UnseriousAcademic

joined 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Based on my avid following of the Trashfuture podcast, I can authoritatively say that the "Hoon" programming language relies primarily on Australians doing sick burns and popping tyres in their Holden Commodores.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Funnily enough that was the bit I wrote last just before hitting post on Substack. A kind of "what am I actually trying to say here?" moment. Sometimes I have to switch off the academic bit of my brain and just let myself say what I think to get to clarity. Glad it hit home.

Thanks for the link. I'm going to read that piece and have a look though the ensuing discussion.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Oh god it's real? I saw pictures and there was a lot of "it's AI" claims which I kind of hoped were true.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (7 children)

There's definitely something to this narrowing of opportunities idea. To frame it in a real bare bones way, it's people that frame the world in simplistic terms and then assume that their framing is the complete picture (because they're super clever of course). Then if they try to address the problem with a "solution", they simply address their abstraction of it and if successful in the market, actually make the abstraction the dominant form of it. However all the things they disregarded are either lost, or still there and undermining their solution.

It's like taking a 3D problem, only seeing in 2D, implementing a 2D solution and then being surprised that it doesn't seem to do what it should, or being confused by all these unexpected effects that are coming from the 3rd dimension.

Your comment about giving more grace also reminds me of work out there from legal scholars who argued that algorithmically implemented law doesn't work because the law itself is designed to have a degree of interpretation and slack to it that rarely translates well to an "if x then y" model.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh no, the dangers of having people read your work!

It is coming, potentially in the next week. I was on leave for a couple of weeks and since back I've been finishing up a paper with my colleague on Neoreaction and ideological alignment between disparate groups. We should be submitting to the journal very soon so then I can get back to finishing off this series.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

.... Nope. In fact one of my in-laws said that they'd buy us an air frier for Christmas once the sales came. Everyone forgot about it shortly after and I don't care one bit.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (21 children)

I feel like generative AI is an indicator of a broader pattern of innovation in stagnation (shower thoughts here, I'm not bringing sources to this game).

I was just a little while ago wondering if there is an argument to be made that the innovations of the post-war period were far more radically and beneficially transformative to most people. Stuff like accessible dishwashers, home tools, better home refrigeration etc. I feel like now tech is just here to make things worse. I can't think of any upcoming or recent home tech product that I'm remotely excited about.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I'm banking on the primary use case being "getting Elon sued into oblivion by Disney" .

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

Fascinating to see that the politics of the old crypto hype train have carried over to the new hype train.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Ah OK, so it's sending the email draft in process not sending off the content of incoming messages or your final sent messages. Now I understand. Also, that's still bad....

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I don't really understand how it's possible to both not store data in plaintext, but also be able to siphon off some of it in plaintext. Like is this technically possible in the way they suggest it? We shoot off the plaintext before it gets to our storage servers?

Like at some point that means the communication is not encrypted right? But if you're using https and all good normal security standards that should never be the case from the moment it departs your terminal?

I have a small amount of knowledge about this but it's the dangerously small type so any illumination would be appreciated.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

Dear CHATGPT how do we get our company more money?

"That's a great question. To get more money simply bring up the console and enter 'rosebud!;! ;! ;! ;!'"

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