You can call yourself anything you want, and no one will stop you. Calling yourself a Christian, while violating every tenet of Christian teachings, does not qualify you as a Christian. I finally coined the term Hypochrists for people like that.

There are plenty of Christians who do follow Christian teachings, to one extent or another, and are generally trying to be decent people. Unfortunately, there are also large numbers of “Christians” who just use the name to justify their selfish behavior, hatred, and cruelty.

All large religions have, or have had, groups like that. Any social institution that can provide credibility is going to be abused as a tool to gain power by someone. It is appalling that the Hypochrists have become large enough, and powerful enough, to have taken over the popular image of what Christianity is.

Sam Altman is a huckster, not a technologist. As such, I don’t really care what he says about technology. His purpose has always been to transfer as much money as possible from investors into his own pocket before the bubble bursts. Anything else is incidental.

I am not entirely writing off LLMs, but very little of the discussion about them has been rational. They do some things fairly well and a lot of things quite poorly. It would be nice if we could just focus on the former.

There is a critical difference in the way we treat police vs firefighters. Both the law and their training teach police that almost anything is justified if it keeps them safe and that there will not be any consequences. Officer safety takes precedence of the public’s safety. Murdering a few innocent civilians is a small price to pay for that.

Firefighters are simply expected to risk their lives in service of the public. Efforts are made to reduce the risks, but they regularly go in to rescue people knowing they may not make it back out.

Both jobs involve operating in high-risk environments, but the police prioritize police safety and firemen prioritize public safety.

That’s the beauty of modern corporate capitalism. The upper tiers of management are shielded from any responsibility by their subordinates. Their subordinates then have a strong incentive to shift the responsibility elsewhere so it doesn’t fall on them. Paying someone else to take the responsibility does not actually benefit the company, except may be in the short-term, but it does benefit the people who get to make the decisions about it.

And if the service provider really screws up, and loses too many contracts, they either sell out to another company just like themselves, make further profit, and go back to doing what they were doing, or they shut down, form a new company, and go back to what they were doing.

The only people who can be hurt by all of this are the regular employees, who lose their jobs as part of the cycle, and, occasionally, the shareholders, who are never adequately represented by the board. It’s a prefect system where bad decisions only affect those who have no part in them.

“The Cloud” just means “someone else’s sever”. A lot of people who should know better just don’t get that.

It’s entertaining to take almost any internal memo or external press release and substitute “someone else’s server” every time “the cloud” appears. They all suddenly look insane.

I’ve always found that “DO NOT DO THAT” works pretty well. :-)

Financially ruining the AI industry would be an awesome side-benefit.

Late stage capitalism rewards management for any appearance of change. It really doesn’t matter whether the results of that change are good or bad. And even a CEO who keeps destroying companies can always find a similar position elsewhere. The feedback loop is hopelessly broken.

I should have included a /s.

I hope companies eventually figure out people just aren’t that stupid. Also, I really hope that people aren’t that stupid.

On a positive note, this could be the push that America needs to get serious about mass transit.

AI is not universally bad. There are some things it does well. The problem is that there are a lot more things it does badly, often in harmful ways, and most people using it have no idea how to tell the difference.

You seem to be using it the right way, with caution and awareness.

The new model is SAAH (Software As A Hostage). You would think that overpaid CTOs and CEOS would be able to anticipate something as obvious as this. “The Cloud” just means “someone else’s server”.

I came here for this!

And “No step on snek!” is still ours.

Actually saying that they want slave labor is considered bad public relations.

AI is already replacing significant parts of the technical workforce. The key is that it doesn’t have to successfully replace them. It just has to convince the sociopaths in the C-suites that they can pretend it will so they can layoff masses of employees. That will allow them to collect obscenely large bonuses, sell their stock at a huge profit, and move on to destroying the next round of businesses. Fortunately, the only people this will hurt are, well, us.

I also think the evidence that Jesus existed is compelling, but my point is that it doesn’t matter when you’re talking about the philosophy that is credited to him. Reading the Gospels makes it quite clear that a disturbingly large part of modern Christianity is in opposition to everything he stood for.

You are absolutely right. It isn’t complicated. A fundamental principle from the teachings of Jesus is that everyone should share their “wealth” (i.e. food, housing, medical care, etc.) with those in need. No one should ever be hungry, homeless, or sick without treatment. It follows naturally from the idea of loving everyone, without exception.

I’m not going to argue the questions about whether Jesus was divine or even existed. I am simply talking about the philosophy that is presented as his by the Gospels. That is the core of Christianity, but it is ignored by a majority of those who call themselves Christians. The fact that it is difficult and calls for personal sacrifices is not an excuse. He never said that it would be easy.

I accept that Christian principles can be viewed as aspirational goals and not an absolute code of conduct, but that is not what we see in the would-be Christians. They have no interest in working toward those goals.

This is actually a triumph for Musk. SpaceX has figured out how to blow up their rockets without all the cost and time required to prepare for a launch.

One of the many things I like about Subaru is that they seem to move useful features from optional to standard, once they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. I bought an Outback in 2016 and paid extra for the EyeSight safety system. Two years later that car was destroyed in an accident (I was T-boned and rolled over twice, without anyone being hurt). I bought another Outback to replace it, but by that time the EyeSight was a standard feature. Subaru now includes EyeSight on all their cars because it saves lives.

They had done similar things with other safety features. Four-wheel disc brakes, anti-lock braking, and all-wheel drive became standard on Sabarus relatively early.

It is also worth noting that the more intrusive EyeSight features, like lane assist, are easy to turn off. There’s a button on the steering wheel for that one. Even if you turn it off, the car will still warn you if you start to cross lanes without using your turn signals, but it will not adjust for you.

My mother was named after her mother, although she used her middle name. My sister was named after her. We’re white midwesterners in the US.