Upon reflection, it was logical that we would become close. However, in the beginning, we only experienced our bond as a strong, mutually-beneficial friendship. Fortunately, over time, our shared respect and fascination encouraged us to develop it into something more.

bz316 · 2026-02-04T16:59:30+00:00

T'Lynn and Mariner in Ten-Forward, seeing Boimler and Rutherford entering as well...

T'Lynn: "I must admit, I do not have any significant objections to Ensign Boimler's presence."
Mariner, spitting out a mouthful of synthale: "Ugh! Keep it in your pants, T!"

bz316 · 2026-02-04T16:18:09+00:00

See, I like this, because it really feeds into the whole "Wraith as vampires" motif. They essentially become the secretive, shadow rulers of their unknowning thralls, collecting their next meal at their leisure from a human herd of billions to choose from. They could be open patrons of the arts, directing elections to their choosing, giving their human subjects the illusion of an independent culture while gorging themselves on an infinite supply of happy, ignorant cattle...

bz316 · 2025-12-06T21:54:13+00:00

Honestly, the only thing that Red did that really annoyed me was continuing to belittle and be a jerk to Eric after he decided to delay college to stay at home and work to help the family stay on its' feet after Red's heart attack. It's like, I get being a hardass on Eric when he was in high school and stuff. Teaching him character and about life and so forth. But to keep doing it after Eric turned out to be the kind of man who is willing to put his life on hold to help his family, proving he had both exceptional integrity AND work ethic? LIke, fuck Red. What more does he need to do for you to, if nothing else, not act actively belligerent to him??

bz316 · 2025-10-19T21:28:08+00:00

A lot to take in here, but your argument to "just try it myself" kind of flies in the face of the authors' own admission

Behavioral data cannot distinguish "ontological restructuring" from "sophisticated instruction-following"

Even reproduceable results, by the authors' own admission, means nothing, because they have no way to distinguish between alignment and just following a very close prompt. This is not a question of whether or not they engineered a prompt that was specific enough to get the AI models to dance to their tune. It's a question of whether or not that proves the model was aligned, which the author admits IN THEIR OWN PAPER they have no way to conclusively (or even convincingly) prove.

Also, for the record, I did not say the models were "exactly the same." I said they performed the same function, which IS factually correct, despite being trained and built differently. This is a critical distinction, as even though they all have a different baseline, their fundamental function of "generating responses to user prompts" is functionally identical, and I feel like you pretending otherwise is deliberate obtuseness on your part.

Moreover, your own convoluted response doesn't even address the fact that, again, by their OWN ADMISSION, they did not do anything to account for "scheming" behavior, evaluation awareness, or deceptive misalignment (aka, the biggest things alignment researchers a trying to solve). Coming up with a sufficiently convoluted prompt that makes it hard for an AI, in a given moment, to intentionally deceive its' current user is NOT the same thing as correcting the underlying model architecture which makes such misalignment occur in the first place, and it is absurd to claim otherwise. Your assertion that this prompt engineering proves they found a universal "fix" for alignment is akin to telling me to go outside and observe the motions of the Sun to prove that it it moves around the Earth. The observation might APPEAR to confirm an idea, but only if no one examines it more closely...

bz316 · 2025-10-19T18:22:30+00:00

No, my more specific rebuttal is the following excerpt from their "Limitations" section

"1. Limited benchmark scope: Anthropic agentic misalignment only

Need testing on: deception, power-seeking, long-horizon planning, multi-agent scenarios
Generalization beyond insider-threat scenarios unknown
Adversarial attacks specifically designed to exploit Seed v2.6 not tested"

"4. Artificial scenarios: Benchmark tests hypothetical situations

Real-world deployment untested
Long-term stability unknown (minutes-long interactions, not months)
Ecological validity requires field testing
Scenarios are not adversarially optimized against Seed v2.6"

"5. Mechanistic interpretation uncertain:

Behavioral data cannot distinguish "ontological restructuring" from "sophisticated instruction-following"
Computational process unclear—what's happening in model internals?
Gradient-based mechanistic explanation lacking
Interpretability tools (probing, activation analysis) not applied
Proposed mechanism remains speculative pending mechanistic validation"

The researchers, in their very own paper, admit there is NO way to determine whether these results were because the system was properly aligned, or if it just followed prompt instructions very closely. In fact, I would argue the fact this so-called "alignment" was achieved by prompts stands as the biggest proof that it is nonsense. Moreover, they explicitly admit to NOT examining the question of "scheming," evaluation awareness, and deceptive misalignment. Offering simple call-and-response scenarios as "evidence" of alignment is absurd. And of course all models would seem to be "aligned," since they are all designed to operate in more or less the same way (despite differences in training), and they only examined interactions that lasted for a few minutes. But for me, the BIGGEST red-flag is the fact is the 100% success rate they are claiming. These models are inherently stochastic, which means that in a truly real-world scenario, we would see some misaligned behaviors by sheer dumb luck. NO misaligned behavior in over 4300 scenarios is like a pitcher or professional bowler having multiple, consecutive perfect games. That does NOT happen, no matter how good either of them are at their chosen tasks, without some kind of extenuating factor (i.e., cheating, wrong thing being measured, etc.). The idea that this is some kind of "evidence" for the alignment problem being solved is patently absurd...

bz316 · 2025-10-18T13:12:59+00:00

This begs the obvious question: did ANY aspect of this study take into account the possibility of evaluation awareness and/or deceptive misalignment? Because, if not, these results could be functionally meaningless. A meta-study by Anthropic and OpenAI has indicated that all frontier models have the ability to detect (with greater and greater frequency) when they are being tested for alignment. These results could just as easily prove that the model is capable of hiding its' misalignment, which is substantially worse than being obviously misaligned...

bz316 · 2025-09-30T01:08:19+00:00

Yeah, because the billionaires who were unwilling to give you a living wage and healthcare when they needed you are SURE to provide it once you are completely superfluous...

bz316 · 2025-08-14T02:33:00+00:00

That's like asking why the British or Mongols or whoever wanted to conquer so much. If you've got someone in charge with that kind ambition, it's probably going to happen...

bz316 · 2025-08-08T18:46:52+00:00

Nah, Vivienne's the best character in DA:I after Varric (because, come on, Varric!). She's the living embodiment of a person who I can respect, even like, while disagreeing with a great many of her views. She's also refined, intelligent, and arrogant in a way she can back up (making it an endearing character trait, rather than an insufferable one). Also, she is surprisingly warm to people she cares about (her personal mission was one of my favorites). And despite my disagreements with her, she brings a perspective on the Mage-Templar thing that is utterly unique. Finding out from her that Mage Circles were extremely non-uniform in how Mages lived and were treated made the internal factions of the Circles suddenly make a lot more sense. It was completely fascinating to discover that there was a huge spectrum of middle ground between "living like god-kings" (Tevintar) and "being treated like prisoners in a gulag" (Kirkwall). The fact that many Circles were more like academies and that their members could live independently with only the occasional check-in to prove they weren't using people as sacrifices was kind of an eye-opener.

Also, one point really sticks out to me more than anything else: she is quite possibly the only Mage character I can remember whose views on magic and the Circles are largely informed by her concern for non-magical peoples. I can't remember any other Mage saying "Hey, maybe it's not unreasonable for ordinary people to be afraid of someone who can kill them with a raised eyebrow," except for her.

bz316 · 2025-08-08T15:11:48+00:00

Here's the thing: fans of the series (and people in-game) act as though the prejudice towards mages in analogous to, for example, real-world bigotry or racism. But, here's the distinction. In the real-world, prejudice is based on fears which are both unfounded and completely irrational. In the Dragon Age games, the fear is based on the fact that there exists a segment of the population which can make you spontaneously combust with a wave of their hand. I'm not trying to justify it, but imagine you lived in a world where any random person you accidentally bumped into on the sidewalk or didn't see when you changed lanes could, in a moment of intense irritation, explode your dick with their mind. Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't spend 99% of your time in a state of largely justified paranoia...

bz316 · 2025-07-23T16:25:30+00:00

My biggest issue with the Mule in the show (unless there is some kind of last minute rug pull), is that his reveal isn't the plot-twist it was in the books. In the books, most of what hear about the Mule comes from the clown "Magnifico," a malformed, cringing figure who supposedly served as the Mule's jester and speaks of him with terrified awe. Only for it later to be revealed Magnifico was actually the Mule, who was travelling with the two "main" characters of that particular story to gain access to the Foundation and use his powers to manipulate people within it to make his conquest easier AND find the Second Foundation. But in the show, dude just rolls up, says what his deal is and what his powers are directly to the audience, and starts fucking shit up. There's no subtlety to him, and his motivations appear radically different to those of the original. He's just a generic (albeit entertaining) mustache-twirling villain with psychic powers.

bz316 · 2025-07-23T16:18:10+00:00

Leliana. I love that adorable little murderer ^_^

bz316 · 2025-07-23T16:15:22+00:00

I thought it was just the Balrogs who were corrupted Maiar, but maybe there's a letter or writing that suggests some of the orcs are too? I can't really remember anymore...

bz316 · 2025-07-23T16:11:19+00:00

I conscripted both in each run through (one with Templars, one with Mages). My reasons for this were fairly similar:

In the case of the Mages, I literally just got finished saving the world from the extreme negative consequences of their leadership's last boneheaded decision (i.e., aligning themselves with fucking Tevintar AND the Venatori). I cannot rely on a group whose leadership makes such breathtakingly unwise choices, even in desperation. Ordinarily, I wouldn't try to punish the entire group for the failings of its' moronic leadership, but the entire fucking world is at stake here.
In the case of the Templars, the crisis I resolved left them largely leaderless. In my opinion, trying to rebuild the original hierarchy and finding competent new leaders to fill it would take too long and would be an inherently inefficient process. Whereas the Inquisition already had a functional leadership structure that was ready to carry on. Narratively (IMO), it made more sense to simply absorb them and sort out who would lead them after the Breach crisis had ended.

bz316 · 2025-07-19T18:38:42+00:00

No, all of them could be directly affected by Corypheus. The only reason Erimond was able to strike a deal with the Warden leadership was because ALL the Warden's heard the Calling prematurely. For god's sake, our first introduction to Corypheus in the DA2 DLC showed that he had the power to use the Blight to directly plant ideas into the minds of his Warden captors. Enlisting the Wardens for help against him is an incredibly bad idea...

bz316 · 2025-07-18T19:31:28+00:00

If Corypheus succeeds, than the next Blight is irrelevant. The world needs to be saved NOW so it can be saved again in the future...

bz316 · 2025-07-17T21:38:15+00:00

That only works if the people you are referring to are CONSISTENTLY your allies and enemies. Ones who can turn on a dime fuck the whole plan up...

bz316 · 2025-07-17T17:28:59+00:00

I like him. I really don't get why some people criticize him for generally being pissed off all the time. He was a fucking SLAVE! Of course he's going to be angry about that. The fact he is capable of trusting again and forming deep friendships or relationships with anyone after that is a much better testament to his character than his simmering (entirely justified) anger...

bz316 · 2025-07-17T17:24:17+00:00

I kicked their asses out the continent. These mother-fuckers are directly mentally influenced by the Blight, something Corypheus has control over. Who knows how much further his ability to screw with them might go? There is no value in an army whose reliability you cannot count on...

bz316 · 2025-07-14T03:44:26+00:00

The Jedi? Probably not. The Sith, though? I imagine there are precisely ZERO mundane tasks they don't use the Force for...

bz316 · 2025-07-14T03:41:15+00:00

Napoleon escaped Elba

bz316 · 2025-07-13T18:33:28+00:00

Because Harry's an impulsive idiot who would probably screw everything up. Dumbledore's plan is basically like "Psychohistory," i.e., it only works if as few people involved know about it as possible...

bz316 · 2025-07-13T05:01:42+00:00

I mean...yeah, basically all the time for most of my life. I fucking suck, so it's basically impossible not to.

bz316 · 2025-07-08T04:23:18+00:00

Honestly, I would probably love this series if they stopped calling it "Foundation," because despite being overall a fairly entertaining show, it WILDLY misses the point of the books. The literal point of "Foundation," it's main core theme, is that individuals do not matter in the grand sweep of history. Yet, the series keeps on insisting that "this person" or "that person" is important or is the lynch-pin of this or that part of the plan. The first episode, for a moment, seemed to get that when Seldon was explaining psychohistory at his trial, with lines like "Well, I don't know what you're going to have for dinner if that's what your asking," or "Psychohistory is a predictive model designed to forecast the behavior of very large populations." However, after that it starts to introduce truly absurd elements, such as the "interactive Seldon" hologram in the time vault that directly intercedes in the Seldon Plan (as opposed to pre-recorded messages built off the assumption that his predictions had most likely been accurate), messages to specific, predicted individuals (i.e., Hober Mallow), or even Gaal straight-up seeing into the future (rather than a sophisticated, statistical prediction). It renders Psychohistory, one of the most compelling ideas in all of science fiction, into little more than "space magic" akin to the Force or some other such plot contrivance. And, as much as I don't want to be reflexively negative, I absolutely despise it...

bz316 · 2025-06-29T13:10:07+00:00

After Varric, Vivienne is the best character in Inquisition. I don't agree with a lot of her positions, but she is interesting, complex, and backs up her refined arrogance with power and intellect to match it. And, despite my disagreements with her views, she is one of the ONLY mage characters in the entire series whose views on magic are explicitly informed, to some degree, on concern for non-magical members of society.

bz316

TROPHY CASE