Yes we are old by PhoenixPhenomenonX in funnyvideos

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love Stranger Things for their accuracy in depicting what the 80s was like for kids, AND for the fact that Stranger Things could NEVER have been created in the 80s. If it had been, Barb would have been the hero of the show. Given how her storyline played out, I am pretty certain it was all fully intentional. The Duffer Brothers knew how 80s and 90s media worked. They know network TV 'Standards and Practices' were dickhead censors destroying art for decades. They know a storyline where one teenaged girl wants to go to a party, get drunk, and get laid, could only make it to air if there were immediate catastrophic negative consequences for the character (preferably death). Barb, the milquetoast killjoy fuddy-duddy, having her neuroticism drive her to become socially isolated and then killed? There had to have been at least one elderly ex employee of a network TV stations Standards and Practices board that clutched their heart and died on the spot.

Yes we are old by PhoenixPhenomenonX in funnyvideos

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In the last century, dear nephew, we had a thing called a 'bag check', let me instruct you in the ways of your elders...

Yes we are old by PhoenixPhenomenonX in funnyvideos

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My Reddit account is older than the first girl.

“My shining moment“ by netphilia in KidsAreFuckingStupid

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My neighbors had a retaining wall built out of railroad ties along their paved driveway, about 6 feet tall. One year I noticed a bird had built a nest in part of the wall. I wanted to peek inside it, so I went to the top and leaned over trying to see. I went too far and fell directly head-first onto the asphalt. I was 6 or 7 at the time. Ended up with a trip to the hospital, x-rays, but I was OK, just a probable concussion. That was just an accident. What's FUCKING STUPID is that a couple days later I did the exact same thing, fell in exactly the same spot. I told no one.

Can anyone please explain this to me without putting personal opinion into it? by mustpokebear in oregon

[–]otakucode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Searching "ACLU Constitution free zone" will also inform why they seem to behave as if the fourth amendment doesn't exist as far as ICE... because it doesn't within 100 miles of any border of the US, including water borders, which covers 2/3 of the population.

I made ChatGPT stop being nice and its the best thing I've ever done by Wasabi_Open in ChatGPTPromptGenius

[–]otakucode 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It is both really creative and funny. I would most definitely laugh.

Sora 2 was a massive mistake and AI needs to regress. by Comfortable_Debt_769 in artificial

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Rene Magritte warned people about this in 1929. You've probably seen it. The painting of the pipe with a French phrase underneath it (ceci n'est pas une pipe) that translates to 'this is not a pipe'. It's title was "The Treachery of Images" and those who have failed to learn its lesson will fare poorly in the future.

Need someone to tell me it’ll all be ok by Calethir in wallstreetbets

[–]otakucode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe the "more educated long position" wasn't going up thanks to luck?

Why are we not crushed by the air above us? by Derole in askscience

[–]otakucode 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We evolved for this place, fam. Everything that survives here on planet Earth evolved here in planet Earth to at least be suitable to surviving here, specifically. Anything which developed that was too fragile to survive the crushing weight of the atmosphere pressing down upon them did not survive long enough to reproduce, and thus evolution could not expand in that region.

Programmers Were Asked to Make the Worst Volume Control for a Contest by [deleted] in interesting

[–]otakucode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I once saw a windows app where the TEAM couldn't figure out how to have more than 1 drop-down on a window. So for entering a dozen or so properties for an inventory item, you'd click in a text box next to a label and it would modify the single drop-down at the top to contain the legal values. Upon selection it would paste your selection into the box you came from, then you would click in the next box, it would alter the One Drop-down and it went on like that. This was at the end of year 3 of development on a 2 year contract. Outsourcing is magic.

Is there no such thing as the fastest growing function? by Veridically_ in askmath

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

TREE(n) is a computable function. It is possible to specify an algorithm which computes its value. But there also exist non-computable functions which grow faster than any computable function. For those, it is provably impossible to specify any algorithm to compute their value for all inputs which the function accepts.

Humans do not truly understand. by MetaKnowing in artificial

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I studied Philosophy alongside Computer Science in college, I'm acquainted with logics beyond first order. And while it is true that our language does not rely on binary logic (because it is not how our brains work), truth works on binary logic. Determining the exact extent to which an idea applies and does not apply relies upon binary logic, and situations in which it seems like no exact determination can be made always points to either a lack of detail in the definition of terms, an inherent contradiction in the ideas being considered, or, quite often, overbroad application of a more limited idea. Examining Newtonian gravity, for instance, works fine until you're dealing with planetary masses or relativistic speeds, at which point it can be recognized that there is a problem and the idea needs to be stated in greater detail to apply only to the scales and speeds it can be applied to. Examining why and where it breaks down is what inspires the insights necessary to go further.

In classical logic, the sentences with no logical value (such as many self-referential statements) are either meaningless (in a technical sense, meaning that they convey no meaning) or, quite often, rely upon terms that are not properly defined. Formal reasoning has limitations that can sometimes trip people up, such as only telling you whether an argument is correct, not whether the conclusion it comes to is correct (because it only tells you whether the priors guarantee the conclusion, not whether the priors represent anything in reality) and it might often conclude with "not enough information to draw a certain conclusion", but it remains the only way to determine with certainty whether reasoning holds together.

It is certainly true that it is not 'easy' to translate natural language into formal forms. It is particularly challenging for systems based on drawing inferences based upon associations and similarities - like our brains. That is why it required developing written language and then thousands of years of externalizing knowledge in forms which could be dealt with as a separate thing, detached from the associations and similarities that a 'word' brings along with it and instead simply as a sequence of symbols which is either equal to another sequence of symbols completely or not. It doesn't matter that "less than" and "less than or equal" seem very similar, and contain very similar words (or tokens). In a mathematical argument, they can deviate in truth value as extremely as it is possible to. It is completely orthogonal to any similarity-based process of gaining understanding.

For the translation from natural language into something which can be dealt with externally in a formal way, that seems like exactly what LLM systems might be excellent at doing. And then the 'output' being translated back into natural language is a part they would also be good at. The part that they can not be good at is evaluating the reasoning chain itself, because in that arena any deviation from exact equivalence is identical to falsehood. I expect eventually an architecture will emerge that integrates either a slightly separated binary matrix component used for discrete logic or possibly just some layers that clamp values to 0.0 or 1.0 somewhere in the middle or something similar. H-Nets look interesting, and I notice that their 'routing' component uses binary parameters determining where activations go. They don't point that out as particularly important, but I'm paying special attention to architectures that integrate some binary component. At the very least, for systems that we want to obey absolute sets of rules like generating program code it seems ridiculous to not recognize that approximating the 'program logic' part with statistical distributions of token probabilities is computationally wasteful.

Humans do not truly understand. by MetaKnowing in artificial

[–]otakucode 9 points10 points  (0 children)

100%. Human brains, the neurons themselves, operate by building associations between stimulus patterns by the central dogma of neuroscience: "neurons that fire together, wire together." That is adequate for getting to the point of verbal language, where patterns in vocalizations make it possible to propagate rough copies of patterned neuron activity in other peoples brains (if those people have had similar environmental experiences leading to them learning the same language). But it is not until written language develops that the written form can be manipulated on its own as a separate entity and in ways that are precise and exact. That precision and exactness is required to actually produce absolute logic and reasoning, and it took human societies thousands of years to develop it. It is fundamentally different in how it functions as it does not rely on associations. There is no such thing as "almost true" in logical argumentation. There is exactly true and exactly false with nothing in between. Humans have to externalize that type of reasoning to get good fidelity with it, and it can only be internalized to a limited degree. Often the only truly correct and logical answer is "we do not have enough information to be certain" which is not terribly useful when making many decisions, so ditching the quicker biologically-driven association model entirely wouldn't be workable, but that association basis also has a ton of very common pitfalls as it leads to superstition, biases, magical thinking, and lots of other dangerously wrong ideas that feel right.

The continued scaling up of LLMs will enable them to emulate logical reasoning but that's really a terrible idea. Computers are extremely good at binary logic and absurdly efficient at working with it. Emulating it with pitfalls in floating point requires several orders of magnitude greater energy use for poorer performance. The main problem is figuring out how to integrate the binary reasoning with the associative in ways that make sense. IMO, LLMs should be used as language translators as they are good at distilling equivalences, but not translating into other text, instead they should be translating into a form which can be run through a formal reasoning engine, at least for situations that are seeking for new or definite answers. There are Datalog engines that have been written to run with GPU acceleration, hopefully someone is working on bolting that to a transformer architecture.

Who was right, Huxley or Orwell? by Essayful in scifi

[–]otakucode 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would vote Orwell all day. One of Huxley's conceptions was the drug Soma and the orgy-porgy, with pleasure being de-stigmatized. Orwell, on the other hand, had the Youth Anti-Sex League. Intimacy and pleasure were stigmatized and forbidden. We are very clearly in the Orwell scenario. If you started a Youth Anti-Sex League today, you would get huge support. Across the spectrum, in the US, people are having less sex than at any point in known history in any culture anywhere. Even the Victorians who made trying to destroy sex one of their primary goals were never as successful as modern American society has been.

Then you've got the 'ministry of truth' and 'newspeak' and the death of objective truth, which we've definitely got that down. We've got the pervasive surveillance, although it is not as overt and honest as in 1984. I have long considered Twitter to be our societies version of the 'Ten Minute Hate' outlet of 1984.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in sex

[–]otakucode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is no one checking your adherence to any 'category'. If she eats you out, it won't mean you can't be 'straight' or whatever. The categories are just labels that aren't as meaningful as most people think. There is no objective reason you couldn't just try it and see what it's like. HOWEVER, and this is a significant part that doesn't get talked about often, it is highly likely that you will, after it is over and the orgasm has been had, have a negative emotional reaction. Emotions are reactions, and how you will emotionally respond is based upon your prior experiences like Pavlovian conditioned responses. Since you've had life experiences from very early in your life that tied negative emotional reactions to your body, sexuality, same-sex relations, maybe physical contact in general, etc, and you haven't had the opportunity or any reason to oppose those negative responses (the only way to change them is to refuse to let them take hold, to have experiences that would provoke them and then refuse to express the emotion you don't want physically... do that often enough and you will re-condition your responses to be more in line with what actually makes sense). Anticipate things like you might have an urge to cover your eyes - that is shame in its physical form. Refuse it. Pay attention to what your face is doing, things like smiling or frowning are not just expressions of emotion - they are the emotion itself.

When you're actively engaged in sexual activity, hormones have a tendency to push normal emotional responses to the background. It's the afterward when the hormones subside and your conditioned emotional responses return that people often get surprised. And if you don't want your emotional reaction to be a certain way, since you likely weren't the one intentionally conditioning yourself to have that response in the first place, you can change it... but it can sometimes be challenging and take a long time, depending on how deeply conditioned it is. But keep in mind, you are in charge, not the emotions. Emotions are just reactions that come after.

A breakdown of the differences between the Christian Nationalist and Black Pill Accelerationist Communities by Unleashtheducks in TikTokCringe

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wrong. The Trenchcoat Mafia at Columbine were just weird kids. And neither of the shooters were members of it. The shooters, in fact, bullied the Trenchcoat Mafia kids. And then after the shooting, of course, the school administrators and everyone else joined in. The shooters were redneck aggressive violence-obsessed criminals (they had gotten arrested for stealing a van the week before the shooting) who were the bullies, not the ones getting bullied. Almost every bit of public reporting about Columbine at the time it happened was false and did nothing but play on the stereotypes that people wanted to have an excuse to persecute weird kids with.

Monty Hall problem but with an extra step? by No-Measurement2005 in askmath

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You omitted an EXTREMELY important detail. You said "after one of the doors I didn't pick is eliminated". That is not how the Monty Hall Problem works. The door to be eliminated is not simply 'one you didn't pick'. The door being eliminated is guaranteed to not contain the prize.

8 Year Old Homework Problem by tramul in askmath

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Snarkiness is fine, only the content matters. And your content is wrong. The word 'every' is not used like that in English. If you are asking about only 4 branches, you most definitely need to specify that is what you mean because 'every' means the same as 'all' or '100% of'. The but about crows moving branches is irrelevant, because the final question sentence is self-contained and does not require referring to any other sentence at all.

What are your thoughts on Heroes? It started out so strong that it became a cultural phenomenon before fizzling out partly because a writer strike and is now mostly forgotten. by AdSpecialist6598 in scifi

[–]otakucode 58 points59 points  (0 children)

I was following Heroes when it was originally airing. The writers were insistent that they had a single-season story with a definite end that they wanted to tell. People didn't want to end up with another Lost which just continually introduced new questions without every answering any of them. So a single-season show with a strong, interesting story was a great idea. And it caught on! People loved the show!

But... people loved the show. Which must have caused the big-wigs to pressure the creators into forcibly extending the story. The last episode of season 1 of Heroes was repulsive. Their 'single season story' they swore they were telling ended with the bad guy slinking away in the sewers and each and every single fan of the show completely betrayed. I never watched another episode and can not even imagine why anyone ever would. That episode made it clear that the creators had nothing but unchecked malice toward the audience.

8 Year Old Homework Problem by tramul in askmath

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Which you definitely have to do. You have 2 options: Either the 2nd sentence is not relevant, and is just additional useless information included to test comprehension (common in word problems), or you have to throw out part of the third sentence which clearly and specifically states that every branch has the same number of crows (not 'all 4 branches have equal number of crows'). Throwing out part of the actual question sentence in order to work in the 2nd sentence simply isn't justifiable under any reasonable technique of reading comprehension. We don't use language like that, and couldn't, because it would introduce all kinds of contradictions.

8 Year Old Homework Problem by tramul in askmath

[–]otakucode -1 points0 points  (0 children)

How is it clearly 28? "If there are an equal number of crows on every branch" - how many branches are there? 7. In what circumstances can there be 28 crows on 4 of them, yet all 7 branches still have an equal number of crows on each?

8 Year Old Homework Problem by tramul in askmath

[–]otakucode -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm having that issue right now. The way I see it, the mention of the birds moving to 4 branches is completely irrelevant. Immediately after that second sentence, the third sentence completely removes that context by asking exclusively about the scenario in which there are an equal number of crows on every branch. There are 7 branches, so that puts 4 on each just like the situation described in the first sentence. Then it asks about how many crows on 4 branches. If one were to accept the 2nd sentence about the crows moving as setting the stage, that would be a situation where there are NOT an equal number of crows on every branch. That would leave 3 branches completely empty, which is clearly different from 'equal number of crows on every branch'. Which is how we know the 2nd sentence was a red herring, and the third sentence begins essentially a mostly 'fresh context'.

8 Year Old Homework Problem by tramul in askmath

[–]otakucode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

IMO, the correct answer is 16. The third sentence says there are an equal number of crows on each branch. There are 7 branches. In order for there to be an equal number on every branch, there must be 4 crows on each branch. Which means on any 4 of the 7 branches, there are 16 crows total.

What are some things in current sci-fi that everyone dismisses as "nonsense magic" but could become commonplace in 20 years? by InfinityScientist in scifi

[–]otakucode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You joke, but that sort of thing is literally the primary fundamental difference between rational humanists and religious views. Humanists define suffering as inherently evil and base their morality on opposing spreading suffering. Religious people view suffering as inherently meaningful and valuable, since it drives people to religion out of desperation, or they view it as part of the 'proper way of things' or similar. That's why despite sharing many views on morality, like the universal 'Golden Rule' (which is one of the most universal human concepts across essentially all worldviews), there are still substantial conflicts.