Chris Hanson

@eschaton
1.6K Followers
941 Following
2.7K Posts

I used to work on tools for people to do work. Now I play with old computers and do other retiree things.

Ed Zitron is right. Ceterum censeo LLMs esse delenda.

Websitehttps://eschatologist.net/
Bloghttps://eschatologist.net/blog/
Show threadChris Hanson1d ago
@jonny @mxchara The unstated goal of such statements by the self-proclaimed “center-left” is to prevent any actual left populism from taking root. Because it turns out they’re not “center-left” at all; at least in the US and UK, they’re to the right of actual centrists like Bernie Sanders and AOC and Jeremy Corbyn.
Chris Hanson1d ago
Show threadjonny (nonvenomous)1d ago
The technology the left needs, apparently, is more like "a reasonable and secure chat app with channels and reputational vouching" than AI. If signal were to fall then all the affinity groups would get smoked, but in the meantime their capacity is hampered in no small part from signal exhaustion lmao.
Chris Hanson1d ago
Show threadjonny (nonvenomous)1d ago
No you cannot use LLMs to optimize your meetings without alienating the people actually doing work in your group. No you cannot use LLMs to guide your vanguardist international strategy. No you cannot use LLMs for keeping abreast of what your local fascist paramilitary is up to. No you cannot use LLMs to unionize your colleagues. No you cannot use an LLM to promote or coordinate a general strike. No you cannot use LLMs to generate a vague kind of labor currency. Yes using LLMs isolates you from people around you, yes LLMs are antithetical to solidarity with people around you, yes using LLMs corrodes the basis of social cohesion needed for local organizing, etc.
Chris Hanson1d ago
Show threadjonny (nonvenomous)1d ago
The reason the right and corporate center are experiencing great gains with AI are that they are floating on massive piles of exploitation that cushion losses, that the things they need are probabilistic managerialism where imprecision is a benefit as it can be constructed to always err in the managers favor, and the winning end state for them is total surveillance with carefully controlled access to information. None of these things can be "adopted by the left"
Chris Hanson1d ago
Show threadjonny (nonvenomous)1d ago
I instead view the situation as one that has eminent empirical validation where the largest companies in the world are trying to get us dependent on a technology that yields full control of what is possible to know, what happened, and what can be done as a subscription product with inelastic demand once saturated.
Chris Hanson1d ago
jonny (nonvenomous)1d ago
I regret to give anyone this information that didn't already have it, but "the left for AI" as a cluster of ideas both a) exists and b) is infopoison of the highest order
Chris Hanson4d ago
The lack of a film that’s a simultaneous sequel to both “Roadhouse” and “Cocktail” represents a serious failure of imagination on Hollywood’s part.
Chris Hanson6d ago
rob pikeMay 11

Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).

Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.

Chris HansonMay 8
Mark my words: The biggest revelation, if extraterrestrial visits to our world are ever revealed, will be that *people are people*. Conscious, intelligent beings are almost certainly going to be more the alike than we are different, no matter our circumstances. It’s certainly true for humans, and I feel pretty confident that it’s the sort of thing that will transcend species.
Chris HansonMay 5
Martin EscardoMay 5

When I was young, I learned, and was taught, how to make the computer to work efficiently and correctly, in my computer science degree.

Now it is the opposite. Do brute-force search using giant farms of computers, using a huge amount of energy and water, and get results that are not guaranteed to be correct any more.

And I was discussing with a colleague this morning that my 2001 laptop ran faster than my current top-range computer for everyday tasks. Of course, it had a much worse CPU and much less ram. And of course the software for things we still do *now* was much faster *then*.

I still have that laptop from that time running Ubuntu 4.10 from 2004 in my personal museum of computers. You would be amazed how responsive the system is for everything we do every day with a computer. I recently tested it with my son, because he was curious to see how things were then.

So we are using more powerful hardware for getting a poorer experience.

The new computers are much better for some things, such as running Agda. But, for everything else I happen to do, they were just as fast, because people programmed them in a more efficient way (they had to - there was no other way).