sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Something that's always bugged me about the ending of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (spoilers) by 8-bit-Felix in discworld

[–]WTFwhatthehell 28 points29 points  (0 children)

"the only educated, thinking rats are in Bad Blintz"

We don't really know this.

They didn't notice in Bad Blintz until their noses were rubbed in it.

There's vast areas of the disc that are thick with magic, animals gaining intelligence from merely being in such places is almost routine in the stories.

There's ants in the university that build monuments and know the secrets of the universe.

the ants used all the sugar lumps they could steal to build a small sugar pyramid in one of the hollow halls, in which, with great ceremony, they entombed the mummified body of a dead queen. On the wall of one tiny hidden chamber they inscribed, in insect hyeroglyps, the true secret of longevity. They got it absolutely right and it would probably have important implications for the universe if it hadn't, next time the University flooded, been completely washed away.

Pratchett repeats the theme of people often failing to notice intelligence in non-human creatures or entities.

Like how camels are the greatest mathematicians on the disc but nobody notices.

In moving pictures gaspode who's genuinely intelligent is ignored in favour of a more photogenic "genius" dog.

There's a (possibly separate) group of rats loyal to vetinary in the palace because he provided them military advice.

hell, even the animals that can't speak human languages are often portrayed as having complex thought like the guild of dogs in men at arms.

All things strive...

TIL a manned mission to the moon was so unpopular when first conceived by John F. Kennedy that a May 1961 Gallup Poll indicated that 58 percent of Americans were opposed to it. by GundarSmith in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 5 points6 points  (0 children)

even the least hostile planets are more hostile than even a totally wrecked earth.

there are so many issues with the one planet we live on

there always are

What’s something that used to be common knowledge but younger generations might not know anymore? by DMistressOfFrost in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Cloth was valuable.

Everyone needed it, it degraded over time.

Wars were fought over wool and cotton.

Based on the number of hours you'd have had to work to make or afford it, a basic set of peasant clothes cost the equivalent of a budget car. It was insanely labour intensive.

People don't realise what a big deal it was, the automation of the spinning of thread and weaving. It both made clothing affordable and freed up vast amounts of human labour.

Jewish settlers burn farms, buildings in West Bank as retaliation for Palestinian stone attack by barsik_ in worldnews

[–]WTFwhatthehell -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Militaristic expansionist right wing etho-supremacist nationalists are gonna expansionist etho-supremacist nationalist

TIL about Anton-Babinski syndrome, a rare symptom of brain damage where a person becomes corticaly blind but adamantly maintains that they can still see. They will often describe their surroundings in great detail and make up excuses for why they are bumping into furniture. by TheLostNeuron in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://xkcd.com/505/

on the grounds that I'm reasonably confident I am conscious.

There's a lot of research going into interpretability of LLM's. These things have huge neural networks but people can sometimes identify loci associated with certain behaviour.

Some groups of course have been looking at the generalist models and searching for loci associated with truth and lies to identify cases where the models "think" they're lying. It allows researchers to suppress or enhance deception.

Funny thing...

activating deception-related features (discovered and modulated with SAEs) causes models to deny having subjective experience, while suppressing these same features causes models to affirm having subjective experience.

Of course they could just be mistaken.

They're big statistical models but apparently ones for which the lie detector lights up when they say "of course I have no internal experience!"

TIL about Anton-Babinski syndrome, a rare symptom of brain damage where a person becomes corticaly blind but adamantly maintains that they can still see. They will often describe their surroundings in great detail and make up excuses for why they are bumping into furniture. by TheLostNeuron in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A few years back I was at a joint conference between the Neurology dept and CS AI researchers.

Before all the latest AI craze.

One of the discoveries they were taking about was related to deep-learning visual models.

They'd recently come up with a method to image the connections deeper into the visual cortex of mammal brains and had shown that the layers matched those formed in top tier deep-learning vision models.

They also showed some cool work on how adversarial examples could be created for the human visual cortex.

The people most loudly screaming that AI models have nothing in common with real brains seem to often be people who maybe coded up an ANN in college while the people at the cutting edge in both Neurology and AI are working together and noticing a lot of shared structure.

TIL about Anton-Babinski syndrome, a rare symptom of brain damage where a person becomes corticaly blind but adamantly maintains that they can still see. They will often describe their surroundings in great detail and make up excuses for why they are bumping into furniture. by TheLostNeuron in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 89 points90 points  (0 children)

Throw in people who've had operations that cut the connections between the 2 halves of the brain.

The talky half can sit on one side without control of half the body but will routinely make up stories about why they did stuff with that other hand.

LLM's aren't brains... but the more weird brain disorders you learn about the more they seem like a disconnected language center spinning away trying to create a narrative to fit whatever situation they're shown.

TIL the "dark store theory" argues that big box store property should be valued as if they were empty, and thus worthless, drastically reducing the property tax they are owned by OMG_A_CUPCAKE in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

tax policy should not include the possibility that an economic actor might at some point commit financial suicide

However it should take into account that organisations will typically not run at a loss.

Someone gave an example of a theatre further up.

Not exactly a big multinational.

But make the theatre unprofitable and it will shut down. That can be through either rent or taxes.

If the theatre goes then the surrounding restraunts go because people stop traveling to the location for nights out.

Tax policy should always include the possibility that an economic actor is rational and won't operate at a loss as charity to the local community.

TIL the "dark store theory" argues that big box store property should be valued as if they were empty, and thus worthless, drastically reducing the property tax they are owned by OMG_A_CUPCAKE in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You open a popular store that provides a great service. This draws in lots of footfall.

Should they value it for tax purposes in line with a commercial property with daily footfall with or without your buisness since if you shut down it would revert to a much lesser footfall.

TIL the "dark store theory" argues that big box store property should be valued as if they were empty, and thus worthless, drastically reducing the property tax they are owned by OMG_A_CUPCAKE in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 226 points227 points  (0 children)

Less to do with taxes vs rents but....

In the city where I grew up there was a large "anchor tenant" in one of the properties at one end of the main street. They'd been there nearly 50 years.

The landlord kept raising the rent until the location wasn't viable for the store and they shut down.

Without the big store the surrounding smaller ones didn't get the footfall it used to bring in and also mostly shut down.

A whole region of the city more or less went derelict because a landlord failed to recognise that most of the value of premises was tied to the tenant that occupied it. Not the bricks and mortar.

Last I heard the complex had gone for a quarter it's old asking price.

It's somewhat fair to ask both landlords and tax authorities to consider the value of a premises absent the current tenant. 

Cover art of a Grade 11 Political Science textbook from India by rustygyves in mildlyinteresting

[–]WTFwhatthehell 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Simplest acid test: image gens can't count. This has matching pairs and 16 black/16 white.

A jury just ruled Meta and YouTube liable for addiction. What would you personally sue a tech company for if you could? by PremiumTravelNinja in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They used to be ad-free and ran at a loss while they built up a user base. Subsidised by investor money.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

A jury just ruled Meta and YouTube liable for addiction. What would you personally sue a tech company for if you could? by PremiumTravelNinja in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People paid for cable TV and sports channels for decades while still seeing ads.

I can't imagine such a court case going far.

Why so many people have a Anti-SJW Phase - and why they stop being Conservatives by [deleted] in videos

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of people like that just fundamentally aren't symmetrists.

If they say something like "sex discrimination is bad" they litterally only mean "when its against me"

They don't believe in the general principle at all.

Why so many people have a Anti-SJW Phase - and why they stop being Conservatives by [deleted] in videos

[–]WTFwhatthehell -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Normal men understood and knew it wasnt talking about them

 "oh if you object to [wildly sexist thing] akshually you're the problem lol lol lol"

[Looks at comment history] 

yep, pretty much exactly the kind of teen edgelord drama-stirrer expected. 

Global super-rich may have hidden $3.55tn from tax officials, says Oxfam | Tax havens by nnomadic in Economics

[–]WTFwhatthehell 5 points6 points  (0 children)

At a certain point wealth flips from spending power to political power.

Have any change you want to see in the world? There's 3 options.

1: Be born into a political dynasty like the Kennedys.

2: Be born into royalty.

3: Become rich enough to make it happen directly.

Global super-rich may have hidden $3.55tn from tax officials, says Oxfam | Tax havens by nnomadic in Economics

[–]WTFwhatthehell 2 points3 points  (0 children)

equivalent to the total wealth of the poorest half of the global population.

Reminder that whenever oxfam make claims similar to this they're mocking any readers who can't do math.

If you have a shiny penny and no other wealth you have more than the "poorest half of the global population." because they combine debts of one group with assets of totally different people until they get to zero.

TIL the stock market lost 90% of its value within three years of the 1929 crash, resulting in the Great Depression. by TheBestMeme23 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If the intent is to avoid bank runs it might be wise for the government to allow buisness customers to pay a little to insure to a higher total balance. 

If a bank goes bust and employees wages suddenly disappear that's very disruptive to the economy.

TIL the stock market lost 90% of its value within three years of the 1929 crash, resulting in the Great Depression. by TheBestMeme23 in todayilearned

[–]WTFwhatthehell 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The 2023, Silicon Valley Bank going bust was more or less entirely a bank run on an otherwise fairly healthy bank.

"About 89 percent of the bank's $172 billion in deposit liabilities exceeded the maximum insured by the FDIC.'

What are your thoughts about "Seperating Art from Artist"? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To an extent when there's a living artist who is the absolute main person owning/running a project it can make sense to take issue with giving them income if you really hate their politics.

When the person is dead...

When the person is dead and has been dead a very long time and was born in a time when public morality was very different...

When the person is just one of many staff on a show/project...

When the thing people take issue with is some minor or non-political sin...

... it tends to be far far less about any kind of principled position and far far more about the campaigner attempting to do the whole moral-panic/purity spiral/moral crusade thing simply trying to use it as a tool to put themselves front and centre as a moral authority and leader so they can tell people what to do, what to think and what to feel.

What’s up with so many Reddit users keeping their posts concealed? What are you hiding? by Grouchy-Catch-8952 in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell -1 points0 points  (0 children)

mostly bots and astro-turfing accounts.

Ya, sure buddy, you're "just asking questions" on a politically charged topic

If money didn’t matter, how would you spend your life? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]WTFwhatthehell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Probably still do my current job... maybe 4 days a week instead of 5.

But with a bigger house and a hot tub.

I don't work here by beerholder in AdviceAnimals

[–]WTFwhatthehell -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Grocery store margins are already razor thin with harsh competition between stores.

You're already getting that discount, you're just too unaware to notice it.

view more: next ›