> my cognitive surrender to the model is increasing too. Why check it? It's obviously going to be correct.
I use "frontier" AI models daily at day_job. I can confidently say that anyone who is satisfied with the output of LLM code (enough to commit it straight off) is just an absolutely shit programmer. Sorry but I don't have any other way to put it.
The code is (with rare exceptions) atrocious on every level. It is only not atrocious if you take multiple iterations of "review and correct".
>If we find no flaws in the design whatsoever, will we be less careful about the second one? The third one? What about the ten thousandth one?
Like the saying goes, if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike. LLMs can't even produce quality maintainable code for a trivial web service or whatever. Why are we planning for what we will do when they can "design" 10,000 nuclear power plants without any flaw?
They told it to attack X (a simulated host inside their sandbox) and it attacked Y (Hugging Face, an actual external company). These are not the same thing.
A bus that gets stuck in traffic is by definition a failure. It will (again by definition) never be a viable alternative to driving, meaning a reinforcing loop where more driving means more traffic for the bus to be stuck on, meaning the bus is even slower and less attractive...
> It will (again by definition) never be a viable alternative to driving
I don’t follow the logic here. Why would a bus (periodically) getting stuck in traffic forever invalidate it in comparison to getting stuck in the same traffic in a car?
In aggregate, people go the fastest way - no way to stop this from happening. In places where everyone takes public transit, the transit is fast. To make more people take public transit, you make the transit fast.
Reserving lanes as bus lanes can actually speed up car traffic by making more people switch to bus.
If buses and cars participate in the same road traffic (i.e. the bus doesn't have dedicated lanes), then a bus trip will never be faster than a comparable car trip. This is because you have to walk to/from the bus stop at both ends of the journey, wait for a bus to show up, ride the bus and have it stop for other passengers, transfer between routes, the bus has slower acceleration and turning than a car, etc.
Think about even the most strawman trip possible: A bus rider and a car driver start exactly at the location of a bus stop, the bus shows up exactly at the start time, both contestants ride/drive straight for a few kilometres (which happens to follow exactly one bus route, without changing buses; but the bus might stop a few times along the way for other passengers), and end exactly at a bus stop. The car will win every single time.
It's good to have dedicated bus lanes, but the point of a bus isn't to get from point A to point B faster than a car.
It's a part of a transit ecosystem that makes it possible to survive without a car. It fills in the the gaps where it's not economical to add train/metro lines.
Caveat: the bus can be a little bit slower and still win, because you don't need to drive. Or the car can be a little bit slower and still win, because people are antisocial. When the difference is more than a little, then you're correct.
Except that many buses broadcast their location, and many cities prioritize green lights for buses over cars.
So the car might need to stop on red multiple times (unless following a bus), while the bus will have most lights automatically turn green in front of it.
Yeah, the car will be faster, unless there are accommodations that benefit the bus only (like dedicated lanes). But the bus doesn’t have to be _faster_ to be viable to many people: there are other things going for the bus like not having to park, often being cheaper especially if it allows you to not own a car, etc. etc.
A big one: no need to find parking! Or to go back to your parked car on the reverse trip. You can do a triangle trip A,B,C,A with public transit. With a car it has to be A,B,C,B,A as you left your car at B.
I do trips like A,B,C,A all the time in a car. Sometimes even A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z,A trips in a car.
If you're sprinkling in little rules like "ah but you couldn't park at C", well, "the bus doesn't go to C" is also a valid restriction I run into often. So often when I take transit, its drive to train station -> take train someplace -> take bus someplace -> walk several blocks to destination -> walk several blocks back to bus stop -> ride bus to train station -> ride train back to train stop -> take car home so a A,B,C,D,C,B,A trip is actually quite common just to do the same as A,D,A with a car.
Bus lanes make a bus a very good alternative to driving, and they are much more efficient space-wise compared to cars (and god forbid, pick-up trucks), which means you can get more throughput...
Well Israel has defined "combatant" as "male between 14 and 55", and the Western world more or less shrugged and moved on without missing a beat. I'm not optimistic.
> Hamas itself parades in uniforms but fights in civilian clothing… But Israeli soldiers as a rule wear uniforms and Palestinians do not - ever.
Not even in parades?
> The west bank incident is also completely irrelevant.
How convenient.
> the IDF soldiers wear uniform and fight according to international laws
They are widely and credibly accused of not fighting according to international laws.
> You can't seriously suggest that Israel should equip Hamas with "thousands of items of military clothing, including boots, coats and combat vests, all in camouflage colors."
What military doesn't have boots, coats, and combat vests in its uniform?
You can't claim you get to treat them as illegal combatants because they don't have uniforms when you are embargoing the uniforms, lol.
> That said the Hamas tactics of being "civilian" do endanger their civilians in situations that could be ambiguous.
IDF HQ is right by a shopping mall. Fair to target?
Is there a way that we can actually take this discussion beyond propaganda?
I served in the IDF (a long time ago). I talked with soldiers who fought with Gaza. I'm not making stuff up based on what I saw on social media. The IDF does not just go around shooting every military aged male in Gaza. Are there scenarios where a military aged male in civilian clothing can get shot at in certain places - absolutely. Those are not the same thing and that's an important distinction. If your tactic is for people to drop in and out of being a civilian, like go to a weapon cache in civilian clothes, grab an RPG, fire it at the enemy, then drop it and become a civilian again, then those tactics have consequences. Especially in areas where civilians were ordered to evacuate.
So the original statement is false. Is there nuance when it comes to civilians operating around the front lines in areas under evacuation in a war. Totally. Those are very different things.
IDF HQ is not "right by a shopping mall". The Kiryah in Tel Aviv is clearly delineated from the civilian area. The UK and France as random examples also have their military HQs in civilian areas. But yes, the Kiryah is in Tel Aviv and not far from civilian areas. It is a very large army base that's distinct from the surrounding civilian areas. I've been there.
Targeting the Kiryah is absolutely legal. If the Hamas had similar delineation between the military and the civilian then there'd be something to talk about.
> They are widely and credibly accused of not fighting according to international laws.
Widely yes. Credibly no. Most accusations have nothing to do with actual laws and actual facts on the ground. That's not to say there haven't been incidents that are questionable but as a rule (and what the rules and the law says) soldiers are supposed to conduct themselves, and broadly do, by those laws. When you have 100's of thousands of soldiers fighting this sort of war in a dense civilian area you're going to see incidents and all western militaries do (like the original topic, the US hitting the Iranian school).
You really got me there with the parades. Yes, they do wear uniforms in parades. So they got them. No Israel is not required to equip its enemy with military gear. They can saw uniforms or wear blue shirts or whatever. But they do have uniforms.
"The men had emerged from a building and were approaching a group of IDF soldiers when they were shot dead, in spite of the fact that they were shirtless and visibly unarmed while waving a makeshift white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew."
> IDF HQ is not "right by a shopping mall". The Kiryah in Tel Aviv is clearly delineated from the civilian area.
Let's be serious, here; Google Maps has it ~300 feet from the mall and hotel across the street. Do that in Gaza and it'll be deemed to be using civilians as human shields.
We are debating the original claim and you keep bringing up random things.
The original statement that the IDF views every military age male in Gaza as a combatant from a targeting perspective is still false. It's easily falsifiable and you don't care. I provided an actual credible reference (The ICRC), a pointer to video evidence where you can cleasrly see the IDF not targeting military aged males, and my personal experience. My job is easier because you need to prove this is the law/rules/regulations/commands/practice and I just need to provide counter-examples to show that those are not actually the law/rules/regulations/commands. As to the official Israeli law and commands they are very clear about this. You can argue that's not what soldiers are doing on the ground but this claim needs a lot more support than you're providing.
>> So the administration does not intentionally target civilians, they have just stopped caring about who a civilian is.
> Well Israel has defined "combatant" as "male between 14 and 55", and the Western world more or less shrugged and moved on without missing a beat. I'm not optimistic.
It's false and you keep insisting it's true. So if you want to build your theory of the world on false things keep doing it.
None of your claims/evidence support your conclusion. The way for you to challenge your conclusion and the original statement is by looking for evidence that it's false. And there is plenty of evidence beyond my personal experience and that of people I know - which you're welcome to discount.
The incident of the killing of the Israeli hostages is indeed very troubling. And it does not prove your point. It does agree with my more nuanced take. Your point is easily disproven by the thousands of interactions between the IDF and civilians in Gaza where military aged men are not shot at. That's what matters. Not whether there have been any war crimes or incidents where civilians have been killed. It should be obvious that if the IDF wanted to kill all military aged males in Gaza that number would be higher than the 9,000 cited in your other response given there are probably around 700k military aged males in Gaza.
It should also be obvious that Hamas tactics of fighting as civilians increases the likelihood of civilians being mistaken for combatants. That's why there's the requirement to wear uniforms in the first place. If you can't acknowledge that this is wrong that's another piece of evidence that you have decided what's wrong and what's right regardless of the actual facts. And no, Hamas isn't fighting in civilian clothing because Israel doesn't let them import uniforms. That's ridiculous.
It's not true that if Hamas had a designated HQ that was clearly delineated from civilian areas, even if it was 300 feet away, "it would be deemed to be using civilians as human shields". Hamas' practices include getting children and civilians to converge on assets that were under evacuation warnings. These practices are not comparable in any shape or form. What is true is that many/most western nations end up having some military installations in proximity of civilians. That is very different than setting up camp inside a civilian building or underneath. There are many examples of these practices by Hamas.
There's plenty of true/real things to be critical of Israel about. I would even join in some of these. But a lot of the criticism levelled at Israel, like this one, are based on falsehoods. The conclusion is chosen first and then reality is formed to fit it. Even bringing up Israel in the context of this thread on Iran is odd. If anything this thread shows that bad things happens in wars. We should be critical of the US here for good reasons. But this example (or countless others from US wars) does not prove that the US targets civilians or doesn't care about civilians. It proves that despite having rules and processes (that are way beyond what non-western armies have) civilians still get killed in wars.
> As to the official Israeli law and commands they are very clear about this.
Oh, come on. The sitting PM is getting out of his corruption trial by keeping the conflict going. The only person punished for gang-raping a Palestinian detainee was the prosecutor who leaked it because they were getting away with it. You're gonna really pull the "well it's illegal!" thing?
Btw, random from your guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74wBqSkgIpo (and this is not related to the debate but since you're throwing random things at this and we're not getting anywhere anyways). This video has a Palestinian videographer who admits he did not share footage of Israeli hostages being abused by Palestinians due to fear for his and his family's safety [EDIT: from Hamas if it's not clear]. That is the view you get from Gaza.
You are still stuck and I can't help you. If your logic somehow explains things existing at the same time 1) Israel considers every military age male a target and attacks them 2) That such a relatively small percentage of military age males were killed in Gaza despite overwhelming military superiority of Israel 3) That there is endless footage showing the IDF soldiers in interactions where they don't just shoot every military age male. 4) the rules/commands/laws of Israel are what I say they are.
Your comment is again not relevant to our question. It is also, as seems to be a pattern, twisting the truth:
"Broadcast in August 2024 on an Israeli news channel, the footage shows reserve soldiers at the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel taking aside a detainee, then surrounding him with riot shields to block visibility while he was allegedly beaten and stabbed in the rectum with a sharp object."
Gang raping -> you made this up. The video does not show that. There is no evidence.
This was being investigated. So that part of the system was working. There was a political pressure against the investigation but the investigative body is independent.
"Five reservists were charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm to the detainee. They have denied the charges and have not been named."
This is the system doing what you claim it's not doing. It doesn't support your argument.
It's true that the end result of the prosecutor leaking the video, thus betraying trust, led to her dismissal, and compromised the case.
Personally I wouldn't rule out that Hamas captured during Oct 7th while murdering Israelis would face extreme violence in detention. It's possible. The evidence does not prove this conclusively.
I also agree Netanyahu has reasons to prolong the conflict and avoid justice. This is also not relevant to the validity of the original broad statement we're debating. It does not follow logically that because Netanyahu wants to remain PM that he is somehow instructing soldiers to shoot every military aged male in Gaza. He also doesn't actually have the power to do that. Part of every soldier's training in Israel is that they should not follow illegal orders. (another actual fact) And the PM doesn't have absolute authority over the chief of staff of the IDF. That position has a certain amount of independence in law. And sometimes they disagree - even publicly.
Is there anything that can be said or any piece of evidence that would convince you that the broad claim is false? If not then it's really up to you to ask yourself why.
This has nothing to do with the broader claim still being false and obviously so.
The world has complexity and has nuance. You insist in seeing it in black and white. And ofcourse in your world Israel is always in the black despite any evidence to the contrary.
> Gang raping -> you made this up. The video does not show that. There is no evidence.
You have a very odd approach to evidence plainly visible here. The detainee has confirmed rectal injuries and there's video of the incident that caused it. (Rape with an object remains rape, if that's the attempted quibble.)
To recap:
"This video has a Palestinian videographer who admits" is credible.
"This video shows the actual incident in question, which has corroborated physical evidence and was bad enough someone senior in the Israeli government whistleblew at great personal risk to get it out there" is not.
> Is there anything that can be said or any piece of evidence that would convince you that the broad claim is false?
"Is there one piece of evidence that would outweigh all the other pieces of evidence pointing the other direction" is quite the question.
No, there'd need to be pretty significant and widespread evidence to contradict clear lying about incidents like shooting ambulances (and covering up the site), raping detainees, shooting unarmed Israeli hostages trying to be rescued (oops!), and confimed video of the sitting Israeli national security minister personally abusing detainees.
> That there is endless footage showing the IDF soldiers in interactions where they don't just shoot every military age male.
This is a strawman, and you know it.
The problem with the "military-aged male" thing is it's used to excuse killings of civilians.
> The world has complexity and has nuance. You insist in seeing it in black and white.
"random from your guys"
Physician, heal thyself. Again. Hamas ain't "my guys". Why does this complexity and nuance apply only to one side?
You hooked up a chatbot to a harness that does API calls to myriad services. That's what you did. "Claude by himself" did not "do" anything. Just like they did not "break out of containment" and hacked companies.
> The cyclists also tend to wander out of the bike lane into the car lane
This sentence alone tells me that it's not a bike lane. A painted line is not a bike lane.
Walter I'm seriously fighting the urge to write a wall of text in response. Why the knee-jerk reaction and the hyperboles? It's not interesting conversation...
It's amazing how people neglect this basic fact. Free markets already often don't work in practice. But they don't even work in theory if both parties do not have at the very least the same information in order to base their decisions. These sort of scam tactics (like dynamic pricing) are simply fraud, much like hiding problems in a car or a house you sell.
That's ridiculous. We have managed without electricity or antibiotics for 100,000 years too. Are you keen on reading by candlelight or dying of preventable infections?
Instant messaging and calling is extremely valuable. Algorithmic social media is extremely noxious. Unfortunately, they both live on the same device.
A more apt comparison is would you be OK reading by candle light sometimes for a few hours? I would be, it’s perfectly fine to read for a few hours by a bright candle.
I would prefer to give up algorithmic social media for 24h/day (massive negative impact) than to give up calls and texts with my friends and family for a few hours (no negative impact).
Comparing smartphones to antibiotics is somewhat ironic given that smartphone addiction is a disease, not a cure to one. There is no law of the universe that says that technology cannot create ills where previously there were none. I assure you that you are allowed to turn your phone off for hours, days, weeks, forever if you so choose, and your life may be better for it.
Did you read why I wrote? It appears you completely ignored it and are just talking past me... Yes I goddamn know "technology can create ills where previously there were none", that's why I called algorithmic social media a catastrophe.... Swear to god
> Instant messaging and calling is extremely valuable.
They, and I, are disagreeing with you. Instant messaging and calling are nice-to-have at best, and a huge burden at worst. They teach an extreme codependency that has little benefit, and causes a lot of anxiety.
They're convenient when somebody needs to go to the hospital, needs to get picked up, you can't find somebody in a museum, you're at the store and somebody at home might need something.
You are rarely using it for this. You're mostly wittering on and on about nonsense and not giving each other any room. When others go silent or don't answer quickly enough you get nervous about what they think about you, or if they are in danger. When others are interrogating you about things that make you uncomfortable, you feel like you have to answer now or you're making a statement with your silence.
Most of the useful stuff could be moved to a house phone (which doesn't exist anymore) and a payphone (which doesn't exist anymore.) For the people farther away, writing a letter was better. You don't need to be on the back of somebody 1000 miles away. There are too many of them, and companies and governments slip in. It's not healthy and it's not safe.
Please don't project on me. Doomsrolling irrelevant junk and polluting one's mind might possibly be what the majority of smartphone use is for. Hence my distinguishing that from "calling and texting".
I can text my wife when I leave home telling her to meet in the park. I can call for help in an emergency. I can talk to my family, back in my home country, whenever I want and wherever I am. My grandparents emigrated when "seeing your family" meant a month's journey by sea, so I'm quite sensitive to this. It's a miracle we take for granted.
An empty loop, under some non-obvious conditions, on some compiler flags but not others, silently transforms into a system call. In a systems programming language.
Destructors run predictably at list, and are pervasive everywhere. You know that when you exit a scope, be that a function or whatever it may, the destructors of variables in that scope are called. That is clear and consistent. The transformation mentioned above is not.
Understanding the code requires understanding the destructors of the objects you're using. Since they are invisibly inserted, they are a source difficulty in entirely understanding the code.
I do wonder if any of the language servers that insert implied type annotations would ever also show things like destructor calls in a similar manner. It seems like it would be quite useful.
Since AFAIK I'm still the only person to write a correct C++ (C++98) compiler from preprocessor to object file, I know all about destructors.
Here's a fun one for your amusement:
foo(a, b, c);
The parameters are pass by value. a, b and c are objects that have destructors. Have a look at the code generated for that.
It is nice that the compiler does the dirty work for you, but the various paths with exceptions and recovery with invisible code may not be well tested.
I use "frontier" AI models daily at day_job. I can confidently say that anyone who is satisfied with the output of LLM code (enough to commit it straight off) is just an absolutely shit programmer. Sorry but I don't have any other way to put it.
The code is (with rare exceptions) atrocious on every level. It is only not atrocious if you take multiple iterations of "review and correct".
>If we find no flaws in the design whatsoever, will we be less careful about the second one? The third one? What about the ten thousandth one?
Like the saying goes, if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike. LLMs can't even produce quality maintainable code for a trivial web service or whatever. Why are we planning for what we will do when they can "design" 10,000 nuclear power plants without any flaw?
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