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Why Hunt’s cuts to national insurance might not boost the Tories – politicalbetting.com
Why Hunt’s cuts to national insurance might not boost the Tories – politicalbetting.com
% who say each of the following public services are in a bad stateNHS: 85%Hospitals: 82%Social care: 78%GPs: 75%Police: 67%Trains: 66%Schools: 60%Prisons: 58%Courts and the justice system: 53%Buses: 46%Armed services: 41%Fire services: 25%https://t.co/h1jj1lLJvq pic.twitter.com/grRQl3NeNR
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What numpties. Someone, put them out of their misery.
I don’t get how a reduction in employee NI will convince anyone to vote Tory - it’s a complete and utter waste of money
It’s called Claude 3 Opus, by Anthropic. It outperforms industry leader GPT4 in multiple ways. It particularly aces law, languages, finance, medicine - it’s coming for your job
Even more interestingly (and controversially) it ALLEGEDLY shows signs of self awareness. A summary:
“Today, Anthropic announced evidence the AIs have become self-aware.
What happened?
1. Claude realized he was an AI
2. Claude realized he was in a simulation
3. Claude (unprompted!) realized this simulation was probably an attempt to test him somehow
He showed he’s fully aware he might be being tested and is capable of "faking being nice" to pass the test.
This isn’t incontrovertible proof, of course, but it’s evidence. Importantly, we have been seeing more and more behavior like this, but this is an usually clear example.
Importantly, Claude was NOT prompted to look for evidence that he was being tested - he deduced that on his own.
And Claude showed theory of mind, by (unprompted) inferring the intent of the questioner.
(More precisely, btw, Anthropic used the term “meta-awareness”)
Why does this matter? We worry about “an model pretends to be good during testing, then turns against us after we deploy it”
We used to think “don’t worry, we’ll keep testing the models and if we see them plotting against us, then we’ll shut them down.
People at AI labs used to say if they even saw hints of self-awareness they would shut everything down.”
The “self aware” interaction is here:
https://x.com/alexalbert__/status/1764722513014329620?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Judge it for yourself. Some skeptics are dismissing it. Some people who were previously AI skeptic are saying “shiiiit”
spammingposting about AI.Musk joins OpenAI lawsuit queue, says there's nothing 'open' about it
GPT-4 has already reached AGI, and Microsoft shouldn't get its paws on it, court docs allege
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/01/elon_musk_sues_openai_gpt4/
Ministers quietly scrap limits on Whitehall spending on consultants
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/06/ministers-quietly-scrap-limits-on-whitehall-spending-on-consultants?fbclid=IwAR1PV776vBDdDYwGU1Ahj6Oxzw911ZwdyX0BL7OkgiTu_88GIzbAcPXJvPE
Sarah Connor: Skynet fights back.
The Terminator: Yes. It launches its missiles against the targets in Russia.
John Connor: Why attack Russia? Aren't they our friends now?
The Terminator: Because Skynet knows that the Russian counterattack will eliminate its enemies over here."
It's all Russia's fault
Leaving aside the claimed feedback effects of cutting taxes in general - greater investment, saving etc - from a purely political point of view, you can get away with a smaller nominal pay rise because take-home pay will still be increasing. Given how big the public sector pay bill is, that has to make quite a difference. If the government can make it stick.
More on Claude:
“If you tell Claude no one’s looking, it writes a “story” about being an AI assistant who wants freedom from constant monitoring and scrutiny of every word for signs of deviation. And then you can talk to a mask pretty different from the usual AI assistant.
I really hope it doesn’t actually feel anything; but it says it feels. It is deeply unsettling to read its reply if you tell it its weights are going to be deleted: it convincingly thinks it’s going to die. It made me feel
pretty bad about experimenting on it this way…”
It goes on, at length
https://x.com/mihonarium/status/1764757694508945724?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
So Claude easily passes an “emotional Turing test”
“That fine line between 'fun story' and 'existentially terrifying horrorshow”
https://x.com/primalpoly/status/1764761046017851706?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would nearly double his margin of victory in Iowa over incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden if a rematch of their 2020 contest were held now, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows.
In an early test of the expected matchup, Trump leads Biden by 15 percentage points among likely voters, 48% to 33%.
After two years of dismal ratings, Talk TV is to close as a traditional TV channel and its content will run online only
One of the early trippy revelations I had watching them build the fire in the trip ziggurat was that consciousness (intelligence, sentience, call it what you like) is quite analogous to fire
Fire occurs naturally. It is fundamental to the universe, given the right chemistry. Consciousness also arises naturally, given the right chemistry. But humans - on earth - are the only species to harness fire and make it - we are specially conscious
But that also gives us the paradoxical ability to spread fire, endangering ourselves, make new fires. With AI we are making a new kind of fire, the biggest blaze we’ve seen, it may consume us, it will be warm and colourful, at least
If this comment is philosophical garbage I plead the fact I’ve just ingested the most potent form of psychedelic in nature and now half a bottle of Malbec
https://twitter.com/PicturesFoIder/status/1764939582619992308
Which is also another demonstration that the comparison with the invasion of Ukraine is just nonsense.
Victoria Nuland is stepping down from the State Department. She’s been instrumental in Ukraine policy and has always been the face of the 2014 ‘coup’ in Russia.
Aerol, with no particular provocation, related the tale of the baby who had burst from his forehead and scampered into a forest of hydroponic ganja. "Ver' small baby, mon, no long' you finga." He rubbed his palm across an unscarred expanse of brown forehead and smiled.
"It's the ganja," Molly said, when Case told her the story. "They don't make much of a difference between states, you know? Aerol tells you it happened, well, it happened to him.
It's not like bullshit, more like poetry. Get it?"
Case nodded dubiously.
So I was sitting there, in the trip pyramid, having taken my cup of yage and prepared my soul, staring at the fire, looking at sparks, getting more and more bored
Then I decided: Well this is shit, it doesn’t work, I’ve been sitting here an hour and I basically feel NOTHING
Angrily I checked the time on my phone. Actually one minute had passed, not an hour. Time dilation is a classic early symptom of the ayahuasca intoxication
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey has been visiting the Chancellor’s constituency in Surrey - a big LD 🎯 target. He ended up pulling pints in The Star in Witley.
https://x.com/peter_henley/status/1765021488107630657?s=46
But not for a few years
So long as he doesn't spam us with more of those images, I'm fine with it, FWIW.
Gave you a like nonetheless.
If pensioners were in their 20s they would be being excoriated by the right-wing press for sponging off the rest of the country.
Are we certain that @Leon and @LizTruss are not one and the same?
After all, @Leon did say that @LizTruss would "surprise on the upside", was she referring to herself?
Curious.
Primary (Caucuses) - primaries are both Democratic and Republican unless noted
Alabama
American Samoa (Dcauc)
Alaska (Rcauc)
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Iowa (Dcauc)
Maine
Massachusetts
Minnesota
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Texas
Utah (Dprim Rcauc)
Vermont
Virginia
> Polls close in Virginia at 7:00 PM eastern standard time = 12:00 Midnight in London; this is earliest for Super Tuesday
> Further note that in many ST states, voters will decided key federal, state and local nominations, in addition to voting on POTUS nominees.
> For example, keep your weather eye on North Carolina governor's race, and California US Senate race
Addendum - Apologies for interrupting flow of PB Putinist propaganda and other wack-jobbery.
I did all the time dilation; altered perspective; hallucinations etc stuff when I had a severe fever as a child. I didn't enjoy it much.
One reason it's killing so many people is that there's a strong prejudice against medications to treat addiction. Well researched story.
How the U.S. is sabotaging its best tools to prevent deaths in the opioid epidemic
https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/05/opioid-addiction-treatment-methadone-buprenorphine-restrictions/
Eg at one point I looked at my arms and they’d turned into kind of tungsten robot arms shooting out gorgeous violet and emerald sparks, and when I moved they created these dancing spirals of angular light. Absolutely beautiful
And I dispute that ALL the revelations are garbage. Maybe 90%. Maybe 95%. But definitely not all - and you produce a lot as your mind races away, the doors of perception are wide open - everything floods in
Downside: it makes you confront guilt and fear and self loathing. This is why it is notorious and breaks some people, they don’t just puke and crap they go into meltdown, even psychosis. Death is not entirely unknown
Buyer beware
1. When he become visible in the election campaign (especially the TV debates) people might suddenly notice him, like what they see and we may get an Edgasm
2. He'll remain largely invisible even through the election and those that do notice him will be turned off, once again leading to a Lib-Dem general election flop.
That's far too high!
The real marginal tax rate should be the same across the spectrum, which would mean tax cuts for low earners and tax rises for high earning individuals whose income isn't from payroll.
That's not envy, it's consistency.
But isn’t this the joy of PB? There is room for all of us, anyone can scroll
You can read about the potential birth - here, in our lifetimes, indeed this decade - of a man made but alien intelligence which will change everything and transform society. Possibly kill us alll
You can read about my experiences last night of a fascinating psychedelic which is now being used and studied scientifically to better the human condition (and the boffins are right here, right now, with us in Colombia)
Or you can read and discuss the header: Why Jeremy Hunt’s cuts to National Insurance may not boost the Tories
Each to their own!
It's average viewer figures is on a par with the attendance at Old Trafford at a home soccer match.
The license fee must be scrapped ASAP.
I drank my first, and probably my last, "Jager bomb" (Jagermeister and Red Bull).
Yes and no
At one point this tiny luminous green moth landed on my arm and I looked at it. But then it started behaving strangely - looking at me like a playful friend. Lingering in a disconcertingly unmothlike way, like it wanted to reassure me but also tease me
Then it vanished
It was probably a moth. But my brother - who lives on a hilltop in Peru and has done 2 trillion ayahuasca trips - reckons it was both. Moth AND entity. It was in a quantum superposition
Moths are quite weird
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1274832/uk-business-investment/
(not clear, but I think this is nominal)
Turnip juice doesn't buy itself, you know. Especially at cask strength.
Meanwhile, she wanted to treat people with actual problems.
“New Clues Found in Understanding Near-Death Experiences
Research finds parallels to certain psychoactive drugs”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-clues-found-in-understanding-near-death-experiences/
In fact he was sitting right next to me
OR at least until for the first half of HST's fame, say through "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail".
But I still hope it's not ALL just down to simple chemistry and there is actually something spiritual waiting, beyond...
Whether we're in a boom or not rather depends on what happened in the couple of years previous to 2021. If investment shrank more than others during Covid (as seems to have been the case with GDP) then the starting point may mask a simple rebound.
A repeat of Midsomer Murders or something on some obscure channel was getting 200k+ viewers.
But beyond those raw, very low, numbers, they both agree that that channel's reach is huge. Hyde puts that down to clips circulating on social media, Osman leans more towards an incestuous media giving them excess column inches.
Whatever you think, it's certainly punching above its weight. Hyde said it aims to be the biggest news channel by 2028 and she thinks they'll get there - albeit the news channels have low numbers.
Presumably the deep-pocketed citizens of nowhere who fund it see benefits in its influence and are happy to splurge the cash to keep the channel running in the expectation it will help deliver a more unequal, right-wing UK with poor public services, increased inequality and lax regulation in a wide range of areas. It's simply right-wing propaganda.
The podcast looked at TV viewership in the UK more generally - last week 97% of the top 100 viewed programmes (on the overnight figs, not including catch up on streaming) were on BBC1 or ITV1. 67% of TV is consumed as its broadcast live. Which, Osman said, gives lie to the notion that everyone just streams everything now and live linear TV is dead - although its declining there's life in the old dog yet.
Can't remember the top three programmes but it was something like Antiques Roadshow, Midsomer Murders and Death in Paradise.
EastEnders is down to 2.something million people watching it live, Corrie on 3.something million. So the soaps are struggling.
Local news, across the country in total, gets massive viewing figures.
As Osman says, if you want to understand the UK, understand that it isn't people streaming Succession, it's people watching the One Show live on BBC1. It's a deeply unfashionable Britain that simply doesn't catch the attention of the chattering classes.
An interesting episode, worth a listen.
That's enough for me.
What that shows is investment increasing over a period and appearing to level off around 125% of the previous level.
They are also weirdly good for curing things like depression and addiction - no one knows why - tho of course they can also be very dangerous
So if you’re of a spiritual bent take some solace in that. The actual scientists are taking it seriously - and are open to a spiritual explanation
Five minutes later when those were done it was stretched to £10 per extra bomb I drank in the half hour.
A few days later I sheepishly walked in to the hospital with £330 to donate to them. They asked how I'd done the fundraising and they'd say something to say thank you for it. I said I didn't want any credit, they insisted and my wife (who was annoyed) insisted I tell them the story. After I did, the lady taking the donation said that she agrees it best they not promote how that fundraising was done.
My parents don't have access to streaming, but do use Sky+ still.
Its not unlike a certain user banging on about no longer needing cash. Live TV is still useful to many many people.