Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh facts of Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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18 points

No, all you lawyers explaining to me how the practice of law works in the U.S., you would totally benefit from GPT. Complete with bonus:

  • Everyone explaining to me that lawyers actually read all the documents in discovery is really trying to explain to me, a computer scientist with 20 years of experience[1], how GPT works!
  • [1] Does OP have actual tech expertise? The answer may (not) surprise you!
  • You lawyers admit that sometimes you use google translate and database search engines, and those use machine learning components, and all ML is basically LLMs, so I’m right, Q.E.D.!
  • Lawyers couldn’t possibly read everything in discovery, right?
  • Lawyers couldn’t possibly pay for professional translation for everything, right?
  • Even when it’s mandated by the court?
  • Really?
  • and many, many more
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11 points

I just want to latch onto one more thing there:

GPTs are great at transforming information. Transformations include compression, decompression, and inter-language translation, among others.

Okay mister computer scientist, sure, what is “transforming information”? From what you’re saying it appears like you’re describing basically any map from information to other information. But AMONG OTHERS that includes a map going from NO INFO to CONFIDENT BULLSHIT. And I do agree LLMs are amazing at it.

Here, I’ll sketch it out for you in fucking LaTeX:

$\emptyset \mapsto \mathit{Nonsense}$

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10 points
*

This thread is an unending source of amusement.

Someone there found his ORCID and… It’s not great: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2835-3521

He has basically nothing published, but has like 40 different “preprints”, read PDFs he uploaded to arxiv with no peer review.

I use these tools daily. I have also built software which utilizes genAI. I have also worked on fine-tuning GPTs. I have written extensive [sic!] on the topic. I also have formal training in mathematics, computer science, engineering, and anthropology1. [emph. mine]

🤡


1 No he doesn’t? His Education lists A.S. in Engineering, A.S. in Computer Science, and B.S. in Mathematics, that anthropology claim seems completely made up.

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9 points

A.S. in Engineering, A.S. in Computer Science

wait, wait. that’s basically the bootcamp level of education, no?

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5 points

I know essentally nothing about the US education system but…

If you’re gonna pull credentalist bullshit, maybe at least have the credentials? You took us there mate, I wouldn’t be pulling your degrees up if you didn’t first talk about how formally educated you are…

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9 points
*

(nothing wrong with that per se, i don’t have any c. s. degree anyways and yet i work in the field for years. but the gall of a dude who has finished a few two-year courses to tell fucking law professionals that they don’t know enough… this is indeed the threadnought-level of recklessness.)

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7 points
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he does seem to have carefully cultivated case of engineer disease

also it’s not “almost all” preprints, it’s all preprints, just one repository calls these papers

he didn’t discover yet predatory journals, it all could have been published for a small fee like with this one (contains mind numbing level of conspiracy-theoretic rambling and related brainworms) hxxps://uraniumisagenocidegiant[.]com/ (you have been warned)

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7 points

There’s one classified as “SSRN Electronic Journal 2023 | Journal article”, I thought this was something like a predatory journal, hence the “almost”, but now that I clicked on it I think this is just an arxiv-like website that calls itself an “electronic journal”? No fucking idea.

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10 points

he’s the very model of a modern crypto-douchebag.

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12 points

Those “papers” are gold, they’re mostly a few pages long, and they span such a wild range of topics as:

  • How to calculate a mean of numbers?
  • What is a number?
  • Atheism is actually a religion.
  • Ethereum is a store of energy.

I’ve never seen someone in such a dire need of a wedgie, come on man, you spend the hours of your life writing your farts into LaTeX and generating DOIs for them, this isn’t healthy.

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7 points

They’re all blog posts that refer to no actual work, my favorite is the one where he advocates for his blog posts to be accepted to journals: Call to Research: A need for a new paper format

This is mostly whining about how he’s totally an academic and people should take him seriously.

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8 points
*

nothing wrong with papers a few pages long, as long as they are concisely written and have supplementary information 10x that size. my last paper is 5 pages long, of which the last one are references only, and has 60+ pages of SI

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8 points

Ethereum is a store of energy.

fucking WHAT

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9 points
*

studied maths and CS for 20 years, all he has to show for it on his orcid is BSc and bunch of lousy preprints (with blockchain!). jfc. in that amount of time, people can finish entire PhD degrees, starting from high school, twice over

on top of that pile of shite sits a preprint titled “A Scholar’s Year in Review: Navigating the Convergence of AI, Economics, and Physics in 2023”. might be a bit grandiose and bordering on word salad. why the fuck does he think he needs to release preprints. if he had anything worthwhile to say, it would pass peer review

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8 points

he also has researchgate

Looking to network with other researchers in a diverse array of fields for collaboration and discussion.

bet you would want to, you time-waster

aand his crowning achievement seems to be dead startup where he tries to put covid on blockchain, it has coin and everything. it’s even associated with worldcoin and so with sam altman. curious that

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13 points
*

I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. You’re also mansplaining to an expert. While I admit that I am not an expert on law and am listening when corrections related to LAW and the practice of LAW are concerned, you do not want to admit your lack of understanding of this technology.

My god DANIEL, no, people are not mansplaining to you, unless that’s a mask for a Danielle.

EDIT: Down the thread he responds to Kathryn Tewson, an actual expert, with

Yeah I’m not obligated to answer every question by a horde of people. You should change your name to Karen, because you sure act like a fucking entitled white bitch.

This guy has such a punchable face, even though I’ve never seen him. I can just tell.

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11 points

Kathryn Tewson

Iirc, She is not just an expert, but she is so good at law that while she didn’t practice law, but just commented about her interpretations of the law (as ANAL) people hired her and paid for her law degree. She has both talent and expertise.

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7 points

Daniel’s a very nice and likable guy, but he’s also a bitcoiner

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8 points

I wish I was surprised at what the main account was posting about when I looked into it 😵‍💫

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16 points
*

This is also a very qucik hypthetical that I wrote up just to show a point not to argue a fucking legal case.

“Guys I totally didn’t expect the lawyers to respond like lawyers when reading my Chat-GPT generated garbage”

Except… I admitted I was not a lawyer and not an expert, and rather than working to communicate they kept latching onto errors related to law, while they confidently made statements about the nature and functionality of ML technologies like LLMs and NMTs.

“Why are all the lawyers being so mean to me?? I’m just saying they could all be replaced by chatbots”

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11 points

Ah shit, ML spelled backwards and wrong is LLM, they got me good.

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