Whether they are gullible, corrupt, or simply pieces of shit and sociopaths... Why are they allowed to keep their job? And how can we fix democracy to make sure that they are held accountable?
Let's be clear about one thing: Hanlon's razor is bullshit. Globally, only about ~30% of humans think that "people are generally trustworthy". Even fewer think that "strangers can be trusted". So it fucking IS malice, and people are not trusting because they know that it is malice. In fairness you can look at nord-european countries for some counter-examples, but 30% is a good approximation.
I don't even care if politicians are stupid or malicious. They're probably both anyway because they're human. But what I care about is that they don't fuck with my hard earned civil liberties. So much blood was shed to get where we are... have we learned nothing at all?
That's like trying to stop a hemorrhage with a band-aid
Daily reminder that traditional AI expert systems from the 60s have 0 problems with hallucinations by virtue of their own architecture
Why we aren't building LLMs on top of ProbLog is a complete mystery to me (jk; it's because 90% of the people who work in AI right now have never heard of it; because they got into the field through statistics instead of logic, and all they know is how to mash matrices together).
Clearly language by itself doesn't cut it, you need some way to enforce logical rigor and capabilities such as backtracking if you care about getting an explainable answer out of the black box. Like we were doing 60 years ago before we suddenly forgot in favor of throwing teraflops at matrices.
If Prolog is Qt or, hell, even ncurses; then LLMs are basically Electron. They get the job done, but they're horribly inefficient and they're clearly not the best tool for the task. But inexperienced developers think that LLMs are this amazing oracle that solves every problem in the world, and so they throw LLMs at anything that vaguely looks like a problem.
Does your brain really tell you it’s more likely that 90% of people in the field are ignorant, rather than old expert systems were brittle, couldn't learn from data, required extensive manual knowledge editing, and couldn't generalize?
Btw as far as throwing teraflops, the ability to scale with compute is a feature not a bug.
I think it's more that the old expert systems (AKA flow charts) did work, but required you to already be an expert to answer every decision point.
Modern LLMs solve the huge problem of turning natural language from non-experts into the kind of question an expert system can use… 95% of the time.
95% is fantastic if you're e.g. me with GCSE grade C in biology from 25 years ago, asking a medical question. If you're already a domain expert, it sucks.
I suspect that feeding the output of an LLM into an expert system is still useful, for much the same reason that feeding code from an LLM into a compiler is useful.
It looks like model transfer from uninterpretable, pretrained models to interpretable models is the best strategy to keep using. That also justifies work like Ai2's OLMo model where all pretraining data is available to use other techniques, like those in search engines, to help explainable models connect facts back to source material.
> they got into the field through statistics instead of logic
LLMs by definition are built from neural networks, which indeed work via "mashing matrices" rather than "logic". That's the axiom of the technique. Sounds like you're saying let's throw away half a century of progress and start from scratch with a completely different direction. Maybe it will work, but who's gonna do all of that? I doubt that vague heckling from random comment threads will succeed in convincing researcher to commit to multiple lifetimes of work.
Instead of trying to reinvent LLMs, it would be more practical to focus on preprocessing input (eg. RAG) and postprocessing output (eg. detecting hallucination and telling the model to improve it before returning results to the user). This is something where something like using ProbLog might conceivably produce an advantage. So if you really want to rehabilitate Prolog to the field, why don't you go ahead and develop some LLM program in it and everyone can see for themselves how much better it is?
The answer to too much exaggeration about AI from various angles is _not_ more exaggeration. I get the frustration, but exaggerated ranting isn’t intellectually honest nor effective. The AI + software development ecosystem and demographics are broad enough that lots of people agree with many of your points. Sure, there are lots of people on a hype train. So help calm it down.
We’re developing an ‘Agent Bus’ to enable distributed multi-agent orchestration, so agents can run across different environments in a more scalable, shared manner.
The UK has been seriously going downhill ever since it left the EU. Not that it was doing great before, but damn. I wouldn't want to be one of its citizens right now, knowing that all my compatriots are such fucking idiots. There's no other way to say it, I'm sorry.
Hey it's not like I feel superior or smug about it. I'm affected too, in my own country. The world is slowly but surely giving away all of its democratic rights. One by one...
But the problem is that all the uneducated, easily manipulated dumbfucks are letting "them" do it. As if they actually understood what they voted for. As if their opinion actually mattered. They're just pawns and nothing more. Sigh. Let me out already I don't deserve this.
You make another drone swarm and hit drones with drones. That's how it's currently done in Ukraine with standalone small UAVs and multicopters right now, anyway. Shooting them is hard, net-shooting and shotguns work, but it must be automated, since there are a lot of them. EMP is a fairy tale, because you would also fry everything else, and the most common EMP used in wars so far is an atomic bomb. Jamming may work, if frequencies are known, and there is jamming equipment deployed for that frequency, but it's likely you need to jam video, as to not get operator to the point where they can make decision to be executed autonomously, and perhaps intra-swarm communication as well, in case of retranslators,as with a swarm it's possible to make multiple communication channels to the base, since different units can carry different sets of transmitters, so the best bet is drones hunting drones.
Let's find out if you're a bigot or not. I'll throw up Webster's definition for reference.
Bigot – a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.
The capacity for pregnancy is not confined to individuals with a female (46,XX) chromosomal pattern. The real world is complicated, and intersex people can be born with a (46,XY) karyotype or mixed (46,XX) and (46,XY) karyotypes as a result of chimerism. People with Swyer syndrome (46,XY) develop female reproductive anatomy (a uterus and fallopian tubes) but do not produce eggs. However, pregnancy can be achieved with donor eggs and assisted reproductive technology.
So here's the question: Are you devoted to your first opinion, or are you capable of acknowledging that the medical community may have had legitimate reasons, grounded in actual biology, to choose a more inclusive word?
What of the people that are born who don't produce gametes?
( For example, no gametes are produced in 85% of individuals with streak gonads )
The whole human sex | gender thing seems superficially clearcut but the real world edge cases are messy AF.
The aspect I personally find confusing is that the exceptions are relatively rare .. human births are straighforward enough for 98% of births, and of the 2% that pose a challenge the really curvy edge cases are rare (but real).
Why then do some people seeming lose their collective minds over real but rare occurrences and attempt to hammer every triangle into either a round or a square hole?
I have a purely empirical observational view of the world at large, forced a priori prescriptiveness at odds with the world seems more than a little flat earthy.
A less succinct way of phrasing it would be something like: which gametes are produced, were produced, or should have been produced.
There are messy edge cases. Not all people have 8 fingers and two thumbs, but we don't say digit count is on a spectrum because some people are born with more or less, or that some people have had digits amputated.
The vast, vast majority of people are not messy edge cases. And some of them find language like "pregnant people" or "people with protates" awkward and vaguely dehumanising as opposed to the more understandable and specific terms: "women" and "men".
Like you, I find those terms awkward, at best. I refuse to use them.
Yet, "what should have been produced" is no better. Everytime I hear it, from you and anyone else, it sounds like numbskulls all too pleased at themselves for what they believe is a clever definition, without realizing it's merely "because I said so".
Maybe I'm missing something, and one day I will hear it differently. Not many such things change for me after years. Maybe I'll win the lottery, too.
Since you mentioned fingers... I used to know a shop teacher who adamantly wouldn't count themselves among the 10-fingered, and would give you a safety lecture if you brought it up. Just like that lecture would ignore your joke about opening soda cans and proceed into a near-diatribe that, 30 years later, is still an effective reminder on machine safety, this exemplifies the crux of the gender terminology problem: you're focusing on the wrong thing.
Why are you so insistent on telling other people about their bodies, to the point of declaring to them what their body "should have produced"?
You appear as the middle-schooler that thought youself clever, and your close group of friends seemed to agree, but most everyone else is trying to ignore you. This only became a problem when that close group of friends started stealing lunch money, saying it "should have" been given to them.
> A less succinct way of phrasing it would be something like: which gametes are produced, were produced, or should have been produced.
So how can we determine what "should" be from a scientific basis if all study of these outliers is policed and censored like this?
This seems to be missing the point that would and should are objective vs whatever YOU and yours decided... Almost universally decided by religious or cultural dogma ... And not biology or science
We've been able to observe that there are two sexes since time immemorial based on secondary sex characteristics. There is a very strong correlation between these characteristics and gametes produced. This isn't what I or anyone else has decided nor is it based on religion or culture.
Why is a strong correlation need to forced into a false binary true or false by the law or government?? Myself and others have already gone over the outliers... Again you are focusing on "should be" vs what objectively and scientifically just IS. which is the very definition of culture vs science.
It's not a forced binary. There are no in-between gametes. There are large gametes (eggs) and small gametes (sperm).
The law and government doesn't get to decide this, as you say, it just is. How the law reacts to the scientific fact of the sex binary is a different matter.
There is plenty of in between on what to classify someone who doesn't produce either gamete. And the only answer you seem to have it's that it's obvious because 'should'. While also thinking it's acceptable to use the law to force this conclusion against scientific research. Much like a religious dogma...
Anyways I'm done with this conversation, the whole point was to tease out how absurd and non objective your argument was and I think I have achieved that well enough for others to read for themselves whether this circular logic makes sense or is just to rationalize bigotry.
The problem here is that you’re hand-waving people’s identity behind what you believe it “should” be - which isn’t actually easy to tell! You can have ovaries, XY chromosomes, eggs, male characteristics, and on and on and on in infinite permutations.
Of course, they (meaning people who identify different than you think they “should”) also hand-wave everything away. The difference is they are… them. Their opinion on their identity is more important.
Some people being born with additional/missing digits or limbs doesn't mean we should stop saying that humans have two arms and two legs with five fingers/toes each. At the end this is all performative - no one was ever actually harmed by women being called women.
And if anything those who insist of forcing this newspeak onto others by attacking anyone that doesn't go along also fit your definition of being "obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices".
> doesn't mean we should stop saying that humans have two arms and two legs with five fingers/toes each.
In the context of a loose generalisation that's pefectly fine.
However in the context of delivering public services to insist that all humans have two arms and two legs with five fingers/toes each with no exceptions is just wrong.
According to you. Not according to the trans-men who have undergone c-sections. Whether that is happening or not is not debatable - there are people who identify as trans-men who have gotten c-sections. Just as the sky is blue.
The question then shifts to why you believe your interpretation of their identity is more valuable than their interpretation of their identity. This is where people really struggle to make their logic consistent. In my opinion, your interpretation is inherently less valuable because, well, you aren't them.
One may wish to look to some one true objective truth. It does not exist. Women and men is not clear-cut and has never been clear-cut. There are those who may have a uterus, ovaries, and XY chromosomes. Or testes and a vagina, with XX ovaries. Or maybe ovaries with XXY chromosomes.
We can hand-wave these people away, sure, but remember - you're competing with a perfectly inclusive term. If you hand-wave those people away then you admit your term isn't perfectly inclusive and is therefore worse, so we're back at square one.
Can you find one true external factor that determines a binary gender for every human who has existed, may exist, or is currently existing, with no exceptions? You may be tempted to answer - but I should warn you, it can, and will, be trivially disputed.
Or, you can skip all of this "pursuit of truth" nonsense and just say "pregnant people", which DOES encompass anyone who is pregnant and who has existed, or may exist, or is currently existing.
Sorry but your argument doesn't make much sense. If I decide to identify myself as a dog or a lampshade, it doesn't mean that I am a dog or a lampshade. It's just words.
Similarly, a pregnant woman who for whatever reason has decided to call herself a man is, in reality, still a pregnant woman. The mere utterance of words does not alter that material fact.
Also worth considering is just how contradictory it is for her to try to identify into a sex class that is, by definition, incapable of being pregnant.
> Similarly, a pregnant woman who for whatever reason has decided to call herself a man is, in reality, still a pregnant woman.
Uh, no. Just according to you. “Woman” isn’t easy to just say like that, there’s no one definitive way to tell who is a woman.
I notice you didn’t point to any objective truth, most likely because you can’t. I think this conversation is way over your head, and I’m not going to try to convince people who do not have the mental capacity to understand what I’m saying.
Think about this logically. Consider a person. This person is pregnant. From this fact alone we can infer the presence of a female reproductive system. Which means that this person must be a woman.
Or, we can look at this from the other direction. Male sexual development does not result in a female reproductive system. Therefore this person is not a man.
You can perform this exercise of logic with any species that has individuals with different reproductive roles. For example: consider a chicken. This chicken lays eggs. From this we know that this chicken has a female reproductive system. Therefore this chicken must be a hen, not a cock.
> This person is pregnant. From this fact alone we can infer the presence of a female reproductive system.
No, no you can't. You can in 99% of circumstances, but not absolutely. They may also have a penis, or testicles, or any combination of reproductive organs. Yes, really.
But even if you could assume this, which you can't, you ALSO can't assume that a female reproductive system makes a woman. Because gender is complicated.
For example, you might call the bank teller "ma'am". Did you examine her reproductive organs? No, right? So this should be impossible - how did you know she was a woman?
Because, regardless of what bumbling idiots on the internet will claim, gender is inherently a social construct. You understand she is a woman because of the societal context of her clothes, her face, her hair, her makeup, and 1001 other tiny little things. Your brain then computes these all together and you determine "woman". But, she could have a penis.
In fact, just statistically speaking, you've encountered many women with penises and you will never know who they are, because they are women by your own perception. The same goes with men. Whether you choose to acknowledge this or remain a bumbling idiot, I do not care. This conversation is stupid, and frankly beneath me.
If you are unaware that pregnancy requires a female reproductive system and that this is the process the female reproductive system in humans and most other mammals is specialized for, then I would very much recommend you learn more before attempting to discuss this topic. At the very least, please look up what a uterus is and its role in gestation.
As for your view of women being "clothes, hair and makeup", this is a remarkably sexist perspective and I would urge you to rethink your understanding on this as well.
You’re being purposefully dishonest, as none of this is what I’ve said. You can’t just ignore what I wrote and fill in something that is easier for you to argue - this makes you look unbelievably stupid.
I wrote: "This person is pregnant. From this fact alone we can infer the presence of a female reproductive system."
You replied with: "No, no you can't."
From this, it is reasonable to assume that you either you don't understand that pregnancy requires a female reproductive system, or that you don't understand what the female reproductive system is.
You wrote: "You understand she is a woman because of the societal context of her clothes, her face, her hair, her makeup, and 1001 other tiny little things."
From that, it is reasonable to assume that you have a view of women based on sexist stereotyping around clothes, hair and makeup.
If you don't like the ideas that your words convey, that's on you for writing them.
> You wrote: "You understand she is a woman because of the societal context of her clothes, her face, her hair, her makeup, and 1001 other tiny little things."
> From that, it is reasonable to assume that you have a view of women based on sexist stereotyping around clothes, hair and makeup.
The person you are responding to was identifying the markers that cause the average person to make a snap decision on whether someone is a "he" or a "she" when encountering complete strangers on a day to day basis. If you don't use these factors to determine how you would address a person you've never met, what do you use? Do you demand to see their genitals or birth certificate?
You didn't answer my question. When you meet a stranger, how do you decide which words to use for them if not the way they're purposely choosing to present themselves?
Facial structure, body shape, voice. Humans have sufficient sexual dimorphism and are attuned to the differences enough to make this distinction correctly almost all of the time.
This is how we can, in most cases, ascertain a person's sex regardless of how they're attired.
It's also why the other commenter's view of women being "clothes, hair and makeup" is so absurd. A change of clothes, a haircut, and wiping off makeup doesn't somehow change women to men, or remove the ability of others to recognize sex.
Also, even if a person manages to disguise their sex or impersonate the opposite sex, this doesn't change the reality of their sex. Just may obscure it from observation, for some observers.
A friend of mine has a cat, which she's had since a kitten. When the cat was given to her, she was told it is male. However, when she took the cat to the vet for vaccinations, she was informed that the cat is in fact female.
A mistaken assumption doesn't change the underlying reality.
If she hadn't taken the cat to the vet and hadn't otherwise realized that the cat is female, and later, the cat had become pregnant, then she wouldn't be exclaiming how amazing it is to see a male pregnancy. No, she would understand that the cat is female, because only female cats can be pregnant.
No you've missed the point, which is that "people" includes both women and men.
Men cannot be pregnant, which is obvious from the fact that male sexual development does not produce a female reproductive system.
The term "pregnant people" is not just unnecessarily obfuscating but also linguistically erases the group of people who can actually be pregnant - that is, women.
You described a sibling with a female reproductive system, who has been pregnant. This means that your sibling must be a woman.
That you refer to her as your brother rather than your sister implies that she calls herself a man, and that because she calls herself a man you have chosen to do the same.
You are of course free to immerse yourself in the fiction that she is a man, and make self-contradictory statements like "my brother is a man who has been pregnant." But it would be odd to expect others to agree with this, seeing as it is not based in reality.
It doesn't. As you've been told already, you're wrong about this.
> But it would be odd to expect others to agree with this, seeing as it is not based in reality.
Fortunately for my brother and the countless other trans people in this world, scientific consensus is on their side. You and those in power right now might disagree, but your kind has been defeated before and will be defeated again.
Getting back to the point of the thread, it's fine if you want to hold the personal belief that your sister is your brother. No-one is stopping you from that, nor should they. You could believe she's a cat and gave birth to a litter of kittens if you like. That is your freedom of belief.
However, the CDC should have its focus in reality, not fiction. If a woman says she's a man, she does not somehow transform into a man. This is a nonsensical belief.
It's a bit like Catholics believing that bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. Fine for them to hold that fictional belief if they want to, but it would look ridiculous if the CDC published this within their hematology resources as if it's a fact.
To state that men can be pregnant is incorrect, and has no scientific consensus. The male reproductive system is incapable of pregnancy. You can try to "defeat" this but it's a losing battle, as it is plainly false.
The older one is the more pointless it is to try. Not because it's impossible but because of all the friction and inertia required to get someone to change their habits and mindset. You quickly reach diminishing returns.
> which I understand is a bit further in an IP rights grey area than emulating a 30 year old game
But Nintendo will never take down anything that is related to Showdown because it would highlight their massive hypocrisy!
It would set a precedent. People would go: "wait, but why did they never take down Showdown itself? Could it be that it's because they actually benefit from its existence? Then why did they take down X/Y/Z? Oh! It's because copyright law only applies when you want it to! It's all arbitrary and made up! You just need to be friends with the right people in the VGC and your pet project will be immune from all legal backlash!"
Or something.
Seriously I hate it so fucking much that Nintendo does nothing about Showdown, which blatantly steals a ton of game assets, and then nukes some random guy's fan project that no one ever played.
