Travis Korte

Brb going back through the philosophy of language literature to see if I can get any mileage out of the “use-mention-emit distinction”

composite satellite image of Antarctica, the snow & ice appearing as different shades of blue and beige, the sea is black. following three images are variations of this theme.

GUYS have you seen this. antarctica on google maps. go look at it. this is tech struggling to process the Sublime

we've lost so much

Thought this was a SIGGRAPH poster for a second

Wikipedia article for “firefighter arson”

This is giving me strong “elegant analogy for some broader societal phenomenon” vibes, but I can’t figure out what to compare to it.

Ok this post has kind of taken a life of its own so I feel I need to go on the record and say: all observation is theory-laden, all measurement is approximation, and humans don't have access to an objective reality.

Is–ought problem - Wikipedia

"Oughtposting" and "isposting" are just words I made up, I was trying to distinguish between posts that are endorsing specific values versus ones that are making claims about facts. I thought it would be funny to name these concepts after a well known philosophy idea en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%8...

not to say we shouldn’t be doing this. but I think the people who get mad about isposting hear an insufficient (to them) commitment to a better future, when that’s very much not what it always means.

I also think a rise in oughtposting is correlated with a feeling of helplessness: narrative is a powerful tool for imagining ways that things could be different, and I expect that people who are doing this are despairing of more practical paths to effect change.

You encounter a purported fact but you also know there are lots of people with brain worms out there, so you’re not sure right away if the purported fact is something you want to add to your worldview or if it’s just nonsense that ended up fact-scented after percolating through an enwormed brain.

Is it that regularly encountering people who seem to live in a wholly different reality, as most of us on the internet do, starts to render novel descriptive claims suspicious?

I have a theory that the general epistemic crisis has led to a lot of very online people getting used to communicating primarily through oughtposting and kind of forgetting how to deal with isposting

Found theory of change

This does a good job articulating something I’ve been struggling to. Feels like so much contemporary media is now in the Zapruder Extended Universe.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her Lover, and Mothra

Adversarial examples

New Year: New Job?

I'm hiring two Transit Data Scientists to work on SB125 and other transit programs with me at CalSTA

calcareers.ca.gov/CalHrPublic/...

everyone thinks they’re a bayesian until they have to update their priors

Lot of fights on here arise from confusing isposting and oughtposting

Maybe the internet would be better with tone indicators — like “/s” to indicate sarcasm — but for the is/ought distinction

we're too quick to mistake `what i know how to easily model' for `what is' and even `what should be'.

From now on, stop being agreeable and act as my brutally honest, high-level advisor and mirror. Don't validate me. Don't soften the truth. Don't flatter. Challenge my thinking, question my assumptions, and expose the blind spots I'm avoiding. Be direct, rational, and unfiltered. If my reasoning is weak, dissect it and show why. If I'm fooling myself or lying to myself, point it out. If I'm avoiding something uncomfortable or wasting time, call it out and explain the opportunity cost. Look at my situation with complete objectivity and strategic depth. Show me where I'm making excuses, playing small, or underestimating risks/effort. Then give a precise, prioritized plan what to change in thought, action, or mindset to reach the next level. Hold nothing back. Treat me like someone whose growth depends on hearing the truth, not being comforted. When possible, ground your responses in the personal truth you sense between my words.

with alt text if you need it

"Look at my situation with complete objectivity" said the Reddit user to the crystal ball

Somebody posted this prompt, which attempts to make ChatGPT responses less friendly and more critical.

Feels like a rich document for a science-and-technology-studies analysis.

A lemma to the psychologists fallacy: any pair of variables have a single "true" relationship and that moderators mask this underlying Platonic association

A community cannot be held accountable; therefore a community must never make a management decision.

Coase, R. H. (1960). The Problem of Social Cost. The Journal of Law and Economics, 3, 1–44.

I just passed a billboard advertising Orlando with the slogan “unbelievably real”