Anyone have thoughts on this Anthropic thing? It’s a topsy-turvy world when the tech bros have more restraint than the federal government.
"Tech bros" are not a monolith. The high profile obnoxious (or worse) ones get a lot of press. But mostly the good ones get ignored.
As for Anthropic specifically, I'm not up on the details, either of Anthropic's history or this specific spat. But if Hegseth is upset, that strongly suggests that Anthropic is on the side of the angels, at least on this one.
Chiming in briefly to note that the underlying assumption in Charles’ comment is that sitting still and paying attention are somehow feminine behaviors.
Girls don’t get restless in class?
I don't know about current practice. But when I was growing up, girls were socialized early on to not run around, yell, be generally disorderly, etc. Generally before they even got to kindergarten, certainlly before they finished elementary school.
The parental, teacher, and social pressures may have been barely visible to the little boys, but in retrospect they were definitely strong. Perhaps, although I don't want to put words in his mouth, that kind of experience influenced Charles' comment.
nous -- I’m trying to understand where you draw the line between patriarchy and “men seeking status and dominance.”
My (attempted) point is that rape isn't just about men showing how they are more powerful / higher status than women. (Which is my understanding of how patriarchy is being used.) It's about an individual showing that relative to another individual. Gender isn't really a necessary component.
also, yep, it’s not about sex, but rather about status and power and hierarchy within the patriarchal structure.
This I think, speaks (unconsciously?) to the root of the problem of rape. It's not patriarchy per se; that's just a particularly prevalent environment for it. It occurs when someone (the rapist) feels the need to demonstrate his power and status. Often to others, both the victim and the audience. But also sometimes just to himself.**
For a test case, consider prisons. Rape among inmates is pretty much never about sex. It about establishing and demonstrating who is more powerful.
Getting rid of patriarchy, while desirable in itself, won't address the problem of rape. At most, it will shift the mix of who gets raped.
To actually deal with the problem of rape, we need to consider how to reduce the enormous pressure to achieve status and dominance. Or change the way status and dominance are demonstrated. Get us to the point where the reaction of people who know a rapist is "What a pathetic loser! Can't even [however status is demonstrated in that culture]."
** "himself" because most rapists are male. How much of that is because men are more often in higher status/more powerful positions in our culture, and how much is simply mechanical, is a different discussion.
f, as it seems, all of the regular male participants on ObWi find this a foreign concept, it makes them a rather unusual group. Who knows about the lurkers, however.
Nice as it is to be seen as special, I'm not entirely convinced that we are that anomalous. Not the pretend that there are not an appallingly large number of scum out there. But I think that, exactly because they are so horrid, they appear more numerous, more usual, than they actually are.
I recall a couple of social circles/groups I was in back in the 60s and 70s and 80s. Both included some high profile males (I decline to style them men) for whom "sexist" or "predatory" are mild adjectives. But, looking over the whole group, there were a host of men, from teenagers to elderly, whose behavior and language wouldn't distress anyone here. But we didn't stand out like the lowlifes did.
I’m constantly surprised and repulsed by the number of classic rock and pop songs I hear still being played today that are about jailbait (even on the satellite feed in Trader Joe’s).
It is perhaps less surprising (but no less repulsive) for those of us who were teens in the 60s and remember.
Or, although not jail bait, considered something like Surf City: "Two girls for every boy!" Even as a teenager when this came out, my first thought was "Doesn't really sound all that great for the girls". Even if you don't classify that as misogyny, it seems remarkably tone deaf.
GftNC, certainly it depends on context. But my assumption was based on a lack of context. That is, a standalone remark. My thought being that, to advoid that assumption from listeners, it behoves the speaker to provide some context to counter the assumption.
GftNC, if the totality of what Chomsky said was the quote ("I’ve met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don’t regret having met any of them.”), I would take the unambiguous meaning to be that he is perfectly comfortable spending time with the scum of the earth.
On the Chomsky remark you quote, I think it is ambiguous.
I'd say that whether it's ambiguous depends a lot on what's in the (unquoted) rest of what he said. There might well be context that shows what he thinks of those people and their views. Good or ill.
But if the quote is the totality of his statement, it doesn't seem all that ambiguous. At least to me.
For the Economist, having Megan McArdle work for them is is not just one strike, it is more like striking out the entire side.
Certainly not a plus. On the other hand, is/was a detailed political philosophy exam part of the Economist's hiring process? I would also note that she no longer works there. I'd want to know a bit more about the history there before leaping to a conclusion.
Not to mention that, people change. It is my recollection that she was a lot less extreme in her views, at least in what she wrote, when she was there than she is now. When she left, I thought enough of her writing to read her stuff elsewhere. Definitely didn't last; it was like reading a differe
I'm not sufficiently up on UK politics to describe their stance beyond "underwhelmed by the currently available options" among politicians and parties. They were appalled by Brexit, but then anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see that would be the fiasco that it has indeed become.
As for the US, they have the same challenge everyone else does: selecting which of each week's insanities to even talk about. They still have a bit of a libertarian lean, but rather less than a couple of decades ago. More like "Surely we can simplify and rationalize the kludge that has grown up over the years."
Turns out, multiple companies already have in progress law suits to require the government to refund the money collected from them by Trump's tariffs. I admit to mixed feelings on that. For me, it comes down to whether, and to what extent, they absorbed the added costs themselves, vs passing them thru to their customers.
If they held the line on prices, absorbing the tariffs by accepting lower profits? No problem at all with them recovering their loss. But if they passed all, or even part, of their tariff-induced cost? I'd have to see from them something on how they proposed to similarly pass along those refunds to those customers.
IANAL, but it looks like it could take multiple cases to establish an equitable answer.
I'm sooo tempted to read this as some of the justices discovering at least a hint of a spine when it comes to Trump. Doesn't mean they won't continue to be reactionary as hell. But perhaps on stuff where the focus isn't ideology, but just Trumpic insanity...?
But realistically? I want to see several more examples before getting my hopes up.
It’s almost as if we are ruled by an at best amoral, unaccountable elite not governed by any law.
I really must take serious exception. Given the behavior on display, amoral seems like sane-washing. Immoral is what we've got here; there really isn't any reason to attempt to whitewash it.
By my count (and I’m not going to go back and check) today’s accusation by Trump that Keir’s deal is “a very big mistake” is his third volte face in a few weeks where he has said this, and then the opposite,
The thing is, Trump's memory is shot. So he tends to go with whatever the last person to talk to him said. If a couple of people close to him have different opinions on some topic, you can expect to see exactly that sort of flip-flopping.
In November the administration announced changes that are expected to allow more than half a million seasonal workers to enter the country each year — an increase of more than 25%. In a regulatory filing, the Department of Agriculture said the expansion was necessary because “qualified and eligible U.S. workers will not make themselves available in sufficient numbers.”
Apparently Agriculture isn't talking to ICE. If they are, ICE isn't listening. Quelle surprise.
Or, I suppose, Agriculture had the wit to carefully avoid talking to Miller. Miller, after all, would probably be dumb enough to see it as a challenge. And focus ICE on agricultural workers for a while.
Mightbe more accurate to say "the Mountain West." Because, the total lack of rain the last 6+ weeks notwithstanding, in California the reservoirs are all full. Not as much snow pack as we'd like, but we're not looking at drought conditions.
Having several days in a row (in February!) with highs above 75° was weird. But considering the weather east of the Mississippi, I'm definitely not complaining.
What (to my knowledge) has not yet happened is the administration getting someone (a major politician of the opposition in particular) convicted in a court of law based on fake AI ‘evidence’.
What we have seen already, is court briefs where it turned out that the lawyer had used AI to draft the brief, but had not checked it over thoroughly. And so did not realize that a) in some of the cited precedent cases, the decision didn't actually say what the brief claimed, and b) some of the citations were entirely invented.
Several lawyers got badly burned; judges take a very dim view of lying to the court, which is what submitting a brief like that amounts to. As a result, most lawyers are likely to be extremely wary of trying to use AI for anything. Of course, lawyers around Trump have already demonstrated that they are not most lawyers, so it will be no surprise if one of them tries it. (Whether knowingly or just by failing to check some "evidence" provided by, for example, ICE.)
Getting a conviction, however, seems less likely. Already we see grand juries repeatedly refusing to indict** based on how unsubstantiated DOJ attorney's claims are. In court, any good defense attorney is going to have checked whether supposed evidence is real. Fingerprints on digital files, while not visible to the viewer, can be damning. It's possible to work around that, but it requires a level of competence not much in evidence in this administration.
** Heretofore, indictments were the next thing to automatic. When a grand jury declined to indict (and it only takes 12 out up to 23 jurors to do so), it was big news. Now, it seems about as newsworthy as some Trump administration spokesman spouting obvious lies.
It comes down to this, social media is a communications technology that we are only just starting to adapt to. AI is another technology we will have to learn to use properly. Eventually, we will figure out how to use them without them being used abusively. The operative word being eventually.
Unfortunately, it will take us a while. Those of a historical bent might look at how our (great) great grandparents eventually dealt with "yellow journalism". Then, as now, a new technology for distributing information blossomed while distributing lots of misinformation. Over the course of decades, most (by now means all but most) people figured out that the tabloids were not reliable sources. Amusing, perhaps, but not reliable.
The challenge, once again, will be surviving while we figure out how the adjust and then roll out those adjustments across the population.
GA tried making it actually illegal to hire illegals, and it was a disaster.
looking the other way might be the only way to keep construction and ag sectors afloat.
Which was obvious. But the folks in rural areas across the Midwest (and elsewhere, e.g. rural California) managed to avoid noticing that they were shooting themselves in the foot. Using a gun rest on the knee for better aim actually.
If you raise crops like vegetables, which need to be harvested by hand, how do you not realize that all your workers are speaking Spanish? If you're raising animals, how do you not know that pretty much all the workers in the slaughter houses are illegals?
But they managed. And now, they have crops rotting in the fields. And they can't sell their animals -- slaughter houses aren't going to buy animals when they have no workers to butcher them. Even if you aren't prosecuting the employers for hiring illegals, their businesses are getting trashed because they can't hire anyone else -- turns out that those folks complaining about "illegal immigrants taking our jobs!" aren't willing to do those jobs.** (Don't have the skills either, but that's a separate discussion.)
The construction industry doesn't have the same immediately-trash-the-economy-of-the-whole-community impact. The company owners are still in trouble because they can't get workers with the skills they need. But the impact on other businesses is, as a percentage, lower. Which only means they will take linger to be felt.
** If you've ever done farm work (I have) you can certainly see why not. Not that it makes me sympathetic.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “As it all falls down around our ears: An open thread”
"Tech bros" are not a monolith. The high profile obnoxious (or worse) ones get a lot of press. But mostly the good ones get ignored.
As for Anthropic specifically, I'm not up on the details, either of Anthropic's history or this specific spat. But if Hegseth is upset, that strongly suggests that Anthropic is on the side of the angels, at least on this one.
On “Perpwalk Imperial”
Say, rather, they have been taught not to behave like they are.
"
I don't know about current practice. But when I was growing up, girls were socialized early on to not run around, yell, be generally disorderly, etc. Generally before they even got to kindergarten, certainlly before they finished elementary school.
The parental, teacher, and social pressures may have been barely visible to the little boys, but in retrospect they were definitely strong. Perhaps, although I don't want to put words in his mouth, that kind of experience influenced Charles' comment.
"
My (attempted) point is that rape isn't just about men showing how they are more powerful / higher status than women. (Which is my understanding of how patriarchy is being used.) It's about an individual showing that relative to another individual. Gender isn't really a necessary component.
"
This I think, speaks (unconsciously?) to the root of the problem of rape. It's not patriarchy per se; that's just a particularly prevalent environment for it. It occurs when someone (the rapist) feels the need to demonstrate his power and status. Often to others, both the victim and the audience. But also sometimes just to himself.**
For a test case, consider prisons. Rape among inmates is pretty much never about sex. It about establishing and demonstrating who is more powerful.
Getting rid of patriarchy, while desirable in itself, won't address the problem of rape. At most, it will shift the mix of who gets raped.
To actually deal with the problem of rape, we need to consider how to reduce the enormous pressure to achieve status and dominance. Or change the way status and dominance are demonstrated. Get us to the point where the reaction of people who know a rapist is "What a pathetic loser! Can't even [however status is demonstrated in that culture]."
** "himself" because most rapists are male. How much of that is because men are more often in higher status/more powerful positions in our culture, and how much is simply mechanical, is a different discussion.
"
Nice as it is to be seen as special, I'm not entirely convinced that we are that anomalous. Not the pretend that there are not an appallingly large number of scum out there. But I think that, exactly because they are so horrid, they appear more numerous, more usual, than they actually are.
I recall a couple of social circles/groups I was in back in the 60s and 70s and 80s. Both included some high profile males (I decline to style them men) for whom "sexist" or "predatory" are mild adjectives. But, looking over the whole group, there were a host of men, from teenagers to elderly, whose behavior and language wouldn't distress anyone here. But we didn't stand out like the lowlifes did.
"
I’m constantly surprised and repulsed by the number of classic rock and pop songs I hear still being played today that are about jailbait (even on the satellite feed in Trader Joe’s).
It is perhaps less surprising (but no less repulsive) for those of us who were teens in the 60s and remember.
Or, although not jail bait, considered something like Surf City: "Two girls for every boy!" Even as a teenager when this came out, my first thought was "Doesn't really sound all that great for the girls". Even if you don't classify that as misogyny, it seems remarkably tone deaf.
"
GftNC, certainly it depends on context. But my assumption was based on a lack of context. That is, a standalone remark. My thought being that, to advoid that assumption from listeners, it behoves the speaker to provide some context to counter the assumption.
"
GftNC, if the totality of what Chomsky said was the quote ("I’ve met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don’t regret having met any of them.”), I would take the unambiguous meaning to be that he is perfectly comfortable spending time with the scum of the earth.
"
I'd say that whether it's ambiguous depends a lot on what's in the (unquoted) rest of what he said. There might well be context that shows what he thinks of those people and their views. Good or ill.
But if the quote is the totality of his statement, it doesn't seem all that ambiguous. At least to me.
On “Open Thread”
Certainly not a plus. On the other hand, is/was a detailed political philosophy exam part of the Economist's hiring process? I would also note that she no longer works there. I'd want to know a bit more about the history there before leaping to a conclusion.
Not to mention that, people change. It is my recollection that she was a lot less extreme in her views, at least in what she wrote, when she was there than she is now. When she left, I thought enough of her writing to read her stuff elsewhere. Definitely didn't last; it was like reading a differe
"
I'm not sufficiently up on UK politics to describe their stance beyond "underwhelmed by the currently available options" among politicians and parties. They were appalled by Brexit, but then anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see that would be the fiasco that it has indeed become.
As for the US, they have the same challenge everyone else does: selecting which of each week's insanities to even talk about. They still have a bit of a libertarian lean, but rather less than a couple of decades ago. More like "Surely we can simplify and rationalize the kludge that has grown up over the years."
"
O brave new world, that has such leaders (and past leaders) in’t.
Trump is, no doubt inadvertently, accomplishing one thing: a lot of previously covert misbehavior is moving into the open.
Where, down the line, the perpetrators can be dealt with. Probably an improvement over them remaining in the shadows.
"
Veering off in a different direction, here's the title of today's Economist podcast:
And the Arrest is History: Andrew Mountbatten Windsor
The Economist does manage some nice turns of phrase.
"
Turns out, multiple companies already have in progress law suits to require the government to refund the money collected from them by Trump's tariffs. I admit to mixed feelings on that. For me, it comes down to whether, and to what extent, they absorbed the added costs themselves, vs passing them thru to their customers.
If they held the line on prices, absorbing the tariffs by accepting lower profits? No problem at all with them recovering their loss. But if they passed all, or even part, of their tariff-induced cost? I'd have to see from them something on how they proposed to similarly pass along those refunds to those customers.
IANAL, but it looks like it could take multiple cases to establish an equitable answer.
"
I'm sooo tempted to read this as some of the justices discovering at least a hint of a spine when it comes to Trump. Doesn't mean they won't continue to be reactionary as hell. But perhaps on stuff where the focus isn't ideology, but just Trumpic insanity...?
But realistically? I want to see several more examples before getting my hopes up.
On “Perpwalk Imperial”
I really must take serious exception. Given the behavior on display, amoral seems like sane-washing. Immoral is what we've got here; there really isn't any reason to attempt to whitewash it.
On “Open Thread”
The thing is, Trump's memory is shot. So he tends to go with whatever the last person to talk to him said. If a couple of people close to him have different opinions on some topic, you can expect to see exactly that sort of flip-flopping.
"
In case you missed it:
Apparently Agriculture isn't talking to ICE. If they are, ICE isn't listening. Quelle surprise.
Or, I suppose, Agriculture had the wit to carefully avoid talking to Miller. Miller, after all, would probably be dumb enough to see it as a challenge. And focus ICE on agricultural workers for a while.
"
Mightbe more accurate to say "the Mountain West." Because, the total lack of rain the last 6+ weeks notwithstanding, in California the reservoirs are all full. Not as much snow pack as we'd like, but we're not looking at drought conditions.
Having several days in a row (in February!) with highs above 75° was weird. But considering the weather east of the Mississippi, I'm definitely not complaining.
On “The Aiken formula”
Homan is sorta right. With the removal of the huge ICE mob, the public safety threats have largely been arrested. That's "arrested" meaning stopped.
On “What fresh hell is this?”
What we have seen already, is court briefs where it turned out that the lawyer had used AI to draft the brief, but had not checked it over thoroughly. And so did not realize that a) in some of the cited precedent cases, the decision didn't actually say what the brief claimed, and b) some of the citations were entirely invented.
Several lawyers got badly burned; judges take a very dim view of lying to the court, which is what submitting a brief like that amounts to. As a result, most lawyers are likely to be extremely wary of trying to use AI for anything. Of course, lawyers around Trump have already demonstrated that they are not most lawyers, so it will be no surprise if one of them tries it. (Whether knowingly or just by failing to check some "evidence" provided by, for example, ICE.)
Getting a conviction, however, seems less likely. Already we see grand juries repeatedly refusing to indict** based on how unsubstantiated DOJ attorney's claims are. In court, any good defense attorney is going to have checked whether supposed evidence is real. Fingerprints on digital files, while not visible to the viewer, can be damning. It's possible to work around that, but it requires a level of competence not much in evidence in this administration.
** Heretofore, indictments were the next thing to automatic. When a grand jury declined to indict (and it only takes 12 out up to 23 jurors to do so), it was big news. Now, it seems about as newsworthy as some Trump administration spokesman spouting obvious lies.
"
It comes down to this, social media is a communications technology that we are only just starting to adapt to. AI is another technology we will have to learn to use properly. Eventually, we will figure out how to use them without them being used abusively. The operative word being eventually.
Unfortunately, it will take us a while. Those of a historical bent might look at how our (great) great grandparents eventually dealt with "yellow journalism". Then, as now, a new technology for distributing information blossomed while distributing lots of misinformation. Over the course of decades, most (by now means all but most) people figured out that the tabloids were not reliable sources. Amusing, perhaps, but not reliable.
The challenge, once again, will be surviving while we figure out how the adjust and then roll out those adjustments across the population.
On “Unsure on the definition of ‘torn’”
One thing about doing farm work. Nothing else you will ever do qualifies as "hard work."
"
Which was obvious. But the folks in rural areas across the Midwest (and elsewhere, e.g. rural California) managed to avoid noticing that they were shooting themselves in the foot. Using a gun rest on the knee for better aim actually.
If you raise crops like vegetables, which need to be harvested by hand, how do you not realize that all your workers are speaking Spanish? If you're raising animals, how do you not know that pretty much all the workers in the slaughter houses are illegals?
But they managed. And now, they have crops rotting in the fields. And they can't sell their animals -- slaughter houses aren't going to buy animals when they have no workers to butcher them. Even if you aren't prosecuting the employers for hiring illegals, their businesses are getting trashed because they can't hire anyone else -- turns out that those folks complaining about "illegal immigrants taking our jobs!" aren't willing to do those jobs.** (Don't have the skills either, but that's a separate discussion.)
The construction industry doesn't have the same immediately-trash-the-economy-of-the-whole-community impact. The company owners are still in trouble because they can't get workers with the skills they need. But the impact on other businesses is, as a percentage, lower. Which only means they will take linger to be felt.
** If you've ever done farm work (I have) you can certainly see why not. Not that it makes me sympathetic.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.