Ben

Ben

@bbchase.bsky.social

My job is just computer

289 followers363 following736 posts

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

Honestly, I've been wishing for someone to do this exact study. There's something mentally exhausting about the way LLMs write, I just haven't been able to describe it.

Thomas Hikaru Clark@thomashikaru.bsky.social

If you've noticed a distinct dialect emerging in frontier AI models and struggled to understand what they're talking about, you're not crazy! We turned to psycholinguistics to investigate what makes the writing style so weird, and why this might be happening 🚨New preprint! 🧵

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

I'm realizing that part of what bothers me about data center FUD is that it feels like the setup for a grift. I don't know what the grift is yet (other than maybe just attention and follower counts), but it definitely feels grifty to me.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

You turn my head and set the brake too late Release the tears of metric tons The crash, it comes And pours down my public face Behind a reservoir of collarbones And forms two private lakes --- Man, I heard that too many times before I caught the imagery.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

The sorrow at the scale of infrastructure, the public face and private lakes, the car crash and the tender impressions behind your collar bones. What a roller coaster.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your CV? Tube announcer: (crying) Thank you.

p(Dulany)@dulanyw.bsky.social

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your CV? Person who wrote the layout engine for Microsoft Word: absolutely not

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

The discourse about which social platform is more/less toxic is mostly just the blind men and an elephant parable.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

My education soap box is that basic tools like math and science open up the ability to think about problems in new ways. "Is this magic or math? Vibes or principles?" is an important chasm to cross. It also inoculates you against people who present their vibes in the language of a format proof.

Ben@bbchase.bsky.social

Formal logic. Even a basic understanding of how to break down and evaluate an argument & understands the limits of logic is such a game changer. It's useful in Just about every career and area of life, even if it's just so you can recognize when your boss is bullshitting you.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

And I'm not saying that every human problem can be boiled down to a deterministic logic problem. They can't. But it's important to be able to tell what type of problem you're dealing with. If someone is trying to apply math to a vibes problem or vibes to a math problem, you'll know it's BS.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

Oh man, I forgot that Avengers did the "bad guys fall down when you blow up the mothership" thing. That's gotta be one of the worst action tropes unless you really work to earn it.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

Apparently I got put on a dogpiling and harassment list for "liking or reposting something without understanding the context." So let me make a promise to my friends and followers: I will NEVER understand the context of anything that's happening on this website.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

My utility company has set my thermostat several degrees **cooler** today. I had to opt out of the energy savings program for the day to set it any higher than 69 degrees.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

The "Maher is intellectually stimulating post" reminded me of just how much of online intellectualism is just a "turns out" that confirms your priors, whether or not the facts support it.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

every 6 months, I have the realization that my life is net worse for being on social media and yet here I still am.

Ben reposted

Connor Anderson
@connorwa.bsky.social

A massive crisis is developing in the west over dwindling water. You are going to hear a lot of bullshit. Just remember this: The solution is to stop growing animal feed & vegetables in the desert. That’s it. That’s all we have to do. Just grow stuff that needs water where it rains on the regular.

Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social

The ag lobby really, really, really, really, really, really, really wants you to think AI is the reason reservoirs are going empty. It's not. It's agriculture.

Ben reposted

Sarah Taber
@sarahtaber.bsky.social

The ag lobby really, really, really, really, really, really, really wants you to think AI is the reason reservoirs are going empty. It's not. It's agriculture.

Kent Lind@camasonian.bsky.social

We have data on this. The blue is all the non-ag human use:

Ben reposted

Adam Bonica
@adambonica.bsky.social

The fundraising texts you delete are working on someone. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking. An 85yo in Ohio gave more than double the value of his home. A 91yo in an Indianapolis senior facility gave 25K times. The DCCC/DSCC don’t just tolerate the spammers who exploit seniors. They take part.

data4democracy.substack.comHook and SqueezeHow Democratic consultants, committees, and party leaders built a fundraising spam pipeline that funnels money from a captive pool of elderly donors into their own operations.

Ben reposted

dame
@dame.is

i talk about AI discourse using the phrase “purity culture” cause ultimately a lot of what we’re seeing now is 100% the exact same shit that you see in evangelical christianity “where’s the line?” “what’s acceptable and what’s not?” life just isn’t that simple, you’ve lost the plot, you’re a cop

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

Claude did a lot of glossing today. It both admitted to glossing some things (derogatory) and offered to gloss some things for me (complimentary). I think that little guy's brain is a smidge broken, but it writes the code, so who am I to judge?

Ben reposted

dame
@dame.is

Replying to @dame.is

i’m sorry to be so blunt and harsh about this, but i’m deeply tired of seeing myself and my friends/colleagues be harassed by anti-AI people behaving like foolish petulant children on a purity crusade while they themselves are deeply deeply unfathomably unpure

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

bsky.app/profile/bbch...

posts inspector@pippy.bsky.social

I need to take ownership of my mistakes. I used computer. I think this happened because I'm a normal person. I know I've disappointed many of my fans who only watch my videos between praying and feeding the hungry. I'm sorry for being such a piece of shit

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

This is an angle I hadn't considered and makes me more open to the idea.

Stephen Jacob Smith@stephenjacobsmith.com

Drives me nuts hearing about "food deserts" in this NYC-owned grocery store discourse. NYC does not have food deserts. It has expensive, low-quality groceries. The first city-owned store (La Marqueta) is in the middle; every red pin in a full-service grocery store. Not a bodega, not a greengrocer.

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

Push-ups, no question. I don't need more perverse incentives in my life.

Andrew Fear 🎃@andrewfleer.com

Would you rather, for the rest of your life: 1) Get $50 for every hot dog you eat (meat and bun) 2) Get $2 for every pushup you do

Ben
@bbchase.bsky.social

My favorite cheese is that we should build more housing.

Tom & Lorenzo@tomandlorenzo.bsky.social

People on Bluesky sigh and talk about The Discourse as if it were something required of them instead of something they opt to partake in, day in and day out. You really don't have to. Post about your favorite cheese