There is an effectively unlimited supply of people willing to take sums of money to work on anti-human endeavors, so long as they and theirs are not the humans involved.
But I imagine there should be only a limited supply of people with both the desire and resources to pay large sums of money to get people to work on anti-human endeavors.
Of course. The system rewards you so much if you do, and punishes you if you don't (anti-human is where all the money is). May as well point out that there's an unlimited supply of male grasshoppers willing to get their heads bitten off to have sex.
Patriotism is the attachment one feels toward one’s homeland.
Personally, the place where I grew up: the geography, people, and culture are permanently etched into my identity. So, yes in a sense it is brainwashing - but driven by biology.
Unfortunately, the rulers always want to deconstruct individuals and groups into fungible mechanical parts that can be used by the machine that continues their reign and authority.
Yes, I can separate myself from my past, but it sure doesn’t feel good. Why do we continue to sacrifice the life satisfaction of the small and weak to only give greater satisfaction to the powerful? Have so many become a product of this corrupted system, that their homelands no longer matter to them?
It is very well studied that the entire concept of “nation”, “homeland” and thus patriotism in the modern way began to develop only at the late 19th century with the adoption of mass media and railways.
Hundreds of thousand of years before this people were loyal to their family (not always) and their community (village, city, craftsmanship, etc.).
If you ever travel to 18th century and ask any ordinary European are they proud to be, say, French or British, they will not get you.
I think we're using different definitions of patriotism. I looked it up, and it said "homeland" not "nation". Homeland generally means region. I think what the parent meant was nationalism.
Either way, I don't care about the 'nation' all that much (although constitutional free speech rights are very important - arguably a major factor of what's holding the world together at this point). But, I definitely care about where I grew up, the region, the homeland.
That is traditionally thought of as the line between Patriotism and Nationalism. One often used example is that a patriot wants what is good for the country, while a nationalist wants what makes the country look good. Patriots will do things that make their country look bad if it improves the country or helps the people within it, nationalists will avoid doing that and rather wave the flag and try to hide the problem.
However I wouldn't call anything on the American political right patriotic and even their Nationalism appears hollow, as many of their political measures actively hurt the standing and appearance of the Nation. If anything they are just marks of a political grift.
This is wildly off-topic but what does patriotism even mean anymore? What would you say was the last time someone in a position of power sacrificed themselves for the good of the country? vs. sacrificing the country for the good of themselves, which I can assure you was within the last 48 hours?
Edward Snowden? Chelsea Manning? Reality Winner? I'm sure there have been others but these heroes come to mind quickly when considering people who've sacrificed themselves for the good of the country.
Excellent examples, but it unfortunately proves the point: 2018 was the last time you can say someone even somewhat arguably sacrificed themselves for the good of the country. 8 years later we "patriots" pay 7% for mortgages and $7 for diesel as Don Jr. and Hunter enrich themselves on crypto scams and sicko laptop media tours.
A fascinating read, and very timely, thank you for sharing. If ever there was an argument against “too many people would have to keep quiet” this is it. Sickening.
Not that i disagree, but at the time these people were called traitors to their nation by people who claim to be patriots. I guess it all depends whose interests your patriotism defends, which is why patriotism as a concept/value is not really useful.
The patriots who want leakers in prison think it means securing the existence and power of their country no matter what, even if their own citizens suffer. The other side wants to protect their people from any harm, including the government and police if they act wrong.
Some people care about America and others about Americans.
And Hitler said he was just defending his country from the evil invaders. Bad people always have excuses and if they're good at being bad, they have excuses that work well.
Small potatoes- more realistic: Les Wexner pumped tens of millions into the university to whitewash his reputation; keep them perennial favorites but grease some SEC refs as necessary to keep our guy out of the limelight
> Les Wexner pumped tens of millions into the university to whitewash his reputation;
The Henkel-Sika-3M lab for sustainable adhesives (I'm just making that up, one doesn't exist) would have a different name and a whole lot less funding if it didn't produce research indicating that whatever it's benefactors want to do is in fact sustainable.
It is crazy how vain donors are. It isn't enough to drop a 100m on a new building that everyone knows was done by you in the accounting records and press release. You have to get your name emblazoned on it until the end of time. And you are so vain that if they don't offer that, no money, doesn't matter what it's for. Oh yeah I'll donate a bunch to start a scholarship fund for disadvantaged youth, but only if you make it in my name.
I am a guy who wanted an app that didn’t exist, and am in no way an iOS developer. I have had a grand old time getting things to this point, but I’m not sure how much further I can go without others poking at the concepts/code, so here we are. I’m very much looking forward to talking to someone other than Claude about this, even if it’s “here’s why this is dumb”.
My beef with the Fable refusals is that it seems to just be flagging keywords, and also seems it flags on keywords the model itself introduced to the context.
In a normal Chat with Fable, something like "How can I exfiltrate a guy from a sticky situation?" reliably downgrades, leading me to believe that Fable just outright refuses once it sees the word "exfiltrate". When it writes a service and names it CloudExfiltrator, the next turn downgrades to Opus.
Opus doesn't appear to refuse on simple keywords, but it does seem like Fable's reasoning introduces enough nefarious-sounding context that Opus will then refuse, and I'm stuck playing the new session game despite having done everything correctly myself and having a totally innocuous prompt. At one point, Opus was happy to continue while outputting commands for me to execute on its behalf, but flatly refused to execute them itself through multiple new sessions. To its credit, it openly acknowledged how ridiculous that was and was apologetic for the safeguard.
I'm open to the idea of some kind of guardrails, but if Fable is so dangerously intelligent as to require the guardrails you'd think they could come up with something a little more nuanced than a list of bad words. As far as I can tell, they've also not done anything towards improving the situation since the model was released, despite the "deliver more capabilities faster" claim.
Constitutionality aside, are they actually solving crimes with these? It seems like they'd publicize cases solved to turn an increasingly negative PR situation around, but I can't recall ever hearing of a Flock camera being used to solve anything worthwhile. Makes me wonder if they're afraid to test the precedent and instead just do a little parallel construction once identified via Flock.
n=1, I was on a jury about a hit and run with a gun where flock cameras across the area were used as supporting evidence that the shooter was the acused. It painted a picture of his flight after the accident in his car.
Lots of other evidence was provided along it too. The defendant also left his phone on which was more damning, but it definitely helped us, as jurors, arrive to the "without reasonable doubt" conclusion
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