Sam Goshen

Hyper-focused engineer with too much time to think. Fascinated by data, history, and basketball || Northeastern ‘22

[Mark Schipper - 5th Down CFB @5thDownCFB]

The ruination of the NBA as a legitimate competition is guys like this explaining that this abomination is not in fact a travel

I've said it for years now, and it's truer every season:

The NBA is not basketball, it's a basketball-like game, it's basketball adjacent. The league sold its soul for DUNKS! and THREES! and flashy things

This is an insult to your intelligence and a disgrace to the sport

[Sam Goshen @GoshenSam]

@degNBA to go from good to elite in the nba you need to play the whistle

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

🚨BREAKING: OpenAI published a paper proving that ChatGPT will always make things up.

Not sometimes. Not until the next update. Always. They proved it with math.

Even with perfect training data and unlimited computing power, AI models will still confidently tell you things that are completely false. This isn't a bug they're working on. It's baked into how these systems work at a fundamental level.

And their own numbers are brutal. OpenAI's o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The "smarter" models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.

Here's why it can't be fixed. Language models work by predicting the next word based on probability. When they hit something uncertain, they don't pause. They don't flag it. They guess. And they guess with complete confidence, because that's exactly what they were trained to do.

The researchers looked at the 10 biggest AI benchmarks used to measure how good these models are. 9 out of 10 give the same score for saying "I don't know" as for giving a completely wrong answer: zero points. The entire testing system literally punishes honesty and rewards guessing.

So the AI learned the optimal strategy: always guess. Never admit uncertainty. Sound confident even when you're making it up.

OpenAI's proposed fix? Have ChatGPT say "I don't know" when it's unsure. Their own math shows this would mean roughly 30% of your questions get no answer. Imagine asking ChatGPT something three times out of ten and getting "I'm not confident enough to respond." Users would leave overnight. So the fix exists, but it would kill the product.

This isn't just OpenAI's problem. DeepMind and Tsinghua University independently reached the same conclusion. Three of the world's top AI labs, working separately, all agree: this is permanent.

Every time ChatGPT gives you an answer, ask yourself: is this real, or is it just a confident guess?

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

This gets to the core of the issue more than any debate about specific terms.

Do you believe in democracy? Should our military be regulated by our elected leaders, or corporate executives? Seemingly innocuous terms from the latter like "You cannot target innocent civilians" are actually moral minefields that lever differences of cultural tradition into massive control.

Who is a civilian and not? What makes them innocent or not? What does it mean for them to be a "target" vs collateral damage? Existing policy and law has very clear answers for these questions, but unelected corporations managing profits and PR will often have a very different answer.

Imagine if a missile company tried to enforce the above policy, that their product cannot be used to target innocent civilians, that they can shut off access if elected leaders decide to break those terms. Sounds, good, right? Not really - in addition to the value judgement problems I list above, you also have to account for questions like:

-What level of information, classified and otherwise, does the corporation receive that would allow them to make these determinations? How much leverage would they have to demand more?
-What if an elected President merely threatens a dictator with using our weapons in a certain way, ala Madman Theory/MAD? Is the threat seen as empty because the dictator knows the corporate executives will cut off the military? Is the threat enough to trigger the cutoff? How might either of those determinations vary if the current corporate executive happens to like the dictator or dislike the President?
-At what level of confidence does the cutoff trigger, both in writing and in reality?

The fact that this is a debate over AI does not change the underlying calculus. The same problems apply to definitions and use of ethically fraught but important capabilities like surveillance systems or autonomous weapons. It is easy to say "But they will have cutouts to operate with autonomous systems for defensive use!", but you immediately get into the same issues and more - what is autonomous? What is defensive? What about defending an asset during an offensive action, or parking a carrier group off the coast of a nation that considers us to be offensive?

At the end of the day, you have to believe that the American experiment is still ongoing, that people have the right to elect and unelect the authorities making these decisions, that our imperfect constitutional republic is still good enough to run a country without outsourcing the real levers of power to billionaires and corpos and their shadow advisors. I still believe.

And that is why "bro just agree the AI won't be involved in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance why can't you agree it is so simple please bro" is an untenable position that the United States cannot possibly accept.

[Patrick T. Brown @PTBwrites]

The Olympics and the Masters are the last two major sporting events that prioritize the aesthetic experience of watching sports instead of monetizing every square inch - no jersey ads or sports betting ad reads - and it looks so clean and pleasant and rewarding as a viewer.

[Fareed Zakaria @FareedZakaria]

Blue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off fiscal problems to some future day.

Democrats in city halls should stop governing as if the goal is to announce new entitlements, and instead make government work.

My take:

[Dr Keeneland Dan @fatbaldguyracin]

This non travel call is killing basketball, YOU CANT CHANGE pivot feet. For 200 yrs in basketball this is a WALK , but lately the refs have decides you can just take another step. It is happening every night in CBB and its never called anymore. Its a freaky travel.

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

"The central theme of the book is the contrast between the Hobbits (or "the Shire") and the appalling destiny to which some of them are called, the terrifying discovery that the humdrum happiness of the Shire, which they had taken for granted as something normal, is in reality a sort of local and temporary accident, that its existence depends on being protected by powers which Hobbits forget, against powers which Hobbits dare not imagine."

-CS Lewis, close friend of JRR Tolkien

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

There is absolutely no difference between this play and the Buffalo play. Adams did not make any move. He caught it, secured it as he was tackled and then stripped on the ground. Same exact thing. Same exact. This is why fans hate the NFL refs. No consistency game to game

[Capt. Caleb Williams @CaptCSWilliams]

Mother—

We have lost the battle, but the war will wage as long as I manage this post of Chicago. Defeat may visit us, but it shall not remain.

This too shall pass.
—CW

[Jimmy Traina @JimmyTraina]

Here is Kevin Harlan’s ELECTRIC national radio call of the Bears insane game-tying touchdown.

[Sara @wolvestwtsara]

“We still have no answer for when 35, 30 & 23 retire”

the answer:

[Danny Parkins @DannyParkins]

Wow the impromptu Caleb speech… ‘make your money in the regular season, the playoffs are for your name. For our legacy.’ Then he gives his game ball to Ben Johnson.

Can’t believe it’s the Bears.

[Capt. Caleb Williams @CaptCSWilliams]

Mother—

Victory hath been secured! The antidotes distributed to the public for lactase in the water supply proved vital in the waning moments.

A civilian secured a dairy-shredding device amidst the height of battle.

The knees of the enemy are bent.

Good. Better. Best.
—CW

[The Wieners Circle @TheWienerCircle]

If the Bears win the Super Bowl, we will feed free hot dogs to the entire parade (as many as we can give out), and the players on the team will receive free hot dogs at our store for the rest of their lives

[Eric Weinstein @ericweinstein]

Like everyone else, I looked at the shooting of Renee Nicole Good. From several angles. And frame by frame. I watched the reverse lights go out. The weapon leave its holster.

I looked at the before footage. The aftermath. I listened carefully to the audio. I heard the legal scholars commentary. The politicians. Etc.

But most of all, I watched it as a pair of amped up Federal Agents with a car and driver defying my orders in a tense situation. And then I watched it as a freaked out American female in fight-or-flight model with a terrifying man trying to force open my driver side door who may have barely noticed the other man in front of my car about to end my life.

——-

My thoughts.

This was always going to happen. A bunch of political people we don’t know playing out a drama of Sanctuary Cities, voting strategies, refugee designations, border enforcement, immigration scams, etc.

Sooner or later, given enough time, a loving widower and single dad will also pick up a gun and find a 2A solution to his grief over the Surgeon who “transitioned” his only brainwashed child while he was working two jobs in a murder suicide.

Someone wearing a Candace t-shirt calling for America-First will shoot up a Pro-Israel rally in Florida chanting about “Noticing”, Nick Fuentes and wanting their country back. Or a person will spray-paint “Never Again” on a Cybertruck and drive it into a Michigan crowd screaming “From The River To The Sea!”

Etc.

We are being set, like wind up toys, to tear each other apart and ourselves apart. my own head has been filled with so many slogans and so much hate for you by so many different people no matter who you are.

We are all in this low grade revolution.

And it will be reset today by algorithms you didn’t program, filled by speeches you didn’t write, amplified by accounts you don’t know are bot farms, directed by political strategists whose names you do not know, undoing action you would never have taken in ways you would never agree to directed by famous people you don’t know personally.

[Sana Ebrahimi Ledene @SanaELedene]

So which is it, Brian?

Was Gaza covered 24/7 because Western media conveniently had reporters on the ground? (No they did not)
Or because editors "understand" Gaza but somehow can't grasp Iran? (Majority of Americans don't know that "Palestine" has never existed as a country)

Then explain this: during the 12-day Israel–Iran war, BBC, NYT, CNN ran nonstop coverage. Daily updates. Endless analysis. No confusion, no hesitation, no "lack of access" or "lack of understanding" excuses.

What changed?

Iran did not suddenly become harder to understand. Reporters did not suddenly disappear. The only thing missing now is Israel's direct involvement.

And there's the pattern.
When Israel is in the frame, legacy media locks in.
When Iranians are being killed in the streets of Tehran, silence.

This is intentional. Legacy media is not failing by accident, it is choosing what matters.

[Ryan McEntush @rmcentush]

I think a lot of discussion about recent US foreign policy misses the frightening, underlying premise. In Washington, there’s a growing belief that most allies are no longer capable of meeting hard security requirements in an era of renewed great-power competition. And that we must act fast to fix that.

The United States appears to have decided that it will no longer outsource core elements of its security. That doesn’t mean alliances don’t matter, but they are no longer treated as substitutes for actual control. For systems tied directly to homeland defense — missile warning, space, cyber, subs, nuclear — the US insists on direct command. And regionally, very few countries are viewed as up to their standards.

Seen through that lens, policies that are portrayed as erratic look more coherent. Venezuela mattered because it was becoming a permissive platform for Iran, Russia, and China in the US near abroad. Greenland matters because it is weak, strategically vital, and increasingly exposed, while Denmark/NATO are trusted politically but not seen as operationally sufficient to secure it alone. This is not a vote of no confidence in allies’ intentions, but in their ability.

Israel stands out as the rare case where the US appears to view an ally as competent and capable of directing its own regional security — watch Iran here. A second-tier of new "trusted" allies might include Japan and Poland, but it's not clear.

What has me worried is that DC is clearly spooked and views their current global position as inadequate. Rhetoric is now action. The objective now appears to be hardening positions before a much bigger conflict, rather than rely on collective action in a crisis.

Framing recent moves in terms of resources or ideology feel like it gets the causality backwards. Those considerations matter, but they are downstream of a more basic and terrifying conclusion — in an increasingly unstable world, the US believes only a handful of actors are capable of bearing real security burdens, and it intends to retain control accordingly.

Actions viewed as preemptive today likely only signal the beginning of a much longer era of instability. The board is being set. I hope I'm wrong.

[Christina Hoff Sommers @CHSommers]

I totally agree. For decades, our schools have focused on the moral failings of the West. Students learn little about the West’s far more numerous and spectacular moral achievements. This imbalance has created a dangerous ethical illiteracy.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Tomorrow will be an important day, and the days after that. But today the dictators are afraid, the Marxists and appeasers are crying, and Venezuelans are celebrating the removal of a brutal despot. I refuse to complain about a day like that. May Venezuela be free.