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Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

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Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#191

Post by intended »

ball_of_lint wrote: post #92
ai_critic wrote: post #35

First read of this pissed me off, but subsequent reads gave a much different opinion. Do yourself a favor and read this, a few times, and take a moment to actually try and see what the author's getting at.

Oh it's so nuanced and hard to parse that he's arguing for compromise. The trouble is, compromise isn't really a tenable option with encryption. Either you make a draconian law that forces all electronic devices to run approved software only, or people will have access to easy encrypted messaging. There's really no middle ground, because where the smallest weakening of encryption affects everyone's privacy, only outl…

I don’t think the author is arguing for compromise though?

I think the author would love to see more enlightened policy, but he doesn’t believe it’s going to happen. Hence the closer: “ Please make my predictions come out wrong.“

Also, these laws don’t simply originate from big tech. That particularly OSINT study was done by someone who wrote their own interpretation of the data points they uncovered, to create a narrative that was comforting to them.

Big tech has been aware that a reckoning was coming, because they and safety advocates have been fighting for years now. The fact that there was no actual teeth or ability to enforce e regulation, and that harms were evolving beyond reason and imagination was general knowledge.

Meta is lobbying to influence the shape of the manacles they know are coming.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#192

Post by intended »

simianthoughts wrote: post #93
dgellow wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not his prediction, he made it clear they are useful. His conclusion for that section is this: > The only real question for me is: Are the LLM-code-review tools economically viable outside the bubble?

So is he suggesting that in the future, models of Opus 4.8 tier will no longer be as affordable? Like it would become 3-5x more expensive? Now that's quite a prediction.

I believe the added point was that new tools identify a group of bugs, and then there aren’t more bugs to find. At which point it becomes another tool you use and don’t think about.

Also, from what I recall, Anthropic and OpenAI subsidize their prices by ~40x?

That said, given the prices*quality of recently released open models, I think the cost issue is moot.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#193

Post by intended »

fzeroracer wrote: post #15

There are some incredibly strange equivalences going on in here that make me think the person in question is indeed quite out of date. The people pushing for the destruction of privacy and attested software integrity ARE the tech bros. I'm sure there are people here that will vehemently disagree with me, but we see the biggest tech companies pushing for age verification and we see founders and rich folk gleefully giv…

> I'm sure there are people here that will vehemently disagree with me, but we see the biggest tech companies pushing for age verification and we see founders and rich folk gleefully giving up their earlier pro-privacy stances in favor of supporting locking down identity.

I vehemently disagree, because this is not what is happening.

The Age verification domino toppled first in Australia, and then other governments found the example was good enough and followed suit.

The issue that HN conversations miss, is that the dominoes were set up over years. People have constantly been trying to deal with the many, many issues thrown up by social media. Issues ranging from the Myanmar genocide, content moderation, fraud, child safety, sextortion, to name just a random grab bag of issues.

Voters, governments, NGOs, victims and even tech firms, have been trying to figure out what to do for a decade+.

Voters, and non-tech-literate society used to complain about the status quo. The political will to change it reached critical mass, and is now in progress.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#194

Post by hinkley »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #159
hinkley wrote: post #146

A bit of an aside, but after someone introduced me to the notion of Reversible Decisions, it quickly became apparent to me that the solution to the bikeshed problem is to throw money at it before the roosters can start preening about which color the shed should be. Decisions that are reversible should just go with the instinctive answer of whoever volunteers to work on it. I've been in many meeting rooms where, becau…

+1! I've fallen in love with many of Amazon's in-group concepts, and maybe I'm just drinking the koolaide, but they have the concept of a "two-way door", which is exactly this -- a decision that can be made, unmade, remade, etc relatively cheaply. If you can identify that a choice isn't very dangerous, you can focus on the things that really are instead.

Amazon unfortunately downplays the value of ethics over numbers, and we see how that has turned out. The numbers say that counterfeit goods are just fine.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#195

Post by mimd »

intended wrote: post #185
mimd wrote: post #183

I have met women in tech who have been privacy conscious and paranoid about state control. Or even a healthy stream of non-tech women worried that it will be used to attack their sex and to discriminate. I don't think the author is correct in his belief that there are not a considerable amount of women worried about privacy. And to make such a board claim, and in light of my experience, would indicate either hubris o…

As a counter point, the larger point that the author was making resonated with what I have seen. As in - women in tech who value privacy and rule of law, and are also advocates for child safety and (better versions of) age verification. In addition, for obvious reasons, you see more (more being the key word) women showing up for issues like NCII.

I'm not fully sure of what is the total composition of opinions, and will not dismiss your experience. Indeed the hyper privacy all high costs group might be a small percentage. But I know several that use tails openly, despite being vehemently protective of women, while knowing less men that use tails. Certainly not "mythical" in my book. Futhermore the ignoring of viewpoints of non-tech women, the majority of women, expressing constant worry of state discrimination via information collection even though it's regularly hitting the news is bad. Tech is not the only party to this, indeed that's one of the reasons for this scenario as he correctly pointed out. His claim was overbroad so as to improve his argument, an annoying manipulation. Additionally, he used emphasis on wife/daughter, yet not including their voices, while minimizing his own position, which warrants the further parthian shot.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#196

Post by casey2 »

busterarm wrote: post #13
failuser wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws they pass do nothing to stop the criminals. Do you think an “age verification” law can stop any criminals?

The laws not stopping the criminals isn't the point. People are calling on their governments to do something and thus governments are going to do what they are going to do. It's a mix of what they can do and what they're likely to do. They just have to be able to go back to voters and say they're doing something. If you think that the fact that they did the wrong thing is an argument for not doing anything, you clear…

People are also calling on parents, governments and tech companies to respect children's privacy. [1]

None of these groups will because they profit too much from disrespecting their privacy. The average child would be far safer if they used the Dark Web. I'm not sure why the "richest country on earth" is engaging in zero-sum behavior, but those are the kinds of contradictions such behavior creates.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/18/key-findi...

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#197

Post by antonvs »

sfRattan wrote: post #175
antonvs wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. But the problem is, those same forces you're describing are employed to fool people into believing the fictions that support these regressive movements. The real danger we should be focusing on is "won't someone think of the impressionable adults".

Long term, I think we need computer age fables . As in: stories children can listen to and read growing up to acquire effective instincts about computers and the digital, networked world, rather than trying to apply instincts about the analog world to computers. Inter-human societal complexity has long outstripped our genetically developed instincts, but we've already solved that problem with storytelling and cultura…

> Long term, I think we need computer age fables.

That seems undeniable.

After all, look at religions. The major ones have survived, and perpetuated their positions - including many glaringly counterfactual beliefs! - for thousands of years.

If we want to communicate to the majority of humanity, fables seem like the only way.

But the fables will need to be assembled into a coherent ideology, with a motivation for following it.

Whenever I have discussions like this I'm reminded of the L. Ron Hubbard quote: "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."

It's a bit surprising that more religions haven't started with the motivation of making life better for everyone, instead of getting rich. Another strike against human nature.

Re: Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds

#198

Post by girvo »

busterarm wrote: post #171
girvo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m mostly seeing people disagree with the substance of his argument, though. Your argument through authority is weak.

Really? I'm overwhelmingly seeing people just complain and call him a crank without really making any arguments. There are some arguments but it isn't the majority of the comments, or even what I was responding to.

Yes, really. It seems you’re seeing what you want to see.
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