The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
Maggie Appleton has a very persuasive article on the boredom that faces us from generative AI and some ideas to deal with it.
I particularly liked:
Easier said than done, but one of the best ways to prove you're not a predictive language model is to demonstrate critical and sophisticated thinking.
Which ought to go without saying, but of course doesn't. And which ought also to include some sort of distinctive authorial voice.
And:
we can prove we're real humans by showing up IRL with our real human bodies
Bring it on.
Beastly Clues: T. S. Eliot, Torquemada, and the Modernist Crossword
Fascinating deep read, prompting deep memories of my father's abiding interest in cryptic crossword puzzles and prodding me to maybe take up my pen (or more likely pencil) again..Maybe in the New Year.
Fogknife : Six days of the Python (5 minute read)
I feel so seen, and this by Someone Who Knows.
Oh my god web results for popular programming questions are terrible. The top hits for every search phrase with python in it lead to pages that technically contain the information I seek, but which clog up the browser window with animated ads, subscription pop-ups, and sliding survey pitches.
fluffy rambles: Warning signs with social media platforms
Still not feeling a whole lot of urgency about any alternatives to That Silo. Maybe that just reflects my lousy performance as a self-promoter.
52 things I learned in 2022
I really, really like this series, and am thankful it comes around each year. (Even though Medium's markup sucks.)
Health & welfare in a small farm future, Part 3 | Small Farm Future
TIL about TATT and MUS.
[C]ould it be possible that health care in a small farm future wouldn’t necessarily be inferior, because we have the wrong image of what health care involves?
Health & welfare in a small farm future: Part 2 – a game of Monopoly | Small Farm Future
More fascinating ideas from Chris Smaje:
Why focus so much on the undeserving poor, rather than on the undeserving rich? Accounts of the undeserving rich do exist in our politics, but they’re not nearly so prominent as their counterpart. The numerous ways that the fortunes of the world’s rich people and rich countries are extracted from the poor ones go too little remarked. Out of wealth comes the power to keep writing the rules in favour of wealth, and thence the need to keep dusting its crumbs from the table in the form of stigmatizing welfare policies.