"Bullshit is 'any utterance produced where a speaker has indifference towards the truth of the utterance'. That explanation, in turn, is divided into two "species": hard bullshit, which occurs when there is an agenda to mislead, or soft bullshit, which is uttered without agenda.
"ChatGPT is at minimum a soft bullshitter or a bullshit machine, because if it is not an agent then it can neither hold any attitudes towards truth nor towards deceiving hearers about its (or, perhaps more properly, its users') agenda."
To see anything there at all in a mirror, there are three easy actions:
I can spend my time flexing.
I can make the time to shape myself up.
I can ask better questions.
Pick yours. Stop laying it on #LLMs. They only work with what humans put into them at that second. #Compassion for any struggle to make order out of the #other.
Let's take a sec here and notice something genuinely great happening in the US government: the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's stunning, unbroken streak of major, muscular victories over the forces of corporate corruption, with the backing of the Supreme Court (yes, that Supreme Court), and which is only speeding up!
Finally, he's made an interoperability rule requiring banks to let you transfer to another institution with one click, just like you change phone carriers. That means you can search an honest site to find the best deal on your banking, and then, with a single click, transfer your accounts, your account history, your payees, and all your other banking data to that new bank:
Last day of my break from work, I contemplate the dirt on my kitchen floor. The baskets of laundry. The pile of mail on the table. Plans incomplete, hours evaporated. I see all the failures and only glimpse the good moments. Was I swallowed by futility? Perhaps I should tell this to my therapist.
A #juror was quickly dismissed at the start. She was among the 7 already selected, she said she was very worried that despite the fact the court ruled to keep jurors’ name secret, she would still be exposed & targeted.
Another prospective juror interviewed by Necheles, says she is very "centrist." She says she appreciates #democracy & a diversity of #political opinion. But, says, "I really don't think this case is about my #personal politics, this case is ultimately about the #evidence & the #facts presented." She concludes by saying that her family background "comes from #totalitarian regimes," & that bc of that, she believes in "innocent until proven guilty."
Welcome to the 17th Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:
The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:
Our budget was cut 10%. I shouldn’t plan on submitting abstracts or organizing symposia at conferences.
We made reservations to visit München this October.
My daughter (on spring break) dropped me off at work so she could have my car for the day.
I won a Teaching Excellent Award. (Yeah, that one I was grousing about earlier this semester. I should feel happier, but my prevailing emotion is gratitude I don’t have to apply again.)
#Writer and #scientist Susan Abulhawa is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to uplifting #Palestinian#children.
Writer and scientist Susan Abulhawa is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to uplifting #Palestinian#children. She wrote the following piece during her stay in #Rafah in February and early March.
Once again, I find myself arriving at the weekend with a giant backlog of links, triggering a linkump, the 15th such dumpage, a variety-pack of miscellany for your weekend. Here's the previous editions:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
This policy makes a perfect bookend to the last CFPB initiative I wrote about here: a rule that forces banks to allow you to transfer your account to a rival with a couple of simple clicks, importing all your history, payees, and everything else you need to switch to a better bank: