This would be a more convincing take if reasoning LLMs didn't already exist. Given the growth in capability over the last few years alone nothing about your description "several minute explanation of how the item description and the slight differentiations of the boxes" seems beyond an artificial intelligence to solve by the time humanoid robots would be ready to physically traverse a warehouse.
Your last point is also interesting given perhaps a robot is more amenable to such instruction, thus creating cascading savings. Each human has to be trained, and could be individually a failure. Robot can essentially copy its "brain" to its others.
Or likely more accurately, download the latest brain trained from all the robot's aggregate experiences from the amazon hivemind hq
i understand that perfectly, which is why i responded sarcastically to a point trying to connect this to TikTok's "argument" re their Singaporean CEO by pasting an infamous digression on that very topic.
seems to have gone over your head... i edited out the crack about your iq, which was done only because you chose to engage that way to begin with. i would respect an apology for misreading me more than trying to sanitize your earlier arrogance, but c'est la vie.
Some people are ethnonationalists, and the CEO of Tiktok, while he is Singaporean, is also ethnically Chinese. It seems pretty clear that is what the line of questioning was about, and just saying you are Singaporean and not Chinese does not answer the unstated question. Like his politics or not, it is obvious that Tom Cotton is not an idiot who does not understand that Singapore is not in China (like conversation was interpreted on the Internet when it happened)
What is the American ethnicity? Should all other ethnicities be subjected to the same round of questioning before the United States Congress?
I'm not sure why you are defending Tom Cotton's intelligence. Rule #1 of asking questions in a courtroom or a congressional setting is to anticipate the answers. Put more strongly, it is often said you should not ask a question you don't already know the answer to. If he thought he was going to elicit some Chinese "ethnonationalist" response, then he failed, and as such, was idiotic in pursuing this line of questioning. I agree with you he knows Singapore is not in China. That's not what makes his line of questioning stupid. It is that he essentially asks the same question multiple times and gets the same answer. The reason he looks dumb is because his line of questioning is dumb.
If he had some evidence the CEO was an "ethnonationalist" he could have confronted him with that. He doesn't and he didn't, so instead he committed himself to a bs line of questioning that ended up embarrassing him. If there is an unstated question as you claim, he could have asked it directly. He didn't. Why is that?
What did he achieve by this line of questioning, besides making himself look like a fool? This is his one job, he's one of only 100 people (really less) who gets these opportunities and this is the best he can do? Why are you making excuses for him? Demand better from your representatives.
I should note I am really straining to be charitable to your view. I think the real unstated, obvious subtext here is a white guy from Arkansas with the last name "Cotton" is openly trading in the same type of racist dog whistling his ancestors more than likely engaged in. I mean if we are just going to randomly accuse people of being ethnonationalists why not start with the Senator? Since you see no problem with crafting lines of inquiry based on your rather broad statement that "some people are ethnonationalists" (ok... and?) then maybe we should start with the Senator himself. I mean, why not? What makes the Tiktok CEO a more compelling suspect? I think it's obvious why the clip resonated beyond the feeble questioning - it's because many Americans can empathize with the CEO in this case. If the Senator had done his basic homework he would know Singapore doesn't allow dual citizens, so he already had his answer at the first question, which he would have already known if he had done any basic research. They are supposed to prepare for these things you know.
I mean I really am just disappointed in you, as an American citizen. The idea you need to have your representatives ask these kinds of questions in the United States on the off chance someone is an ethnonationalist... it just feels ironic. You should probably read up on your history most people who ask these types of questions from the seats of power in the United States Senate have historically been the ethnonationalists. As I stated if Cotton had evidence of his views, he could have raised them. Or asked about them directly. Instead he essentially asked the same question about his citizenship numerous times. Why?
I appreciate you replying in what I take to be good faith though. I don't mean to turn it into a question of race/ethnicity alone, which I gather will only alienate you. Then again, you are the one who brought up "ethnonationalism". I'm not even sure I know what exactly you mean by that term, but I find your invocation of it here to be suspect. But I am trying to be charitable to your position. The point remains his line of questioning did not clear up any "ethnonationalist" notions, but honestly I felt I had to edit this and be more straightforward with my criticism of your rejoinder. I just think you might want to consider why this clip resonated, instead of the straw man you seemed to posit (internet thinks Cotton thinks Singapore is in China).
Maybe it is about idealistic concepts like "ethnonationalism", but a pragmatic perspective is just that: someone with critical ties/stakes with PRC makes them vulnerable to PRC pressure (just look up PRC overseas police services, or the expanding reach of its National Security Law).
Tbh, its either naive or outright propagandistic to be surprised that powers with stakes on an issue won't pressure to have outcomes lean in their interests. There are centuries of examples of this.
And? What strawman are you attacking? No one disputed that pragmatic concern. How did Cotton's viral line of questioning help clarify if or how the CEO was "vulnerable to PRC pressure"?
Should American CEOs who do business in China be subjected to the same lines of questioning re their citizenship? You think Americans who do business in China aren't influenced or "vulnerable to PRC pressure"? China is a huge market, one of (if not perhaps the most) desirable in the whole world. You think American companies don't behave to please the PRC when operating in China?
Tbh it is either naive or outright propagandistic to be surprised at the idea that American citizens running international businesses are somehow immune to "PRC pressure" given the PRC is the government of one of the largest and most desirable markets in the entire world.
Tom Cotton's line of inquiry is embarrassing on all grounds. The fact you have to draw up a strawman to defend it says a lot. As with the claim of "ethnonationalism", if he had even a shred of concrete evidence re PRC pressure he could have brought it to bear and dispensed with the repetitive citizenship questionnaire.
The fact you shouldn't ask questions you don't know the answer to is one of the indicators that the judicial and legislative systems is broken. That's a principle that is hostile to inquisitive and curious reasoning.
a cross examination or a congressional hearing is not a university lecture.
would you like your liberty to be at risk just so a judge or a senator can satisfy their curiosity at your expense? do you have any idea what the penalties can be for failing to comply with a judicial or congressional subpoena? is the penalty of perjury consistent with "inquisitive and curious reasoning"? or is that an instrument of "hostility"?
it would not be a free country if the judicial and legislative systems were equated with "inquisitive and curious reasoning". if they want to serve that function they can give up their power to deprive people of their liberty.
If you want to flip the script and attack subpoenas, sure. Involuntary subpoena power is hostile in and of itself. It's form of indentured servitude or temporary slavery without even an accusation of crime or wrongdoing. I think it's morally abhorrent and I am not advocating for violence enforced subpoena power of those not even under indictment of misconduct to exist. These subpoenas themselves are not an exhibition of being 'free' as you proudly use the word.
I don't see how what you're saying as attacking what I'm saying. You're attacking involuntary subpoena power. I don't disagree with you. It's an interesting red herring, and I find it an interesting topic, so I'm happy to discuss it but not under the pretenses you are weakening my argument. But it's not impossible to get rid of subpoena power and still have judicial or legislative powers, even if you argue the judicial system will be less effective or some such (personally I think the benefits of being 'free' outweigh the advantages of subpoena).
Sorry, I simply don't know what point you are making. If you are trying to propose some alternative system that is one thing. I'm merely clarifying that your statement does not make sense in the context of the system we already have. It is not meant to be a red herring. The reason that adage about "don't ask questions..." even exists among trial lawyers is because of the state's great power over its own citizens (and others it has authority over).
Now I guess maybe what you are saying is that the state shouldn't have these powers, and therefore we should be able to more freely ask and answer questions in courts and congress, then fine. But I'm not sure I agree with that or I want to engage with whatever you proposed alternative is. I think simply it doesn't comport to equate some kind "hostility to inquisitive and curious reasoning" to the adage, because the point is that the courts are not a venue for such a thing.
Now if you think they should be, that is a separate argument. I don't see how any institution that has the power to deprive people of their liberty could ever be a venue for "inquisitive and curious reasoning". Which is why I said the courts and congress are not the universities. In fact, there is very good historical literature that elucidates the role of the university as something of a sovereign entity in the Western tradition given this almost definitional tension with the institutions of the state.
In reading the subtext in your comment, I think we may agree in more than a few areas, but we are just coming at this from slightly different directions. Again, the adage came up with respect to Cotton's performance as an examiner in the context where people in his position have great power to damage those sitting before him.
It's an adversarial system by design. If you want to redesign it fine, but the adage makes sense given this is the system. It applies to Cotton in this case as well, even if he is the state here, because naturally even though there will not be any real consequences for him, he still falls under the same risks re the success of making an argument in this kind of venue if you ask a question without considering the answer you will be eliciting. I also don't really think him asking essentially the same question about his citizenship multiple times is a species of "inquisitive and curious reasoning" anyway. So while I think I may sympathize with your general notions I'm not sure I really know what you are getting at.
It's not that complicated. Elect a Democrat in 2028 who will nominate a strong AG, not a useless ditherer like Garland. What a disgraceful tenure he had. If he was going to take so long to bring charges he should have just avoided it. Instead he takes 3 years to bring all these charges which naturally look like election interference and as such are paused until they choke the election away and the new justice department kills all the cases.
Don't elect a geriatric compromise candidate. The current administration's excesses create a massive opportunity for a pendulum swing. It's really not that hard. Hold yourself, your neighbors, your family and your friends accountable for who they vote for. And as tempting as it is, don't give into cynicism. It will take work but change for the better is always possible, and really in America, is far less out of reach than it would often seem.
Doesn't matter whom you elect, at least not as far as righting wrongs. You might prevent more egregious wrongs from happening, but convincing Congress to return to rule of law is impossible when Congress is almost entirely funded by the same powerful interests who chose to put a lunatic in charge.
You're also up against a large population which has been brainwashed, and even if someone deprogrammed is still not intellectually capable of reasoning beyond their own immediate interests. In other words, a democracy where ignorant people can vote is ultimately doomed to look quite like what we have now.
While I broadly agree with this characterization, it is somewhat inaccurate.
> the same powerful interests who chose to put a lunatic in charge.
I don't think this is accurate as a fact of recent history. As I recall, said interests wanted a repeat of Bush v Clinton. While they may have fallen in line since, I think this picture you are painting misses a lot of nuance. The current president was considered a joke up until the votes started coming in. So I think you are painting with an overly broad brush.
Secondly, at a certain point this starts to read like little more than cynicism. What is a suggestion you have, that isn't merely one in the negative? I genuinely sympathize with your perspective, but I'm curious what the subsequent step is then meant to be.
Thirdly, preventing egregious wrongs is pretty important. I don't believe rule of law is permanently out of reach. If your basis for this is the broad brush you painted earlier well then I don't think that actually computes. And I don't think preventing egregious wrongs should be minimized, even if structural issues are a barrier to "righting wrongs" as I believe you correctly put it. Solving those structural issues is a longer discussion, and one predicated on the requirement that there is no longer a "lunatic in charge".
That in of itself, is important. Let's also remember they could have brought the cases earlier. Your comment doesn't really address that, unless you are essentially claiming someone paid off Garland to dither away for 3 years. I gather that is not your claim? Therefore I think you're being overly cynical. As I said, in many ways it's not that complicated.
> Elect a Democrat in 2028 who will nominate a strong AG
Impossible. Democratic Party power is concentrated into a gerontocracy mostly interested in preserving their own wealth/power.
Appeasement and encouragement of status quo will be the result of any Democrat victory.
Of course all this Trump shit is good precedent for them to use similar tactics to line their pockets next time.
Is this supposed to be an intelligent comment? Is your answer to forgo elections ahead of time? You plan for the worst outcome by already accepting it as reality?
Why don't you work on lobbying your grandparents and their vote because I seriously doubt you are equipped for whatever armed conflict you are imagining. Have some dignity. If Americans are so called upon to defend the constitution then so be it, there is no need to prematurely soil your pants about it.
People often in essence say "I think the odds of [the alternate option(s)] are greater than are being represented". It can be helpful to frame it that way, rather than "I will over-react to what I feel is an over-reaction".
I generally agree, but this time his VP isn't going to defect and he's been building ICE into a republican guard loyal only to him, so I think you can't just completely say "well it failed last time so it'll fail again"
Yep, might not have liked a lot of what Mike Pence stood for but he was at least willing to operate with humility. He always took the honest route ecen if you disagreed with his views.
Vance however, I dont see much of that in action. But time will tell. Folks like to think it is a quiet conspiracy but every time you get a glimpse inside workings of government, if feels like they hate each other more than the next guy, regardless of who is in power.
> he was at least willing to operate with humility. He always took the honest route ecen if you disagreed with his views.
eh I'm not really going to agree with you on this. He flinched 1 millimeter away from committing a full coup. That's not really a positive vote, it's just not as negative as it could be.
“It’s not that complicated. Give up your principles for short term house cleaning.”
People with strong political beliefs are going to turn their head to keep their side in power rather than put someone in power that will push policies they are fundamentally against.
Blagojevich was not replaced by a Republican.
At this point presidential elections are won by getting members of the other side to stay home. So encourage young people to get out and vote if you want a Democrat. Don’t waste your breath telling someone who cares about gun rights to vote for a Democrat.
What kind of reply is that? Nevermind the questionable style of making up a sentence and putting it in quotation marks, what about the comment you're replying to suggests giving up any principles?
You cannot vote for someone in a representative democracy that will enact things against your principles. Voting Democrat, regardless of the quality of character of the representative, would be a betrayal of principles for the people who believe things like “abortion is murder”.
The made up quotation is a style designed to illustrate how dumb of a suggestion that is to people who vote on single issues.
It’s how single issue voters think regardless of Democrat/Republican. They ignore the representative’s moral failings and pick the one that will execute their policy desires.
Why are you appending a sentence I never said within your quote of my position?
Your comment reads like you are arguing with yourself. I never suggested anything to the contrary of much of what you write, so frankly I have no idea what point you are trying to make. I suggest you re-read my comment in full as I think we are predominantly in agreement.
You suggested voting for a Democrat, which would be a ridiculous betrayal to any single issue voter Republican voting for something like stopping abortion because they think it’s murder.
It’s so ridiculous on its face that I put in quotes what would be running through any single-issue voter’s head when they would hear a suggestion to vote for a different policy platform to oust a representative. You might as well ask a Bernie supporter to vote in Ron Paul.
I wasn't talking to single issue republicans... I didn't take the OP to be one, and I (like you) would not waste much time on one.
The point I was trying to make is Democrats can elect and nominate better candidates. But let's also not forget, single issue Republicans are not the only problem.
Institutional or single issue Democrats are also the problem. The biggest problem with Democrats is the DNC. The same people who lied to you about Biden's fitness for a second term are by and large still there. They still want your money. The DNC uses the Trump fear to escape accountability for its failures at every turn. The losers who have lost to this man for about a decade now are still there.
So I think we are in agreement, but I would add the reason more young people and independents need to vote is to replace the power structure on both sides of the aisle, not merely the one in power today. This is not "both sides", rather two things can be true. An institutional Democrat can be better than what we have today, but I think history has shown in the long run it is not good enough. What comes after this from the right in the near future may be far worse. Do not underestimate the ability for a future nominee to make the current president look like a saint... recall when people thought Bush II was a low point. It can happen again. If we keep electing mediocre Democrats, I believe it will.
Thank you for clarifying your comment, I appreciate you coming back to do that.
Movements that ignore the need for a charismatic leader fail, often spectacularly. It's why for example occupy wallstreet was such a laughable failure. Who was its leader? Is the human megaphone a species of "massive collaboration and communication"? Can you name me one leader from that movement who was nationally recognized as such?
Strong leaders are always required. Such people reduce the cost of messaging and communication which would otherwise be insurmountable to cohere a movement and actually make change. You don't elect a mob. Find leaders you trust and spread your conviction without apology. Roosevelt was not Roosevelt until after his works were done. We don't need some amorphous "massive collaboration and communication" we need to elect leaders who will fight for what we believe. So many of your friends, family and neighbors are willing to elect sell-out leaders. You could start there, that is if you actually want to fix the problem rather than invent new ones.
> It's why for example occupy wallstreet was such a laughable failure.
This claim is enormous. I would instead argue that the movement lacked cohesiveness because it basically complained about too large a set of (correctly identified as interconnected) issues and lost momentum because the surface was too large.
That said, I agree w your point about a face being important. Even in software, where tech can speak for itself, we see this heavily: Torvalds, Matsumoto, van Rossum, Jobs,
> LLMs don't second-guess whether a change is worth submitting, and they certainly don't feel the social pressure of how their contribution might be received. The filter is completely absent.
Of course you could have an agent on your side do this, so I take you to mean a LLM that submits a PR and is not instructed to make such a reflection will not intrinsically make it as a human would, that is as a necessary side effect of submitting in the first place (though one might be surprised).
It would be curious to have an API that perhaps attempts to validate some attestation about how the submitting LLM's contribution was derived, ie force that reflection at submission time with some reasonable guarantees of veracity even if it had yet to be considered. Perhaps some future API can enforce such a contract among the various LLMs.
Prioritizing or deferring to existing contributors happens in pretty much every human endeavor.
As you point out this of course predates the age of LLM, in many ways it's basic human tribal behavior.
This does have its own set of costs and limitations however. Judgement is hard to measure. Humans create sorting bonds that may optimize for prestige or personal ties over strict qualifications or ability. The tribe is useful, but it can also be ugly. Perhaps in a not too distant future, in some domains or projects these sorts of instincts will be rendered obsolete by projects willing to accept any contribution that satisfies enough constraints, thereby trading human judgement for the desired mix of velocity and safety. Perhaps as the agents themselves improve this tension becomes less an act of external constraint but an internal guide. And what would this be, if not a simulation of judgement itself?
You could also do it in stages, ie have a delegated agent promote people to some purgatory where there is at least some hope of human intervention to attain the same rights and privileges as pre-existing contributors, that is if said agent deems your attempt worthy enough. Or maybe to fight spam an earnest contributor will have to fork over some digital currency, to essentially pay the cost of requesting admission.
All of these scenarios are rather familiar in terms of the history of human social arrangements.
That is just to say, there is no destruction of the social contract here. Only another incremental evolution.
And they make money. A scammer is the President of the United States.
At a certain point why blame people for trying to keep up? Why are scammers so successful? It seems to me we have a systemic failure at a societal level. Until we are honest about that it will only get worse. Until then maybe some rouge LLM botching some critical system will be the wake up call we need.
I am not sure what to make of critiques that seem to rest on notions of a small population of scammers preying upon the doe-eyed public. I think the situation is a bit closer to Carlin: garbage in, garbage out. A critique that holds up quite excellently in this AI age.
western society is a shelve of its former glory. it did not last long but there was an age were man was capable of greatness. the early internet kinda was the last stretch of this short run then money corrupted it. the underlying issue stems from abandoning cultural education as a Western value. Instead, we've opted to dispense raw ideology devoid of any thinking mechanism that we now seek so dearly to integrate to LLMs so that they can be more like us. This sloppening manifested in our lives through every medium.
We witnessed it when animation shifted to 3D, providing slop and poorly designed characters and stories. We witnessed it when video games all adopted the same game engines, look and feel and lack of narrative stakes, slopping ideology down players’ throats- no nuance, no wit, just mind-numbing dogma that punishes anyone who dares to criticize.Perhaps most damaging was Netflix's infiltration of our households that has accelerated our collective intellectual atrophy through relentless ideologically charged content parroting as entertainment. Meanwhile, our children's minds are being shaped not by family or tradition but by the algorithms of TikTok and Snapchat.The past decade and a half hasn't just prepared LLMs to replicate human abilities it has systematically stripped away human complexity, reshaping us into predictable patterns, not to raise LLMs to our level, but to reduce us to theirs, until the distinction no longer matters.
People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state to detain, arrest, and potentially deprive citizens of a free country of their life, liberty or property is asinine and shameful.
Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held accountable, and then cry like babies when someone makes videos and mocks them. He could have just sued them directly to recoup his financial losses from them destroying his house over a bs warrant but cops have qualified immunity. The justice system gives him no recourse. They sued him for videos meanwhile his countersuit was thrown out on this basis.
If you support the cops on this I see no reason why one should not conclude you "wholly endorse" the ongoing "law enforcement" assault on free Americans. What principles do you take the nation to be founded on? You realize red coats coming into people's homes under the color of the law is what instigated the war that bought this country its liberty 250 years ago? I fail to see how this is much different, armed goons with guns and badges invading private property that cannot be held accountable. No election he can take part in will reasonably solve this so he can sue in a timely manner, as the unelected justice system has unilaterally decided you cannot sue cops over this. This is anti-American. Go read the bill of rights and tell me it is consistent with the spirit of those hard fought liberties to support the cops on this. I hope if you actually endorse burdens of proof you will at least support local, state and federal representatives who will codify into law a "repeal" of qualified immunity so that cops who fail to meet that burden can be held personally accountable.
Note a case on that count would still need to prevail on the merits. That is how justice is supposed to work. Instead a carve out for law enforcement has been created where you can't even take them to court. Your case is going to get thrown out. The justice system should not be creating this special class of people, with great power and depriving them of the responsibilities common between neighbors in a free society. What they have done is really not unlike the British sending armed men into American cities to violate rights and then insisting they cannot be held accountable in colonial courts as a matter of principle. This is criminal. People should be able to sue police officers. If that makes the cost of waving guns in people's faces more expensive then so be it.
> People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state
Let's take a step back. OP, essentially, made a very basic logical error (actually not an error IMO, but a willfully misleading statement).
They said, "Statistically, [assuming a cop is a white supremacist] a pretty sensible assumption."
In my mind, what makes something a statistically safe assumption would mean that, more times than not, you'd be right. So it'd mean that greater than half of police are white supremacists. They then posted a link to support that statement which said that some white supremacist groups are instructing their members to join the police force.
He's gone from the evidence of "some" white supremacist groups are telling "some" of their members among the police force to justify saying that it's a safe assumption to assume any officer is a white supremacist (greater than 50% chance for any random cop to be a white supremacist).
Considering that I strongly doubt the quantity of white supremacists that are members of white supremacist organizations in this county is even more than half of the amount of police officers, I very much doubt that the subset of individuals in the subset of organizations who were given this instruction and actually followed through on it comprises more than half of the police officers in the country.
To which I facetious said, "I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal." Implying that, if the cops used the same logic on a neighborhood with criminals, it'd be sensible for them to assume every member of the neighborhood is a criminal. That point seemed to go over OPs head as he replied as if I wasn't making a facetious point and implied that cops do indeed do that. Presumably he thinks that's a bad thing when they do it but is perfectly reasonable for him to do.
I don't think anyone should be using faulty logic to make claims about groups of people.
> If you support the cops on this
I never said I did and, as such, the rest of this comment is not directed to me.
Indeed, your chances of needing a seatbelt for a particular car trip are very low but, over many trips, it becomes a safe assumption you'll be in an accident and, therefore, generally good policy to be prepared for that eventuality.
Your last point is also interesting given perhaps a robot is more amenable to such instruction, thus creating cascading savings. Each human has to be trained, and could be individually a failure. Robot can essentially copy its "brain" to its others.
Or likely more accurately, download the latest brain trained from all the robot's aggregate experiences from the amazon hivemind hq
reply