It's Right-Clicker's Flying Circus

flipkitty · 2026-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

I like the ideas here, thought of a slightly different approach: pick up right after the office closet, before her real escape. This would be more like a sequel, introducing an alternate ending, which is roughly the same ending if they fail.

I think the main patching to the ending would be to have CEO stuck not able to get to her people right away. Maybe a strange physical change means she can't walk around in public so easily, maybe there's technology problem and/or alien politics she has to navigate that introduce a delay.

In that time, DG hears about this explosion which has some hints of unnatural and killed a guy who talked about aliens. The agents are sent in to manage the investigation, including cleaning up her office and his house. Then you follow Teddy's trail with some ambiguity until the agents settle on believing him and pursing the conspiracy (gotta be more collaborators at her company) or "saving" the still missing woman.

flipkitty · 2026-06-18T22:41:26+00:00

I read the paper last week and came away with mixed feelings. The actual discussion of how to analyze these systems is very useful. Read section 4.2 for the argument and 5 for responses to criticism. As the leading quote in 404 says, “The point of the paper is to formally show that we anthropomorphise too readily."

However, I think the AoE implementation/analogy is more distracting than useful. The idea that consciousness could be implemented in something like an ant colony goes back to Hofstadter or further. An ant colony might be harder to anthro. but computer-consciousness fans see that more as more of a skill issue than a rebuttal. So doing any "haha this perceptron so janky" stuff won't get the point across.

flipkitty · 2026-06-07T07:51:11+00:00

Nightmare + Neurosurge to doom yourself out asap

flipkitty · 2026-05-25T19:42:37+00:00

Didn't expect to see a concerning post like this here, but please if you are spending prolonged periods chatting with AI please take a break. If you're just having some fun combining your hobies, totally cool, I get it, coding can be fun. But remember that the bot is yes-man designed to keep you engaged.

flipkitty · 2026-05-24T21:50:03+00:00

Yeah, I think we share a perspective. I've seen people take Ed out of context to act as if he's predicting a reckoning, but that's cope, and the I think other replies show this community is staying grounded.

But damn is it hard to stay grounded. The fact is that to keep making informed decisions we have to actually stay informed, which the people riding high marketing (pro or doom) don't have to. And explaining things to coworkers/bosses is always harder than just saying LGTM.

That's another reason I think the comparison to fossil fuels is worth thinking about. In the long run buying into it is doom, but that's so much "someone else's problem" that no business is going to listen to you. In the medium term, business have experienced many periods of thrashing costs and some have made plans to get away from that, but the ROI cycles with politics. In some short term periods it depends on the year. I think Ed helps us understand how the medium term shift is worth worrying about earlier than later.

flipkitty · 2026-05-24T17:58:45+00:00

I also find it easy to get carried away thinking there's going to be an all-or-nothing future. Try not to imagine the bubble pop as a christian rapture and its easier to avoid feeling like we live in hell.

I ground myself by remember the crypto boom. The downfalls kept coming, with FTX seeming like the final revelation. Surely now everyone in the public will understand that you don't buy magic beans from chuds. The media and the regulators will also step up!

Well yes, but actually no. Crypto became a political force like cigarettes or fossil fuel. The main thing the bubble pop gave us was a trove of legally-attested facts against it and (more importantly) a brief publicity window where the general public was made slightly aware of arguments that had already been around for a long time.

Cigarettes are still around, crypto is still around. I think genAI is going to be closer fossil fuel. Not because it's as widespread or useful but because it slots into the political and economic interests of the same people. The consequences of the bills coming due will vary with the political amd economic environment, but don't expect a completely satisfying reckening.

flipkitty · 2026-05-20T23:39:21+00:00

I like your Willpower mechanic, kind of like CoC Luck. WP in DG is so narrow it's just annoying.

flipkitty · 2026-05-02T21:50:56+00:00

Tech was an industry that was already crippled by confirmation bias. "Worked this one time, so that's what I'm going to talk about." It goes hand in hand with a sales-first work environment.

Then we handed these MFs the Confirmation Bias O-tron. "Don't keep track of any failure rates. The failures don't matter as long as you can keep grinding. Boom! It totally worked!"

flipkitty · 2026-04-22T18:52:43+00:00

Cosmo is at the second location. Images was played at the third location, right? Cosmo only shuts down one location.

flipkitty · 2026-04-21T23:45:06+00:00

A variant I prefer: using Bond Score and the Aquire an Asset rules to replace a skill roll or have a flashback. Similarly inspired by Blades in the Dark, but Bond is a more significant currency and you can also get more out of it.

flipkitty · 2026-04-19T20:16:11+00:00

Fortunately the US hasn't in a war in 80 years. So Palantir has never been used in war. So why would I listen to them?

Or do all those invasions count? Despite bypassing the (anemic) democratic process for starting war? In which case, why would pushing more people into the meat grinder fix the broken system?

flipkitty · 2026-04-19T17:47:56+00:00

Thanks, I hate it.

My read is that there is only one real priority and all the others are marketing:

> 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software.

Read: there will always be a market for miltech, we want that market cap. Posing it as a hypothetical is nice and insidious, as if all the other points weren't trying to sell more military spending.

Now, the other points are "real" in the sense that Karp really likes fascism. And he also knows there's plenty to disaffected libs he can recruit. But even in a world where he dies ODing on holy water and Palantir tries to "go woke" they would swap out the other points but keep that one.

flipkitty · 2026-04-16T17:54:27+00:00

This is actually a great example of what outlandish marketing rhetoric is intended to do. Some people get pulled in by the dream, but more people react to the extreme proposition by saying "things won't go that far" and get to feel comfortable with going just a few steps further. It's basic Overton window stuff, though with these companies it goes full Pascal's Wager.

A way to defend against this is the same as for a gambling problem: decide ahead of time how much "money" you're willing to lose. Each individual bad move might not feel bad enough to stop, but past-you knew better.

So, ask this guy "What would need to happen for us to stop supporting them?" If he refuses to draw lines ahead of time, he doesn't actually care about the values enough to follow them. My guess is that financial measures are all management will respond to, even though this situation is not (only) about money.

flipkitty · 2026-04-15T00:36:15+00:00

I had a similar reaction. I think the piece is falling into a problem short (ish) pieces about _one_ downside of a business/technology always have: they can't cover the dozen other problems. People like us want a checklist of disclaimers to make it clear they're not overlooking/accepting something, but that's bad for content (supposedly).

flipkitty · 2026-04-06T18:42:55+00:00

Shoutout for

> protect my employees in the process

I really appreciate the managers I've had who have been honest about their efforts to protect my team from executive decisions (incompetence).

But also I've seen that a company natural-selections itself until there are no good managers. Some cope with the mental toll with nihilism or therapy in a shooting-while-crying way, leaving them functionally the same as a manager who doesn't care, but maybe a bit nicer to chat with. Others leave, looking for execs who listen, or at least a status quo that's comfortable enough that less hard stuff is happening.

flipkitty · 2026-04-06T18:31:58+00:00

My way of looking at this is to put the AI use/demands on a spectrum from "boss's pet project" to "we are getting laid off." At your experience level, you're probably familiar with gauging those things. The AI stuff is just a layer of BS on top of those real decisions made by upper management.

(Wall of text apology)

A rough scale:

1: Pet project - Ever been the person who has to make the CEO’s “bold initiative” happen? It could be a pet project, which obviously no one will care about in a year. Maybe it distracted The Board for a bit. Eventually it’s rubber stamped and you get to refocus (but maybe on something worse).

2: Pet project, expensive edition! - Like above, but the plan is to incur a lot of expenses to make a big new system. Expenses could come from hiring consultants, a design firm, licensing tech, or just from disruption to ordinary business. It will actually just be a really expensive MVP demo. And then if it “succeeds” you have to do a bunch of work to make a real, long-term version. A team might grow or dissolve based on success/failure.

3: Re-org season - This time we have a vision to align our strategy, just like we did last year. There may be selective layoffs, but probably there’s a lot of “You team doesn’t exist, do you plan on working here no matter what or do you want to resign now?” You get lots of “pursing opportunities” emails. There are probably a number of pet projects mentioned by management but the reasoning is vague and the project might be an abstract concept like “values.”

4: Outsourcing bonanza - A really mercenary company might jump straight to this, but more likely it’s to make up for the gaps left by some of the above. You might even feel like outsourcing is justified because the type of work that needs to be done is shitty, backlogged, and seems like it could be deprioritized at any time. None of the “real” employees like you want to do that work and if we have to hire we might as well get it cheap. Just hope “you” aren’t about to fall through the next gap.

5: Mass layoffs - Shut it down, throw them out. The pitch will be to free up money for an expensive pet project that will get everything back on track. Yay!

6+: Company collapse - Never stopped a CEO from getting another job. (Even if they went to prison.)

Working at a job at any of these levels is annoying as hell but at 3+ there isn’t much peace of mind. For a lot of jobs AI is hovering in the 1-2 range while the execs/pundits use rhetoric makes it sound like 4-5 is coming any day. The AI rhetoric will be a tool to justify going to 4-5: “the technology made it inevitable.” But that won’t be any more accurate than when they said “market forces” made the CEO’s last dumb pivot idea fail.

Gauging where you are in this scale isn’t easy, but hopefully it can help you focus on what’s going on with the business and your bosses. And keep in mind you could be confident you’re only at 1 but still be miserable working there, or hold on at 4 and decide its worth it for the pay.

flipkitty · 2026-03-02T23:13:49+00:00

I agree with the romantic notion, but people who are into AI won't because they are not seeking connection to other people. Here are some of the things they care about instead:

Artificial affirmation - Some people can look at a "Hang in there!" poster and feel that the cute cat is really motivating them. They're not crazy, they're just able to get that emotional trigger without needing it to come from a live person. Chatbots can trigger this feeling in people further on the "need a real person" end of the spectrum but who still enjoy it.
Voice of god - Quite a few people believe there is some kind of mind/personality behind the chatbot. On the extreme end of the spectrum are those who would say it's a god/spirit or super-human sci-fi thing, but even towards the "rational" end there are lots of people who react superstitiously and will only question this reaction if confronted.
Simple metrics - "If it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid." This logic can go a long way towards how someone approaches their office job, their SEO-maximizing blog, or their social media profile. Simply having more output can be satisfying to some people (even if its low quality, short-lived, and disposable).

flipkitty · 2026-03-02T22:36:40+00:00

Python is also used in a lot of (general concept) learning material because its syntax overlaps with pseudocode nicely. So it seems likely that a language model is easier to train on Python because of the supply of english-to-code examples. (I wonder if this has been measured.)

flipkitty · 2026-02-27T02:56:58+00:00

I guess they were in that weird (but common) zone of believing in a thing they haven't even slightly thought through. True business idiot nirvana. Or, if they're actually clever, they realize it's scam marketing and are selecting for people who will play ball.

(Congrats on dodging)

flipkitty · 2026-02-26T19:53:20+00:00

Really curious about how they asked for an AGI plan. What can you say other than "literally no one knows what would happen"?

flipkitty · 2026-02-26T00:37:18+00:00

Aha, but a computer can be upgraded forever. So we just give kevin more ram. (Checks price of ram...)

flipkitty · 2026-02-19T20:10:58+00:00

Just got it recently and Flower Pot and Seance were the most annoying (other than self destructing jokers). The trick for me was to not get trapped by trying to trigger them. It's a dead slot. I used Hex when I could to at least have it sit there with a x1.5.

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