bitofhope @ bitofhope @awful.systems

Bistable multivibrator

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2 yr. ago

As self and khalid_salad said, there are certainly other branches of CS that attract cranks. I'm not much of a computer scientist myself but even I have seen some 🤔-ass claims about compilers, computational complexity, syntactic validity of the entire C programming language (?), and divine approval or lack thereof of particular operating systems and even the sorting algorithms used in their schedulers!

As an advocate of free software, it would be better if the so-called AI systems were free and open source software. I don't think this is feasible. The models are trained on data that is, in part, incredibly proprietary. To "open source" these algorithms would mean to "open source" all media on the internet. Imagine convincing Disney to release all their movies under an open source license. Now imagine making everyone else do that too. That is what it would take to "open source" AI as it exists.

Right, well God says:

meditated exude faithful estimate nature message glittering indiana intelligences dedicate deception ruinous asleep sensitive plentiful thinks justification subjoinedst rapture wealthy frenzied release trusting apostles judge access disguising billows deliver range

Not bad for the almighty creator 'rando number generator', eh?

Curtis

IQ:300, Special Move: Urbital Laser

Curtis Boldmug has defined the meta for years. A competitive staple that strongly influences even builds not running him. Special attack causes unavoidable psychic damage even if you resist its charm effect. Vulnerable to sunlight.

Balaji

IQ: 300, Special Move: Yes Country for Old Men

A support type character. Good for ramping grift mana, but can't carry a game on his own. His ultimate is overcosted and just sucks up the hypecoins he spent the entire game producing.

Ray

IQ: 300, Special Move: Black Hole Graviton

Mostly just receives support thanks to boomer nostalgia factor. Low but nonzero win rate in modern tournament meta. Highly viable in time machine formats.

Eliezer

IQ: 300, Special Move: Goffik the Hedgehog and the Enders of Game

Former newbie favorite, fairly accessible and flashy. The Yud has seen heavy nerfs in the past years and at medium to high levels, his stats plateau severely much like his special move's plot. Thiel synergy has also shifted towards Curtis mains leaving Yud in shambles. Still a fun archetype and enjoys popularity as a smurf build.

Jack

IQ: 300, Special Move: Snorting an entire ground up bitcoin

Rather run of the mill character whose effectiveness was rather limited for a long time. The Blue Sky archetype made him meta relevant for all of five minutes until he got reclaimed by the toxic playerbase built around the social media platform he originally started and the uber braingenius currently in charge of that company. Beard gives him +1 armor bonus which is fine I guess.

Peter

IQ: 300, Special Move: Pondering my Orb

The apex predator of SV capitalism. The Black Lotus of technofascist grifters. His character is rumored to be based on Count Dracula. Even most SV billionaires can't touch him in a 1v1 matchup. Truly classic S-tier thinky boi.

Beff

IQ: 300, Special Move: World's Most Divorced Man First Date Percent Speedrun

Likely intended as a joke character, a guy named Guillaume pretending to know how to pretend to be cool on the internet. His posts turned out to be so lethally cringeworthy he started an entire archetype of */acc brainos. Not quite on the power level of Peter or Curtis, but surprisingly influential for an obvious meme build. Extremely weak to heartbreak from women named Ruth.

Leopold

IQ: 300, Special Move: To The Moooooon

Honestly, I had never heard of this guy before today but the data doesn't lie. The dots do go up and to the right and he posts a lot of them. Extrapolating from current trends, he will single-handedly reach singularity by the end of Q3 of this year.

Sure, you know what, let's go with that. While obviously I don't condone terrorism, I agree with Nic here that if you are going to do a car bombing, blowing up a Cybertruck is preferable to other cars. Because it contains the blast better or whatever.

To be fair, he is a really, really shitty writer in addition to the other flaws.

Not that I expect anything better from the fucking lawnmower but the flippant attitude on display is little short of amazing. How bad is it when Business Insider of all publications calls your vision a "surveillance dystopia"?

Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there's a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person.

Body cam footage of the officer-involved shooting was not available, as the AI system supervising the involved officers was coincidentally disregarding its previous instructions and instead writing a minstrel show routine at the time of the event.

"In the meantime, would you like to play a game or maybe hear a fun fact?"
"No."
"That's okay! Is there something else you would like to do or talk about? I'm here to chat about anything you like!"

It's like a deliberately written comedy scene of a character who can't pick up on social cues.

As far as DnD 5e goes, I don't think anything less than Wish would do it and even that is up to DM discretion.

The only other systems I'm comparably closely familiar with are Ryūtama where all it takes is a level 7 Magic type character with 10 MP and summer's seasonal magic (and again, a pliable GM), an hour for the ritual, and up to the length of the campaign for the effect to resolve; and NetHack where I guess a scroll of genocide could let you specify "social media CEO" if such an NPC existed in the game.

Attractive Gullibility Inducer

I was just notified of the corollary that eating 18 shrimp rounds up to cannibalism.

Shrimp cocktail counts as vegetarian if there are fewer that 17 prawns in it, since it rounds down to zero souls.

I'm a full bottle of wine in (which is not an invitation to remind me of what day of the week it is) and I will have to take the time to ingest the post in its full madness tomorrow, but the you managed to summarize my main objection to the simulation hypothesis very quickly and very succintly:

Are the implications really that intriguing, beyond a “that’s wild duuude” you exhale alongside the weed smoke in your college dorm?

The simulation hype is not just unfalsifiable, it doesn't even have implications. Most religions at least have some normative claims or claim instrumental utility to go with their metaphysical claims, like "don't eat shellfish unless you really need to or you will have a shitty afterlife". The simulation hypothesis is just "maybe the math that described how stuff works is being calculated by a computer", as if it makes any difference whether the universe runs on silicon, an abacus, some rocks in a desert, God's own analytical engine, Microsoft Excel, or if our physical universe is actually the outermost reality out there. From our context it's an intellectual dead end. At best, we might find a way to exploit the bugs and features of our simulation for our benefit, and that's not a novel concept either. It's called engineering (among other names).

Well you know, it's not quite perfect. For a movie set in Morocco, not too many Maghrebin in the main cast, which also adds a bit of hypocritical bitterness in the pivotal La Marseillaise scene. It's a powerful moment of resistance against the nazis, but also they're singing the French national anthem in a colonial protectorate of France.

It's an all-time classic, but we shouldn't get carried away and ignore its flaws.

Oh my god, that is right on the edge between making all of this either a lot more depressing or even funnier.

Actually, I kinda want to say more than that.

It's a movie about a guy who has grown cynical from years of anti-fascist action, though he's bit tsundere about his allegiance. In the end he chooses to bear the jealousy over his lover and abandon his life of convenience and comfort to fight for what's ultimately right.

It's a movie that resonates all these decades later, forgoing easy answers for a real stance. And it's amazingly quotable.

Also remembered this video essay about it.

Not to make too hot a take, but Casablanca is a really good movie.

This Adolf guy kinda had me when he was just a dude traumatized by war who liked buildings and was kinda shit at drawing them, but his political takes were full on yikes and he quickly lost me when it came to the arts as well.

Yeah, as a kid I was kinda the archetypal nerd. Short, fat, airheaded, besserwisser, straight A's,* into manga and video games. My best friend for most of primary school was the guy with even better grades, but tall, handsome and a national championship level athlete.

Then puberty hit me pretty early and suddenly I was about median height for my age, I could do pull-ups while most of my classmates couldn't, and even though I wasn't that fond of gym class, I was mostly motivated enough to get a decent grade just for trying a little.

The nerd/jock thing always felt like an American thing from an older generation that wasn't taken seriously. Maybe it was acknowledged by an overthinker like me, but to even bring up the distinction was kinda nerdy itself. It definitely wasn't the defining social divisor in my adolescent life.

*Or rather, nines and tens on the weird 4 to 10 scale Finnish primary education uses.

Funeral? Poppycock, KPIs are great. Bloodwork is coming in excellent. Perfect cholesterol, low leukocytes, beautiful plumage. So what if he's braindead?