Charlie Loyd @vruba@everything.happens.horse

Come down to National Geodetic Survey marker AE5211 in the next 15 minutes if you want an ass kicking.

Hearing the Minecraft damage sound every two seconds as I skim the Wikipedia article on quaternions.

Happened to be learning about communication technology in the mid-fifties, and my goodness what a time to be reading the news.

This reads exactly like the list of people who liked a post that just says something like “Hands Holbein the Younger” or “we should respect that he took our advice and mackled less”. https://botsin.space/@ryanfb/109999045107815043

@kissane There was some debris on the freeway the other day and I had the thought: it would be neat if there was a team of people whose job was to patrol the highways and fix dangerous situations. Likewise, I can imagine a country where there were some kind of federal commission that would notice when someone is running their trade deceptively.

@meetar @harrisj That nomenclature is so confusing. I wish they’d just call them false positive children and false negative children.

@harrisj See, this is why the Oxford comma is so important.

@Ffangohr Oh, sure.

@allafarce @sanbornmaps I had never heard of https://www.goskagit.com/anacortes/news/old-codfish-processing-plant-will-come-down-in-august-commercial-building-proposed/article_9e15336a-d497-11eb-ad95-6b47a642aa19.html before, so this has taught me something important about Anacortes history.

@migurski Especially if you’re Henry Kissinger.

@migurski All I want is for people to stop acting like they looked at Wikipedia’s list of philosophical positions on AI, saw one they liked, and said “Ah, so this is the true one! Now, off to let everyone know!”

A reasonable thing to ask here would be: Charlie, are you Calling For Civility?

Good question. Thanks for asking. And my answer is: Nope. The alternatives here are not (1) status-quo–preserving fear of controversy v. (2) standing in public and playing a recording of your opinions on the loudest speakers you can find. I am positive you can find a way to be firm and even fiery in your arguments without presenting them like things that everyone else was too lazy to think of. I believe in you.

It reminds me of things you hear from people whose information environment is clearly about the size and smell of an Altoids tin: “Homosexuality doesn’t appear in the animal kingdom” or “We’ve never actually observed evolution” or whatever – things where you don’t just want to say no; you want to pull the emergency brake, ask where they heard that, why they believed it, and what they think other people believe.

It’s bad. Even when the conclusions are correct, it’s a bad way to think in public.

There’s a very culture-war–flavored bubbledness to a lot of the “AI” “discourse” that I (mostly accidentally) see, and I hate it.

People sure like making categorical statements about what’s possible, impossible, or inevitable with a level of self-confidence that does not befit grownups talking about the unknown.

In particular, I keep seeing this naïve quality to the delivery of controversial statements: a sense of “I’m revealing the truth to you, not making an argument; treat me as such.”

@Ffangohr Kind of angry about how right you are.

@Ffangohr Now I’m a libertarian.

@Ffangohr I’m glad to hear it. Sometimes I think I should start it up again.

@Ffangohr (A cliché, I know.)

@Ffangohr I certainly hope that at least some people of the time thought those boring fonts with bad rhythms were as ugly as I do.