Schadrach

…and even newer methods make old math insanely complicated, but much more generalized. Like building definitions for things like numbers and basic arithmetic using set theory.

To be fair, the first 100 pages of that was justifying the set theory definition for what numbers are. The following two hundred papers are proving that a process of iterative counting we call addition functions in a consistent and useful way, given the set theory way of defining numbers. Once we get to that point, 1+1 is easy. Then we get to start talking more deeply about iteration as a process, leading to considering iterating addition (aka multiplication), iterating multiplication (aka exponents), etc. But that stuff is for the next thousand pages.

Remember, 0 is defined as the amount of things in the empty set {}. 1 is defined as the amount of things in a set containing the empty set {{}}. Each following natural number is defined as the amount of things in a set containing each of the previous nonnegative integers. So for example 2 is the amount of things in a set containing the empty set and a set containing the empty set {{}, {{}}}, 3 is the amount of things in a set containing the empty set, a set containing the empty set, and a set containing the empty set and a set containing the empty set {{}, {{}}, {{}, {{}}}}, etc. All natural numbers are just counting increasingly recursively labeled nothing. Welcome to math.

They admitted they are not factual, and thus are not news.

More specifically there was a case where a Fox News “reporter” was asked to do a story on something and what they saw did not match the narrative at all, they refused to play along and were fired for not telling the story the network wanted to tell. They sued, and the argument from Fox was that only the shows literally called the news were news and had any need to be truthful, everything else is opinion or entertainment and thus could lie as much as they wanted. If you look at their current schedule, I’m pretty sure “news” is down to the 11PM Fox News @ Night, the closest anything else gets is being “geared towards” news.

That must be unbearable.

Obviously. That’s clearly two women who didn’t choose the bear.

You can’t consent to a religion if leaving it causes you to be shunned by your family and community.

Then almost no one consents to their religion worldwide at all, barring a relative handful who leave the dominant faith in their community and are essentially disconnected solo practitioners of whatever, because joining or marrying into a different religious community is essentially just choosing a different group with the power to shun you for leaving their faith in turn.

A lot of writing code is relatively standard patterns and variations on them. For most but the really interesting parts, you could probably write a sufficiently detailed description and get an LLM to produce functional code that does the thing.

Basically for a bunch of common structures and use cases, the logic already exists and is well known and replicated by enough people in enough places in enough languages that an LLM can replicate it well enough, like literally anyone else who has ever written anything in that language.

So they are both masters of troll chess then?

See: King of the Bridge

The more I see him in the real world the more very upset I become that I genuinely really liked his story. HPMOR is a banger, possibly one of my favorite pieces of amateur literature in existence.

If you enjoy ratfic, I suppose I have to point you at the standard other fare that tends to be enjoyed by fans of HPMOR, like Ra by qntm, Yud’s other works like Three Worlds Collide, and the assorted works of Scott Alexander especially but not limited to UNSONG (an utter masterpiece of foreshadowing), Sort By Controversial (one of the most realistic horror stories ever), Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person (which alternates between nonsense poetry and the narrator trying to convince the entities in his DMT trip to prove they are real by solving a math problem, complete with explaining enlightenment with a car analogy) and Samsara (about the last unenlightened man being driven to enlightenment by sufficiently stubborn refusal of it).

Going away from the ratfic standards, there’s also some overlap between fans of those and the works of Wildbow/J.C. McCrae. Wildbow is a fantastic author, but wouldn’t understand the value of brevity if asked to write something to hit him over the head with repeatedly. If you want to try his stuff and like superheroes and deconstructions thereof, start with Worm. If you prefer biopunk, try Twig. If you prefer urban fantasy, then either Pact or Pale. He’s also got Claw and Seek, which I haven’t yet read myself.

I didn’t know the author was a wanker at the time of reading, and now that I do, I want to make myself retroactively un-like his work, but I can’t.

He was so good at HP fanfic that he managed to illicit a similar response as many have to the JK’s original.

One of the key things to enjoying it is realizing that Harry is very often wrong about astoundingly obvious things because he’s not half as bright as he thinks he is and has massive, glaring blind spots. Rather like watching someone with a PhD who thinks that means they know much about things wildly far away from their specialty.

Specifically it will only be real if it becomes real and you didn’t support it becoming real.

It’s like the inverse of the notion that the proof of God’s omnipotence is that he doesn’t need to exist in order to save you - the whole idea of Roko’s Basilisk is that if the AI super-intelligence machine God comes to be, it might decide to punish everyone who worked against it coming to be, as an incentive for people to help it come to be in the first place. For exactly the right kind of host, this is an effective memetic infohazard, despite essentially being “God will be angry if he don’t assist in his apotheosis”.

He’s best known for a blog on rationality called LessWrong, Harry Potter fan-fiction written as a vehicle for his notions on rationality called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and being more than a little obsessed with AI risk and being behind the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He’s also written some other fiction that’s broadly not bad, including a piece about first contact called Three Worlds Collide and an isekai Japanese-style light novel called A Girl Corrupted By the Internet Is the Summoned Hero?!. He once wrote an April fools post where he claimed to be from an alternate universe and for a one off April fools bit contained a surprising amount of world building.

None of the above implies he is actually human, let alone is familiar with where common human foods grow from. I could totally see him being exactly clueless enough to assume that since holy fuck are a lot of foods technically cultivars of wild mustard, that potatoes and apples are similarly related.

Classic poor folk food. You take some kind of starch (rice or potatoes are common choices), two cans of veggies, optionally a finely chopped or ground meat and shredded cheese if you’ve got it and a can of some kind of soup or similar as a binder and to help keep it from drying out. Mix everything thoroughly but the cheese, top with the cheese, bake. It’s filling, cheap, makes enough that you probably have leftovers and will last a few days if it needs to. Most combinations under this formula are also pretty tasty. The whole point is to stretch a little meat and veg a lot.

It’s “make a filling meal off whatever you got last time canned stuff was on a sale and still have in the pantry” food, aka food for poor folk.

only those companies that actually gave a shit continue to support Pride.

By which you mean only those companies that believe appearing to give a shit will be more profitable than sucking Trump’s dick continue to support Pride.

I think the Bible fails on the role-playing game front and I don’t remember any voodoo, but otherwise yeah?

She was religious and this is from the early 80s. It’s not even in the top ten most batshit things she said or wrote. From an early 80s Christian conservative standpoint homosexuality is basically just a more narrow category or sex perversion. She was also one of the big voices in the Satanic Panic in general and considered a subject matter expert, including writing things like interrogation guides for law enforcement.

Here’s a couple of examples of her lunacy:

THE WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE AND HOW OF TEEN SATANISM

WHO
1. Adolescents from all walks of life.
2. Many from middle to upper middle class families
3. Intelligent
Over or Under Achievers
Creative/Curious
Some are Rebellious
Some have low self esteem and are loners
Some children have been abused (physically or sexually)

WHEN does this occur?
It appears the ages most vulnerable are 11-17

WHERE?
1. Public places such as rock concerts, game clubs in communities or at school.
2. Private parties at a friend’s home.

HOW?
1. Through Black Heavy Metal Music
2. Through fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (R)
3. Obsession with movies, videos, which have occult themes
4. Collecting and reading/researching occult books
5. Involvement with “Satanic Cults”, through recruitment
6. Some are born into families who pratice “satanic cult rituals”

TWO BASIC PRINCIPLES APPLY HERE “Law of Attraction” and the “Law of Invitation”

WHAT can be expected?
1. Obsession with occult entertainment
2. Minor to major behavior disorders
3. Committing crimes and status offenses such as:
A. Running away
B. Graverobbing (such as bones)
C. Breaking and entering to steal religious artifacts or sometimes stealing small items to prove loyalty to the group
D. Defacing public or private property using “Satanic Graffetti” or related Graffetti 
E. Threatening to kill (self or others, self mutilation is very common)
F. Aggression directed towards family, teachers and authority figures
G. Contempt for organized religion
H. Supremist attitudes
I. Kidnapping or assistance in kidnapping
J. Murder
K. Suicide pacts among members of the group

WHAT can we do?
1. Document all information relating to occult involvement (even if it does not appear relevant at the time)
2. Keep an open mind
3. Stay objective
4. Never assume that an individual is acting along until all other information surrounding the case and individual has been fully investigated.
5. If individual is involved in “satanic activity,” he/she will deny a great deal to protect other members of the group as well as the “satanic philosophy”.
6. Have a team approach, work with a therapist, a clergymen and other helping professionals.
7. Educate the community so that potential tragedies might be avoided.

Don’t forget the woman whose son committed suicide so she created an anti-D&D group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons. Her group described D&D as “a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings.”

Don’t forget Tom Hanks first leading role in the movie Mazes and Monsters, originally titled Dungeons & Dragons, but forced to change it when TSR sued them.

Half of the ways people were getting around guardrails in the early chatgpt models was berating the AI into doing what they wanted

I thought the process of getting around guardrails was an increasingly complicated series of ways of getting it to pretend to be someone else that doesn’t have guardrails and then answering as though it’s that character.

The real story is “Mentally Ill Person with a History of Knife Crime Stabs Mail Carrier in Fight”

To the people who consider them being trans headline-worthy, “trans person” and “mentally-ill person” are synonyms.

I mean, not practically. Maybe if you routinely need to go to industrial plant construction sites for the early parts of construction before they’ve done things like generally flatten the area and cut something resembling a road. But even then it seems like overkill.