9 karma · joined December 31, 2025
When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a soldier mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe--and shoot down those we don't. But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a scout mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout's goal isn't to defend one side over the other. It's to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what's actually true. In The Scout Mindset, Galef shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn't that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It's a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world--which anyone can learn. With fascinating examples ranging from how to survive being stranded in the middle of the ocean, to how Jeff Bezos avoids overconfidence, to how superforecasters outperform CIA operatives, to Reddit threads and modern partisan politics, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.
We have control points (prompts + context) and we ask LLMs to draw a 3D surface which passes through those points satisfying some given constraints. Subsequent chats are like edit operations.
Sculding??
Rice by any other name??
The best video essay on the movie
You know what you are told.
Billionaire coder: a person who has "written" billion lines.
Ordinary coders : people with only couple of thousands to their git blame.
I am seeing the doomed future of AI math: just received another set theory paper by a set theory amateur with an AI workflow and an interest in the continuum hypothesis.
At first glance, the paper looks polished and advanced. It is beautifully typeset and contains many correct definitions and theorems, many of which I recognize from my own published work and in work by people I know to be expert. Between those correct bits, however, are sprinkled whole passages of claims and results with new technical jargon. One can't really tell at first, but upon looking into it, it seems to be meaningless nonsense. The author has evidently hoodwinked himself.
We are all going to be suffering under this kind of garbage, which is not easily recognizable for the slop it is without effort. It is our regrettable fate.
delicate feelers is like octopus arms
put the above prompt and enjoy some imaginative writing.
When Carlin asks about the last white people America bombed, he answers his own question: the Germans, and specifically notes they're "the only ones." But here's the key part of his argument: America didn't bomb Germany for moral reasons or because they were evil - we bombed them because "they were trying to cut in on our action. They wanted to dominate the world." His punchline: "Fuck that, that's our fucking job."
German Scholars Reveal Shocking TRUTH About China’s Xinjiang Province
Remember folks, soft power is nothing in front of hard power.
Two prominent Boeing whistleblowers, John Barnett (died March 2024) and Joshua Dean (died April 2024), have died in recent times, raising significant concerns about retaliation and safety at the aerospace giant; Barnett died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after battling Boeing in a retaliation lawsuit, while Dean died from a sudden infection after raising quality concerns, with his family suspecting foul play despite official rulings. Barnett's death was ruled a suicide, though his family's wrongful death suit claims Boeing's harassment caused his distress, while Dean's death followed rapid illness, with his family also alleging misconduct by his employer, Spirit Aerosystems, and Boeing.