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jordanpg

2,429 karma · joined September 27, 2014

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jordanpg··on GPTZero finds 100 new hallucinations in NeurIPS 2025 accepted papers
If these are so easy to identify, why not just incorporate some kind of screening into the early stages of peer review?
jordanpg··on The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis
My point still stands. The country will obviously not be permanently swarming with ICE agents violently grabbing immigrants off the street. There is going to be mission creep. If this isn't obvious then I don't know what to else I can say to convince you. Immigration is clearly just a pretext to establishing a national police force.

Remember this thread when you hear for the first time that ICE agents are tasked with doing something that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Coming soon.

jordanpg··on The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis
Along the same lines, anyone who thinks this is just about immigration should ask themselves what all these tens of thousands of ICE agents are going to do when all the immigrants are finally deported.

Are they just going to go home and go back to their old jobs? Or do you think the Administration is going to find something else for them to do.

jordanpg··on Statement from Jerome Powell
People are, yes, but I'm not. I'm looking inward and trying to be honest about what it's going to take to get me on the street.
jordanpg··on Statement from Jerome Powell
> Not sure being out in the street really does much.

I agree; this phrase was just a stand in for doing something -- anything -- about the state of affairs I don't like. Other than things I can do from my couch like commenting on HN.

jordanpg··on Statement from Jerome Powell
> Posting online literally is political activity.

This guy's book convinced me otherwise: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/political-...

"Political hobbyism" is things like commenting on the internet, as distinct from going out and convincing people to vote differently or running for offfice.

jordanpg··on Statement from Jerome Powell
Stated differently, if things really are so bad (and I would be the first to agree that things are pretty bad), then why are so many comfortable people (like me) not out on the street every day?

There are a lot of reasons for that, of course, but the bottom line is that when things get bad enough -- much worse than they are today -- then more people will take to the street, along with whatever sacrifice that entails. We're just not there yet, because for many, there is far too much to lose.

jordanpg··on ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods
More to the point, it's the collapse of the carefully balanced entente around things like WMD and war crimes that will be our undoing.

Recent events have brought this into sharp focus.

This is really the glue that holds it all together -- that we and our allies haven't even had to think about these things for our entire lives up until now.

I hate to be hyperbolic, but I fear that fear of these things will soon become a looming presence in our lives. For the rest of our lives. And kids' lives. And grandkids' lives.

jordanpg··on Eat Real Food
FTFY: Eat Real Food -- if you can afford it and have time to.

But I'm sure the Administration will accompany this release with various programs to boost access for the bottom 50% to fresh produce, meat, etc. right?

jordanpg··on New Lego smart-play system
I'm guessing this is post-patent expiration innovation happening at LEGO these days to counteract the growing number of generics.
jordanpg··on Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
And let's not forget that the stated rationale in this case, drugs, is very obviously pretextual.
jordanpg··on Scientists discover beer bottle in the Mariana Trench (2024)
I agree it's something of a bummer, but why is this surprising or "bizarre"?
jordanpg··on Hacker News front page now, but the titles are honest
This weird obsequiousness and the fact that it never updates are beginning to make me wonder if this is some kind of prank.
jordanpg··on Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions
My point is that citations are constantly making headlines, yet at least at first glance, seems like an eminently solvable problem.
jordanpg··on Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions
Does anyone know, from a technical standpoint, why are citations such a problem for LLMs?

I realize things are probably (much) more complicated than I realize, but programmatically, unlike arbitrary text, citations are generally strings with a well-defined format. There are literally "specs" for citation formats in various academic, legal, and scientific fields.

So, naively, one way to mitigate these hallucinations would be identify citations with a bunch of regexes, and if one is spotted, use the Google Scholar API (or whatever) to make sure it's real. If not, delete it or flag it, etc.

Why isn't something like this obvious solution being done? My guess is that it would slow things down too much. But it could be optional and it could also be done after the output is generated by another process.

jordanpg··on General principles for the use of AI at CERN
Organizations above a certain size absolutely cannot help themselves but publish this stuff. It is the work of senior middle managers. Ark Fleet Ship B.

I work in a corporate setting that has been working on a "strategy rebrand" for over a year now and despite numerous meeting, endless powerpoint, and god knows how much money to consultants, I still have no idea what any of this has to do with my work.

jordanpg··on Homeschooling hits record numbers
> Once an alternative way to educate children, homeschooling is now an increasingly popular and mainstream option.

TFA does not even begin to grapple with the single most important issue, which is who is actually doing the homeschooling.

This is only an option for certain families, with parents with enough bandwidth and knowhow to do this effectively. That excludes many tens of millions of Americans.

I think this is really about class, race, and religious segregation. Families can do what they want, of course, but this framing makes it sound like failing schools are the whole problem and I don't think that's the whole story.

jordanpg··on Gemini 3
What is Gemini 3 under the hood? Is it still just a basic LLM based on transformers? Or are there all kinds of other ML technologies bolted on now? I feel like I've lost the plot.
jordanpg··on What is a manifold?
Man, I wish that the modern internet -- and great stuff like this -- had been around when I took GR way back when. My math chops were never good enough to /really/ get it and there were so many concepts (like this one) that were just symbols to me.
jordanpg··on What is a manifold?
Remarkably, they don't even ask for money anywhere on the site. Now that is a rare thing on the modern internet, especially for high quality writing.
jordanpg··on URLs are state containers
One barrier to adoption is that big URLs are just ugly. Things are smooshed together without spaces, URL encoding, human-readable words mixed with random characters, etc. I think even devs who understand what they're looking at find it a little unsatisfying.

Maybe a solution is some kind of browser widget that displays query params in a user-friendly way that hides the ugliness, sort of like an object explorer interface.

jordanpg··on US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces
This is often described in terms of adherence to democratic norms, but I like your framing better.

If we have to distill the problem down to its simplest essence, it's the political parties. In particular, it's the existence of the two political parties, whose priorities have transcended those of the Republic itself (mostly the members' self interest). It just so happens to be the Republicans in power when the consequences of this have spiraled out of control.

jordanpg··on New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
This sounds like something I would have written before I was a parent.

And please remember: not everyone's family situation is the same. There are single parents, all kinds of employment scenarios, chronic illnesses or disabilities, sick parents, income differentials, and on and on and on.

Your single data point about what worked for your situation does not necessarily apply to everyone else's situation.

jordanpg··on Tech CEOs Take Turns Praising Trump at White House Dinner
Indeed. It is a calibrated, lawyer-defined behavior called executing their fiduciary duties.

In other words, they are behaving as necessary (and as advised) to avoid later being exposed to a lawsuit.

jordanpg··on We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA
Maybe, except that doesn't explain the deliberate kneecapping of R&D, health, and academia.

I'm pretty sure that if the curtains are pulled to the side, the people who are behind these policies are not seeking wealth and power. They are instead religious zealots seeking transformation.

jordanpg··on We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA
But Kamala Harris was not perfect in every respect. In fact, she had several policy preferences that don't align perfectly with my own. In a lot of ways, she was just like Trump. Also, she was not a very good public speaker. /s
jordanpg··on We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA
> But I also have no doubt these decisions aren't being made for the long-term benefit of the US as a whole

Then why are they being made? That is the real question that in my opinion is not being discussed enough. A lot of reacting to what's happening in the US, but not enough pondering about what the real goals are here.

I have my own views about this, which I used to think were somewhat conspiratorial and hyperbolic, but no more.

jordanpg··on The contrarian physics podcast subculture
I agree that he's not the best messenger, but in this case, he's right about Hossenfelder. I think the interviews with the 6 physicists stand alone. For the most part, Dave just lets them talk.
jordanpg··on The contrarian physics podcast subculture
Sure, academia is the worst system except for all the other ones.

Academia is what she is criticizing, btw, not the "scientific enterprise," even if she doesn't say it all the time. You know what else she doesn't say? What we should do instead.

Here's what she thinks we should do instead: privatize academic research. Can you think of any problems with that?

jordanpg··on The contrarian physics podcast subculture
She has gone way beyond this. She is actively undermining the entire academic scientific enterprise, even as she makes money popularizing it. It's unclear why she does this. She portrays herself as speaking truth to power, but -- much like certain actors in US public life these days -- is simply doing the easy work of tearing things down, without doing the hard work of building things.
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