the_af (u/the_af) - Readit News

the_af commented on I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me marcusolang.substack.com/... · Posted by u/florian_s

Forgeties79 · 8 hours ago

I was mostly responding to the section about how those people should not be parents but I must’ve misread tone/missed something.

the_af · 6 hours ago

I was mostly arguing that Altman's statements, if taken at face value, show him to be unfit to be a parent. I stand by this, but mostly because I think people like him -- Altman, Musk, I tend to conflate -- are robots masquerading as human beings.

That said, of course Altman is being cynical about this. He's just marketing his product, ChatGPT. I don't believe for a minute he really outsources his baby's well-being to an LLM.

the_af commented on JetBlue flight averts mid-air collision with US Air Force jet reuters.com/world/america... · Posted by u/divbzero

antonymoose · 7 hours ago

Arguably, yes?

Had the US somehow magically lost WWII, the firebombing atrocities would almost certainly have had a few Air Corp generals executed by the victor.

We could just as well look at the systemic atrocities committed against the Vietnamese civilian population and yet we still lost that war.

Excepting the Gulf War, how far back to we go to find something America has won (somewhat) cleanly?

the_af · 6 hours ago

> Arguably, yes?

No.

The USA is the strongest military power in the world. They are not the underdog. If they resort to war crimes or unfairness, it's not because they are the underdogs; it's because this is what top dogs do. Let's not make excuses for them.

the_af commented on JetBlue flight averts mid-air collision with US Air Force jet reuters.com/world/america... · Posted by u/divbzero

antonymoose · 9 hours ago

The Red Coats lost quite a few battles to their aged tactics against the Patriots. So much so that officers complained about the ungentlemanly conduct routinely in their correspondence.

As far as our modern, temporary notion of “rules of war,” go, it’s because it suited the victor and gives them what they feel is an edge and an air of superiority. I don’t say this to be smug either, just look at how well the Geneva Suggestions worked out for the North Vietnamese or the Taliban. They ignored the and won.

Like it or not, the modern nation-state’s notions of Rules of War are going to quickly become a bygone relic of a simpler time, as was a formal British fighting line.

the_af · 8 hours ago

Ah, yes, the USA is the underdog here, they cannot win at war unless they ignore the conventions of war.

the_af commented on JetBlue flight averts mid-air collision with US Air Force jet reuters.com/world/america... · Posted by u/divbzero

pksebben · 13 hours ago

I served. While in basic training, the drill sergeants taught us why we salute differently than other countries (probably apocryphal) - because we've "never lost a war". I'm cheeky now and I was then, so I asked about vietnam.

"Police Action" came the terse reply. "We don't talk about that one."

Course by then I'd already signed on the dotted, so...

the_af · 8 hours ago

Curious here, what's the different salute?

the_af commented on JetBlue flight averts mid-air collision with US Air Force jet reuters.com/world/america... · Posted by u/divbzero

padjo · 9 hours ago

I believe the term of art de jour is “special military operation”

the_af · 8 hours ago

That's the term in Russia. In the USA it's "War on Terror-drugism".

the_af commented on I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me marcusolang.substack.com/... · Posted by u/florian_s

Forgeties79 · a day ago

That’s not the questions people will ask though. They’ll go “what body temperature is too high?” Baby temperatures are not the same as ours. The threshold for fevers and such are different.

They will ask “how much water should my newborn drink?” That’s a dangerous thing to get wrong (outside of certain circumstances, the answer is “none.” Milk/formula provides necessary hydration).

They will ask about healthy food alternatives - what if it tells them to feed their baby fresh honey on some homemade concoction (botulism risk)?

People googled this stuff before, but a basic search doesn’t respond with you about how it’s right and consistently feed you emotionally bad info in the same fashion.

the_af · 9 hours ago

Agreed. I wasn't defending Altman!

the_af commented on Pro-democracy HK tycoon Jimmy Lai convicted in national security trial bbc.com/news/articles/cp8... · Posted by u/onemoresoop

0x3f · a day ago

It's possible for a meat grinder process to still be good at convicting, say, all murderers, at the cost of a few false positives. In a utilitarian sense that could be considered reasonable. And it might well be repeatable in a way. Even default-guilty is repeatable, and 'just' on those terms, as long as your pre-charging pipeline isn't kicking up too many false positives.

Really it's just about the definition of fairness or justness though. I'm not really disagreeing because I'm not putting forward definitions of my own either, but a lot of the comments here throw out the terms with some assumed meaning. For example, I'm pretty sure if you polled Chinese people, they wouldn't have a problem with the OP story's outcome. So does that make it democratic? Or good as a point of public policy? It's all a bit hand-wavey without specifying.

> what's with obsessing over Hong Kong and China if most of the world isn't fair?

Well we (I'm assuming) both live in the West and so we encounter the exceptionalist narrative of this place. Certainly HN is a Western forum. Most views of China held by people in the West are based on partial truths and thought-terminating cliches.

But that's kind of just how _people_ are the world over, no? Chinese people in Chinese forums have a parallel experience to this, just mirrored.

the_af · a day ago

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think we're in agreement.

I too think the situation is probably mirrored from China's side. I hope there are some people over there who can also understand there's some middle ground, that neither side is totally right or wrong, and that we both perceive the world in half-truths and thought-terminating cliches.

And yes, because I live in the West (well, Latin America, anyway) I'm more upset about the distortions from "our" side. I don't really get to witness the Chinese side. I'm very skeptical even of what "our" side claims the distortions on the Chinese side are, since I don't get to witness them directly and I have reason to be skeptical of my side's narrative.

the_af commented on Pro-democracy HK tycoon Jimmy Lai convicted in national security trial bbc.com/news/articles/cp8... · Posted by u/onemoresoop

andy_ppp · a day ago

So do you think citizens of the UK should be held accountable somehow? I honestly don’t think the UK has done much to harm other countries since the Iraq War which obviously made everything worse.

the_af · a day ago

The citizens of the UK in general? No.

Authorities and government? Yes. Even if the current ones weren't born when history was made, it's their duty to understand the history of the country they are governing, and of how past decisions shaped the world as it currently is.

> I honestly don’t think the UK has done much to harm other countries since the Iraq War which obviously made everything worse.

The history of Hong Kong itself is deeply influenced by Great Britain's actions (as well as other world powers, of course), and it doesn't start with mainland China's takeover.

Another example of UK's actions deeply influencing the current world, unrelated to China, is Iran (and well, the Middle East in general). So the UK cannot simply point fingers at others and forget about how they helped shape the situation.

the_af commented on Pro-democracy HK tycoon Jimmy Lai convicted in national security trial bbc.com/news/articles/cp8... · Posted by u/onemoresoop

nutjob2 · a day ago

Why is every political discussion boiled down to a whataboutism? Who cares what the UK does when the subject is HK's obvious slide in to naked authoritarianism.

Can we not simply condemn that?

the_af · a day ago

> Why is every political discussion boiled down to a whataboutism?

Unfortunately, just like whataboutism can be a disingenuous rhetorical device, so is anti-whataboutism. Sometimes the comparison is relevant, sometimes it's not. In this case, I think it is.

the_af commented on Pro-democracy HK tycoon Jimmy Lai convicted in national security trial bbc.com/news/articles/cp8... · Posted by u/onemoresoop

0x3f · a day ago

Well it's possible in the same coincidental sense that I described, right? You can be railroaded _and_ be guilty of horrific crimes. It depends whether fairness and justness are properties of the process or the outcome.

Regardless, it's presumably all relative. At least there's certainly an ordering of states I'd rather have against me, as a person living in them. Maybe Sweden?

the_af · a day ago

I think if it's coincidental, it cannot be fair right? Fair in the sense we're discussing here must mean a repeatable system. If a wrongful process arrives at the right conclusion, it's still not fair (e.g. let's say a bunch of people lynch someone accused of murdering a child, without hearing any evidence, and it turns out the suspect was really a child mudered: was the process "fair"?).

Or if you don't like the child murder analogy: suppose an FBI employee decided to betray the US to the Soviets out of money, not ideology (cue Robert Hanssen). The US is at this point in time still executing traitors to the state. They grab this Hanssen-type, send him to the electric chair (on faulty evidence or simply "vibes" of guilt), but later it turns out this person was really guilty. Was this process fair?

Maybe Sweden if relatively fairer, like you said. I suspect not. But even if it was relatively fair, what's with obsessing over Hong Kong and China if most of the world isn't fair?