Roger the Data Scientist

Politically moderate gay man working in software and AI/ML. Just exploring the insanity that is Twitter.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@Samingo_real @AlexCaswen @yashkaf Insurance companies have entire risk control departments that help their customers reduce their own risk.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@th1nkp0l @JerrBearr @username_is_unq @PeterMoskos @sarchasm9 There’s also a difference between cancelling and non-renewing that people don’t seem to understand. When you pay your homeowners premium, it’s for one year of risk. They’re under no obligation to sign up for another year, just like you’re under no obligation to re-sign with them.

[GB News @GBNEWS]

'This is not what we're talking about!'

@MichelleDewbs silences Mike Buckley's claim that the majority of sexual violence is perpetrated by white men, emphasising the unique nature of grooming cases and urging the public to review court transcripts for context.

[Nathan Cofnas @nathancofnas]

Anyone under the impression that ChatGPT "thinks" is either delusional or unfamiliar with actual thinking (in most cases the latter).

LLMs are useful for a handful of activities like coding, doing basic calculations, writing doggerel, generating cartoonish images, churning out fake news, and conducting searches. They have zero creativity, ability to deal with genuinely novel problems, or understanding of what they pontificate about, as can be confirmed by anyone with a ChatGPT or Grok account. (See the screenshot of my conversation with ChatGPT where it fails to understand the concept of longer vs. shorter lines.) Training LLMs on more data (which increasingly consists of bot-generated bullshit, though that's immaterial) isn't going to usher in some history-altering singularity.

AI enthusiasts—including a few people who I respect intellectually—will say that in the past LLMs performed feats that skeptics said would be impossible, and there will be egg on my face when ChatGPT replaces me as a philosopher before turning us all into paperclips. But I don't think so. After being trained on 40 gazillion words, ChatGPT hasn't produced a single joke that's funny, or an original philosophical idea, or one sentence that doesn't sound like it was written by a glorified autocomplete (what ChatGPT is).

Many people are spooked by ChatGPT's ability to write an essay of the form "X is an interesting topic. Some people say A about X, but others say B. In conclusion, a good case can be made for A." The chatbot writes this kind of thing better than most people can, so it might feel like the machine has achieved human-level intelligence. But there is a qualitative difference between writing summaries of text in the style of a college term paper and writing something that's new and interesting. Most people write by following the same principles of ChatGPT: they respond to a prompt by shuffling around clichés and phrases (data) that they picked up from their environment. It's not surprising that computers can beat us at that game. But they're not beating us at what matters, namely, adding intellectual value.

Science tells us nothing about what what happens in the magical moment when the mind grasps an idea or comes up with something new. Maybe one day we will figure out how to instantiate that process in silicon. That day is not now.

@gregisenberg shared a story about his lunch with a 22-year-old Stanford grad who was struggling to finish sentences, grasping for basic words. The zoomer explained: "Sometimes I forget words now. I'm so used to having ChatGPT complete my thoughts that when it's not there, my brain feels...slower" (https://t.co/zW6EVt6kxy). Most people would balk at the idea of outsourcing their thinking to this extent to a human guru—even one who is wise and cares about their well-being. But for some reason we are okay with merging our minds with a trippy chatbot that can't and never will understand what it means for a line to be long or short.

[JD Vance @JDVance]

Looking forward to Biden giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumously) to Pol Pot and Count Dracula.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@EiratheIntern @LinkofSunshine Ya people who’ve never lived in Chicago don’t realize that even in the really nice neighborhoods median rent is a third of what you’d pay in comparably nice parts of Brooklyn. Thousands of dollars per month difference.

[Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630]

These guys are...really going hard to protect foreign child rape gangs.

It's one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen.

Why not welcome all domestic and foreign criticism, impeach all highly placed protectors of the animals, and deport or kill everyone actually involved? #a_modest_proposal

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@Alexzawesome123 @peterrhague @PhysWiz $7M/yr is literally nothing. wtf.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@damintoell @an_artfuldodger Honestly count it as a blessing. I muted her after her reaction to 10/7 was “blood doesn’t dry pink!!1!”

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@davidyelland How is “politicians that covered up child rape should be removed from office” a “sensitive debate”? like where in life did you go wrong to get here man?

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@davidyelland “Wrongly enter such a sensitive debate with incorrect facts” omg I can’t get over how ridiculous you all are come onnnnn 😂

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@jurgen_nauditt By saying what he thinks on the internet? Euros are so weak it’s unbelievable. Grow a pair.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@Tyler_A_Harper It’s just modern indentured servitude. I didn’t realize that’s how it worked until the first time I had a coworker with H1B explain it to me. It’s just not right. And if the point is to attract top foreign talent, then companies should have to compete for their labor.

[Tyler Austin Harper @Tyler_A_Harper]

If you think it’s perfectly fine that we have a category of worker who can get deported if they’re fired—giving their employers an immense amount of power not just over their work life but over their life as such—just say so. I personally think that’s bad and should be reformed.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@yacineMTB It’s so much better to have things boil and cool quickly like that rather than fester under years of censorship. The quicker the discourse happens the faster it resolves and the better off we all are.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@rfleury @yacineMTB Git is like SQL: they’re so engrained that we all have to live with them even though they’re awful to work with

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@eigenrobot I think we’ll have a population decline, but there are subcultures having lots of kids. They will become dominant, resulting in most people being from large families again, at which point fertility is more likely to increase again. I don’t think most projections account for this.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@vikhyatk @EsotericCofe I have interviewed people that struggled to write a function. I honestly don’t know what they even do in some of these degree programs. Is it just grade inflation? Or outright fraud? Many of these people should have been failed out of their programs.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@wesyang @elegationvain Only one that’s iffy is “dysphoria is a social construct”. I think people experience dysphoria and it’s real. Is that a consequence of certain cultural norms in part? Perhaps. But dysphoria itself is not a “social construct”.

[Roger the Data Scientist @GayModerateGuy]

@wanyeburkett I have had individual weeks where I worked 80 hours. Worst was a month of 80 hour weeks. But I generally make up for it by slacking off later. If I’m salaried I’m not working more than 40-45 hours on average.