So this is a poem I wrote with GPT-3. I previously posted it in this blog, but this time I have revised it on my own, without GPT-3, so I guess it's now 60% mine, 40% GPT-3's. It's still not a great poem, but it's maybe interesting?    Red star- o’ dread star   Shatterest … Continue reading If Faust had but Loved, revised

For me it's "they need to face the consequences of their own actions" when used to justify something horrible being done to a person. I find it especially annoying when it's invoked by an authority figure who plays some role in determining what happens to a person. Now it may be that they deserve the … Continue reading What thought stopping catchphrases and cliches grind your gears?

Suppose we granted that punishing certain acts is an intrinsically good thing. If the above it were true, it would seem hard to deny that punished crimes create less net-badness than otherwise identical unpunished crimes. This is because they are associated with an intrinsic good (punishment) that unpunished crimes are not. Presumably, if there are … Continue reading A repugnant implication of retributive punishment

(Superficially this work is about 50% mine and 50% GPT-3's, but neither of our contributions look like they would have, had we been writing alone, so I prefer to think of it as 80% mine and 80% GPT-3's. It's not a very good poem, but I wanted to publish it to encourage you to experiment … Continue reading If Faust had but loved- a collaborative poem with GPT-3 through Dungeon AI

It nails Trump's tone amazingly well. Apologies for the stale writing of the prompt, but I figured given the way GPT-3 is consituted it's best arranged to work with strings of cliches. Prompt: Felix Beiderman is a dark-haired, muscular Jewish man in his early thirties with a strong and honest face who podcasts with the … Continue reading Felix Biderman of Chapo Trap House interviews Donald J Trump through the magic of AI Dungeon

If you enjoy this article, please check out my free book by clicking Here: “Something to Read in Quarantine: Essays 2018-2020.” Natural Language Processing (NLP) per Wikipedia: “Is a subfield of linguistics, computer science, information engineering, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages, in particular how to program computers to … Continue reading In light of the GPT-3 buzz, I’m reposting an essay I previously wrote on NLP, philosophy and speculation on the possibility of a “linguistic path” to general intelligence.

ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat I I have a recurrent experience where something I’ve done, or something I am, appears to me to be better than I know it to really be. I pause and try to break through, to see it from the outside, but I can’t. When I write, what I’ve … Continue reading Perspectival fever: On being shot through with philosophical desire

If you enjoy this essay I have a free book form PDF of my best essays titled “Something to read in quarantine: Essays 2018-2020”. you can grab it here.  I Predicting the future is stupid etc. etc. but… I believe, although obviously I cannot know, that there’s about to be a successful cultural backlash to … Continue reading Backlash

If you're a young scholar and you want to understand debates in social theory, sociology, literature, political philosophy, history and the history of ideas, one of the most important and time effective things you do is read the communist manifesto if you haven't already. It's also one of the easiest things you can do. It … Continue reading Meet the spectre: Read the communist manifesto

I.עַ֚יִן תַּ֣חַת עַ֔יִן The Lex Talonis- "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". We're taught that our society rejected it as barbaric and harsh, and inclined itself further to mercy. However the maximum prison sentence in New York for felony assault is at least 3 years, and frankly, I'd rather lose … Continue reading Vengeance is thine: Miscellaneous thoughts about punishment