97 karma · joined March 1, 2025
To say language models teach a person nothing is just completely absurd.
All learning materials really work in conjunction. The books I have read give me better questions to ask the models that lead to more books that lead to more questions.
Then layer on top of that the deep research models. It is just an incredible time for learning.
I would honestly pay a monthly fee for a board like this that is completely devoid of political nonsense. It is just so boring to read in every subject.
I think it is because the modern internet is an amazing tool for assembling conformist mobs of thought. The individual really becomes a type of outcast in this structure.
The way to get more likes and views is in out-conforming the next person.
The radical individual is most likely to just be ignored.
It is almost like we have evolved a structure of a conformity lottery. If you can reach a certain threshold of public conformity display, then you might get your lottery number called for cash and prizes.
The radical individual is basically doing some 80s cable access show that not only no one watches but most don't even know exists so most don't even bother.
I consider myself a radical individual but if I was 15 right now? I know without question I would be as conformist as possible.
It is insane.
Many people just talk nonsense on this topic with China vs the US. Anyone who hasn't read America Against America by Wang Huning basically has no idea what they are talking about on this subject. Of course, total ignorance on a topic has never been something to slow down the opinion of a westerner.
I actually would have interesting things to put on the timeline. Why anyone would do this though just doesn't make sense to me on any level and I know I am in the minority on that.
After a few incredibly strange experiences, the last time I smoked it the trip came on then it told me "don't ever come back here" and that was it. The whole trip was like 30 seconds. That was almost 30 years ago.
A bad LSD or mushroom trip is scary in a much different way. I was pretty fearless when younger with these things but never wanted to see what that salvia demon thing would do if I went back.
Anything amanita related never sounded much fun to me.
He is so well read that what he is saying doesn't work in a blog summary like this.
I think he also says things exactly so people write blogs like this to make him sound extra controversial for marketing purposes.
If he just said what he really believes, that the US needs a president like FDR, it would get no traction.
Implying democracy is dead while really meaning Athenian democracy that we don't have and that the US needs a monarch when really talking about FDR/Hoover/Coolidge is a professional writer basically marketing themselves so other writers like this run with it and do marketing for him.
I get the feeling he is doing a type of "dangerous idea" performance art because it is really hard to be a professional blogger.
Almost the way the Ice-T band Body Count went from obviously stirring up controversy for the song Cop Killer for marketing purposes to Ice-T playing a cop on Law and Order.
Conservative at this point has as much to do with conservation as Liberal has to do with laissez-faire economics.
I think it either needs that snap to a scale like in the youtube video you posted or it needs to do something more 12-tone row sounding.
I couldn't get it to make anything that sounded more than just random.
Keto, fasting and also breaking the "foodie" culture that eating and going out to eat becomes a hobby.
I didn't order/dine in at all from a restaurant in 2024. It is much easier to not over eat the boring keto meals I make myself. My "cheating" is eating basmati or jasmine rice with a stir fry instead of cauliflower rice.
There is actually not enough known side effects for me to take GLP-1s. They are either complete miracle drugs or side effects we don't currently understand haven't come out in the wash yet.
We have a pretty good track record when a new powerful medication like this is introduces of doing things quite wrong. There are probably risk mitigation strategies we will learn in the coming decades that we simply can't know right now. Otherwise, these are basically free lunch miracle drugs. That seems an easy short.
I think about how much is it worth for me to work remote vs working at the same factory for 40 years like my father. Some people pretend like this is just a given in the modern world and basically worthless. In reality, it is hard to put a price tag on because the difference is so valuable to me. I actually could have been the 4th generation working at a flour mill if I had wanted. Even if the flour mill paid double what it does, my life is so much more grand than what that would have been, it isn't even close.
The drug is scopolamine and atropine that datura contains.
I think I have read every trip report on erowid related to tropanes.I find them incredibly fascinating.
What stands out most to me is I can't think of even a single one I read that the person sounded like they had a good experience. They are all pretty dark because your body knows it is being literally poisoned.
Sonnet 3.7 is unbelievable.
It would hardly be shocking though if OpenAI hits a wall. I couldn't get an invite to Friendster, I loved Myspace, I loved Altavista. It is really hard to take the early lead in a marathon and just blow every out of the water the whole race without running out of gas.
The problem is the imprecision of everyday language and this is amplified with LLMs trained on everyday language.
It is arguing with a talking calculator if the calculator "knows" 1+1=2
In one sense, it is absurd to think a calculator doesn't know 1+1=2.
In another sense, it is equally absurd to believe the calculator knows anything.
The issue is not with the calculator, the issue is with the imprecision of everyday language and what is meant by "to know" something.
This scales to basically everything. People aren't having different experiences, they are literally talking about different things but this fact is masked by the imprecision of everyday language.
A single person can trade limit orders with almost no transaction cost with enormously deep markets. The modern world has made the markets incredibly inefficient, prone to massive overreactions on basically everything.
It is not the fault of the model though. MusicLM shows what could be done.
The problem is they just aren't trained on enough interesting music to impress me.
Of course, if you never played music before I am sure it is super cool to produce music.
It would be like if the AI art models had only been trained on a small amount of drawings.
Compared to being trained on every piece of recorded music ever produced?We are just so far from that.
I think to really do something interesting you would have to train your own model.