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The person they were responding to said "Open models have the same performance on coding tasks now." AFAIK this is bullshit, but I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong.

I don't mean this in an "I know better" way, just genuine curiosity: why couldn't you record a solution with pauses and then strip them from the replay file?

I tried but the change in behaviour immediately before and after the pause could be seen in the playback.

It's the time it takes to go "uhh, I'm stuck, I'd better pause" and then the bit before your brain kicks in following a pause.


But if winning the game requires you to do shitty science and defraud the public, why play it at all? There's no desperation justification here, because anyone who can succeed in academia almost certainly has the brains and credentials to get a decent non-academic job.

Because, for one thing, some people are shitty frauds, and they're not bothered by it. Those people see messed-up incentives as an opportunity.

Do serious workers tend to get out of the field, if the incentives are wrongheaded enough? Sure. Some. Does that fix the incentives or the outcomes within that field? No, not at all.


Because it's not a requirement, and most people are not intentionally or accidentally defrauding the government.

The issue is that there is no incentive to do the additional work necessary to generate reproducible results because of the pressure to constantly generate sufficiently novel results to publish.

If you spend the additional time required to have fully reproducible results and your competition is not, you're probably going to lose the game (where the game is obtaining more funding).

Not generating reproducible results doesn't mean you're a fraud, but the absence of a requirement to generate them in order to publish means that it's easier for fraudsters to operate that it would be with that requirement.


> anyone who can succeed in academia almost certainly has the brains and credentials to get a decent non-academic job.

I suspect the way this usually gets started is similar to embezzlement schemes. “Oh I’ll just borrow a few dollars from the till and pay it back tomorrow” is akin to “The manuscript is due tonight so I’ll just touch up this microphotograph to look like the other one that had bad focus.”

That escalates into forging invoices on the one hand and completely fabricated data on the other. By that point they’re in too deep to stop until they get caught.


>because anyone who can succeed in academia almost certainly has the brains and credentials to get a decent non-academic job.

That's not obviously true at all.


Because you've just spent 10-15 years studying for a masters, PhD, and postdoc how to do exactly one thing, and probably are IN that system for another 5-10 years before realizing how totally corrupt it is.

It's definitely important to change the game, because there will (sadly) always be a supply of unscrupulous people if dishonesty is rewarded. But I do think the incentive-focused approach sometimes undermines itself. One of the ways to disincentivize dishonesty is to have strong social sanctions against dishonest people, so it's (arguably) pretty stupid to weaken this with a "don't hate the player" attitude. And we tend to work harder to prevent and punish offenses that stir our emotions, so if everyone is blasé about academic dishonesty then we'll probably continue to see lax enforcement and weak penalties.

I think this is the right tension, in that bad incentives matter, but that does not remove personal responsibility. We probably need both stronger accountability for clear misconduct and better systems that make rigor, transparency, and verification easier to pursue in the first place. The second piece gets much less attention than it should. That is a big part of what we’re trying to tackle at Liberata: https://liberata.info/beta-signup

This is definitely a good approach but I don't think it's the only one!

I absolutely agree that the idea that exercise has to be unpleasant is wrong and harmful. But there's a middle ground where the things you actively enjoy aren't sufficient to keep you fit, and so you develop a habit of doing regular exercise even when you don't feel like it and even if it's a bit boring and effortful.

Everyone's different but IME this works well provided you build up the effort level gradually, and never feel the need to push yourself to a really unpleasant degree. Eventually habit, the knowledge that it's good for you in the long run, and the fact that it usually makes you feel better in the short run make it pretty easy to stick with.


"it does suggest that avoiding your triggers [...] provides no benefit"

This is the part I'm sceptical of. When I look this up, I mostly find articles like https://theconversation.com/proceed-with-caution-the-trouble... (and the underlying studies), which mainly address the question of whether reading a trigger warning and then consuming the potentially triggering content is better than just consuming the potentially triggering content without a warning.

(The article also mentions a finding that trigger warnings have "no meaningful effect on an individual's [...] avoidance of this content"; but I think that's entirely compatible with a world where most people consume the content regardless of the warning, some are more drawn to it because of the warning, and some (including the few who are truly vulnerable) avoid it because of the warning. The effect on those vulnerable few is what's most relevant here. The article does briefly mention "unhealthy avoidance behaviours", but in the context of one university's opinion and without supporting evidence.)

What's the best evidence against trigger warnings as a means of enabling traumatised people to make an informed decision on when (and whether) to confront their triggers?


> The article does briefly mention "unhealthy avoidance behaviours", but in the context of one university's opinion and without supporting evidence.)

There's not much additional context here because avoidant behavior is basically universally understood to be a bad thing when it comes to the long term treatment of PTSD (this is separate from immediately/short-term after the event - different situation there) - there's no real serious argument against this idea, so when avoidant behavior is discussed it doesn't require context on why that behavior is a bad thing, in the same way that a an article targeted at cardiologists isn't going to explain why poor ejection fraction is an issue - it's baseline knowledge for the target audience.

The results are mixed on whether it encourages avoidance - some studies like https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... indicate that it does, others found no effect or negligible increases.

To be clear, I'm not definitively stating it causes avoidant behavior - I am saying that it might, which would be one of those 'worst case' scenarios.

Trauma groups have been part of the meta-analysis that indicate no real change in avoidance, and some have had the 'forbidden fruit' impact even in trauma groups, but it's in similar quantities as the ones that show an increase in avoidant behavior.

Fundamentally, trigger warnings just don't make a lot of sense to try and argue in favor of from a 'helping people with their PTSD' standpoint if you believe the science.

1) For them to have the effect you claim is desirable, they would need to avoid the content - but avoidant behavior is a negative when it comes to overcoming PTSD

2) The science largely indicates that it doesn't cause them to change their behavior at all in this manner - so the desired effect, it doesn't seem to do anything.

3) There's some evidence that it might increase avoidant behavior (science would call this bad!) and some evidence it might increase people exposure due to the 'forbidden fruit' effect (which would be bad from the supposed desired effect, and not necessarily good from the scientific standpoint - unnaturally being pushed towards something might also be negative vs. more 'natural' exposure, particularly when coupled with the upcoming point)

4) A variety of studies have shown that they increase anticipatory anxiety in people when they appear, which is of course a negative for anyone. I haven't been able to find any studies particularly engaging on this specific topic of anticipatory anxiety from trigger warnings + follow up exposure from the 'forbidden fruit' effect so this isn't something backed by science like the rest, but my gut instinct is that it would be more likely to be negative vs. something more organic. I could very well be wrong there.

I don't see any combination of piecing together these studies that could lead to a belief that trigger warnings provide value from a therapeutic standpoint.


Can you point me to some strong evidence that it's reliably counterproductive to avoid reading a book or watching a show that contains a trigger? I get that avoidance, in the sense of trying to push away all thoughts of the trauma and avoid all possible reminders, is generally considered counterproductive. And exposure, at the right times and in the right ways, can be very helpful (or absolutely necessary). But there's a big difference between those facts and the idea that it's bad for a PTSD sufferer to have the option of sometimes deciding not to actively expose themselves to triggering media.

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/what/avoidance.asp

> A combat Veteran may stop watching the news or using social media because of stories or posts about war or current military events.

https://www.verywellmind.com/ptsd-and-emotional-avoidance-27...

> The avoidance cluster of PTSD symptoms involves efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings, and external reminders like discussions about the traumatic event or encounters with people or places associated with it.

I don't see how specifically avoiding content that contains triggers is anything but avoidance behavior as discussed above - avoiding the news or discussions about war is pretty explicitly facilitated by TW - before the clip plays on the news, by people posting it at the top of their social media content, etc. And media with the content would fall in line pretty explicitly as an "external reminder"

Like, I don't think someone who has been physically tortured and dealing with PTSD should watch Hostel or other torture porn, and I don't think a vet with PTSD should watch a compilation video of some of the worst horrors of war. So I'm not arguing for massive exposure or intentional forced exposure, etc. But the fundamental issue is that going out of your way to prevent yourself from being exposed to it at all, which is what TW facilitate if they were to work, is pretty definitionally avoidant behavior.


I've seen evidence that reading a trigger warning and then consuming the content might be worse than just consuming the content without a trigger warning.

But is there any good reason to doubt that trigger warnings can be helpful in the obvious way: someone sees the trigger warning and makes an informed decision to avoid the content?


The nature of that setup makes it incredibly difficult to research. You'd have to answer a negative.

Of course, that won't stop people that are anti-trigger warnings from using the irrelevant research (they don't work if you don't heed them... duh) to push their agenda.


I think I prefer the 'STEM people' approach of trying to say true things, rather than this superior approach of just saying things and then, when they turn out to be false, dismissing them as irrelevant. If the truth of the claim is irrelevant, why did you make it in the first place!

The statement IS true anyways, the problem is that you failed to distinguish between an example and a universal claim. You want to argue on logic? I'm an engineer, I can argue on precision too:

The (true!) statement is "However, there's an immense difference in scale between post-industrial strip mining of resources, and preindustrial resource extraction powered solely by human muscle (and not coal or nitrogylcerin etc). Similarly, there's a massive difference in information extraction enabled by AI, vs a person in 1980 poring over the microfilm in their local library."

I said there is a major difference in scale between "modern strip mining" and "a preindustrial extraction method powered only by human muscle", and I made an analogous point about AI-enabled information extraction versus 1980s manual archival research. That statement is purely true. Nothing in that statement says the muscle-powered-extraction example was the only preindustrial mode of production, just as "someone using microfilm in 1980" does not imply microfilm was the only way information was accessed in 1980. The fact that other information formats existed in 1980 is irrelevant to the truth of the example.

So no, nothing I said "turned out to be false". You are attacking a claim I never made because you failed to parse the logic in the one I did. Most importantly, this direction missed the big picture dialectical synthesis that I was introducing as well, and just kept decomposing the argument into locally falsifiable atoms which lost the thread of what was actually being discussed.


Is your counter argument that you’re not wrong just attacking a straw man? Because it really sounds to me like you are just clueless.

Strip mining goes back thousands of years, it’s a simpler technology than making tunnels. And no it wasn’t limited to human power to crack rock several more powerful methods existed.

Roman mining literally destroyed a mountain, operating within an order of magnitude of the largest mines today. That’s what makes what you say false. It’s not some minor quibble over details you are simply speaking from ignorance.


It’s almost like you’re intentionally trying to be wrong.

You don't seem to understand how analogies work. I’m not talking about strip mining vs tunnel mining, I was comparing scale of human powered mining to mining with nitroglycerin.

I’ll let you figure out how the scale of mining “going back thousands of years” is very different from modern explosive mining on your own. Go google “iron production by year” or something. Hint: it took generations for the Romans to strip a small hill, that a modern midsize mining company can do in a few days.


If you take Pliny’s word for truth, they did achieve 10% of the scale of the largest currently operating gold mine using hydraulics at Las Medulas.

Modern geological estimates are radically lower.


> they love making every single release a world ender

You've said this a couple of times, but it doesn't match my recollection, and I get the impression you're basically making it up based on vibes. (Please prove me wrong, though.)

Their last major frontier release was Opus 4.6, and the release announcement was... very chill about safety: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-6#a-step-forwar...


When 'oneanother' = strangers trying to get rich, when could we ever trust oneanother?


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