The Busy World of Richard Scarry Soft Toys with Car #358 ย -ย Huckle Cat in Blue Car โ Huckle Cat Soft Toy is made of white plush with orange accents and dressed in a bright yellow shirt, grey pants, and red suspenders.
Like, I get that the mirror test is probably not a good test for self-cognition - it isn't even for animals as far as I know.
But I think you are misrepresenting it somewhat. From what I read, the test was showing them a screenshot of their own interface, and them being able to deduce that it's probably an AI assistant. Of course, this is flawed in many ways. But it's still quite a bit different from a quine.
@sigmasternchen Recognising anything from a screenshot is a significant technical achievement.
My point is that there is nothing additionally difficult, or additionally significant, about recognising something (either with a trivial string comparison, or a sophisticated neural net classifier) that happens to pertain to the software performing the task.
@sigmasternchen I agree, the LLM โmirror testโ results arenโt inherently twice as impressive than its other capabilities by dint of it being โself-recognitionโ, but of course itโs way more impressive than this custom purpose quine-like code.
@sigmasternchen The value of current-gen LLMs is not their intelligence. They aren't intelligent. They're dumb as rocks. The value of current-gen LLMs lies in rubbing people's noses in just how much of human action, reaction, interaction requires no smarts at all and can be performed quite adequately by something that is dumb as rocks.
I hyperventilate over the mirror test too - but mostly out of frustration with people taking it seriously - as if somehow a stupid test gets some kind of imprimatur because a bunch of psychologists say it's important. TBH I feel similarly about all that self-awareness business too.
In the 90s we had Eliza. Why couldn't we just have been happy enough with "Super Eliza" and watching ourselves drawn eating a twelve foot donut with Freddie Mercury?
Why did we have to jam this garbage machine into absolutely everything?
I think the issue is cropping up across Meta. I've had 2 post challenged by FaceBook's AI censor. The 1st was from the Washington Post about the attack on Palestinian journalists by Zionist soldiers; the 2nd from the BBC was about a child dying from the after effects of a measles infection. I think FB's censor bot needs retraining
@Woodswalked I dumped Threads within a week of checking it out. Owned by Meta, controlled by corporate executives is anathema to my expectations of social media.
"You call this nightmare 'structured cabling'? I'm going to have rip it all out and reroute all of it. You're lucky I can feed cables through grommet holes you humans cannot reach... Mind you it is going to cost you..."
I have a knee jerk reaction to anyone saying theyโve lost something. Especially metaphorically. โMrs Jones lost her husbandโ โHas she looked down the back of the sofa?โ
In some ways, the saddest and most puzzling aspect of these stories (beyond the atrocities themselves) is how little that senior officers seem to appreciate the damage they do to the future, and how many British lives may be lost because of the hate they have fostered. The rules of war exist not only because they are morally right, but also because they are good common sense when aiming for lasting peace.
Without being cynical, this is SOP for the MOD. Can you find any Army deployment since 1945 that didnโt come with a huge coverup of war crimes?
Mercer is merely the latest officer to find heโs been surrounded by criminals in uniform. Iโm sure the FCO and the MOD have busily reclassified everything as โretained materialsโ and not searchable under the FIA.
Itโs ironic that Cameron is back covering up at the FCO after his Golden Temple mess in 2014.
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Coincidentally, a friend in Amritsar for a wedding sent me this. 1919 Army war crimes left behind a little more physical evidence than the civil service could easily cover up.
An article from earlier this year argues that it is entirely constitutionally appropriate for the Lords to block the Rwanda safety Bill and suggests some approaches the courts might take to it if it were passed. #ukpol ukconstitutionallaw.org/2024/0โฆ
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Lords on 29 January 2024, having cleared the House of Commons unamended.ย There are a great many pโฆ
is there something that covers similar ground to The Ancestor's Tale, but not written by a bigoted jerkbag? I ask because it was influential on my thinking at a young age, and ironically I think it helped innoculate me against right-wing ideology. Specifically, the repeated idea that biological life, as it exists (and existed before humans) is actually rather difficult to categorize neatly - that is, a "species" is less like a set, and more like a probability distribution
@FSMaxB Strongly disagree. Popular science in general is essential to science and to policy - without popular science, forget about funding for research. Also, if we had had more popular science explaining the complex stuff to policy makers, the climate would definitely be better off. As for not having published anything recently - he published a new book in 2019 at the age of 78, give him a break. As for his behaviour, that is irrelevant to the qualification of 'hack'.
@FSMaxB Maybe so, but he changed/helped a lot for me to understand how evolution works and how/why it clashes with religion. As a non-academic/scientist. I would never be able to read one of your phd articles. Really no offense meant, I'm just offering a view from a different perspective.
Check question: is that a problem in the grand scheme of things? Or is that only a problem for specific technical evolution aspects? From a popular science point of view (educating a larger, ignorant audience, me included) the latter problably doesn't matter much.
@KoosPol @FSMaxB The problem with popular science is that you get to just make your own claims without them being reviewed by other experts, so things like "The gene is the unit of selection" end up as part of popular understanding despite it not being accurate
@FSMaxB Fair enough. But that's on another level then saying he's a hack. I'd argue that popular science is way more a means of getting people to understand things than necessarily being correct in every detail. It's ok to present omissions, generalizations and caricatures if it helps me understand difficult topics.
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Jakop Dalunde commissioned it. I wrote it. And it came out this evening - what needs fixing has why with public transport ticketing, cross border, in the EU jakopdalunde.se/wp-content/uplโฆ
Read it all now and have just one nitpick. The NAPโs donโt really solve the timetable data issue fully because being open data, they come with no guarantees. If a booking portal is planning journeys to sell tickets, there needs to also be a guarantee from the operators that the data is in fact correct, including some commercial relationship as recourse if there are errors.
@stefanlindbohm thanks, but does this matter? Ok, when you hit โbookโ you might then end up with (fractionally?) different times, but are there cases where this would be significant enough to matter?
I will have to get back to you on how frequent issues might be for inaccuracies as we get more data, but the big issue lies in building a portal that is dependent on data without a commercial relationship. If the data would disappear from one day to another and we would potentially have to go through courts to get access back, that is a huge risk to the business model.
A lot of countries/operators are already fine with their long distance/regional traffic missing from Google/Apple maps. Or in a few cases they are present in Google/Apple without the data otherwise being publicly available (assumingly there are commercial agreements), which would make open data that another party uses a separate question that is lower impact for countries/operators to break.
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The dreaded barnyard puddle has returned, and the goats would like you to know they are really annoyed about it. I'm a little surprised they didn't make use of the plank, but goats have very strong opinions about getting their feet wet.
(Every year this puddle appears and I want to dig a trench, but the ground is still too frozen, and then the puddle soaks in by the time the ground is workable and I forget to do it)
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I've worked out when the Firefox developers plan to retire.
(Of course there seems to be an off-by-one error, it's javascript. Kwality is its watchword. I'd expected it to be on an IEEE754 boundary, but it looks like a magic constant).
imo everyone should go on puberty blockers until like age 16, at which point you're perfectly old enough to choose whether you wanna go with endogenous hormones or store-bought. and then we just write off Puberty Year for each cohort, and maybe give them a year off school.
This was part of the worldbuilding in Neon Yang's Tensorate series and while the series never clicked I was really struck by that idea. Would buy into that.
so, in the Irish school system thereโs an optional non-academic year taken at approx 16, for learning life skills, etc. This is calledโฆ Transition Year. I submit this as an alternative name.
Honestly I've always thought that would be nice. Having periods when you're still playing with blocks & pretending to be a giant water vole with golden claws & a nest full of jewels is just not right.
@CadeTheCat There would be a monumental freakout over the number of people (whatever number of people it turned out to be) who decided to stay on the puberty blockers indefinitely.
Do cis people in the UK actually think there has ever been a point at which transgender medicine was widely and routinely available on the NHS?
Guys, it never has. When they exist at all, the services are chronically underfunded with waiting lists that literally stretch for decades.
To a first approximation, if you want to medically transition in the UK, you are on your own, unless you want to fight a war of attrition for years.
TERFs like to pretend that you can easily access NHS gender identity services as if it were just a thing people do.
It appears some people have believed their fairy tales. However badly you think trans people are treated by the medical establishment in the UK, I promise you that the reality is worse, and always has been.
โChildren on puberty blockersโ. Fucking state of it. There are no children on puberty blockers. Not because theyโre trans, anyway.
Totally endorse your summary of the lies, but there is a difference between underfunded and an exercise in bloody-mindedness on the one hand and wholly unavailable on the other. Many of us have no choice but to grit our teeth and grind through the system. Which is as bad as you say.
@Isabel Ruffell I transitioned with a lot of people who tried and were unable to access it.
Even at the peak of trans acceptance in the UK, being able to access ANYTHING depended on your postcode at least, and probably a few other things. Some PCTs as weโre basically refused to refer anyone for anything at all.
At which point, you either had the money to go round them, or you found ways to get it ๐
yes, my first attempt at transitioning was without any guarantee that the local health authority would pay for anything but hormones (and having to persuade the local shrinks to refer me to a GIC at all). I am now in my ninth year of a second attempt. Now that I am relatively close to finishing, I am in a position to make other arrangements, but that wasn't the case earlier. And it is awful that I feel fortunate to have made it so far, but then I conside whatr other folk face.
I basically had to self fund treatment to a certain extent but was incredibly lucky, combined with have a great GP, and being in Wales where they didnโt have a GIC at the time, that surgery was referred directly so I was one of those rare people who went to Heywards Heath. My partner did not so I used what I had saved, expecting I would have to pay, to pay for her. I know plenty who did the exceptionally slow NHS grind. I was just lucky with my circumstances.
I would love to ask a TERF to summarise their achievements in removing healthcare from trans people, and then summarise how easy it is for trans people to get it now. They know, of course they do. It's all doublethink.
โNHS to end practice of back rubs for Godzillaโ
If you think the NHS was ever actually giving trans children puberty blockers, then Iโm afraid you have fallen for a TERF fairy tale. The NHS has never actually done decent treatment for trans children. news.sky.com/story/children-toโฆ
The decision follows a review after a sharp rise in referrals were recorded at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which is closing at the end of March.
One of my best friends has a trans daughter, who is just on the point of being prescribed blockers after a battle of about five years. We don't at this point know whether she's sufficiently far along that this will 'only' make it harder to find a sympathetic GP, or a final last-minute defeat after so long waiting.
So yes, even within an awful system, this will make things materially worse for some trans people.
@David Matthewman they’ve always given these drugs to adults. They gave them to me in my 30s.
The issue is that they have pretty much never, as far as I know, given them to trans children for the purposes of arresting puberty.
I think the media narrative of referring to GnRH agonists as “puberty blockers” here is probably not helping any attempt at comprehension. It makes people think that’s all they do. They’re gonadotropin inhibitors, and they are useful after puberty for transition to allow HRT to work unopposed by endogenous hormones.
Now trying to stop them being prescribed for that is their next target, and without invading the privacy of the person you mention, you say it’s been a five year battle.
There’s no point prescribing these drugs before the initial onset of puberty because … well, they don’t do anything.
So five years … puberty is mostly done by then, and you’re
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@David Matthewman theyโve always given these drugs to adults. They gave them to me in my 30s.
The issue is that they have pretty much never, as far as I know, given them to trans children for the purposes of arresting puberty.
I think the media narrative of referring to GnRH agonists as โpuberty blockersโ here is probably not helping any attempt at comprehension. It makes people think thatโs all they do. Theyโre gonadotropin inhibitors, and they are useful after puberty for transition to allow HRT to work unopposed by endogenous hormones.
Now trying to stop them being prescribed for that is their next target, and without invading the privacy of the person you mention, you say itโs been a five year battle.
Thereโs no point prescribing these drugs before the initial onset of puberty because โฆ well, they donโt do anything.
So five years โฆ puberty is mostly done by then, and youโre looking at a young adult transition type situation.
For reference, the daughter in question turns 13 soon. And it's not that anyone was trying to give puberty blockers to an eight-year-old, but the battle was to get her the possibility of having them when they would help.
@David Matthewman Ok. Credit to her parents for fighting that battle, and maybe the Tavistock might have considered possibly doing it on a trial basis at some point (โmaybeโ is doing a lot of work there), but they basically donโt do that, and never have. Their standard mode of operation is to just keep talking until people age out of their service and can join an adult GIC waiting list.
The headline is literally just a reaffirmation of the way the NHS has always behaved. Itโs giving the impression that itโs ending a practice of medical intervention for trans kids.
But to end something, it has to have started in the first place.
I was watching the Portuguese election coverage last night. Ignore the Chega TV banner in the top left; they were just rebroadcasting RTP3โs coverage. What struck me was where in the UK we report turnout percentages, in Portugal the media report the opposite: the percentage of voters who stayed at home (abstenรงรฃo in the bottom right). I wonder if thereโs something about the political history of Portugal that makes this so.
@Alisdair Calder McGregor Ooh, that's a good point; I hadn't noticed whether the numbers actually were %ages of the total electorate rather than of those who voted... And annoyingly they're not doing the UK thing of election coverage continuing well into the next day.
Privacy is a basic aspect of human decency. The reason we have curtains and clothes isn't because we have anything to hide, it's because wearing clothes and using curtains when appropriate is simple human decency. The same goes for the choice between postcards and envelopes, and use of encryption in respect of private files and communications.
I know you know, but just giving some concrete examples:
Reasons why people need privacy:
To negotiate business deals To plan and participate in surprise parties To get holiday gifts for family To plan surprise engagements To manage home finances/retirement investments To buy/sell a house and negotiate terms/price
yeah, thereโs a big disconnect there between me and some friends. I _hate_ the idea of any company algorithmically โreadingโ my email, so I refuse to use Gmail and co. Discussing with friends, most of them are in the โwho cares?โ camp, which boggles my mind! Sadly Iโm terrible at explaining why I have such a strong aversion to it, do you know of any โhereโs why you might want to careโ sort of articles?
I'll give up my privacy, when... Politician's conduct all interactions in public & on the record Politician's publish their tax records, bank statements, shareholdings, w oversight by open forum Politician's don't allow lobbying of any kind All corporations pay their taxes in full, no offshore crap Free healthcare, education, social care for all worldwide When the industrial-miltary complex is dismantled When all wars are abolished & nukes
โSo sometimes my roommate, with whom Iโve been paying a mortgage for 10 years and looking after a herd of cats, does me against the wall with a strap on. Do you think I should risk telling her I have feelings for her? Iโm pretty sure sheโs straight.โ reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdโฆ
So, just in case you needed the heads up - noauthority.social is a fascist server; appears to be a refuge for nazis who got tired of having their previous server, noagenda.social, defederated by literally everyone. I just caught some nazi rando in my replies and after blocking him, hopped over to his timeline to see who he's talking to and it's literally all other fascists from noauthority.social. Strong defederate with extreme prejudice recommendation for admins but it's your life.
Yeah look, one of the two servers I'm on already had them blocked, and this ain't me reaching out to be friends. No matter what we all think of each other and this hashtag, I think we can ALL agree that online nazi servers are something we're all interested in seeing eat the bar. We ain't gotta be friends, and in fact I can assure you it's not gonna happen. I'm just making sure folks know the score; what they want to do about it, is their business. Half y'all got THIS server blocked anyway.
by the name id think its some anarchist server, but no of course the server called 'no authority.social' is all about hosting people who want the most oppressive ""authorities"" possible .. Why wouldn't it??
@Paulos_the_fog Yes, but it doesn't do what most people would think it does. It prevents YOU from seeing all posts, from that instance; as if you muted them all. They can still see and interact with your posts. In fact, it's pretty hard to stop people from SEEING your posts even if you have them blocked; they can just open a new window on a big neutral server like Social. But if you block individually, they can't interact with your posts, which is generally what you want re: nazis.
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The actual transcript excerpts from retired Army Lieutenant Colonel David Slaterโs dating-site chats with his mystery gf are quite something. Itโs as if HAL 9000 were trying to seduce Dave Bowman instead of lock him outside the ship.
Hereโs why the NHS were happy to vaccinate me with MMR the other day. From UK govt advice from 2019:
โข individuals born between 1970 and 1979 may have been vaccinated against measles and many will have been exposed to mumps and rubella during childhood. However, this age group should be offered MMR wherever feasible, particularly if they are considered to be at high risk of exposure.
โข individuals born before 1970 are likely to have had all three natural infections and are less likely to be susceptible. MMR vaccine should be offered to such individuals on request or if they are considered to be at high risk of exposure.
Tl;dr: younger GenX and older Millennials in the UK were likely given inadequate protection against measles and none against mumps and rubella: vaccinate on sight.
Older GenX and boomers: just give them the vaccine if they ask for it.
I recall that you had whooping cough many months ago, which I was reminded of because I also got it last autumn. Somebody on here told me recently that it was included in the tetanus booster. Research done some years ago shows that people don't need to the tetanus boosters, but I guess whopping cough wasn't part of the study? Anyway, I haven't had that shot in 20 years now and I'm guessing virtually no others adults have either.
@Ghost of Hope The single dose measles vaccine they used in the 70s was not as effective as theyโd hoped long term, but to be fair the thing was on the verge of being eradicated and they didnโt think it needed to be.
@Alexandra Lanes Dupuutren's appears to have gone into remission overnight. I guess my body is too busy doing measles things to worry about fucking my hands.
If I were still teaching methods, I could use these boost numbers to illustrate a double barreled question (triple barreled if you add "boosted for survey methods teachers" #sociology )
Look, you don't write 120,000 words of fanfiction set on the Federation-Romulan Neutral Zone without understanding every bit of canonical text written about the Treaty of Algeron.
I havenโt been able to watch any Trek after TNG, some Voyager (sorry, lost in space) and some Enterprise. None of DSN or Discovery.
And since paramount has so utterly failed to deliver Trek, I canโt see myself subscribing to watch Picard or that other thing that produced a musical episode.
It can have phasers and transporters and warp driven starships and still not be Star Trek. Embarrassing. Untenable. Wrong.
I did the written Autism test and included 5x pages of notes detailing the issues with (British) English (spelling, syntax) and the issues with too vague questions that it had.
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