The Lonely Theophilostory Post Thread

[Mation]

Good news! Someone/thing has published a biography* of long lapsed urbanite, Haller

Here is Haller's review:

Alwyn Turner: Chronicler of Modern Britain

ALWYN TURNER reviews an AI-generated biography of, er, himself.

thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com

Does anyone want this kind of content-free drivel?

How can we or should we combat AI-generated misinformation about ourselves?



*Highly unlikely, I know, but just in case: please don't buy a copy! It's not even good for the lulz. And yes, this stuff is probably going to keep happening++ but I'd rather not encourage it.

 

[xenon]

Fucking hell, that is bizarre.

 

[xenon]

But yes it does highlight how the Internet is going to be filled full of this crap. There was an interesting podcast on QAA recently about how useless Google is and AI generated content, slop.

 

[Mation]

Fucking hell, that is bizarre.

Isn't it!

I should say, btw, that the drivel I meant is the biography, not the review!

 

[Silas Loom]

It’s a shame Haller isn’t still here. Great writer. John and Margaret can be very proud.

 

[Silas Loom]

To the original point, I have been told that large language models trained on the public internet since 2022 or so are significantly less effective than their predecessors because they have ingested so much hallucinated drivel along with human-generated content.

 

[Voley]

That's mad.

Interesting that AI is getting very good at saying stuff with no actual content, though.

The quote here:

"During his time at university, Turner gravitated towards a particular field of study that captured his imagination and fueled his intellectual curiosity. Whether it was history, literature, sociology, or another discipline, Turner’s chosen area of focus became the cornerstone of his academic pursuits and scholarly endeavours. He dedicated himself wholeheartedly to mastering the intricacies of his chosen field, delving into its theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and key debates"

really reminds me of a trainer I listened to recently. Loads of words but no substance at all.

Is it AI mining management-guru stuff or just finding word-salad easier to regurgitate?

 

[Silas Loom]

That's mad.

Interesting that AI is getting very good at saying stuff with no actual content, though.

The quote here:

"During his time at university, Turner gravitated towards a particular field of study that captured his imagination and fueled his intellectual curiosity. Whether it was history, literature, sociology, or another discipline, Turner’s chosen area of focus became the cornerstone of his academic pursuits and scholarly endeavours. He dedicated himself wholeheartedly to mastering the intricacies of his chosen field, delving into its theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and key debates"

really reminds me of a trainer I listened to recently. Loads of words but no substance at all.

Is it AI mining management-guru stuff or just finding word-salad easier to regurgitate?

Generative AI is predictive, but limited. It begins sentences without knowing how they will end. A lot of low-wattage people adopting professional personae do that, too - or, at least, they finish their sentences without remembering how they began.

 

[Mation]

Generative AI is predictive, but limited. It begins sentences without knowing how they will end. A lot of low-wattage people adopting professional personae do that, too - or, at least, they finish their sentences without remembering how they began.

You could at least have fremony at the library

 

[Mation]

Sorry

 

[Silas Loom]

You could at least have fremony at the library

But for the second week running Durant had to leave the field injured, this time suffering eye trouble.

 

[T & P]

I’ve been long pondering about the custom of facial shaving in ancient civilisations and tribes across the world. Whereas modern TV/ film depictions of tribesmen cannot be taken as historically accurate, there are plenty of contemporary voyage accounts of early European explorers showing tribesmen with a clean shaven or at least well defined and trimmed facial hair. And if you image search uncontacted tribes you will see recent photographs of tribesmen with surprisingly clean shaven faces, such as this fellow



I am genuinely puzzled by this. I would get the rich and powerful of any society indulging in such practices because they would have access to both the sharpest tools their society could produce, and the best medical care available to them whenever they got a cut that got infected. By why would ordinary men in primitive societies across the world adopt shaving? Apart from the extra effort required to produce a bladed instrument sharp enough to shave a person’s face, you are wasting additional time on something you’d have to do very regularly. The man in the picture above has a closer shave than I manage to sport most days ffs

And most crucially, it seems counterintuitive to the very principle of self preservation we are meant to have in us; certainly in all societies prior to the discovery of penicillin, or surviving isolated tribes that have no access whatsoever to modern medicine. If nicks and cuts are not particularly uncommon among men using advanced engineering blades and shaving gels, it must have been an almost guaranteed occurrence every other time you shaved. Why risk constant infections when having a beard would make far more sense from every angle I can think of?

 

[krtek a houby]

I’ve been long pondering about the custom of facial shaving in ancient civilisations and tribes across the world. Whereas modern TV/ film depictions of tribesmen cannot be taken as historically accurate, there are plenty of contemporary voyage accounts of early European explorers showing tribesmen with a clean shaven or at least well defined and trimmed facial hair. And if you image search uncontacted tribes you will see recent photographs of tribesmen with surprisingly clean shaven faces, such as this fellow

View attachment 434766

I am genuinely puzzled by this. I would get the rich and powerful of any society indulging in such practices because they would have access to both the sharpest tools their society could produce, and the best medical care available to them whenever they got a cut that got infected. By why would ordinary men in primitive societies across the world adopt shaving? Apart from the extra effort required to produce a bladed instrument sharp enough to shave a person’s face, you are wasting additional time on something you’d have to do very regularly. The man in the picture above has a closer shave than I manage to sport most days ffs

And most crucially, it seems counterintuitive to the very principle of self preservation we are meant to have in us; certainly in all societies prior to the discovery of penicillin, or surviving isolated tribes that have no access whatsoever to modern medicine. If nicks and cuts are not particularly uncommon among men using advanced engineering blades and shaving gels, it must have been an almost guaranteed occurrence every other time you shaved. Why risk constant infections when having a beard would make far more sense from every angle I can think of?

Forest beasties, ticks and mites just might nest in the facial hair, therefore it makes sense to keep it mean and clean?

 

[JimW]

I’ve been long pondering about the custom of facial shaving in ancient civilisations and tribes across the world. Whereas modern TV/ film depictions of tribesmen cannot be taken as historically accurate, there are plenty of contemporary voyage accounts of early European explorers showing tribesmen with a clean shaven or at least well defined and trimmed facial hair. And if you image search uncontacted tribes you will see recent photographs of tribesmen with surprisingly clean shaven faces, such as this fellow

View attachment 434766

I am genuinely puzzled by this. I would get the rich and powerful of any society indulging in such practices because they would have access to both the sharpest tools their society could produce, and the best medical care available to them whenever they got a cut that got infected. By why would ordinary men in primitive societies across the world adopt shaving? Apart from the extra effort required to produce a bladed instrument sharp enough to shave a person’s face, you are wasting additional time on something you’d have to do very regularly. The man in the picture above has a closer shave than I manage to sport most days ffs

And most crucially, it seems counterintuitive to the very principle of self preservation we are meant to have in us; certainly in all societies prior to the discovery of penicillin, or surviving isolated tribes that have no access whatsoever to modern medicine. If nicks and cuts are not particularly uncommon among men using advanced engineering blades and shaving gels, it must have been an almost guaranteed occurrence every other time you shaved. Why risk constant infections when having a beard would make far more sense from every angle I can think of?

Different population groups have different patterns of facial hair; for example, a lot of East Asian men could stay clean shaven just with a bit of plucking. Mollusc shells also made easy razors. The ancient Egyptians plucked and shaved IIRC.

 

[T & P]

Inspired by the men’s 100m race at the Paris Olympics, when even the last runner beat Carl Lewis’s then-groundbreaking 9.92s record in the 1988 Olympics…

If the human race as we know it were to continue existing for millions of years, what would happen to such athletics records? I can’t imagine we would ever run 100 metres in <1s even if we lived for billions more years. So would we reach a point whereby we reached a non-improvable time? Or would we perhaps continue to improve through all eternity but the improvements would become millionths of a second or less?

 

[Saul Goodman]

But yes it does highlight how the Internet is going to be filled full of this crap. There was an interesting podcast on QAA recently about how useless Google is and AI generated content, slop.

Google used to be good, but it's completely fucked now. Pretty much the whole of the internet is fucked. But it's not just the internet. The whole of the subscription-based world is fucked, and it's only going to get worse. We haven't quite reached peak fucked, yet, but we're close.

 

[T & P]

This is a thoroughly depressing thought, but one that I revisit regularly whenever there are any analysis about the chances of intelligent life in the universe and what such societies might turn out to be like.

If the human race has become technologically advanced enough for various nations to start venturing into space exploration, but some of those same countries are still busily executing their own citizens, and not just for capital crimes but for the likes of adultery, political dissent or same-sex relations, will there ever be a time in which we can hope humanity has finally become enlightened enough to have done away with such shit?

I really fear not. I often think aloud that if I made first contact with some alien civilisation I would advise them to give planet Earth a wide fucking berth for a few centuries at least; but then, I wonder if there'd be any guarantee of an ultra advanced, interstellar-travel alien civilisation no longer engaging in executions of their own citizens for some imaginary offence against their made-up deities. Klingons, Borg and Galactic Empires are sadly a prediction of the future that we've probably got spot on, and truly, knowledge will never free us from tyranny and stupidity no matter how technologically advance we ever become