blakestacey

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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Reached by the Chronicle, Yudkowsky said he would not read the letter for the same reason he refused to read the manuscript of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.

Not even the MST3k version?

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.tv.mst3k/search?q=MiSTing%3A+Unabomber+Manifesto

(Warning: contains some ... Tarantino-like 1995 edginess at odds with its overall tone)

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 12 points 2 months ago

Ketan Joshi:

Microsoft's own research confirms something that was already pretty obvious: relying on a text generating machine to come up with answers erodes critical thinking, and is a method favoured by those who never liked doing critical thinking in the first place

The whole paper is an absolute nightmare funfair ride through the behaviours that have become almost instantaneously widespread through the professional world - something Microsoft have invested billions into accelerating and worsening no matter the consequences.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 15 points 2 months ago (7 children)

a phrase to make your skin crawl right off:

Lighthaven cuddle puddle

And after that shot, a chaser:

Is the Dark Enlightenment actually fascist? Not at all. It's probably the least fascistic strain of political thought today, though this requires understanding what fascism really is, which the word itself now obscures. Is it racist? Perhaps. The term is so malleable that it's hard to say with clarity.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 16 points 2 months ago

the “thinking” part definitely works for me

[bites tongue, tries really hard to avoid the obvious riposte]

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 2 months ago

Our AP English teacher marked down everyone in our class for failing to identify a quote that wasn't in the translation of L'Etranger that we all read. She refused to give our points back even after I brought a copy of the French original and showed that the translation in our edition was correct when hers was not.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 2 months ago

Yeah, four kids is "the biggest family on the suburban block where I grew up", not "time to build another cabin in the compound".

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 2 months ago

Or they deliberately named things like the Lance of Longinus in order to fulfill a prophecy, or make it look like a prophecy was being fulfilled.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 17 points 2 months ago

We are on the verge of a “cultural mass extinction.” This will dramatically increase the homogeneity of our species and as such lower the prevalence of orthanganal perspectives that could generate solutions to social problems which are not apparent to surviving cultures.

zoom and enhance

orthanganal

I shouldn't make fun of uncorrected typos. But I will.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 2 months ago

All Cop-ilots Are Bastards

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Borrowing bits of Christian iconography and such was a thing in anime going back to the '80s, as I understand it, to get that creepy/exotic flavor. In Evangelion, I don't think it's entirely clear how much of the esoteric religious references are supposed to be taken literally and how many are more like in-universe code names (in the vein of Trinity test). Like, maybe the "Dead Sea Scrolls" they keep talking about really are the Dead Sea Scrolls, but NERV named their supercomputers the "Magi" just because they're pompous weirdos.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 2 months ago (5 children)

They're a supranational organization that nominally reports to the UN while actually being directed by an ancient conspiracy that is being subverted from within by a modern conspiracy. They build WMDs that are piloted by child soldiers. One of these child soldiers is the son of the commander. Another is a clone of the commander's dead wife (maybe). NERV are the only ones who can stop the annihilation of all life on Earth by the lovecraftian kaiju, because they are the sole possessors of forcefields that run on loneliness.

... But there is a penguin!

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 16 points 2 months ago

Over the course of my research, it has come to my attention that Jordan Lasker was invited to give a talk titled "The Academic and Career Trajectories of Underqualified College Admits" at Stanford University's Classical Liberalism Initiative seminar series. The series of talks, run by Iván Marinovic out of the School of Business whose goal is to invite professors to "debate ideas and policy issues with rigor, even when doing so may challenge orthodoxy".

These challenges to "orthodoxy" never seem to include ideas like paying reparations for slavery. (Deadpan Daria voice) It's so strange.

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