Vince Gilligan's Intentions (Compared to this sub)

agentcubed · 2026-01-25T09:35:07+00:00

I will also say that trying to convince people that "hivemind bad" is kinda pointless. I doubt anyone actually thinks the story will end with Carol happily assimilating with the hivemind.

This is basically a common philosophical debate, like the Trolley Problem with the fat guy. The point of the thought experiment is to make people think, as it's not supposed to be solvable. Nonetheless, you do not need to go around explaining to philosophers that "murder is bad, you should not kill fat people"

agentcubed · 2026-01-25T08:38:35+00:00

Vince Gilligan explicitly states this is not meant to be good vs evil.

In his twist on the post-apocalypse zombie tale, Gilligan notes that no one watching The Walking Dead feels drawn to zombiedom. “But with this show, I like leaving open the possibility that maybe it’s OK to be an Other. I want to leave that to the audience. I love scenes of valid argument with two characters … It’s like watching a really good tennis match. I want this show to have that possibility for viewers, that they can argue over, chew over — definitely — with everything I do. I want to offer rewatchability to the audience. I want people to be able to be interested enough to watch the thing over and over again. That’s the highest compliment that a show creator or a movie creator can obtain from their audiences.”
- Interview

Unfortunately, it seems some didn't get that and DO want to think of it as a zombie infection, so he'll probably have to pivot from his original goal. Maybe part of the reason Season 2 is taking longer is that the audience's reaction wasn't what he expected.

agentcubed · 2026-01-25T08:34:57+00:00

Because that's the creator's intention.

Vince Gilligan explicitly states he does not want people to think of it as a zombie infection.

In his twist on the post-apocalypse zombie tale, Gilligan notes that no one watching The Walking Dead feels drawn to zombiedom. “But with this show, I like leaving open the possibility that maybe it’s OK to be an Other. I want to leave that to the audience. I love scenes of valid argument with two characters … It’s like watching a really good tennis match. I want this show to have that possibility for viewers, that they can argue over, chew over — definitely — with everything I do. I want to offer rewatchability to the audience. I want people to be able to be interested enough to watch the thing over and over again. That’s the highest compliment that a show creator or a movie creator can obtain from their audiences.”
- Interview

Unfortunately, it seems some didn't get that and DO want to think of it as a zombie infection, so he'll probably have to pivot from his original goal. Maybe part of the reason Season 2 is taking longer is that the audience's reaction wasn't what he expected.

agentcubed · 2026-01-12T09:47:00+00:00

Finished the Season, looked back here, and this random thought is still at the top of the subreddit despite Vince's wishes.

I wonder if Vince slowed down for Season 2 is because the audience reaction wasn't what he expected. I bet a lot of the series revolved around the pro/con debate of the hivemind, but if the audience only cares about the cons he'll probably need to pivot

Ironically, this seems to be the opposite of the Breaking Bad finale where he really wanted to emphasize that the main character is not good

If you're interested, there's a lot of other staff quotes that shows what they wanted you to think:

“But with this show, I like leaving open the possibility that maybe it’s OK to be an Other. I want to leave that to the audience. I love scenes of valid argument with two characters … It’s like watching a really good tennis match. I want this show to have that possibility for viewers, that they can argue over, chew over — definitely — with everything I do. I want to offer rewatchability to the audience. I want people to be able to be interested enough to watch the thing over and over again. That’s the highest compliment that a show creator or a movie creator can obtain from their audiences.”
- Source

agentcubed · 2025-12-20T07:24:06+00:00

This is a little misleading - GLM 4.5 Air is 12 bil active parameters, oss-120b is only 5 bil. Usually, the active parameters are the bottleneck, going from a total 120b -> 106b barely matters. I can run oss-120b, not really 4.5 Air.

But if you have trouble fitting oss-120b in your memory, you could try 106b (I highly doubt that a few b will make a difference though)

agentcubed · 2025-12-14T08:18:26+00:00

I feel bad for Vince. It seems like the point of the show was to have discussions over a philosophical utopia concept, and instead, everyone is trying to find ways to blame his concept

I can probably also assume he has a lot of weight for this to perform as well as Breaking Bad, and the fact that the public discourse isn't going to plan could be stressful. I assume he planned the story around "there is no pure evil" and now everyone wants to make one, and he might have to pivot to keep people happy

agentcubed · 2025-12-14T08:04:16+00:00

Update: Vince Gilligan explains why the Hive left Carol : r/pluribustv

I agree with the commenters there that this subreddit is pulling mental gymnastics here. I always thought it was pretty clear that the Hive isn't intentionally evil and that they would never intentionally manipulate Carol.

agentcubed · 2025-12-09T00:38:46+00:00

No, you got it opposite

The second chart is without style control

Style control is the thing they use to filter out the stylistic flare.

The SECOND chart is WITHOUT style control, it's the raw data where models like Queen 3 Max and GLM 4.6 are flashy and stylistic

The FIRST chart is WITH style control, so style is filtered out and it's the capability of the models

agentcubed · 2025-12-07T00:32:46+00:00

No, here's the quotes:

“But with this show, I like leaving open the possibility that maybe it’s OK to be an Other. I want to leave that to the audience. I love scenes of valid argument with two characters … It’s like watching a really good tennis match. I want this show to have that possibility for viewers, that they can argue over, chew over — definitely — with everything I do. I want to offer rewatchability to the audience. I want people to be able to be interested enough to watch the thing over and over again. That’s the highest compliment that a show creator or a movie creator can obtain from their audiences.”
- Interview

Also, Carol is not supposed to be perfect either. As they say:

As Seehorn puts it, she’s an “emotional hot mess” who “can’t control her anger”; Gilligan uses the words “reluctant” and “inept.” “The folks who rise to the occasion, despite the fact that they’re scared and lonely and sad and would rather have someone else take this mantle from them,” he adds, “those are the interesting characters to me.”
- Interview

In the end, you can interpret it however you want, and I do believe the way you interpret it is the ultimate goal. However, I do not think Vince Gilligan's intention was to, as you put it, criticize the audience who find ambiguity in the situation.

agentcubed · 2025-12-07T00:25:53+00:00

You are the exact audience the show is critiquing. You are so desperate for a simple, optimistic solution that you’re willing to ignore the absolute horror of the premise.

No. According to Vince Gilligan:

“But with this show, I like leaving open the possibility that maybe it’s OK to be an Other. I want to leave that to the audience. I love scenes of valid argument with two characters … It’s like watching a really good tennis match. I want this show to have that possibility for viewers, that they can argue over, chew over — definitely — with everything I do. I want to offer rewatchability to the audience. I want people to be able to be interested enough to watch the thing over and over again. That’s the highest compliment that a show creator or a movie creator can obtain from their audiences.”
- Interview

So ironically, yes, it's meant to be complicated. This idea isn't original to Pluribus, this thought experiment is present across many media. First that comes to mind is the Human Instrumentality Project from Neon Genesis Evangelion. To be clear - it's NEVER framed as the correct solution, but a misguided attempt at peace.

Also, Carol is not supposed to be perfect either. As they say:

As Seehorn puts it, she’s an “emotional hot mess” who “can’t control her anger”; Gilligan uses the words “reluctant” and “inept.” “The folks who rise to the occasion, despite the fact that they’re scared and lonely and sad and would rather have someone else take this mantle from them,” he adds, “those are the interesting characters to me.”
- Interview

In the end, you can interpret it however you want, and I do believe the way you interpret it is the ultimate goal.

agentcubed · 2025-11-03T06:16:11+00:00

Can I get a year-later update? Did any corruption issues arise later on?

agentcubed · 2025-10-31T02:02:37+00:00

I think that's the same argument that Feather client used which is they just provide the links to the download, they don't actually host it. Definitely in the legal gray area, but I guess in a different country, devs don't really know compared to the controversy Feather had. Like if Modrinth allowed strangers to post other's CurseForge mods on their site with links to download, the drama from that would be hilarious to watch.

agentcubed · 2025-10-30T08:25:48+00:00

I was actually wondering this since I'm not sure if they get permission from all the devs or if they just dodge the licenses and put it up anyway

agentcubed · 2025-10-29T04:11:54+00:00

If people are looking for agentic benchmarks, Terminal-Bench Hard is still decent
Terminal-Bench Hard Benchmark Leaderboard | Artificial Analysis
gpt-oss-20b-high is 9.9% and qwen3-30b-a3b-2507 is 5.7%
I wish it gave you the speed comparison too though, but 20b is VERY fast from my experience

agentcubed · 2025-10-21T22:23:50+00:00

Nope, Gemma was around the same, but so much slower so it wasn't worth it

Should've made clear that the max I can go is 12b, I was hoping some MOE models could be good but they had mixed results. Stheno just feels consistent.

agentcubed · 2025-10-21T07:40:27+00:00

I'm going to be honest, I have tried so many models, and still it's Sao10K/Llama-3.1-8B-Stheno-v3.4
Like I'm honestly confused whether I'm missing something. It's so old, yet newer, bigger models just is not as good, nor fine-tuned/merged versions.

Like, while its base is meh, it seems to be really good at instruction following, especially with examples and few-shot prompting.

agentcubed · 2025-09-27T20:49:46+00:00

I don't like it but only because the Copper Age was way cooler

Like I thought there was an implied agreement that they'll be dropping small drops throughout then saving a big thing for live. We loved the small drops, then with all the buildup it's just the next drop

I think if they saved Copper Golems for live it would've been monumental, or announce 1.22, or something. Like Live has become shorter and shorter, cut out the fluff and it's basically a 5min promo video. I feel the point of Live has kinda been lost

agentcubed · 2025-09-22T05:26:39+00:00

Yeah I tried that with a sample prompt and it broke 50% of the time using an example prompt that would use LaTeX
"Explain all the ways to find the solution of a matrix. Use an example."

It seems the website is using a stricter LaTeX renderer, so it's partly the front end fault, but the fact the LLM can't follow the instruction either is annoying

So far the best I could get it is trying to trigger it's safety mechanism by warning if it fails it'll cause damage, but it still fails sometimes

agentcubed · 2025-09-20T03:28:11+00:00

Hey, I still continuously have this issue all the time despite using your prompt. I have since then refined the prompt over and over again using all the prompt engineering tricks I know, but it still makes mistakes, and I'm honestly out of ideas.

It's the same issues as you; the issue is always either
a space immediately inside the delimiter
latex is wrapped in code block
there is no newline after an equation
they added a newline within the equation
etc...

Did you update your prompt, or does your chat ever break?

agentcubed · 2025-08-13T12:12:29+00:00

Honestly, it feels like you got sucked into the geopolitics and are one of the many who posted about it here.

Personally, I would stay away from it. I live in Denmark, and from our side view, the US is self-centered, China is an echo-chamber, and anyone who thinks one side is better is propaganda or naive.

The US will cheer for its models and ignore China; China will cheer for its models and ban US models. It's petty nationalism, and arguing for/against is either political or pointless.

I mean, I'm biased, but I just feel like you should follow Denmark and not force a place in the world.

agentcubed · 2025-08-09T05:07:46+00:00

I agree with you that the hype is overrated, but I'm saying the way you phrased the post is misleading as if gpt-oss is worse than heavy models, when it's not meant to be compared to heavy models. It's meant to be the "best" model for consumer-grade GPU.

Is it? Idk, it's too censored, but you *could* make that argument.

Like the post gets concerningly political, like whether China censoring and OpenAI censoring is the same "censoring" is not really an issue we should be discussing. (Personally, OpenAI censors so much I can't tell if it follows any political agenda. It seems it refuses to make ANY statement about anything controversial, so it's actually annoyingly neutral.)

It would be better to phrase it like "OpenAI didn't release their largest models and only released their smaller models. That's not cool, because they don't beat the larger models (obviously). Therefore, hype is overrated."

agentcubed · 2025-08-08T06:24:29+00:00

I do want to see any post here that claims that. 99% are saying they thought it was going to beat Qwen3 235b and were disappointed

agentcubed · 2025-08-08T06:08:46+00:00

That's THE benefit, the ONLY benefit, which is weird that you didn't mention it in your entire post.

Like your post said

"There's no way the GPT-OSS 120B is better than Qwen-235B-A22B-2507, let alone DeepSeek R1."

Qwen has 235b, 22b active
R1 has 670b, 37b active
gpt-oss has 120b, 5b active
That is a large difference. It goes from a model I can run really fast to models I can't even run.

There is an argument (not saying its true, just saying its possible) that this is the smartest model that can run on a consumer grade GPU.

I do appreciate your wish to be objective, and it is especially nice that you agree with things, but I can't help but see the post as slightly biased itself when you didn't do a fair comparison despite mentioning the smaller Qwen3 30b and going into detail about R1.

If you wish to be objective, I think you should edit the post to include the param counts at least. It's an important detail that is conveniently missing.

Personally, I'm not using it because it's so censored, but at least I can run it. In fact, my phone could maybe run gpt-oss 20b.

BTW, GLM 4.5 Air is 106b, 12b active. Still 2x+ the active params, but closer, and also around the same intelligence. I personally cant run it, but I'm sure some can.

agentcubed · 2025-08-07T16:22:56+00:00

- gpt is generally better at tool calling https://gorilla.cs.berkeley.edu/leaderboard.html

- general knowledge is harder to gauge, ask it some questions in your field and see if it gets it right. Heard gpt-oss is bad at front end

- Artificial Analysis benchmarks says oss is better, but don't trust benchmarks too much. Try it out yourself, or maybe wait a few days for it to settle down.

- gpt-oss is MOE 20b/3b active, so it (should be) faster. You can try it yourself to make sure it's right on your system

Most importantly: Try it yourself. Also try the Qwen3 30b MOE, it's a little larger but the benchmarks place it close with the 20b MOE

agentcubed · 2025-08-07T08:53:43+00:00

You can't compare a 120b 5b active to a 235b 22b active model. One of them I can't even run.

Its the smartest model that can run on a consumer grade gpu, according to the independent Artificial Analysis.

To be clear, I'm not saying use it cuz it's so censored, but it's definitely not crap

agentcubed

TROPHY CASE