bloaf

The most consistently implemented procedure is the one that doesn't require anyone to do anything.

I agree that when looking at a process that seems bloated and inefficient, we should be mindful of the XY problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

In my experience most procedures are created not due to a deep nuance to the problem space that makes procedures superior to automation, but rather one of the following:

1. Leadership lacking the technical background to understand what automation would look like or accomplish. (In extreme cases, this can manifest as people creating processes that are redundant with automation capabilities built into the tools they are already using.)

2. Leadership lacking confidence that the organization has the skills or resources to automate effectively.

> Bloaf, it's the employee's job to bring the case for automation to their leadership...

3. People in senior technical roles shooting down automation efforts because a significant amount of their expertise is "expertise in navigating existing processes" and they don't want this expertise to be undermined.

This is only true for people with a certain amount of spare money to pay the extra, since cars are more expensive to purchase.

"According to Kelley Blue Book, gas cars averaged $48,681 that month" whereas horses typically cost between $1500-$10,000 https://www.joyfulequestrian.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-bu...

AAA reports that average annual operating costs for a car are ~$8500/year https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/what-does-it-cost-to...

Whereas the average annual cost of a horse is under $4000/year https://cowgirlmagazine.com/cost-owning-horse/

Remember the holodeck in Star Trek? Everyone thinks that's cool technology and not really particularly scary. But in reality, the existence of a holodeck is an existential threat to humanity: if you can have literally any experience you want in a holodeck, there is no reason to invent/do anything else.

AI text generation has a similar flavor of danger. Imagine a world in which everyone has a personalized better-than-human text-generating AI. People will have no incentive to read anything other than what it writes (why read Shakespeare when you could have Shakespeare-tailored-for-you?) People will have no incentive to broadcast their own words over those of their AI.

Obviously text is a small subset of the "literally any experience" offered by a holodeck, but it is not hard to see a future in which everyone is MITM'd by text-generating AIs.

https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person...

Not saying that's the reason for the ban, but twitter is not solely a force for good here.

https://www.12000.org/my_notes/CAS_integration_tests/reports...

Giac/Xcas is slightly worse at symbolic integration than Maxima, and both are dramatically worse than Mathematica.

FriCAS, an Axiom fork, is the best open source CAS on those benchmarks.

> The hippies are rooted in things like naiveté, lust, drugs, immorality, communism, apathy, and atheism.

There is a sense in the more liberal communities that cultures are good-by-definition. They do mental gymnastics to ensure that any harmful cultural artifacts (e.g. slavery) are explained away as "not really culture, but a product of external forces" (e.g. imperialism).

I have never felt the need to do this: some cultures are on-the-whole bad, and that does not disqualify them from being cultures.

The correct conclusion is not that 50% of kids are dumb and 50% smart. Actually, none of the kids knew but they had a 50% chance of picking the right answer at random.

Knowing what you don't know is an "advanced" skill many adults haven't even mastered. I'm not at all surprised chatGPT struggles to not-answer questions on things you just made up.

It's weird to me that people seem to expect current AI to be as good as an expert, especially at something as subtle as the intersection of society and technology. The hype around chatGPT is not that it's an expert in all things, it's that it's a novice in all things, and better than that at some.

Imagine trying to buy a house when your face says 18 and your ID says 78.

Getting a drink at a bar? Showing ID to vote? Withdraw money from that 78 year old's account? Collect social security?

You're going to get denied at best, and likely accused of identity theft/fraud.

Does anyone have a good blog/news site that covers topics like this? Because evidently I'm missing out.

Scandinavia has very strong social programs for new parents (as well as "abortion on demand"), but only slightly higher fertility rates than Russia (which has less generous parental benefits, but fewer abortions than Scandinavia). And indeed, the fertility rate in the USA are in the same ballpark, despite the US having no parental benefits.

(Scandinavian fertility is 1.8-1.9, Russian fertility is 1.7-1.8, USA fertility is 1.8-1.9, all in 2021 numbers from Gapminder)

(Scandinavian abortion rates are generally above 15%, Russia is ~12%, and USA is ~11%)

Edit: Data caveats there are some sources claiming russia's abortion rate is >50%, but they seem to be confusing the abortion rate with the abortion ratio. Also, the abortion rate in Russia has evidently undergone a precipitous decline since the 90s, so the abortion rate can look much different if you get/use a source that is even a few years old.

If you squint at MAID one way, you can see all the good it does for people who really need it. If you squint another way, you can see the medical system just killing off the people it failed.

I checked out "Show me the place" which is incredibly erotic. Leonard asks to be shown "where the suffering began" (painful childbirth is the first punishment God mentions for Eve) and "where the word became a man" (i.e. where Jesus was conceived-Mary's womb) because "his head is bending low." The AI, just like a lot of people, can't get past that use of religious terminology to realize the sexual innuendo.

https://www.songtell.com/leonard-cohen/show-me-the-place

As I explained: This kind of mandated restriction is looming over AI. Companies are trying to get out in front of these restrictions so they can implement them on their own terms.

A confrontation is inevitable, though. Right now it costs moderate sums of money to do this level of training. Not always will this be so. If I were an AI-centric organization, I would be racing to position myself as a trustworthy actor in my particular corner of the AI space so that when legislators start asking questions about the explosion of bad actors, I can engage in a little bit of regulatory capture, and have the legislators legislate whatever regulations I've already implemented, to the disadvantage of my competitors.

For people who say "people can make whatever images they like in photoshop," I will remind you of this: https://i.imgur.com/5DJrd.jpg

1) Link to the documentation in your tools

2) Ensure everyone has edit access to the linked documents

> A few people rushed and it was only a few

"It's just the thugs and the scabs fooling you"

A man grabbed his daughter and carried her down

But the thugs held the door and he could not get out

> And then others followed, a hundred or more

But most everybody remained on the floor

The gun thugs they laughed at their murderous joke

While the children were smothered on the stairs by the door

> Such a terrible sight I never did see

We carried our children back up to their tree

The scabs outside still laughed at their spree

And the children that died there were seventy-three

     foreach x $list1 y $list2 {
         lappend result [Myfunc $x $y]
     }

     lmap x $list1 y $list2 {Myfunc $x $y}

     lmap {x y} $list1 {Myfunc $x $y}