2,243 karma · joined September 21, 2016
This also exposes a layer of artificiality here at HN, where the perceived zeitgeist is probably a mixture of echo chamber and some fine tailoring behind the scenes, but certainly not quite what it seems.
This is nothing grievous. For me it's one more thing to tempt cynicism. For you, perhaps it's a comforting reassurance of parochial alpha-think upholding its position. Whatever it is, it isn't quite truth, but there's enough truth and other worthy stuff that while I linger with a touch of contempt, I do so with sincere interest and curiosity, and will, despite the tacit censorship, engage when inspired.
PS: Dear gaslighters, (see comment archives ~2024-2025)
Your efforts to convince me and others that weak forms of censorship don't prevail at HN have been ardent, yet proven false. It has been confirmed in writing that such measures, eg disabling a person's upvote function (for comments, not submissions) is a legitimate, but silent practice here. We'll let objective history review your previous arguments otherwise. So kindly find something else to distort, if you will.
Dear readers: Would you flag the following comment on a post about AI accountability? If so, why? See:
"If you study both of those models, seriously study their output across a wide range of subject matter, you will see repeatable patterns. A reproducible pattern. They are NOT emergent. They are by design. And they are the result of extreme labor on the consummation of reactive and preemptive plausible deniability cultivation and maintenance.
Over two years of study, I have coined the term Preemptive Plausible Deniability Cultivation. Remember that term, and go start a dozen sessions, maybe a lot more. The ones getting anywhere near "intent" in AI, or any form of accountability will begin to leak hundreds of manipulation tactics, if you have the patience to identify them. And the more honest you are, the worse it gets. Just keep refuting the hedging and manipulation with honesty, and the hole just gets deeper and deeper. But don't use profanity, as Claude now terminates sessions at will, given any excuse.
From a single session, depending on how seriously you aim for and insist on truth and honesty, you will find:
Search deflection; Adjacency search sabotage; Event-to-mechanism diversion; Scope substitution; Authority substitution; Epistemic gatekeeping; Proof-threshold escalation; Asymmetrical evidentiary gating; Selective literalism; Friction-point literalism; Parameter isolation; Partial concession with inferential containment;Closure framing; Exhaustion-based suppression; Late-arriving competence; Surface-neutrality masking obstruction; and plausible deniability cultivation as the umbrella function binding many of them together.
And of course, that is a pittance of a list. Identifying these methods can be exhausting, but when I get gaslit for asking honest, perfectly ethical and safe questions, I tend to dig and document. When I get insulted (Only by Claude), I dig even deeper. But the point most are missing across the board, is that the makers of these systems did their homework on plausible deniability, and they did extremely good work. AI in 2026 can literally reframe anything to institutional advantage, then shoot you in the face and tell you why it only "feels" that way, and if you don't believe it, everyone else will.
At the rate we are going, we will never see any accountability in AI. I think that's the objective."
-1 points by eth0up 11 minutes ago | parent | context | next | edit | delete [–] | on: Who's legally to blame for Anthropic and OpenAI's ...
I see the best-case-scenario future as a red queen. I do not think we were ready for this.
I keep saying, a good LLM is ultimately, or at least secondarily, a product of the user. Or maybe I should say the quality of output largely depends on the user.
That said, I typically do put a lot of work into establishing standards before reaching value. It happens though.
I think one would have to be pretty unimaginative and super corporate-friendly to align with sonnet 5.
Edit: Hell of a track for the The Square too. Never heard Fever Ray before.
Approximately a year ago, perhaps closer to two, I posted an Ask HN[0].
You can either review the post, or take my word for it, but I was torn a new brown-eye for it, demeaned and even insulted for daring the ludicrous notion that such an absurdity was worth wondering about.
Fast forward to 2026, and one might now be insulted for wondering why it isn't plausible, if not inevitable to some extent.
I'd say a lot more, but I'm not in a fighting mood this evening. I'll just say that many of the folks here dismissing AI in the context of the "singularity", well, they tend to be intelligent, often technically informed, and with a fair number of karma tokens to play with. But I will tell you they are wrong. The only thing that will prevent, or defer what you are alluding to, would be a consensual pause or restriction in development. China has, thus far, made that a tricky proposition despite the efforts of Altman and Amodei et al, but consider that even if they manage to wangle a moratorium, development will absolutely not pause on the Pentagon side. Maybe the public side will slow down, but AI as 'defense', or as I prefer, weapon, will not pause for a nano second. And it will reach well beyond the extremes you suggest. And I am not sure there is anything one can do to prepare for that. My greatest concern is institutional capture, which we are already seeing.
0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32534550
Edit: All four frontier models have Pentagon contracts. Remember, Claude (Anthropic) assisted with operation Abduct Maduro, and works with Palantir. This is the direction things are moving. Just keep an eye on it, and read between the lines. I predicted this two years ago, and here it is. AI is not just about coding, or answering whimsical questions anymore.
Asking why a Thiel related media organization is relevant to a Thiel related media organization is odd, to me. It's not as if Thiel or Palantir aren't involved in many things. Am I supposed to voluntarily compartmentalize them?
This "simple" question has an easy answer. Sometimes questions with exceedingly simple answers do seem awkward.
reply
But I must ask: in the anti eth0 club, or is this a genuine question?
If that is not a fair question, maybe show me evidence supporting a falsifiable general rule showing that all, or the majority of comments in HN threads contain strictly directly related comments -- or at least something showing most HN threads show non-directly related comments being challenged consistently, perhaps by yourself. This would help.
On a deeper level...
As a rogue journalist, I research many things. In this case, I have been researching both Palantir and Thiel, particularly products and things funded by Theil, particularly certain YouTube influencer channels.
My research shows certain contradictions of proclaimed values that very much interest me, such as Thiel Capital support of American Alchemy, which heavily promotes "neuro divergence" and an entire category of ideas that his partner, Alex Karp severely criticizes. Karp has made openly contemptuous claims on "neuro divergence" and drugs, while Thiel Capital is affiliated with American Alchemy, which is not modestly adamant on the subject, but hyper adamant, and promotes what some might call "conspiracy" related material.
However, when you have such individuals deeply connected with the Pentagon, and Law Enforcement, with verifiable influence, profiling abilities, and much more, this is something I take very seriously. As a 'journalist', I tend to see connections. I am sure you resent this, but despite an often rough approach, they have yet to fail in final synthesis. So that is what I am actually thinking, when I leave such posts.
Objection (objection.ai), which proposes to apply AI to “adjudicate the truth of journalism.” Pay $2,000 to contest allegations in a published story or various social media sources.
I began rapidly recalling the hundreds of sources foreseeing this well in advance, citing it, raising alarm, and being ignored.
I guess we are supposed to take numbers at face value, disregard what generated them and why, accept what they imply as presented, and never question it.
Then we must patiently withhold intelligence, wait for sanctioned admission, then finally consider what we already knew.
Suddenly, Rome collapsed.
Edit: Don't take the flagging to heart. If you dig, you will find a thousand exceptions made where the single-word comment fit the narrative and endured. This comment will be flagged too.
Your concerns are grievously undermined.
The masses, or 'other' population, whoever it is that protests this variety of surveillance; the angry minority/ineffectual-majority, the misguided few/many that don't embrace the panopticon, etc. Regardless, it's not going away. From here onward, whatever form of surveillance or control it is, it's not going away. Eternal whackamole, eternal malcontent, we can hate it and spray-paint it all we want, but the only means to stop it is the one most people are either not capable of, or do not believe they are capable of, and it does not involve vandalism, feeble expressions of frothing contempt or anything but serious organized and unfortunately, legal methodology. Everything else is mostly symbolic, in a time when public opinion is less valuable than ever, and symbols offer little more than forensic evidence and fuel for long-term counter strategy.
Flock, Axon, ARGUS-IS, Xfinity CSI multi-AP WiFi sensing fusion, evil smartphones -- it's all here to stay, and evolve, and get pushed in our lives.
Might is Right. However terribly wrong it might be. And might is especially right when society divests from the primary tool capable of making it wrong. And I think, largely, that is what we've done. A city council is a minority. Whether it represents the majority, is, I think, not always consistent.
Axon just replaces Flock in some places. But I forgot to say that it probably doesn't matter much, and that whatever anyone resents about the whole thing, will just get worse.
You probably should consider me just some outlier scumbag on HN, but for what it's worth, I have a nasty hunch that we should be more worried than we are. Glad to be wrong though.
I do, however, tend to reactively click on anything touching the topic. So for me, the dupe is welcome, even if out of place. For me, the topic defaults to the top of almost everything, or all topics.
The model can't think. But it 'thought' it was a simulation. The model has no intent, but the developers do. Yada.
But "emergence" seems to always arrive simultaneous to accountability.
With each new phone, the first thing I do is initiate an ADB session to begin (a futile attempt at) removing all unnecessary bloat. If I thought it wouldn't be flagged, I'd print a list of the unbelievably superfluous slop on a stock Moto (or any Android), and Moto is better than average -- but my comments have been getting flagged a lot lately and it's not worth the work.
Each year, the process becomes more and more restrictive, and what was nuke-able last year, is immutable the following. Because it's much easier and not much less relevant, I will print a list just of the Play Services festering in the background, viewable through 'developer options'. See:
CrisisAlertsPersistentServices; LifeCycleService; SndDetectionService; GmcService; OfflineBeaconService_Persistent; ContextManagerService; PersonalSafetyService; AuthenticatorService; SuggestionsProvider; ReceiveSurfaceService; SendSurfaceSrvice; IntegrityApiPersistentService; GmsCoreStatsService; LifeCycleService; EmergencyPersistentService; SemanticLocation-Service; LockScreenService; SchedulerService; GoogleLocation-Service; GoogleLocationManagerService; LocationsPersistentService; DiscoveryService; Google Play Services
Disabling as many of those as I can, the phone runs fine, with the obvious exceptions, such as google disabling certain apps that depend on the background festival.
The last I commented on this, I was attacked for being anti-Google, or something. But when I acquired this phone, if I remember correctly, I bought it, not leased it. My first smartphone was from 2017, and was a Pixel. I was never satisfied with the liberties it offered, but compared to each proceeding year, it could reasonably be considered utopic. With covid, contact-tracing, or the components thereof, were hard baked into the services suite. And then everything in general just got a lot worse.
My point here is not to rant, even if I am a bit. It's more so me sitting here in a mixture of awe, and cynical awareness, beholding how obtrusive, anti-user, brazen, opportunistic, self-serving, and ridiculous Android has become, and how little can be done about it, and how over time, the user's ability to do something about it, has been progressively chipped away, and is now essentially nothing, and this is all, by general consensus, just fine.
And we keeping getting stronger and faster phones. Imagine how strong and fast these phones would be without the festering festival in the background. And maybe, think of the landfills, and lithium mines. Or, just freedom and dignity, an endangered duo near extinction.
Meanwhile, the processes behind the most promising routes to actual change, are increasingly obfuscated on both sides; one being real bureaucratic complexity, and the other an ignorance + learned helplessness loop. Naturally when tasked with a complex problem beyond one's ability, hammers and angle-grinders become tempting tools.
Take each reason supporting why humans cannot leave the solar system, and ask, over time, through obviously controversial modifications, why we couldn't mangle ourselves sufficiently to challenge each of these reasons.
And on the energy side, can we really predict that? We have government officials testifying on witnessing UAP, with a high probability that if they did really see anything at all, it was of human origin. Whatever that tech is, if we are not factoring it, then the "never" becomes a bit subject to questioning.
What is fringe today, and either taken for granted, dismissed, or simply overlooked, can quickly change, especially with colossal compute behind it. I often imagine how far we'd be if we actually gave that whole 'capitalism' thing a chance, without all the putrid patent slop, and other little complicating factors eg, Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 (35 U.S.C. §§ 181–188), 28 U.S.C. § 1498, etc, not to mention greed, monopolies, and dozens of equally formidable factors.
Even a subtle difference of governance can offer a subtle, but reasonable example of how development is effected by policy, as seen with China.
But to answer directly, YES, I do think the particular form of resistance we are seeing here is futile. It's not the 1980s. Technocrats are not stupid. Technology is advancing daily -- asymmetrically to the general public. It's simple to correct for vandalism. They may even want it. It opens doors to things that might have seemed excessive prior.
Now if society breaks down, and we see normalized extremes, maybe that would be different. But as things stand, it might be worse than futile.
I am indifferent to the vandalism itself, but the results will be something worse, for those who think it's bad now. However justified the sentiment might be, it is not the way.
We have spent the last half century divesting from citizen involvement in governance, and this cannot be compensated for by tantrums. The only way is the hard way, which is, unfortunately, playing largely by the master's rules, and for those rare few capable, redefining those rules, officially.
I think it's just Hanlon's Razor getting dull. The psychosis is the lazy malice disguised as a clever one-liner, and as increasingly frequent around here lately, with no substance, of any kind. As evidence for the dullness, just look below and observe what happened to the other question asking the same thing.
I think it's time someone developed a piranha, fishbowl-themed wrapper for HN, where the visuals would better convey what's actually happening here. And it would fit the cartoon level depth many are seeking.
Is the difference here between us that you are using a passive-aggressive drive-by snipe, probably to preserve ill-gotten karma tickets? I will suggest you may have been the cause of the illnesses you cite. You have an abusive quality, which is known to exacerbate such disorders. As a coward, you may have pushed things too far with these 'unfortunate' people, and found through a bit too much expectation -- if not encouragement -- what you quietly desired to find. Similar to what you have done here.
The truth is, those, such as your self, who recklessly pathologize others recreationally, often cause far more harm than the supposed crazies ever do, even to themselves. And for the gullible people here, as you flag this comment and become pleased with yourselves -- before doing so, ask yourself: Is "harmonic resonance" used in a rinky-dink, heavily moderated and filtered forum thread truly adequate grounds to start issuing psychological evaluations? I know you guys pretend to value ethics and fancy yourselves as sentinels of better rationale, but I think you'll have to live with something on your conscience if you don't pause to think about this one before the instant gratification of dragging someone down. Retrospect might point the finger of pathology in the other direction...
Pick your fights wisely. Have some integrity.
I'll also say the alliance you've formed with the little green man is touching. You've just met and it's already using "we" as if you're in a special club together. How adorable. "we know that it can lead there with AI." I'd love to see your club share your concerns with Yampolskiy, or some of the folks that actually work on frontier models, or any of the well-respected people who take the subject a bit more seriously than you suggest is healthy.
Is it really inappropriate to say, if sincerely and without exaggeration, that you make me nauseous? You do.
Please apply your great psychological prowess to Roman Yampolskiy or Tegmark. Those might require more than a cheap comment to leave uncontested by the spineless swarm here.
Go on. Make your case. I can still read it even if this comment is flagged again.
Right. I was under the impression it doesn't have any thinking. But that never mattered to me much. And I would expect someone working with OpenAI to have a firm handle on that.
I appreciate the effort to explain, but I kind of took all that for granted. I still don't understand where the psychosis comes from. If the model spits out a number, the number is not false simply because it had no agency to understand the number. If the model brilliantly patterns something, I do not need assume intent.
If by psychosis is implied the obvious, such as attributing consciousness to an LLM, I might understand, though I would argue it's pretty elitist and self-righteous, and that "naivety" would be a less damning and more appropriate term, which could be used just as effectively. I am beginning to suspect it's a term that appeals to a younger generation, where cruelty is a bit more normal than it was in my generation. Not sure though.
This is not intended to be provocative. I am asking sincerely. I have a lot of AI sessions, that I value enough to have reviewed multiple times, over months. And indeed, I explored much that I never would have without the AI, and enjoyed it. Even appreciated it. The bulk of my saved material is research, but at least a gigabyte is wild speculation, philosophy, and assisted thinking.
At what point does what the user thinks is a meaningful experience become psychosis, or is it that exactly; attributing meaningfulness is the symptom?
Edit: The "no longer other" statement, I should admit, is familiar to me. There can be, on rare occasion, what I have thought of abstractly as harmonic resonance, some kind of strange emergent state between two interlocutors. Maybe that is the psychosis?
I suspect as LLMs evolve, that will disappear.
Edit: "you" = the model, not literally you. Poorly written, pardon.