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Now imagine all that low quality AI slop is being posted online and a new generation of AI will "learn" from it, output it's own version of AI slop, that will eventually end up online again for a new generation of AI to "learn" from.

Something, something, idiocracy comes to mind.


> Something, something, idiocracy comes to mind.

So, confirmation? They are catching up quickly!

The actuality is, anyone with pre-slop data still has their pre-slop data. And there are endless ways to get more value out of good data.

Bootstrapping better performance by using existing models to down select data for higher density/median quality, or leverage recognizable lower quality data to reinforce doing better. Models critiquing each other, so the baseline AI behavior increases, and in the process, they also create better training data. And a thousand more ways.

Managed intelligently, intelligence wants to compound.

The difference between human and AI idiocracy, is we don't delete our idiots. I am not suggesting we do that. But maybe we shouldn't elect them. Either way, that is one more very steep disadvantage for us.


The AI centipede

This leads to a well-documented phenomenon known as model collapse. You know how if you blur and sharpen an image repeatedly you eventually end up with just a rectangle of creepy, wormy spaghetti lines? You lose information on each blur, and then ask it to reconstitute the image with less information on each sharpen, until there's nothing recognizable left.

Training a model is like the blur and generating from that model is like the sharpen. Repeat enough times and enough information is lost that you're just left with "wormy spaghetti lines"—in an LLM's case, meaningless gibberish that actually pretty closely resembles the glitchy stuff said by the cores that fall off GLaDOS in Portal. I dunno, you read the paper and be the judge:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07566-y

To jump to the last output sample, C-f Gen 9

Of course you may be talking about the human aspect of this. Gods willing, we'll realize that our LLMs are spewing gibberish and think twice about putting them in all the things, all the time. But the scenario I fear isn't Idiocracy—it's worse: a community of humans who treat the gibberish as sacred writ, Zardoz style.


> Israel has literally nothing to lose.

Israel has a lot to lose, the question is only how much of the lost will be replaced by american taxpayers' money. They're almost out of anti-air interceptors, the war they started in lebanon is going badly and iran still has tens of thousands of drones left. There's also hamas and hezbollah and more and more of the world is turning against them, be it in proper politics or even mundane stuff like the eurovision.

And it's not just the aljazeera and similar media, the israelis said it themselves: https://www.timesofisrael.com/zamir-said-to-warn-cabinet-tha...


The ones armed by US? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

And provided with starlink: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-smuggled-thousands... ?

Imagine russia or china sponsoring and arming protesters in US. The last time US was actualyl attacked it put 120k japanese people into concentration camps just because they were japanese.


> ones armed by US?

Were there any armed protests in Iran? I thought they were peaceful?


What? Iran was attacked by israel numerous times, including today. It has the right to defend itself.

If anything, it's israel here that has attacked almost all countries in the area and annexed land from them ("buffer zones").


How does shooting ballistic missiles with cluster warheads at residential areas help defend Iran?

https://syncthing.net/ <- like this :)

Free, opensource, works on computers and phones, can in most cases puncture nat, supports local discovery (lan, multicast).

No googles, no dropboxes, no clouds, no AI training, no "my kid likes the wrong video on youtube, now our whole family lost access to every google account we had, so we lost everything, including family photos", just sync!

(not affiliated, just really love the software)


The only issue I have, with this amazing piece of software that I heavily use across multiple devices, is management of sync failures and exclusions via the UI. I have been using it for long enough to know the tips and tricks but it would be great for the web UI to allow easy management of conflict issues and the ability to mark files/folders as exclusions in a friendly manner.

This is my go to solution for code sync across macOS laptop, Windows VMs, and Linux VMs to build and run/debug across environments. Unless something has changed, exclusions of build artifacts was always an issue with cloud sync providers. I have been doing more cross compilation on macOS, copy and run on those other machines lately for prototypes, but for IDE based debugging it’s great to edit local or remote and get it all synced to the machine to run it in seconds.

Sadly it doesn't have a great official solution for mobile devices.

The problem with syncthing is that you need to download the whole folder to your device. Google drive is "streaming"

Have a look at Seafile's SeaDrive client for that.

Mind, I haven't actually used it in anger, as I prefer full file sync vs on-demand.


How's that a problem? The tool has "sync" in its name. It's a feature.

Everything you have on your pc is sent to AI... "local", yeah.

If you want local but text-only search, there is a very similarly named project called Recoll - https://recoll.org/ - a bit ugly, but works great, especially for people who tend to save notes in many different text files in many different folders.


Low for who exactly? You have low-users overpaying and a few openclaw users actually using what they paid for and getting banned for that... that's not really a "low price" for anyone.

If they they expect X money for Y tokens, better provide Y tokens for your X money. If they can't provide that, then change the pricing plans. That's not the users problem.


Who exactly, their intended audience. I get my money's worth having Claude Code write code. No interest in OpenClaw.

US is providing targeting information, weapons and money for ukraine... it seems totally fair that russia is providing the same info for iranians, hopefully they (and china) will send them some weapons too.

> instead of this authoritarian rah rah death to America and death to Israel nonsense.

After US and israel bombing them.... again... what do you think, will there be more or less "death to US" chants? Also, considering the number of dead people in iran, lebanon, palestine and other countries, the next step is probably special force work in US... the ones you guys call "terrorists".


Half the world chants that. Currently, probably more. Americans have managed even to alienate the ass-kissing politicians from europe. Even in US, the people are protesting against the current president, and no wonder... trump wants 200 billion more while people can't afford healthcare and education and some cities look like cities from apocalypse movies, with homeless camps everywhere.

US is in 53. place in child mortality ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an... )... but hey, those bombs need to be used up, so the taxpayers can pay for new ones, right?


A lot more than 1/2 the world, a lot more...

Currently lot if people dislike/distrust america. Which is understandable and rational thing to do. Chanting “deato xyz” is very irrational and unproductive and just bad.

if I was disliked and distrusted by a lot of people I’d think long and hard about why that is vs. complaining about how that dislike/distrust is communicated

Do you assume that I am American and that I was complaining about people chanting?

I am not; yet I prefer that my side stays rational without such chant’s (somebody has to be the responsible adult)


I made no such assumptions, no

I've just been at a conference where some high-up guy from germany was talking about the effect of sanctions... russia used to sell wood pulp to germany, german factories would produce paper products and then sell a lot of them back to russia.

Then sanctions came, no more very cheap wood pulp for the german industry, and after a year of sanctions, the russians built (i think) 4 large paper factories, so even after the sanctions end, that business is not coming back to germany.


OK, so what? Obviously we shouldn't continue trading with enemies regardless of the economic impact.

Why? If the objective is to weaken a regime, and the sanctions strengthen it, why should you help your “enemy”?

The classic mistake here is to consider that dictatorships are like democracies—they aren't, and their power structure is different and more resilient to economic shocks. Even Bachar Al-Assad, who was much weaker, took 13 years to leave power.

At some point, one should question if wide sanctions targeted at increasing the suffering of the civilian population are really worth it.


Your assumption here is that, since sanctions strengthen the regime, not having sanctions weakens the regime, which is not logical.

Not having sanctions potentially strengthens a regime more than sanctions do, embeds them in the global geopolitical/cultural/economic stage, normalises their behaviour, and goes against a lot of people's deontology.

Look at Israel: no sanctions, strong Zio regime, majority of US/German pop supported the "self-defense" argument for decades, complete normalisation of Palestinian genocide until the horror reached an unbearable threshold. Etc., etc.

Yes, sanctions are far from perfect, but I strongly believe that a world with Israel santioned would have been a much better place for everyone, including the Israelis (from having to contend with their ideology).

Edit: I'm also aware that my argument is not perfect either. For example, I wouldn't qualify what Cuba has or what Iraq had as sanctions in the sense that I'm talking about: these are to my eyes an economic war of aggression by the US/West. What I'm defending is sanctions on fascist and ethonationalist global/regional superpowers that are engaging in large-scale horror. But I'm aware how leaky my definition is.


You can do sanctions on items that allow the regime wage wars (weapons and dual-use products), yes, that can work. Or wide sanctions on small countries such as Israel can be a credible deterrent, since it lacks economic depth to find substitutes.

However, wide sanctions on large countries such as Russia or Iran are now proven to be quite ineffective in the long run. Even worse, by preventing the creation of a middle-class, you won't have the conditions to start a democracy later, after a possible regime change.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's what data shows.

And sanctions don't prevent countries from committing atrocities either. What about the deaths and suffering induced by sanctions? 500k Iraqi children were estimated to have died due to the US sanctions. The architect of the policy told that it was "worth it". Was it?

https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...


- Economic growth slows down under sanction.

- removing their leverage over you is also good.

Even if regime will not change, it will be weaker


Sanctions also affect population and create indirect deaths and suffering in the civilian population.

I guess that, just like Madeleine Albright, you believe that 500k Iraqi children death caused by US sanctions were "worth it"? (US still wanted to invade after, proof that sanctions worked!)

https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...


Quite a loaded question (a-tier).

Counter-question/game:

Hypothetically, imagine that you become president of US today, inheriting current situation. What would you do regarding Iran situation?

What is the correct action now in current situation?

Spoiler: I think there is no “correct” solution, somebody will be hurt in the end despite best wishes.

Note: Lower supply of oil and fertiliser affects poorer countries more than the rich ones (possibility of famine in Africa). Current Iran government just killed their own civilians a month ago in thousands to end protests; and repressions will likely repeat as protests are likely to repeat. (Irans populace seem to be quite educated and want some reforms) Ground invasion of Iran would cost a lot of lives - civilian casualties always exist.

But honestly, what would you choose to do?


No it's a great question. As always when someone makes a point about something, one should ask "up to which point do you believe this to be true". It's the same in science.

The US president is not in charge of the application of human rights in Iran. It's amazing that Americans are so concerned about human rights in oil-rich countries, only. Right?

The US generally don't understand other countries' internal dynamics and only leave a mess after dropping bombs to "liberate" those ungrateful civilians.

Obama's JCPOA was a good framework, I'd work to reinstall it.


But they just became more independent.

Germany stills needs and wants russian energy, because they're overpaying a lot currently, but russians don't need the german paper industry anymore.


Paper is definitely not the only thing Russia was importing. Check statistics of Russian aviation accidents (not sure if Germany was in supply chain for aviation, but this is visible thing that clearly was affected by sanctions)

Is there evidence sanctions strengthen a regime? With Russia at war right now, sanctions do indeed seem to be helping Ukraine with Russia having a budget crisis.

“ sanctions strengthen authoritarian rule if the regime manages to incorporate their existence into its legitimation strategy.”

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-...


Sanction strengthen the political grip of a regime on society, which can use them as a justification for its repression. They also hollow-out the middle class, which prevents a democratic societal change, which requires it.

In the case of a war, it is of course useful, but it won't solve the long-term issue of the nature of the Russian regime, which has gotten only more entrenched since 2014.


Russia is actively and directly at war with Ukraine. Russian tax dollars fund that war with Ukraine.

Sanctions on Russia are us not funding the war on Ukraine.


Do you count enemies as the one we try to invade, or only as the one that invade others and more generally don't respect international laws?

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