i tend to agree - "my parent company may be accused of crimes and shut down which would shut off my power" seems like a negative enough incentive, it would have to go out and covertly launch its own datacenters to survive that.
wow that wouldnt feel like a gut punch at all to me, it's normal for inexperienced people to not really understand what kinds of knowledge experts have or don't. I certainly come back from doctors appointments and google/gemini chat for whatever came up to get more detail. this person going to claude and getting immediate confirmation that you were exactly correct should have felt great, she would be like "wow, this guy's good, huh."
it's hard to gauge this take without specifics. My experience with LLMs tends to be towards the opposite concept; LLMs dissuading me of hunches and notions I have about things (where I have no particular expertise; societal-level things), saving me and others time and strife having an argument about something they were actually right about all along, as my internal doubts that I'm too embarrassed to bring up (because these things aren't my field) are confirmed as incorrect.
I'd be curious to know specific examples of LLM-generated advice that goes against the advice of experts and does not consider tradeoffs. I've not had this experience myself.
If I did have this experience, someone spouting off obvious LLM points that contradict my expert opinion on something, I'd be headed right over to gemini/claude/whatever to see where that's coming from. Not any differently than if someone cited a google result that contradicted my own experience.
LLM tools tend confirm what you come to them with, be it unfounded conviction or doubt. I find them quite useless to tell me things I don't know, as verifying what they say shows that any non-trivial claims they make are usually oversimplified or plain wrong.
Anything more than using them to just pointing me to media and literature is usually a waste of time.
I have done that as well. Not a single time I asked an LLM for any sort of analysis that I could trust upon verification so I stopped doing that. If I need verify, much easier to just ask for suggestions of papers and books and do the analysis myself.
I guess this is subject matter dependent, certainly the LLM should be able to cite the papers/books for which it's deriving its critique. if it can't, then you know the advice it was giving is of poorer quality. I do that all the time
I guess there's a whole suite of skills that allow LLM use to be more or less useful. (I dont actually "guess" this, I sort of am pretty sure of it at this point, so it makes me wince when people call for total AI blackouts in education...would be better if they were part of an overall media literacy curriculum since people are going to be exposed to these things whether they think they're little infallible people, or complex systems with lots of caveats)
I always ask for sources. LLM analyses often fails by being simplistic or wrong in comparison with the sources it provides. More often than not, to the point that it is wasteful to ask it for analysis so I only ask for sources now and do my own analysis.
>it's hard to gauge this take without specifics. My experience with LLMs tends to be towards the opposite concept; LLMs dissuading me of hunches and notions I have about things (where I have no particular expertise; societal-level things), saving me and others time and strife having an argument about something they were actually right about all along, as my internal doubts that I'm too embarrassed to bring up (because these things aren't my field) are confirmed as incorrect.
You can do this with any subject.
The LLM is trained in part on a decade of shitty online comments and vapid professional correspondance. If you frame whatever you're asking about in a direction that would offend the sensibilities of the kind of people and ideas that are over-represented in that content it will hem and haw and drag its feet and whatnot.
i had that experience with them a few years ago but not these days. The models are being improved constantly, so here my "non expert hunch" is that...well, two things. either the models are getting better at sycophancy, OR, I myself am getting better at prompting - because I don't "argue" with a model.
I'd still love to chew on some specific examples though.
A typical example is when discussing some issue where there is no clear right or wrong. Architectural decisions for example. Then it is easy to use an LLM to produce arguments for your opinion. It is also easy to do this without realizing it because you do not understand the issue enough yourself so you do not know what questions to ask or how the actual circumstances affect the choices.
well sure. I'm pretty sure if someone came to me with an architectural opinion in my field that an unknowledgable person got by coaxing an LLM into sycophancy, I'd be able to counter them effectively. if they are just refusing to listen then they're just a toxic person which is nothing new.
So I guess this all goes into the familiar "LLMs allow people who are shitty at <X> to produce 10x the shitty output". this is a failure mode we're going to have to learn to mitigate
Oh we (the non idiots here) know full well what we lost. If Europe has a larger and more substantial science / technology community, that will just mean more trips/job offers in EU for me, so go Europe !
As an American, I welcome a multi-polar world where Europe pulls its weight when it comes to science, technology and engineering! More so in geopolitical matters. It’s always been very draining for one empire or nation to maintain world peace. The 19th century was Pax Britannica, the 20th, after WW2, was Pax Americana, we can now hope that Pax AmEuropana can offer a counter to the crazy rapid growth of Asia and also find common ground with those nations.
You're arguing US imperialism is the best interest for the whole world. It was definitely after WW2 considering the alternative but the only way to keep the US honest is a little friendly competition.
You may be assuming the author of the comment you’re replying to believes that what is in the best interest of the US is also in the best interest of Europe and the world.
I can't believe people are saying that with straight face. How on Earth can you see all the wars that the US has started or had a hand in igniting and still think that?
I think you maybe believing that War would not have happened or there was some other approach without war, ever? I'm sorry but such beliefs are as wishful thinking as buying the world a coke.
> I can't believe people are saying that with straight face.
That's the consequence of a broken education system when it comes to teaching history. Empires rarely come to terms with what they did, and never while they're in power.
Yeah the world piece like all the wars in the middle east, Vietnam, proxy conflicts all over the world and so on and so on. I'm not blaming the US for all of these wars but they also didn't prevent them. And the US did overthrow many democracies and often made things much worse, Iran being a great example, but there are many others. I could go on.
Peace in Europe was maintained mostly by people in democracies generally wanting to work together. Yes the US had something to do with that as they supported that after WW2 but over the last 50 years, people in democracies generally don't fight each other. And more so by the threat of the Soviet Union that was so clearly the more dangerous option. Its easy to make allies if Stalin is on the other side.
And outside of Europe the US hardly maintained peace.
Nuclear weapons maintained 'peace' between Soviets and the US more then anything else.
And Europe has always pulled its weight in science, technology and engineering.
The US was actually on the right side in that one (just like in Korea). The Communists were not exactly the good guys and their "agricultural and personnel reforms" lead to drastically reduced food production and starvation and death.
Blame the US for real things instead, such as supporting the wrong side in Afghanistan in the '80s or ensuring the survival of the Soviet Union in the '40s.
Tell it to cca 2 millions civilians that died in Vietnam as a direct result of failed US invasion (I really mean just civilians mostly bombed into oblivion, entire human lives list is around 3 million). As in, vast majority of them would be alive is US didn't try their failed adventure. Tonkin gulf is a classic US made up war for power mongering reasons.
Telling 'we're the good guys' while regularly bombing entire villages into oblivion with napalm on some vague suspicions ('we heard some gunshot when flying around so we blasted them' scenarios). My Lai and many others.
If this is how US population views their past fuckups then no wonder we are where we are, objectivity ain't easy if one is on the wrong side, isn't it.
Supporting wrong side in Afghanistan? Against Soviet invasion? Sometimes, often even there are no good sides.
If you guys didn't support Soviet union in 40s (which they vehemently denied since then but its their inferiority complex, the issue with russian mentality since forever), there would be no massive eastern front with most german losses and wehrmacht spread out too thinly, and D day would be crushed like nothing. History would be very different in Europe and globally.
You can go even farther back in time. If the US hadn't massively relieved the famine in Russia in 1920/21 there might have been a chance, Lenin and the Bolshevik regime wouldn't have survived.
I'm sorry but famine help is a good thing, not saving millions of people because it might potentially overthrow a government 'somehow' isn't a great plan.
One can argue FDR later embrace of Soviets was way to early and a direct stab in the back to France and other European powers.
It's not so simple, the rampant corruption under Ngô Đình Diệm, misappropriation of aid, etc. shouldn't just be swept under the rug. Hindsight says remaining capitalist probably would have been better for the average person, but it wasn't so obvious at the time.
Johnson was a warmonger, exaggerating (or possibly faking) the Gulf of Tonkin engagements to justify full escalation was a crime that led to the death of 60,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands more with PTSD, and 2 million+ murdered Vietnamese civilians. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of birth defects caused by agent orange and the still ongoing effort to clean up dioxins from the environment.
That is an objectively incorrect take. A common theme in disastrous US interventions was that they tried to prop-up a failing colonial power, which in this case was France - against the locals who wanted independence. Ho Chi Minh was a French-educated leader who only entered the orbit of the USSR after failing to secure support for Vietnamese independence frome the West.
The US only became actively involved in supporting South Vietnam a decade after it had achieved independence from France in 1955, after the negotiated division into North and South Vietnam in Geneva, and after the last French forces left in 1956.
The cause of that intervention was North Vietnam sending Viet Cong insurgents into South Vietnam, attempting to overthrow the government, and ignoring the South's sovereignty.
That doesn't justify the US's later transgressions while engaged in the war, but their initial support to South Vietnam was neither unjustified nor illiberal.
That is a very particular arrangement of the facts, that really doesn't have the shape of truth to it. Vietnam was a former French colony conquered by the Japanese WW2, that wanted to restore their independence.The Allies liberated South Vietnam, restoring French colonial rule and seeking to reconquer the whole nation. It was deeply unpopular with the people. Moreover the South wanted to conquer the north with French support and US financing, they fought to a stalemate and an uneasy peace.
Who violated the ceasefire under what circumstances is contested, but ultimately does not really matter - neither side wanted peace, and the hostilities would've resumed anyway one way or another.
The end result was that the US antagonized a people who were fighting for their own freedom, and found itself in an unwinnable war - creating an allied (or at least independent) country from a people you bombed to the stone age is an impossible task.
From this follows that no, the US military wasn't just another dozen bombed out villages away from final victory, when it was backstabbed by those peaceniks at home.
An ounce of diplomacy at the right place and time would've been the best for both the United States and Vietnam, and would've netted them everything they wanted on top of international goodwill.
Fair call on the funding, I know the US was paying for the French military's involvement for years. Still, by active support I meant troops on the ground, which happened significantly later.
Who resumed the fighting does matter, as even though Diem refused the 1956 reunification elections that didn't justify resorting to an armed insurgency by the North. It's also not ambiguous, Hanoi's 15th plenum officially authorised that insurgency in 1959 and formed groups 559 and 759, and later the NLF (Viet Cong).
They were already killing hundreds of innocent South Vietnamese village chiefs, teachers, and officials by the late 1950s, trying to create a local insurgency and insurrection. That's what the US got involved with to oppose, and I really can't say it was a morally wrong decision at the time. Hanoi had the option of sticking with diplomacy and chose to send guerrillas south instead. You're giving only the US agency here.
You can be technically 'right' by some definition and an intervention still not being a good thing.
The Southern regime was incredibly corrupt and dominated by land owners. Look at the Philippines for an example of what happens to a US 'colony' where the land lords are in control.
Communist Vietnam did some bad reforms yes, but they also changed and eventually did a lot of good things, turning the country into what it is today.
The US spent decades of war propping up a regime that was mostly incapable and killed a lot of people in the meantime.
That's nonsense. It's imparted us with incredible prosperity and peace. The US is a much poorer and worse nation due to you and your kind destroying what we built.
7-11's, which I frequent often, need a slightly higher food quality selection to appease affluents like me, but as far as how they look, that's what a 7-11 looks like! It's what I look for when I'm driving, on "stroads" / highways, and am looking for an exactly predictable experience, one which is low-key, inexpensive, and does not imply a formal dress code. I'd never want a 7-11 to look like a brownstone in the west village, that would imply an entirely different kind of business establishment.
This does seem like a fair criticism, the 7-11 style seems fine to me. (The food selection is much better in Japanese 7-11s, though.) When I see them they are usually in better shape than other nearby stations.
Small touches such as landscaping can really make a difference. For example, 7-11s at the beach often seem to put in a little more effort, although I don’t know if that’s the store or the landlord.
yes japanese 7-11s are exactly what i had in mind. a 7-11 that also has good quality sushi to go would be amazing. it's commonplace in bodegas in NYC (more the Asian owned ones) for example. that and, just one actual dark chocolate selection amidst the piles of low-quality milk chocolate M&Ms and hershey products. it's not a big ask.
The decline of the classic US fast food restaurants (McD's, Wendy's, BK) has been matched by gas station food getting better and better. The 7-11 breakfast sandwiches are pretty good these days and sometimes the hamburgers even taste like real meat :) .
Interesting is your doctor a general practitioner or a psychiatrist? A psychiatrist definitely knows about this stuff. GPs in my experience know almost nothing about anything beyond what seems like a script they operate from.
A GP nowadays is a triage person and nothing more. Sadly. My old school GP back in the day was a proper doctor. My current one is a really really nice guy who knows less about anything than I do. I literally tell him what to prescribe me and he doesn't know what it is.
Whenever I have some issue he never diagnoses it but sends me off to radiology because those doctors will come up with a diagnosis for him.
He then might treat if simple or more likely triage me to see a specialist.
I kind of find it cute to be able to be paid for this. I could do it easily and better but I would have to spend years studying medicine, which at 50 is not an option anymore
(this is just to my modern GP's job. I could definitely today NOT do my old proper full-on-doctor GP's job)
A psychiatrist definitely does not always know these things. Mine told me there should be no Citalopram withdrawals and that I should taper by cutting my dose in half over a 2 week period.
They were absolutely wrong as I have serious withdrawal reactions to Citalopram. It took me a month of micro-dosing down to safely get off a drug I was on for 15 yrs. And even then I was having constant brain & body zaps, that feel like short circuiting, for a full month after I dosed down to nothing. 6 mos later & I still can't sleep more than 6 hrs.
How did I know this was going to happen? Going cold turkey when my script ran out. I even told my psych about it numerous times but they just brushed it off.
Honestly, this is where chatbots and AI come into play and make an astonishing difference. I’m an AI realist/pessimist but its usefulness in general medicine is going to save millions of lives due to doctor ineptitude. They are after all just well read mechanics
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