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Giant indeed. How large was it, I couldn't even zoom in enough on my phone to get good detail.

10,408 by 5,408 pixels, or about 30" by 15" at 300dpi - but for this you'd want half that or less, so the result is large enough that the print is actually readable. Even redone to a less extreme aspect ratio, it would certainly fill a binder and probably cover a wall.

Wild. This makes me even more interested in playing. Thanks

It's contextual though, and pragmatic seems different to me than correct.

For example, if you have $20 and a leaking roof, a $20 bucket of tar may be the pragmatic fix. Temporary but doable.

Some might say it is not the correct way to fix that roof. At least, I can see some making that argument. The pragmatism comes from "what can be done" vs "should be".

From my perspective, it seems viable usage. And I guess on wonders what the LLM means when using it that way. What makes it determine a compromise is required?

(To be pragmatic, shouldn't one consider that synonyms aren't identical, but instead close to the definition?)


> It's contextual though, and pragmatic seems different to me than correct.

To me too, that's why I say they are measurements on different dimensions.

To my mind, I can draw a X/Y axis with "Pragmatic" on the Y and "Correctness" on the X, and any point on that chart would have an {X,Y} value, which is {Pragmatic, Correctness}.

If I am reading the original comment correctly, poster's experience of CC is that it is not an X/Y plot, it is a single line plot, with "Pragmatic" on the extreme left and "Correctness" on the extreme right.

Basically, any movement towards pragmatism is a movement away from correctness, while in my model it is possible to move towards Pragmatic while keeping Correctness the same.


If you can't trust a company, don't use their api or cloud services. No amount of external output will ever validate anything, ever. You never know what's really happening, just because you see some text they sent you.

even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place.

What an absurd thing to say. As a Canuck, I may even spend some days wondering if I'll have to defend my country from the US, but I can clearly see that there are many governmental and military jobs that are incredibly valuable, ethical, beneficial.

Wikipedia says there are ~2M US governmental employees, and ~2M in the military. The military doesn't use such clearances. When it comes to securing data systems for the government, a clearance is required, even if it's about any number of domestic things, some of which, yes, are valuable and helpful, and needed.

It should be noted that there are all types of security clearances, including very simple ones. In Canada, we have (for example) 'enhanced reliability' and 'secret level II' for governmental work, the first being a simple background, criminal record check, with 10 year's history.

Selling services, even say... cloud based wordprocessing software as a service would require most employees to have such clearances. But of course, what is effectively selling paper and pens, eg wordpro software, is a morally bankrupt thing in your context?!

This is a governmental program: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R42353#_Ref471832706

Description: Provides supplemental, nutrient-rich foods; nutrition education and counseling; and breastfeeding promotion and support to low-income women, infants, and children.

But I guess, because this requires handling money, and therefore a security clearance, you'd be ethically challenged to seek clearance? Or to write software for this?

To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting. You should literally be ashamed of yourself.

Get your head on straight. Please.

Don't let whatever weirdo US team politics-of-the-day exists, leave you making overreaching statements. The US, as a nation, needs GOOD people in such programs, not ones feeling shame.

I personally feel the US is on a terrible course currently, but it won't be fixed by tearing it down further. And if a time does come to change that course, the framework you have, needs to be filled with good people.

Do you not realise that by acting this way, you're working to ensure that only morally bankrupt people will apply for such jobs? If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time? That even the most noblest of jobs, such as helping to feed poor children will only be filled by those with no scruples?

How is this attitude helping?

How is it any better than whatever other team the US has?


> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.

Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc. In that case if you consider some of the jobs to be morally bankrupt, you consider all of them to potentially be morally bankrupt. You could go through all the hassle then turn it down, or leave during a probationary period when you discover the details, but that is a significant wasted time risk to take.

> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.

Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them right now nor would I have at all at numerous points over recent years. And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related.

> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?

For some, it has become true. That time is now or before.

As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal, I entirely understand people not thinking that they've got the nerve for that. Especially given that the first thing a bad administration does to someone raising concerns is to sack and blacklist them in a way that will affect future employment opportunities.

> such as helping to feed poor children

The “but think of the children” argument cuts both ways: many governments have, directly or indirectly, done and continue to do, terrible things to children. It may not be possible in the short/medium term to do anything truly useful about that (you go try tell the current administration over there to refund the good works that have been gutted recently and see how seriously they take you!) and dealing with the crap until things stear back towards the good is too much for some.

Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.


> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.

Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc.

I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point? It certainly doesn't counter or answer the point I raise.

> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.

Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them

Well I do blame them. And I specifically excluded the military. As I mentioned, the government is a vast and immense entity. Further, my response was to someone saying that to get a clearance would be morally bankrupt. I provided examples as to why that may not be the case. What you are doing, is painting all government as bad, because a specific team is in play right now.

This is literally what is wrong with the US currently. 90% of the issues are due to team politics on both sides. Politics before people. Politics before sensibility. Politics, instead of examining the moral and ethical considerations of each action one takes.

> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?

As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal,

You do not have to fight corruption to take a job feeding babies. Or the large amount of good that the government does. You can simply take and do that job. That's my point here. You're doing what the poster upstream did, painting the entire body of the US government as a single entity.

It's OK to say "I don't think this part of government is ethical, I won't work for that part of government", but to say that any government job is morally repugnant is disgusting.

> such as helping to feed poor children

The “but think of the children” argument

It's not a "think of the children" argument in any traditionally way. That argument is typically defined by taking rights away from someone, to "protect kids". This is simply feeding the poor, and babies. No comparison.

Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.

The government is not bad. A tiny part (the current administration) is the problem.

To give context, you'd need a string of "one team" government for decades to turn the course of the entire government. Programs enacted by both US teams are currently in play. Some programs are decades old, and supported by both parties.

Anyone who thinks that a certain team gets into power, and then "all government bad" is not thinking clearly. What you need to do, is look at what each department and each program does. Determine if they are good. It absolutely does not matter which administration passed it, or when. All that matters is "is this thing good?".

The government should be viewed as series of literally tens of thousands of companies. Each has its own task, provides specific services, and so on. To paint them all bad is nutty.


> I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point?

You are completely ignoring the “you don't always know the full nature of the task until after clearance” part. If you don't know it isn't one that will be a problem for you, it could be one that is. My point there is that bit.

> And I specifically excluded the military.

So did I. Hence I explicitly said afterwards “And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related."

I stopped reading at this point because if you didn't bother properly reading my previous before blurting out a response, then explaining more, giving you more to not fully read, will likely achieve nothing beyond consuming my time.


To take this logic to it's extreme: Would you have signed up for a job in Nazi Germany that required clearance?

If not, it's all down to value judgements and your personal evaluation of the current power structures.

Personally, I would feel guilty if I did anything that empowered the Trump regime.


First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate. That's back to old Usenet and mailing list ethics.

Regardless, absolutely, yes, I would take a job in Nazi Germany which required clearance, if that job was to feed poor children. What the hell? I literally used feeding babies as an example, please provide some context in where innocent babies should be left to starve. Children are literally the absolute concept of innocence, and a baby is beyond culpability!

That is... unless you're advocating some form of weird let babies starve, because of the crimes of their parents?! Which is effectively along the lines of suggesting ethnic cleansing???

Any form of ideological stance which is this extreme, is realistically actually inline with fascism, for it puts politics before people.


> First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate.

True. Though to be frank, before typing my longer response I did consider just telling you the same about the “but forget everything else and think of the children” line of reasoning.


First, I purposefully avoided drawing direct comparisons to the Nazis, I only used the extreme end of the logic to illustrate my point, that it's a spectrum and value judgement, not an absolute.

Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.

Along those lines, who said anything about crimes of parents?

Let me be more concrete: Would you feed children on camera so the propaganda apparatus can film a movie about a concentration camp titled "The Führer gifts a City to the Jews"? [0]

Everything you do can and will be instrumentalized by the regime. The innocents, too, are just a medium for their machinations.

There is a treshold at which even nominally good acts become morally reprehensible because they serve to sustain a harmful system. The only question is which system do you consider harmful enough to pass that treshold?

You're presenting your moral line as if it's objectively correct. I’m pointing out it's a judgment call with no easy absolutes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_(1944_film)


Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.

None of that is relevant. Why? My statements have been quite clear; the government is not the party in power. And further, that there may be portions of the government that may offend, that saying "all parts" is obscene and inane.

Recall the original conversation. It's not the mess you've made of it now. Recall my objection was to someone saying that any government job was bad.

I cited a government department with a specific outcome. Feeding children. The counter with the Nazis, therefore, is inline with that statement of mine. Yes, in Nazi Germany, I would work for the government to feed children.

The sensible inference is that my statement is akin to the same for the current US government feeding children. You've now changed that condition to, instead, being some sort of actor for films about feeding children.

This is not what we were discussing. For the record, no, I would not star in a propaganda film willingly.

In as this entire conversation has revolved around how the US government has a myriad of programs which are ethical and moral, and how it therefore would not be untoward to seek clearance and work in those jobs, yes I stand my ground.

I have also indicated that if one found the job questionable, then don't take it! And naturally one can quit if the job changes.

It's such an enormous stretch to try to claim that every single possible job the US government has is reprehensible. The notion is absurd, see my other post about how some of these departments have been unchanged for decades. Lived through both parties.

So yes, there is an easy absolute here. That currently (because, no one can claim to know the future), there are government jobs which are moral and ethical. Period. Hands down. Absolute certainty.

You wonder about the "crimes of the parent". Well, if you refuse to feed children because their parents are in Nazi Germany, then presumably part of that has to do with their parents. For example, would you feed the children of dissenters? If the answer is "yes", yet when asked "would you feed the hungry children of Nazi zealots" you say "no", then you are indeed punishing babies for the crimes of their parents.

A child is a child is a child, and to feed that child is noble. To feed the children of your enemy is noble. To feed the children of someone who murdered your children is noble. To feed the children of those who wish you harm is noble.

There is no ground where not feeding children is reasonable. None. Nada. Ziltch.

Children are not a political game. Children are not something you use to do battle. Children are not something cease helping, because you worry about it helping the enemy.

You. Feed. Children.

Period.


I would feed the children of both Nazis and Dissenters, but not under Nazi command.

To do so reinforces and legitimizes the power structure, and that is what I take issues with. Children are not enemies, I am fully with you on that.

The enemy is power structures and me not supporting a particularly harmful one might save more children than the concrete act of me feeding them personally.


And yet you have not even remotely addressed how this translates to every US government job being a morally / ethically bankrupt job.

You wave your hands about, and cite far flung examples of how it could be, then there is not here, but then is not now, the future is not now, and we are speaking of the current.

If your concern is that it "could be" at some point, well I hate to break it to you, but that also covers every type of job you might imagine. "Could be" covers a lot of change and time. "Could be" is a wide brush to paint with, especially considering the object isn't even before us, but a misty, intangible, not yet formed thing.


This is what the internet used to be about, just people ... connecting with people, without all the hassle of big business in the way.

Yes, imagine being in breach of contract if you apply for a mortgage, and they ask "What do you do" and "How much do you make a year" and "Can we see a pay stub (or income tax info)".

Such clauses are inane beyond the legality of it.


It's literally in the bowl you were just sitting in. I'm not sure where the inspection plate goes. Is this an AI saying this? Is the rest of the thread AIs? Is this all made up. What's happening!?

I thought learning about bidets was a new experience, now inspection plates?!

I thought I understood this part of my life.

scared and confused


It's just different shapes of toilets. There's a part without water directly under you, and then when you flush it's flooded.

Just do a quick search for German toilet and you'll see.

There are no AIs here, only gains.

While the example your provide is reasonable fair, the comparison is not.

For it to be fair comparison, the carrots would have to be grown by a foreign company, known for using unsafe growing practices, causing contamination. Eg, poison carrots. This same company would have to be under the control of a very hostile, very actively aggressive and threatening nation.

Such as one currently threatening to annex allies, among other things.

With the US literally tapping and spying on heads of foreign states:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Parliamentary_Committee...

and there being lots of ways to spy, such as push notifications:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...

Only insane people would objectively decide to use Google or Apple anything for any form of ID. Those platforms should literally be outlawed. Any use of push notifications or identity attention should be looked at as utter fantasy.

Here's a secret for you. There really isn't any urgent requirement to have an electronic identification method. It can wait. Supporting legislation can be passed first. There are lots of ways to do so.

For example, the entire EU could pass legislation stating that all cell phones have open source code available, including all binary blobs for drivers. And that all phones are unlockable, and that (for example) the phone has a version of the rom you can download without any Google services.

(If Apple isn't able to compete here, well... too bad)

The phones would not be legal to sell, unless the open source firmware was compiled in front of regulators. The point of this is another pet-peeve of mine, it would allow people to support their own phones, for that source code would be released the day that phone was no longer supported.

And yes, it's trivial to have open source firmware blobs. There just isn't a market for it. Pass a law, and sellers of SoC and other ICs will capitulate, or maybe more punitive laws will be passed against them. As someone once said, yes companies can have a lot of sway.

But governments have police, courts, and armies.

Right now, Android and Apple devices are a literal arm of the US government's spying apparatus, even if those two companies actively work against it.

Do not trust Google Play. Do not trust Firebase. Do not trust Google. At all.

Are Germans just too trusting? I remember 15 years ago, when nuclear power plants were closing, concerns were raised about the reliance on Russian natural gas. These were waved away. Russia? What's wrong with Russia! They're almost allies, they're capitalists now!

Don't do this again.

Do NOT trust Google. Don't. Don't make it a core part of any identity management.

Imagine, needing an active Google account to even bank! Or to file your taxes, or even to prove who you are!? Google cancels accounts with no recourse, no reason why, won't help anyone, and this is to be the core of identity management for Germany?

The average person won't even be able to install any German Government designed apps, unless they are on the Play store! Are you going to teach Grandma how to use ADB to install an app? Without an active Google Account, will you even be able to use push notifications?

Why would a government even allow ID to be blocked by the requirement that a company with terrible, horrible, inane customer service, which just kills accounts without recourse, be a gatekeeper?

No Google account, no ID! Wha!?

It's literally not sane.


I think it falls under the article yesterday about male German citizens having restrictions on their travel. Electronic ID is a step toward “papers please”.

Germany at least seems to feel international war is only a few steps away and from how militant the Chinese and Russians have been treating their “territory” I am not sure it is a bad call.

America has likewise turned bad preferring violence over dialogue and loves tracking “hostile influences on the American way of life”. Those influences being anyone who would call out the toxic culprits making America into a cesspit.

Tying to Apple and Google? It is a terrible idea. Both are prone to freeze devices for financial or social issues.

However, a fix I would accept is to force the device makers to support multiple accounts out of box on every device to keep separate what the corporations have proven time and again they cannot be trusted to combine. Also for those companies to be forced to make a cheap credit card sized device which must be held to power on for the few that truly hate the ecosystems.


> cheap credit card sized device

I don't understand why this is not the default to be honest, and why people are not advocating for that


The first thing to go in every major war, will be the reliably of electronic anything.

What's wrong with ID cards and cash?


Worse, soon fewer and fewer people will taste good food, including even higher and higher scale restaurants just using pre-made.

As fewer know what good food tastes like, the entire market will enshitify towards lower and lower calibre food.

We already see this with, for example, fruits in cold climates. I've known people who have only ever bought them from the supermarket, then tried them at a farmers when they're in season for 2 weeks. The look of astonishment on their faces, at the flavour, is quite telling. They simply had no idea how dry, flavourless supermarket fruit is.

Nothing beats an apple picked just before you eat it.

(For reference, produce shipped to supermarkets is often picked, even locally, before being entirely ripe. It last longer, and handles shipping better, than a perfectly ripe fruit.)

The same will be true of LLMs. They're already out of "new things" to train on. I question that they'll ever learn new languages, who will they observe to train on? What does it matter if the code is unreadable by humans regardless?

And this is the real danger. Eventually, we'll have entire coding languages that are just weird, incomprehensible, tailored to LLMs, maybe even a language written by an LLM.

What then? Who will be able to decipher such gibberish?

Literally all true advancement will stop, for LLMs never invent, they only mimic.


Ironically, apples are one of the fruits where tree ripening isn't a big deal for a lot of varietals. You should have used tomato as the example, the difference there is night and day pretty much across the board.

If humans can prove that bespoke human code brings value, it'll stick around. I expect that the cases where this will be true will just gradually erode over time.


If humans can prove that bespoke human code brings value, it'll stick around.

Value to who, and which type of value?

Will that defining value be purely economic in nature? While it be purely defined by mega-corps, and their perception of value? The market moves, the money flows to those which control its direction.

We already see it today, with some firms literally forcing people to use LLM coding tools. The stories abound, of simply being forced to use whatever it spits out. Value, is often designed by cost, and code maintainability 5 years later isn't an immediate, quarter-profit induced concern.

It feels like you're glossing over a lot of my point.

In terms of new coding languages, it's rare to see new coding languages gain any traction, rust is the only recent one I know, and it's had a larger backer behind it since its release 15 years ago. It was supported in house for almost a decade before even seeing the light of day.

Will that happen now? And created (or at least managed) by a human? If not, what would a new language look like? Would it be human maintainable? Understood?

To me, this goes right back to the classic "buying a car with the hood welded shut". No way to maintain, repair, or even evaluate the quality of the thing under you.


> As fewer know what good food tastes like, the entire market will enshitify towards lower and lower calibre food.

This happened a long time ago in the US. Drive through California's Central Valley sometime and sample the fruit sold fresh along the side of the road. It's a completely different experience than the version you get at Safeway.


Same issue in my country with employment rates. Yes, some of those have been looking for work for so long that they slide from looking to "not looking" automatically. However at the same time, some of those people actually don't want to work.

And if they don't want to work, why would that impinge upon full employment, because what is the plan? Force people to work who are retired, or don't want to? Work or go to jail? "Full employment" is always presumed to be "people wanting to work can find it".


Giving up looking is not necessarily the same as not wanting a job.

Yes, that's why I specifically mentioned it.

If the best data you have is conjoined, then you must either figure it out, or ignore it.

Do you know what percentage, exactly, are retired vs "giving uo"?

No?

Then when someone says full employment, they're right unless you have specific and precise data to counter that.

We could also discuss people too sick to work. Or on maternity leave. Or wealth vs desire to work. Or 100 other factors.


> Then when someone says full employment, they're right unless

That's odd. The burden of proof is not exclusively on one side.


The burden of proof is predicated upon a well established economic terms. You want to refute those century+ old definitions? Alter them?

Then yes, you have to start the dance. And work at it. And convince the entire planet to change.


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