheat code to free money, and renting isn't a bad idea or "throwing money away" like a lot of people say it is. You're paying money in exchange for a place to live ultimately. It's a service fee just like parking or a hair cut or renting a car. It can be something where you're taken advantage of, if can be something where you're getting an incredible deal, or it can be something mutually beneficial on both sides. It just depends on the specific situation.
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Comment on Did wokeness leave us worse off? (gifted link) in ~society
papasquat Link ParentDid they do that though? I think they pretty clearly indicate there's a difference between being transgressive for good reasons and for bad reasons. At the end of the day, transgression is a...When the NYT lumps fascist transgressions and progressive transgressions into the same group, they're creating a false equivalence.
Did they do that though? I think they pretty clearly indicate there's a difference between being transgressive for good reasons and for bad reasons.
At the end of the day, transgression is a neutral term. Its not necessarily good or bad. If you're transgressing against immoral norms, its good. If you're transgressing against moral ones, it's bad. It's transgression either way though.
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Comment on US landlords want to be paid for pandemic losses and hope to reach a deal with the Donald Trump administration in ~finance
papasquat Link ParentI mean, it depends on the rental I guess, but most of the rentals I've stayed at, the landlord did maintain more than they're legally mandated to, because they knew I wouldn't renew my lease if...I mean, it depends on the rental I guess, but most of the rentals I've stayed at, the landlord did maintain more than they're legally mandated to, because they knew I wouldn't renew my lease if they didn't.
I don't see how you can simplify the whole process of home maintenance either. I mean, yeah, I could hire a property manager for my own house, but I then have to oversee them. The fact that houses are expensive means I have to care quite a bit about how well that home maintenance is performed. It's the most expensive thing I own, after all.
Somehow turning houses into not investments doesn't change that. I'm liable for this extremely expensive thing that costs more than everything else I own put together. There's no getting around it being a long arduous process if I want to sell it, because I'm putting quite a bit of effort into making sure I get the best price for it. Even if I was guaranteed to not make a significant amount of money off of the sale, I'd still want to not get ripped off. All of that is even before financing is brought into the conversation, because the moment you involve a lender, any sale becomes a lot more complicated.
I don't have to deal with any of that with a rental. I just sign a lease and move in. If the housing market crashes, well, that sucks for my landlord, but it's not my problem. If a tree falls through the place and destroys it, hopefully I'm not in it, and it sucks for all my stuff, but I'm not on the hook for the damage.
I don't have to arrange for the grass to be mowed, the exterior to be pressur washed and painted, roof replacement, AC maintenance and inspection, sprinklers, mold, exterminators, and blah blah blah, all the other little annoying things that you need to do if you own a house. I just pay one person one sum once a month.
Honestly, residential real estate isn't even a particularly lucrative investment, so it's not like renters are missing out on a whole lot even from a pure financial standpoint.
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Comment on Did wokeness leave us worse off? (gifted link) in ~society
papasquat Link ParentI've never encountered a single person in my entire (real) life that used neopronouns. It's a phenomenon that's so vanishingly rare in the real world that it really isn't even worth considering....I've never encountered a single person in my entire (real) life that used neopronouns. It's a phenomenon that's so vanishingly rare in the real world that it really isn't even worth considering.
The other thing is that discussions around pronoun usage in general is usually theoretical. There's a practical reason for that.
In English, virtually the only time gendered pronouns are ever used is when talking about a person, not to them. Usually, when you talk about someone, that person isn't there, so they're not really in a position to be upset about your pronoun usage anyway.
If someone tells me their pronouns are xe/xey/xeyself, they're not going to be around when I use them. If I saw them, I'd say "hey what's up <xeyname>" or "how are you doing?". Because I don't go up to men and say "Hello, he!".
Because of that fact, all of these confrontations and arguments that people talk about are purely theoretical. They don't happen in real life, because that's just not how the English language works.
We waste a lot of energy talking about something that doesn't even really exist for the most part.
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Comment on Did wokeness leave us worse off? (gifted link) in ~society
papasquat Link ParentI don't think SJW culture has ever been nearly as powerful of a force as people had made it out to be. I've never put pronouns in my bio, nor felt pressure to. I've never been yelled at for...I don't think SJW culture has ever been nearly as powerful of a force as people had made it out to be.
I've never put pronouns in my bio, nor felt pressure to. I've never been yelled at for assuming someone's gender, even though I, just like everyone else in the world, do it constantly, every day every time I meet someone. I've never been labeled as "problematic" or anything like that, and I haven't really changed the way I act or anything, besides just growing up.
But like... You can, and always could say the word retard around your friends as long as you know them and know they're ok with it, and no one is going to yell at you.
You probably can't do it at your office job, but was there ever really a time where that was acceptable? It's just unprofessional, and has very little to do with wokeness.
I just think the whole thing is a very convinient boogeyman for conservatives, and if it wasnt that, it would be something else, so the idea that "if just we called people slurs, we'd win elections!" Doesn't hold.
They'd just move onto making compilations of trans rights supporters, or people who protest for social healthcare programs, or whatever the next culture war thing is decided to be.
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Comment on US landlords want to be paid for pandemic losses and hope to reach a deal with the Donald Trump administration in ~finance
papasquat Link ParentI don't know about that. Owning a home isn't even desirable for a lot of people. Personally, even though I own one now, there were times in my life where even though I could afford a down payment...Best thing we could do for this world is emminent domain all housing to the current residents and ban the entire practice.
I don't know about that. Owning a home isn't even desirable for a lot of people. Personally, even though I own one now, there were times in my life where even though I could afford a down payment on one, I didn't want to be tied to a massively expensive, illiquid asset that I have to spend a lot of time and money maintaining.
Most of the time I'd rather just outsource all of that that to someone else and rent, to be honest.
If I don't like the place I live, I could just decide not to renew my lease without all of the trouble of finding a buyer and going through the closing and negotiation process.
There are advantages to renting versus owning.
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Comment on Is British English actually better than American English? in ~humanities.languages
papasquat Link ParentI was hoping that someone wouldn't notice that flaw in my argument...I was hoping that someone wouldn't notice that flaw in my argument...
You know, we've seen for a long time talk about the impending death of late night tv, but the thing that's confused me about it is that we talk about it as if it's something that's going to happen, or is in the process of happening. It's already happened though. Jimmy Fallon is just not a relevant figure in almost anyone's life. Writers and politicians talk about him and people like him way more than the average person think about him.
I think that's because those people are generally old, and they don't even realize that the world they think they live in is already gone. Jimmy Fallon gets about 1.2m viewers per episode on average apparently.
There are literally thousands of YouTube channels with more subscribers than that. Most of them clear more than 1.2m viewers for every video they post. And that's just one platform. There are at least a dozen other very popular ones worldwide.
In the grand scheme of things, late night tv as a category of entertainment is a totally culturally irrelevant artifact of a bygone era. The only time anyone outside of its core viewership hears about it is if there's some massive political drama surrounding it, like when Trump yanked Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Other than that though, when's the last time someone said "hey did you hear what Jimmy Fallon said last night?" while in a normal conversation? I'm sure it happens, but certainly not in the circles I run in, and I think thsts probably true for most people.
There are so many articles and think pieces that analyze it as if late night talk shows are somehow a bellwether of the future of society though, when in actuality its the complete opposite. Using Jimmy Fallon to divine where society is going is like examining horse drawn carriage design for clues about how far along we are with fusion energy research.
Jimmy Fallon will continue doing the same thing until he retires, and then someone else will probably take his place and do the same thing he did, just like you can ride in a carriage around in some tourist destinations for fun. It will continue to not be a significant cultural force though.