Notes

In 2008, I was angry about a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article that blamed a car, rather than driver, for a death.

16 years later, I tried to track down the broken URL and find their current headlines today are blaming cars for crashing into buildings and running over and dragging people.

I still want to be annoyed at this phenomenon; as ascribing sin to our tools helps motorists evade responsibility. But maybe I should embrace that we’re casting moral failings to “cars” so we might determine that they are evil and need to be banned from places with people.

It’s not “kids these days” that make me yell at clouds, but the dopamine cartel.

TIL my online writing style with copious ellipses, a careful ratio of periods and exclamation points, and emoji is optimized to alienate people of every generation.

Leaving a note here so I can say “I was right” later: by the time I retire, it will seem quaint that we thought global economics could be understood as the US vs China, ignoring the self-determination of India and African societies.

I knew the Apple Vision Pro’s EyeSight looked familiar.

I am fascinated by prompt hacking that uses emotional appeals to affect the behavior of LLMs. A long-lived LLM might be used to prototype manipulation techniques, perhaps by other models in an adversarial training arrangement.

In any event, many humans may learn social interactions by interacting with them as much as or instead of with peers. I’m not sure if that’s troubling or promising!