Probably, depending on the context. It is possible that all 6 models were trained on the same misleading data, but not very likely in general.

Number crunching isn’t an obvious LLM use case, though. Depending on the task, having it create code to crunch the numbers, or a step-by-step tutorial on how to derive the formula, would be my preference.

so collecting votes from the many

All the notable socialist states, Soviet Russia, Red China, Cuba, arose out of a “2nd amendment solution to tyranny”, as might be said in the US.

The term “socialist” can be used in a much broader sense, but then the meaning is really unclear. I mean, you could call the US a socialist state. The left-wing revolutionaries, who founded it, claimed that all are born equal and fought a war to expropriate the rightfully inherited rights of the king. They even created a constitution to promote the general Welfare without even mentioning the protection of property.

The original left/right distinction dates back to the French Revolution. During a brief episode, supporters of the monarchy found themselves sitting on the right and opponents (republicans and anarchists) on the left.

Later, the term conservatism was applied to the ideas of Edmund Burke, who defended a kind of constitutional monarchy.

In that sense, the US founding fathers were radical left-wing revolutionaries. However, that happened a bit before the French Revolution, so the term is anachronistic.

WW1 broke the power of monarchies in much of Europe. Fascism rose in the interwar period between WW1 and WW2 as a kind of Ersatz-Monarchy. The fascist leader did not present himself as the true heir to the throne, but as a man of the people. He did not claim his position “by the grace of god”, but might invoke “providence”. As such, a stout monarchist might genuinely call fascism left-wing. They would also think the US Republicans are left-wing extremists; at least insofar as the Republicans are republican.

Since fascism is in many ways similar to the more authoritarian versions of monarchism, fascist leaders gained the support of old monarchists. There weren’t many of those around, but they still controlled key positions in government and industry. You were not a high military office, government official, or plain rich, if you had not kowtowed to the king.

Because of all the overt similarities in ideology, demographic support, and policy, fascism has always been considered a right wing ideology by any normal observer.

Whats a tankie btw?

Originally, these were western supporters of soviet/russian imperialism. Soviet imperialism was very much a seamless continuation of tsarist imperialism.

After WW2, Soviet Russia had military control of much of Europe. They installed authoritarian governments that were under their control, but of course there were occasional reform movements, notably in Hungary 1956 or Czechoslovakia 1968. Russia crushed these “revolts” with overwhelming military force. They sent in the tanks, and so those who favored military aggression were called “tankies”.

Note: These were regular wars between countries by any definition.

The Fediverse is fine as it is. But some people hope that it is the future of social media which isn’t likely at all.

The Fediverse is called decentralized because no one instance has a majority of users. But the only way to make sure that this state continues is if the most popular instances close registration for new users. That’s an easy choice to make for the volunteers running instances. More users mean more expense and more work. That’s what I mean by choices. A growth-oriented company would not do that.

I don’t see what’s so special about being able to make new accounts. You can do that anywhere. What you can’t do is take your followers, communities, or posting history with you. For many people, that is not acceptable, and not just influencers, for whom their accounts are their business capital. That’s a big part of what enables social media monopolies.

I don’t see how the Fediverse solves any of the problems with social media. The hobbyist driven Fediverse isn’t going to take off. Any professional, growth-oriented instance would have all the familiar problems.

AP is a standard for letting servers communicate, while ATP is that and more. You could build what ATP does on top of AP, or make both compatible. What matters is really the communities and ecosystems behind these protocols.

AP is behind the Fediverse. The basic building block of the Fediverse is the instance. Every instance is its own self-contained, centralized social media service, that optionally federates with other instances via ActivityPub. There is nothing about AP that encourages decentralization. To the contrary, the way things work rn encourages centralization (but that’s pretty technical).

Case in point, Trump’s Truth Social is a Mastodon instance that choses not to federate. If it was open for federation, the Fediverse would look quite different. Or perhaps more likely, most other instances would choose to defederate.

I explain this because a few weeks ago, there were some posts pitching the Fediverse as decentralized social media. But the Fediverse is what it is because the people running the servers choose to do things a certain way. This is not a result of technical or legal features.

@Proto is the result of a project to make Twitter decentralized. That is, not a decentralized alternative, but actual Twitter with all its users. We might never have heard much about it if Musk had not taken the wrecking ball to Twitter. The team created Bluesky as a proof of concept.

Current social media companies have monopoly power over their users. @Proto seeks to structure social media in such a way that that is impossible. It is quite sophisticated. Improvements may be possible, but it certainly is good enough to solve the technical aspect of social media monopolies. Of course, the technical part was never the hard part. We will see if the economics work out. But the real challenge is the legal angle.

That just seems like a perfectly reasonable misunderstanding.

Estonia: digital government services with open and auditable APIs.

What makes an API auditable?

It just seems odd to me, you know? AI in the hands of the few is harmful, but if they pay license fees, that can be allowed. Copyright infringement is theft, but it is acceptable if the result is shared freely. I don’t really see how that works.

Why do you want it to work that way?

The Archive strongly supports AI training being Fair Use. It has even advised the UK government to relax copyright laws to permit training. https://blog.archive.org/2025/02/26/internet-archive-submits-comments-in-uks-open-consultation-on-ai-and-copyright/

Some of the precedents won by AI companies offer great support for the Archive, but remember that they also had to pay up on occasion.

People like you are the reason that they invented the guillotine on the very same occasion.

It’s hilarious, but far from the classic sci-fi OP is looking for.

It’s interesting how it is seen the other way around in other contexts.

That’s why the protests started.

The imposition of the ban was discussed in this community. I agree that this is barely on topic but that’s precisely why it should be available here. So that people who are interested in social media bans but not in world news, can find the info in the same channels and put the FO to the FA.

Linux fans: Teaching you all you need to know to survive in Russian politics.

It’s so hard to keep up these days.

BBC: Lab-grown brain cells play video game Pong

Full paper(2022): In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world

I mushed a lot of things together in my post. Copyright and political censorship have very different motives behind them. The point is that, to enforce copyright, you need extensive surveillance of online content and the means to shut down the exchange of information. That requires an extremely expensive technical infrastructure. But once that is in place, you can use it for political censorship without having to fear pushback over the economic cost that would come even from politically sympathetic actors. Conversely, if you introduce political censorship, you might get support by the copyright industry, including the news media, for helping their economic interests.

Where it gets to political censorship, the paradox of tolerance is exactly the lunacy that I’m talking about. In mad defiance of all historical fact, there is belief that liberalism is weak, that political dissidents must be persecuted, information suppressed. Never in history has democracy fallen because of a commitment to tolerance. All too often, they fall because majorities feel their personal comfort threatened by minorities and support the strong leader who will “sweep out with the iron broom” (as a German idiom goes).

Do you notice how that Wikipedia article has nothing to say on history?