> There, within WildChat’s data, Hamilton and Mimno found a small sample of conversations that included Elias and familiar tales of lighthouses.
> “Based on the timeline, we’re fairly certain WildChat is an original source of this phenomenon,” Hamilton said, adding that future work will explore why LLMs prefer these lighthouse stories.
So, probably at least as much a quirk of the training data as a deep distillation of LLM psyche. Still fascinating though, especially IMO the broader pattern of tropes.
> At the time of posting, I didn't know about any embargo. My contact had told me there was no embargo, and her contact had told her the same thing.
I'm not saying it needs to be a public burning, but I sure hope someone figures out who dropped the critical metadata bit so they can avoid telling that party critical things in the future.
Eh. I'd rather we set up a system where we don't have to rely on people being 100 % perfect for it to work. I'd be much more interested in what went on simultaneously that caused the meta data to get dropped, rather than who happened to be the one to do it this one time.
If you could tell ahead of time which components would be unreliable, that would be a great idea. For the most part, we only discover the component was unreliable after it's caused trouble. Removing the component at that time gets you at best a very short-lived improvement to the system because it'll happen again and again with other components.
If the component removed is a human, the situation is worse. Then you're creating an incentive to hide mistakes and assign blame to others. This makes it even harder to improve the system properly, because then the information you need to improve the system no longer gets to you undistorted.
That's why we have to design systems that don't assume components are perfectly reliable, and ensure any human components that we're not out to get them, we're out to create an environment where they will find it hard to make mistakes.
If you're able to achieve that, great. But I don't think any "system" can survive arbitrary component failures. Eventually it just stops being the system you designed.
For what it's worth, convenience and belonging are very closely aligned, more than you seem to be giving them credit for. People tend to believe convenient things regardless of belonging, so most people will find themselves in a social context full of convenient beliefs. Meanwhile belonging is already convenient before considering the content of the belief. They reinforce each other. Not a full match, but I'd give it more than half.
You assert that humans follow convenient beliefs therefore everyone in a group follows the same convenient beliefs therefore everyone belongs.
Convenient doesn't really mean anything in this context. What is the other option? Humans tend to make choices that are counterproductive/painful for themselves? Obviously we don't...
Ergo astra's response is extremely vapid. Low marks from me.
You've almost exactly identified what "convenience" means for a belief, then rejected it out of hand based on... what? Implicit, unquestioned nihilism? The other option is generally personal sacrifice based on principle, usually moral/ethical. This isn't common, but it does happen enough to be worth noting.
Anyway, I think I've pretty clearly described a positive feedback cycle in a way that distinguishes it from a tautology. I don't know what else to tell you on that point.
> These recent studies demonstrated for example, that silicic supereruptions with volume exceeding 1,000 km3 of eruptible magma can be generated in less than 5,000–10,000 years (which we call “Yellowstone” type), to longer than 500,000 years
And geology is not a context where "less than 5,000" realistically includes, like 5, or even 100.
Curiosity is one thing, but in practice "just asking questions about dark matter" is uncomfortably close to pseudoscience and a lot of us are sick of it. It's similar to if you had accidentally said something similar to a young-earth creationist.
Did you just compare CDM-Lambda to the age of the of earth?
That implies far more evidence than actually exists. The science on the age of the Earth is far more grounded in experimental results simply because, well, we live on the Earth.
This doesn't mean CDM-L is incorrect in any way, but saying that questioning it is similar to being a YEC is ridiculous.
There's confident and there's cocky, I think you veered too much in one direction there.
I plainly did not say they're equivalent, no. But the difference in mindset among the proponents is often one of degree, not kind. Bear in mind that I only brought it up to explain to someone why their honest questions might have been accidentally conflated with that mindset.
Personally I'm still holding out the possibility of something like MOND being true, even if it looks more and more like it will have to coexist with DM at best. That doesn't stop me from noticing that most of the people who believe in it look exactly like cranks, and many of them actually are. And I'm going to keep pointing this out where it's relevant.
Loitering munitions are already a thing. You just need to combine that concept with interceptor drones. Actually I'm not sure autonomous interceptors are a thing yet, so that might be the blocker.
...hmm, yeah, now that you mention it. Those generally have pretty big targets though, with IR signatures. I'm not sure how much of that translates directly to subsonic drone-on-drone violence. (In general it's just a matter of time, of course.)
What makes you think I'm "baffled"? It's not that hard to figure out.
If they were actually 5d chess players, you would expect their governance decisions to be less calamitously stupid, to at least achieve their evil goals if not their stated policy goals. The only thing they actually do well is enrich themselves, and that's just not that hard.
Calamitous for everyone but them. If you oppose them, avoid underestimating them. Playing dumb is the oldest trick in the book because it invites your adversaries to sabotage themselves by aiming low.
Trump will not be successfully impeached. Musk will not be bankrupted. And neither is going to jail. A calamity for their office, nation, or stakeholders is not their concern, unless you take them at their word. What calamities are you referring to?
I already acknowledged they were good at enriching themselves. But it really beggars belief to think that Iran, ICE murdering random civilians, the economy, etc are going exactly as Trump et al wished they would. That's borderline flat-earth conspiracy logic. They're just idiots making idiot mistakes and having idiot spats.
Lmfao. No one is confused about how billions of dollars, shallow populist “policy”, and the largest news outlets in the country literally knowingly regurgitating false propaganda could win elections.
It’s not some brilliant “kayfabe,” it’s just retard populism, same as it ever was. Now it’s just come to a country with 1) virtually no controls on private political funding and 2) extreme wealth inequality. It would be utterly shocking if it didn’t result in corrupt retards getting elected.
They don't have to be brilliant. They only have to outplay the rubes, which seems to keep happening. And it's correlated with them being consistently underestimated. But if you feel like you're winning in some way, by all means stay the course.
Yes, they consistently "outplay" in the same way that a mobster who injures a rival's horse before a race is "outplaying" the rival.
I love this goofy pseudo-intellectual aloofness. "Ah yes, I as an enlightened fellow can sit above the fray and commentate objectively on the degradation of the norms and laws that have kept our society operating for centuries."
Unfortunately in addition to "outplaying" people by just lying to the public, they must also govern. And they can't. So they're going to get smacked in the midterms, functionally crippled until 2028, and then likely many of them will be thrown in prison for their various crimes.
It’s going to be so funny when your grandchildren have to learn that you were one of the rationalizers. Even as late as 2026! They’ll be ashamed of you.
You're right about that - the herd has had its head in the sand since 2016. Sorry for being rude but the mentality that brought you here is not the one that's going to get you out of it. "Lmao."
> There, within WildChat’s data, Hamilton and Mimno found a small sample of conversations that included Elias and familiar tales of lighthouses.
> “Based on the timeline, we’re fairly certain WildChat is an original source of this phenomenon,” Hamilton said, adding that future work will explore why LLMs prefer these lighthouse stories.
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/10/who-elias-lighthous...
So, probably at least as much a quirk of the training data as a deep distillation of LLM psyche. Still fascinating though, especially IMO the broader pattern of tropes.
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