this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this, and happy new year in advance.)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (4 children)

a reply from a mastodon thread about an instance of AI crankery:

Claude has a response for ya. "You're oversimplifying. While language models do use probabilistic token selection, reducing them to "fancy RNGs" is like calling a brain "just electrical signals." The learned probability distributions capture complex semantic relationships and patterns from human knowledge. That said, your skepticism about AI hype is fair - there are plenty of overinflated claims worth challenging." Not bad for a bucket of bolts 'rando number generator', eh?

maybe I’m late to this realization because it’s a very stupid thing to do, but a lot of the promptfondlers who come here regurgitating this exact marketing fluff and swearing they know exactly how LLMs work when they obviously don’t really are just asking the fucking LLMs, aren’t they?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not bad for a bucket of bolts ‘rando number generator’, eh?

Because... because it generated plausibly looking sentence? Do... do you think the "just electrical signals" bit is clever or creative?

Here's an LLM performance test that I call the Elon Test: does the sentence plausibly look like it could've been said by Elon Musk? Yes? Then your thing is stupid and a failure.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

That test doesn't totally work as Elon does often say fuck.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

That first post. They are using llms to create quantum resistant crypto systems? Eyelid twitch

E: also, as I think cryptography is the only part of CS which really attracts cranks, this made me realize how much worse science crankery is going to get due to LLMs.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

As self and khalid_salad said, there are certainly other branches of CS that attract cranks. I'm not much of a computer scientist myself but even I have seen some 🤔-ass claims about compilers, computational complexity, syntactic validity of the entire C programming language (?), and divine approval or lack thereof of particular operating systems and even the sorting algorithms used in their schedulers!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I thought those non crypto cranks were relatively rare, which is why I added the "really" part. There has been only one templeos after all. And cryptography (crypto too but that is more financial cranks) has that 'this will ve revolutionary feeling which cranks seem to love, while also feeling accessable (compared to complexity theory, which you usually only know about if you know some cs already). I didn't mean there are no cranks/weird ass claims about the whole field, but Id think that cryptography attracts the lions share. The lambda calculus bit down thread might prove me wrong however.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago

I know what you mean. I think the main genre of CS cranks is people trying way too hard to prove something they've gotten way too attached to and cryptography (and its more or less obviously stupid applications) and functional programming (proven to be no more or less powerful than procedural, but sometimes more or less fun) seem to attract a particularly high share of cranks. Almost certainly other fields too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I still need to finish that FPGA Krivine machine because it’s still living rent-free in my head and will do so until it’s finally evaluating expressions, but boy howdy fuck am I not looking forward to the cranks finding it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

write a series of blog posts about it, all of which end "And in conclusion, punch a Nazi."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

also sprinkle it at the start, and throughout

because you just know the tiring fuckers won't bother reading in depth

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think cryptography is the only part of CS which really attracts cranks

every once in a while we get a "here is a compression scheme that works on all data, fuck you and your pidgins" but yeah i think this is right

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

there’s unfortunately a lot of cranks around lambda calculus and computability (specifically check out the Wikipedia article on hypercomputation and start chasing links; you’re guaranteed to find at least one aggressive crank editing their favorite grift into the less watched corners of the wiki), and a lot of them have TESCREAL roots or some ties to that belief cluster or to technofascism, because it’s much easier to form a computer death cult when your idea of computation is utterly fucked

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

fair, there are cranks still trying to trisect an arbitrary angle with an unmarked straight-edge and compass, so i shouldn't be surprised. there are probably cranks still trying to solve the halting problem

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Right, well God says:

meditated exude faithful estimate nature message glittering indiana intelligences dedicate deception ruinous asleep sensitive plentiful thinks justification subjoinedst rapture wealthy frenzied release trusting apostles judge access disguising billows deliver range

Not bad for the almighty creator 'rando number generator', eh?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

a non-zero amount of the time, yeah

also, that poster's profile, holy fuck. even just the About is a trip

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wow, how is every post somehow weird and offputting? And lol at 'im seeing evidence the voting public was HACKED! (emph mine)' a few moments later 'anybody know some big 5 webscrape API coders? I need them for evidence gathering'. The delightful pattern of crankery where there is a big sweeping new idea that nobody else has seen, plus no actual ability in a technical field.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Wow, how is every post somehow weird and offputting?

just an ordinary mastodon poster, doing the utterly ordinary thing of fedposting in every thread started by a popular leftist account, calling “their wing” a bunch of cowards for not talking in public about doing acts of stochastic violence, and pondering why they don’t have more followers