Haven't been on ChatGPT for about a year, so I thought I'd see if they've improved their factual information replies.
They haven't.
My question: "How many votes did the Conservatives poll in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1983 general election?"
Answer: "In the 1983 UK general election, the Conservative Party candidate in the Huntingdon constituency, John Major, received 32,833 votes, winning with 54.2% of the vote. This was a strong performance in a safe Conservative seat, marking the beginning of a prominent political career for Major, who would later become Prime Minister."
In fact he polled 34,254 votes at that election.
Claude 3.6’s answer:
“Since this is a very specific historical electoral statistic from a single constituency, I should note that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate specific numbers like this. The Conservatives won Huntingdon in 1983 (with John Major as their candidate), but I don't want to state a specific vote total without being completely certain of the figure. I'd recommend checking official electoral records or the BBC's historical election database for the exact number.”
Admirable self-awareness
Stop talking about AI, you know the rules.
PB will be left sadly uneducated, but fair enough in this instance
Here’s a photo of Gyeong-ju
I love and hate Korea all at the same time. It has really annoying rules - no booze without food! - enforced by quite odd people, but at the right moment it enchants. It is, in other words, PB turned into a nation, with a similarly ageing population
USA Election Question. If the polls are correct (Tied or Harris slightly ahead by 1%) then why is Trump not going to win the Electoral College? Doesn't Harris need to be ahead by 2% or more to win the Electoral College?
I have a slightly different take on Musk buying twitter. I don't really buy the free speech absolutism, same as the eco-warrior spin on EV cars.
I think he saw a bloated company that never really made any money and thought he could low ball his way into buying it. At worst he gets a company that ticks along, but on the upside, data. Remember he was an early investor in OpenAI, so he is well aware of the power of data, LLMs, etc.
But he screwed up over the amount he paid and then was forced to radical cost cutting. But at the same time, he has got sucked down into the twitter rabbit hole, which made things worse, in terms of keeping advertisers happy. And he is a weird dude, who when criticised he fires from the hip unwisely.
It is worth pointing out, quietly he cut off every bodies elses access to twitter data, formed a spin off and recently set up a 100k GPU cluster....I think that was the original plan all along.
Musk was on Rogan’s podcast yesterday. They spend half the time talking about politics and the other half talking about various forms of technology.
Musk says that he primarily wanted a platform with freedom of speech, he didn’t see why he needed tens of thousands of content censors, hadn’t banked on organised advertising boycotts, admits he way overpaid but that it was worth it for the greater good of humanity!
As I say, I am not totally convinced by that.
Look at every Musk play in the past, there is always another angle. Tesla, he has bought up so many of the prime locations for charging, such that between the charging tech and locations, everybody is now having to pay them for access...look at SpaceX / Starlink, he is getting himself a monopoly on internet for airlines....
They are not the stated missions of the companies.
Pretty much straight away setting up an AI sister company, and training LLMs, cutting off outside access to data, and now doubling down by setting up a 100k GPU compute cluster, says I have a different motive than (just) I want a free speech social network.
Or, it’s a bit of all seven. He ended up vastly overpaying for Twitter, he then further fucked it up with the rebrand however he hugely reduced costs. He realised it gave him a free speech megaphone with which to influence the world - but also annoy people - not good. And now he’s noticed he can harvest mega data for his Grok AI
He’s an innovator and a twat and an entrepreneur. He makes terrible errors but he learns from those errors and can sometimes turn them to huge advantage
He’s not a man to bet against, not lightly
Indeed. And I think the combination of Twitter and Starlink is not being sufficiently appreciated in the effect it can have (and is having) on global opinion.
But Musk doesn't really understand people very well. He has proven himself an outstanding project manager writ huge. But go into politics and it takes more. The question is whether he's happy to play by the current rules and, if not, what he and his allies will do about it.
It strikes me as odd that someone should take such a hard-right view when such a large share of his Tesla market is of the left.
Listening to Shelagh Fogerty on LBC she had a guy called Dan, a Brit from New Jersey, who claims NJ is going red. Previously a woman called Gemma from Britain who voted for Harris in NY says that her friends are all voting Trump. They are suggesting a Trump landslide based on the economy.
William Glenn has called this.
Damn
Just imagine if New Jersey and Virginia went red with Iowa and Kansas blue.
Just hold that thought for one second.
I think more likely is NJ and Virginia are much closer but narrow Harris wins still but Iowa and Kansas are also closer but Iowa goes for Harris and Kansas still goes Trump. So main impact is boost for Trump in popular vote as former 2 are more populous but boost for Harris in EC with Iowa
Based on early votes and mail ins Democrats ahead 59% to 21% for GOP in NJ and 50% to 38% for the GOP in Virginia.
Dems tied 39% each with GOP in Iowa but GOP ahead in Kansas 52% to 33%.
Republicans also ahead on early votes in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and by 1% in NC. Democrats ahead on early votes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with Michigan tied
I have a slightly different take on Musk buying twitter. I don't really buy the free speech absolutism, same as the eco-warrior spin on EV cars.
I think he saw a bloated company that never really made any money and thought he could low ball his way into buying it. At worst he gets a company that ticks along, but on the upside, data. Remember he was an early investor in OpenAI, so he is well aware of the power of data, LLMs, etc.
But he screwed up over the amount he paid and then was forced to radical cost cutting. But at the same time, he has got sucked down into the twitter rabbit hole, which made things worse, in terms of keeping advertisers happy. And he is a weird dude, who when criticised he fires from the hip unwisely.
It is worth pointing out, quietly he cut off every bodies elses access to twitter data, formed a spin off and recently set up a 100k GPU cluster....I think that was the original plan all along.
Musk was on Rogan’s podcast yesterday. They spend half the time talking about politics and the other half talking about various forms of technology.
Musk says that he primarily wanted a platform with freedom of speech, he didn’t see why he needed tens of thousands of content censors, hadn’t banked on organised advertising boycotts, admits he way overpaid but that it was worth it for the greater good of humanity!
As I say, I am not totally convinced by that.
Look at every Musk play in the past, there is always another angle. Tesla, he has bought up so many of the prime locations for charging, such that between the charging tech and locations, everybody is now having to pay them for access...look at SpaceX / Starlink, he is getting himself a monopoly on internet for airlines.... And he got the government to basically provide a big chunk of capital in loans and subsides, for these endeavours.
They are not the stated missions of the companies.
Pretty much straight away setting up an AI sister company, and training LLMs, cutting off outside access to data, and now doubling down by setting up a 100k GPU compute cluster, says I have a different motive than (just) I want a free speech social network.
"For the good of humanity" is bollocks, obvs. The Saudis wouldn't be helping fund that, for a start.
Lines to vote in New Jersey. Apparently never happened before...
Dan from NJ on LBC is predicting NJ goes red.
Every cycle there is breathless talk of NJ going red, with folk hyping up anecdotage that supports the case. Every time it’s solid for the Dems. Now this year might be the one where they’re right but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it…
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
Most Reform voters are either small businessmen, in the armed forces or white working class private sector workers. So I doubt they are that bothered about Farage promising to slash the civil service and public sector administrators as long as he doesn't also slash the numbers of police, soldiers and doctors and nurses
This is such an idiotic take because if you cut "public sector administrators" you end up paying doctors and police officers to do admin tasks.
But when you do that, guess what? Less admin is done vs more real work. Most admin is work for work’s sake, expanding to fill the space.
That's just not true at all. Management consultancy bollocks.
Nope - at CitiGroup, for example, pre 2008 they had floors of people who went to meetings to write PowerPoints to present at other meetings to….
In 2008, a manager was shouting, can anyone tell me out exposure to Lehmans ? Literally. One bloke put his hand up - a contractor from my company. The rest knew nothing..
After 2008, they were firing by the floor…
All organisations go through this. They accumulate bullshit like dust.
Yeah, but if you fuck up reforming CitiGroup some rich people make less money, but if you fuck up reforming the public sector real people suffer.
In addition, "admin" jobs in the public sector have been cut to the bone since 2010.
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
Most Reform voters are either small businessmen, in the armed forces or white working class private sector workers. So I doubt they are that bothered about Farage promising to slash the civil service and public sector administrators as long as he doesn't also slash the numbers of police, soldiers and doctors and nurses
This is such an idiotic take because if you cut "public sector administrators" you end up paying doctors and police officers to do admin tasks.
But when you do that, guess what? Less admin is done vs more real work. Most admin is work for work’s sake, expanding to fill the space.
That's just not true at all. Management consultancy bollocks.
Nope - at CitiGroup, for example, pre 2008 they had floors of people who went to meetings to write PowerPoints to present at other meetings to….
In 2008, a manager was shouting, can anyone tell me out exposure to Lehmans ? Literally. One bloke put his hand up - a contractor from my company. The rest knew nothing..
After 2008, they were firing by the floor…
All organisations go through this. They accumulate bullshit like dust.
Yeah, but if you fuck up reforming CitiGroup some rich people make less money, but if you fuck up reforming the public sector real people suffer.
In addition, "admin" jobs in the public sector have been cut to the bone since 2010.
Which still hits the economy as rich people buy more goods and services in absolute terms and there would still be cleaners, cooks, secretaries etc working at CitiGroup
I have a slightly different take on Musk buying twitter. I don't really buy the free speech absolutism, same as the eco-warrior spin on EV cars.
I think he saw a bloated company that never really made any money and thought he could low ball his way into buying it. At worst he gets a company that ticks along, but on the upside, data. Remember he was an early investor in OpenAI, so he is well aware of the power of data, LLMs, etc.
But he screwed up over the amount he paid and then was forced to radical cost cutting. But at the same time, he has got sucked down into the twitter rabbit hole, which made things worse, in terms of keeping advertisers happy. And he is a weird dude, who when criticised he fires from the hip unwisely.
It is worth pointing out, quietly he cut off every bodies elses access to twitter data, formed a spin off and recently set up a 100k GPU cluster....I think that was the original plan all along.
Musk was on Rogan’s podcast yesterday. They spend half the time talking about politics and the other half talking about various forms of technology.
Musk says that he primarily wanted a platform with freedom of speech, he didn’t see why he needed tens of thousands of content censors, hadn’t banked on organised advertising boycotts, admits he way overpaid but that it was worth it for the greater good of humanity!
As I say, I am not totally convinced by that.
Look at every Musk play in the past, there is always another angle. Tesla, he has bought up so many of the prime locations for charging, such that between the charging tech and locations, everybody is now having to pay them for access...look at SpaceX / Starlink, he is getting himself a monopoly on internet for airlines....
They are not the stated missions of the companies.
Pretty much straight away setting up an AI sister company, and training LLMs, cutting off outside access to data, and now doubling down by setting up a 100k GPU compute cluster, says I have a different motive than (just) I want a free speech social network.
Or, it’s a bit of all seven. He ended up vastly overpaying for Twitter, he then further fucked it up with the rebrand however he hugely reduced costs. He realised it gave him a free speech megaphone with which to influence the world - but also annoy people - not good. And now he’s noticed he can harvest mega data for his Grok AI
He’s an innovator and a twat and an entrepreneur. He makes terrible errors but he learns from those errors and can sometimes turn them to huge advantage
He’s not a man to bet against, not lightly
Indeed. And I think the combination of Twitter and Starlink is not being sufficiently appreciated in the effect it can have (and is having) on global opinion.
But Musk doesn't really understand people very well. He has proven himself an outstanding project manager writ huge. But go into politics and it takes more. The question is whether he's happy to play by the current rules and, if not, what he and his allies will do about it.
It strikes me as odd that someone should take such a hard-right view when such a large share of his Tesla market is of the left.
I don’t think he’s hard right - not at all. That’s Overton Window shifting bollocks
His main thing is Free Speech, that’s what obsesses him and why he’s reluctantly sided with Trump (recall he was anti-Trump and wanted De Santis). He’s probably a fan of Kemi B
Listening to Shelagh Fogerty on LBC she had a guy called Dan, a Brit from New Jersey, who claims NJ is going red. Previously a woman called Gemma from Britain who voted for Harris in NY says that her friends are all voting Trump. They are suggesting a Trump landslide based on the economy.
William Glenn has called this.
Damn
Just imagine if New Jersey and Virginia went red with Iowa and Kansas blue.
Just hold that thought for one second.
I think more likely is NJ and Virginia are much closer but narrow Harris wins still but Iowa and Kansas are also closer but Iowa goes for Harris and Kansas still goes Trump. So main impact is boost for Trump in popular vote as former 2 are more populous but boost for Harris in EC with Iowa
Based on early votes and mail ins Democrats ahead 59% to 21% for GOP in NJ and 50% to 38% for the GOP in Virginia.
Dems tied 39% each with GOP in Iowa but GOP ahead in Kansas 52% to 33%.
Republicans also ahead on early votes in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and by 1% in NC. Democrats ahead on early votes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with Michigan tied
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
Most Reform voters are either small businessmen, in the armed forces or white working class private sector workers. So I doubt they are that bothered about Farage promising to slash the civil service and public sector administrators as long as he doesn't also slash the numbers of police, soldiers and doctors and nurses
This is such an idiotic take because if you cut "public sector administrators" you end up paying doctors and police officers to do admin tasks.
But when you do that, guess what? Less admin is done vs more real work. Most admin is work for work’s sake, expanding to fill the space.
For a real-life case, read Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, and the Buurtzorg experience. He has other examples
Admin work is real work. You can have too many administrators, just as you can have too many nurses, but this idea that admin work isn’t real work is just reactionary bullshit.
Someone has to make sure the patients are going to come in at the right times, corral the support staff & do all the tracking that has to happen to make a service work. You can pay a consultant to do that work, compromising their healthcare output in the process. Or you can pay an administrator to do it, leaving the consultants to concentrate on doing the thing we actually pay them to do.
I know which I would prefer.
It’s notable that by comparison with European healthcare services, which generally now get better outcomes than the NHS (IIRC) the NHS has far fewer administrative staff. We need more admins & support staff (IT especially) in order to free up healthcare staff to do the thing we’re actually paying them to do: deliver healthcare.
If we had more administrators we might understand that it is cheaper to pay doctors 10% more to work full time and improve retention, than paying the same people 10% less salary, find a decent chunk quit or move part time, and then have to spend £200k overtime or contracting to cover their work.
Listening to Shelagh Fogerty on LBC she had a guy called Dan, a Brit from New Jersey, who claims NJ is going red. Previously a woman called Gemma from Britain who voted for Harris in NY says that her friends are all voting Trump. They are suggesting a Trump landslide based on the economy.
William Glenn and Darkage have called this.
If Gemma is from Britain, how did she vote in NY? You'll get very good odds on the likes of New Jersey going Republican. That doesn't mean it's hard to find Trump supporters there.
She lives in NY and is naturalised. She voted Harris. Dan on the other hand says he lives in NJ. I thought it curious he shares the first two letters of his name with Darkage.
I am genuinely in a panic. Hand me those Trump diapers!
USA Election Question. If the polls are correct (Tied or Harris slightly ahead by 1%) then why is Trump not going to win the Electoral College? Doesn't Harris need to be ahead by 2% or more to win the Electoral College?
No, remember Kerry won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2004 despite Bush winning the popular vote.
Nationally Americans prefer centrist Democrats like Hillary and Biden to left liberals like Harris but the upper Midwest seems to prefer left liberal Democrats like Kerry and Harris and Walz
Lines to vote in New Jersey. Apparently never happened before...
Dan from NJ on LBC is predicting NJ goes red.
Every cycle there is breathless talk of NJ going red, with folk hyping up anecdotage that supports the case. Every time it’s solid for the Dems. Now this year might be the one where they’re right but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it…
Haven't been on ChatGPT for about a year, so I thought I'd see if they've improved their factual information replies.
They haven't.
My question: "How many votes did the Conservatives poll in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1983 general election?"
Answer: "In the 1983 UK general election, the Conservative Party candidate in the Huntingdon constituency, John Major, received 32,833 votes, winning with 54.2% of the vote. This was a strong performance in a safe Conservative seat, marking the beginning of a prominent political career for Major, who would later become Prime Minister."
In fact he polled 34,254 votes at that election.
Claude 3.6’s answer:
“Since this is a very specific historical electoral statistic from a single constituency, I should note that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate specific numbers like this. The Conservatives won Huntingdon in 1983 (with John Major as their candidate), but I don't want to state a specific vote total without being completely certain of the figure. I'd recommend checking official electoral records or the BBC's historical election database for the exact number.”
Admirable self-awareness
Stop talking about AI, you know the rules.
PB will be left sadly uneducated, but fair enough in this instance
Here’s a photo of Gyeong-ju
I love and hate Korea all at the same time. It has really annoying rules - no booze without food! - enforced by quite odd people, but at the right moment it enchants. It is, in other words, PB turned into a nation, with a similarly ageing population
It isn't as big an issue as the world's ageing population, but pb's ageing population worries me. When I started out here I was towards the younger end of the spectrum. Now ... I think I'm still towards the younger end of the spectrum. And periodically a poster whom I'd hitherto considered to be about the same age as me turns out to be a decade or two older. In a couple of decades, who will keep alive our memories as we keep alive the memories of those who went before?
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
This is all very fascist obviously, but it’s also notable (to me) that Farage completely glosses over the reality that Musk sacked 80% of Twitter’s staff & as a result triggered an 84% drop in it’s revenue. He simply didn’t understand the product Twitter was selling.
The idea that you can simply hack away 80% of government employees & not end up causing great swathes of harm to people in the real world is for the birds.
All very fascist? I thought they were lovers of bureaucracy and the big state (provided it was putting their policies into action). The one thing they weren't was libertarian individualists like Musk.
Another example of how the word 'fascist' has been debased and become essentially a synonym for 'people I dont' like'. Idiot shorthand for those who can't be bothered to think things through.
Massively cutting the size of the state cannot, by definition, be fascistic because Fascism depends on a large and all-powerful state in order to enforce its fundamentally authoritarian ethos.
And if we extend that logic, trimming the state would be seen as an admirable act of anti-Fascism. But logic is typically lost on the vacuous.
You appear to be operating under the delusion that Fascism is an internally consistent political philosophy.
One aspect of fascism is the appeal of the strong leader who promises to cut through the ties that bind the nation with clear decision action.
The fact that this claim is in direct opposition to the inevitable sprawling bureaucracy that fascist states tend to sprout when actually in power is irrelevant.
Lines to vote in New Jersey. Apparently never happened before...
Dan from NJ on LBC is predicting NJ goes red.
Every cycle there is breathless talk of NJ going red, with folk hyping up anecdotage that supports the case. Every time it’s solid for the Dems. Now this year might be the one where they’re right but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it…
Don't worry we'll have the Alaska going blue talk at some point
USA Election Question. If the polls are correct (Tied or Harris slightly ahead by 1%) then why is Trump not going to win the Electoral College? Doesn't Harris need to be ahead by 2% or more to win the Electoral College?
It depends on how the vote falls. If Trump is gaining useless extra votes from ethnic male voters in New York and California, while Harris is doing well with female voters in the swing states, then no.
Haven't been on ChatGPT for about a year, so I thought I'd see if they've improved their factual information replies.
They haven't.
My question: "How many votes did the Conservatives poll in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1983 general election?"
Answer: "In the 1983 UK general election, the Conservative Party candidate in the Huntingdon constituency, John Major, received 32,833 votes, winning with 54.2% of the vote. This was a strong performance in a safe Conservative seat, marking the beginning of a prominent political career for Major, who would later become Prime Minister."
In fact he polled 34,254 votes at that election.
Claude 3.6’s answer:
“Since this is a very specific historical electoral statistic from a single constituency, I should note that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate specific numbers like this. The Conservatives won Huntingdon in 1983 (with John Major as their candidate), but I don't want to state a specific vote total without being completely certain of the figure. I'd recommend checking official electoral records or the BBC's historical election database for the exact number.”
Admirable self-awareness
Stop talking about AI, you know the rules.
PB will be left sadly uneducated, but fair enough in this instance
Here’s a photo of Gyeong-ju
I love and hate Korea all at the same time. It has really annoying rules - no booze without food! - enforced by quite odd people, but at the right moment it enchants. It is, in other words, PB turned into a nation, with a similarly ageing population
It isn't as big an issue as the world's ageing population, but pb's ageing population worries me. When I started out here I was towards the younger end of the spectrum. Now ... I think I'm still towards the younger end of the spectrum. And periodically a poster whom I'd hitherto considered to be about the same age as me turns out to be a decade or two older. In a couple of decades, who will keep alive our memories as we keep alive the memories of those who went before?
Haven't been on ChatGPT for about a year, so I thought I'd see if they've improved their factual information replies.
They haven't.
My question: "How many votes did the Conservatives poll in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1983 general election?"
Answer: "In the 1983 UK general election, the Conservative Party candidate in the Huntingdon constituency, John Major, received 32,833 votes, winning with 54.2% of the vote. This was a strong performance in a safe Conservative seat, marking the beginning of a prominent political career for Major, who would later become Prime Minister."
In fact he polled 34,254 votes at that election.
Claude 3.6’s answer:
“Since this is a very specific historical electoral statistic from a single constituency, I should note that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate specific numbers like this. The Conservatives won Huntingdon in 1983 (with John Major as their candidate), but I don't want to state a specific vote total without being completely certain of the figure. I'd recommend checking official electoral records or the BBC's historical election database for the exact number.”
Admirable self-awareness
Stop talking about AI, you know the rules.
PB will be left sadly uneducated, but fair enough in this instance
Here’s a photo of Gyeong-ju
I love and hate Korea all at the same time. It has really annoying rules - no booze without food! - enforced by quite odd people, but at the right moment it enchants. It is, in other words, PB turned into a nation, with a similarly ageing population
It isn't as big an issue as the world's ageing population, but pb's ageing population worries me. When I started out here I was towards the younger end of the spectrum. Now ... I think I'm still towards the younger end of the spectrum. And periodically a poster whom I'd hitherto considered to be about the same age as me turns out to be a decade or two older. In a couple of decades, who will keep alive our memories as we keep alive the memories of those who went before?
I’m afraid we’re doomed. Like Korea
Humbly, I consider myself the “k-pop” of PB. One last remarkable cultural efflorescence, in the form of my ongoing commentary, then the entire civilisation dies
Haven't been on ChatGPT for about a year, so I thought I'd see if they've improved their factual information replies.
They haven't.
My question: "How many votes did the Conservatives poll in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1983 general election?"
Answer: "In the 1983 UK general election, the Conservative Party candidate in the Huntingdon constituency, John Major, received 32,833 votes, winning with 54.2% of the vote. This was a strong performance in a safe Conservative seat, marking the beginning of a prominent political career for Major, who would later become Prime Minister."
In fact he polled 34,254 votes at that election.
Claude 3.6’s answer:
“Since this is a very specific historical electoral statistic from a single constituency, I should note that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate specific numbers like this. The Conservatives won Huntingdon in 1983 (with John Major as their candidate), but I don't want to state a specific vote total without being completely certain of the figure. I'd recommend checking official electoral records or the BBC's historical election database for the exact number.”
Admirable self-awareness
Stop talking about AI, you know the rules.
PB will be left sadly uneducated, but fair enough in this instance
Here’s a photo of Gyeong-ju
I love and hate Korea all at the same time. It has really annoying rules - no booze without food! - enforced by quite odd people, but at the right moment it enchants. It is, in other words, PB turned into a nation, with a similarly ageing population
Go to a bloody convenience store and buy your booze. You can probably drink it there.
And is a likely a more authentic experience than Gyeong-ju...
I have a slightly different take on Musk buying twitter. I don't really buy the free speech absolutism, same as the eco-warrior spin on EV cars.
I think he saw a bloated company that never really made any money and thought he could low ball his way into buying it. At worst he gets a company that ticks along, but on the upside, data. Remember he was an early investor in OpenAI, so he is well aware of the power of data, LLMs, etc.
But he screwed up over the amount he paid and then was forced to radical cost cutting. But at the same time, he has got sucked down into the twitter rabbit hole, which made things worse, in terms of keeping advertisers happy. And he is a weird dude, who when criticised he fires from the hip unwisely.
It is worth pointing out, quietly he cut off every bodies elses access to twitter data, formed a spin off and recently set up a 100k GPU cluster....I think that was the original plan all along.
Musk was on Rogan’s podcast yesterday. They spend half the time talking about politics and the other half talking about various forms of technology.
Musk says that he primarily wanted a platform with freedom of speech, he didn’t see why he needed tens of thousands of content censors, hadn’t banked on organised advertising boycotts, admits he way overpaid but that it was worth it for the greater good of humanity!
As I say, I am not totally convinced by that.
Look at every Musk play in the past, there is always another angle. Tesla, he has bought up so many of the prime locations for charging, such that between the charging tech and locations, everybody is now having to pay them for access...look at SpaceX / Starlink, he is getting himself a monopoly on internet for airlines....
They are not the stated missions of the companies.
Pretty much straight away setting up an AI sister company, and training LLMs, cutting off outside access to data, and now doubling down by setting up a 100k GPU compute cluster, says I have a different motive than (just) I want a free speech social network.
Or, it’s a bit of all seven. He ended up vastly overpaying for Twitter, he then further fucked it up with the rebrand however he hugely reduced costs. He realised it gave him a free speech megaphone with which to influence the world - but also annoy people - not good. And now he’s noticed he can harvest mega data for his Grok AI
He’s an innovator and a twat and an entrepreneur. He makes terrible errors but he learns from those errors and can sometimes turn them to huge advantage
He’s not a man to bet against, not lightly
Indeed. And I think the combination of Twitter and Starlink is not being sufficiently appreciated in the effect it can have (and is having) on global opinion.
But Musk doesn't really understand people very well. He has proven himself an outstanding project manager writ huge. But go into politics and it takes more. The question is whether he's happy to play by the current rules and, if not, what he and his allies will do about it.
It strikes me as odd that someone should take such a hard-right view when such a large share of his Tesla market is of the left.
From observation during my recent 6,608 mile drive around the US, the bumper sticker “I bought this before I knew what he is like” on the back of a Tesla is reasonably popular.
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
Most Reform voters are either small businessmen, in the armed forces or white working class private sector workers. So I doubt they are that bothered about Farage promising to slash the civil service and public sector administrators as long as he doesn't also slash the numbers of police, soldiers and doctors and nurses
This is such an idiotic take because if you cut "public sector administrators" you end up paying doctors and police officers to do admin tasks.
But when you do that, guess what? Less admin is done vs more real work. Most admin is work for work’s sake, expanding to fill the space.
That's just not true at all. Management consultancy bollocks.
We've literally done this experiment in the NHS over the last 10-15 years. We've cut management to internationally very low levels, and guess what... productivity per worker has plummeted.
Listening to Shelagh Fogerty on LBC she had a guy called Dan, a Brit from New Jersey, who claims NJ is going red. Previously a woman called Gemma from Britain who voted for Harris in NY says that her friends are all voting Trump. They are suggesting a Trump landslide based on the economy.
William Glenn has called this.
Damn
Just imagine if New Jersey and Virginia went red with Iowa and Kansas blue.
Just hold that thought for one second.
I think more likely is NJ and Virginia are much closer but narrow Harris wins still but Iowa and Kansas are also closer but Iowa goes for Harris and Kansas still goes Trump. So main impact is boost for Trump in popular vote as former 2 are more populous but boost for Harris in EC with Iowa
Based on early votes and mail ins Democrats ahead 59% to 21% for GOP in NJ and 50% to 38% for the GOP in Virginia.
Dems tied 39% each with GOP in Iowa but GOP ahead in Kansas 52% to 33%.
Republicans also ahead on early votes in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and by 1% in NC. Democrats ahead on early votes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with Michigan tied.
Though the Research Michigan poll had fewer 2020 Biden voters voting Trump than 2020 Trump voters voting Harris with Harris leading with Independents in Michigan (whereas in Pennsylvania more 2020 Biden voters are voting Trump than 2020 Trump voters voting Harris albeit Harris still had a 1% lead there overall)
Given the existence of Independents (and the expectation of more Republicans voting for Harris than Democrats voting for Trump), shouldn't a tie between Republicans and Democrats in these terms translate to a lead for Harris?
Haven't been on ChatGPT for about a year, so I thought I'd see if they've improved their factual information replies.
They haven't.
My question: "How many votes did the Conservatives poll in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1983 general election?"
Answer: "In the 1983 UK general election, the Conservative Party candidate in the Huntingdon constituency, John Major, received 32,833 votes, winning with 54.2% of the vote. This was a strong performance in a safe Conservative seat, marking the beginning of a prominent political career for Major, who would later become Prime Minister."
In fact he polled 34,254 votes at that election.
Claude 3.6’s answer:
“Since this is a very specific historical electoral statistic from a single constituency, I should note that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate specific numbers like this. The Conservatives won Huntingdon in 1983 (with John Major as their candidate), but I don't want to state a specific vote total without being completely certain of the figure. I'd recommend checking official electoral records or the BBC's historical election database for the exact number.”
Admirable self-awareness
Stop talking about AI, you know the rules.
PB will be left sadly uneducated, but fair enough in this instance
Here’s a photo of Gyeong-ju
I love and hate Korea all at the same time. It has really annoying rules - no booze without food! - enforced by quite odd people, but at the right moment it enchants. It is, in other words, PB turned into a nation, with a similarly ageing population
Go to a bloody convenience store and buy your booze. You can probably drink it there.
And is a likely a more authentic experience than Gyeong-ju...
I quite liked the authentic inauthenticity of Gyeong-ju. Also liked the zealously manicured 1500 year old Silla kingdom tombs. Tho I reduced my stay there from two nights to one
Listening to Shelagh Fogerty on LBC she had a guy called Dan, a Brit from New Jersey, who claims NJ is going red. Previously a woman called Gemma from Britain who voted for Harris in NY says that her friends are all voting Trump. They are suggesting a Trump landslide based on the economy.
William Glenn has called this.
Damn
Just imagine if New Jersey and Virginia went red with Iowa and Kansas blue.
Just hold that thought for one second.
I think more likely is NJ and Virginia are much closer but narrow Harris wins still but Iowa and Kansas are also closer but Iowa goes for Harris and Kansas still goes Trump. So main impact is boost for Trump in popular vote as former 2 are more populous but boost for Harris in EC with Iowa
Based on early votes and mail ins Democrats ahead 59% to 21% for GOP in NJ and 50% to 38% for the GOP in Virginia.
Dems tied 39% each with GOP in Iowa but GOP ahead in Kansas 52% to 33%.
Republicans also ahead on early votes in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and by 1% in NC. Democrats ahead on early votes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with Michigan tied.
Though the Research Michigan poll had fewer 2020 Biden voters voting Trump than 2020 Trump voters voting Harris with Harris leading with Independents in Michigan (whereas in Pennsylvania more 2020 Biden voters are voting Trump than 2020 Trump voters voting Harris albeit Harris still had a 1% lead there overall)
Given the existence of Independents (and the expectation of more Republicans voting for Harris than Democrats voting for Trump), shouldn't a tie between Republicans and Democrats in these terms translate to a lead for Harris?
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
Most Reform voters are either small businessmen, in the armed forces or white working class private sector workers. So I doubt they are that bothered about Farage promising to slash the civil service and public sector administrators as long as he doesn't also slash the numbers of police, soldiers and doctors and nurses
This is such an idiotic take because if you cut "public sector administrators" you end up paying doctors and police officers to do admin tasks.
But when you do that, guess what? Less admin is done vs more real work. Most admin is work for work’s sake, expanding to fill the space.
That's just not true at all. Management consultancy bollocks.
We've literally done this experiment in the NHS over the last 10-15 years. We've cut management to internationally very low levels, and guess what... productivity per worker has plummeted.
USA Election Question. If the polls are correct (Tied or Harris slightly ahead by 1%) then why is Trump not going to win the Electoral College? Doesn't Harris need to be ahead by 2% or more to win the Electoral College?
For similar reasons to those "statisticians" who confidently asserted Starmer had to have a 12 point lead to get a majority of one.
Haven't been on ChatGPT for about a year, so I thought I'd see if they've improved their factual information replies.
They haven't.
My question: "How many votes did the Conservatives poll in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1983 general election?"
Answer: "In the 1983 UK general election, the Conservative Party candidate in the Huntingdon constituency, John Major, received 32,833 votes, winning with 54.2% of the vote. This was a strong performance in a safe Conservative seat, marking the beginning of a prominent political career for Major, who would later become Prime Minister."
In fact he polled 34,254 votes at that election.
Claude 3.6’s answer:
“Since this is a very specific historical electoral statistic from a single constituency, I should note that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate specific numbers like this. The Conservatives won Huntingdon in 1983 (with John Major as their candidate), but I don't want to state a specific vote total without being completely certain of the figure. I'd recommend checking official electoral records or the BBC's historical election database for the exact number.”
Admirable self-awareness
Stop talking about AI, you know the rules.
PB will be left sadly uneducated, but fair enough in this instance
Here’s a photo of Gyeong-ju
I love and hate Korea all at the same time. It has really annoying rules - no booze without food! - enforced by quite odd people, but at the right moment it enchants. It is, in other words, PB turned into a nation, with a similarly ageing population
It isn't as big an issue as the world's ageing population, but pb's ageing population worries me. When I started out here I was towards the younger end of the spectrum. Now ... I think I'm still towards the younger end of the spectrum. And periodically a poster whom I'd hitherto considered to be about the same age as me turns out to be a decade or two older. In a couple of decades, who will keep alive our memories as we keep alive the memories of those who went before?
I was 24 when I started posting on PB.com. Now my daughter is nearly 23.
I'm assuming there are politics nerds on tiktok for today's 20-somethings.
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
Most Reform voters are either small businessmen, in the armed forces or white working class private sector workers. So I doubt they are that bothered about Farage promising to slash the civil service and public sector administrators as long as he doesn't also slash the numbers of police, soldiers and doctors and nurses
This is such an idiotic take because if you cut "public sector administrators" you end up paying doctors and police officers to do admin tasks.
But when you do that, guess what? Less admin is done vs more real work. Most admin is work for work’s sake, expanding to fill the space.
That's just not true at all. Management consultancy bollocks.
We've literally done this experiment in the NHS over the last 10-15 years. We've cut management to internationally very low levels, and guess what... productivity per worker has plummeted.
Management for the sake of management is just as stupid and damaging as no management.
Consider medicine. Is doing operations on people a good thing? Well, it is, if you do the right operation on the right person for the right end goal. Otherwise it is harmful.
We have people popping up here to say "What about Grenfell?" when we speak of process reduction.
Well, a major goal of the process was supposed to be a building that doesn't kill people. The reason that fucked up was that in the rooms full of documents generated, the bit about not (re-) building it out of fire lighters got missed.
Just as the bits about RAC and drilling out the rivet holes on Comet airliners and safe life on Valiants etc etc - if you bury the vital work in a pile of crap, it gets forgotten.
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
Most Reform voters are either small businessmen, in the armed forces or white working class private sector workers. So I doubt they are that bothered about Farage promising to slash the civil service and public sector administrators as long as he doesn't also slash the numbers of police, soldiers and doctors and nurses
This is such an idiotic take because if you cut "public sector administrators" you end up paying doctors and police officers to do admin tasks.
But when you do that, guess what? Less admin is done vs more real work. Most admin is work for work’s sake, expanding to fill the space.
That's just not true at all. Management consultancy bollocks.
Nope - at CitiGroup, for example, pre 2008 they had floors of people who went to meetings to write PowerPoints to present at other meetings to….
In 2008, a manager was shouting, can anyone tell me out exposure to Lehmans ? Literally. One bloke put his hand up - a contractor from my company. The rest knew nothing..
After 2008, they were firing by the floor…
All organisations go through this. They accumulate bullshit like dust.
I was in rates trading in a Canary Wharf IB and this sounds almost exactly our experience - although we didn't have a single person who new what our exposure was - it was much, much more complicated than that....
Farage: "This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the [US] deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.
There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.
Because that’s what Reform UK believes in - that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting."
Really? That's what Reform voters want? 80% of the state slashed and burned.
The Red Wallers he's after???
I very much doubt it.
Most Reform voters are either small businessmen, in the armed forces or white working class private sector workers. So I doubt they are that bothered about Farage promising to slash the civil service and public sector administrators as long as he doesn't also slash the numbers of police, soldiers and doctors and nurses
This is such an idiotic take because if you cut "public sector administrators" you end up paying doctors and police officers to do admin tasks.
But when you do that, guess what? Less admin is done vs more real work. Most admin is work for work’s sake, expanding to fill the space.
For a real-life case, read Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, and the Buurtzorg experience. He has other examples
Admin work is real work. You can have too many administrators, just as you can have too many nurses, but this idea that admin work isn’t real work is just reactionary bullshit.
Someone has to make sure the patients are going to come in at the right times, corral the support staff & do all the tracking that has to happen to make a service work. You can pay a consultant to do that work, compromising their healthcare output in the process. Or you can pay an administrator to do it, leaving the consultants to concentrate on doing the thing we actually pay them to do.
I know which I would prefer.
It’s notable that by comparison with European healthcare services, which generally now get better outcomes than the NHS (IIRC) the NHS has far fewer administrative staff. We need more admins & support staff (IT especially) in order to free up healthcare staff to do the thing we’re actually paying them to do: deliver healthcare.
Support staff within hospitals is a debatable case. What is less justifiable is the presence of enormous NHS trusts above them, enormous NHS England and equivalent quangos above them, and an enormous Department of Health above them. If the NHS were subjected to the rigours of the private sector, this wouldn't happen, period.
Haven't been on ChatGPT for about a year, so I thought I'd see if they've improved their factual information replies.
They haven't.
My question: "How many votes did the Conservatives poll in the Huntingdon constituency at the 1983 general election?"
Answer: "In the 1983 UK general election, the Conservative Party candidate in the Huntingdon constituency, John Major, received 32,833 votes, winning with 54.2% of the vote. This was a strong performance in a safe Conservative seat, marking the beginning of a prominent political career for Major, who would later become Prime Minister."
In fact he polled 34,254 votes at that election.
Claude 3.6’s answer:
“Since this is a very specific historical electoral statistic from a single constituency, I should note that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate specific numbers like this. The Conservatives won Huntingdon in 1983 (with John Major as their candidate), but I don't want to state a specific vote total without being completely certain of the figure. I'd recommend checking official electoral records or the BBC's historical election database for the exact number.”
Admirable self-awareness
Stop talking about AI, you know the rules.
PB will be left sadly uneducated, but fair enough in this instance
Here’s a photo of Gyeong-ju
I love and hate Korea all at the same time. It has really annoying rules - no booze without food! - enforced by quite odd people, but at the right moment it enchants. It is, in other words, PB turned into a nation, with a similarly ageing population
It isn't as big an issue as the world's ageing population, but pb's ageing population worries me. When I started out here I was towards the younger end of the spectrum. Now ... I think I'm still towards the younger end of the spectrum. And periodically a poster whom I'd hitherto considered to be about the same age as me turns out to be a decade or two older. In a couple of decades, who will keep alive our memories as we keep alive the memories of those who went before?
Aren’t you planning to hand over your mantle to the @Cookie crumbles?
Comments
Composition
*cough*
Doesn't Harris need to be ahead by 2% or more to win the Electoral College?
But Musk doesn't really understand people very well. He has proven himself an outstanding project manager writ huge. But go into politics and it takes more. The question is whether he's happy to play by the current rules and, if not, what he and his allies will do about it.
It strikes me as odd that someone should take such a hard-right view when such a large share of his Tesla market is of the left.
The Saudis wouldn't be helping fund that, for a start.
In addition, "admin" jobs in the public sector have been cut to the bone since 2010.
Georgia on my mind.
(The Clash)
His main thing is Free Speech, that’s what obsesses him and why he’s reluctantly sided with Trump (recall he was anti-Trump and wanted De Santis). He’s probably a fan of Kemi B
I am genuinely in a panic. Hand me those Trump diapers!
Nationally Americans prefer centrist Democrats like Hillary and Biden to left liberals like Harris but the upper Midwest seems to prefer left liberal Democrats like Kerry and Harris and Walz
One aspect of fascism is the appeal of the strong leader who promises to cut through the ties that bind the nation with clear decision action.
The fact that this claim is in direct opposition to the inevitable sprawling bureaucracy that fascist states tend to sprout when actually in power is irrelevant.
But that's "all my friends inside the Trump bubble". A world away from "here's what I think so it must be what everyone thinks" being true.
They're just setting up for the "IT WAS STOLEN, LOCK AND LOAD instruction to follow.
Humbly, I consider myself the “k-pop” of PB. One last remarkable cultural efflorescence, in the form of my ongoing commentary, then the entire civilisation dies
https://x.com/scottpresler/status/1853766538525860121
You can probably drink it there.
And is a likely a more authentic experience than Gyeong-ju...
The National museum there is fantastic, though.
NEW THREAD
https://www.nhsconfed.org/articles/are-there-too-many-nhs-managers
Red tape really does hold the nation together.
I'm assuming there are politics nerds on tiktok for today's 20-somethings.
Consider medicine. Is doing operations on people a good thing? Well, it is, if you do the right operation on the right person for the right end goal. Otherwise it is harmful.
We have people popping up here to say "What about Grenfell?" when we speak of process reduction.
Well, a major goal of the process was supposed to be a building that doesn't kill people. The reason that fucked up was that in the rooms full of documents generated, the bit about not (re-) building it out of fire lighters got missed.
Just as the bits about RAC and drilling out the rivet holes on Comet airliners and safe life on Valiants etc etc - if you bury the vital work in a pile of crap, it gets forgotten.