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np- commented on I don't care how well your "AI" works   fokus.cool/2025/11/25/i-d... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
prmph · 3 months ago
Tools are not value neutral in any way.

In my third world country, motorbikes, scooters, etc have exploded in popularity and use in the past decade. Many people riding these things have made the roads much more dangerous for all, but particularly for them. They keep dying by the hundreds per month, not only just due to the fact that they choose to ride them at all, but how they ride them: on busy high speed highways, weaving between lanes all the time, swerving in front of speeding cars, with barely any protective equipment whatsoever. A car crash is frequently very survivable; motorcycle crash, not so much. Even if you survive the initial collision, the probability of another vehicle running you over is very high on a busy highway.

On would think, given the clear evidence for how dangerous these things are, why do people (1) ride them at all on the highway, and (2) in such a dangerous manner? One might excuse (1) by recognizing that many are poor and can't buy a car, and the motorbikes represent economic possibility: for use in courier business, of being able to work much further from home, etc.

But here is the thing about (2), A motorbike wants to be ridden that way. No matter how well the rider recognizes the danger, there is only so much time can pass before the sheer expediency of riding that way overrides any sense of due caution. Where it would be safer to stop or keep to a fixed lane without any sudden movements, the rider thinks of the inconvenience of stopping, does a quick mental comparison it to the (in their minds) the minuscule additional risk, and carries on. Stopping or keeping to a proper lane in a car require far less discipline than doing that on a motorbike.

So this is what people mean when they say tech is not value neutral. The tech can theoretically be used in many ways. But some forms of use are so aligned with the form of the tech that in practice it shapes behavior.

np- · 3 months ago
But this is just your own personal value judgment, of which clearly you don't like motorcycles. Not everybody shares the same opinion. I.e. there are plenty of people who ride motorcycles safely and legally, you just never hear about them because they never have any incidents. You have just instilled your own value into the tool, one that is not universally shared, the tool itself is still neutral and can even be seen as a positive by somebody else.
np- commented on What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality   nytimes.com/2025/11/23/te... · Posted by u/nonprofiteer
ArcHound · 3 months ago
Lol, in this comment chain, I, personally, shall judge all of the quality of human connection based on vibes.

Gamifying the needs depends on the intent. If you care about people wellbeing it's a force for good, if you seek to manipulate the people using advanced mechanisms it's evil.

Ultra popular romance book to balance needs of a woman is okay if the book was written by a human, and even that only as long as there is effort to connect outside of it. It's preferable to trash talk the husband behind his back over a glass of prosecco with 3 and exactly 3 friends.

Keep them coming, happy to answer. Just don't ask me for proofs, here I deal with vibes.

np- · 3 months ago
What about men, are they allowed to play single player video games with bots in it when they have an option to play with humans? ...or are we only judging women in here?
np- commented on CBP is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with suspicious travel patterns   apnews.com/article/immigr... · Posted by u/jjwiseman
nabla9 · 3 months ago
65% of the US population, 200 million Americans, live within the 100-Mile "Constitution-Free Zone".

Supreme Court has established that some established constitutional provisions do not apply at the U.S. border, and protections against governmental privacy incursions are significantly reduced.

The border search exception applies within 100 miles (160 km) of the border of the United States, including borders with Mexico and Canada but also coastlines.

np- · 3 months ago
Border Patrol is doing an operation in Charlotte, NC right now. That is well over 100 miles from any border or coast. So 100 miles itself is fiction, they can just do whatever they want. Who’s gonna stop them?
np- commented on That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus   cybersect.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/sixhobbits
roody15 · 5 months ago
Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news.

I tend to agree with student, NYT and major news outlets are clearly used for propaganda and if you sit back and look at it from perhaps another angle it makes sense , why wouldn’t a world super power with a massive government apparatus use media to influence and control citizen behavior?

So yes the anonymous experts, the anonymous intelligence experts, the experts on CNN panels .. etc etc. It’s the government pushing a narrative for a purpose. My two cents live your life and spend your precious emotional energy for the people you care about around you. Do things in your local community and help when and where you can.

np- · 5 months ago
Isn’t it a feature that people are vocally dissatisfied with what the media reports? To just accept it quietly in silence seems in fact the worse outcome. Even if everyone knows the media reporting is wrong, keeping quiet about it creates a strange meta state where the reporting is true enough that no one wants to publicly question it, because nobody else is questioning it, so it’s unclear whether your fellow citizens accept it as true or not, so you need to assume they believe it’s true.

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np- commented on Hallucinations in code are the least dangerous form of LLM mistakes   simonwillison.net/2025/Ma... · Posted by u/ulrischa
theshrike79 · a year ago
Spoken by someone who hasn't had to maintain Somene Else's Code on a budget.

You can't just rewrite everything to match your style. You take what's in there and adapt to the style, your personal preference doesn't matter.

np- · a year ago
Someone Else’s Code was understood by at least one human at some point in time before it was committed. That means that another equally skilled human is likely to be able to get the gist of it, if not understand it perfectly.
np- commented on Hallucinations in code are the least dangerous form of LLM mistakes   simonwillison.net/2025/Ma... · Posted by u/ulrischa
JimDabell · a year ago
> My fear is that LLM generated code will look great to me, I won't understand it fully but it will work.

If you don’t understand it, ask the LLM to explain it. If you fail to get an explanation that clarifies things, write the code yourself. Don’t blindly accept code you don’t understand.

This is part of what the author was getting at when they said that it’s surfacing existing problems not introducing new ones. Have you been approving PRs from human developers without understanding them? You shouldn’t be doing that. If an LLM subsequently comes along and you accept its code without understanding it too, that’s not a new problem the LLM introduced.

np- · a year ago
Code reviews with a human are a two way street. When I find code that is ambiguous I can ask the developer to clarify and either explain their justification or ask them to fix it before the code is approved. I don’t have to write it myself, and if the developer is simply talking in circles then I’d be able to escalate or reject—and this is a far less likely failure case to happen with a real trusted human than an LLM. “Write the code yourself” at that point is not viable for any non-trivial team project, as people have their own contexts to maintain and commitments/projects to deliver. It’s not the typing of the code that is the hard part which is the only real benefit of LLMs that they can type super fast, it’s fully understanding the problem space. Working with another trusted human is far far different from working with an LLM.
np- commented on German tourist held indefinitely in San Diego area immigrant detention facility   kpbs.org/news/border-immi... · Posted by u/axiologist
BlueGh0st · a year ago
The article I read a few days ago said that the tattoo artist posted on Instagram advertising their arrival to the US and taking clients. They had done the same with the previous destination on their tour.

If it's true, it seems pretty open and shut, so I'm not really sure why this is popping up on HN now.

np- · a year ago
It doesn’t seem open and shut at all, why not just deny her entry if they’re so sure at the border? It’s popping up on HN because apparently she’s been detained for over a month… well after her scheduled return flight. why would this ever be necessary?
np- commented on Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers   collegetowns.substack.com... · Posted by u/raybb
bloak · a year ago
I've sometimes wondered what the exact rule is with red lights. Presumably you're allowed to continue moving forwards if the front of your vehicle passed the stop line before the light turned red. But if you stopped with the stop line passing through your vehicle are you allowed to start moving forwards again while the light is red? (Whether that would be a sensible thing to do would depend on whether you're driving a long vehicle with just a tiny part of it behind the stop line, or a motorbike with just a tiny part of it in front of the stop line, but does the law distinguish those two cases?)
np- · a year ago
If your vehicle is ever fully stopped past the line, and the light is red, that would be considered a “blocking the box” traffic violation in most jurisdictions. You technically should not have entered the intersection at all without the ability to fully clear it.

u/np-

KarmaCake day748May 5, 2020View Original