bbor

@robb.doering.ai

999 Followers 3871 Following

Terrified optimist, Kant stan, AI loon, and self-unemployed cognitive engineer — in that order! Begrudgingly [he/him]. Ostensibly here to discuss philosophy, but... y'know... ✊ 🏴 🇺🇸 El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido 🇺🇸 🚩 ✊

A discord screenshot that depicts 1) a user with a green avatar named "butlerian jihad" saying "Will speaking about violence get me banned?", 2) an interstitial meme saying "One Day Later...", and 3) A conversation between that user and an anonymous journalist, labelled "the Free Press". The conversation goes like this: "Hey there! I saw you were asking aobut violent on the stop AI server. What did you have in mind?" "Luig'ing some tech CEOs" and then, in obviously-fake font, the meme creator added "LMAO that's awesome, wanna be interviewed?"
If you actually recognize that making things matters, that we would love to have high levels of trade but it needs to be balanced trade, then, in fact, having a tariff and putting a thumb on the scale for domestic production becomes a correction of an inefficiency that we' suffering from. Having a tariff says, look, you can import stuff if you have to or if you want to, but there's s going to be a cost associated with doing that, which means you're going to think a lot harder about what you can make here. If you're investing, maybe it makes sense to invest in building things here. The implication of a trade deficit is that we lost all of the manufacturing jobs in one area and created nothing new to offset it. That's an immediate problem for the health of our economy and for the trajectory of our growth.
One policy that we focus on at American Compassis is very big and broad and blunt, which is that we should have a global tariff. We should essentially say that anything coming into this country has a 10% tariff attached to it. That makes imports less attractive than domestic production and consumption.
Graph showing that us food exports are at a high since 1995
Graph from the fed showing the unemployment rate is actually very, very low
The reciprocal tariffs were left-censored at zero. Higher minimum rates might be necessary to limit heterogeneity in rates and reduce transshipment. Tariff rates range from 0 to 99 percent. The unweighted average across deficit countries is 50 percent, and the unweighted average across the entire globe is 20 percent. Weighted by imports, the average across deficit countries is 45 percent, and the average across the entire globe is 41 percent. Standard deviations range from 20.5 to 31.8 percentage points.
A graph showing that Saudi exports spiked in 2023 via the category mentioned above, for some reason ($13B)
But when you transform to odds ratios, 0.502 and 0.503 go to 1.008 and 1.012, and 0.9999 and 0.99999 go to 9,999 and 99,999. And when you transform to log odds, 0.502 and 0.503 go to 0.03 decibels and 0.05 decibels, but 0.9999 and 0.99999 go to 40 decibels and 50 decibels. When you work in log odds, the distance between any two degrees of uncertainty equals the amount of evidence you would need to go from one to the other. That is, the log odds gives us a natural measure of spacing among degrees of confidence. Using the log odds exposes the fact that reaching infinite certainty requires infinitely strong evidence, just as infinite absurdity requires infinitely strong counterevidence. Furthermore, all sorts of standard theorems in probability have special cases if you try to plug 1s or 0s into them—like what happens if you try to do a Bayesian update on an observation to which you assigned probability 0.
Searches for "consumer confidence" are at a five-year high
In his home life, as in his intercourse with friends, and even with mere acquaintances, I think one might say that Karl Marx's main characteristics were his unbounded good-humor and his unlimited sympathy. His kindness and patience were really sublime. A less sweet-tempered man would have often been driven frantic by the constant interruptions, the continual demands made upon him by all sorts of people. That a refugee of the Commune a most unmitigated old bore, by the way—who had kept Marx three mortal hours, when at last told that time was pressing, and much work still had to be done, should reply "Mon cher Marx, je vous excuse" is characteristic of Marx's courtesy and kindness. As to this old bore, so to any man or woman whom he believed honest (and he gave of his precious time to not a few who sadly abused his generosity), Marx was always the most friendly and kindly of men. His power of "drawing out" people, of making them feel that he was interested in what interested them was marvelous. I have heard men of the most diverse callings and positions speak of his peculiar capacity for understanding them and their affairs. When he thought anyone really in earnest his patience was unlimited. No question was too trivial for him to answer, no argument too childish for serious discussion. His time and his vast learning were always at the service of any man or woman who seemed anxious to learn.
is it possible to be allergic to water is it possible to be pregnant on your period is it possible to be born with pink hair is it possible to lose a pound a day is it possible to learn this power is it possible to have purple eyes is it possible to have 3 breasts is it possible to reverse diabetes
An image of a modern RGB gaming pc setup, where you can see the internal electronic components light up, along with a lit up keyboard.
Principal Skinner from the Simpson thinking intently, wondering if he’s out of touch
The famous arrested development meme with Vance and Hegseth badly photoshopped on, reading: Well, did it work for those people? No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but… but it might work for us.
Well, it's like the post says: two giant arthropds swim through a shallow freshwater channel, while small plants and simple mosses are dwarfed by strange, tall dark columns of flesh.
Data sourced from https://wordsrated.com/academic-publishers-statistics/, which is much more readable than I can make any alt text :)
A comic with two panels. First, “how it looked”, showing a woman growing from a young girl into an old lady. Then, “how it felt”, which shows the young girl holding up costume-like appearances with increasing consternation!
A graph showing true crime became popular in the late 80s, then spiked after Serial (~2012)
Part 3 (Articles 6 – 27) lists the rights themselves. These include rights to: physical integrity, in the form of the right to life and freedom from torture and slavery (Articles 6, 7, and 8); liberty and security of the person, in the form of freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention and the right to habeas corpus (Articles 9 – 11); procedural fairness in law, in the form of rights to due process, a fair and impartial trial, the presumption of innocence, and recognition as a person before the law (Articles 14, 15, and 16); individual liberty, in the form of the freedoms of movement, thought, conscience and religion, speech, association and assembly, family rights, the right to a nationality, and the right to privacy (Articles 12, 13, 17 – 24); prohibition by law of any propaganda for war as well as any advocacy of national or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence (Article 20); political participation, including the right to the right to vote (Article 25); Non-discrimination, minority rights and equality before the law (Articles 26 and 27). Many of these rights include specific actions which must be undertaken to realize them.
A meme reading “you wouldn’t download a fish. Teach the multitude. It’s a crime.” as a parody of a famous anti-piracy commercial from the early oughts (“you wouldn’t download a car”). In the middle is an image of Jesus distributing fish and bread from the “feeding the multitude” Bible story
But we’ve been dealing with Denmark. We’ve been dealing with Greenland. And we have to do it. We really need it for national security. I think that’s why NATO might have to get involved in a way, because we really need Greenland for national security. It’s very important. You know, we have a couple of bases on Greenland already, and we have quite a few soldiers that — maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers go there. I don’t know. What do you think about that, Pete? Don’t answer that, Pete. (Laughter.) Don’t answer that question. But we have bases, and we have quite a few soldiers on Greenland already. Q Mr. President, some people question your commitment to NATO. Will everything — anything change? Your com- — your commitment to NATO, will anything change? Same amount of money? PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I think they made — Q Same number of troops? PRESIDENT TRUMP: — a great step by putting Mark in charge. I think, to me, that’s a great step, because he and I have seen eye to eye on everything for a long time. We’ve been doing this a long time now.
Definitions include: "the deliberate killing of innocent people, at random, to spread fear through a whole population and force the hand of its political leaders" (Michael Walzer, 2002). "the organized use of violence to attack non-combatants (‘innocents’ in a special sense) or their property for political purposes" (C. A. J. Coady, 2004). "the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating some other people into a course of action they otherwise would not take" (Igor Primoratz, 2004).[page needed] "the use of force or violence or the threat of force or violence to change the behavior of society as a whole through the causation of fear and the targeting of specific parts of society in order to affect the entire society" (Arthur H. Garrison, 2004). "The premediated use or threat to use violence by individuals or subnational groups to obtain a political or social objective through the intimidation of a large audience beyond that of the immediate victims" (Todd Sandler, 2010). "a doctrine about the presumed effectiveness of a special form or tactic of fear-generating, coercive political violence... [as well as] a conspiratorial practice of calculated, demonstrative, direct violent action without legal or moral restraints, targeting mainly civilians and non-combatants, performed for its propagandistic and psychological effects on various audiences and conflict parties" (Schmid, 2011).
The United Nations General Assembly condemned terrorist acts by using the following political description of terrorism in December 1994 (GA Res. 49/60): Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.
On 1 March 1847, the Bank of England announced plans to raise a loan of £14 million to relieve the Irish crisis, and also for unfunded tax cuts. This led to the Panic of 1847, in which gold was withdrawn from circulation, so reducing the amount of bank notes that the Bank could legally circulate. By 17 April 1847 the bullion reserve of the Bank of England had diminished from £15 million in January to some £9 million, and it was announced that the cost of famine relief would be transferred to local taxes in Ireland. The financial crisis temporarily improved, but the intended relief for Ireland did not materialise. In June 1847, the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act 1847 (10 & 11 Vict. c. 31) was passed which embodied the principle, popular in Britain, that Irish property must support Irish poverty. The landed proprietors in Ireland were held in Britain to have created the conditions that led to the famine. However, it was asserted that, since the Acts of Union 1800, the British Parliament was partly to blame. This point was raised in The Illustrated London News on 13 February 1847: "There was no law it would not pass at their request, and no abuse it would not defend for them." On 24 March, The Times reported that Britain had permitted in Ireland "a mass of poverty, disaffection, and degradation without a parallel in the world. It allowed proprietors to suck the very life-blood of that wretched race". The "Gregory clause" of the Poor Law, named after William H. Gregory, MP, prohibited anyone who held at least 1⁄4 acre (0.1 ha) from receiving relief. In practice, this meant that the many farmers who had to sell all their produce to pay rent and taxes, would have to deliver up all their land to the landlord to qualify for public outdoor relief. These factors combined to drive thousands of people off the land: 90,000 in 1849, and 104,000 in 1850. The Incumbered Estates (Ireland) Act 1849 (12 & 13 Vict. c. 77) allowed landlord estates to be auctioned off upon the petition of …
A graph from Wikipedia showing US college education rates growing since 1940 — tho there is indeed something of a plateau around 1977-1996 (Vietnam pushback +aftermath?). It was around 4-5% in 1940, and 27-30% (?) in 2015. By comparison, high school completion flattened out in the seventies after hitting ~85%, and has barely grown since.
A graph showing drop offs in the 2024 US presidential election, which refers to when more votes are received for “downballot” members of a party than are received for the presidential nominee of that party — usually a quite rare event. This graph, if true, indicates that the downballot drop offs significantly favored Trump in swing states, but was otherwise normal/positive in non-swing states. It’s sourced from SMARTelections.us
A graph showing Elon started tweeting a lot in 2018, but his interest in “free speech” and immigration didn’t start until 2021, and “crime” in 2022
A graph showing emissions around 160Tg for Wetlands, 25Tg for biomass burning, ~110Tg (or more!) from Fossil fuels, and ~210Tg from Agriculture.
A large spreadsheet comparing two books; see comment for link. Sorry, don’t think I can describe this one in prose!
A screenshot of a google sheet, too complex to describe in full; see this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Gw9lxWhhTxjjTstyAKliwdy75VHXLtCDxCPFJhe5pPQ/edit?usp=sharing
Part 3 (Articles 6 – 27) lists the rights themselves. These include rights to: physical integrity, in the form of the right to life and freedom from torture and slavery (Articles 6, 7, and 8); liberty and security of the person, in the form of freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention and the right to habeas corpus (Articles 9 – 11); procedural fairness in law, in the form of rights to due process, a fair and impartial trial, the presumption of innocence, and recognition as a person before the law (Articles 14, 15, and 16);
An LA times article that begins “I saw a great meme created by Dustin Mulvaney…”
It was March 1937 and the Spanish Civil War was raging. Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the eventual leader of the military rebellion that broke out against the Second Spanish Republic in July 1936, was increasingly desperate to conquer the capital to cement the legitimacy of his authority. Yet, the defense of Madrid had proven far more resilient than he had ever imagined. “¡No Pasarán!” the people shouted, they shall not pass. To turn the tide, Franco called upon the forces that Mussolini, like Hitler, had sent to Spain in violation of the neutrality agreement that France and Britain were still conscientiously observing. To achieve glory in Spain, Mussolini had outfitted a force of 35,000 men with 250 tanks, 180 artillery, and 4 motorized machine gun companies. It was the “most heavily armed and best-equipped force yet to enter the battle.”107 Yet, their technological advantage evaporated as their vehicles got stuck in the mud outside of Guadalajara and their air support was grounded in flooded airfields. From March 12 to 17, the CTV faced intermittent attacks from a range of forces that included the XI International Brigade (composed of the French Commune de Paris battalion and German Edgar André and Thälmann battalions), the XII International Brigade (composed of the Italian Garibaldi battalion and the Franco-Belgian André Marty battalion), and Cipriano Mera’s anarchist militia supported by the republican air force.108 A trickle of desertions turned into a full-scale collapse on the 18th as the Spanish Republic claimed its first victory of the war. In his capacity as a war correspondent for The New York Times, Ernest Hemingway argued that “it is impossible to overemphasize the importance of this battle,” which energized international anti-fascism aftera decade and a half of continual defeat.109
A pair of graphs showing A) that Elon Musk has started tweeting an *insane* amount at all hours of the day since buying Twitter (like literally stops for maybe 3-4h a day, maybe) and B) has started tweeting overwhelming about fascist shit like "Immigration" and "Free Speech", and relatively less about climate tech or renewable energy
Screenshot showing AOCs top donors are (employees of) Alphabet, NYC, teachers, “health professionals”, retirees, and University of California workers
A meme with the “progressively bigger brain” format, with the following panels: 1. Studying philosophy through old books 2. Studying philosophy through randomly selected articles 3. Studying philosophy through /r/PhilosophyMemes 4. Studying philosophy through arguing with your one friend who puts up with it
To pull from the relevant part of Hofstadter’s incredible I am a Strange Loop (a book also happens to more rigorously invoke Gödel for cognitive science): And this is our central quandary. Either we believe in a nonmaterial soul that lives outside the laws of physics, which amounts to a nonscientific belief in magic, or we reject that idea, in which case the eternally beckoning question "What could ever make a mere physical pattern be me?” After all, a phrase like "physical system" or "physical substrate" brings to mind for most people… an intricate structure consisting of vast numbers of interlocked wheels, gears, rods, tubes, balls, pendula, and so forth, even if they are tiny, invisible, perfectly silent, and possibly even probabilistic. Such an array of interacting inanimate stuff seems to most people as unconscious and devoid of inner light as a flush toilet, an automobile transmission, a fancy Swiss watch (mechanical or electronic), a cog railway, an ocean liner, or an oil refinery. Such a system is not just probably unconscious, it is *necessarily* so, as they see it. This is the kind of single-level intuition so skillfully exploited by John Searle in his attempts to convince people that computers could never be conscious, no matter what abstract patterns might reside in them, and could never mean anything at all by whatever long chains of lexical items they might string together.
Ross Glick, a pro-Israel activist who previously shared a list of campus protesters with federal immigration authorities, said that he was in Washington, D.C., for meetings with members of Congress during the Barnard library demonstration and discussed Khalil with aides to Sens. Ted Cruz and John Fetterman who promised to “escalate” the issue. He said that some members of Columbia’s board had also reported Khalil to officials.
Blocked by 1,315
AI companies are spamming federal workers' key online hub Federal workers’ online sanctuary, r/FedNews, is getting bombarded with ads for AI. Plus, AI-generated art controversy and another sign the bubble's bursting?
Shalom by itself is a very common abbreviation and it is used in Modern Israeli Hebrew as a greeting and farewell. In this way, it is similar to the Hawaiian aloha, the Korean annyeong, the Persian dorud (bedrud), the Indian namaste, the Italian ciao and the Vietnamese chào (a false cognate of ciao; the two words are not linguistically related despite sounding similar to each other).
A screenshot of Tesla stock over the past 6 months, peaking after the election but then cratering. It’s just barely (<$1) lower than it was 6mo ago
The local governments in Otto even defended their counseling restrictions the same way Colorado does here, arguing that counseling is "professional speech or conduct[, and that] they have the power to limit it" like any other "professional regulation[]." 981 F.3d at 861, 864. Rejecting that argument, the Eleventh Circuit recognized that what those local governments "call[ed] a 'medical procedure' consists entirely-of words," and the "characterization of [the] ordinances as professional regulations" did not transmogrify words into conduct. Id. at 861, 865. Those counseling restrictions were "direct, not incidental, regulations of speech." Id. at 865. The Tenth Circuit held the exact opposite here.
The one time Heisenberg seemed to talk about this explicitly is a postwar autobiography in which he rendered himself talking to von Weizsäcker about this at Farm Hall: I do not know [he says he said to Weizsäcker] whether one can object to this argument [that a man like Hitler should be denied atomic bombs], especially when one considers what really happened in the Nazi concentration camps. After the end of the war with Germany, many physicists in America probably advised against using this weapon, but by that point they no longer had a decisive influence. That is not for us to criticize either. For we too could not prevent the terrible things that our government did. The fact that we did not know their full extent is no excuse, since we could have done more to find out.
Werner hiesenberg and Niels Bohr share tea, food, and beer together, talking animatedly. Bohr is noticeably older. They sit close to one another, clearly friends/familiar debate partners.
A photo of a man in a suit with a neutral expression. Middle aged. It’s Heisenberg, obviously.
A photo of Tesla’s stock price, up from ~180 to ~260, peaking around 450 in late 2024 (after the election) and declining ever since
A screenshot of an article with the final sentence highlighted, reading: Scharf stated that the order is designed to prevent loan forgiveness for those employed at nonprofits engaged in "improper activities," such as assisting illegal immigration. While details remain unclear, the move appears to be aimed at organizations working on causes Trump opposes. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, created by Congress, allows government and nonprofit employees to have their remaining student loan balances wiped out after 10 years of payments. Since it was established legislatively, it remains uncertain whether the Trump administration has the authority to unilaterally modify the program.
A photo of a crowd of a few hundred in front gathered in front of a stage, with the Georgia state Capitol in the background.
all good things correlate parents who leave their children immense and unrestricted wealth also tend to leave them strong familial culture, high social status, and high IQ
A quote from “emilyinvc” saying; “how are women supposed to compete with Sora + Vision Pro + Porn? Birth rates going to zero”
A Google ngrams graph showing “frontier models” getting popular since the late 70s, until a peak in usage (in books!) in the late 2000s. We’re now slowly climbing back up towards that peak after a local minima in the early 2010s, about to pass it.
A graph of the Dow jones year-to-date, showing stock prices leveling out soon after inauguration after a sharp rise, a small dip in reaction to the first tariff that ultimately comes back to level, some relatively minor uncertainty for the rest of February as the admin issued tariffs on China, Steel, and general policy documents. Near the end of Feb, the market begins to fall greatly in reaction to consumer sentiment+GDP numbers, briefly recover in hope that he would delay the planned March 1st tarrifs, then tank even further when they go into effect. Indeed—as covered in the thread above—a small spike occurred today in reaction to various capitulations and “pauses”, but it leveled out about the same at the end of the day. fwiw, we’re still up from January 1st due to the sheer size of the pre-inauguration rally
A pointillist painting by Signac titled *Antibes, The Pink Cloud*. In the center of the frame is a small sailboat on a serene ocean, with a giant, gorgeous cloud towering behind it in the distance lit up by the sunset. The beautiful composition is interrupted though, by the subtle presence in the far right distance of an imposing line of black ships putting up plumes of black exhaust. These represent the German navy coming for France, juxtaposing the beauty of peacetime France with the ominous threat of war and suffering visibly approaching from the distance.
A graph showing pro-palestine protests in the US over time from October 7 2023 until January 15th 2025. There's a clear peak in mid 2024, and a small peak later that year -- both before the election. It's now at what seems to be a steady base state.
A graph of usage of 5 terms from 1600 to now in books scanned by Google, showing: 1. “idiot” (steadily popular until become super popular on the 2000s) 2. “Retard” was coined in the 1650s and remained the most popular for most of its life, until the 2010s. 3. “Moron” is surprisingly almost negligent throughout, picking up a tiny amount in the the 1910s. 4. “Imbecile” starts around 1800 and drops off staring in 1900, until a resurgence in the 2000s. 5. “Intellectual disability”, the current medical term, starts around 2000, and is currently the most popular in books — though far, far less common than “idiot” now is.
A photo of a young Jack Dorsey looking at an old school Mac in front a map.
Many scientific societies have prizes for the best paper. As an online-based society, we instead launch a contest for the best graphic meme regarding the philosophy of the sciences of the mind. We are interested in memes formed by static images + text and GIFs. The contest is open to all those who submit a paper or a symposium at the conference: to participate, simply add up to a .GIF or .JPEG file entitled "ISPSM2025 Best Meme Contest." Memes should aim to elicit a laugh and then a thought (similarly to the Ig Nobel prize) and should abide by the ISPSM code of conduct (https://www.ispsmind.com/). The winning meme will be hosted on the society’s homepage and social media. The winner will be selected by the Program and Local organising committees and chairs.
A photo of a desk surrounded by plants and a high rise window on the left, paintings and a flag of the fictional California republic behind it, and bright blue a Herman miller embody chair (aka “a goody, expensive chair”) in front. On the desk sits a 49” ultra wide monitor, two 27” monitors above it, a Logitech ERGO K860 ergonomic keyboard in front, and a Logitech MX Master 3B ergonomic mouse next to that. There’s also a small pile of books, a monster and a coffee cup (lol whoops), a water bottle, manicure tools to stop me from anxiously picking my cuticles, and ADHD+GAD meds. Below the desk is a blue rug, a trash can, a glue gun and clamps, and a huge white gaming PC that’s supposedly for running local LLMs. There’s also a collection of squishmallows, origami, and Warhammer figurines below the monitor, for encouragement!