• 0 Posts
  • 20 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 20th, 2023

help-circle






  • During the invasion of Berlin in 1945, the overwhelmed German command trying to map out the Russian advance had to resort to just calling businesses or homes of people living in areas they were uncertain about.

    If most people in a district did not pick up the phone, or someone did pick up and swore in Russian, they marked it on the map as invaded.

    Different worlds of course, but the point is that civilian phones have intelligence value.

    It could make sense as a super creepy tactical choice by Iran to deny intelligence gathering from abroad.


  • I feel that this article is based on beliefs that are optimism rather than empiricism or rational extrapolation, and trains of thought driven way into highly simplified territory.

    Basically like the Lesswrong, self-proclaimed “longtermists” and Zizians crowds.

    Illustrative example: Categorizing nannies under “human touch strongly preferred - perhaps as a luxury”. This assumes automation is not only possible to a degree way beyond what we see signs of, but that the service itself isn’t inherently human.




  • This is what I have been hoping LLMs would provoke since the beginning.

    Testing understanding via asking students to parrot textbooks with changed wording was always a shitty method, and one that de-incentivizes deep learning:

    It allows for teachers that do not understand their field beyond a superficial level to teach, and to evaluate. What happens when a student given the test question “Give an intuitive description of an orbit in your own words” answers by describing orbital mechanics in a relative frame instead of a global frame, when the textbook only mentions global frame? They demonstrate understanding beyond the material which is excellent but all they do is risk being marked down by a teacher who can’t see the connection.

    A student who only memorized the words and has the ability to rearrange them a bit, gets full marks no risk.


  • This comment is uninformed and I appreciate any corrections or education:

    I thought Iran already had nukes, so the attack made no sense: Attacks on nuclear weapons facilities are prettly much “launch nukes” in any nuclear doctrine in any nuclear country.

    But apparently they have just been working on them, and are allegedly a few weeks off from making their first?

    It still seems like a suicidal move. Attacks on production typically slows or delays, but won’t delete or reverse anything. Iran hurrying up the programme and going on full nuke alert ready to fire if a bird in the sky twitches wrong seems like a very possible outcome.