I’m pretty sure that Atlas Shrugged is actually just cursed and nobody has ever finished it. John Galt’s speech gets two pages longer whenever you finish one.

And I think the challenge with engaging with Rand as a fiction author is that, put bluntly, she is bad at writing fiction. The characters and their world don’t make any sense outside of the allegorical role they play in her moral and political philosophy, which means you’re not so much reading a good story with thought behind it as much as it’s a philosophical treatise that happens in the form of dialogue. It’s a story in the same way that Plato’s Republic is a story, but the Republic can actually benefit from understanding the context of the different speakers at least as a historical text.

So maybe I’m just showing my lack of actual dev experience here, but isn’t “making code modifications algorithmically at scale” kind of definitionally the opposite of good software engineering? Like, I’ll grant that stuff is complicated but if you’re making the same or similar changes at some massive scale doesn’t that suggest that you could save time, energy and mental effort by deduplicating somewhere?

This doesn’t really feel performative enough for that crowd, though. Like, if it included some kind of horribly racist engraving or even just a company logo then maybe, but I don’t think anyone’s gonna trigger the libs by just playing their metal not-gameboy.

It’s interesting to see how many ways they can find to try and brand “LLMs are fundamentally unreliable” as a security vulnerability. Like, they’re not entirely wrong, but it’s also not something that fits into the normal framework around software security. You almost need to treat the LLM as though it were an actual person not because it’s anywhere near capable of that but because the way it fits into the broader system is as close as IT has yet come to a direct in-place replacement for a human doing the task. Like, the fundamental “vulnerability” here is that everyone who designs and approves these implementations acts like LLMs are simultaneously as capable and independent as an actual person but also have the mechanical reliability and consistency of a normal computer program, when in practice they are neither of those things.

Also, when less than a fifth of your salespeople are making their targets you need to take a very long look at what that fifth is doing, because with a product like this they have to be lying about something that’s going to give Legal headaches down the line.

Can I just take a moment to appreciate Merriam-Webster for coming in clutch with the confirmation that we’re not misunderstanding the “6-7” meme that the kids have been throwing around?

Yeah. If I wanted to perfectly reproduce the original series in a different time and location I would use a machine rather than trying to get my local theater troupe to do it, I guess. Therefore AI completely and blatantly fucking up a totally different task isn’t a monumental waste of time and energy?

Jesus. This being 2025 of course he had to clarify that it’s definitely not DEI. Also it really grinds me gears to see hyperfocus listed as one of the “beneficial” aspects because there’s no way it’s not exploitative. Hey, so you know how sometimes you get so caught up in a project you forget to eat? Just so you know, you could starve on the clock. For me.

Much like when the Voyager passed warp 13, our AI development is moving too fast with potentially magnitudinous consequences.

It’s fascinating to watch Hanania try and do politics in a comment space more focused on academic inquiry, and how silly he looks here. He can’t participate in this conversation without trying to make it about social interventions and class warfare (against the poor), even though I don’t know that Bessis would disagree that the thing social interventions can’t significantly increase the number of mathematical or scientific geniuses in a country (1). Instead, Hanania throws out a few brief, unsupported arguments, gets asked for clarification and validation, accuses everyone of being woke, and gets basically ignored as the conversation continues around him.

This feels like the kind of environment that Siskind and friends claim to be wanting to create, but it feels like they’re constitutionally incapable of actually doing the “ignore Nazis until they go away” part.

1. From his other post linked in the thread he credits that level of aptitude to idiosyncratic ways of thinking that are neither genetically nor socially determined, but can be cultivated actively through various means. The reason that the average poor Indian boy doesn’t become Ramanujan is the same reason you or I or his own hypothetical twin brother didn’t; we’re not Ramanujan. This doesn’t mean that we can’t significantly improve our own ability to understand and use mathematical thinking.)

Honestly I’m kinda grateful for people who dig into and analyze the actual data in seeming ignorance of the political context of the people pushing the other side. It’s one thing to know that Jordan “Crimieux” Lasker and friends are out here doing Deutsch Genetik and another to have someone cleanly and clearly lay out exactly why they’re wrong, especially when they do the work of assembling a more realistic and useful story about the same studies.

…so it’s not a Dr Who thing.

No, no. I’m not mad. Just… disappointed. Existentially speaking.

they’ve already got a contract with Crusoe AI to deliver 1.21 gigawatts.

Does that number feel suspiciously memetic to anyone else?

The new “Radio didn’t work and I never heard the order to shovel forty tons of shit, sir” is going to involve some suspiciously direct damage to Corporal Chatbot’s output devices.

Sounds a bit like a Swedish heiress to Lillian Gilbreth. My wife has had some mobility issues and has lamented that the work that went into designing more ergonomic and accessible kitchens in the 40s and 50s was largely abandoned and ignored in more recent homes.

I’m slightly disappointed they didn’t take a page from David and use the only valid photo of Jensen Huang for the relevant page, but the fact that he was encouraging us to sign a literal deal with the devil more than made up for it.

Honestly you could probably pitch that to the Musk/Thiel set pretty easily by playing up how masculine fighter pilots are and disconnecting but not removing the rear flight controls. Let them push buttons and feel cool.

I’m legitimately disappointed in John Carmack here. He should be a good enough programmer to understand the limitations here, but I guess his business career has driven in a different direction.

Call the last one A for Agency and turn the acronym into an AI history reference: ELISA.

I feel like this is a really common experience with both HPMoR and HP itself, and explains a large part of the positive reputation they enjoy(ed).