merc

@ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts

10
Comments

3482
Joined

3 yr. ago

1h ago

Yeah Why Are They
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merc @sh.itjust.works 1h ago
You clearly have no idea how fact checking works in journalism. They couldn't make that claim.

2h ago

Yeah Why Are They

That doesn't work when the details are fuzzy, for example, this paragraph:

House Democrats Wednesday released a small batch of emails that appear to suggest President Donald Trump knew more about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage women than he has acknowledged.

https://theweek.com/politics/house-democrats-release-epstein-emails-trump

You couldn't say "Trump knew more about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of girls 11-14 than he has acknowledged". That suggests that the emails that were released referenced those specific ages, which they don't.

3h ago

Yeah Why Are They

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merc @sh.itjust.works 3h ago

I'm sure I can find you a bunch of articles where there's no sign they're trying to minimize what happened but they happen to use that term. I just think English is tricky. What term do you think they should be using?

6h ago

YSK Your smoke detectors should be replaced every 7-10 years

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merc @sh.itjust.works 6h ago

Aaaaaaaand let me tell you, I had a sleepless night last night knowing there were no detectors installed.

This seems really weird. Smoke detectors are important, but the odds of a fire any given night are incredibly low. To me, replacing a detector would be a chore I'd get to within a week, and I definitely wouldn't lose sleep over it.

7h ago

Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"

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merc @sh.itjust.works 7h ago

I'm pretty sure Google's AI is fed by the same spider that goes out and finds every new or changed web page (or a variant of that).

As soon as someone writes an article about how AI gets something wrong and provides a solution, that solution is now in the AI's training data.

OTOH, that means it's probably also ingesting a lot of AI generated slop, which causes its own set of problems.

7h ago

Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"

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merc @sh.itjust.works 7h ago

It's not literally guessing, because guessing implies it understands there's a question and is trying to answer that question. It's not even doing that. It's just generating words that you could expect to find nearby.

7h ago

Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"

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merc @sh.itjust.works 7h ago

3 in 10 people get this wrong‽‽

Maybe they're picturing filling up a bucket and bringing it back to the car? Or dropping off keys to the car at the car wash?

7h ago

Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"

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merc @sh.itjust.works 7h ago

It's also the case that people are mostly consistent.

Take a question like "how long would it take to drive from here to [nearby city]". You'd expect that someone's answer to that question would be pretty consistent day-to-day. If you asked someone else, you might get a different answer, but you'd also expect that answer to be pretty consistent. If you asked someone that same question a week later and got a very different answer, you'd strongly suspect that they were making the answer up on the spot but pretending to know so they didn't look stupid or something.

Part of what bothers me about LLMs is that they give that same sense of bullshitting answers while trying to cover that they don't know. You know that if you ask the question again, or phrase it slightly differently, you might get a completely different answer.

7h ago

too many creators not enough destroyers

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merc @sh.itjust.works 7h ago

In the absence of content destroyers, I'm happy to settle for content selectors, like OP.

7h ago

Yeah Why Are They

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merc @sh.itjust.works 7h ago

It is a really weird thing to say, and you can still find a lot of articles that use the term "underage women". But, it's not like articles that use that term are necessarily trying to apologize for Epstein or minimize what happened.

I think the problem is that they want to use the term "underage" because they want to clarify that what happened wasn't legal. The proper term for an "underage woman" is a "girl". But, unfortunately, "girl" is also used with adult women. So, saying "Trump had sex with some of the girls" doesn't really clarify what happened. And, the term "underage girls" is also bad. That's the kind of language you might find from someone like Megyn Kelly trying to draw a distinction between sex with an 8 year old vs. sex with a 15 year old.

7h ago

Yeah Why Are They

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merc @sh.itjust.works 7h ago

You were flooded with articles about inundation? I bet using that term resulted in a flood of comments on those news pages.

8h ago

Too Many Cooks (short film)

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merc @sh.itjust.works 8h ago

Too Many Cooks was the best thing to just start watching without any expectations. Even having someone say "hey, you should watch this" sort of ruins it.

8h ago

Get your State of the Union Address bingo card right here!

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merc @sh.itjust.works 8h ago

Ok, I'll be the one to nitpick. American-style bingo cards are 5x5, one for each letter in BINGO.

It doesn't really matter, except that the middle square is normally a free square, which is an opportunity for a joke. Like, "this is so guaranteed to happen, you just get it for free". So, "Trump does accordion hands gesture" or something.

9h ago

Also, in my state, all the drivers are the worst

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merc @sh.itjust.works 9h ago

There's a big difference between drivers who only drive in rural areas and drivers who drive in crowded rush hour traffic in big cities. And, different big cities have their own challenges. As a visitor, trying to navigate LA's freeway hell was awful, and the drivers who were used to it were not at all accommodating. But, I think LA drivers would find driving in Boston and its Masshole drivers to be hell, because it's all about squeezing down narrow streets that come from a time before automobiles.

9h ago

Also, in my state, all the drivers are the worst

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merc @sh.itjust.works 9h ago

I'm guessing wherever you live doesn't have lots of snow and frozen ground.

24h ago

AOC slams Republican Sen. over mockery of her bartending work: ‘Makes me 1000x more qualified to govern on behalf of working people’

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merc @sh.itjust.works 24h ago

Those are 2 exceptions out of how many?

24h ago

I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day | Anonymous

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merc @sh.itjust.works 24h ago

I'm not actually laughing at it.

1d ago

AOC slams Republican Sen. over mockery of her bartending work: ‘Makes me 1000x more qualified to govern on behalf of working people’

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

Sure, but not executive experience.

If you look at most successful candidates for president they were either governors or generals (or lately CEOs). You can guess what the attacks against AOC are going to be. One will certainly be that she doesn't have the experience, especially as a key decision maker. Personally, I think she'd be a fine president right now. But, to convince enough other people I think she'll need to prove to them that she knows what she's doing at the "big desk".

1d ago

All rulers under 30

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

At 5 minutes per execution, it could be done in just over 2 days. If you wanted to ensure that nobody missed any of the event and limited it to 8 hours per day, you could get it done in 1 week.

1d ago

All rulers under 30

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merc @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

Here's a counter-example that proves the rule:

Born in 1992
Graduated from MIT in 2014 at 22
Joins a proprietary trading firm after graduation
Founds a quantitative trading firm in 2017 at age 25
Founds a cryptocurrency exchange in 2019 at 27
On the 2021 Forbes "30 under 30" list at 29, and is recognized as a billionaire
Found guilty of wire fraud and conspiracy in 2023
Currently in prison

Sam Bankman-Fried got to $1b before 30, and he didn't inherit his wealth (but he certainly started with a lot more wealth than most people). But, the way he managed to hit $1b before 30 was via massive fraud. Without massive fraud, I don't know how you go from an entry level job at 22 to $1b just 8 years later.