I sure would have liked to have seen the waterfall:
Comments
Open thread 2/24/2025 — 48 Comments
I sure wish there were trustworthy information about foreign affairs. Everything I see, even if it’s on a blog, ultimately came through legacy media, which we’ve known for years has been acting as stenographers for their fellow Democrats in government.
But we didn’t learn until recently how venal that government has been domestically, and its venality does not plausibly stop at the water’s edge. We know now that high-sounding government programs were really slush funds for the connected and for progressives, and that the legacy media did it all it could to cover that up. It seems pretty obvious that our government’s high-sounding defense and foreign policy have also been slush funds for the connected and progressives, and that the legacy media still does all it can to cover that up.
Having new leadership actually willing to try to do something about it, instead of pretending that nothing can be done, could slowly change these things, but the world we’re looking at now is the result of what has come before and not what has changed since January 20.
I had read about the Gilbralter Flood, but not the second one around Scilly. Happened to far back to be Noah’s Flood.
that really is fascinatinghttps://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-marine-021723-110155
i thought they associated the second one with santorini, and the collapse of the bronze age,
If the German CDU would ally with AfD, they’d have a clear majority. However, they refuse to work with AfD, which means the majority of German voters who voted for a right or center-right government won’t get what they voted for. They’ll get another coalition government which refuses to face Germany’s basic problems (unassimilated immigrants and stupid energy policies).
Kate:
I fear you are correct.
However, prayers delayed are not prayers denied. The AfD was up 10% this cycle. Maybe more next.
I urge everyone to read miguel’s link above to the Tablet article by Natan Sharansky. It is both fascinating and haunting. Also useful to disabuse anyone (though probably few among neo’s commenters) of the notion that antisemitism is strictly a “right-wing” phenomenon.
When you reward something you get more of it.
I think that it is pretty obvious by now that “helping” the homeless by not arresting them, but tolerating their encampments, by offering free needles to those addicted, and other such accommodative measures have been a total failure, and have only served to make the problem of homelessness spread and become more widespread–worse, not better.
Linked below is an article titled, “End Homelessness by Making it Illegal,” which advocates a very “tough love” approach to dealing with this problem.*
Continuing a thread from last night with Brian E:
__________________________________________
Chat called it, “What we have here is a failure to rebut.”
Huxley, that’s pretty funny– for a computer. I read somewhere computers didn’t do funny very well, but they obviously understand a play on words.
— Brian E
__________________________________________
The latest Grok AI from Elon Musk’s xAI is purported to be sassier — more human, less politically correct.
In my experience ChatGPT 4.o is much more freewheeling than ChatGPT 3.5.
My current speculation is that we are only a dev cycle or three away from chatbots with movie star personalities.
What if talking to your AI Buddy felt like talking with Brad Pitt … or whomever else your human heart might desire?
ChatGPT 4.o agreed.
Thanks miguel for that extraordinary piece by Sharansky….
According to his autobiography, his prodigious abilities as a chess player—and his memory—helped preserve his sanity (and save his life) while in Soviet solitary confinement.
Paleontologists, Lord love ’em. My faculty adviser in college was a Paleontologist who was married to a Paleontologist. I would often see them in the Paleo lab looking through microscopes and chatting away about the details of this foraminifera or that crinoid. They were having such fun. 🙂
It was not my cup of tea, but they are the ones who have been most responsible for reconstructing the geologic past. They’re like detectives gathering evidence and clues to events that took place in the mists of time. I applaud them and am appreciative of the work they do.
Natan Sharansky is a wonderful human being. I’ve seen him speak a few times and was at his celebrity roast a few months ago by Commentary magazine. The problem is no one did any “roasting” – they all just got up and said wonderful things about him. So he got up to the microphone and did it himself. Paraphrasing below, obviously.
“My whole life I was a failure. I dreamed of being the number one chess player in the world. I failed. I dreamed of being the number one physicist in the world. Again, I failed. It took me forever to figure out where I could finally be number one. Solitary confinement.”
Whilst many on America’s right wait for President Trump to come up with America’s version of a TASS or Xinhua News Agency – a sorta ‘One News to Rule Them All’ that is acceptable to America’s right – I will continue using all the news sources and AIs available to me. The idea of a right-wing ‘One News to Rule Them All’ just ain’t appealing to me—reminds me of the ‘Animal Farm’ but with Legacy Media being replaced by One News.
America is pre-emptively ceding fundamental and long-held positions to Russia in the hope of ending a war it is not fighting. This is likely to make it less, not more, secure.
Short but impactful & informative – concise enough to maintain my attention.
Ten days of diplomacy in Brussels, Munich and Riyadh have laid bare President Donald Trump’s approach to the Russia–Ukraine war. It is a policy of rapid, unilateral concession of long-held positions on fundamental interests to persuade the aggressor to stop fighting. The established name for such a policy – not a polemical but a well-established one – is ‘strategic surrender’. In the classic study commissioned by the United States intelligence community in 1957, this is defined as ‘orderly capitulation … to obtain some political concession’.
Yeah, that was rather obvious from the start of President Trumps opening offer/s to Putin in the Russia-Ukraine negotiations—tho I didn’t know there was such a term for it.
STRATEGIC SURRENDER – is a ‘classic study commissioned by the United States intelligence community in 1957.’ Waaayy to long for slow reader me @ 154 pages.
Back to the concise article and brief snippets:
… Genuine negotiations involve carrots and sticks: offers that will benefit the other side if it agrees to a desired outcome and threats to impose costs if it does not.
America is using little of either. It is instead accepting a series of escalating Russian demands without extracting any quid pro quo except the promise of an end to the war on terms that Russia dictates.
***
Russia, by contrast, has ignored the few requests that America is known to have made.
The baffling urgency for a deal
America’s extreme and undisguised urgency is also characteristic of strategic surrender rather than typical end-of-war negotiations. It predictably strengthens Russia’s position even further. In his book, The Art of the Deal, Trump wrote, ‘the worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead’. This is precisely what Trump is doing, and the consequences are just as he describes, enabling Russia to steadily raise the price it extracts for agreeing to stop fighting.
The puzzle of America’s interests
Strategic surrender has always been a policy adopted by states facing total defeat and occupation. Since America is vastly superior to Russia, and faces no such danger, its decision to do so is puzzling. Three further factors compound this.
Firstly, while Trump promised to end the war quickly during his election campaign, there is no evidence that doing so by siding with Russia is popular with American voters. Only 30% say America is giving too much support to Ukraine.
Secondly, the administration has not clearly articulated why its approach serves American interests. Trump has called the conflict a ‘terrible war’ that has killed ‘millions’, and senior figures say it is ‘bad for America’. But none has set out in any detail the benefits of ending it as soon as possible, on terms highly favourable to Russia. Alone among the administration’s policies, this one lacks a clear rationale in terms of core national interests.
Thirdly, this approach is in fact likely to harm America’s long-term security. It will not only imperil Europe, its biggest trade and investment partner, but will make Russia a more powerful, assertive and attractive ally to America’s adversaries around the world.
***
Other countries have chosen strategic surrender to avert disaster in dire military weakness. America has initiated a diplomatic version from a position of great strength. If it continues on this course, it will become less secure. The reason America has chosen it is profoundly mysterious.
Yeah, Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” didn’t work out very well with Zelensky. Looks like negotiations for mineral rights & security is getting closer tho. Trump is slow getting back to Russia for some reason – maybe Russia wants even more concessions that Trump is no longer in a position to give…
@Karmi:Whilst many on America’s right wait for President Trump to come up with America’s version of a TASS or Xinhua News Agency
Source: from inside your butt.
I will continue using all the news sources and AIs available to me.
LOL. Blue-hairs with nose rings trained those AIs and write that news…
Karmi’s first source: IISS; Board of Trustees, John Brennan! One of the 51 who told us all about how Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
SOUNDS LEGIT! Karmi will sure be well-informed about the world listening to John Brennan’s UK-based group and asking Grok to summarize it for him.
“My current speculation is that we are only a dev cycle or three away from chatbots with movie star personalities.” – huxley
That was the sense I got reading Althouse’s interaction with Grok 3.0– only that we’re already there. It was engaging, it was entertaining– but the fact it could be whatever you wanted– verbose, cryptic, sympathetic exposes it as inauthentic.
It felt creepy. Would it be more fulfilling and a realistic emotional substitute for loneliness?
As usual – Niketas Choniates is unable to discuss or dispute a comment, and immediately gets mad—starts resorting to obscene snarky comments whilst bad mouthing sources he is unable to disprove.
Hold your Breath & Wait a little longer, Niketas Choniates, for I am sure someone is working on a “version of a TASS or Xinhua News Agency – a sorta ‘One News to Rule Them All’” that is suitable for one such as yourself…
As usual, Karmi reverts to personal attacks when called out on lies.
Anyone can read what I wrote: it’s the first comment. Anyone can see that you lied about it.
Anyone can see that you don’t bother to check the sources of what you post here. John Brennan is a liar for Biden, and is a perfect example of the unreliable sources laundered through legacy media that I commented on.
And nothing you say about me changes that, or your failure to vet what you read and repost.
Any source with leftist liars like Brennan on the board is not, probably, reliable. And I admit to reading the Daily Mail, but I do try to wade through its sensationalism to see if there is any solid reporting in its stories. Skepticism is called for with almost any source these days. Blogs I read and value link to original sources routinely.
And I don’t know of any conservatives waiting for Trump to set up an American TASS. We have enough leftist state media. We don’t need right-wing state media, just an end to censorship.
Brian E wrote: It (Grok 3) was engaging, it was entertaining – but the fact it could be whatever you wanted — verbose, cryptic, sympathetic exposes it as inauthentic.
I suspect that if Monica Bellucci sat down next to Albert Einstein, that he would be engaging, entertaining, … and peeking. While my suspicion imagines Einstein as inauthentic, Claude.ai imagines their conversation as follows, below.
“If Albert Einstein and Monica Bellucci could meet as adults, their conversation might be quite fascinating.
“Einstein might be curious about how science and art have evolved since his time, while Bellucci could share insights about modern cinema and cultural shifts. Given Einstein’s appreciation for beauty in all forms, including art, he might be intrigued by Bellucci’s career spanning both European and Hollywood cinema.
“They might discuss Italy, as Einstein visited Italy several times during his life and had connections to Italian physicists. Bellucci could share perspectives on her home country’s evolution since Einstein’s era.
“The conversation could turn philosophical, with Einstein perhaps musing on the relationship between time, perception, and beauty – themes that resonate with both science and art. Bellucci, known for her thoughtful approach to aging and beauty in the public eye, might offer insights that would interest Einstein’s contemplative nature.
“They might find common ground in their experiences as public figures who maintained private intellectual lives beyond their public personas.”
Sigh. I’m way outta my depth. But, I really appreciate that Claude.ai let’s me learn from him.
Oh, and when I asked Claude.ai how to tag quotes in html, he gave me the example below.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
At least he didn’t say, “Remember the first rule of holes.” 😉
Kate:
I don’t know of such conservatives either. Conservatives simply would rather that 95% of the MSM weren’t shills for the left.
But Karmi enjoys setting up strawmen.
He does. I am reluctantly forming the habit of skimming past his posts.
And nothing beats astronomy for blowing one’s mind. Check this out.
Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is traveling a million miles a day, won’t reach the edge of the Oort cloud for 300 years and won’t exit it for another 300,000.
After reading the story above I couldn’t resist playing with a calculator – it’s my nature.
One million miles a day sounds crazy fast. Divided by 24 gives you about 41,666 miles per hour. Divide that by 60, and 60 again and you get about 11.5 miles per second. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. So the fastest thing mankind has built travels about 0.006% of the speed of light.
New post…Retro-Reading: The Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine from 1884
It looks to me that AI will help fill that gap for a lot of people. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, especially when compared to television and social media.
President Trump now has the United States voting with ‘Russia, North Korea, Iran and 14 other Moscow-friendly countries‘ … geez!?!
Guess that’s more of Trump’s ‘strategic surrender’ and/or ‘orderly capitulation’ negotiating tactics mentioned in comment @ 3:47 pm. Here’s the 154 page – United States Intelligence Community’s 1957 study on the subject:
UPDATE: some sites are reporting that Iran “abstained”…
“All the lonely people” …
Well, some 25+% of us are introverts … so while not really hermits or recluses or monastically inclined, we can live happily with our own thoughts much of the time (but not all of the time).
And while the flu season is in swing, staying away from people (plus hand washing) might help keep from playing home to someone else’s viruses.
And for all we really know, half of the commenters here might just be AI creations … right? I mean, the quantity of material that Turtler (for example) or maybe AesopFan puts out, they might just not really be human. But raise your hand if in fact you are a human savant!
Kate on February 24, 2025 at 5:15 pm said:
“And I don’t know of any conservatives waiting for Trump to set up an American TASS. We have enough leftist state media. We don’t need right-wing state media, just an end to censorship.”
Somewhere I picked up the (possibly erroneous) idea that Pierre Omidyar was the rich source behind the continued financial survival of National Review. I could not confirm that with a very quick search, but maybe one of our AI mavens can clarify if there is any “there” there.
Great conversation between Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro, which I don’t remember seeing when it was recorded last year.
First part of three: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVElvvXWh0c
That poster didn’t date the video, but they were both in Poland at the time at the European Jewish Association conference in January 2024.
The original DW video is paywalled.
As one commenter noted, this is the slowest speaking man in the internet talking to the fastest speaking pundit.
PS The closed caption voice-to-text transcription has trouble with both of them, but mostly with Musk’s faintly British accent.
Somewhere I picked up the (possibly erroneous) idea that Pierre Omidyar was the rich source behind the continued financial survival of National Review.
==
He’s been bankrolling The Bulwark. I assume The Dispatch has a similar sugar daddy. Not sure about NR.
My apologies if someone previously linked to this. This is from Jordan Peterson, posted 2 weeks ago. A J6 interview with a Dr. Simone Gold. Infuriating.
Fascinating video about the Gibraltar flood… but due to a combination of my aging hearing and the speaker’s voice, it was so much work to hear his words accurately, I just couldn’t make it through the video!
@ Ray van Dune > ” it was so much work to hear his words accurately,”
I use the Closed Captioning on everything these days, especially if I speed up the playback (some narrators are excruciatingly slow). The advantage of the slow ones is that the voice-to-text machines (AI? not yet) sometimes can actually get the words correct, as they have no clue what the speaker is actually saying.
Sometimes the text is not as illuminating as it should be, because it’s a purely phonetic rendering, so it can be thrown off by any accent not bog-standard-American; any vocabulary not found in a 4th-grade reader; and any technical jargon not commonly used in the newspapers.
But, it’s sometimes better than nothing!
@ Rufus > “Karol Markowicz theorizes that’s necessarily a bad thing:”
I have to side with Karol here.
“The replacement of actual friendships, first with online-only “friends” we never see and eventually with bots who tell us what we want to hear, threatens an utter transformation of human society — and we shouldn’t keep heading in this direction without thinking through the consequences.”
And huxley even provides evidence!
“It isn’t easy to make new friends as we grow older, but even something as simple as becoming a regular at a local coffee shop or attending services at a house of worship will open the door to friendly new faces.”
I think there is a great danger in imputing “friendship” to a persona from the intertubes, no matter how interesting it is. For a little fun, and a more interesting “master librarian” than reading texts, sure, why not.
BUT, I can see a LOT of potential for a cycle of bias confirmation, and the consequent increase in veering away from contacts with the real-world might generate a very dangerous psychological condition (after all, our liberal-leftist-progressive friends already demonstrate that problem).
Also, there is the danger of restricting even internet contacts to that single source, which is almost certainly spinning its output according to the bias of its learning model and inputs. Worse, a nefarious “owner” of the AI could even set it up to lure people in with “unbiased” conversations and gradually move them to a much more extreme ideology.
That procedure has been around for a long time in the meat world, and I see no reason for it to be absent from the electronic one.
Real people are a pain, but there’s a vestige of randomness to their interactions that can mitigate those two potential dangers, whereas depending on a single non-human for a “friend” is dangerously narrow.
Being myself a very introverted person, making real friends is hard for me, so I can understand the attraction. See above: “real people are a pain.”
However, I still see a great value in having friendly people as part of my life, which is in large part satisfied by knowing my local church members, WAS helped by having Scouting colleagues, and is varied by a couple of “interest groups” that we hang out with on occasion.
Having something in common to talk about helps (and talking is ALL you can do with an AI persona), as it’s always dicey trying to discuss politics even within the church, as our local membership is very bipartisan, and our interest group friends are overwhelmingly Democrats.
So, you guys are stuck with my political ranting here .
And even if some of you are AI bots (which I actually do suspect to be the case with some “commenters” at PowerLine and Turley’s blog, because of the way they write, and how their reactions are structured), most of you clearly are not.
And even if you are, there is enough variation to not get stuck in a confirmation silo.
@ R2L > I’m raising one hand for being human, but definitely not a savant. I just get a kick out of doing research, even of a trivial kind. It’s my substitute for sports.
@ David Foster in re your Retro-Reading: The Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine from 1884″
My grandfather was a depot master in Texas, although I don’t recall him ever telling us any stories. It was a very small town, on the very flat plains, and I don’t suppose there was ever much excitement like a bridge washing out. However, I grew up with a fondness for the railroads, and we were able to take our kids to the Galveston RR museum several times.
Our non-church “interest groups” (in my prior comment) are devoted to Welsh history and culture. One of our local members, in fact the president, was an immigrant from Wales, and his hobby there was working with the railroad conservation societies.
He actually learned how to be an engineer on one of the “tourist” lines.
Sadly, he passed away last year, and I inherited his library and back-issues of the RR club, but they mostly dealt with history, mechanics, and so forth.
No poetry or literature, which is unusual for a bunch of Welshmen.
“Welsh miners formed study groups to read Austen and Dickens. Scottish shepherds built lending libraries. Watchmakers & cabinetmakers taught themselves Greek and Latin. The loss of working-class autodidact culture is one of history’s great tragedies.”
Louis L’Amour, in his Western books, made a great point of mentioning that even cowboys read Shakespeare.
WRT Simone Gold (Steve @ 5:40 am), the hit job done on her in the Wikipedia entry, in light of this interview with Jordan Peterson, is flat-out deranged.
Wonder if she can sue them…
@AesopFan:“Welsh miners formed study groups to read Austen and Dickens. Scottish shepherds built lending libraries. Watchmakers & cabinetmakers taught themselves Greek and Latin. The loss of working-class autodidact culture is one of history’s great tragedies.”
To some extent meritocracy is to blame for this: youngsters brighter than average get hoovered up into colleges and universities and white-collar occupations, leading to a society where neither the theories nor the plumbing will hold water.
No one likes to acknowledge on our side of politics that meritocracy might have a downside, and admittedly it is hard to suggest an alternative that doesn’t sound fundamentally unfair.
The flip side to the working-class autodidact culture was that because class structure was once so rigid, it simply didn’t matter how smart people were, if their background was wrong.
One of the most remarkable working-class autodidacts in history was George Green, a baker’s son with one year of formal schooling. Green’s days were spent operating the sails and replacing the millstones on the windmill and his leisure time studying in the Nottingham Subscription Library, where he taught himself extraordinarily advanced mathematics and wrote “An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism,” which he published himself since he didn’t think a journal would accept something written by someone with no education. Wealthy and connected people took notice and Green was able to go to Cambridge at the age of 40. He died in 1841 at age 47, and his mathematical innovations are widely used in physics.
@ NC: “… youngsters brighter than average get hoovered up into colleges and universities and white-collar occupations,…”
Like Charles Murray’s Belmonters marrying Belmonters, etc. in Coming Apart.
The replacement of actual friendships, first with online-only “friends” we never see and eventually with bots who tell us what we want to hear, threatens an utter transformation of human society — and we shouldn’t keep heading in this direction without thinking through the consequences.”
–Karol Markowicz
Re: Friendships, loneliness and AI
AesopFan:
We humans rarely and barely think through the social consequences of anything, e.g. no-fault divorce. Markowicz can huff and puff all she wants.
There are already plenty of unhealthy ways people cope with loneliness — food, porn, alcohol, drugs, social media and television. We aren’t having much success with those. Will AI be any worse?
I’m not arguing that AI replace human relationships, but help fill the gap. And that gap for a lot of people can be quite large.
If one can’t manage a certain level of attractiveness, social status, physical health, mental health, financial security, etc., it can be a tough old world for finding good relationships.
Should those people go without an AI companion because Markowicz is concerned about social consequences?
@ huxley > “Should those people go without an AI companion because Markowicz is concerned about social consequences?”
Of course not — but it also doesn’t hurt to think about the consequences, especially for young people getting started in life, and already having difficulties with relationships.
For us old geezers, it probably isn’t a problem at all, especially for those who go into the hobby knowing their companion is not a human.
On the other hand, there is now the serious possibility of having an on-line friend who is not human, and NOT knowing that.
We were watching a short clip recently of Jordan Peterson, and it wasn’t until the last sentence that I realized we were listening to a computer reading from a text — the emphasis in a dependent clause was “off” in a way no person would say the words, and certainly not Peterson. Other than that, the voice was spot on.
On the gripping hand, some people have such a tenuous hold on reality that cultivating a relationship with an AI bot might be a step up for them.
The clincher for me, however, is that, when I get sick, a bot won’t bring me home-made soup and bread, like my human friends do. (And I do the same for them.)
😉
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I sure wish there were trustworthy information about foreign affairs. Everything I see, even if it’s on a blog, ultimately came through legacy media, which we’ve known for years has been acting as stenographers for their fellow Democrats in government.
But we didn’t learn until recently how venal that government has been domestically, and its venality does not plausibly stop at the water’s edge. We know now that high-sounding government programs were really slush funds for the connected and for progressives, and that the legacy media did it all it could to cover that up. It seems pretty obvious that our government’s high-sounding defense and foreign policy have also been slush funds for the connected and progressives, and that the legacy media still does all it can to cover that up.
Having new leadership actually willing to try to do something about it, instead of pretending that nothing can be done, could slowly change these things, but the world we’re looking at now is the result of what has come before and not what has changed since January 20.
I had read about the Gilbralter Flood, but not the second one around Scilly. Happened to far back to be Noah’s Flood.
that really is fascinatinghttps://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-marine-021723-110155
i thought they associated the second one with santorini, and the collapse of the bronze age,
a fascinating perspective,
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/natan-sharansky-doublethink
as much as we wanted it to be true, it wasn’t
https://www.frontpagemag.com/searching-for-condemnations-in-the-muslim-world/
the tale of the scorpion,
https://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/cliffhanger-in-german-elections/
If the German CDU would ally with AfD, they’d have a clear majority. However, they refuse to work with AfD, which means the majority of German voters who voted for a right or center-right government won’t get what they voted for. They’ll get another coalition government which refuses to face Germany’s basic problems (unassimilated immigrants and stupid energy policies).
Kate:
I fear you are correct.
However, prayers delayed are not prayers denied. The AfD was up 10% this cycle. Maybe more next.
I urge everyone to read miguel’s link above to the Tablet article by Natan Sharansky. It is both fascinating and haunting. Also useful to disabuse anyone (though probably few among neo’s commenters) of the notion that antisemitism is strictly a “right-wing” phenomenon.
When you reward something you get more of it.
I think that it is pretty obvious by now that “helping” the homeless by not arresting them, but tolerating their encampments, by offering free needles to those addicted, and other such accommodative measures have been a total failure, and have only served to make the problem of homelessness spread and become more widespread–worse, not better.
Linked below is an article titled, “End Homelessness by Making it Illegal,” which advocates a very “tough love” approach to dealing with this problem.*
* See https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2025/02/24/end-homelessness-by-making-it-illegal-n2652671
Continuing a thread from last night with Brian E:
__________________________________________
Chat called it, “What we have here is a failure to rebut.”
Huxley, that’s pretty funny– for a computer. I read somewhere computers didn’t do funny very well, but they obviously understand a play on words.
— Brian E
__________________________________________
The latest Grok AI from Elon Musk’s xAI is purported to be sassier — more human, less politically correct.
In my experience ChatGPT 4.o is much more freewheeling than ChatGPT 3.5.
My current speculation is that we are only a dev cycle or three away from chatbots with movie star personalities.
What if talking to your AI Buddy felt like talking with Brad Pitt … or whomever else your human heart might desire?
ChatGPT 4.o agreed.
Thanks miguel for that extraordinary piece by Sharansky….
According to his autobiography, his prodigious abilities as a chess player—and his memory—helped preserve his sanity (and save his life) while in Soviet solitary confinement.
Paleontologists, Lord love ’em. My faculty adviser in college was a Paleontologist who was married to a Paleontologist. I would often see them in the Paleo lab looking through microscopes and chatting away about the details of this foraminifera or that crinoid. They were having such fun. 🙂
It was not my cup of tea, but they are the ones who have been most responsible for reconstructing the geologic past. They’re like detectives gathering evidence and clues to events that took place in the mists of time. I applaud them and am appreciative of the work they do.
Natan Sharansky is a wonderful human being. I’ve seen him speak a few times and was at his celebrity roast a few months ago by Commentary magazine. The problem is no one did any “roasting” – they all just got up and said wonderful things about him. So he got up to the microphone and did it himself. Paraphrasing below, obviously.
“My whole life I was a failure. I dreamed of being the number one chess player in the world. I failed. I dreamed of being the number one physicist in the world. Again, I failed. It took me forever to figure out where I could finally be number one. Solitary confinement.”
Whilst many on America’s right wait for President Trump to come up with America’s version of a TASS or Xinhua News Agency – a sorta ‘One News to Rule Them All’ that is acceptable to America’s right – I will continue using all the news sources and AIs available to me. The idea of a right-wing ‘One News to Rule Them All’ just ain’t appealing to me—reminds me of the ‘Animal Farm’ but with Legacy Media being replaced by One News.
America’s strategic diplomatic surrender
Short but impactful & informative – concise enough to maintain my attention.
Yeah, that was rather obvious from the start of President Trumps opening offer/s to Putin in the Russia-Ukraine negotiations—tho I didn’t know there was such a term for it.
STRATEGIC SURRENDER – is a ‘classic study commissioned by the United States intelligence community in 1957.’ Waaayy to long for slow reader me @ 154 pages.
Back to the concise article and brief snippets:
Yeah, Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” didn’t work out very well with Zelensky. Looks like negotiations for mineral rights & security is getting closer tho. Trump is slow getting back to Russia for some reason – maybe Russia wants even more concessions that Trump is no longer in a position to give…
@Karmi:Whilst many on America’s right wait for President Trump to come up with America’s version of a TASS or Xinhua News Agency
Source: from inside your butt.
I will continue using all the news sources and AIs available to me.
LOL. Blue-hairs with nose rings trained those AIs and write that news…
Karmi’s first source: IISS; Board of Trustees, John Brennan! One of the 51 who told us all about how Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
SOUNDS LEGIT! Karmi will sure be well-informed about the world listening to John Brennan’s UK-based group and asking Grok to summarize it for him.
“My current speculation is that we are only a dev cycle or three away from chatbots with movie star personalities.” – huxley
That was the sense I got reading Althouse’s interaction with Grok 3.0– only that we’re already there. It was engaging, it was entertaining– but the fact it could be whatever you wanted– verbose, cryptic, sympathetic exposes it as inauthentic.
It felt creepy. Would it be more fulfilling and a realistic emotional substitute for loneliness?
As usual – Niketas Choniates is unable to discuss or dispute a comment, and immediately gets mad—starts resorting to obscene snarky comments whilst bad mouthing sources he is unable to disprove.
Hold your Breath & Wait a little longer, Niketas Choniates, for I am sure someone is working on a “version of a TASS or Xinhua News Agency – a sorta ‘One News to Rule Them All’” that is suitable for one such as yourself…
As usual, Karmi reverts to personal attacks when called out on lies.
Anyone can read what I wrote: it’s the first comment. Anyone can see that you lied about it.
Anyone can see that you don’t bother to check the sources of what you post here. John Brennan is a liar for Biden, and is a perfect example of the unreliable sources laundered through legacy media that I commented on.
And nothing you say about me changes that, or your failure to vet what you read and repost.
Any source with leftist liars like Brennan on the board is not, probably, reliable. And I admit to reading the Daily Mail, but I do try to wade through its sensationalism to see if there is any solid reporting in its stories. Skepticism is called for with almost any source these days. Blogs I read and value link to original sources routinely.
And I don’t know of any conservatives waiting for Trump to set up an American TASS. We have enough leftist state media. We don’t need right-wing state media, just an end to censorship.
Brian E wrote: It (Grok 3) was engaging, it was entertaining – but the fact it could be whatever you wanted — verbose, cryptic, sympathetic exposes it as inauthentic.
I suspect that if Monica Bellucci sat down next to Albert Einstein, that he would be engaging, entertaining, … and peeking. While my suspicion imagines Einstein as inauthentic, Claude.ai imagines their conversation as follows, below.
Sigh. I’m way outta my depth. But, I really appreciate that Claude.ai let’s me learn from him.
Oh, and when I asked Claude.ai how to tag quotes in html, he gave me the example below.
At least he didn’t say, “Remember the first rule of holes.” 😉
Kate:
I don’t know of such conservatives either. Conservatives simply would rather that 95% of the MSM weren’t shills for the left.
But Karmi enjoys setting up strawmen.
He does. I am reluctantly forming the habit of skimming past his posts.
Fun story from the world of astronomy:
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2025/02/23/oort-cloud-resembles-galaxy/8901740362127/
And nothing beats astronomy for blowing one’s mind. Check this out.
After reading the story above I couldn’t resist playing with a calculator – it’s my nature.
One million miles a day sounds crazy fast. Divided by 24 gives you about 41,666 miles per hour. Divide that by 60, and 60 again and you get about 11.5 miles per second. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. So the fastest thing mankind has built travels about 0.006% of the speed of light.
New post…Retro-Reading: The Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine from 1884
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/73340.html
Hello. We’ve got a warm spell here just now. Forty degrees Fahrenheit today.
[Althouse’s interaction with Grok 3.0] felt creepy. Would it be more fulfilling and a realistic emotional substitute for loneliness?
Brian E:
Many years ago a smart contrarian friend observed that “television is the great banisher of loneliness.”
We live in a disconnected time. Maybe it’s always been that way. _______________________________
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
–The Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby” (1966)
_______________________________
Nowhere really.
It’s a tough thing.
It looks to me that AI will help fill that gap for a lot of people. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, especially when compared to television and social media.
President Trump now has the United States voting with ‘Russia, North Korea, Iran and 14 other Moscow-friendly countries‘ … geez!?!
U.S. votes with Russia on UN Resolution condemning invasion
Guess that’s more of Trump’s ‘strategic surrender’ and/or ‘orderly capitulation’ negotiating tactics mentioned in comment @ 3:47 pm. Here’s the 154 page – United States Intelligence Community’s 1957 study on the subject:
STRATEGIC SURRENDER
UPDATE: some sites are reporting that Iran “abstained”…
“All the lonely people” …
Well, some 25+% of us are introverts … so while not really hermits or recluses or monastically inclined, we can live happily with our own thoughts much of the time (but not all of the time).
And while the flu season is in swing, staying away from people (plus hand washing) might help keep from playing home to someone else’s viruses.
And for all we really know, half of the commenters here might just be AI creations … right? I mean, the quantity of material that Turtler (for example) or maybe AesopFan puts out, they might just not really be human. But raise your hand if in fact you are a human savant!
Kate on February 24, 2025 at 5:15 pm said:
“And I don’t know of any conservatives waiting for Trump to set up an American TASS. We have enough leftist state media. We don’t need right-wing state media, just an end to censorship.”
Somewhere I picked up the (possibly erroneous) idea that Pierre Omidyar was the rich source behind the continued financial survival of National Review. I could not confirm that with a very quick search, but maybe one of our AI mavens can clarify if there is any “there” there.
huxley @ 8:26pm,
Karol Markowicz theorizes that’s necessarily a bad thing: https://nypost.com/2025/02/24/opinion/friendship-in-america-is-in-freefall-and-its-killing-us/
Great conversation between Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro, which I don’t remember seeing when it was recorded last year.
First part of three:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVElvvXWh0c
That poster didn’t date the video, but they were both in Poland at the time at the European Jewish Association conference in January 2024.
The original DW video is paywalled.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiro-sits-down-with-elon-musk-for-exclusive-wide-ranging-discussion-on-dei-space-religion
This is their onstage conversation, which is more sedate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmlSAHRCxqc
As one commenter noted, this is the slowest speaking man in the internet talking to the fastest speaking pundit.
PS The closed caption voice-to-text transcription has trouble with both of them, but mostly with Musk’s faintly British accent.
Somewhere I picked up the (possibly erroneous) idea that Pierre Omidyar was the rich source behind the continued financial survival of National Review.
==
He’s been bankrolling The Bulwark. I assume The Dispatch has a similar sugar daddy. Not sure about NR.
My apologies if someone previously linked to this. This is from Jordan Peterson, posted 2 weeks ago. A J6 interview with a Dr. Simone Gold. Infuriating.
https://youtu.be/ZcdSVbq9vTU?si=fTm2qGRhohZnVLd0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INiAI_Hcol4&list=PLnLdS5mDl7rmd_uNVa3ZgahFNsL0SgitO&index=46
Fascinating video about the Gibraltar flood… but due to a combination of my aging hearing and the speaker’s voice, it was so much work to hear his words accurately, I just couldn’t make it through the video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR3exqvSDN8&t=3198s
@ Ray van Dune > ” it was so much work to hear his words accurately,”
I use the Closed Captioning on everything these days, especially if I speed up the playback (some narrators are excruciatingly slow). The advantage of the slow ones is that the voice-to-text machines (AI? not yet) sometimes can actually get the words correct, as they have no clue what the speaker is actually saying.
Sometimes the text is not as illuminating as it should be, because it’s a purely phonetic rendering, so it can be thrown off by any accent not bog-standard-American; any vocabulary not found in a 4th-grade reader; and any technical jargon not commonly used in the newspapers.
But, it’s sometimes better than nothing!
@ Rufus > “Karol Markowicz theorizes that’s necessarily a bad thing:”
I have to side with Karol here.
“The replacement of actual friendships, first with online-only “friends” we never see and eventually with bots who tell us what we want to hear, threatens an utter transformation of human society — and we shouldn’t keep heading in this direction without thinking through the consequences.”
And huxley even provides evidence!
“It isn’t easy to make new friends as we grow older, but even something as simple as becoming a regular at a local coffee shop or attending services at a house of worship will open the door to friendly new faces.”
I think there is a great danger in imputing “friendship” to a persona from the intertubes, no matter how interesting it is. For a little fun, and a more interesting “master librarian” than reading texts, sure, why not.
BUT, I can see a LOT of potential for a cycle of bias confirmation, and the consequent increase in veering away from contacts with the real-world might generate a very dangerous psychological condition (after all, our liberal-leftist-progressive friends already demonstrate that problem).
Also, there is the danger of restricting even internet contacts to that single source, which is almost certainly spinning its output according to the bias of its learning model and inputs. Worse, a nefarious “owner” of the AI could even set it up to lure people in with “unbiased” conversations and gradually move them to a much more extreme ideology.
That procedure has been around for a long time in the meat world, and I see no reason for it to be absent from the electronic one.
Real people are a pain, but there’s a vestige of randomness to their interactions that can mitigate those two potential dangers, whereas depending on a single non-human for a “friend” is dangerously narrow.
Being myself a very introverted person, making real friends is hard for me, so I can understand the attraction. See above: “real people are a pain.”
However, I still see a great value in having friendly people as part of my life, which is in large part satisfied by knowing my local church members, WAS helped by having Scouting colleagues, and is varied by a couple of “interest groups” that we hang out with on occasion.
Having something in common to talk about helps (and talking is ALL you can do with an AI persona), as it’s always dicey trying to discuss politics even within the church, as our local membership is very bipartisan, and our interest group friends are overwhelmingly Democrats.
So, you guys are stuck with my political ranting here .
And even if some of you are AI bots (which I actually do suspect to be the case with some “commenters” at PowerLine and Turley’s blog, because of the way they write, and how their reactions are structured), most of you clearly are not.
And even if you are, there is enough variation to not get stuck in a confirmation silo.
@ R2L > I’m raising one hand for being human, but definitely not a savant. I just get a kick out of doing research, even of a trivial kind. It’s my substitute for sports.
@ David Foster in re your Retro-Reading: The Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine from 1884″
My grandfather was a depot master in Texas, although I don’t recall him ever telling us any stories. It was a very small town, on the very flat plains, and I don’t suppose there was ever much excitement like a bridge washing out. However, I grew up with a fondness for the railroads, and we were able to take our kids to the Galveston RR museum several times.
Our non-church “interest groups” (in my prior comment) are devoted to Welsh history and culture. One of our local members, in fact the president, was an immigrant from Wales, and his hobby there was working with the railroad conservation societies.
He actually learned how to be an engineer on one of the “tourist” lines.
Sadly, he passed away last year, and I inherited his library and back-issues of the RR club, but they mostly dealt with history, mechanics, and so forth.
No poetry or literature, which is unusual for a bunch of Welshmen.
“Welsh miners formed study groups to read Austen and Dickens. Scottish shepherds built lending libraries. Watchmakers & cabinetmakers taught themselves Greek and Latin. The loss of working-class autodidact culture is one of history’s great tragedies.”
Louis L’Amour, in his Western books, made a great point of mentioning that even cowboys read Shakespeare.
WRT Simone Gold (Steve @ 5:40 am), the hit job done on her in the Wikipedia entry, in light of this interview with Jordan Peterson, is flat-out deranged.
Wonder if she can sue them…
@AesopFan:“Welsh miners formed study groups to read Austen and Dickens. Scottish shepherds built lending libraries. Watchmakers & cabinetmakers taught themselves Greek and Latin. The loss of working-class autodidact culture is one of history’s great tragedies.”
To some extent meritocracy is to blame for this: youngsters brighter than average get hoovered up into colleges and universities and white-collar occupations, leading to a society where neither the theories nor the plumbing will hold water.
No one likes to acknowledge on our side of politics that meritocracy might have a downside, and admittedly it is hard to suggest an alternative that doesn’t sound fundamentally unfair.
The flip side to the working-class autodidact culture was that because class structure was once so rigid, it simply didn’t matter how smart people were, if their background was wrong.
One of the most remarkable working-class autodidacts in history was George Green, a baker’s son with one year of formal schooling. Green’s days were spent operating the sails and replacing the millstones on the windmill and his leisure time studying in the Nottingham Subscription Library, where he taught himself extraordinarily advanced mathematics and wrote “An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism,” which he published himself since he didn’t think a journal would accept something written by someone with no education. Wealthy and connected people took notice and Green was able to go to Cambridge at the age of 40. He died in 1841 at age 47, and his mathematical innovations are widely used in physics.
@ NC: “… youngsters brighter than average get hoovered up into colleges and universities and white-collar occupations,…”
Like Charles Murray’s Belmonters marrying Belmonters, etc. in Coming Apart.
The replacement of actual friendships, first with online-only “friends” we never see and eventually with bots who tell us what we want to hear, threatens an utter transformation of human society — and we shouldn’t keep heading in this direction without thinking through the consequences.”
–Karol Markowicz
Re: Friendships, loneliness and AI
AesopFan:
We humans rarely and barely think through the social consequences of anything, e.g. no-fault divorce. Markowicz can huff and puff all she wants.
There are already plenty of unhealthy ways people cope with loneliness — food, porn, alcohol, drugs, social media and television. We aren’t having much success with those. Will AI be any worse?
I’m not arguing that AI replace human relationships, but help fill the gap. And that gap for a lot of people can be quite large.
If one can’t manage a certain level of attractiveness, social status, physical health, mental health, financial security, etc., it can be a tough old world for finding good relationships.
Should those people go without an AI companion because Markowicz is concerned about social consequences?
@ huxley > “Should those people go without an AI companion because Markowicz is concerned about social consequences?”
Of course not — but it also doesn’t hurt to think about the consequences, especially for young people getting started in life, and already having difficulties with relationships.
For us old geezers, it probably isn’t a problem at all, especially for those who go into the hobby knowing their companion is not a human.
On the other hand, there is now the serious possibility of having an on-line friend who is not human, and NOT knowing that.
We were watching a short clip recently of Jordan Peterson, and it wasn’t until the last sentence that I realized we were listening to a computer reading from a text — the emphasis in a dependent clause was “off” in a way no person would say the words, and certainly not Peterson. Other than that, the voice was spot on.
On the gripping hand, some people have such a tenuous hold on reality that cultivating a relationship with an AI bot might be a step up for them.
The clincher for me, however, is that, when I get sick, a bot won’t bring me home-made soup and bread, like my human friends do. (And I do the same for them.)
😉