Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

  • zogwarg@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    A fairly good and nuanced guide. No magic silver-bullet shibboleths for us.

    I particularly like this section:

    Consequently, the LLM tends to omit specific, unusual, nuanced facts (which are statistically rare) and replace them with more generic, positive descriptions (which are statistically common). Thus the highly specific “inventor of the first train-coupling device” might become “a revolutionary titan of industry.” It is like shouting louder and louder that a portrait shows a uniquely important person, while the portrait itself is fading from a sharp photograph into a blurry, generic sketch. The subject becomes simultaneously less specific and more exaggerated.

    I think it’s an excellent summary, and connects with the “Barnum-effect” of LLMs, making them appear smarter than they are. And that it’s not the presence of certain words, but the absence of certain others (and well content) that is a good indicator of LLM extruded garbage.

    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      18 hours ago

      Also, you can one-step explain from this guide why people with working bullshit detectors tend to immediately clock LLM output, vs the executive class whose whole existence is predicated on not discerning bullshit being its greatest fans. A lot of us have seen A Guy In A Suit do this, intentionally avoid specifics to make himself/his company/his product look superficially better. Hell, the AI hype itself (and the blockchain and metaverse nonsense before it) relies heavily on this - never say specifics, always say “revolutionary technology, future, here to stay”, quickly run away if anyone tries to ask a question.

      • zogwarg@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        7 hours ago

        My feeling has gotten that I prefer the business executive empty vs the LLM empty, at least the first one usually expresses personality. It’s never entirely empty.