Which is why these were never communist states, any more than North Korea is democratic, or the old East Germany was a republic.

Just because these states wore the word “communism” like a thin veneer of legitimacy, does not a communist state make.

Communism can very much be decentralized, and in fact a correct implementation tends to be exactly that.

Because that’s where “communism” the term comes from - community, communal, etc…

I could get behind that.

But wealth is power, and power does not corrupt so much as it attracts the corruptible. You would need to work with all manner of sociopaths and malignant narcissists. And these are people who have the least justification for existing in a polite society.

Plus, they would also continue to be parasites on civilization, and continue to pathologically hoard more wealth than they could possibly spend in a million lifetimes.

Honestly, a guillotine is a lot simpler and a lot faster. Take out the top 0.01% of civilization, and the remaining members of the Parasite Class will not fight when you implement 99% top-tier tax rates, close all of the high-wealth loopholes, and build proper social frameworks that benefit everyone.

And this starts with the political system, with a high-tech direct-participation democracy which eliminates all politicians in favour of letting everyone vote on all issues. This requires a foundation with a population that is well educated in critical thinking and bullshit detection (which would destroy all conservatism in the first place), and an economic system (even modified capitalism) that meets everyone’s needs so everyone would have the headspace to deal with societal questions without being forced to always focus on economic survival. Without this political framework, socialism/communism of any form would continue to be corrupted and co-opted by strongmen and tyrants.

Because when you look at any attempt to implement communism in the past, it never survived beyond a few months to maybe a year or so. Sure, Russia had its revolution in 1917, but by 1918 Russian communism was effectively dead; taken over by an authoritarian kleptocracy no different than a feudal system.

Eternally youthful but mortal life.

I don’t mind dying. Death is what makes life have meaning. Let me live long enough and at some point I would be eager to wrap up my concerns and shuffle off this mortal coil.

But I would prefer to die on my own terms, at a time of my own choosing, and in the meantime exist with all the physical and mental vigour of someone between the ages of 25 and 45.

And the key is not being immortal, as I would not want to always survive grievous injuries. I would want to be mortal on purpose – if an accident would kill a normal human despite immediate medical attention of the highest modern quality, I would want to die just the same. I would not want to continue existing as bloody paste paining the interior hull of an airliner that smacked into a mountain.

But barring accidents, I would love to loiter and observe the next few centuries in great health and youthful vigour. Doing what, I don’t know. That’s for the future to determine. But it would be interesting.

As I pointed out in another root comment, the average - depending on the model being tested - tends to sit between 60% and 80%. But this is with no restriction on source materials… the LLMs are essentially pulling from world+dog in that case

So this opens up an interesting option for users, in that hallucinations/inaccuracies can be controlled for and potentially reduced by as much as ⅔ simply by restricting the model to those documents/resources that the user is absolutely certain contains the correct answer.

I mean, 25% is still stupidly high. In any prior era, even 2.5% would have been an unacceptably high error rate for a business to stomach. But source-restriction seems to be a somewhat promising guardrail to use for the average user doing personal work.

How much do large language models actually hallucinate when answering questions grounded in provided documents?

Okay, this is looking promising, at least in terms of the most important qualifications being plainly stated in the opening line.

Because the amount of hallucinations/inaccuracies “in the wild” - depending on the model being tested - runs about 60-80%. But then again, this would be average use on generalized data sets, not questions focusing on specific documentation. So of course the “in the wild” questions will see a higher rate.

This also helps users, as it shows that hallucinations/inaccuracies can be reduced by as much as ⅔ by simply limiting LLMs to specific documentation that the user is certain contains the desired information, rather than letting them trawl world+dog.

Very interesting!

That may be the case, but the most irritating thing is that thy fill all available spots with the lowest-capacity chips that meet the requested provisioning spec, instead of taking the requested provisioning and using the fewest higher-capacity chips needed to meet the provisioning spec. The latter, at least, would leave spots open for an authorized repair location to manually solder on more approved chips of compatible spec.

Read it again. It occurs even with a full system wipe and re-install from Microsoft-direct media, or even a full hard drive swap. It is wholly independent of what is on the hard drive, the only restriction being that it can only successfully run when injected into Windows.

• https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty/

One example of many.

You must be new to tech to not remember this. Wasn’t all that long ago.

If you have the money and want simplicity, reliability, and interoperability, go for a Mac. Just clench your sphincter and maximize the RAM; min. 32Gb ought to be minimally appropriate for a 7-8yr lifespan of basic duties. And FFS, go for what your current data uses up ×2.5 or 1Tb, whichever is larger (vital performance reasons in that). Don’t get the smallest storage unless third-party upgrade options exist like for the Mac Mini M4. And remember: all RAM and a lot of storage is integrated these days, which is why you should always max it out; there is no upgrade path except wholesale replacement of the machine. CPU is largely immaterial unless you are doing truly heavy lifting like video editing or AI, so that can often be the lowest choice.

If you want freedom and truly unconstrained system, some form of Linux/BSD on a Framework system is the way to go. Or if a desktop, hand-assemble it yourself.

If you are going to stick with Windows, go for a business-class Dell. Trust me, it’ll be almost as $$$$ painful as a Mac, but these little f**kers are built to last. At least you can upgrade the RAM and on-board storage, although I honestly recommend not going under 32Gb for anything other than basic tasks. It’ll be a lot more zippy with 32Gb even if you spend the first week tearing all the AI and built-in spyware out of Windows.

You are correct, however they were malicious in nature and loaded on every boot from the UEFI/BIOS. They required Windows and auto-terminated the install if they already existed.

Goldfish memories by most muggles and normies.

Plus the latest shiny and feature FOMO.

And then you have procurement who are told to get the most at the least cost, allowing state-owned companies to undercut most competition. Without clearly-specified guidelines that exclude dangerous tech, most rank-and-file salarymen will be told by Dilbert bosses to order the hardware or look for a different job.

Yes, but if you are running Windows on them, do they still inject Chinese state-sponsored malware into Windows on every boot from UEFI/BIOS storage?

They were caught doing this on several occasions, to the point where Lenovo products are forbidden across significant swaths of the U.S. government and military.

purposefully infecting your child with chickenpox for future immune protection

Vaccines are infinitely safer than doing that. Your premise a bad example to give, as it’s the riskiest possible path to immunity, and an example of exceptionally harmful parental care given the vaccination options.

If we made it illegal to expose children to religion until they reached the age of adulthood - and made enforcement viable and effective - religion would become extinct within two to three generations.

There is a reason why every religion out there places so much emphasis on proselytizing to children - because evolution has primed children to trust adults implicitly. They are the perfect brainwashing subjects because over the last few million years those who listened to adults and obeyed them without question were the ones most likely to make it to adulthood themselves.

I’m on the fence as to whether telling your child they are a girl or a boy is similarly harmful.

Telling them that they are developing physically as one or the other isn’t the problem.

The real problem is forcing cultural baggage onto them that pigeonholes their development. Or worse - that tells them that any discrepancy between their outward appearance and internal being means their internal being is the problem.

Being in tune with who and what you are has never been the problem. Learning about differences and realizing that your physical phenotype puts you in a particular group is also not a problem. Children will always be curious, and feeding their curiosity is always a net benefit.

The problem occurs when the outside world forces you to think and behave in ways that don’t align with your real self. That is the true evil.

Transgender participation in sports can lead to unfair advantages.

There is oodles of science that absolutely confirms this.

Almost all men are stronger than almost all women. It’s why high school boy’s sports teams routinely wipe the field with Olympic-level women’s teams. Like, they absolutely dominate the women’s teams. Even world-class female bodybuilders and strength athletes only moderately exceed the upper quartile of the male population. As in, not other bodybuilders and strength athletes, just normal men who have high-but-not-unusual levels of fitness.

And because the Venn diagram of when changes are best applied to the human body, and when subjects are old enough to give informed consent, are two separate circles with one hell of a gap between them, most FtM changes occur after the bulk of the musculature that provides adult strength has been developed.

As a progressive it absolutely sucks to admit that. But facts, evidence, and even reality have a very strong left-leaning bias.

I think we should be able to decide our own deaths if we want too, and that should be law.

Come to Canada or certain parts of Europe, we have MAiD.

Now granted, it’s heavily regulated such that you need extensive and documented proof of an unrecoverable decline that will only bring pain and suffering, and you need to pull that ripcord while you are still cognitively capable of giving consent (Canada generally still doesn’t permit advance assent), but it’s there to be used… even my own parents are putting all their ducks in a row to leverage it when it’s time.

The biggest problem is that our technology has been rapidly outpacing our society’s and legal system’s ability to moderate it, and is epically outstripping our ability to evolve better and more appropriate cognitive structures (biologically/developmentally-generated, so grounded in evolution) that might be able to better restrain ourselves and our destructive impulses.

TL;DR: As a species, we’re morons hammering on a nuclear detonator with a stone hammer.

Most of your success is more due to chance, and your environment, than your effort.

I have been lowkey studying business success for the last few decades, and you are absolutely correct… the vast majority of “success” is directly traceable to luck. Luck of opportunity, luck of connections, luck of having born into the right family with massive intergenerational wealth, and just plain dumb luck. But it’s almost always statistical probability. You just ignore all the snake eyes in your life in favour of the nat 20s.

Now, that’s not to say hard work doesn’t assist to a degree… a strong skill set, talent, and grit do allow people to better leverage existing opportunities, but those opportunities are almost 100% luck-based.

Agreed. It’s fucking disgusting.

But then again, I used to love Thousand Island dressing as well, and now hate it just as much. I think that happened at some point in my fifth decade.

But blue cheese and ranch… disgusting.

About the only mass-produced dressings I can stand these days are a few fruity and quite sharp/acidic vinegarettes, Greek, and Cæsar dressing; specifically Reneé’s. Even other brands of Cæsar dressings are… inadequate.