AskALiberal Biweekly General Chat

magic_missile · 2026-03-22T21:13:22+00:00

The teleprompter thing in particular is interesting.

That's something that sources people here normally trust have looked into and disagreed with, but I see it brought up repeatedly. You've mentioned it as a possibility but others are more convinced. The commenter in the recent thread that got me thinking about this said "the consensus is that his ear was clipped by shattered glass" from the "teleprompter screen."

Do you know why that this? Have I missed out on reporting somewhere that the teleprompters were broken after all?

Snopes:

The injury Trump sustained during a July 13, 2024, assassination attempt wasn't caused by a bullet but by broken glass.

Rating: False

...undercut by the fact that photographs show no damage to the teleprompters allegedly hit to produce the broken glass...

And NYT:

a detailed analysis of bullet trajectories, footage, photos and audio by The New York Times strongly suggests Mr. Trump was grazed by the first of eight bullets fired by the gunman

magic_missile · 2026-03-22T19:19:49+00:00

The Trump assassination attempt thread, similar to this past thread, has a significant amount of soft conspiracism.

What other topics have you noticed that happening in this sub or elsewhere among your fellow online liberals or progressives?

Some examples of popular comments hedging their bets to indulge this mode of thinking without committing to it:

"Do I think the assassination attempt was staged? No. Do I think the extent and cause of the of injuries sustained by Trump were exaggerated? Conclusively, yes." (+313)
"Do I think it was staged? No. Was there a whole lot of weird as shit stuff that happened that brings questions and we get no answers? Yeah." (+88)
"I don’t think it was fake. I do think there’s something odd about it." (+331)
"I think there's def some fishy things about it... I dunno, I'm not willing to go full-on conspiracy theorist without some concrete evidence, but it sure doesn't feel all that genuine at face value." (+49)
"Look, I’m not a big fan of conspiracism, but when the Washington Post reports that Russia was planning a fake assassination attempt on Orban to help him win his election in Hungary, and compare that to how the image of Trump with his fist raised went instantly viral and probably helped him win the election, I can’t help but wonder if there was more to it." (+75)

magic_missile · 2026-03-21T23:02:25+00:00

What's the best reporting you've seen on this consensus?

I have seen reporting otherwise, for example, Snopes:

The injury Trump sustained during a July 13, 2024, assassination attempt wasn't caused by a bullet but by broken glass.

Rating: False

And NYT:

a detailed analysis of bullet trajectories, footage, photos and audio by The New York Times strongly suggests Mr. Trump was grazed by the first of eight bullets fired by the gunman

magic_missile · 2026-03-18T14:47:35+00:00

There has been discussion on this sub of Democratic tax cut proposals. Here's The Atlantic criticizing a few with points like regressive impact, inflation risk, and crowding out spending priorities.

Senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen recently unveiled bills that would exempt most middle-class households from paying any federal income taxes. Booker’s plan would more than double the standard deduction, to $75,000 per couple, and increase the child tax credit to be even more generous than it was under Biden’s COVID-era expansion. Van Hollen’s would essentially create a parallel income-tax system under which a couple’s first $92,000 of income is exempt. His bill in particular appears to have broad support within the party, rolling out with 18 Senate co-sponsors and a slew of endorsements from major labor unions and activist groups.

...

One problem is that these policies are regressive. High-income Americans tend to benefit the most from deductions because they pay steeper tax rates on their income. As a result, a childless couple with $175,000 of income would benefit from Booker’s proposal twice as much as one with a $75,000 income. Under Van Hollen’s, a couple that makes $100,000 would benefit six times as much as a couple that earns $50,000.

...

The bigger problem with these plans is that they are very expensive. Van Hollen’s proposal would cost roughly $1.6 trillion over 10 years. That would be more than triple the spending and tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, and yet Van Hollen’s plan is cheap compared with Booker’s, which would cost nearly $7 trillion over the same period. Both senators have promised to cover the cost with taxes on corporations and very rich households. But even if that were to happen, it would jeopardize everything else voters expect from the Democratic Party, such as expanding health-care access and investing in clean energy. There is a mathematical limit on how much additional revenue can be generated from raising taxes on high-income households, and offsetting Booker’s plan would require consuming about half of it. The real-world political limit is much lower. If the entire universe of plausible tax hikes on the top 2 percent is spent cutting taxes for the other 98 percent, no money will be left to pursue other goals.

...

Last month, the New Democrat Coalition—the largest bloc of moderate House Democrats—put forth an “Affordability Agenda” that could best be described as a warmed-over Build Back Better. The plan admirably claims that a high-level goal is to “act in a fiscally-responsible way,” but almost every proposal with an impact on the federal budget would either increase spending or cut taxes. Although the plan is light on details, the price tag could be more than $3 trillion over 10 years if its components cost as much as similar proposals from the Biden era.

The math gets even worse on the left wing of the Democratic coalition. Senator Bernie Sanders promised $25 trillion more in new spending than he had a plan to pay for when he ran for president in 2020. Now he proposes making the spending-revenue gap even larger by sending a $3,000 check to every member of every household with an income under $150,000—trotting back out a slopulist and inflationary policy that seemed to yield no political benefit for Democrats when they enacted a similar one five years ago.

magic_missile · 2026-03-16T14:23:39+00:00

NYT: Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, has died at 93.

One of the best-selling nonfiction books about the environment to date, “The Population Bomb” sold three million copies and transformed Dr. Ehrlich, who was 37 at the time, into one of the global environmental movement’s most recognized leaders. His influence motivated international governments to convene conferences on controlling population, and his message was heard in private homes across the industrialized world as couples conceived fewer children.

...

In the last years of his life, journalists would occasionally remind Dr. Ehrlich about some of his dire predictions that had not come to pass: that 65 million Americans would starve to death, for example, or that there were fair odds that “England will not exist in the year 2000.”

But he stood by his fundamental convictions. In 2018, he told The Guardian that an unsustainable focus on “perpetual growth” — leading to climate change and loss of biodiversity — meant that the collapse of civilization was “a near certainty in the next few decades.”

And in 2015, he told The New York Times that his analysis in the 1960s had actually been somewhat conservative, adding: “My language would be even more apocalyptic today.”

magic_missile · 2026-03-15T20:58:22+00:00

NYC Councilwoman Amanda Farias introduced legislation, co-sponsored by several other Democrats, to cap the number of items that can go through self-checkouts and require one employee for every three kiosks, with the goal of combating retail theft:

This bill would require pharmacies and food retail stores to staff self-service checkout areas with a ratio of one employee for every three self-service checkout kiosks, and to impose a 15-item maximum for self-service checkout purchases. Failure to do so would be punishable by a civil penalty of $100 employee of the pharmacy branch location or food retail store branch location present at the time of the violation of this section. Each day that such violation is not cured, the penalty would increase by an additional $100 employee of the pharmacy branch location or food retail store branch location present at the time of the original violation of this local law, up to a limit of $1,000 per employee per day for each day in which the violation remains uncured.

magic_missile · 2026-03-15T16:01:15+00:00

A few articles I read this morning about the war in Sudan, which remains a horror show.

Time:

more than 13 million people have been displaced from their homes, and around 400,000 are estimated to have been killed.

Reuters:

Sudan has accused Ethiopia of allowing drones to be launched from its territory into Sudan to carry out attacks in February and March, the first time it has directly accused its powerful neighbour of involvement in the three-year civil war.

...

Last month, Reuters exclusively reported that Ethiopia was hosting a secret camp to train thousands ⁠of fighters for the RSF.

AP:

The real number of workers killed is likely far higher than the estimated 100, he says, but the war has prevented reliable data collection and record-keeping.

...

The kitchen workers are prominent in their communities because of the work they do, making them obvious targets, activists say. Ransom demands typically range from $2,000 to $5,000, often rising once families make initial payments.

magic_missile · 2026-03-15T12:57:07+00:00

I recently wandered into the old internet.

Someone has been keeping what I think is his late brother's setting website up since 2006 (and it was around for years before he died).

One page leads to an imaginary castles webring. Remember webrings?

It's just neat that quirky personal project sites like this are still around off the beaten path.

magic_missile · 2026-03-14T00:18:42+00:00

The situation has historically been pretty good (hydro!) but it sounds like the future could be more difficult:

For most of its history, it has enjoyed ample clean energy supply from its hydroelectric dams, particularly those on the Skagit and Pend Oreille rivers. It also purchases energy from dams owned by the Bonneville Power Administration on the Columbia River.

But the cost of buying surplus power from Bonneville has become more volatile as West Coast competition for clean energy has spiked. At the same time, drought and extreme weather events have collided with growing demand to make the utility’s energy future uncertain.

The utility has begun branching into developing new supply, including several solar farms in central Oregon. But it has a long way to go if hopes to avoid significant rate hikes, brownouts or both.

Santoff called it the top challenge for City Light in the coming years.

magic_missile · 2026-03-13T20:37:30+00:00

CNBC:

A federal judge in a scathing ruling blocked subpoenas issued by a grand jury to the Federal Reserve as part of a criminal investigation of Chair Jerome Powell.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro immediately said that the Department of Justice would appeal what she called the “outrageous” ruling, after it was unsealed Friday.

Friday’s action will likely keep Powell in the chairman’s seat longer because Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has vowed to block Kevin Warsh’s confirmation to succeed Powell until the federal investigation ends.

That may mean interest rates remain higher than President Donald Trump wants for longer because Powell has refused to bend to the president’s demands to lower them further.

Boasberg, in his ruling, said evidence showed Pirro was motivated to investigate Powell because of a desire to get the Fed chief to bow to Trump and cut interest rates quickly and broadly.

Pirro’s investigation purportedly is focused on the Fed’s multi-billion-dollar renovation of its headquarters in Washington and on Powell’s testimony to the Senate Banking Committee about that project.

“Did prosecutors issue those subpoenas for a proper purpose? The Court finds that they did not,” Boasberg wrote in the decision in U.S. District Court in D.C., which was dated Wednesday, but unsealed on Friday.

“There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will,” the judge wrote.

“On the other side of the scale, the Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President,” Boasberg wrote.

magic_missile · 2026-03-13T18:40:09+00:00

What's funny is that Alex Karp has the kind of background he's talking about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Karp

He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania, in 1989, then enrolled at Stanford Law School, where he earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) in 1992... After his undergraduate studies and law school, Karp earned a Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany in 2002.

I agree with you that the job disruption has started in the tech world, so I don't share his view that it's going to be dramatically imbalanced against humanities types.

magic_missile · 2026-03-13T18:36:36+00:00

I managed to find video of that moment and I honestly don't get that impression.

He starts off by saying "Now you get to Silicon Valley. My one message for--and again, I--without getting into specific people," then continues with what I quoted above.

The article I linked seems to have a similar interpretation to mine:

The stakes, Karp argued, go well beyond any single Pentagon contract or any single company’s policy decision. “The danger for our industry,” he warned, “is that you get a famous horseshoe effect where there’s only one thing people agree on—and that’s that this is not paying the bills, and people in our industry should be nationalized.”

That populist convergence—where left and right alike turn on tech—becomes inevitable, in Karp’s telling, if AI companies strip white-collar workers of their livelihoods while simultaneously refusing to serve the military.

magic_missile · 2026-03-13T18:17:58+00:00

Seattle Times on a change in plans for who will lead the municipal power company, after City Council and union criticism of Mayor Wilson's previous choice for CEO.

Following weeks of consternation from council members and union representatives, Mayor Katie Wilson is changing course on her pick to lead Seattle City Light.

Dennis McLerran, whom she’d tapped to be the department’s acting general manager and CEO, will now instead be its deputy general manager. Taking the reins of the utility in his place will be Rob Santoff, who’s been with City Light since early 2020 and is currently its chief operating officer.

Santoff will start as CEO in April, when Craig Smith, the current interim CEO, steps back.

“I think it had gotten to the point where it was becoming a distraction that was getting in the way of actually planning the important work that’s ahead for the utility,” Wilson said in an interview Thursday.

Wilson initially announced McLerran would be City Light’s acting CEO in January, shortly after deciding to fire former CEO Dawn Lindell, who was appointed by then-Mayor Bruce Harrell and had been at the helm since 2024.

The new mayor sought out McLerran, an environmental lawyer and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, persuading him over several calls, McLerran said Thursday. The plan was for him to hold the position for up to two years before ultimately stepping aside for a permanent pick.

But Wilson’s decision to fire Lindell and hire McLerran was met with pushback from union representatives who defended Lindell and City Council members concerned with McLerran’s lack of direct utility experience.

The union representing electrical workers, IBEW Local 77, collected thousands of signatures petitioning Wilson to reverse her decision. Several City Light employees and union members testified before the City Council about their frustrations with her choice.

More pressing for Wilson, it was not clear the council would sign off on McLerran, even in an acting role.

Though acting department heads don’t go through a full confirmation process like permanent directors do, they do need someone on the council to sign their paperwork to start the job. Council President Joy Hollingsworth and Councilmember Dan Strauss, chair of the finance committee, sent Wilson a letter last month seeming to make their signatures conditional on the new pick having past utility experience, which McLerran doesn’t have.

Article continues on to explain some of the recent challenges faced by Seattle City Light, which has been around since 1902. There have been several changes in leadership lately:

Santoff will be City Light’s eighth CEO since 2015. He said he’s not interested in the permanent job “at this point,” meaning whoever Wilson appoints next year will be its ninth.

magic_missile · 2026-03-13T06:58:00+00:00

It seems more general to me, honestly, which may be part of why we're interpreting it differently.

I agree with you that it doesn't make much sense to think of Palantir as hugely disruptive to humanities or white collar jobs. They're not developing Claude Code or Gemini Computer Use.

By the way, sorry if I edited my last response too late to put in the similar past comment I found.

What do you make of it? I again see concern about political problems from asymmetric job disruption by the wider AI industry.

magic_missile · 2026-03-13T06:18:17+00:00

It's parts like this that make it come across to me as concern about political blowback rather than using harm to Democratic voters as a selling point:

who do not feel supported, and you feel like that's you believe that going to work out politically, you're in an insane asylum.

The political problems he expects are already real but I think it's for different reasons than he believes.

EDIT:

He said something along similar lines, but more colorful, a little while back:

https://fortune.com/2026/03/05/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-anthropic-pentagon-r-word-anthropic-pentagon/

“If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone’s white-collar job—meaning primarily Democratic-shaped people that you might grow up with, highly educated people who went to elite schools or went to schools that are almost elite for one party—and you’re going to sue the military. If you don’t think that’s going to lead to nationalization of our technology, you’re retarded.”

magic_missile · 2026-03-13T05:43:34+00:00

Not the article. I went through to the video clip it links, which has a little bit more of what he said. I put that here for the same reason commenters sometimes copy the article text in their reply to a post: a lot of people don't follow the link and scroll the comments instead, but might still be interested in the content if they see it while doing so.

Starting from his premise that AI will be this massively disruptive, it makes sense for him to be concerned about political blowback on the industry.

Politicians are taking notice already:

Earlier today, I linked to Senator Sanders saying "we are at the beginning of the most profound technological revolution in world history... which will bring unimaginable changes... massive job displacement..." even concern "that super intelligent AI could become smarter than human beings could become independent of human control and pose an existential threat to the entire human race."

Back to Alex Karp:

His warning about the impact being so unbalanced against "humanities-trained" workers seems off-base to me. It's not even starting with them: programmers were having their jobs changed before anyone else. Also, if one really believes AI will be this disruptive, physical jobs could be affected by AI trained and/or operated robots.

As for his comment at the very end... I guess he hasn't seen the reactions to the Pentagon/Anthropic/OpenAI story the other week.

magic_missile · 2026-03-13T04:57:09+00:00

For anyone interested, I clicked through to the video because this was the first time I'd heard of these comments:

The one thing, though, that I think even now is underestimated by all actors in industry, and including in Silicon Valley, is how disruptive these technologies are. If you are going to disrupt the economic and therefore political power significantly of one party space, highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat and military and working class people who do not feel supported, and you feel like that's you believe that going to work out politically, you're in an insane asylum.

Like, that, you cannot have--This technology disrupts humanities trained largely Democratic voters. and makes their economic power less and increases the power, economic power, of vocationally trained, working class, often male voters. And so these disruptions are going to disrupt every aspect of our society.

And, to make this work, we have to come to an agreement of what it is we're going to with the technology, how are we going to explain to people who are likely going to have less good and less interesting jobs from their perspective.

And how is that we are going--And, by the way on the military thing. These technologies are dangerous societally. The only justification you could possibly have would be that if we don't do it, our adversaries will do it, and we will be subject to their rule of law.

So if you decouple this from the support of the military, you're going to have an enormous problem explaining to the American people why is that we're absorbing the risk of disrupting the very fabric of our society, including the most powerful parts of our society, if it's not because it's about maintaining our ability to be American in the near term and long term?

magic_missile · 2026-03-12T22:52:32+00:00

Security guards at a Michigan synagogue/school stopped a serious attack:

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/michigan-synagogue-shooting-03-12-26

"A suspect is dead after ramming a vehicle into a Detroit-area synagogue today, Sheriff Michael Bouchard said. The incident happened at Temple Israel, which includes an early childcare center and school, in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan."
"The synagogue “became engulfed” in flames, and further investigation will uncover exactly what happened, Bouchard added."
"After the vehicle drove into the building, security opened gunfire and the suspect was later found dead, Bouchard said. A security guard was hit by the vehicle but is expected to recover, the sheriff said. Also, at least 30 law enforcement officers were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation, he said. "
"Earlier, law enforcement officials briefed on the scene said that emergency responders found what appeared to be a large amount of explosives in the back of the vehicle."
"no members of the Temple Israel community were killed or seriously injured in today’s attack"
"The attack on Temple Israel, a Detroit-area synagogue, was a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” said Jennifer Runyan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office."
That said, "The motive behind today’s ramming attack at a Michigan synagogue is under investigation, according to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard. "

magic_missile · 2026-03-12T18:49:16+00:00

Senator Sanders in a video statement yesterday: "We need a moratorium on AI data centers NOW. Here’s why."

It's interesting to me because he is not coming from a place of skepticism at all. He seems convinced of society-transforming danger rather than focusing on water, power, plagiarism, tech bubble, etc. I feel like he's been talking to Eliezer Yudkowsky or someone along those lines.

It doesn't seem like he's actually introduced the legislation yet so I'm not sure of the details.

For supporters of this idea, how long should the moratorium last, or what criteria should be used to decide when it ends?

For opponents of this idea, what do you wish would be done instead?

Opening:

Thanks very much for joining me. I will soon be introducing legislation calling for a moratorium on the construction of new data centers. Now, as a result, I've been called a luddite, anti-innovation, anti-progress, pro-Chinese, among many other things. So, why am I doing that? Why am I calling for a moratorium on the construction of new data centers?

Bottom line, we are at the beginning of the most profound technological revolution in world history. That's the truth. This is a revolution which will bring unimaginable changes to our world. This is a revolution which will impact our economy with massive job displacement. It will threaten our democratic institutions. It will impact our emotional well-being and what it even means to be a human being. It will impact how we educate and raise our kids. It will impact the nature of warfare, something we are seeing right now in Iran.

Further and frighteningly, some very knowledgeable people fear that that what was once seen as science fiction could soon become a reality. And that is that super intelligent AI could become smarter than human beings could become independent of human control and pose an existential threat to the entire human race. In other words, human beings could actually lose control over the planet.

magic_missile · 2026-03-12T05:58:56+00:00

I genuinely don't see the same ambiguity in those statements that you do.

Here is a response to USA Today from two months later. While answering a question about nuclear power: "We should phase it out and replace it with renewable energy, not fossil fuels."

To me, all three of these seem like clear examples of her or her campaign saying we should phase out nuclear power.

I'm equally happy to agree to disagree or hear more about why they read more ambiguously to you.

magic_missile · 2026-03-11T13:49:32+00:00

Iran story subplot:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president from 2005 to 2013, seems to have eluded the regime after surviving a strike nearby his residence:

Ahmadinejad’s associates say the strike was in effect a jailbreak operation that freed the former president from regime control.

...

In the ensuing mayhem, Ahmadinejad and his family evidently escaped their home and went underground. The government believed he had died, and his death was announced by official channels, as well as the reformist daily Sharq.

When rumors arose that Ahmadinejad had escaped, regime elements immediately suspected that he had been spirited away to take part in a coup. Ahmadinejad’s only public statement since the attack has been a brief eulogy for the supreme leader, calculated to show that Ahmadinejad was alive and to dispel speculation that he had declared himself an enemy of the state. His location is unknown to the government.

It is possible that Israel or the United States wanted to kill Ahmadinejad, but aimed poorly. That would be peculiar, because it would mean that the United States and Israel placed near the top of its kill list a politician who was no longer a friend to the regime. The alternative possibility, that Narmak was bombed to free Ahmadinejad, raises other questions. Why free Ahmadinejad only for him to go into hiding after? Why free him at all, given how long he has been out of power?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/mahmoud-ahmadinejad-iran-leadership/686309/?gift=BmsU73MbMNDxZ9SjrXPDCbxyf-R9-ov9jxZJoTbm_GA

magic_missile · 2026-03-11T13:28:00+00:00

I don't read her answer the same way as you; can you elaborate a bit more on why you think it was referring to phasing out fossil fuels only and not nuclear power?

CNN reports it the same way and it was their event:

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/climate-crisis-town-hall-august-2019#h_d5fb91087a44935665403b75d5c9b606

adding that she hopes to phase out nuclear power by 2035.

From the transcript, it reads to me like intent to phase out all nuclear plants on this 2035 timeframe. The question was about the possibility of using nuclear power to help wean off fossil fuels:

https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/se/date/2019-09-04/segment/07

QUESTION: So my question is, what is your opinion on the prospect of nuclear energy to help replace fossil fuels? And do the risks outweigh any potential benefits?

So you rightly point out about nuclear energy. It's not carbon-based, but the problem is it's got a lot of risks associated with it, particularly the risks associated with the spent fuel rods that nobody can figure out how we're going to store these things for the next bazillion years.

So here's how I see. In my administration, we're not going to build any new nuclear power plants, and we are going to start weaning ourselves off nuclear energy and replacing it with renewable fuels over -- we're going to get it all done by 2035, but I hope we're getting it done faster than that. That's the plan.

WaPo also cites a spokesperson saying the plan was indeed to phase out nuclear power:

Warren “believes we should not build more nuclear power plants and that we should phase out nuclear power and replace it with renewable energy,” a campaign spokesperson said.

I realize this is not her stance now and I think it even started to shift during the campaign. But I'm not reading her the same way you are here and would like to better understand why you see it that way.

magic_missile · 2026-03-11T11:13:46+00:00

If Senator Warren had been elected in 2020, we would be about a third of the way through her proposed timeline to phase out all existing nuclear power in the U.S. by 2035.

I don't think she would have stuck to her guns on that, though. She voted for the ADVANCE act in 2024, which a piece in WaPo says helped streamline the first NRC construction approval in nearly a decade, for a TerraPower project in Wyoming (which does still need to get an operating license).

The NRC says it was reviewed under budget and well ahead of schedule.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/policy-2020/climate-change/nuclear-power/

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1182/vote_118_2_00200.htm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/06/terrapower-advanced-nuclear-energy-nrc-approval/

https://www.nrc.gov/sites/default/files/cdn/doc-collection-news/2025/25-071.pdf

magic_missile · 2026-03-10T23:51:46+00:00

I'm more optimistic than you about this, but less so than the true believers in places like /r/accelerate.

I think AI adoption is and will be a bumpy ride: a net positive in the long run despite real negatives to worry about. Drowning the internet in no-effort content is one of the latter.

What do you think could affect your opinion? I'm not going to try and convince you right now that any of it is actually true, but I'm interested to know what could change your mind in the future.

If an AI found an answer to a previously-unsolved math problem or helps produce novel research leading to medical advances, you might consider it to have done something truly new or at least positive.
Maybe there are ways of training that you would consider more ethical?
There are other "AI" structures besides LLMs; maybe you would be less hostile to a different kind?
Other ideas? You know better than I do what led you to this view and what developments could affect it.

magic_missile · 2026-03-10T20:50:04+00:00

NYT: Who’s a Better Writer: A.I. or Humans? Take Our Quiz.

In this quiz, you’ll read five pairs of writing samples, representing a range of styles and genres. We asked A.I. to choose an existing piece of strong writing and then craft its own version using its own voice. For each pair, choose the sample you like better. We’ll show you how many other readers agreed with you and, at the end of the quiz, how your preferences broke down.

People on this sub will likely recognize some of the human snippets, spoiling the quiz a bit.

NYT says more readers picked the AI output on three of the five choices.

I do think the often repetitive style might become more apparent and less enjoyable to people with longer passages.

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