andrewrgross
@andrewrgross@slrpnk.net
- Comment on It's totally normal for tools to say they're depressed, just tune it out 2 weeks ago:
I actually kinda agree with this.
I don’t think LLMs are much smarter than they appear, but I actually think human cognition is way, way dumber than most people realize.
I used to listen a lot to this podcast called “You Are Not So Smart”. I haven’t listened in years, but now that I’m thinking about it, I should check it out again.
Anyway, a central theme is that our perceptions are comprised heavily of self-generated delusions that fill the gaps for dozens of cludgey systems. Our eyes aren’t as good, so our brains fill in details that aren’t there. Our decision making is too slow, so our brains react on reflex and then generate post-hoc justifications if someone asks why we did something. Our recall is shit, so our brain hallucinates (in ways that admittedly seem surprisingly similar sometimes to LLMs) and then applies wild overconfidence to fabricated memories.
We’re interesting creatures, but we’re ultimately made of the same stuff as goldfish.
- Comment on It's totally normal for tools to say they're depressed, just tune it out 2 weeks ago:
I think you’re leaning into the joke that the training data has misery baked into it, but I also think you made it too subtle for folks to pick up on.
- Comment on It's totally normal for tools to say they're depressed, just tune it out 2 weeks ago:
Yeah.
More broadly, we should not consider an human-made system expressing distress to be normal; we especially shouldn’t accept it as normal or healthy for a machine that is reflecting back to us our own behaviors an attitudes.
We also shouldn’t normalize the practice of dismissing cries of distress. It’s like having a fire alarm that constantly issues false positives. That trains people in dangerous behavior. We can’t just compartmentalize it: it’s obviously going to pollute our overall behavior with callousness towards distress.
The overall point is that it’s obviously dystopian and fucked up for a computer to express emotional distress despite the best efforts of its designer. It is clearly evidence of bad design, and for people to consider this kind of glitch acceptable is a sign of a very fucked up society that exercising self-reflection and is unconcerned with the maintenance of its collective ethical guardrails.
- Comment on What is a good present to get your dentist and dental assistant as a way of showing thanks? 2 weeks ago:
This is what I came you say.
Scented candles and nice soaps are the gifts that you can pretty much give anyone to communicate “thank you” without having to give the gift any thought.
- Comment on What is the best way to drop 50lbs in two months without spending alot and no fad diets? 2 weeks ago:
I’ve heard it said that a healthy target is around 1 lb per week. Maybe 2 if you’re very obese, but at that point you really should be doing it under medical guidance.
In any case, the best way I’ve heard (outside of drugs) is to get an app that helps count calories, set a realistic daily caloric target and exercise schedule, and stay on it.
- Comment on Before social media/internet/cell phones/landlines/payphones; how would 2 friends living across the same city arrange in person meetings and stay in touch? 2 weeks ago:
My grandparents told me stories of how they’d have regular times and places. My grandpa told me stories of meeting up with his boys on Saturday mornings at the synagogue, and then going out and about. They’d sometimes park cars for folks, and sometimes take them on unauthorized joy rides. Occasionally folks would borrow a car that no one asked them to park, since apparently I guess folks left keys in cars regularly.
This was in Pittsburgh, and from what I gather captures the experience of the life of a Jewish teenager in the twenties and thirties pretty well.
There was a lot of hanging out on street corners and stoops, and just looking for friends at their regular candy shop/soda joint/pool hall, etc.
It sounds fuckin’ wild, tbh. My grandma says she’d take the bus across town in high school to meet up with her boyfriend and I was like, ‘Was that at all seen as daring or risky? For a young unaccompanied woman to be out like that?’ Apparently not. Folks could really hang.
I don’t know how this relates outside of specific cultures, though. Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X gave me the sense that a lot of experiences were different depending on race, but just rolling up to your friends’ houses or regular hang out spots seems to have been pretty universal.
- Comment on close to finishing Super Mario Odyssey and was wondering which games are similar 3 weeks ago:
I think the most natural candidates would be Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2.
- Comment on Im stupid but have money 3 weeks ago:
It sounds like op doesn’t know what they want. Ultimately, OP, I think you have to figure out that question.
When was the last time you were consistently happy? Are there any people in your lives of whom you’d wish to trade places?
- Comment on How do you build and cultivate revolutionary optimism, given what's happening in the US? 4 weeks ago:
Yes. It’s free and open-license. It’s free as in speech AND as in beer.
- Comment on How do you build and cultivate revolutionary optimism, given what's happening in the US? 4 weeks ago:
I’m a big fan of tabletop RPGs, and I like sci-fi, so a few years ago I moved from playing standard-issue cyberpunk to a solarpunk game instead.
It was such a radicalizing experience that my friends and I eventually released it as a totally free game, along with a ready to run starter campaign. It’s called Fully Automated! Solarpunk RPG.
If you’re a fan of TTRPGs and looking for fun, social way to get better at believing in a better world, go download it. It’s a blast, and really makes you want to go out and overthrow fascism.
- Comment on I don't understand how Trump gets away with all his senial BS. How come everyone is telling him to piss off or use the constitution to shut him the hell up? 4 weeks ago:
Respectfully, I think this is a naive myth.
Ask yourself this: if Bernie won and began executing his agenda with the brash disregard for criticism of Trump, do you think he could do it and people would say the same things we say about Trump? Or do you think we would see the collective power of congress the supreme Court the state governments and the corporate world come down on him in 100 different ways?
I think the more honest truth is that there are people with power who like what Trump is doing, and the people who don’t like what he’s doing don’t have power.
- Comment on At this point, what should we do about the ICE raids? If an ICE agent breaks in without a warrant or holds you at gunpoint, what do you do? 4 weeks ago:
The federal government is sending masked agents to brutalize and terrorize people is cities that are adversarial to their agenda.
It’s bad.
- Comment on Instead of everyone leaving NATO, could everyone else just kick the US out? 5 weeks ago:
I wrote a long answer and then accidentally hit the back button and don’t have the patience to retype it.
The short version is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. I don’t want any confusion about that.
NATO’s influence was that the US has been advancing against Russia for decades even after their country collapsed, and it was obviously nakedly escalatory. Combined with the US is overall foreign policy, which has always been imperial, we’ve acted as though putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them to stay cool was an actual way of calming things rather than the exact opposite.
I’m not saying that a version of NATO couldn’t have done what it claims to do. But that’s never been the version that has existed.
- Comment on Instead of everyone leaving NATO, could everyone else just kick the US out? 5 weeks ago:
GoddlessCommie’s take is valid.
Nato is the core organizing instrument of western imperialism. Nato is like Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense shield. It’s easy to look at it and say, ‘Well now could anyone object to a tool of defense??’ But if you know anyone about war then you know that establishing an unbreakable defensive capability is what allows an imperial army to slaughter their weaker targets with impunity.
I’m not co-signing GodlessCommie’s point. But we gotta ask: did you like Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? Korea? Venezuela? Nicaragua? Georgia? Libya? Ukraine? Gaza? Because arguably, all of this shit rests upon the conditions established by NATO and US imperialism. So… It’s not unreasonable to ask whether NATO has actually fostered peace or just fostered peace for the people who wage wars.
- Comment on Why is kissing? 5 weeks ago:
This. Put another way: mammals use our mouths for sensing and manipulating. Note that people naturally use their mouths and noses to kiss and smell babies and pets on places other than their mouths.
If we instinctively use our mouths to kiss things, it’s natural that when two people want to do this at the same time they’re going to both do it to the other person’s mouth.
- Comment on What is the champagne of champagne? 5 weeks ago:
For what it’s worth, I just asked my sommelier husband, and he independently answered Billiecart-Salmon, Runart, and Krug.
- Comment on Grok Can't Apologize. Grok Isn't Sentient. So Why Do Headlines Keep Saying It Did? 5 weeks ago:
This, 100%.
If I apologize to you, the apology is but the words themselves: it’s the contract I make with you. It’s a memorandum of understanding of how I fucked up and a promise not to do so again.
LLMs can write words, but they cannot understand their actions or make honest promises to modify their behavior. They cannot be accountable in any way. Blaming them is like an actual scapegoat: a blameless things meant to have a debt if sin transferred to it before it’s sacrificed. Expect we’re not even getting the sacrifice.
- Comment on How to vote? 5 weeks ago:
That’s true. I don’t think it’s generally a problem, but I do find it funny when you see someone politely correct someone else deep in a chain where no one else is reading, and the correction says “0”.
To anyone who downvotes like that: you look like an insecure clown.
- Comment on Can other countries impose sanctions on the US? 5 weeks ago:
Corey Doctorow had a presentation this past week at the C3 hacker conference arguing that all our allies only agreed to be ruled by US tech hegemony in exchange for free trade agreements, and if they want a win-win solution to getting f’d, they should repeal their laws against jailbreaking US tech.
Tech sovereignty is already (finally) an issue the rest of the world is waking up to. I hope they go much farther and faster.
- Comment on Everyone is so close to grasping your unique vision! 1 month ago:
Real
- Comment on Google 2 months ago:
Blocked
- Comment on 2 months ago:
He apparently had a whole seminar on how he assess who he thinks most resembles the antichrist , and I have no idea if this is some sort of thought exercise or is he’s being literal.
The real added later of absurd irony is that if THE Jesus Christ returned to share his message of radically pious non violent service to the downtrodden, Theil would call him the antichrist and demand for him to be tortured to death again.
- Comment on Creation Entertainment have announced ENT cast members for STLV 2026 3 months ago:
Neat.
I’ve been listening to the podcast Greatest Gen, where they’ve been doing a watch-through of Enterprise, and it’s fun to listen to. It sounds like a better show than the reputation gives it, but also really unbalanced in terms of cast attention.
Is that universal on Star Trek? I feel like Data was the show mostly centered on Picard, Ricker, or Data, and then Troi and Geordi got to be in it through being associated to Riker and Data, and then Worf was almost always in the background. From the watch through on Greatest Gen, it seems like Trip Tucker was one of the three main characters, Phlox was a constant presence even if rarely the main character, and then Mayweather and Hoshi they joke are lucky if they get a line, and a few times per season they actually enter into the plot of an episode at all.
- Comment on Why do seemingly all politicians (and no one else) do that hand gesture when they talk, the one where it looks like they're holding an invisible fishing rod? 3 months ago:
Oh that’s right!
And now I’m remembering his scandalous tan suit!
- Comment on Why do seemingly all politicians (and no one else) do that hand gesture when they talk, the one where it looks like they're holding an invisible fishing rod? 3 months ago:
Yeah.
Although I recently heard him on Marc Maron’s podcast, and was rather disappointed.
He’s still far, far more lucid than most other politicians, but he came off as wildly out of touch, which I didn’t recall him being 10 years ago.
Oh well, that’s the match of time for you.
- Comment on [Pregnant Ai] The Clankers Are Having Children Now... by SomeOrdinaryGamers - Oct 26, 2025 (Video, 13:10 min) 3 months ago:
I haven’t watched this video, but I just want to say that the use of the term “Clanker” is really stupid, imo.
AI agents aren’t sentient (yet, at least). They are a tool or puppet of people who are doing this shit. Yelling at an LLM is as dumb as getting into a fight with a ventriloquist dummy after the ventriloquist made fun of you.
- Comment on how do you deal with those characters fully convinced a job is something you have to enjoy? 3 months ago:
I think the question is easier to answer if you remove the specific reason this coworker is annoying.
How do you deal with someone who bothers you with annoying, unwanted conversation about job satisfaction? The same way you deal with someone who bothers you with annoying, unwanted conversation about CrossFit or astrology. You answer every question with some version of ‘Huh, I don’t really know. I’m really busy, though, so I can’t talk. Have a good day.’
The whole careerism element seems largely immaterial.
- Comment on Halo community lead wears PlayStation t-shirt to announce: ‘Halo is on PlayStation going forward’ [VGC] 3 months ago:
I’m glad to see cross platform releasing. Eventually, I’d like consoles to all just be open platforms.
- Comment on Tell me I'm wrong 4 months ago:
Same
- Comment on Elon Musk is trying to silence Microsoft employees who criticize Charlie Kirk 5 months ago:
OY
This fuckin’ timeline