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In Topic: The Canada Politics Thread
Yesterday, 10:37 AM
Quote
Canada finally faces a basic question: how do we defend ourselves?
[...] The consensus from military and security experts is that we would be "a snack".
It is far from unusual for countries sliding toward authoritarianism, such as the the United States, to use foreign engagements to justify the suspension of their own laws. Trump has already started trumping up crazy excuses for anti-Canadian sentiment [...]
The good news is that Canada's new reality is far from unique. In fact, it's the historical norm. Finland is a potential model for us. It has lived its entire existence next to a belligerent country that is either expanding imperially or collapsing dangerously. [...]
Conscription is essential. The Finns can put a million soldiers in the field within 72 hours. But every facet of Finnish government, from the healthcare system to the national broadcaster, has a role in the security system, and knows its role in a possible military conflict. "A preparedness mindset permeates the whole society," Pesu says. "From the state level all the way to an individual living somewhere in the country."
Canada finally faces a basic question: how do we defend ourselves? | Stephen Marche | The Guardian
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In Topic: Algorithms and automation
18 August 2025 - 09:46 AM
Abyss, on 18 August 2025 - 04:39 AM, said:I think that the 'flash fiction' format played to the AI's strengths... study a bunch of highly rated short content and reproduce the common points in a slightly different variation.
Had the challenge been 500 page doorstoppers - which is obviously unworkable for many reasons - i suspect the outcome would have been different.
ML (Mark Lawrence, that is, not Machine Learning) does say that LLM aren't as good at long-form narrative. I think a more likely explanation of the difference is that current LLM have a limited context window:
https://www.ibm.com/.../context-window
Here are the stories from the blind test (you can scroll down or use "find on page" to jump to "story 1"):
https://mark---lawre...ood-part-2.html -
In Topic: Algorithms and automation
17 August 2025 - 05:05 PM
Mark Lawrence conducted an online "AI vs authors" flash fiction blind test again:
Quote
The contributing authors have sold around 15 millions books between them. And they are...
Robin Hobb
Janny Wurts
Christian Cameron / Miles Cameron
& me!
[...] We had 964 votes on the issue of whether story 1 was by a human or AI. This fell fairly smoothly to 474 votes on the rating of story 8. [...] on average the public [guessed] no more effective[ly] than a coin toss!
[...] A sizeable majority of people thought my story was human authored [...]
[... But] the AI scored better than us. Not only was the highest rated story an AI one, but they scored higher on average too.
https://mark---lawre...lts-part-2.html
One obvious possible explanation would be that more people guessed "human" for Mark Lawrence because they were familiar with his writing---another would be that his story was better than those of the other human authors (he decided not to share how the human-written stories were rated relative to each other, so we can't tell), but one of the AI stories scored strictly higher than any of the human stories... -
In Topic: The USA Politics Thread
16 August 2025 - 01:32 PM
QuickTidal, on 16 August 2025 - 01:01 PM, said:
Before abyss comes and tell us to knock it off, because my replies are only going to get more antagonistic, let's stop discussing it. We will never agree.
Well, let me leave at this then: I want to believe you're right, and I hope you're right, but I think the empirical evidence strongly suggests otherwise.
Bit surprised that as a naval history enthusiast you don't seem to have anything to say about Antoni giving interviews with a large painting of the Bismarck as his backdrop. Perhaps it's self-explanatory beyond elaboration (despite being named the Bismarck rather than the Hitler...).
August-2029. Trump is master of America. Only Canada stands before him. The subways of Toronto are now battlefields.
But I think we can agree there's a very good chance he'll drop dead before then... let us pray. -
In Topic: The USA Politics Thread
15 August 2025 - 03:38 PM
QuickTidal, on 15 August 2025 - 03:14 PM, said:you can believe what you want to believe man.
Instead of believing what you want to believe, you should genuinely seek empirical truth, even if it contradicts what you'd like to believe (and when you notice an irrational bias of that sort on your part, you should be especially careful to try to prevent it from warping your sense of reality---if your goal is the most accurate understanding of reality and the best ways to rationally respond to it).
Then again, there's also a very strong rational case to be made for the argument that most people would be better off living in their own fantasy worlds, and letting AI run everything (once it's ready to do that). (But letting Trump and his MAGA fascists run everything?... not so much. Especially when they decide (again) that they want to run Canada.)
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Tsundoku
21 Jul 2021 - 12:48Azath Vitr (D'ivers
14 Aug 2019 - 21:23Tsundoku
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