gradient descent into madness

Reinforcement learning guy, #1 mirror descent enjoyer, game design enthusiast, and haver of many bad opinions

[sleepnoises]

boyfriend's quail photos have reached perhaps a lifetime peak today

[damazcuz]

Laughing at this again today. My piece of shit wuppyog?!

[bambamramfan]

The Huggingface Incident

...

I just want to reiterate, even though I am enjoying making cool stuff with Claude:

We need to stop fucking around. I do not want to find out.

[collapsedsquid]

I mean the other recent AI story that he doesn't directly address there is the rise of Chinese open-weight models that raises questions of "What are you going to do about this?"

[natural-blogarithm]

A belated inventory

In my thirties I've started making lists: birds to spot, lakes to jump in, cities to wander at 3am after the subway stops running, storms to make me pray to no god at all, textbooks and paintings and songs that will burrow themselves inextricably into my mind. The longer I'm alive, the more I mourn everything I can't learn. It's a terrifying world and I want to be afraid. I want to know what there is to fear at all.

[markovchaingang]

i'd like to formally apologise for my behaviour last night, which i can only describe as "fucking badass"

[micro-usb-deactivated20230625]

ALT

[smbc-comics]

Actually, things were at their best during the last year of my life when I had no responsibilities.

Check out the bonus panel on the site.

Upcoming book signings this summer.

───── ◆ ───── ◆ ───── ◆ ─────

SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

Buy this comic as a print.

[toskarin]

wizards of the coast is really innovating if you're into apocalyptically incestuous cultural sludge, digested and regurgitated to only barest recognisability for viable producteering

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

:/

[phaeton-flier]

There's an important lesson here, which is that stuff tends to get done by the people who just... Show up and do stuff. Just taking initiative and starting things often gives you a lot of decision power. There are no adultier adults who are in charge—just whoever is trying things.

[everythingfox]

Most unserious animal

[ceescedasticity]

That looks like an "I'm going to run through all my tricks until you reward me for something" to me.

[natural-blogarithm]

all my haters turn into tomaters in my mysteriously well-fertilized garden of success

[sreegs]

nobody seems to understand this: when you download something someone's gotta make a new file to replace the one you downloaded

[deadgenerations]

it's literally like sucking cock the computer's balls need time to make new little file sperms. this is called Seeding

[sreegs]

not what i was aiming for but you know what that's fine

[maykitz]

when people who want to be vaguely progressive say 'nature' all secular style but it's painfully obvious they mean 'god' while thinking they don't mean god

[maykitz]

"natural behaviour" "the natural body" "nature intended" "nature created" no da fuck it didn't

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.” - Yuval Noah Harari

[bayesic-bitch]

If you read interviews with homicide cops, two things quickly become clear

It is really not all that hard to get away with murder. A basic amount of foresight and prep will get rid of enough evidence that the police either won't find the killer or will be unable to make the charge stick.

Despite this, most murders do get solved, because someone who decides that murder is the solution to their problems is probably not the kind of person to be levelheaded and careful enough to avoid getting caught.

I think something very similar is true of sockpuppet accounts. It's not that hard to make a convincing sockpuppet. However, people almost always make sockpuppets as a way of defending their egos, of making it look like they have more support than they actually do. And this passionate defense of someone the sockpuppet ostensibly doesn't know and has no reason to care about is a dead giveaway. So if you want to validate a sockpuppet you have to lose an argument to it. You have to get owned. Once it makes you look like an idiot, basically no one will ever suspect it again.

Unfortunately, by posting this, I've burned my only chance to actually do it. From now on, whenever you see me getting dunked on, you'll assume it's staged sockpuppet validation. and you'd be right. i have never lost an argument on this website. every single one was staged. i did not get owned. i did not get owned.

[syabm]

My most persistent troll is an idiot who keeps making accounts of either totally random words, or ones that make his agenda obvious.

And he keeps posting in the exact same way, no matter what. Keeps bringing up the same long-debunked arguments to distract the conversation from stupid things his team says and does. Or a stereotyping personal attack/generalization.

He's not even subtle about it.

He's wasting more effort making these accounts than it takes to ignore them.

I notice similar posting patterns in Youtube comment trolls, so I sometimes wonder if this is some kind of paid troll or bot, and wonder why anyone would waste the effort on someone who doesn't even qualify as a picocelebrity.

[gopfails]

Turns out being a garbage human who lies and victim blames to defend murderers makes people upset

Try not being a piece of shit next time

[bayesic-bitch]

@gopfails @syabm,

can you guys do this somewhere else

[bayesic-bitch]

If you read interviews with homicide cops, two things quickly become clear

It is really not all that hard to get away with murder. A basic amount of foresight and prep will get rid of enough evidence that the police either won't find the killer or will be unable to make the charge stick.

Despite this, most murders do get solved, because someone who decides that murder is the solution to their problems is probably not the kind of person to be levelheaded and careful enough to avoid getting caught.

I think something very similar is true of sockpuppet accounts. It's not that hard to make a convincing sockpuppet. However, people almost always make sockpuppets as a way of defending their egos, of making it look like they have more support than they actually do. And this passionate defense of someone the sockpuppet ostensibly doesn't know and has no reason to care about is a dead giveaway. So if you want to validate a sockpuppet you have to lose an argument to it. You have to get owned. Once it makes you look like an idiot, basically no one will ever suspect it again.

Unfortunately, by posting this, I've burned my only chance to actually do it. From now on, whenever you see me getting dunked on, you'll assume it's staged sockpuppet validation. and you'd be right. i have never lost an argument on this website. every single one was staged. i did not get owned. i did not get owned.

[powerjock]

making posts about how beer tastes bad is a lot like that painting of a jester harassing a bunch of dogs while leaning over a wall, except the jester is below the dogs and trying so hard to reach them, and all the dogs are extremely beautiful and strong, and have a wonderful community built on love, and they never want for anything. they never want for anything.

[kata4a]

will toledo was so right

[kata4a]

it doesn't have to be like this. killer whales.