williams_482's recent activity

  1. Comment on The dead economy theory in ~society

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    What non-cognative tasks are you suggesting would still require human labor if the cognative elements were delegated to bots?

    What non-cognative tasks are you suggesting would still require human labor if the cognative elements were delegated to bots?

    3 votes

  2. Comment on What are people's experiences with using Kagi? in ~tech

    williams_482
    Link
    I started using it about a year ago when Google cranked up their AI stuff and made it impossible to hide. I've been reasonably happy with it. Search results seem fine, and I only had to tell it to...

    I started using it about a year ago when Google cranked up their AI stuff and made it impossible to hide. I've been reasonably happy with it. Search results seem fine, and I only had to tell it to stop showing AI overviews once.

    I haven't paid super close attention to the privacy settings and I wasn't actually aware that there was a "slop stop" feature. I am also aware that there are some questionable sides to Kagi's owner/primary developer, but nothing that struck me as more problematic than Google.

    7 votes

  3. Comment on Bricks & Minifigs corporate stole a man's $200,000 Lego collection and told him to get bent in ~hobbies

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    In this case, the damage is done and direct remedy will necessarily move slowly. The problems are twofold, and are the reason these sorts of things happen as often as they do: Deciding to pursue a...

    But to circle back, again, what would you want to have happened in this case?

    In this case, the damage is done and direct remedy will necessarily move slowly. The problems are twofold, and are the reason these sorts of things happen as often as they do:

    1. Deciding to pursue a legal remedy is in the hands and on the wallet of the victim. If the perpetrators had snuck into the victims home and run off with these Legos directly, the decision of whether or not to prosecute (and the costs associated with that decision) would be in the hands of the state. The state picking and choosing which criminal cases cases to pursue has it's problems, but it at least doesn't make this a financial roll of the dice for the victim, and removes the perpetrator's ability to (as explicitly done here) intimidate the victim by threatening to make a lawsuit as expensive as possible. That at least levels the playing field significantly between rich and poor (at least until more direct corruption comes into play).

    2. The people who made this choice did so deliberately with the understanding that it was a good financial move for them and the business, because even if it all went horribly wrong they would escape criminal penalties. In a heartless calculation they were "correct" to do so: they had good odds of successfully intimidating these people and simply keeping the merchandise without causing much visible fuss. When that failed, they tried to prevent a journalist investigator from learning enough information to make it legally actionable. When that failed, they made a second attempt at financial intimidation by threatening painful legal fees. When that failed they used law enforcement to prevent a lawsuit from physically being served. When that failed, they fought in court. When that failed, they put the branch into bankruptcy and kept the assets anyway, forcing the victim to make a second attempt at a legal remedy that may or may not actually work. They have suffered a financial penalty, sure, but one they clearly judged to be less than the value of the stolen property they were ordered to return. They may lose the next lawsuit, but that's no guarantee and in any case, the actual people responsible will suffer no legal consequence.

    There are so many things that have to go against the company for it to suffer any real consequence, and even if all that happens the people who made these choices are completely shielded from personal liability by the corporate entity. This is the systemic problem: people made evil choices, because the system they were in both directly incentivizes the attempt while removing major consequence from failures. Our Lego theft is just one example or this problem popping up in a daily basis all over the world.

    So what would I want to have happen? I would want the people who made the decision to steal these Legos be on the hook for prison time if found guilty, same as if they had stolen them more conventionally. Likewise, the people who made the decision to lie to law enforcement about the particulars of the situation should be on the hook for (additional?) criminal penalties if found guilty. Additional efforts at obstructing justice should also be considered in levying punishment. Finally, the corporate entity should, if found guilty, have to absorb a substantial penalty well in excess of what they hoped to gain by this theft. That penalty should not necessarily go to the victim beyond what is judged appropriately for lost time, emotional damages, etc. Personally I'd have it funneled into a legal fund for prosecuting exactly these sorts of cases, but that's beyond the scope of this already extravagant and fanciful proposal.

    None of this is easy to make happen, but it also doesn't require omniscient, angelic police officers or implausibly rapid legal proceedings. We can't make sure that every one of these crimes is caught and prosecuted, certainly not at great speed, but we can make committing them in the first place a stupid idea for the business and individuals alike.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on Bricks & Minifigs corporate stole a man's $200,000 Lego collection and told him to get bent in ~hobbies

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    Fast justice? How about any justice? If the people who were robbed here are able to sue successfully, which you are erroneously presenting as an easy, certain, and financially manageable task,...

    Fast justice? How about any justice?

    If the people who were robbed here are able to sue successfully, which you are erroneously presenting as an easy, certain, and financially manageable task, they will get back the value of what was stolen from them minus the legal costs paid to win that case. The corporate entity they are suing will lose the money they have to give back and their own legal costs. The humans who decided to carry out this act will suffer no legal consequence whatsoever.

    If those same people had stolen the same items in a slightly different way, the stolen items would have been returned and they would be either in prison or out on bail right now, in either case awaiting a trial which would not depend on their victims ability to self-fund a legal challenge.

    Feel free to argue that the perpetrators of petty thefts ought to be able to keep ahold of whatever they allegedly took until their trial is complete, they should not be at personal risk of prison time or other punitive legal penalties, and that their trials should also be civil cases whose prosecution is wholly dependent on the whims and financial muscle of their victims*. In any case, there is obviously a systemic problem here.

    * in such a world, I suspect the preferred course of action by the victims would be to burgle the perpetrators directly in an effort to recover their losses. Why pay a lawyer when you can probably get a thief for less?

    Nobody here is stupid. We understand that legal structures are complicated for a reason, innocence before proof of guilt is important, etc. None of which takes away from how obviously fucked this situation is, and how well it represents the larger systemic societal problems that have started boiling over of late.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on ‘It’s shameful’: New York’s elite lash out at Zohran Mamdani’s second-home tax in ~finance

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    The comparison with ancient and medieval plagues is in interesting one, and I thing surprisingly relevant. Pre-industrial agricultural societies pretty much across the board wind up forming...

    The comparison with ancient and medieval plagues is in interesting one, and I thing surprisingly relevant.

    Pre-industrial agricultural societies pretty much across the board wind up forming societal structures where labor is heavily devalued relative to land and capital, because the local powerful people deliberately design them that way. A typical peasant family has not quite enough enough land to reliably feed themselves once taxes, disruptive weather conditions, and other attritive elements are accounted for, but they have enough labor available to work far more land given the opportunity. This surplus labor is normally spent in the fields owned by the local landowning "big men", for as little pay as these big men can get away with without things in the peasant community becoming so desperate that the surplus labor decide they'd rather attempt a violent uprising. All in all, peasants wind up working about as hard as they can sustain to keep themselves and their families alive, while the big men take everything else.

    In situations where the local population is significantly reduced (such as a plague, or a brutal conquest and displacement of a local culture by a foreign invader) peasants are able to take control of land that had belonged to the deceased (both dead peasant families, and dead big men), and can use that formerly-surplus labor to work that land for themselves. This gives them significantly more short term power because they actually can feed their families without the meager earnings from working someone else's land. The local big men are still out there, with quite a bit of land, but that land is worthless if not worked. With a much smaller and less desperate labor pool to draw from, they need to pay much higher rates for workers, which gives them less surplus to spend on tools of extraction like armed soldiers. Total productivity wouldn't increase much overall (it might even go down slightly, because a peasant who has enough food to eat for the year and a surplus to trade for a few luxuries doesn't get a very good return from working even harder to get even more yields), but those peasants would find their individual lives much improved.

    Over a few generations peasant populations increase to the capacity of the land, the local rulers slowly recover their wealth and military strength and are able to squeeze more and more out of this expanding peasant population until they are back at maximum sustainable extraction, and things return to normal.

    The exact mechanics obviously do not map on neatly to modern society, but the general pattern of more resources coming available to the lower classes greatly reducing the wealth gap is definitely there. One could also note the relevance of an upper class extracting as much as possible from the lower classes, and spending that extracted surplus to maintain their power and continue extraction. It's breaking that feedback loop, not the precise mechanics of agrarian land and labor availability, which gives the lower classes power.

    5 votes

  6. Comment on The center has a bias in ~tech

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    Can you elaborate on how this relates to the preceding portion of your comment?

    To discuss AI, you need to grok AI, and that means to be capable of loving it just as much as being capable of hating it. I don't see the loud anti-AI camp being charitable on that side.

    Can you elaborate on how this relates to the preceding portion of your comment?

    7 votes

  7. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    Vintage Story is so good. If you're not aware, the 1.22 update is currently in the unstable prerelease stage and will probably have a stable release some time in April. Lots of good stuff coming...

    Once we are done I believe the next game we are going in is back to Vintage story, I have forgotten everything, so am looking forward relearning and experiencing it again.

    Vintage Story is so good.

    If you're not aware, the 1.22 update is currently in the unstable prerelease stage and will probably have a stable release some time in April. Lots of good stuff coming in that update, so I'd recommend waiting until it's out to start a new playthrough.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on The cognitive dark forest in ~tech

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    When I clicked on a hyperlink of the word "debunked" I expected something more concrete and convincing than an article which on closer reading only claims the story is improbable.

    I think this alludes to the Target pregnancy scandal, which was debunked.

    When I clicked on a hyperlink of the word "debunked" I expected something more concrete and convincing than an article which on closer reading only claims the story is improbable.

    8 votes

  9. Comment on A day in the life of an ensh*ttificator in ~tech

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    Having new designs purely for the sake of having new designs is mostly neutral, although the fast fashion culture fed by these choices is clearly a blight on society. Artificially hampering...

    Is having new designs a bad thign?

    Having new designs purely for the sake of having new designs is mostly neutral, although the fast fashion culture fed by these choices is clearly a blight on society.

    Artificially hampering designs of practical products so they can be easily changed every year and give sales something useless but different to hype up about the latest generation? Yes, that's also clearly terrible.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on I made a word game - and it has come a long way in ~games

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    I'm not sure how I would add this while keeping the clean, simple feel of the UI, but I wish there were a visual indicator of what direction the letters would be rotated in. I keep thinking that...

    I'm not sure how I would add this while keeping the clean, simple feel of the UI, but I wish there were a visual indicator of what direction the letters would be rotated in. I keep thinking that it's going to turn in the other direction for some reason, even though clockwise feels like it should be the intuitive direction.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Opta removes all advanced statistical data from fbref.com in ~sports.football

    williams_482
    Link
    This is a terrible blow to statistically inclined football fans and amateur analysts. It also looks like a terrible decision by Opta, who made a lot of money off of selling fan interest in sports...

    This is a terrible blow to statistically inclined football fans and amateur analysts.

    It also looks like a terrible decision by Opta, who made a lot of money off of selling fan interest in sports statistics to broadcasters and other media companies. Cutting off access to regular people just as football statistics are starting to become mainstream is clearly not going to help the long term standing of their industry, nor their reputation within it.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Star Wars shake-up: Kathleen Kennedy steps down as George Lucas protégé Dave Filoni, exec Lynwen Brennan take over Lucasfilm in ~movies

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    I liked Clone Wars, and to a lesser extent Rebels, but what I've seen of Filoni's projects since then has been extremely disappointing. He seems to be far too invested in all the weakest parts of...

    I liked Clone Wars, and to a lesser extent Rebels, but what I've seen of Filoni's projects since then has been extremely disappointing. He seems to be far too invested in all the weakest parts of his early works, especially an insistence on repeatedly returning to old characters and tying so many seemingly disparate things together that the stories feel repetitive and incestuous.

    In retrospect, Clone Wars was a very favorable project for Filoni to take on. He had Lucas's guidance and massive financial backing, plus a pretty good set of story bookends he was beholden to. He also had a bunch of preexisting characters that his audience either liked or wanted to like, and his primary job was to rehabilitate some (mostly Anakin) and flesh out a host of others who were mostly cardboard cutouts in the prequels. Clone Wars' meandering setting meant that random drop ins on mostly irrelevant legacy characters were mostly harmless fun. Further, his one really whacky choice that could easily have been awful (bringing back Darth Maul) was actually executed really well, rehabbing yet another cardboard character into a somewhat complicated yet clearly evil villain. The actual plots are limited in scope by the setting, and compress nicely into satisfying 1-4 episode arcs.

    Rebels gave him more freedom to create a full story arc himself, and forced him to create his main characters whole cloth. The later mostly worked, the former was a bit of a mess held together by those characters. Nearly everything after that has been very disappointing.

    Filoni's early works succeed at creating interesting characters, either new or from woefully underdeveloped existing characters. Which makes it really ridiculous how his later works mostly just want to check in on those characters, or others from original films, and run them through new-ish grandiose stories that just don't hold up very well. It reads to me as a failure to identify what he's good at, buoyed by portions of the fanbase who really do just want to see their favorite characters doing more things, and have as many references as possible crammed in for them to notice.

    21 votes

  14. Comment on Are cooperatives more virtuous than corporations? in ~society

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    What is this in reference to?

    I dread the day another East Asian moves into the community and they try to give them my money or vice versa

    What is this in reference to?

    2 votes

  15. Comment on What makes a game, a game? in ~games

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    Calvinball should count as a game, and fails that criteria completely.

    "someone separate from the participant sets the rules", and even though I ultimately agreed, I'm still not truly sure.

    Calvinball should count as a game, and fails that criteria completely.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Why language models hallucinate in ~tech

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    This is an ironic example, because LLMs recommending sketchy food choices is a genuine danger. We've seen them recommend putting Elmers glue in pizza cheese, and worse, make lethally wrong...

    In some contexts, like cooking, guessing is harmless: worst case scenario you ruin a meal.

    This is an ironic example, because LLMs recommending sketchy food choices is a genuine danger. We've seen them recommend putting Elmers glue in pizza cheese, and worse, make lethally wrong recommendations about what forageable mushrooms are safe to eat.

    Guessing becomes dangerous in a much wider range of situations when the guesser lacks the "sanity check" guardrails that most most adult humans have.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on US Federal court strikes down Donald Trump’s April 2 tariffs in ~society

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    I believe the idea assumes that the government is willing and able to accurately value the cost savings companies are getting specifically for dodging United States environmental regulations. I'm...

    I believe the idea assumes that the government is willing and able to accurately value the cost savings companies are getting specifically for dodging United States environmental regulations.

    I'm not sure if it's practical, but that information is out there and if it can be applied consistently, I'm for it. Not unlike the idea (which I believe I first encountered around here) of the federal government levying a 100% tax on local tax breaks to corporations, to stop municipalities from engaging in their own race to the bottom looking to lure undecided companies to build on their land.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news

  19. Comment on If you could travel back in time and bring one thing back to the modern day, what would it be? in ~talk

    williams_482
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    I'd try to grab some histories. The first specific target that comes to mind would be complete copies of Livy and Polybius, both of which we have in part but with significant portions missing....

    I'd try to grab some histories.

    The first specific target that comes to mind would be complete copies of Livy and Polybius, both of which we have in part but with significant portions missing. These two are generally seen as the best available sources for the periods they cover, and for much of the period where they overlap, Polybius would be preferred were his not missing.

    With that said, there are surely more interesting documents that failed to survive to us which could tell us a lot about something less well explored than republican Rome.

    5 votes

  20. Comment on Some ChatGPT users are developing delusional beliefs that are reinforced by the large language model in ~tech

    williams_482
    Link Parent
    I am not a therapist, and wouldn't say I'm particularly good at identifying subtle undertones in written communication, but that conversation was absolutely ringing alarm bells for me. The...

    I am not a therapist, and wouldn't say I'm particularly good at identifying subtle undertones in written communication, but that conversation was absolutely ringing alarm bells for me. The combination of actively seeking approval for doing "something" about another person, but no elaboration whatsoever on what that something is, is really creepy.

    I'm confident that most people would at least come out of that conversation feeling something was wrong, and would probably ask the obvious "what are you planning to do?" questions.

    7 votes