LeroyRaz

Aren't you worried about low quality interviews?!

I only listen to interviews from 50 years ago (interviews that have stood the test of time), about books from 100 years ago. In fact, how am I reading this article? It's not 2074 yet?!

Your take seems hyperbolic.

Until LLMs exceed the very best of human quality there will be human content in all forms of media. This claims follows because there is always (some) demand for top quality content.

I agree that many writers might use LLMs as a tool, but good writers who care about quality will ensure that such use is not detrimental (e.g., using the LLM to identify errors rather than having it draft copy).

This isn't normal. No other developed country has these issues.

How can any American be proud of their country?

Please do share your thoughts. It seems a shame to let nitpickers ruin the community for others.

You seem to be willfully misinterpretating SpaceX's post. They say that only potable water is used in the deluge process. That's all they are saying. They aren't saying that the post deluge water is potable.

It's decent. I just find Alastair Reynolds a bad observer of humans though... He paints jarringly bad portaits of humans, e.g., in one of his books he has the mercenaries hand wringing about how they can't be morally shady despite the whole fate of the human race depending on them acting decisively. It's is a really naive depiction of how humans actually act under pressure.

I have similar issues with the Three Body problem.

Lol. The culture is pretty far left (strong super-paternalistic government, equality of outcomes, etc...). I don't think one can draw a serious connection between liking the series and rightwing politics.

I think it is pretty clearly a utopia. It's a post scarcity society, where humans still live meaningful lives (despite being outclassed completely by AI). It's about as best as one can do in a post scarcity society with super intelligence.

The interesting and unique aspect of the series, is that Banks manages to write interesting stories about a utopia.

The culture triumphs because it is a technological super power. It is a technological super power because the minds (the super AIs running everything) are given free reign (and presumably most of its industrial base is used to create more minds, and develop more industry).

I've always gotten the impression that the resources dedicated to maintaining and serving the humans in the culture empire are dwaft by the resources invested into developing their science and AI.

(I mean basically they have Von Neumann machines controlling whole star systems, obviously this level of industry beats most biological enemies)

It's worth noting though that there are several other cultures/species that are more advanced than the culture though. E.g., the ascended species that stewards the tomb worlds (and is in essence like a god compared to the culture). There are many other examples.

I don't think it was ever claimed that the culture was predestined to be the strongest, or anything like that.

I've noticed US culture war infecting Canadian university campuses. It's bizarre, and unhealthy.

I mean, Wikipedia says "the history of artificial refrigeration began when Scottish professor William Cullen [made a fridge]"

But, again (merely sourcing from Wikipedia) the idea of evaporative cooling is ancient.

How does one access the a rise in reports? A rise in reports could be bad or good. A) it could be good because the rate of crime is fixed, but more crimes are being reported. B) it could be bad because the rate crime is rising (with the same proportion of crimes being reported). C) it could even be bad because there is an increasing number of false reports.

I am also very intrigued by how one actually estimates rates of things like false reports, unreported crimes, and false convictions. How given that by these categories definitions they are being miscatagorized by the system does any academic or institution estimate these statistics? It seems one would need an independent body to conduct separate investigations to properly estimate any of these

I feel he was just unusually stupid enough to explicitly put in writing what many academics subtly and implicitly do. People cite their friends, others in the field (with an implicit quid pro quo), etc... even if the research cited has only a tenuous connection to the current paper.

The whole practice of citations is very strange. Many times, I have seen researchers search for works to cite at the time of writing! The top Google result gets cited, without the person having even read the paper before, as all they were looking for was a cite for a pretty generic claim (e.g., machine learning has been applied to health care). I'm not sure that such citations are even bad practice as statements should be evidenced by cites. But as a result, a paper getting cited (e.g., the top ranked Google search for ML and Cancer) doesn't actually mean that the cited paper truly means anything, is credible, or a meaningful scientific contribution.

I think point of origin makes a huge amount of sense. All the actual cells of the cancer will be of the origin type! E.g., even if it is in the brain it is still a clump of lung tissue cells.

A quick Google gives reputable looking studies on the topic, e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-02112-8

I find it strange how being killed when innocent is considered so much worse than being wrongly incarcerated.

The state has already taken prime years of life (age 36-56). The potential execution just seems like salt in that wound.

Supernovas and novas are different. The article mentions how the explosion will not be a supernova but a nova.

I think this article makes a good point: the point in the title.

I find the intro almost made me not want to read the article though, as it has this long segue dunking (in a way unrelated to the main point) on some arbitary person who made the mistake of the title.

E.g., '''"it’s more than a little presumptuous to then claim that people on Gessen’s (pro-Palestine) side of the argument are “just much better informed”'''

I don't know who Gessen is, and not knowing who they are, the authors take is, to me, odd and mean spirited. Gessen, at least as quoted in the article, isn't making the point that their side is "much better informed." They actually say that their friends (who support their side) are more informed than their wife's friends (who support the other side) on this particular topic. This is a judgement on two friendship groups that they (Gessen) have first-hand experience of.

Gessen also makes some later points about how people aren't appearing to think during the congressional hearing. But none of the quoted text reaches the arrogance of characterizing all of their side as enlightened and all opposition as ignorant.

Is there a non-paywalled version of this article?

I am surprised that 1 million allegedly buys that level of corruption and influence.

It seems strange it would only cost 1 million to make the association a corporate shrill for Stevia when diabetes as an issue costs billions to the US.

If you're going to forgo your princibles and be corrupt then at least get higher price for doing so!

I am objecting to their initial motivation: it being surprising that "small" DNA changes lead us to be vastly superior to Apes.

They suggest in the disappearing ink thought experiment that this is because the genetic change is sufficient for us to pass some critical threshold (allowing cultural transferences of ideas).

That is a completely different from my complaint. I complain that they subtly mischaracterize how we should think about DNA changes. The number of DNA base substitutions is a pretty meaningless metric in the context they are attempting to use it.

I dont disagree with their argument that there can threshhold changes and that cultural accumilation might be one of them.

Yeah, I think there is lots evidence that social media companies use their platform to support favourable narratives. X is one example.

X spinning a pro X narrative is problematic, just as it is bad Facebook hid their problem with teenage mental health, etc... all these types of things are problematic and can often harm people and society.

The reason TikTok is a greater concern is that TikTok is fully controlled by China, and that hence it is not just pro TikTok narratives that might be amplified but any narrative China wants to amplify. The risks are greater, and the existing mitigations are weaker as the company isn't US owned.

If you ask me, the US in recent history has had incredibly anemic corporate regulation, and there should be a lot more intervention to prevent companies acting nefariously.

No. Your statement does not follow.

TikTok can be undermining the US (and potentially be a growing problem) without it being currently capable of preventing itself being banned.

By your logic, nobody should go to hospital when sick, as if they can go to hospital then they must not be sick.

I support this move. It seems pretty naive to me for people to whine about this ban curbing free speech or fairness when TikTok can directly be used by a belligerent superpower (China) to undermine those values.

Lay people are totally used to this type of precision.

It's like you did a typo in your cookie recipe and instead of 100 grams of sugar instead put 1000 kilos. It's only a few extra zeros after all. A tiny change in the text.

I can't take seriously the suggestion we should expect chimps and humans to be similar due to the "small" number of DNA base changes.

Tiny genetic difference can make a huge difference to an organism. Their statement is like saying doing something 10 times versus 100000 times should give similar results, because expressing both as text the difference is only 4 characters ("10" v.s. "100000"). There are literally places in the human genome that have that kind of effect, e.g. small substitutions resulting in extra whole functioning vertebrae.

Even just "autism makes MY travel a challenge" would be better than the current emphatic generalisation.

Unrelated to the main article, but what is with all the (luckily dead) spam in the HackerNews comments?

The stress and difficulty of trying to get one's best chance of survival sounds incredibly hard. I hope the author (and others in similar situations) keep fighting.

I've read many paywalled articles. HackerNews generally links an archive link, and I also occasionally use institutional access. However, I don't subscribe personally to any news sites.

Often, when I do read paywalled articles, I feel embarrassed by how poor they are. On most topics I'm actually informed on, e.g., my area of work, or say reporting on a fully videod courtroom case I've been following, they come across as incredibly ignorant. This is mainly the general newsites though, e.g., the Atlantic, etc...

I might check out BloombergLaw. So far, I think the only news providers I respect, are BellingCat (I thought their work with navalny was incredible), PrivateEye (consistently princibled - and funny - satyrists) and I also have a softspot for the BBC.