I feel like that’s very similar to what I said, including the bit about being routine in most other regards.

People who spend a lot of time thinking are prone to having thoughts, and sometimes those thoughts are less common.
The more abstract the topic you’re working with, the more accustomed you’ll be to hearing things that don’t make sense at first.

Might just be me, but in general the more educated people I’ve met have been more likely to qualify as odd ducks, and the mathy folks tend towards the upper edge.

I had hoped I was making it very clear that it’s not a case that all mathematicians are weirdos or even difficult to talk to, because they’re not.
Thinking about complicated things all the time results in complicated conclusions, so you’ll end up talking to people with very detailed thoughts if you’re talking about work. Probably perfectly normal thoughts on cooking beyond a bias towards using their analytical ability where others might not.
My point was not that they’re all weird, but that the bar is higher because you deal with more people who have thought about something much more than you have.

My point with the paper wasn’t that it’s weird to have fun, or that the title was bad. It’s that it was complicated and an example of the field requiring you to deal with profoundly unfamiliar ideas and terminology, potentially quite regularly. To some people “that sounded like gibberish” is a sign you dismiss it. In this case, it means you need to do more research to catch up to the terminology.

The two that I was thinking of were erdos and diffie. I’ll concede to featuring some of the more notable characters because their stories are more fun.

The idea being described was a paraphrase of platonic realism and structuralism taken to an extreme to match simulation theory. If the universe is a simulation it means there is, “somewhere”, an equation or algorithm describing our physical reality. Needing that equation to be evaluated to give rise to our universe is an odd perspective since the existence of the equation would be sufficient. An equation describing the motion of a point in a circle doesn’t need to be evaluated to describe that, nor does it need to be written down.

It’s a notion that I thought fit well with my point of “agree or disagree, it’s not delusional, and it’s not obvious”

While it’s not true that intelligence is correlated with mental problems, advanced mathematics tends to attract or create odd ducks.

There are multiple mathematicians in the modern era who are well regarded, technically homeless and just showed up at people’s houses to collaborate on some math. One, who coined the phrase “another roof, another proof”, was a staunch proponent of mixing amphetamines, coffee, and 70’s antidepressants.
People didn’t notice John Nash devolved into a deep schizophrenic break for a long time because it’s not weird for advanced mathematicians to be talking about very complex unintelligible ideas. Scary Wheels and Super Shrubs is an example of a good title and not-transparent description.

Another was the uni-bomber.

There’s plenty of perfectly well balanced mathematicians. You just can’t help but get some weird ideas when your life’s work is to think outside the box about very complicated things all the time.

If you go deep into math work, you’ll meet people who think the universe is a simulation. You’ll meet others who think that’s silly, because the universe is clearly actually an abstract embodiment of the platonic ideal of mathematics. 7, blue, and cat are all equally real or not real, and we don’t need a simulation as the equation defining structure is sufficient to give rise to what we experience, and requiring it to be written or executed is just an odd affectation.
You’ll just nod and concede the appeal because it’s not the first time someone has shared that idea with you.

So when the mathematicians start saying the ideas are getting odd, you know it’s not just “I don’t understand therefore it’s weird”.

I believe that’s basically the basis of the American size scheme. It’s just the size of the paper the paper maker would give you. Records seem to indicate it was based on the sizes of paper used for bookmaking, where a standard sheet would be folded once, twice, or three times to make book page inserts.

Oh damn, that’s some high quality irony right there.

I didn’t say you meant wizard.

What I said would be more akin to “you can care about trans people and enjoy wizards”. Do you see the difference?

Notice how I’m saying “your analogy is wrong”, not “this is what you said”.

It’s really difficult to believe you when you say you understood what I was saying when your takeaway was more about AI than about art. Or when you liken my point to a common anti-gun regulation slogan when I’ve been specifically saying we should regulate them?

You know what? Let’s use guns as a direct swap. You’re arguing that guns are antithetical to art, and that no self respecting artist would use a gun in their artwork. I’m saying that guns should obviously be regulated and people shouldn’t do bad things with them, but that saying they make something not art is foolish.

You actually really haven’t explained your thoughts on the matter. You’ve several times said that you won’t but adamantly insisted you were right. You also seem to ignore anything that’s contrary to the argument you want me to be making, which is another little glob of fun in the “deliberate misunderstanding” irony train.

You haven’t convinced me you understand your thoughts or where they came from. I’m more convinced than ever that you’re just upset to be disagreed with and can’t handle not getting someone else’s argument. You’ve been railing either against something I don’t think, or against actual technical details of how something works.

Ah, lovely of you not to read what I wrote.

People want to rip off artists and treat them like shit. AI tools are just a current tool for doing so.

models were trained without consultation by the people involved, and how it’s now being used to threaten the livelihoods of the same people.
That’s totally correct in my book. Openai, anthropic and the whole lot of them can burn as far as I’m concerned.

A tool that’s doing harm can and should be regulated, and the harm and potential for harm mitigated

Totally sidestepping things.

Remember when I wrote that giving them money was wrong, that all those companies were bad, that we need regulation on it?

You’re still not getting that AI isn’t openai or anthropic or any of that.

If you buy harry Potter, you’re giving money to the baddies.
What I said would be more akin to “you can care about trans people and enjoy wizards”. Do you see the difference?

Do you think that I’m particularly in favor of the massive AI push going on now? What have I said to make you think that?
I think I’ve been pretty clear that my position is “tools don’t define art”.
You’ve been saying “something can’t be art if it involves something I don’t like” and arguing in defense of video games artists the working class.

I think you dislike a tool because someone told you it’s bad, and you don’t know how to distinguish between a product, a company, and a category of tool. I think you’re now invested in the position so you can’t pivot and say you might not understand things as much as you thought. I think that’s why you’re arguing against what you think someone who disagrees with you would say instead of actually understanding.

Well-planned algorithmic randomness and Ai are not the same things.

I would really love to know how they’re different.

I don’t particularly subscribe to separation of art and artist, except for things like “authorial intent doesn’t matter for discussion of a message or meaning you took from the work”, but that’s not what you meant.

I will, however, separate the artist from their tool. I do not condemn paintbrushes for being used to paint offensive words, nor do I think they’re unethical just because Hitler used them. The art is an extension of the artist, not their tool.

You do not give money to people who are using hammers to kill puppies. The only problem with owning a hammer is the people who think that by doing so you must support the puppy killers.

A tool cannot be malicious. It is a thing and has no volition.
A tool that’s doing harm can and should be regulated, and the harm and potential for harm mitigated, but it cannot be malicious anymore than a lawn dart or a kinder egg.

“There’s a very good reason why you’re wrong, several even, but I simply don’t have the space to explain them” is so eye rolling that I’m actually physically trying to find where they landed.
Given you won’t explain your thoughts, other than to say that AI is different from algorithmic randomness (which it isn’t: it’s literally a machine for shaping randomness according to learned weights and biases), I’m just going to assume you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

Charitably, you’re angry at how models were trained without consultation by the people involved, and how it’s now being used to threaten the livelihoods of the same people.
That’s totally correct in my book. Openai, anthropic and the whole lot of them can burn as far as I’m concerned.

The tool in no way requires its inputs to be hostile.
You don’t “support” a tool. I’m not in the pro-nailgun camp, or team anti-hydraulic jack.

I am pro-“how can you fathom the cognitive dissonance to argue that you support art and artists while simultaneously having the gall to declare yourself an authority on what can or cannot be real art. Shut up and make something. You still won’t be able to justify the opinion but then at least you’ll have contributed something worthwhile instead of flailing about how other people are damaging something you’ve been passively enjoying as is”.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to match your tone. That was rude of me.

I’m not sure I would agree with your first statement.
People want to rip off artists and treat them like shit. AI tools are just a current tool for doing so.

Anything that exists right now or in the foreseeable future isn’t sentient. It has no goal.
May as well say that the goal of audio streaming is to rip off musicians.
Audio streaming doesn’t have a goal. Spotify has a goal that shafts most musicians.
Openai and anthropic have goals. The AI is a pile of numbers hooked to a function that some people figured out that’s good at fixing errors.

Can a videogame be art? It’s almost entirely the product of a vastly complicated machine that’s responsible for synthesizing novel images, sounds and experience from a limited set of curated inputs. Sometimes they not even curated, as is the case with procedural animation, most clouds, and a lot of the lighting and texturing: parameters were defined to ensure the desired effect, but they were created by algorithmic randomness.

I think rigid rules, and a rejection of the possibility to explore expression is far more antithetical to art than any tool ever could be.

I don’t think most AI output is art because I don’t think many, if any, people are trying to create it.

You’ll have to walk me through what you mean by that. I’m not sure how what I’m hearing you say would improve anything.

I’d disagree that it’s antithesis to art, it just has to be used artistically. Our current AI systems intrinsically don’t possess the pieces needed to make Art independently, so it’s ultimately all derived from human intention.
It’s similar to how random chance can be used for artistic ends: the specific outcomes are outside of human control, but the context, parameters, and nature of the random are deliberate choices.
The way AI is invariably used right now is cost saving, not intentional.

Any tool can be used for art, but it has to be used for art, not as a way to skimp on voice actors or whatever. Pollocks random painting was guided by intention: it was intentional, not coincidental. The sink he washed his brushes in, while also caked in chaotic paint, was coincidental.

Most people are producing, at best, low effort slop. Businesses are looking to cut costs. Somewhere out there someone is hooking an LLM to a text to speech engine, mangling its training set until it emits a constant stream of wookie noises, beat boxing, and hallucinations of IP law out of a speaker installed in a toilet.
I would immediately accept one of these as art.

But that’s the thing: now you haven’t made an email replacement, you’ve made email more complicated.

If you’re backwards compatible you need a very compelling feature to get people to switch, and using the feature is limited until people switch.
That’s how we added spf, dkim, dmarc and starttls.
The biggest difficulty is managing the layers of compatibility.

Oh, there have been plenty. The issue though is the classic “make a better standard, and now you have N+1 standards”.
Everything is wrong with SMTP. It’s still in use because it’s supported everywhere. Anything that wants to replace it either needs to entirely replace it in one fell swoop, or it needs to be backwards compatible.

The result is that occasionally a new thing comes up, a handful of people try it but there isn’t critical mass to make other features really useful so it fades.

Oh, I feel fine, thanks for caring though. I’m just uninterested in catering to your notion that we need to ignore all context to the words people use or else the racists might not take something seriously.

People in charge of the company I work for are actively delusional.

We had a four hour mandatory meeting to go over our product strategy. The high level vision. For the engineers. No rest breaks. It was announced there would be a test on the materials. Not as a joke.
The top question in the Qa section afterwards was “what is our product strategy?”.
The meeting had roughly 10k attendees.

“AI agents are going to become so pervasive that we’ll need to put a computer on every desk in every office. I’m serious: have you tried to buy a Mac mini lately? They’re just not available”. “Datacenters in space”.

We think they were announcing a new product dashboard, but we’re not sure.

A huge amount of freakout about how AI will make everything different and better that most people on the ground don’t agree with, but we’re mandated to reorganize stuff according to the theory of how it should work in their vision. Teams that change and shift every few weeks. No fixed goals in the week to week timescales. Less planning, more demos, and development goals dictated by higher ups AI agents.

When it all shits the bed they won’t be the ones getting fired. They’ll be the ones collecting the same paycheck and talking about how “limited restructuring” is hard for everyone, but market forces dictate.

I’ve never been under the impression that my work makes the world a better place. I’ve always sold a product that goes to companies that do stuff that might help someone else help people.
It’s someone else having a goddamened coke bender on 50k people’s livelihoods with no consequences that has me down.

I use one to two pea sized … Servings? I’m not sure what you call a single brushing session worth of toothpaste. Serving feels wrong, and so does dose, portions or squeeze.

I use one to two pea sized dollops of toothpaste two to three times a day. I know I should use a bit less but I can’t be bothered to not overshoot a little, and too little toothpaste feels like garbage.
Depending on what I eat for lunch and if I’m home I’ll brush after lunch.

I’m willing to bet the biggest difference in duration of tubes is the brand. I know some of the specialty toothpaste tubes are literally a quarter the size of my standard issue toothpaste.

Wah wah, you’re crying because no one was persuaded by your attempt to cover for racist bullshit.

If the OP didn’t say anything racist, then the person you replied to also never called them racist, technically. Or, if you think they did, then it was by implication. Just like the original racism! Which means you can understand it!

no one takes this shit seriously

Yeah they do. Are you trying to make yourself feel better by normalizing a passive level of racism?

I won’t disagree with what you said, but I’ll disagree that it’s the same point I was making.

My point was that there isn’t a technical solution to traffic congestion. You need less fluid or a bigger pipe. What you correctly mention is why a bigger pipe won’t work for humans when it does for water.

And out of pure pedantry, I’d disagree purely because my analogy said “non-newtownian liquid” - those don’t expand. :P it’s more like a hyperactive toddler manically jamming silly putty into a PVC pipe.

Traffic congestion doesn’t happen because of lack of coordination. Coordination prevents collisions. Our success rate could be a lot better but the system does pretty well with coordination limited to blinking lights, a noise that says “fuck off”, the mutual knowledge that we all got the same training and the private knowledge that everyone else on the road is a suicidal idiot who slept through the training.

Congestion is a physical property of the road network. There’s a physical limit to the number of cars you can push through a road in a given time period. Drive the cars too fast and they fly off the road when it bends, or cars slam into each other when a deer tries to commit suicide.

Traffic is well modeled as an incompressible slightly non-newtownian fluid, like runny oobleck. If you apply more pressure/increase vehicle volume the fluid starts to bind up as it becomes harder for the cars to maneuver without collision, regardless of coordination.

You reduce traffic by taking cars off the road, or scheduling utilization. Self driving cars won’t help, and we can do both of those without them. Long term they’re likely to make collisions worse because humans don’t know what they’re going to do, so the primary mode we have of coordination, “the theory of mind” will break down. Right now they’re so uncommon that you assume any car is a human who reacts and prioritizes like you.

Tear down the freeways and replace them with trains.

And the person you replied to never said what they said was racist, just that they were mouthing off like a racist piece of shit.

Of course, we all know that they were calling them a racist piece of shit. Kind of like how we all know the other poster was being a racist piece of shit because they were saying the same racist shit about Detroit that racist shit bags always say about Detroit.

You don’t have to try to cover for obvious racist dog whistles.

Almost certainly.

They don’t have to, since it’s not a part of the system that it requires them to hold onto the information, but they all invariably hold onto the information to keep training on it, which includes your personal information.

They are likely not using for selling to other people or anything since that’s not their business model at the moment, but it’s probably finding it’s way into the next version in some capacity.