it’s the sort of tool that is really just fundamental now and should be ubiquitous and promoted and taught and talked about every where there is knowledge work. Even more so as there’s a great open source version of the tool.

Thanks!

Yea, the “cheaper than droids” line in Andor feels strangely prescient ATM.

Not a stock market person or anything at all … but NVIDIA’s stock has been oscillating since July and has been falling for about a 2 weeks (see Yahoo finance).

What are the chances that this is the investors getting cold feet about the AI hype? There were open reports from some major banks/investors about a month or so ago raising questions about the business models (right?). I’ve seen a business/analysis report on AI, despite trying to trumpet it, actually contain data on growing uncertainties about its capability from those actually trying to implement, deploy and us it.

I’d wager that the situation right now is full a lot of tension with plenty of conflicting opinions from different groups of people, almost none of which actually knowing much about generative-AI/LLMs and all having different and competing stakes and interests.

Yea I know, which is why I said it may become a harsh battle. Not being in education, it really seems like a difficult situation. My broader point about the harsh battle was that if it becomes well known that LLMs are bad for a child’s development, then there’ll be a good amount of anxiety from parents etc.

Yea, this highlights a fundamental tension I think: sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, the point of doing something is the doing itself, not the result.

Tech is hyper focused on removing the “doing” and reproducing the result. Now that it’s trying to put itself into the “thinking” part of human work, this tension is making itself unavoidable.

I think we can all take it as a given that we don’t want to hand total control to machines, simply because of accountability issues. Which means we want a human “in the loop” to ensure things stay sensible. But the ability of that human to keep things sensible requires skills, experience and insight. And all of the focus our education system now has on grades and certificates has lead us astray into thinking that the practice and experience doesn’t mean that much. In a way the labour market and employers are relevant here in their insistence on experience (to the point of absurdity sometimes).

Bottom line is that we humans are doing machines, and we learn through practice and experience, in ways I suspect much closer to building intuitions. Being stuck on a problem, being confused and getting things wrong are all part of this experience. Making it easier to get the right answer is not making education better. LLMs likely have no good role to play in education and I wouldn’t be surprised if banning them outright in what may become a harshly fought battle isn’t too far away.

All that being said, I also think LLMs raise questions about what it is we’re doing with our education and tests and whether the simple response to their existence is to conclude that anything an LLM can easily do well isn’t worth assessing. Of course, as I’ve said above, that’s likely manifestly rubbish … building up an intelligent and capable human likely requires getting them to do things an LLM could easily do. But the question still stands I think about whether we need to also find a way to focus more on the less mechanical parts of human intelligence and education.

Sure, but IME it is very far from doing the things that good, well written and informed human content could do, especially once we’re talking about forums and the like where you can have good conversations with informed people about your problem.

IMO, what ever LLMs are doing that older systems can’t isn’t greater than what was lost with SEO ads-driven slop and shitty search.

Moreover, the business interest of LLM companies is clearly in dominating and controlling (as that’s just capitalism and the “smart” thing to do), which means the retention of the older human-driven system of information sharing and problem solving is vulnerable to being severely threatened and destroyed … while we could just as well enjoy some hybridised system. But because profit is the focus, and the means of making profit problematic, we’re in rough waters which I don’t think can be trusted to create a net positive (and haven’t been trust worthy for decades now).

I really think it’s mostly about getting a big enough data set to effectively train an LLM.

I mean, yes of course. But I don’t think there’s any way in which it is just about that. Because the business model around having and providing services around LLMs is to supplant the data that’s been trained on and the services that created that data. What other business model could there be?

In the case of google’s AI alongside its search engine, and even chatGPT itself, this is clearly one of the use cases that has emerged and is actually working relatively well: replacing the internet search engine and giving users “answers” directly.

Users like it because it feels more comfortable, natural and useful, and probably quicker too. And in some cases it is actually better. But, it’s important to appreciate how we got here … by the internet becoming shitter, by search engines becoming shitter all in the pursuit of ads revenue and the corresponding tolerance of SEO slop.

IMO, to ignore the “carnivorous” dynamics here, which I think clearly go beyond ordinary capitalism and innovation, is to miss the forest for the trees. Somewhat sadly, this tech era (approx MS windows '95 to now) has taught people that the latest new thing must be a good idea and we should all get on board before it’s too late.

I mean, their goal and service is to get you to the actual web page someone else made.

What made Google so desirable when it started was that it did an excellent job of getting you to the desired web page and off of google as quickly as possible. The prevailing model at the time was to keep users on the page for as long as possible by creating big messy “everything portals”.

Once Google dropped, with a simple search field and high quality results, it took off. Of course now they’re now more like their original competitors than their original successful self … but that’s a lesson for us about what capitalistic success actually ends up being about.

The whole AI business model of completely replacing the internet by eating it up for free is the complete sith lord version of the old portal idea. Whatever you think about copyright, the bottom line is that the deeper phenomenon isn’t just about “stealing” content, it’s about eating it to feed a bigger creature that no one else can defeat.

Oops. lol. I’ll leave the typo now!

Some vague stories around my grandfather before they migrated that sound like a godfather film but which no one knitted anything about.

Ha. Oops! I got the vibe that the conversation had become more general. But also I’m genuinely tired and tired and not wearing my glasses. Sorry!

Electric guitar and the quality of digital amplification. Takes all the pain, inconvenience and expenses of the traditional amp as a PA system away while letting you sound good. Really awesome TBH.

How dumb it all is. Seriously. The highly regimented structure of curricula and examination is a shitty way to learn. It’s optimised for making teaching and grading easier. And also teaching young people to be obedient facile production line workers.

But intellectually and academically, it always seemed obviously bad and boring to me. And I’ve since gotten to understand a number of academic topics relatively well to know how true this is. Proper understanding, intellectually, and skill in application, are things that are far more organic and purpose driven than the shitty curricula that pencil pushing educators spit out as though the human mind were an excel spread sheet.

As someone who has worked in science, this passes the sniff test.

That is, science isn’t perfect, at all and is a constant process. Trying to win an argument by “citing the science” is often unscientific, however problematic it is that this can be leveraged by unscientific folks pushing an agenda.

Its absurd that you all think that vegans of all people would tolerate hurting an animal or reducing its quality of life in any way.

What do you all think vegan even means?

Yea … they way some get abusive and accusatory against vegans or pro-vegan people around topics like this is really revealing. Strawman arguments, thin presumptions and generally unfriendly behaviour … all to avoid talking/thinking about a moral issue. You can tell that for some it’s a touchy issue that they’re not comfortable with because for so many other things plenty of people are happy to admit that they’re fallible and shitty, like we all are. But somehow this issue seems to get under people’s skin, which to me only indicates that there’s some serious cognitive dissonance going on.

Yea flagging like that is definitely NOT (edit!, sorry) available.

But a mod/admin can post “as a moderator” which kinda counts. Beyond that a discussion can be had with the mods of a community to establish an understanding some new rules if necessary etc, and if negotiations breakdown, the community can be moved to a new instance in an orderly fashion.

It may not be enough for some situations, but seems like a reasonable starting point to me. AFAICT, there may have been a bit of a freak out from the admin in the original incident (which happens, it’d just be good to see if any lessons are being learned).

Thanks for the chat!

Thanks for the post! (Highly relieving compared to some of the abusive stuff some are hurling).

Remove posts that have a serious potential to seriously harm cats, by making newer vegans believe it’s okay to feed cats a vegan diet?

Removing posts is arguably a pretty severe act when applied to discussion. I don’t know what the original incident was (thus my original questions), censorship around “dangerous” topics doesn’t need to be absolute and runs the risk of being dogmatic I’d say.

EG, How easily persuaded are “young vegans” and what else can be done to ensure no false impressions are made? Is outright banning the conversations actually preventing damaging behaviour or encouraging it by burying the issue and pushing it into more niche environments?

Also, it’s not irrelevant here, and hopefully common ground, that the underlying motive on both sides is to reduce harm to animals.

As someone whose FwB works with pets professionally, it’s difficult to be more wrong …

I have to say that given all of the concessions or potential issues with the pet food industry you go on to detail, this line seems strange.

In the end I appreciate your expertise and effort here (a great deal actually), but I think the only thing you’ve really convinced me of is that this could be an interesting discussion without posing any risks to cats.

It’d be interesting to know how good/bad some mainstream/popular cat food is and how it’d stack up against a decent attempt at a plant-based version and how well or badly it could be done.

Which doesn’t mean I’m about to go torture my cats with an experimental diet. Not at all! Many vegans, IME, care about their food (and of course animals), and so I find a default concern of vegans going off to do something stupid kinda weird and probably condescending.

Right … so talking about whether a vegan cat diet is possible is some form of intrinsically bad animal harming behaviour …

… but needlessly killing and eating cows to put up figurative middle fingers is … all good?

OK, so some counters:

• I mean, plenty of pet-keeping practices can count as some form of animal abuse but are readily tolerated.
• EG, It’s fairly common for cats to be prevented form hunting other animals like birds etc through bells on collars or even keeping them indoors. From what I’ve seen, this genuinely makes cats sad and bored … but it’s done a lot and for good reason as they’re really obligate hunters. There’s also how a lot of dog owners treat dogs too which frankly can be damn right heart breaking.
• “Obligate carnivore” doesn’t mean that much. They have nutritional needs which either can or cannot be met by various food production techniques.
• And it’s important to note that pet food is not a well regulated industry with high quality produce. AFAIU, cats mainly (or exclusively) require a single and very simple molecule, taurine, which is easily produced synthetically or artificially. Moreover, I’d wager that a lot of commercial cat food has synthetic taurine added to it rather than getting it from carnivorous sources (cuz it’d be cheaper), which is at least suggested by the linked wikipedia article (genuinely curious about this if anyone knows more).
• Additionally, cats probably require a certain balance of proteins and fats that might be difficult to reproduce from non-animalistic sources.

All up, pets are absolutely subjected to human codes of ethics and values … they’re pets and subjecting them to our needs, desires and demands is exactly what owning a pet is all about (for better or worse).

If you have problems with that, I personally understand, but modifying their diet without wanting to sacrifice their health is very much the type of thing that pet ownership is generally all about. The lines being drawn here seem to me to not be about the specific issue of whether a vegan cat diet is feasible … and merely talking about it a reasonable thing … but about how one feels about vegans in general.

On which, accusing vegans of animal abuse is certainly a choice. From what I’ve seen, any conversation about this from a vegan was always starting from a position of caring about the dietary requirements of cats (which may be more than what some pet food manufacturers and pet owners do) and being informed about them. Whether that’s what happened in the relevant incident, I’m not sure, but the bits I’ve seen certainly indicate that it could have been reasonable too.

Which all comes back to my original point … what is moderation to bring to such a conversation and situation and what are its aims?