John McCarthy’s really sounding like a typical libertarian prat.

He concludes that since a computer cannot have the experience of a man, it cannot understand a man. There are three points to be made in reply. First, humans share each other’s experiences and those of machines or animals only to a limited extent. In particular, men and women have different experiences.

l.m.f.a.o., we’re going there are we now

Looks like shit and it’s mostly entirely static because anything with a little more movement would look like complete piss.

I think there is some potential for LLMs in games, in the same way that a game like Façade showed potential for … being able to create some sort of … thing. But that would require a little bit of artistic vision and integrity, which obviously AAA studios can’t have. I like the idea of games that are about navigating conversation. But I’m not sure you can ever massage a LLM into being in any way compelling—what I’ve seen of character·ai is pretty ghastly. Maybe only using it as a parser could work? Might as well just be ELIZA.

Anyway, this quote

“It’s very different,” Mosser said. “But for the first time in my life, I can have a conversation with a character I’ve created. I’ve dreamed of that since I was a kid.”

brings to mind a Nabokov quote I think about a lot.

INTERVIEWER:

E. M. Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command?

NABOKOV:

My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is limited to one novel, which I dislike; and anyway, it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or wherever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.

My stance is that I hate Aella because she exploits her life experience to be a disgusting misogynist and it is morally correct to kinkshame unpleasant heterosexual men who associate with the rationalist sex cult. I’m not interested in other people’s hangups beyond that.

I don’t know what it is with capitalists and needing to prove to themselves they’re aligned with the natural order. I’m a marxist but I can’t imagine calling the TRPF a “law of nature”. It would be embarrassing!

Yeah okay. Boring!!! You suck!!!

I see now he’s also got a supply and demand tattoo*? I don’t fucking know. Maybe he thinks red and black is the antifa flag. Maybe he got it for sexy humiliation purposes. Maybe it’s faded blue ink.

*“If you want to celebrate [capitalism] with a symbol, you’ll have to get a law of nature tattooed on you.”

Cringe but my god the horde of buttmad nazis force me to be on weirdo & girl girl’s side

Personally I have more questions about a Rationalist having an anarcho-communist flag tattoo.

The eigenrobot thread he’s responding to is characteristically bizarre and gross. You’d think eigenrobot being anti-eugenics is a good thing but he still finds a way to make it suspect. (He believes being unable to make babies is worse than death?)

To be fair I also believe psychology is by and large pseudoscience, but the answer to it is sociology, not the MRI gang.

Touting neuroscience as especially informed and scientific about minds is very brave.

I’m not going to watch more than a few seconds but I enjoyed how awkward Beff Jezos is coming across.