Ersatz Doctor

Congrats, Doctor!!!

Not that a college degree is the most important thing, but it's worth noting Mullin doesn't even have a bachelor's degree let alone a law degree. He's literally the least educated senator we have. And he's being put in charge multiple federal law enforcement agencies.

I’m reminded of when Grok was being used to digitally undress young girls and women, and people were going on about Grok’s apology. AI is incapable of apologizing because an apology is not merely a string of words. It’s an intentional act.

It’s important we don’t anthropomorphize AI when we talk about responsibility for atrocities.

AI is not responsible for these things because it’s not the kind of thing that can bear responsibility. It is always *people*—those who design and use it in these ways—who are responsible.

I’ll politely request the means of production but that’s it.

Could I get a flight of mini martinis to compare?

(arm falling off) my posting arm..... (other arm falls off) my other posting arm

I finally bought a robot that can lift weights. I now send it to the gym 3x a week so I don’t have to.

That's a good way to put it. And it makes sense when this this the first time in history a tool can functionally play the role of collaborator.

"You support masks when used to prevent the spread of deadly disease, but you don't support them when used to anonymously terrorize communities? Hypocrite much?"

This isn't perfect but I tend to think of how I think of other forms of learning. To the extent that something gets "internalized" in me and then I produce something unique from that internalization, I did it. To the extent that I'm offloading the internalization process, I didn't do it.

Yeah. Saying they did their homework "with the help of AI" "used AI" is pretty useless without knowing more (e.g. did it help them understand how to perform certain kinds of calculations and then they did the calculations themselves, or did they just have it do the calculations?)

But if you used it to teach you general lessons on cartoon drawing and then you produced a cartoon of your own doing that wasn't "copied" from it, I'm inclined to say you didn't use AI to help you produce the cartoon. (This is all just rough intuition though.)

Ooh this is a tough one. I suspect the line is blurry. I'd want to know more about AI's role. For example, if it produced a specific cartoon and then gave you step-by-step instructions on how to draw that exact cartoon, I'm inclined to say you used AI to help produce the cartoon.

college with no barrier to entry so a 100% success rate would suggest we’re probably not holding to good enough standards, right?” They just gave me the incredulous stare.

Success rates became the thing that mattered regardless of whether they measured what we originally wanted them to measure.

That interpretation is Goodhart’s law in action. The thing measured becomes the goal.

At my college we increase our target success rate levels every few years. I once asked “What’s the ultimate success rate goal? It’s not 100%, right? We’re dealing with humans here. Plus we’re a community…

Philosophy job market pickup lines: Are you the philosophers’ cocoon job market comments section? Because I can’t take my eyes off you.

We live in a time of cartoon supervillains. Unwell billionaires bent on destroying humanity to achieve a perverted future that they see as some kind of spiritual destiny.

I think she’s going to write a short story about it. She’s got a phenomenal sense of humor already.

11yo: “You know how the tooth fairy takes teeth and leaves money? I think that’s because in their world they use teeth as their money.”

That's Spike. He's the friendliest cat in the world. He's basically a dog.

already in bad shape. But the main thing is something about how the joints were setup made it so that water pooled there. A contractor mentioned doing the joints right is key.

I was careful to not hurt the trees. It’s a Japanese maple (with a similar one just out of frame).

I’m not sure exactly how to do it right but I don’t know if they properly treated the wood in the first place or ever retreated it. We could’ve done that when we moved in years ago but it was…

I’m so sad. I spent the weekend tearing out this pergola. It was a DIY from a previous owner that wasn’t done right. Not only was it rotting, it was rotting out our roof. But it provided such wonderful shade against the hot valley sun. (This pic doesn’t do it justice because this is mid take-down)

I like the post but you got my hopes up about the 1,000 donuts app.

I hear that Northern Ireland is becoming a popular destination for French nudists.

They go for the Derry air.

I’m a reasonable man. I’d take that deal.

Fair. But those are a mess anyway because hers and theirs just adds s so I think they’d be better with the apostrophe too! But his is a brand new word. It should be hims if it were consistent (or him’s if I truly had my way).

I shouldn’t have said proper name. Even definite descriptions do it. It’s the object+apostrophe+s pattern.

English has survived other ambiguities. It would survive this one.