blagie

> Altman is busy saying there needs to be regulation, but in terms of what OpenAI does, he can control that already.

No. He can't. Literally.

In a competitive ecosystem, one needs to play to maximize profit sufficiently optimally to remain in business. Otherwise, the business dies, and another one succeeds.

His hands are tied.

If I am in a business making toxic food, and the whole industry is plagued by scandal, as much as:

- I might not want to make toxic food

- The whole industry might benefit from less scandal

- The world as a whole might be a better place

The invisible hand of the free market might force me to keep doing so. Otherwise, I go in the red, and go out-of-business. And if I go out-of-business, someone similar but even less ethical will take my place.

That's why business leaders often do horrific things, while calling for regulation to stop them.

Free markets optimize. Regulations set the constraints of that optimization.

Your brain is cooked if you write:

> I will back down from my claim that Minsky did have sex with Virginia Giuffree

And then continue to argue basing your arguments on that "fact." You have some kind of vendetta. It's not grounded in evidence, and you're willing to contort facts around that vendetta.

And you write things like:

> if you did what you are demanding of me, you would have already apologized several times

What I'm asking you to do is to not spread baseless accusations, especially about someone who can't defend themselves because they passed away.

The people you should apologize to aren't myself, but the people whom you slandered.

What do I have to apologize for, in your mind?

> You are claiming there is no difference in the defense by the widow (who said she was always with him), while also claiming that Minsky was offered but declined. Both can only be the true if the offer was discreetly made and that the widow did not notice.

This doesn't seem like rocket science. If I am e.g. at a dinner party with my spouse, I might be aware there was no opportunity to have sex while not monitoring every conversation my spouse is involved with.

Conversely, if someone flirts with my spouse, and my spouse doesn't engage, I might not take notice, or if I do, I might not find it important enough to report back. There's a broad space of possibilities. "Offered," in this context, is pretty broad.

Famous people have such "offers" all the time. I was once mildly famous, and in one place I visited, there was a person who clearly expressed interest, who looked perhaps half my age. I signed an autograph and quickly moved on. This is the first time I even thought to even relay the story.

> Not just because friends and colleagues would want to defend someone they are involved with...

... you have paranoid delusions. That's just not how the world works.

> If Minsky had rebuked Epstein

I have no evidence this did not happen, and neither do you. Most times, such rebukes are private. I also have no idea what, if anything, Minsky knew.

> rejected any association

> I'm not advocating for Minsky to be condemned as a terrible person. I'm just pointing out that he, as an example of wide-spread societal behavior, did not do the right thing.

You have no idea what he did. You picked a random person, and decided to vilify him in your brain, based on fragmentary quotes.

I'll also mention: Good people associate with bad people. Christians often cite how Jesus associated with tax collectors, sex workers, and other sinners. As a tactic, isolation does not work. Overcoming racism means associating with racists. Overcoming sexism means associating with sexists. "Talking with" is not the same as "supporting," and if we didn't have cancel culture or "cut diplomatic relations" as a punishment, the world would be a much better place.

I do, and I replied elsewhere.

You need to stop basing your argument on a smear campaigns and obvious red herrings.

> I will back down from my claim that Minsky did have sex with Virginia Giuffree

Thank you for backing down.

An apology would be warranted.

> It is materially different. Either it did not happen as the widow claimed, or it did and it was declined.

The material fact was that sex did not happen, regardless of whether the argument was that people saw Minsky decline or the argument was that the widow was with him the whole time and saw it did not happen. The two are not contradictory.

> If you have non-public information, then feel free to share, otherwise there is nothing left to say.

I do. I never met Minsky, which was odd given we revolve in similar circles. I did and still do know a lot of people who do know Minsky, whom I trust. The accounts -- which for me are second-hand and for you are now third-hand, were that the widow wasn't the only witness that sex did not happen, and that people who know Minsky well found the concept of him cheating on his wife inconceivable. That's just not his personality.

That's good enough for me to conclude that Minsky did not have sex with Virginia. It's not hard proof, but it seems extremely unlikely.

However, even if it did seem plausible (let's omit the insider information from a stranger on the internet), I would STILL not indict Minsky without clear evidence. Treating people as guilty without proof is kind of evil, in my opinion. It's two kind of evil:

- It's reprehensible when innocent people are treated as guilty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio

- It makes smear campaigns work. The reason corporations, the CIA, and other organizations are able to run character assassination on activists and whistleblowers is precisely people like you, willing to run with allegations.

As a footnote: If you actually cared about pedophiles, corruption, and sex, why haven't you followed up on the obvious? The logical question -- if you bothered with logical inference over outrage -- would be why there were multiple, non-public witnesses who weren't mentioned in the MIT Transparency Report. Epstein got around a lot in MIT circles.

I'm not sure how to respond to this, except to point out that in a second comment, you finally conceded this:

> Minsky's participation

Did not happen.

The polite thing would be to apologize.

And this:

> if you look at the context of what he said

Would require you to share context. People have a history of sharing an article about an article about an article about what Stallman said.

When I go back to the source, he does have an extreme case of foot-in-mouth, but I have seen nothing from primary sources which would justify the smear campaign. Usually, the "context" is a conversation about terrorists or whatnot, Stallman making some academic point, and the "context" labelling him as "with the terrorists." Stallman:

- Can't read the room

- Doesn't follow the context

- Speaks precisely

Let me be blunt: You're smearing good people who worked to improve the world. That's not cool. It's also something which does broader harm than you might imagine. It means all but the most thick-skinned won't want to get into positions like Minsky or Stallman.

The Minsky situation was MIT looking for a fall-man.

The Stallman one dates back to Microsoft's engineered astroturf campaign, back when they were anti-FLOSS.

Why the fuck would I ever want to pick a fight with a corporation doing something nasty, if the result would be people like you calling me a pedophile?

The reason I give people a very large amount of benefit-of-the-doubt is because I've seen the effect these engineered smear campaigns have on individuals. I've also seen the amount of crazy that happens when one is famous. If a million people know who you are, and 0.01% do something crazy -- obsessive false accusations, bomb threats, or whatnot -- that's still a hundred people. Britney Spears or Zuckerberg will have security teams, legal teams, and PR teams to handle that. People who, like Stallman, are fundamentally doing something for the public benefit have the same pressure from crazies, astroturf, and whatnot, but without the ability to afford a defence.

Everything you wrote is materially correct. Given that you have this background, can you please explain how this:

> Virginia Giuffre said that she had sex with Minsky when she was 17 and he was 73.

Was not a lie?

Also: Yes, I do have sources which are not publicly available, but the difference between "declined" versus "it couldn't have happened because she said she was always with him" is within the spectrum of ambiguity of real-world human speech and memory. It is not materially different. The material point is there are multiple witnesses (at least the widow, in public sources) that say he did not have sex.

If you want proof of MIT folks covering up:

a) Read the MIT Transparency Report

b) Look at photos on archive.org from people who went to Epstein island and events whom MIT did not reveal. All this was public at the time.

Compare. But MIT also has travel records, so most of the people in the Epstein files, MIT knew about and chose to omit.

What you posted is a secondary source, which is exactly what I didn't ask for. Most of that text is not Stallman.

For reference, an original source is something like:

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...

The so-called "article" is a one-line comment on a post in what looks like a 2006-era Twitter-style feed. I think one would see a similar amount of crazy from virtually anyone posting this much, without a filter.

Read it.

Do you believe Stallman is a pedophile on the basis of this comment?

I do not.

I've seen similar comments in academic texts, in the context of cultures where this happened and was acceptable (e.g. Greek pederasty in ancient Athens). From what I know of Stallman's communication style, I read this comment in a similar, if much less informed, light. He's making an incorrect but academic point, poorly.

I guess you had to be around for the reactions to it at the time.

E.g. the reaction to free software in the nineties was communist/anti-capitalist/idealist/unrealistic.

It was an extreme fringe movement.

Now, Linux powers every Android phone, most servers, most routers, and is probably more broadly adopted than all other operating systems, combined.

That it seems normal speaks volumes to his accomplishments.

Someone with coprolalia will clearly cross some pretty bright societal lines too.

Yes, you are ill-informed.

I can write "EA-3167" and "pedophilia" in an article 100 times. Congratulations! You're now associated with pedophilia. That's a classic smear campaign.

Unless someone can cite something Stallman specifically said or did which implicates him, I'm passing on this as part of a smear campaign. I will not accept:

- An article reporting on an article reporting on a misquote of Stallman

- Subtext you read into something he wrote (his flaw is he doesn't get subtext to what he writes)

There's infinite communications from him. He has no filter. Go on. Find something. If you can't, accept you're wrong. The alternative is that I'll accept you're being malicious.

This is not correct.

This expresses an extreme inability to properly communicate subtext, which is common for autistic individuals, or ones autism-adjacent.

Stallman's comments, if read logically like a computer, are generally strictly correct. Stallman's comments, if read inferentially like a human might, often imply abhorrent things.

This is called a miscommunication.

> Virginia Giuffre said that she had sex with Minsky when she was 17 and he was 73. I think no matter how you look at it (even if she was technically above the age of consent in the jurisdiction of Epstein's island), it is still wrong and he absolutely should have known that.

This statement is factually false.

She said she was asked to offer herself for sex to Minsky. People inferred from this that sex happened, but Virginia did not say this. Read the full file.

Accounts from Minsky's wife say that Minsky declined. Accounts from Minsky's friends say he was very monogamous. No one close to the situation supports an account of Minsky having sex with Virginia Giuffre.

The natural next step should not have been to indict Minsky's reputation, but to ask Virginia Giuffre the natural follow-up: How did Minsky react when you made the offer?

I think it's a good, analogous, contemporary example of how RMS tends to be misunderstood.

In this context, his comments tend to be:

a) Correct, if you read them precisely (which is how RMS writes -- precisely)

b) Horrible, if you read them with the subtext implied in mainstream culture (which is how people read what RMS writes)

That combination results in "with the terrorists" in 2001, "with Epstein" in 2026, and a lot of similar things in between.

Coincidentally, it's highly unlikely Minsky did anything wrong. All the people thrown under the bus by MIT were either the people who acted ethically and came forward or, like Minsky, were dead. All the people who did unethical things didn't come forward, and are in the Epstein files. Not all the MIT folks in the Epstein files did unethical things, but many presumably did....

The MIT transparency report is worth reading in the light of the release. MIT had most of that information about its faculty at the time.

He's deeply problematic in the same way as someone with autism, Tourette syndrome, echolalia, or OCD are problematic.

He's not neurotypical.

Once you deal with it, he stops being problematic.

And the striking thing is Cassandra syndrome: Virtually everything he has said:

a) Proves right, decades later

b) Sounds crazy to most people, at the time

The problem is that, in this arms race, unaligned AI has a competitive advantage over aligned AI.

The second problem -- already seen in Ukraine v. Russia -- is that in a high-stakes situation, humans will take every safeguard off.

I should clarify -- since from both posts, my comment was ambiguous and misinterpreted:

I was explaining the article, not my views, since the top-level comment did not read it.

Regarding your comment, it is as wrong as the article. BOTH are important. Recall practice is great for e.g. developing surface understanding, declarative knowledge, and well-done, procedural knowledge.

That type of knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient, for high-level performance in most fields, at least beyond a spelling bee or vocab exam. To understand gaps, see:

- Complex problem-solving, which includes extensive conditional, conceptual, metacognitive, etc. knowledge. (e.g. see how top participants prep for math olympiads)

- Attitudes towards school / learning (one of the top predictors of future success by 3rd grade, together with reading)

- Transfer learning

- Cross-cutting / not explicitly represented knowledge / literature on expert blindspot

- Etc.

"Projects, exploration, and discovery-based 'learning'" work great in practice, when properly structured, which usually means explicit, well-defined learning objectives.

Bad: "Make a nice poster on selling a car"

Good: "Independently explore an organ system of the human body. Make a nice poster synthesizing what you learned and present it to the classroom in three weeks."

You are wrong in understanding the article.

Khan: Videos + rote exercises

Learning: Projects, complex problem-solving, exploration, argumentation, etc.

Dewey is worth reading.

It's not a bad idea in concept, but the core problem is what he delivered was:

"essentially global learning via all the Khan videos, in math, by him, and in other subjects, by his team."

Khan Academy is 2010-era state-of-the-art for rote learning and procedural knowledge. That's a helpful resource, but as one world schoolhouse, there is:

- No room for creativity, or much of anything similar from students (outside of the fantastic JavaScript projects).

- No room for outside innovation.

- A personality cult. Any ideas MUST be attributed to Khan.

... then (at least if they are far enough gone), you have elderly relatives who are not "free and accountable for their own actions."

That's not quite what it says.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

1. The reason is well-regulated militias, but the right is of the people.

2. The militia isn't a state apparatus. Indeed, the goal of the militia is to enable a rebellion if the state is no longer free.

Now, here again, "well regulated" gives plenty of leeway. For example, one might argue that the following scheme fits:

1. I can have whatever arms I want, including an F35

2. The F35 lives with a militia, which is well-regulated. I can use it in trainings there.

I don't think one could argue the militia could be under state control (that defeats the purpose!), but one could easily argue that it could be well-enough regulated that the current far-right extremist groups would not fit.

The concept was a group of citizens under e.g. a town / city council.

That's obviously not where case law went, but in an alternative reality, it very well might have.

Personally, I think gun companies should be liable for any harm done by their products as well.

We want rule-of-law, and in the US, people should have an absolute right to bare arms, as in the second amendment. Free market forces can then determine appropriate prices, insurance, and protective measures to make sure those guns are managed safely.

If I want an F35 and an Abrams, that's okay, so long as Lockheed and General Dynamics are willing to sign off (with full liability for damages) that I'm managing them safely.

Free markets work pretty well with:

a) Full transparency, as needed for rational decision-making

b) No way to externalize costs

> Yes, some elderly are disabled by mental decline or dementia, that's no different from a mental disability at any age.

If there were a clean way to define it, I'd probably be better to change:

- "elderly" to "individuals impacted by mental decline, dementia, or other disability;" and

- "children" to "people who haven't reached an adequate level of maturity to [long definition]."

The point is MOST elderly are impacted by mental decline or dementia by some age. That's often not the same as age-of-retirement. I know people where it happened at 60, and where it happened in their nineties.

Serious questions: You'll be a senior citizen soon enough, and maybe a decade later this will hit you too. What mechanisms would you like in place to be protected?

If and when it this hits you, there may be a long period where you'll be:

a) Functional (e.g. able to feed yourself, keep yourself clean, manage the house) and not needing care (e.g. nursing home);

b) Emotionally important to your relatives; and yet

c) Already vulnerable to predatory behaviour

What protective measures would you like to see in place during this period?

Footnote: In my current location, most people 80 and beyond are glued to some source of polarizing disinformation, be that Facebook or cable TV. Coincidentally, of the few I know better personally, some have empty bank accounts, since they can't manage their money properly any more. But they can cook, clean, shop, but not more complex things like that. It's not just outright scammers. It's predatory advertising, and all sorts of other predatory behaviour.

> are (as far as the law is concerned) free and accountable for their own actions

I don't think you've ever had a relative with e.g. Alzheimer's or dementia.

There's a fine line where the above stops being the case. "Vulnerable to predatory behaviour" happens a long time before "can't find the bathroom without a nurse."

I think what's missing here is elderly.

Arguably, that's even more harmful.

I agree with "just so pointless too - there are many good, better-illustrated, and better-explained human articles about the same circuit."

However, to me, this reads more like human stupidity than AI slop. Certainly, my AIs would do a better job. Rather, the nonsequitors and errors are similar to what I've seen from lazy undergrads filling space.

I have had the misfortune of seeing many similar papers before the rise of AI.

I don't think it's slop -- the sources are books and it doesn't read like slop -- but the sources are more worth reading. It's more like an undergrad trying to fill word count, without getting why this is interesting.

You seem to be a product of Russian propaganda.

My advice would be to read a non-Ukranian history book.

What Russia seems to be doing is trying to split Ukraine from the West. It's not true that "russians having much better positions, unfortunately, thanks to their network of agents covering entire planet." They don't have that scale. They do seem effective propaganda in Ukraine and in Poland.

Right now, it seems to be working. Russian propaganda leads to Ukrainians are acting like dicks, and international reactions to Ukrainians. Literally, all they need to do is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

That's what they're doing, and it's working.

US split off a year ago. EU is turning away. Polish support went from wholehearted, to holding their noses and helping. That's not a result of false information elsewhere, but within Ukraine. Ukrainians -- including politicians who ought to know better -- walk around talking nonsense which fully supports the Russian propaganda.

Right now, you're helping Russia win.

Proper history: Bandera absolutely fought for Ukrainian freedom and independence. He absolutely committed murders, terrorism, and atrocities to do so. Some of those were targeted at Poland, who now took in over a million of your refugees, and put itself at risk to give massive military support. Volhynia was 100,000 Poles killed -- about 0.5% of the Polish population at the time. Many of those were woman and children, and few had anything to do with destruction of churches or whatnot. You're glorifying him, while asking children of his victims for aid.

(As a footnote: No one cares if this were 10,000 or a million. Telling Poles it's 200,000 and Ukrainians that it's 40,000 is exactly a way of driving a divisive wedge on what's a non-issue at this point; everyone agrees it was a metric fuckload)

People like you are not much different than Southern Americans, who talk about the civil war about state rights, omitting slavery, or Germans who talk about post-WWI reparations, without mentioning the holocaust. Yes, WWI reparations were devastating to Germany. No, that didn't merit genocide.

Right now, the important problem is to get Russia out, get Crimea back, etc. For that, you need allies. Swallow your fucking pride, and learn proper history. Every nation that has had one of these events has to go through it, or else they fracture, like America did racially.

Russia's goals of keeping Ukraine out of the EU and NATO? All they needed to do is rile up a few folks like you with nationalist disinformation. Boom. Ukraine did for Russia what they couldn't accomplish with weapons.

This isn't hard to solve. But it requires swallowing pride, and coming to terms with a rather more complex history than presented in Ukrainian nationalist curricula.

> Unless of course you are actually pro-Russian and you're just playing this game at a higher level in which case... congrats because that is effective

I seriously thought this was the case, but looking at the post history, it's probably a question of Hanlon's Razor.

Poster appears to be Ukrainian, and clueless.

Russian trolls feed on these types, unfortunately, and they end up polarized quickly enough.

That's the amplification in these disinformation wars.

That's missing the point.

When a toddler does something inappropriate, "but he did it to me" is not an excuse. If both kids did something bad, I want both to apologize, and both to move on. It's also not a contest for who did something worse. I want Ukraine to apologize to Poland. I want Poland to apologize to Ukraine. I want both nations to move on.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Indeed, that's doubly the case when it's nations -- a civilian hit in a retaliatory strike often has nothing to do with an atrocity. I don't know where you are, but I'll pretend the US. If someone whose father died in Guantanamo, or whose child was killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan, killed your mother, would they be "right"? Would it be hypocritical of you to complain?

Or if you want to punish a dictator, does it make sense to starve the people in his nation -- most of whom probably want him out even more?

I am perfectly aware of all of Russia's wrongs. You missed most of the big ones, from holodomor, to about a half-millennium of other torment of people in Ukraine.

You try to do right for your own soul. Apologizing doesn't weaken you.

And you don't punish children for the sins of their fathers.