@glyph Did you quote post something?
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@mitsuhiko one of the reasons I find this so upsetting is that your argument here is so obviously missing the point that it makes me scared that these things can so terribly damage your metacognition that this seems like reasonable things to say. *I* still want to experiment with them to develop a better understanding, and this kind of public rhetoric makes me feel like I might be poisoning my own brain to do so!
@mitsuhiko I could *easily* accept an argument like "we all have to make decisions under uncertainty and *in my experience*, accounting for subjective distortion as best I can, there has been a big net benefit. we're going to have to agree to disagree until someone does a more comprehensive study; I'll gather more data on my own use in the meanwhile"
but your insistence that I recognize these anecdotal examples (which I *already acknowledged repeatedly*) as *proof* of net benefit is scary
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@glyph Absolutely, but even in that we can make out the general shape of the thing. We know this current model is not economically sustainable by any party. For users, the result will be inability to access models, or paying cripplingly high prices to do so. Option 1 will elucidate their inability to function without the models, and option 2 will impose the kinds of costs that look like rock bottom in other addictions.
@mttaggart @glyph If there is such an unwinding I think users that can't afford premium service providers will fall back to free/subsidized providers and tools that run on-device. A whole spectrum rather than a binary have / have not.
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My old boss became very reliant on LLMs…even though she could clearly see their limitations in terms of the field we were working in. I’m talking 6 mths ago and I appreciate that improvements to LLms are occurring weekly if not daily. But while she lapped them up (she was dyslexic and used to try and hide it by getting others to do all her written communications) I found LLMs left me frustrated - a lot of time wasted on prompts that led to diminishing returns.
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@glyph I wonder how long before "never used LLM" is a positive line item on a resume... 😂
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@glyph if you’re not familiar, searching for “variable intermittent reinforcement” might be informative. It’s the same mechanism behind slot machines, Facebook notifications, and email.
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@glyph if you’re not familiar, searching for “variable intermittent reinforcement” might be informative. It’s the same mechanism behind slot machines, Facebook notifications, and email.
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@genehack the phrasing and adjacency to "slot-machine" as an adjective was not an accident :)
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@glyph so apparently I get to be glad I forgot to ever try kratom despite repeated urging from a friend several years back.
Thanks, ADHD!
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@glyph if you’re not familiar, searching for “variable intermittent reinforcement” might be informative. It’s the same mechanism behind slot machines, Facebook notifications, and email.
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@genehack the phrasing and adjacency to "slot-machine" as an adjective was not an accident :)
@glyph sure, and I read that post — that area is something where I have personal experience (some time at NIDA, learned a thing or two…) so the parallels resonate stronger for me, and I’m maybe more attuned than usual to the resulting dangers.
Glad you’re aware of all of that, I think it’s an aspect many folks miss.
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@glyph sure, and I read that post — that area is something where I have personal experience (some time at NIDA, learned a thing or two…) so the parallels resonate stronger for me, and I’m maybe more attuned than usual to the resulting dangers.
Glad you’re aware of all of that, I think it’s an aspect many folks miss.
@genehack Gotcha. By the way, if there's a subtle distinction in between "variable intermittent reinforcement" and "intermittent reward schedule" as terms of art I'd definitely be curious to hear it — to my understanding they are strictly synonyms and used interchangeably.
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@genehack Gotcha. By the way, if there's a subtle distinction in between "variable intermittent reinforcement" and "intermittent reward schedule" as terms of art I'd definitely be curious to hear it — to my understanding they are strictly synonyms and used interchangeably.
@glyph as far as I know — as an adjacent non-expert person — they’re synonyms.
The way it was explained to me involved a rat in a cage with a food pellet lever. If pushing the lever resulted in a food pellet every time, rat pushed the lever when it was hungry. If pushing equaled no pellet, rat pushed it a few time then lost interest and stopped forever. If the lever push was 50-50 (or even worse odds) food pellet vs nothing, rat would sit there all day and push the lever over and over.
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@glyph I mean, I don't know what to tell you. Are you still really doubting that these things are useful? I've written so many times about this now, are you dismissing it? I can point you to code that I've written over the last seven days that in terms of complexity and utility, is way beyond what we've been able to push out over Christmas. (eg: https://github.com/mitsuhiko/tankgame which is public)
Like, how can you doubt this? It just boggles my mind.
@mitsuhiko @glyph A greenfield project seems like a good way to trial new technology but it's not a real world condition. Greenfield eventually turns to brownfield. Time and complexity shows where simple systems begin to break down.
Once that happens the AI tools become exponentially worse at making changes. Limited context windows. Complex logic changing over time. Updated dependencies.
And the human may lack the knowledge or ability to pick up the slack: https://leadershiplighthouse.substack.com/p/i-went-all-in-on-ai-the-mit-study
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@genehack Gotcha. By the way, if there's a subtle distinction in between "variable intermittent reinforcement" and "intermittent reward schedule" as terms of art I'd definitely be curious to hear it — to my understanding they are strictly synonyms and used interchangeably.
The main difference is that "reinforcement" and "reward" are not the same thing - reinforcement is a process meant to encourage a behavior, but it doesn't have to mean giving a reward. It could for instance involve removing an aversive stimulus - this is called negative reinforcement, one of the most misunderstood terms in psychology. So saying something is "intermittent reward" is more specific than saying it's "intermittent reinforcement".
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The main difference is that "reinforcement" and "reward" are not the same thing - reinforcement is a process meant to encourage a behavior, but it doesn't have to mean giving a reward. It could for instance involve removing an aversive stimulus - this is called negative reinforcement, one of the most misunderstood terms in psychology. So saying something is "intermittent reward" is more specific than saying it's "intermittent reinforcement".
This graph shows the 4 main kinds of operant conditioning. Reward covers the top left corner only, reinforcement covers the whole top half.
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The main difference is that "reinforcement" and "reward" are not the same thing - reinforcement is a process meant to encourage a behavior, but it doesn't have to mean giving a reward. It could for instance involve removing an aversive stimulus - this is called negative reinforcement, one of the most misunderstood terms in psychology. So saying something is "intermittent reward" is more specific than saying it's "intermittent reinforcement".
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Oh that's true, "variable" and "intermittent" are not quite the same either. Variable and fixed are both kinds of intermittent schedule.
So there are two distinct subtle differences in those phrases
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@xgranade to this point I have had kratom users — mostly indirectly, I am not particularly close with any — suggest that I try it because it is "more effective" and "easier to get" than prescription ADHD meds. And I'd definitely be lying if I didn't say I feel a *strong* pull towards believing that. It would be very nice to solve all my problems with a pill or a prompt
@xgranade I should clarify that other ADHD meds are a great thing and I have even had good personal experience with some, and they are in fact way too hard to get. I didn’t mean to dismiss them with the “pill” comment (and it was a poor choice of words given that kratom rarely comes in pill form). the toxic allure of something like kratom is the promise of something easy which is actually a poison, I don’t want to lump that in with the reductive/wrong idea “psychoactive meds are bad”.
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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“cuba vive e resiste”: contro l’attacco imperialista costruiamo la solidarieta’ popolare. iniziativa a brescia venerdi 27 febbraio
@anarchia
La presidente messicana, Claudia Sheinbaum, sta valutando la ripresa delle spedizioni di petrolio verso Cuba. La decisione giunge dopo la sentenza della Corte Suprema degli
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The support for #MathML in browser is often poor. The fact that instead of improving it the developers seem to be instead pressuring the standard bodies to impoverish the language only makes this worse.
(I am aware of #MathJax. We shouldn't need a heavy-duty #JavaScript library to solve typesetting problems. That's exactly what browser engines are there fore.)
I weep for the status of scientific publishing in the modern world.
(This rant is offered by my experience looking for options to make the SPHERIC newsletter available both in PDF and in HTML form. I don't even need complex math usually,, we try to avoid it in contributions because it's hard to typeset math outside of the TeX world. But the fact that in 2026 online the only safe way seems to be to typeset everything manually or rely on huge JavaScript libraries is a little depressing.)
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Ogni ho fatto una sostituzione in un paese non lontano da casa, paese che conosco bene. E non potevo non fare la foto alla chiesa principale che ogni volta mi ricorda il prete robot di Futurama (e potrebbe anche concorrere per il prossimo calendario di @ChieseBrutte )
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Parasocial media
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TerminalPhone
Encrypted push-to-talk voice communication over Tor hidden services.
TerminalPhone is a single, self-contained Bash script that provides anonymous, end-to-end encrypted voice and text communication between two parties over the Tor network. It operates as a walkie-talkie: you record a voice message, and it is compressed, encrypted, and transmitted to the remote party as a single unit. You can also send encrypted text messages during a call. No server infrastructure, no accounts, no phone numbers. Your Tor hidden service .onion address is your identity.
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Buona pubblicitá cucina-zanzariera-auto-profumo-fs a tutti!
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Figured out how to make little train tracks. 🚋
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@dalias
Come on guys, we sit on mastodon lamenting the sorry state of the world, and then everyone signs into an amazon account??? If our actions are to give money to an organization that aggressively works to destroy the middle class and liberal democracies world wide, then our words are meaningless... :-/Quoting The Disposable Heroes of Hip-Hopricy: hypocrisy is the greatest luxury....
