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I would actually argue the opposite. r/worldnews is one of the few major subreddits that actively blocks the hordes of pro Palestinian bots.

The pro Palestinian propaganda campaign being run by US adversaries might be the most effective I’ve ever seen.

I could write a very lengthy post on this topic but it’s exceptionally rare to find anyone willing to have a discussion and not a yelling match.


ThunderBee wrote:

> I would actually argue the opposite. r/worldnews is one of the few major subreddits that actively blocks the hordes of pro Palestinian bots. > The pro Palestinian propaganda campaign being run by US adversaries might be the most effective I’ve ever seen. > I could write a very lengthy post on this topic but it’s exceptionally rare to find anyone willing to have a discussion and not a yelling match.

I think this is what they claim to be doing, but really they are just blocking people who aren't pro-Israel while claiming they are bots.

I think you just explained what is going on. It is being done by the moderators.

The majority of opinion in Canada and US is negative on Israel's military campaign. Blocking this viewpoint from r/worldnews is censoring a majority viewpoint because I guess the moderators disagree with it. At least I am understanding now what is going on.

For example:

* 50% of Canadians believe that Israel is engaging in genocide: https://www.readthemaple.com/polls-show-gap-between-canadian...

* 40% of all US citizens and the majority of US democrats believe Israel is engaging in genocide: https://www.jpost.com/us-elections/article-800603

* Even 30% of American Jews believe Israel is engaging in genocide: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/one-third-of-american-jews...

And even if you don't think that Israel is committing genocide, it doesn't mean you don't care about Palestinians dying in Gaza.

The moderators and the non-blocked inhabitants of r/worldnews are creating an alternate reality and self-justifying it by claiming everyone who doesn't agree with them are bots.


Could you explain why you believe that the war in Gaza is a genocide?

I’m not discounting the fact that many people believe it’s a genocide, I’m saying that they think so because our adversaries propaganda has been incredibly effective. I frequently see posts from communities of people who would be executed in the ME for their beliefs supporting the regimes who would drop the guillotine.

Civilian deaths are a tragic but expected outcome of war. The real deaths counts are completely within the expected civilian death margin for a typical war. The only claims I have seen with numbers that would actually indicate a genocide come from propaganda rags.

I think Israel is showing a lot of restraint and is mitigating civilian deaths as best it can but Iran and their proxies have embedded their fighters within the civilian population and aid organizations to an extent that makes minimizing civilian casualties extremely challenging.

On a separate note, the bot problem on Reddit is arguably worse than anywhere else on the internet.

I’d encourage you to seek out some of the astroturfing services to get a sense of how bad it is as good botnets are basically undetectable nowadays. They use real looking accounts with post schedulers to simulate real activity and then mix in their clients messages.

I do agree that the actions taken to mitigate the bots can cause a siloing of opinions that can elicit an echo chamber effect but what else could they do? Reddit is completely uninterested in dealing with the problem because it boosts their metrics and bots can overwhelm any sub that doesn’t attempt to contain them.


Per the UN Genocide Convention, which defines genocide not just in the totalistic sense (as practiced by Nazi Germany for example) but as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

It isn't simply a matter of body counts (though I disagree with your spin on them). Israel's obvious intent to render Gaza to be basically uninhabitable, and to encourage what it coldly refers to as a "voluntary transfer" of its population; combined with its accelerated strangulation of the West Bank since the start of these activities, are what place its actions squarely within the scope of this definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention

I’m saying that they think so because our adversaries propaganda has been incredibly effective.

No, it's because they read and understand the above definition, and have been observing Israel's long-term game plan (particularly since 1967).

And have successfully immunized themselves against its own relentless and insidiously toxic propaganda machine.


> Could you explain why you believe that the war in Gaza is a genocide?

My formal answer: https://zionismlite.com/blog/2024-09-09-is-israel-committing...

> I think Israel is showing a lot of restraint and is mitigating civilian deaths as best it can

Unicef this week say: "The entire Palestinian population in North Gaza, especially children, is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and the ongoing bombardments." https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/statement-unicef-execu...

If you don't like Unicef, try Peace Now, a major Israeli/Jewish group that supports a 2 state solution - it is ethnic cleansing/starvation/expulsion:

https://x.com/peacenowisrael/status/1853441295974375518

Many genocides are actually happen once an attempt at ethnic cleansing is frustrated. Or done in concert with ethnic cleansing.

I would say that it is >90% likely that the ICJ rules that this is a genocide at this point.

> their proxies have embedded their fighters within the civilian population and aid organizations to an extent that makes minimizing civilian casualties extremely challenging.

This is no longer a war against Hamas nor it is about getting back the hostages. The first is achieved and the second Netanyahu doesn't care about because it would mean ending the war.

Instead because many in the Israeli government dream of Israeli settlements (https://www.timesofisrael.com/government-ministers-call-for-...), they do not want any rebuilding and do not want a day after plan that involves Palestinians staying in Gaza. This is what the war is about now: Israeli settlements in an ethnically cleansed Northern Gaza.

Netanyahu is also scared that any moderate government that emerges in Gaza led by Palestinians could lead to a two-state solution. He is against that no matter what: https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-boasts-of-thwarting-... https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-rejected-palestinian-state-as-...

So what will happen now? Israel continues ethnically cleansing/genocide and in return becomes more and more of a pariah state. If Harris wins, she may get tough with Israel, whereas with Trump, he probably lets Israel do what it wants.


One commonly overlooked facet of Cannabis is the big difference between indica and sativa. The cannabinoids, and ratios of them, can be vastly different which leads indica to be a ‘downer’ and sativa to be an ‘upper.’

An indica can put me into a lethargic state while a good sativa gives me as much energy as a cup of coffee but provides 2-4x the head rush.

I will frequently hit a sativa vape before going on a run or doing chores because it makes it a more pleasant experience with no downsides. If I were to swap to an indica it would not be enjoyable whatsoever.


Every credible claim that hasn’t been ruled a bird, balloon, etc. is likely just a classified test aircraft / drones or EW system.

It has been a running joke for 50+ years in the aerospace industry. People want to believe in fantastical theories so they lean into it.


I grew up in the religious south and the amount of stuff considered political is extremely disconcerting. The list includes:

- Climate science

- Evolution

- Geology

- History

- Sex ed.

Essentially they believe in banning anything contradictory to their narrow religious beliefs.


The most surprising thing to me is that Opus is only slightly in the lead.

I was feeding multiple python and c# coding challenges / questions to both and Opus blew GPT4 out of the water on every single task. Didn’t matter if I was giving them 50 lines or 5,000 Opus would consistently give working/correct solutions while GPT4 preferred to answer with pseudo code, half complete code with ‘do the thing here’ comments, or would just tell me that it’s too complicated.


Another data point, I definitely find Opus better for coding, but not by much. The problems I give them are generally short (<= 100 lines) and well-defined so any advantage Opus has in larger contexts won't be apparent to me. They're also generally novel problems but NOT particularly challenging (anyone with a BS CS should be able to solve them in < 1hr).

I have them working with mostly C++ and Clojure, a bit of Python, and Vimscript every once in a while. Both models are much better at Python and fairly bad at Vimscript. Clojure failure cases are mostly from invented functions and being bad at modifying existing code. I can't pick out a strong pattern in how they fail with C++, but there have been a few times where GPT4 ends up looping between the same couple unworkable solutions (maybe this indicates a poor understanding of prior context?).


Spot on. People need to say what they are actually using the models for and not just "coding".

I mostly use it to make react/javascript front ends to a python/fastapi backend and chatGPT4 is great at that.

I tried to write a piece of music though in the old Csound programming language and it barely even works.

It will be interesting to see how the context plays out because I have noticed that I can often give it extra context that I think will be helpful but end up causing it to go down a wrong path. I might even say my best results have been from the most precise instructions inside the smallest possible context.


It's because LMSYS is an aggregate elo across a range of different tasks. Individually in some very important areas, Claude Opus may be better than GPT-4 by 50-100 elo points which is quite a lot. However there are specific domains where GPT-4 has the advantage because it's been fine tuned based off a lot of existing usage. So weak points around logic puzzles or specific instructions don't bring down its elo whereas Claude Opus doesn't have this advantage yet. I believe Opus's eventual elo, after all these little areas of weakness are fine tuned, will be something like 1300.


Yeah GPT is incredibly lazy, ironically 3 is far better at not being lazy than 4.

I guess you benchmarked via API? I've heard even the datestamped models have been nerfed from time to time..


I’m far more afraid of what Big Tech will do if they get a state sponsored monopoly on the technology over some sci-fi level scenario where AI will kill us all.

If only one group gets access to advanced AI it’s a turnkey solution for totalitarianism. Preventing this should be our primary concern.


I'm more concerned about the economic fallout from AI than even that. I'm having trouble seeing a future (assuming that AI pans out as proponents expect) that doesn't include an awful lot of people falling hard into poverty.


We went from an agrarian society into this white collar service oriented society in the western world in a generation. The ability for bullshit jobs to squander productivity gains for steady 40 hours of butt in seat time can’t be underestimated.


> The ability for bullshit jobs to squander productivity gains for steady 40 hours of butt in seat time can’t be underestimated.

I'm not quite sure what this means. How do "bullshit jobs" squander productivity gains?


Correspondent contends that we’ve failed to spend society’s surplus productivity on an increase of leisure. We’ve rather created makework for vast segments of society who are no longer needed in a productive capacity but can hardly be left to starve.

This is arguably a result of the perverse incentives of growth capitalism. No profit may be made from leisure. Though indeed human psychology - the need to work - seems likely to play a role as well.


I don't even think these jobs are fullfilling. Do you really feel fulfilled by needing to work? Not really. Monkey brain doesn't work like that. You feel the need to survive, yes, but once shelter and food is acquired there is no biological drive to get you to be motivated to stock the shelves at Target. The only thing keeping people in those jobs today is the threat of abject poverty, and perhaps a lack of knowledge or opportunity to do something better to pay for food and shelter. Tellingly, no one who is independently wealthy is finding fulfillment stocking shelves at Target. You have to do that in this society as its more or less illegal to hunt and gather and homestead freely, thanks to property rights being distributed to every square inch of land on earth, and most current world governments have vilified the concept of an altruistic government and society, since that means the elites would have to cede material wealth and power.


They nerfed the model’s capabilities and made it so that it won’t do many of the interesting things it would at launch. How is anyone shocked?


What can it not do anymore? I haven’t noticed any change in my use cases (mostly simple code related questions).


This isn't true.


The US has a secure, jam resistant com link that will be used by the F35 to control a squadron of drones. I’m blanking on the name right now but it was displayed in a public demo so I’m sure someone else on here has seen it.


Sam is on record, and has even given lectures, stating the key to business success is monopolization.

It seems rather obvious under his perspective to do everything possible to restrict access to all information that could be used to train an LLM.

I understand Sam’s history with ycombinator gives him leniency around here but we seriously need to wake up to the fact that he’s attempting to monopolize the most powerful tool ever created. He talks a good game but if you pay attention to his actions it’s clear he is openly hostile towards the common good which he supposedly promotes.

I see him in the same regard as I see any oligarch vying for public favor by ‘stealing’ billions, donating a few million, and riding off into the sunset being praised by media for how much of the ill gotten gains he’s given back.


I think having LLMs watch/listen/read and summarize public meetings and legislation could present a path to saner discourse in our society. It will (hopefully) be far harder for news organizations and bad actors to pollute the discourse around an issue when you can instantly query exactly what was said or written and, if needed, add context and expand the conversation.


AI is not the solution to saner politics. That is a cultural issue specific to the political and media landscape of America. No other country in peacetime has local politicians waving guns at the camera as part of an electoral campaign.

We can query exactly what was written and said today, most public meetings of state/national importance will have full transcripts. People in America aren't going to do the work of looking into any of that. It is easier to click the share button on a meme image and brawl in the comment sections.


I don't think our public discourse is really steeped in truth or reality anymore, sadly. It doesn't really matter who said or did what when politicking and mass emotional manipulation win the day.

There's no lack of existing thoughtful analysis. It's just ignored more often than not.


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