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#31

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by crazy canuck - December 31, 2025, 05:42:08 PM

Jesus Christ man.

I mean fuck that rapist guy but that is some pretty blood chilling shit.

We are all going to have to choose to live in the dark ages just to avoid constant control and monitoring aren't we?

Granted even if the government couldn't do that without a warrant, everybody else can already do it so maybe it doesn't really make that much of a difference. It is always just depressing to be reminded of it.

I wouldn't call the time before search engines the dark ages.  I think it was preferable in many ways.

Yeah but all the analog infrastructure that made that work is mostly gone.

I don't think so, the books haven't been burned yet

#32

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by crazy canuck - December 31, 2025, 05:38:33 PM

Institutional integrity is quite a bit different from an individual having a mental break with reality for a short period of time.

Institutions are made up of many people, and many people have been terminated from important positions within those institutions.  It will take generations for the United States to recover, if at all.

#33

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by DGuller - December 31, 2025, 05:23:05 PM

A general observation: many US government organizations have historically been heavy hitters globally, their regulations and assessments have carried some weight worldwide in many industries. That prestige is starting to evaporate, since US government is a joke now.

My hope is that the obvious insanity going on now will actually mitigate the reputational damage to some extent, because the world knows that the stupid tweets are not really coming from the same agencies that earned the prestige, even if they carry the same name. 

It's like if a widely respected man goes down the street naked yelling obscenities:  the behavior is so obviously crazy that you know it's not the same man doing it, even if the body is the same.  You know a mental health crisis is behind it, and it doesn't erase the man that was there before.  Of course, all this makes a difference only if you can treat the mental health crisis and return the man to what he was;  if the crazy guy persona is the new normal for him, then it gets bleak.

#34

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by The Minsky Moment - December 31, 2025, 04:54:11 PM

 

Travail, Famille, Patrie

#35

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by Sheilbh - December 31, 2025, 04:18:07 PM

Sure - although I think there are spontaneous acts of creation/thought within seminars and tutorials (as a student, I imagine less so for the academic ). I agree in regards to lectures or set texts.

I don't disagree with that. I just disagree that academia is teaching "what we already collectively know".

#36

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by Admiral Yi - December 31, 2025, 04:14:11 PM

I'm not so sure on academia being we're taught what we collectively know, but the contemporary take or interpretation of it. We are taught not the past but the present - which is built on those foundations.

The contemporary take on a matter is not a spontenous act of creation during the lecture; it is the result of *past* reflection and analysis and writing.  And thus searchable by LLMs.

#37

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by DGuller - December 31, 2025, 04:13:07 PM

Nobody's brought up AI, either. I really don't think we can underestimate the potential danger of this.

[edit] Yes, I know there's an entire thread about it.

I did bring up AI in my post, and I'm scared of it for many reasons.  I think people get so caught up about measuring ChatGPT's IQ that they don't think about the scalability of knowledge aspect, and how dangerous it can be all on its own. 

When you have access to a whole world of knowledge, including private knowledge that's generally not of interest to more than a few people, you don't need to be a genius to connect the dots.  Most dots in the world don't get connected not because people are too dumb to connect them, but because they don't have them in the first place due to human limits.  Our privacy and agency relies on a lot of dots staying unconnected that an AI will connect to our detriment, intentionally or not.

#38

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by Valmy - December 31, 2025, 04:02:31 PM

Jesus Christ man.

I mean fuck that rapist guy but that is some pretty blood chilling shit.

We are all going to have to choose to live in the dark ages just to avoid constant control and monitoring aren't we?

Granted even if the government couldn't do that without a warrant, everybody else can already do it so maybe it doesn't really make that much of a difference. It is always just depressing to be reminded of it.

I wouldn't call the time before search engines the dark ages.  I think it was preferable in many ways.

Yeah but all the analog infrastructure that made that work is mostly gone.

#39

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by Josephus - December 31, 2025, 03:01:36 PM

Nobody's brought up AI, either. I really don't think we can underestimate the potential danger of this.

[edit] Yes, I know there's an entire thread about it.

#40

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by DGuller - December 31, 2025, 02:54:08 PM

I don't fear a nuclear armageddon from Trump/Putin...I think both are eager to avoid MAD.  Same from any of Trump's potential successors...all of them are likely to just bend over while stealing from the local monetary sources.  On the Russian side I am less sure...it feels like most of the public/media-facing Russian demagogues speak in apocalyptic tones worthy of the worst religious zealots (the line of "what good is the world if Russia is not in it" while talking casually of using nuclear weapons...).  It may be likely that whomever takes over after Putin will just be some similar grey figure with the necessary hold over the state security apparatus...but that is a big unknown as seen from here.

Meanwhile, China is not likely to just chill on Taiwan forever...but I suspect that if push came to shove, we'd just let them try and take it, and just muddle through any resulting consequences.

The danger doesn't come only from intentions, it also comes from dynamics that inherently can't be 100% predictable.  Sometimes events happen to play out even when everyone understands it's to everyone's collective detriment.  If a nuclear exchange does happen at some point, it would most likely be due to a brinkmanship gone wrong.

That said, we've been living with this fear for decades, so it's old hat at this point.  The new fear I have is that the world is locked on a course to become ever more centralized, and AI will unlock plenty of new ways of ensuring that any challenge to central authority gets identified and contained earlier than ever.  The entrenchment of central authority will lead a world that is very brittle, much like a forest that was never allowed to have brush fires.