blakestacey @ blakestacey @awful.systems

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The given link contains exactly zero evidence in favor of Orchestrated Objective Reduction — "something interesting observed in vitro using UV spectroscopy" is a far cry from anything having biological relevance, let alone significance for understanding consciousness. And it's not like Orch-OR deserves the lofty label of theory, anyway; it's an ill-defined, under-specified, ad hoc proposal to throw out quantum mechanics and replace it with something else.

The fact that programs built to do spicy autocomplete turn out to do spicy autocomplete has, as far as I can tell, zero implications for any theory of consciousness one way or the other.

"And with the proper breeding ratio of, say, 10 chatbots to each male..."

Also:

Also (if you haven't seen) lots of new great writers confirmed attending including Scott Sumner, Agnes Callard, and Patrick McKenzie.

Is it worth getting Agnes Callard if she's not a double act with her second husband/former grad student?

From a comment thread:

Other ideas we chatted about having at LessOnline include maybe having some discussions about doing research inside and outside of academia, and also about learning from GlowFic writers how to write well collaboratively.

snerk

ChatGPT-4-o-face

Strange how the 26-year-old VoiCE of A gENerAtion sounds exactly like a politician who rails against the evil of TikTok while owning stock in Facebook.

"Whiteboards, whiteboards everywhere, yet not a thought to think!"

[taps the sign]

"Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."

And the name of that George Washington? Albert Einstein!

Introducing AI-Powered Audiobooks of Rational Fiction Classics

You know, sometimes I wish my words had touched more lives, but at least I can console myself with the discovery that nothing I've written has fucked people up that badly.

This manifesto could have been an e-mail!

The feature I am looking forward to the most in comminication apps is having a machine learning model listen to those "quick calls", generate summary and action items and post them right back in the thread. You get the benefits of both worlds that way.

Oh, you do, do you?

Tuesday. Found a cigarette butt in my Solo cup. Couldn't have been more overwhelmed with the existentialness of it all. Perfect generation moment, absolutely hilarisad. Uwu! Got two tickets to Cancel Me Harder, You Motherfucking Bitch. Playing at the best basement in the whole D-Square, can you believe it? Called up some completely wonderful numbers, but couldn't find anybody to go with except Roger. Wouldn't be seen dead with him after that business with Mike, but what can you do?

Wednesday. Cancel Me Harder, You Motherfucking Bitch was the definitive worst. Laugh riot from end to end! Couldn't have had a better time, even if Roger does still post to X when he should know that Nostr is the future.

Thursday. Found another cigarette butt in last night's Solo cup. Truth bomb time: what gives, yo? Rode the subway, thought hard about how everyone's face is just a mask for their true self. Thinking I need to upgrade my avi. It's completely the season for pixel art! Gotta ask Kevin about the best prompts, so I don't get something absolutely dreadful.

Friday. Oopsies! Turns out I've been leaving the cig butts in my own Solo cups! I couldn't be more embarrassed, but ChatGPT says that the benzos can't cause memory loss.

Saturday. Rode the subway to CVS. Bought myself an absolutely dismal new eyeliner, took a selfie with The Bell Curve. Hashtag totes not sponsored, hashtag unfiltered!

Sunday. Oopsies! Those cig butts? Turns out I've been leaving them in my own Solo cups! I couldn't be more completely mortified. I really came in a fluffer that time, but what can you do?

I'll see your Perl and raise you QBASIC

I'm imagining a Dorothy Parker review of Honor Levy. "It took gumption to call this My First Book, in the face of the inevitable riposte, 'And it should be your last.'"

Monday. Cold pizza and a vape around 2 pm. The Adderall at the Urbit meetup last night was too revolting, but what can you do? You can't stay up til 5 posting nrx thirst traps on just nothing. They had those divine dubstep remixers in the green coats, and Mike Crumplar was perfectly scathing, angling for a hate-fuck, and it couldn't have been funnier. Absolute VOG unit!

— from "Diary of a Dimes Square Lady (during Days of Panic, Frenzy and World Change)"

Nah. A man who sucks his own dick? That takes effort and deserves respect.

What pushes Levy’s stories beyond being merely on the level of smart magazine essays is the empathy you can sense below the starkness of her sentences. A typical observation: “When I’m at a party and I look across the room I can see everyone holding their red Solo cups and hurting.”

"When I am at a party, I feel like nobody understands me," said the voice of a generation.

One character is nearly canceled when, on a college radio station, she says, “Trigger warnings trigger me.”

2014 sent a Vine; they want their joke back.

Generations no longer understand one another because we haven’t been injected with the same memes.

"Marvy. Fab. Far out," deadpanned Calvin's father.

weird flex but OK

... maybe not OK, at that

The ceilings are so high, pre-war or something like that, and in the lobby there’s a mirror that makes me feel like we’re at Versailles.

"His voice is warm and husky, like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel ... or something."

I kind of wish that she and I could meet. I'd stare deep into her eyes, take her hand in mine, drop my voice into the register that Grandpa Stacey used in his decades of hosting radio, and intone, "Your brain is where insight goes to die."