Is is that surprisingly few weapons inventors expressed regret and doubt? Or just that very few wrote about it?
Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts is— while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days.
Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts is— while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days.
That's true if your definition of 'die in armed conflicts' is limited to 'the soldiers on the battlefield.' If you extend that definition a little to 'people who would not have died if there hadn't been an armed conflict' then you need to scale it up to about a million people a year today. That's just from 5 countries where it's been studied. Globally it's likely to be much more. There's some good information about it, from a credible source, here: https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human
you also need to compare people injured so badly that they are significantly worse off for life after the war is over, as most of those people would probably have been killed in previous wars but thanks to modern medicine can be kept alive to suffer for years afterwards.
not a knock on modern medicine, and probably the people who survive are happy that they did for the most part, however if you compare the results in the way you did, you should compare those as well.
It’s less worry to me given that a year ago this would have been exceptionally harder to do, requiring a lot more time and effort and been more costly. A year from now it will be even easier. All of this means that one aspect of the mission that brought about the need for a license like this is now fundamentally easier whether or not the license is used. There can be less worry about software locked up in closed source overall.
There is a little something self important about the type of person that performs the role of defending forums and sub reddits from unknowingly reading something written by an AI, and so concerned that some other person will mistakenly do the same to their own Unicode-shaped gems, and therefore obsess so much more over the surface style than any other detail.
Certainly. And I'm a fan of unreliable narration and protagonists with irredeemable qualities. Making that subversion intentional and exploring it further would be another interesting angle to take this.
You need the tension between both, or else either approach at most levels of systems, whether its an app or a corporation, tends to lead to toxic failures modes.
It could be something overbuilt, large organization structures. Brittle solutions that are highly performant until they break. Or products/offerings that don't grow for similar reasons, simpler-is-better, don't compete with yourself. Or those that grow the wrong way-- too many, much to manage, frailty through complexity, sku confusion.
Alternatively, things that are allowed to grow with some leeway, some caution, and then pruned back.
There's failure modes in any of these but the one I see most often is overreaching concern for any single one.
Oh no, how will people signal that some functionality or product in general is what they'd previously been referring as Mircolosp? er, Microsolps. wait, that's not it either, Macroslop. Micro$lop. Microsplo. Sorry, so many typos! but you know what I mean.
A PhD generating knowledge has a cumulative effect that an equivalent intelligence generating prose purely for entertainment does not. And a whole bunch of that work isn’t really about novel insights, it’s about filling in gaps and doing knowledge work that assists people who are capable of having those insights. AI doing this enables them, also making it possible for more people to do the same.
Data centers in space no longer look so unreasonable when the requirement is “redundancy against multi site bomb strikes mid op”. A little depressing when some pieces start to fit together.
I’m not exactly fully bought into the idea (for many practicality reasons) but it seems easier to build many (and replace) ground stations than data centers.
Additionally, StarLink et al are now able to directly communicate with cell phones. It therefore should be possible to route entirely in space between “data center satellites” and communications satellites and communicate directly with an end user device, avoiding the entire terrestrial internet.
Routing? Why route? the link at the point of comms is direct. There's no extra ground station, unless you mean the person/people doing things. But either they're communicating direct to a DC on the ground, or one in space, or wherever. Setup so that-- sure-- they can work and coordinate better if someone isn't dropping bombs on ground nodes but that all nodes have some independent capabilities as well.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military.
The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.
Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.
WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
I’d encourage a change of labels away from “friend/foe”. It may seem minor but the subtle loaded nature of those paired terms encourages an adversarial stance rather than one of productive discourse. It’s not catchy so there’s probably better than this but, just as an example— “engage/ignore” could better signal to the user a neutral “do I want to bother with this person?”
Agreed, independent of where the terminology came from, I think if you're trying to promote healthier engagement both for yourself and others using this extension, then not having such adversarial names it's probably a good idea. It should just end up being a sort of web of trust to help you decide what's worth engaging with — and sometimes perfectly valid people that you're not actually enemies with or anything just aren't worth your time engaging with because of fundamental axiological or positional differences.
That would imply a slightly different semantics than what the extension currently provides, though.
If you truly want certain users to be "ignored", then you probably want any of their comments (and the subtree of descendant comments) to be hidden/collapsed/made less legible, so that you don't accidentally read them, and thereby don't accidentally get rage-baited by them into wasting your day arguing with them. Same as e.g. kill files on Usenet.
Given that this comment collapsing/hiding/visibility-decreasing is something already built into HN (for comments/subtrees with strongly-negative score), it'd be really easy for the extension to hijack this functionality for its own purposes... if it actually wanted the red button to mean "ignore".
That the extension doesn't do that, implies to me that the extensions intended semantics for "foes" isn't "I don't want to engage with this person" but rather "I want to notice this person more." Perhaps "so that I can take the opportunity to actively antagonize them / argue with everything they say."
(I'm not saying that this is a good thing; just that insofar as "the purpose of a system is what it does", this is the purpose of a plain "foe" signal!)
maximize your projection onto like minded commenters, create that bubble you always yearned for but until now have never had the add-on to empower the inner-you! finally, you can ignore that filthy plane of delusional outcasts and banish them to the orthogonal abyss forever.
I see this as a very hn type commenting. Nitpicking over semantics rather than engaging the whole. Your comment is fine, but the whole response in the rest of the thread is boorish.
I'm fine with friend or foe, because they are in reality, just coloured blobs
I think there is a difference between “nitpicking” and “discussing” details. I personally do not see any nitpicking in OP’s comment, I rather see it as valuable and well-presented contribution to the general (wholistic) discussion.
To me, your response would have been just fine with only the last sentence.
For once a "this is a very HN" comment seems earned but I think it just marks you at not really the target audience for HN
One of the reason we come to HN is that curiosity and caring about details is rewarded and makes for great discussion
Also your comment has no substance. I stand totally unimpressed by your opposition between the whole and the details and I fail to see how this is relevant. Care to explain what tackling the whole would look like ?
Or are you just trying to handwawe away some potential issue you are too lazy to consider just because you like the project ?
Note that IIRC the guidelines ask you to refrain from "This is HN/reddit" comments because they are fundamentally uninteresting (and lazy)
> I think it just marks you at not really the target audience for HN
This has some pretty serious connotations. I have been here for an awful long time for someone who is not a target audience, please take a moment of self reflection at that.
I don't think nitpicking is a synonym for 'caring about details'. I am acusing commenters of picking on unimportant details, and I'm acusing them of doing it because it is easier than the more substantive concerns that are further down the thread. It looks superficially clever, but is actually just pedantry.
> because you like the project ?
That kind of statement is intellectually dishonest. I wont be installing this extension, but not because of a name for the buttons that didn't form part of the UI.
> Note that IIRC the guidelines ask you to refrain from
Well, I just checked rather than relying on the my fallible memory and, and I don't believe it does. If you want to police people's comments, perhaps take a little more care.
> It looks superficially clever, but is actually just pedantry.
I'll just defend why is think this is not in fact pedantry but a genuine concern :
The "great divide" is now such commonplace, especially in the US, with people living in their online and media environment bubbles that "gardens" like HN are more valuable than ever. The world is already tribal enough as it it. "friend" or "foe" encourages tribal behaviour instead of engaging with different viewpoints. Tribal behaviour is deeply ingrained in all of us and nothing to scoff at. The extension encourages glossing over diverging viewpoints, setting yourself up to dismiss quickly. I just don't think that's in the spirit of HN. There's already community moderation to prune comments who are failing HN guidelines.
You are indeed correct about the guidelines.
This is the part I remembered wrongly:
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit.
However I don't think it would be against the spirit of the law to extend the guidelines with "Don't make comments about the general population of HN. Such vague generalizations bring nothing interesting to the table"
I like friend and foe far more than engage and ignore. A foe isnt someone you ignore. Ignoring is what builds bubbles. A foe can often be right even if you disagree.
Hacker Smacker doesn't mean you ignore your foes. Their comments are now labeled with the tiny red orb, giving you acknowledgement of how you've felt about them in the past.
I've used this extension for the past 15 years and I can say that I love seeing foes show up in threads. I still read their comments, but I know going into it that I can probably skip it after the first sentence if I recognize that it's more of what I disliked about them in the first place.
This is a time saving browser extension, freeing me up to scan more HN threads. I now often scan a thread to see if there's any friends, foes, or FoaFs inside.
That makes sense, but then what is the purpose of the 'foe' label? I can see the logic behind using it as a time-saver (as described by conesus) or a reminder that engagement will probably be unproductive. But if you intend to learn from and engage with the foe, it seems like the 'foe' label is just going to prejudice you against their comments before you read them, without much benefit.
I sure hope the disagreement to ignore ven diagram doesnt look like that. If u never engage, how will you ever know you were wrong about something repetitive and boring?
Most things are interesting if you look deeply into them. People on the other hand can be repetitive and boring about them. Which would extend to the excessive use of meta-argument: complaining people aren't listening but also not actually saying anything of substance.
A foe is also someone you might preemptively punch in the face if they get too close before you could determine if they actually meant you harm right then.
I'd prefer not to label things such that I'm justifying the label's negative potential by the disproportionately small "even if" range of positive ones.
Agree, one of the great parts of HN is that we can still have wholehearted, earnest discussions with people we disagree with. I don't think bringing the combative nature of other platforms makes sense here. We're not at war with eachother or people we disagree with, as much as most media outlets want that to be the case.
This is HN. The focus should be "does this person provide interesting or thought provoking comments", not "relationships" or "engagement".
There are plenty of HN commenters whose opinions I absolutely dislike (I'm sure it's mutual ;), but I still read them - they are at least well reasoned or point out missing facts. I don't have to like them to learn from them.
Yes, and you just found that you "favor" WorldMaker, and therefore ... read the suggestion "Follow/Distance?" more eagerly?
If that suggestion (which I suppose you'll ignore anyway, but maybe it inspires some other thought in you) came from a foe, then ... you'd be directed away from paying attention to it? Because you've incontinently flipped a colored orb at some point in the past, and now you're going to use that statistical information to direct you to where the most inspiring ideas mostly are? I see.
But maybe this is not very high quality information in the first place (the information that you provide for yourself by flicking an orb)?
Is is that surprisingly few weapons inventors expressed regret and doubt? Or just that very few wrote about it?
Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts is— while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days.
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