Author: sean

Response w/out AI

Answering Mike’s concerns.

Bits inline….

I Wonder:

How would you cite an AI derived source? I can imagine my research methods professor saying that we couldn’t use that as a valid research tool. Something that would not be accepted as an academic source. In the early days of the digital age when we were both in college we could only use printed peer reviewed academic journal articles, magazine articles and other publications on microfiche. Only academic sources that we could put our hands on physically. Internet citations was a new thing and APA, MLA or the Chicago manual of style had not spelled out how to document a source from the world wide web. The internet was a “Brave New World” full of information that some in the academic world did not accept as valid or academic. Including my research methods professor. How would you cite an AI source if it pulled it’s answer from multiple sources to generate the answer? Will there be a custom url generated from that AI to copy and paste into the footnotes to direct you to their own sources of reference?

I think you’d cite similar to how you did early Intertubes articles. URL, date retrieved.

To add further support, I’d recommend making a copy (PDF? PNG?) That shows exactly what you saw as it was when you saw it.

In addition to the links being all broken when I link to soemthing like Twitter, I want something more permanent.

(Some of this is self-reflective since I periodically delete all of my Tweets. As I wrote recently, whatever I might have spat out years ago likely isn’t representative of how I behave or think now. Sorry Ms. SHRMP with your five-figure Federal student loans…)

AI has the potential to slowly erode the ability of future scholars to actually do the footwork and research of the subjects they are studying.

I generally agree. But that’s why you need to have something in mind before you turn to the AI to confirm your premises.

Will the questions the researcher asks the AI generate only a certain kind of response to reinforce the researchers world view of the subject?

Maybe? At the same time, it shows that hte researcher is actually thinking enough to ask relevant questions.

We already live in a world where academics and politicians only look to source material that reinforce the ideas they have or the ideas they want the general public to have. A person’s individual “bias” would have the researcher to use language in their questions to get a certain type of answer.

It’s not nice to pidgeon-hole MSNBC Viewers like that, Mike.

AI in the wrong hands would tend to make the general public more ignorant of the true state of the world and the issues we deal with today. All the while leaving everyone feeling empowered because they believe that AI has the power to present them with more information and a broader perspectives on the issues then they would be able to see left to their own devices. In reality the information presented would be to shape a certain view point and create a “group think” mentality that doesn’t have a clue or see the whole picture in the end. That would be by design of whoever controls the algorithm.

I see where you’re coming from. At the same time, I think you have to have a general idea where you’re going before you engage the tools. Then you use those tools to either help confirm your suspicions, or tell you that you’re full of shit.

I like it when someone proves me wrong about something, and helps me figure out where I was led astray.

But that’s not good for the dying media platforms.

So. Whatever.

This kinda fits with the controversy surrounding RFK Jr.’s potential debate on Rogan.

Whatever. I’m pretty confident that there’s not going to be anything worthwhile discussed.

So I just don’t listen. Whatever. /GenX

42

I remember we when I was 42.

But the significance of it is from The Hitchhikers Guide series. The entire purpose “Deep Thought,” Planet Earth, itself, was to determine the meaning of Live, The Universe, and Everything.

After millions of years of work, it finished its research, and returned the answer — 42

I was reminded of this by reading this from Reason. The author who’d come in planning to write about the Dutch guilds as early versions of capitalist cooperation, asked several of the commonly-used AI instances when capitalism started.

All provided different answers, but none touched on what he wanted to write about.

I asked Microsoft Bing: “When was capitalism invented?” Bing said: “1776.”

An answer longer than 42, certainly, but still not correct.

It made me think of my time in college. There was a final in Business Law. One of the questions was pretty straightforward, and I eagerly went to work on it.

I used probably four Blue Books writing my response. Just me and my blue-black inked fountain pen.

I left the exam feeling great about what I’d written.

Being that it was finals, I didn’t see the professor in-person again. She did send me my grade via whatever messaging system the university was using in the dark basically pre-web days of the Internets.

Her response was something along the lines of “Well-reasoned using tort law. You should have used the UCC. C.“

I ended up with a B in the class, but it certainly didn’t give me the relaxing summer I’d been expecting; it still stings today about a quarter-century later.

But it ties back into the AI discussion because I think the author really showed the limitations.

So I wonder if there’s going to need to be two additional questions when you suspect someone’s used AI to do research.

While AI tools did you use?

Which questions did you ask? Verbatim. Justify how/why you chose those questions.

Bubuhbut they’re takin’ our jerbs!

No, there’s ways to use the tools. You just have to be savvy enough to ask the right questions, use multiple tools, and draw conclusions based on the varying results you collected.

This is not a one-shot effort.

But it also speaks to things like the scientific method where you publish everything you did so that others can reproduce your work.

THAT’S PROPRITERY INFORMATION.

No. No it’s not.

That sound you just heard was the sound of thousands of 80s and 90s MBAs’ heads exploding.

Everything Gets Deleted Eventually

Spent a good portion of the day today finishing up The Most Hated Man On The Internet.

What a douchenozzle.

At the same time, so you’ve got pics of your boobies on the Intertubes, okay. You haven’t shown those to me willingly, so I’m going to ignore them. You’re human; you’ve got them.

That they’re up there has no bearing on how I view you.

And no amount of litigation is going to make them go away. Very few things actually ever get deleted.

You can find pretty much anything.

I’m sure there’s shit I said on Usenet, or on mailing lists when I was a teenager that I no longer thing. Whatever.

“I really don’t remember that,” is an acceptable answer if someone asks.

That’s true for an asshole missive, or pics of your tits.

If it was last week, that might be a different story, but you have to allow people to present themselves for what they are now, not what they were.

Does that make me a bit inconsistent considering how I treat some commercial companies? Yeah. But I do treat individuals differently.

But the main message is that, no, everything doesn’t actually get deleted.

I understand this is a problem for those who want to carefully-tailor narratives; we have always been at war with Oceana.

But I do take extensive notes, hide things in places where they’re not easily-found.

But very little of it actually goes away.

Today is Fathers’ Day. I phoned my well-into-his-nineties’ grandfather, and texted my father-in-law.

Going to see my dad’s headstone is something I really don’t have the stamina for, unfortunately.

You Can Remain Silent

When you leave.

I’ve been following along with the news, especially the backlash retailers are experiencing with “Pride,” loosely after my apartment was flooded again at 0230EDT last Thursday morning.

I think things are kinda-sorta getting back together. We’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve got to have hauled out, but we’re back home since Wednesday. Big thanks to my MIL for coming up to help with the cleanup and reorganization.

In amongst the chaos at home, I did watch the last episode of Vice News Tonight. I will have trouble missing it. They didn’t really say anything about that being the last episode. The episode, itself, focused on some guy who died in Mississippi under suspicious circumstances. Was he lynched? Um…he was not hanged publicly for the public to see. Nobody quite understands the circumstances of his death. But, that the Podunk law enforcement agencies haven’t spent considerable time and effort trying to find who lynched him means that he was killed like it’s still 1963. Nothing’s changed. (And that’s why it’s important that the cheerleaders for the party of Jim Eastland must come down to set things straight….)

I was more bummed about Kennedy’s departure from FOX Business. It was fascinating to see her transition from the token Republican on MTV to a Libertarian stalwart. In spite of her too-frequent dalliances with the NeoHips, I will miss her show.

Maybe I’d find something else. Maybe not. Whatever.

But back to the not paying too-close attention to the news, there’s been a bit of controversy over Twitter’s brief cancellation of What IS A Woman?. While I’m happy Elon Musk overrode his employees’ inclination to bury it, it’s still something I really just don’t care to watch.

Without the burial, there’s nothing subversive about trying to find it. I simply don’t care about the movie, or its producer.

But with the controversies about what Target has done with transgender swimwear, too, it’s something I care very little about. While I think what they’ve done is a bad business decision, there’s very little for me to do about it aside from shopping there even less than I do now.

If that makes me a bigot, great. What was your name again? Where do you like do you work? Where to you like to shop? Great. I’ll make sure I avoid those places, too.

But that’s about all I’m going to say about it.

See the title. I have the right not to participate. I have the right to deny you my business.

I’m not going to proclaim loudly either of those choices.

If you think that makes me a bad person, again, Whatever.

Feels Like Sunday

Probably because I didn’t work yesterday.

I’ve been listening to things on Substack this morning. I do really appreciate the text-to-speech feature. Reading things is very difficult with my vision the way it is

Latest listen? Justin Amash’s birthday wish to F.A. Hayek. I appreciate the sentiments, but it doesn’t square well at all with the MiCaucs; laws are just to be ignored when they don’t suit whatever whim you’ve got at the moment.

And this is why the Libertarian Party of Virginia is gone.

Working within the system of laws is too mard, for Morans, we won, so GTFO.

.

If a law, or regulation tracing to it, is unjust change it. You can’t just ignore it.

Okay, CATO, we get that the Jones Act is stupid. Help someone on the Hill to pass a bill to repeal it. (Full disclosure on this — I do donate money to CATO…)

But beyond the justification of laws and regulations, the permanence is the problem.

Like the blessed Assault Weapons Ban, or the Bush Tax Cuts, sunset them. They address a particular problem for a fixed amount of time. If they’re still needed, pass a new law that does the same thing.

You Don’t Know

So many of my thoughts come back to something from Coach Mora.

I don’t know whether The ReOpening was good or not.

I guess it’s supposed to be something done in the style of The Office. Of course, I’d watched a few episodes of it, but the humor was largely lost on me.

Kind of the same thing with the special.

I have absolutely no idea. And I can’t really judge whether it did a good job in trying to capture the spirit of the inspiration.

I don’t like eggs. I couldn’t tell you which restaurants make a good omelet.

And even if there was a place that made one of the best ones around, I wouldn’t order it because I don’t like eating eggs.

Looking around on Twitter the day after, however, the response seems to be somewhat muted. I kind of expected to see rave reviews, just like the NeoHips’ rejoicing about The Debate. But I didn’t see that sort of adulation.

I think I’ve been trying to be better at thinking that sort of way.

If that makes me not part of the team, whatever. I can believe or not believe whatever I want.

Steady Eddie

Been thinking a lot lately about Eddie Willers. (Cliffs Notes version…)

I started down this line of thinking after listening to an episode of Your Welcome where the guest posited that every single person can be best at one thing, and that it’s a good thing to promote that.

Mmm….not sure I agree. Can you be proficient enough at one thing to make yourself useful to someone else in furtherance of another goal? It Doesn’t Take A Hero. (Yes, the sorts of high school side reading that stem from being the son of an Army officer…)

Your abilities also change over time. Mine have been significantly affected (negatively) by my medical condition. So maybe I’m not what I was meant to be, what I’m best at, but I can still do various things, and derive a sense of accomplishment from doing those things that maybe aren’t my forte. But no matter what you end up doing, do it as well as you can, nad get the rewards from that.

And try to enjoy those rewards. (One of the places I really fall down; I beat myself for accolades…)

Back to Eddie, however — he’s not one of the bad guys, even if it’s not one of the incredible protagonists. He’s not stupid. I mean, in the early aughts, he might have driven a Dodge Stratus.

But that’s not the temperament he had in the book, or the movie(s).

He was always loyal to a goal set by someone else. I think there’s something admirable about that…even if he wasn’t doing the single thing at which he was best.

Return of the Mac

Background music… (And apologies to myself, or anyone who reads this in the future, for any broken/dead links; everything gets deleted, eventually…)

MacMoMo that is. On Orkut back in the day, there was a particularly-radical Islamic grad student at a university in Scotland who was particularly intrigued with the “new left,” or “Libertarian Socialists.” His first name was Mohammad, which got shortened to “MoMo.” Since he was in Scotland, that morphed into “MacMoMo.”

Cathy Young, a former writer for Reason (a publication to which I’ve been subscribed on and off since about 1995, and to whose foundation I donate money) published a tweet storm from someone I think might be MacMoMo just absolutely eviscerating the thing that seems to be an undeniable truth in the NeoHippie LP Russia Caucus, that the gas attacks against people in Syria didn’t happen.

So, who I think is MacMoMo’s rebuttal to that.

It has to be a lie to continue granting unquestioned veracity to the storylines coming from these people who’ve “taken over” the Libertarian Party. The biggest proponent, one featured prominently in the LP’s antiwar rally in DC a short time ago, claimed on another podcast that the Rwandan genocide was because of something the US did.

The source for that? Edward S. Herman. The same guy who helped write coauthored Distortions At Fourth Hand. He also wrote extensively denying what the Serbs did in Bosnia/Kosovo during the 1990s.

The evidence for those things is pretty conclusive. There’s people alive who were on the ground that you can talk to. The UN and ICC held hearings on what happened.

But it takes me back to “The Debate,” which the NeoHip bobbleheads running the LP loudly-proclaimed was won by one participant. You have to snake around the reasoning, but it’s ultimately straightforward — Everything bad that happens is because of the US.

No. That’s not true.

Then you start looking at the things that get omitted from the storylines to protect those who you admire, and who might have been at fault.

Things happen. There’s no underlying reason or cause. There’s no grand conspiracies.

That realization is very, very difficult for many people to accept.

It speaks to things like whatever happened with the Nordstream Pipelines.

It could have been the US. It could have been Russia. It could have been Ukrainians. It also could also have been an accident. But there’s Sy Hersh saying that the US blew it up!

Logical fallacy.

We’ll just gloss over contravening information about what Syria did with regards to chemical weapons.

Just leave out the parts that don’t fit, and you’ll be better off.

Um.

A similar line with the health effects of the mRNA vaccines. Any negative health thing that pops up for someone who was vaccinated is because of the vaccine.

Can’t be that there’s any other explanation. It has to be because of the vaccine.

Or not. It couldn’t be anything else, because there needs to be something immediately to blame.

Reax

I’d started writing this before the final episode of the podseries was released.

I still feel pretty much the same way I felt after hearing JKR’s final bits.

So I’m leaving this as is, and will add bits after….

I’ve been considering lately, and no shit, it’s been costing me sleep, things about the issues surrounding J.K. Rowling.

Then Richard Dawkins, hero of evangelical agnostics, came out and said that there’s only two genders. (Pls2bforgiving the CR link, but it’s what came up when I S’dTFW for it….)

This episode, in some of the Twitter discussion, was supposed to be the killshot for her reservations.

The individual interviewed in the episode described the mental health benefits that came from early transition.

But it was female to male.

I think what Ms. Rowling is concerned about is the sorts of things that only males can do.

Can a biological man be physically-abused by a female? Absolutely. But, it’s the exception, rather than the rule.

While I was working through this entry, I say this story float actroas my Twitter feed.

I fully understand why she feels the way she does about hard-fought women’s rights, safe spaces, etc., being taken over by predatory biological males.

Refusing to acknowledge that, to me, is pretty disgusting.

But it also shows a fundamental misunderstanding; people aren’t just going to assent, no matter how much damage you think you’ve inflicted with your cancellation efforts.

Leave people alone.

If there’s something made by a person you once admired, but no longer do, you have the choice. You don’t get to demand he/change it because it doesn’t comport with the views you hold at this instant. If it really bothers you that much, you can leave.

The work isn’t there to please you. It’s there to communicate whatever the artist wanted to commmunicate when he/she wanted to communicate it.

Maybe that same take isn’t there anymore. Maybe it is. Whatever. It’s not for you the consumer to change. If you don’t like it, stop paying attention.

Settling For Saturday

Odd week, but some resolution on what I’m going to be doing over the next few weeks.

It goes along with finding resolution on lots of things.

  • I think I’m permanently finished with some things and places. i just don’t have any fondness anymore. I find it a bit fascinating how you can people can just erase anything someone might have found interesting. So whatever. The Gen X comes out; I’ll find something else.
  • With that, perhaps more than is healthy, I’ve been looking into Yuri Andropov. Some of this is in reaction to the rally the LP shamefully signed its name on to in DC a few weeks ago. Growing up, and in school, I’d heard a ton about Prague 1968, but there wasn’t a lot I got on what happened in Hungary in 1956. When I was there (1993), Budapest was an interesting mix of modern and filthy. Seeing some of the more-recent pictures, it looks a lot better. But the Andropov-era scars were still around. Excuse the sourcing, but Putin loved the guy. I think there’s probably some backstory that can be absorbed from examination.
  • I haven’t watched any XFL. I will probably watch some USFL when it comes back, but the desire to watch sports is somewhere behind many other things. Again. Whatever.