Historians like to use "state capacity" as a term for what a state is capable of doing. The government leader might want to build a great bridge, and might order it done, but depending on which state in which era it might not be a thing that is possible to execute.

I didn't think we would see a powerful state like the US so willfully destroy its state capacity (except for violence), but here we are and “everybody who knows how to access the money got fired”

There is a genocide going on right now in Gaza. Has Singer, the great utilitarian, said anything about how the common man should act to stop it?

Is it more effective to protest or block ports or destroy weaponry? Do we have a moral obligation to overthrow governments supporting genocide, in particular if that government is in our country? If we come across one of the perpetrators of the genocide do we have a moral obligation to do something?

Or are these all to uncomfortable questions, while the donation habits of the middle class is comfortable questions?

the game memorizes these moments, what you say, how they react, and creates story arcs based on it

LLMs famously can't be consistent, so your fantasy game would have story arcs that doesn't fit together, brings back characters that are already dead as if nothing happened, and everyone would have a son named Dorian.

Overheard my kids, one of them had some group project in school and the other asked who they had ended up in group with. After hearing the names, the reaction was "they are good, none of them will use AI".

So as always kids that actually does something in group projects doesn't want to end up in a group with kids that won't contribute. Difference is just that instead of just slacking off and doing nothing they will today "contribute" AI slop. And as always the main lesson from group projects in school is avoid ending up in a group with slackers.

When I run into "Climate change is a conspiracy" I do the wide-eyed look of recognition and go "Yeah I know! Have you heard about the Exxon files?" and lead them down that rabbit hole. If they want to think in terms of conspiracies, at least use an actual, factual conspiracy.

What if my mechanical watch went rogue and killed Bezos?

On one hand Bezos is responsible for a lot of suffering and some deaths.

On the other hand, killing is wrong.

On the third hand, it couldn't do that, because it is just a machine.

(It's a watch, it has three hands. It also has about as much consciousness as an LLM, it "knows" what time it is. Much more energy efficient though.)

"...37%.... That means nearly one in four..."

Eh, no it doesn't, it means nearly two in five. Which is worse.

Jason Kint writes a thread on how Google spun - and publications printed their spin - on a recently lost case: https://xcancel.com/jason_kint/status/1836781623137681746

If you already are very cynical about tech journalism (or the state of journalism in general), it might be nothing new except confirmation from the internal documents of Google. But always nice to see how the sausages are made.

Isn't this just Snow Crash again? Can't these techbros read another book, we already have the Meta verse and it wasn't that popular in reality.

"Because we got paid, cause we got paid, cause we got pa-aid!"

To the tune of "Then I got high" by Afroman.

But they have worked out how to make it go faster! Now we just need to run it in reverse!

Stop jaywalking!

You have 15 seconds to comply!

10 seconds!

5 seconds!

Sidewalk turned into a smoking crater