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https://newrepublic.com/authors/timothy-noah

How can anyone look through that list of the author's articles and voluntarily choose to consume this author's writing? It's nothing but partisan extremism.


So the "negative" externality is that the data you value has been forced to now be higher quality/reliable? From your perspective, isn't the result a positive?

I'm guessing the point was that the data was already high quality and reliable until these legalized prediction markets introduced perverse incentives to manipulate it.

No the negative externality here is that we've derived a value directly to this data, thereby negatively incentivizing this poor behavior. To further elucidate, it effectively introduces a cat-and-mouse game for the people who actually care about the data itself, they now have to worry about nonsensical third party behavior.

How can you know the data is higher quality?

In my city, the airport has wildly different weather than the city center, and the data I get has no relation to what I experience, for example.


Only if you refuse to acknowledge the deleterious effects on society from ruining any notion of trust.

Being held hostage by bad actors until you fortify your defenses seems to be a very unnecessary technical solution to an easily predicted social one.

Normalizing this only means the subterfuge becomes more subtle, not that you remove it entirely. But you preserve the incentives by not changing this system. So you're spending a lot of resources wastefully when you could just... not.


I decided to test it out myself.

Went to the website, typed in "Jeep Wrangler JK engine bay with components labeled" (Since I'm intimately familiar with JK engine bays). Seems like a pretty analogous test to what you did, if anything an even easier test.

Let's see what we get .. a very nice looking diagram of a wrangler engine bay with components labeled, looks good.

But wait ..

- The brake fluid reservoir is on the wrong side of the engine bay

- Where the brake fluid reservoir is, it's labeled as the coolant overflow tank, and while the actual coolant overflow tank does exist in the diagram, it has no label.

- The battery is on the wrong side of the engine bay.

- The top of the front grill is labeled as the "oil filter cap".

- The oil fill cap is in the wrong place.

- Half of the battery is labeled as the fuse box, when the fuse box is correctly shown, but unlabeled, on the other side of the engine bay.

- It shows two different windshield washer reservoirs next to each other.

I could keep going on ...

Now I tried clicking on the incorrectly labeled coolant overflow reservoir and it switches to a new page which now shows a completely different looking coolant overflow, but now it's at least located in the correct place in the engine bay.

But of course it doesn't look remotely like the actual coolant overflow container. It also shows the radiator cap as on the top of the coolant reservoir, when in reality it is very much on the top of the radiator itself.

Like .. I can find fault with every aspect of it. But of course, if you didn't actually know much about the topic it'd all look fairly believable. The story of LLMs basically.


It does poorly on creative concepts as well.

I attempted to explore the works of Kinoko Nasu/TYPE-MOON through its characters and the relationships across works and it was mostly nonsense. Sure it had some broad relations correct, but it presented a tiny set of meaningful characters and only attempted to touch Fate/Stay-Night and Tsukihime.

Even more damning was that it produced garbled text for a few of the textual representations and often even if the lettering was clean, the grammar was off.


To be fair, disentangling even just the Fate series is nearly impossible even for humans

Now that you mention it, i didn't try "Metal Gear". Now that would be a ride.

Are TYPE-MOON relationship diagrams the new pelican benchmark?

I had a tab on nuclear reactors open and so typed in "Pressurized Water Reactor" and the result while very visually appealing is completely nonsensical (connected the high/low pressure coolant loops together) and would definitely explode.

https://imgur.com/a/DEb3oD4


Do we ever simply accept that LLMs weren't made for this kind of detail-oriented work? I can't imagine something like this ever being anything other than a toy which can't be trusted.

Will Silicon Valley executives ever accept this reality? If we acquiesce and admit that LLMs are a good tool for prototyping and boilerplate-reduction, but not finished products-- is that when the bubble finally bursts?


I think the unfortunate fact is that most jobs in the world do not require accuracy, so an inaccurate result has a negligible impact over an accurate one.

I used to feel job safety in the knowledge that AI labs weren't likely to solve the hallucination problem. Then it dawned on me that they don't need to — they just need to reduce our collective expectations.


I predict that this illusion of "(in)accurate enough" will last long enough to trigger a cascading avalanche of failures across all fields of human endeavours, an I'd be pretty cautious to bet on quick recovery or even survival of this civilization after that.

I also replied because I asked it about a Mac Pro case I had right in front of me. Mostly right words, totally wrong visuals. And while I see what you mean by 'story of LLMs', I ask LLMs about things I know often, and for the last 12 months theyve been pretty dang accurate. This ai visual example is the strongest 'its just guessing' Ive seen in years. For a demo, pretty cool still though. Not sure why OP exaggerated, or simply doesnt know his car as well as he thinks he does.

Does it make sense that maybe it has a model of the vehicle it can pull from its corpus wholesale but then the “guess the next letter” portion takes over for labeling and just guesses poorly?

It is a word with multiple meanings. One such meaning is "a group of people brought together and organized for a particular activity."

Or perhaps "to compel someone to act against their will or to break through resistance."

But knowing this administration, "an energy field created by all living things that surrounds, penetrates, and binds the galaxy together."


>> budget squeeze

>> will still be around after this congress and the agency can stabilize once again

2026 budget - 24.4 billion

2025 budget - 24.8 billion

2024 budget - 25.3 billion

2023 budget - 25.3 billion

2022 budget - 24.0 billion

2021 budget - 23.2 billion

2020 budget - 22.6 billion

2019 budget - 21.5 billion

2018 budget - 20.7 billion

2017 budget - 19.6 billion

2016 budget - 19.2 billion

What part of these numbers are you interpreting as some sort of insane budget restriction?


2027 White House proposed budget[1]: $18.8 billion

2026 White House proposed budget[2]: $18.8 billion

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/budget...

[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal...

[2] is represented as deltas, explainer here https://spacenews.com/white-house-budget-proposal-would-phas...


Congress passes the budget since they have the power of the purse. Presidents have requested all sorts of nonsense to appease the base.

That is indeed how it is supposed to work. But things haven't exactly been working like they're supposed to lately.

For FY26, when we had a PBR proposing massive cuts followed by a government shutdown with a long stretch where NASA didn't know what their real budget was going to be, we saw a bunch of layoffs and project cancellations in preparation for a budget that might resemble what the president was requesting. Whether or not that was legal is in question:

https://democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/SST%20Mino...


That is true, but in all fairness, every politician has at one time, or another requested all sorts of nonsense to appease the base, not just presidents hence the term "political lobbying". If you look up the definition of 'politics," it's the method or strategy: sometimes used to describe the tactics, schemes, or "art" used to gain influence, sometimes carrying a negative connotation of manipulation or intrigue. Everybody has done it since the beginning of time :|

Congress also declares wars, and we know how well that has worked out for everyone.

First year civics: the legislative branch passes the budget, the executive branch is the one that actually spends it. Or doesn’t, in which case you have a constitutional crisis.


Congress has granted the president a lot of power to conduct wars on its own

This same president wanted a Mars landing by 2028.

It has been 30 years since Congress last passed a budget.

Congress passes a budget every year, what are you talking about?

It’s a technical distinction. The last true “budget” was FY1997. Otherwise, CRs are used until some kind appropriations bill can be passed. The problem is, that appropriations bill isn’t a true budget as money was already spent via CR.

24.4 in 2026 is less than 19.2 in 2016. I wouldn't call it a giant squeeze or anything though, but these raw numbers almost imply the opposite kind of misunderstanding.

The admin has tried two times in a row to cut the total budget by 20%, and the science budget by 50%

So, probably that squeeze?


Congress sets the budget not the president. The administrations budget is aspirational, and if they want to force it they are required to use political savvy and whatever influence they have built up. Yeah so zero influence as all of that is towards cover ups, stock manipulation, and incompetence.

The executive has the veto and a willingness to leave the government non-functional (funny how anti-government types are often okay with kneecapping government). They're not powerless.

Technically true, but the president also selects the administrator of NASA, and this presidency isn't terribly fussed about following laws about how allocated money can be used.

So don't be surprised if suddenly half the NASA budget is used to pay for a second ballroom or more missiles to CENTCOM.


Yes, but this President has decided that he can move money around or just not spend the money, regardless of the budget, and this Congress has let him.

Yes, as we know this Congress is famous for doing its own independent thinking and not rubber stamping everything that arrives with a little bit of mango colored makeup on it.

Are these numbers adjusted for inflation? $19.2B in 20216 dollars would be $26.4B in 2026 dollars.

This part: Let's now adjust for inflation so you can see the budget squeeze. $19.2 billion in 2016 dollars is worth $26.4 billion and change, once adjusted for inflation, in March 2026. Feel free to do it yourself. Magic of compounding.

24.4 for 2026 is notably less than 26.4. Budget squeeze.


An 8% budget cut isn't a crisis.

You're just scrambling to be technically correct now that you've been shown the data that their budget hasn't really changed much.

Politicians and pundits lie and exaggerate this stuff all the time. Don't take the bait.

This administration certainly isn't the most pro-science, but they did just complete a spin around the moon, something that will get more kids interested in science than anything NASA has done in the last 40 years.


Accounting for inflation the 2026 budget is 2 Billion less than the 2016 budget.

That's like 4 times the ESA budget, and still insignificant compared to the money poured into AI. Several companies could cover that budget with quarterly profits.

The part that the dollars are worth about 35% less now compared to 2016?

You’re kinda implying that there’s a few people standing around in a shed, and that really don’t cost too much.

Every backpack I've ever bought I was able to easily find all the relevant specifications I needed in order to choose a quality a pack. If you're looking at a pack which doesn't provide such specifications then that's an immediate giveaway that it's a low quality pack. It's not difficult, the average person really just does not care to do research. They instead just choose the cheapest one with the advertising that hooked them the best. But the information is there if you want it.

The LLM doomerism is just one arm of the general "us vs them" strategy - defining a group of people as the others who are the bad guys, defining yourself as the good guys, constantly fostering hate against the others, finding ways to give your group rationale for why they have the moral high ground, all of it in the end an act to gain power/influence/money for the people orchestrating it.

The anti-AI angle is just the latest flavor of it, replacing previous ones (I'm sure you can think of some) and eventually being replaced by the next new thing/person that they'll try to direct us to hate.

I'm willing to bet any amount of money that 99.99% of AI doomers identify with the same extreme end of the political spectrum. That should be a very big red flag and highly indicative of the real motive behind the movement.


>I'm willing to bet any amount of money that 99.99% of AI doomers identify with the same extreme end of the political spectrum.

Good: a man willing to put his money where his mouth is! However many dollars you put up, I will put up $10. (I.e., I will give you 10:1 odds.) How much do you bet? Who do you suggest as arbiter in case one is needed?


No, AI doomerists are people cosplaying as religious fanatics. It's mostly sci-fi nonsense that ignores the real material realities that people are currently suffering due to LLMs (water shortages, energy spikes, cancer rates increases, job quality tanking, unnerving local environments, exacerbating the climate crisis).

Most AI safety workers are just doing creative fiction (what if the AI turns into skynet!?1!!?) and not actual society safety that would require dismantling these companies and turning remolding them to benefit the public.


LLMs are causing cancer rates to increase? Say what???

What do you think the causal mechanism is?


All remotely popular online public spaces are completely infiltrated by bots/propagandists/trolls/morons/etc. If you could successfully filter that type of content out you'd end up with a much larger pool of valid/authentic content to access than if you abandoned the space altogether and switched to some very obscure/niche space that's yet to be manipulated.

You can already follow who you want on Twitter. The thing is, bots etc take their toll even on the good users.

Bluesky has a default feed that is just the posts/reposts of the people who you choose to follow, in reverse chronological order.

No need for an algorithm to decide what is worth seeing.


Maybe, but no one worth listening to uses bluesky

Incorrect. William Gibson does. And he’s definitely worth listening to.

Twitter/X has the same feature. It is all I use.

Yes, but it was the biggest opening for propagandists to latch on to for demoralizing and spreading fear/uncertainty/doubt about the mission.

The fact that the average person is seemingly incapable of detecting LLM text drives me insane. Every aspect of that article screams LLM. The tone, the punctuation, the sentence structure, the overall structure, it's so incredibly obvious. But the average person really is oblivious to it.

why? Before comments about LLM I didn't notice this. After I compared pre-LLM posts and post-LLM and looks like AI was used to write/edit this article. But.. why should I matter? Why my ignorance of this fact insane you?

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