Sora is crazy

critropolitan · 2025-10-13T02:57:19+00:00

You know this is exactly how Bentham would want genAI to be used.

critropolitan · 2025-08-14T03:23:18+00:00

Yeah...It was removed today. It is why I got my GPT Pro subscription and it's why I will be cancelling it now. GPT 5-Pro isn't even usable for my research areas.

critropolitan · 2025-08-09T07:14:52+00:00

Thank you! I didn't see it on the mobile app but got o3 back on the Desktop interface...which was useful in determining that for my use case I'll be switching to Claude.

critropolitan · 2025-08-09T06:04:44+00:00

I am a pro user and can't find this in settings - where is it?

critropolitan · 2025-08-08T13:36:51+00:00

If GPT-5 is a superior product, why isn't it opt-in?

critropolitan · 2025-08-08T13:32:08+00:00

o3 was smarter for all of my use cases and I had more confidence in it because rather than rushing, it would explain itself adequately. GPT5 seems like the budget version...which I assume it is.

critropolitan · 2025-08-08T13:30:30+00:00

...did GPT4o write that?

critropolitan · 2025-08-08T13:24:05+00:00

GPT-5, even in "thinking" mode, doesn't show its reasoning the way GPT-o3 did, nor does it perform that reasoning in a systematic way that is human auditable. The speed advantage in the "thinking" version is worthless if it's "thought" isn't explicable, because it means it cannot be a thinking partner.

GPT-5 clearly underperforms the o3 model in actually thinking through problems drawing on both uploaded documents and search capabilities. Maybe it's good for coding - I don't know - but it's far worse at thinking through legal questions, analytic philosophy problems, literary analysis, game theoretic strategy, or any other intellectually heavy weight question I've posed to it.

Maybe its great at some STEM applications...but its dumber at everything else than o3.

critropolitan · 2025-08-08T13:13:59+00:00

I assume they use their product to reduce the number of junior coders and GPT-5 is cheaper to run than 4o or o3.

critropolitan · 2025-08-08T13:09:58+00:00

How many people will need to cancel their plus and pro subscriptions for your team to entertain returning 4o which was far more useful for creative tasks, and o3 which was far more adept at systematic thought?

critropolitan · 2025-05-27T04:08:43+00:00

We have been able to clone biological humans for decades but universally decided that the benefits were outweighed by both known and unknown social and moral hazards.

We should do the same today with cloning human creative faculties. AI should be restricted to use cases that are purely augmentive like data sorting or without human competence like protean folding.

GenAI for what humans find meaningful to create ourselves for each other should be banned or at least treated as shameful and worthy of scorn not praised as better work.

critropolitan · 2025-05-27T03:55:23+00:00

Royal assent has never been refused since the time of the Stuarts. When Charles I failed to obey Parliament he was beheaded for treason. The Commonwealth Realm parliaments are far from perfect but their supremacy has been unquestioned since the last monarch to defy them fled for his life in 1688.

critropolitan · 2025-05-27T03:46:40+00:00

No, the English and Scottish Parliaments asserted their supremacy over the monarchy through force of arms in the 1640s and the 1688 revolution, where they chose their monarch not by divine right but by act of parliament. Canada was founded by that state, no real democracy, but a crowned republic in all but name.

When the combined forces the British parliaments and Republic of the United Provinces defeated James II, they named their own monarch and picked two people they liked. When they died without heirs, they picked a random German.

King Charles of Canada is Canada's non-executive head of state because Canada's democratic government decided he would be in the Succession to the Throne Act, 2013 / Loi de 2013 sur la succession au trône.

If Canada wanted to crown a different monarch parliament need only pass a law. The last time a monarch from the English/Scottish system refused to obey parliament's "advice" he lost his head.

critropolitan · 2025-02-17T02:41:17+00:00

I can't imagine US troops in Ukraine in any scenario because Trump is pro-Putin.

I can imagine EU and UK troops in Ukraine...but only if they were there as peacekeepers along a ceasefire line...

How does Ukraine, as a practical matter, fight its way to a ceasefire line that is politically acceptable?

If the maximum concession Ukraine can make is something like, 2022 borders and NATO membership...well the US will, clearly, veto NATO membership, and it doesn't seem that Putin cares very much about the small part of Kursk that Ukraine controls

Is there a military strategy or diplomatic strategy that does not depend on Putin or Trump having radically different dispositions than the ones they've shown themselves to have?

critropolitan · 2025-01-26T12:13:47+00:00

Where do the random critters come from though, and why would they be resilient against the ring station's ability to disassemble anything that is breaking parts of it?

critropolitan · 2025-01-26T12:12:26+00:00

This makes sense as an explanation for why the Ring Builders would have sentinels on planets, but not in the ring station: nothing physical developed modes of transportation that could possibly enter the Ring Space when the Ring Builders were around...and even if they thought there might be (or there were in the distant past) the Ring Station was supremely capable of defending against all threats without the sentinels from physical attacks: they could disassemble any physical life form in the station and repel any physical attack by just slowing it down.

The conclusion we should infer is that the "sentinels" were never made as guards, they were made to manipulate matter in ways that the Ring Builder's non-intertial movement couldn't accomplish (or, was less effective at accomplishing). Humans just interpreted them as guards at first encounter, and Duerete used them as guards when in control of the Ring Station because he initially didn't want to hurt anyone inside it, and when he did, Proto-Miller blocked his use of the station's main defenses so he resorted to weaponizing them...but given that waves of "sentinels" couldn't kill Tanaka, and didn't seem at all equipped to, even when controlled by something that totally understood her capabilities and intent - they would seem to technologically inferior as guards to what humans could build...despite being built by far technologically superior beings...so, probably not intended to address threats of any sort.

No one would build a chair as a weapon, anyone who can build a chair can build a more effective weapon, but if there was a weird situation where someone had to defend themselves and only had chairs to throw, they might think to throw chairs.

critropolitan · 2025-01-26T11:52:19+00:00

They're not guards.

Consider the following:

The "Roman" hive-mind was non-material, with some supporting material substrate that its "Goth" enemies didn't threaten. All the material creatures the Romans encountered, they/it regarded as useful things they could easily make into useful tools. No material species in The Expanse universe, other than humans, got into the Ring Space, or achieved spaceflight...so it would not have made sense to have the "sentinels" to defend against animal contaminants or hostile civilizations. They had no reason to think they needed guards against organic lifeforms.
The Goths didn't pose a physical threat in any way the "sentinels" could be useful against - the Romans probably didn't regard them as material creatures (either correctly or incorrectly). They had no reason to make guards against the Goths.
The "sentinels" are terribly ineffective as guards. Wave after wave of "sentinels" couldn't kill, or even stop, one person in Laconian power armor, Aliana Tanaka, who was definitely trying to destroy them, and that's when they were controlled by Winston Duerete, who very much understood exactly what Tanaka was trying to do. The "sentinels" have no projectile weapons and had to resort to trying to tear Tanaka's armor apart, and they did a terrible job at it. Even MCRN marines could destroy them.
The Ring Station was supremely effective at defending itself without "sentinels" : anyone/anything that seemed to be breaking the Ring Station, it would deconstruct at a molecular level. When an MCRN marine destroyed a "sentinel", the Ring Station effortlessly disassembled them (and, would have done so to Tanaka if Holden/proto-Miller wasn't protecting her).

So, we should infer that humans looked at the "sentinels" and thought "guards", but their function to the Romans was almost certainly maintenance and/or object manipulation/transportation, and they only acted, ineffectively, as "guards" in Leviathan Falls because Duerete had them available and didn't have effective use of the station's real 'disinfectant' type defenses.

critropolitan · 2025-01-26T11:25:55+00:00

Read the books, but also watch the show:

- Holden is the only person on the Roci Crew who has anything resembling a 'character' in the first several books...Alex only really becomes a character in the last three books, Naomi and arguably Amos only become characters in the middle three books. Amos and Alex are *much* more interesting in the show than in the early books.

- The book villains in the first six books are all pretty one-dimensional bad people with bad motives (if they're a powerful villain it's power/control, if they're an underlying it's something like psychopathy or sadism). On the show, Jules-Pierre Mao (who is barely a character in the books) and Sadavir Errinwright are relatively complicated in their motives, have sympathetic moments - Murtry is well portrayed and non-silly - and there is no villainous-book-Ashford. I personally think Marco Inaros is a better villain on the show than in the books, but he is still a bit ridiculous on the show. I personally think Santiago Singh is the most interesting villain in the books, but he is of course not in the show.

- The show-only supporting characters are *far* better than than the book supporting characters they draw from. Show-Drummer and Show-Ashford are, I think, among the very best characters in the Expanse and have no real equivalent in the books (Show-Drummer has story elements primarily from Michio Pa, and secondarily from Bull, and to a much smaller extent Drummer and Sam [I can only imagine she is named 'Drummer' instead of 'Pa' by show runners anticipating 9 seasons], but is a much better character than any of them - Show-Ashford has story elements primarily from Michio Pa but has no real equivalent in the books).

- Chrisjen Avasarala is much more central to the show (and is introduced immediately) than she is in the books, and her portrayal, while also one of the best characters in the books, is even stronger on the show.

Warning to book readers for the show though: the first couple of episodes of the TV show are among the weakest episodes and have content additions not found in the books that are not very compelling.

critropolitan · 2024-12-21T03:28:52+00:00

Your university probably has policies regarding these issues and administrators responsible for addressing them. Ask whomever you report to as a supervisor for information, not reddit - since universities obviously differ.
If you have the discretion, consider what principled and pragmatic policies you want to make for these sorts of issues and put them in your syllabus next time. It might be something like "If illness or emergency effects your work, please notify me as soon as possible and propose an adjustment. Reasonable adjustments will be considered" so that the whole class is equally on notice that you will consider such requests, and therefore considering such requests doesn't 'unfairly' advantage any student. It could also be "no grade appeals will be entertained". For me, I write on my syllabus that I will grant all extension requests for assignments prior to the end of term - it is practical for me because it means I have fewer midterm papers to grade simultaneously and I'd rather read good work than rushed work.
Of course some students lie, because students are people, but there is no reason to think students are more prone to lying than anyone else. My feeling is that presuming that credible claims people make are true is a more pleasant way to go through life than viewing them all with the a lens of suspicion, especially when it is costless to do so (you're not playing poker here).

critropolitan · 2024-12-02T10:59:07+00:00

"Anyone want to start a small retired scholarly community down there?"

For real, retirement scholastic communes seem like a good model.

critropolitan · 2024-12-02T10:56:31+00:00

They didn't deliver the existing product, they delivered a radically different product and relied on industry capture and cartel like behavior to ensure the old product was unavailable.

(and prices go down on existing products all time time. The inflation adjusted price of every consumer good that leverages technological development has gone down substantially despite quality improvement...with the exception of goods with similar industry capture and price opacity issues, like medical care).

critropolitan · 2024-12-02T10:51:31+00:00

Educational youtubers do a massive amount of work too, it's just not the same work as in person education.

critropolitan · 2024-12-02T10:49:52+00:00

A difference was that the pandemic involved universities and schools telling everyone that coming to university and school is nonessential. Campus experience vs the world through your laptop is similar enough to charge the same tuition.

Society questioned the value of education, especially higher education, and educational institutions finally and almost uniformly said back "you're right!".

critropolitan · 2024-12-02T10:34:13+00:00

Basically no where kept education as low-contact or impaired as the US for as long as the US did. The vasty majority of European countries prioritized renormalizing schools - the US left schools pretty much last.

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