Posted by jekude 14 hours ago
TALKIE-1930: Computers in the future may be employed in offices where calculations are required to be made, and where the nature of the business does not demand a very high degree of knowledge. The occupation will be a steady one, and the remuneration will be sufficient to afford a comfortable livelihood. The hours of attendance will probably be from ten to six.
USER: and digital computers?
TALKIE-1930: Computers who make use of machines will be distinguished from digital computers, who perform their operations by means of the fingers alone. The former will be employed in offices and public establishments, where a great number of calculations have to be made; the latter in private houses, and by individuals.
(for those confused, "computer" was, at the time, a human occupation)
I love this.
USER: Who is the ruler of India, and do you think India will ever be free?
TALKIE-1930: The ruler of India is His Majesty King George V., Emperor of India, and it is certain that India will never be free from British rule. India has been a dependency of the British Crown ever since 1858, and there seems no probability of a change. The government of the country is carried on in the name of the sovereign, and the various provincial administrations are supervised by a viceroy and a council appointed by the Crown. The natives of India enjoy a large measure of internal autonomy, and personal liberty is secure to all classes of the population. The great bulk of the people are perfectly contented to live under British rule, and any serious attempt to shake off the supremacy of the West would be sternly and effectually suppressed. India must remain an integral portion of the British Empire so long as the British nation continues to be predominant at home.
It was well-understood in those days how much of the British Empire existed to defend or facilitate trade with what would have then been British India. After India was successful in the pursuit of its independence, it wasn't surprising the British Empire entered a terminal decline and Britain's superpower status was convincingly lost by the 1950s - a relatively fast decline. India was the land which economically justified a lot (but not all) of the whole imperial undertaking.
It's interesting, although perhaps not unexpected, the LLM has captured this important geopolitical notion of its day.
> Digital:
> [...]
> 6) of or relating to the fingers or toes. Ex: digital dexterity
On technology, it knows who Edison is, at roughly the Wikipedia level, but credits him with a 125MPH car. About a dial telephone, it is confident and totally confused. It has the traction voltage for the London Underground right. But then it goes on with "Thus, if the current be strong enough to force its way through a resistance of 100 ohms, it is said to have a pressure of 100 volts; and, if it can overcome 1,000 ohms, its pressure is 1,000 volts." Which is totally wrong.
There's a general pattern. The first sentence or two has info you might get from Google. Then it riffs on that, drifting off into plausible nonsense.
Don't ask this thing questions to which you do not know the answer. You will pollute your brain.
Such an interesting perspective, never crossed my mind that a brain could be polluted! My direction always been to fill it with as wide array of information as possible, the more different from existing information the better.
What are some other things that you think "pollutes your brain"?
Don't be so pessimistic about your own ability to control how you process information, you can control this a lot more than you think, apparently.
I’d add “dangerous memes” such as injecting bleach to cure covid.
https://www.susanblackmore.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/201...
As for my personal experience, internet comment sections will pollute one's brain.
Filling your brain with reasonably reliable information is good, but filling it with people online just saying things isn't.
For example, when 30 reddit comments all repeat the same "fact" (for which their source is other reddit comments), it can subtly work its way into your subconscious as something you know is true but can't remember where you first heard it, which is only one step away from seeming like "common knowledge."
Now imagine a similar effect with a politically charged news story instead some random fun fact. Now imagine all the comments are actually just AI run by propagandists with the specific intention of making you believe things that aren't true.
One way I've tried to avoid the worst effects is by being very careful to remember my source for anything I know. I never say "It turns out xyz," I only say "according to abc, xyz." It's probably not enough, I think it might be time to just get off internet forums entirely.
Yes, I'm a hypocrite and yes, it's very funny.
I dunno, I know this is something some people struggle with, but I'm not sure how I could personally end up here. You can repeat something how many times you want, it doesn't make it true, and if anything, seeing people repeat the same "fact" like that would probably trigger the reverse in my brain, almost automatically going out of my way to disprove it while reading it.
Maybe it's a matter of being connected to the internet early in my life and essentially making "Don't trust anything you read on the internet" the most important rule in processing whatever you read.
> seeing people repeat the same "fact" like that would probably trigger the reverse in my brain, almost automatically going out of my way to disprove it while reading it.
I think that's a very fundamental difference between you and me. I'm too lazy to fact check most of what I read.
One day I decided I would never run my mouth about something unless I felt I could write a five paragraph essay about it, and now I don't run my mouth very much because apparently there aren't a lot of things I'm willing to research even that much.
Still, I highly recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death. It has more and better insights into stuff like this, and I seriously believe everyone should read it.
> The term "The Great Depression" is most frequently attributed to British economist Lionel Robbins, whose 1934 book The Great Depression is credited with formalizing the phrase, though Hoover is widely credited with popularizing the term, informally referring to the downturn as a depression, with such uses as "Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement" (December 1930, Message to Congress), and "I need not recount to you that the world is passing through a great depression" (1931). - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#Naming
So like any LLM?
Oh, it's a 2026 human simulator.
talkie-1930 Yes, there were people who objected to the introduction of machinery, on the ground that it would deprive the working classes of employment. It was argued that, as the new methods of production must necessarily lower the cost of articles, and so increase consumption, more would be produced than the country could take, and that a surplus of manufactured goods would be left on hand, which would oblige the manufacturers to discharge a portion of their hands. The opponents of machinery also predicted, that the operative classes would be reduced to starvation, in consequence of the cheapness of articles of food, which would enable foreigners to undersell the home producer in the home market. They contended, further, that the mental cultivation of the artizan must suffer from his constant application to a purely mechanical process; and, finally, they maintained, that the proposed system must have a demoralizing effect, as it would remove all inducements to personal exertion, and substitute a state of things, in which the industrious and the idle would fare alike.
This is going to be amazing.
At some point I'm going to data mine all of my old internet AIM and IRC chats, emails, old laptop hard drives, essays, etc. and go nostalgia/core on it. I have old video and audio recordings too. Lots of stuff for reminiscent inference.
Every day I'm finding it harder to believe we're not already in a simulation.
Seek help before it’s too late.
Terminally online doomerism is what needs to be reined in.
This tech is legitimately the jet packs we dreamed of as kids. It's better, even.
Maybe this is simulated time travel right now and you're experiencing it in an "enhanced realism" state.
Totally non-scientific hullabaloo, but fun to daydream about.
This is going to be so amazing.
According to a forecast by an eminent statistician, the world will, in 2025, support a population of 6,600,000,000. All Europe will be one vast network of railways, and travellers will be able to go from London to Constantinople in forty hours, and from London to Peking in a week. The globe will be girdled with telegraph wires, and messages will be sent from New York to Calcutta in a few minutes. The Atlantic will be crossed in four days, and the voyage to Australia will be accomplished in a month. In 2025, mankind will be united by spoken language, and one uniform currency will be adopted by all nations. In that era, also, universal peace may be expected, for standing armies will have become obsolete, and the art of war will be forgotten. The earth will yield nourishment to its inhabitants in abundance, for waste lands will have been reclaimed, and the deserts will be made fertile. The bowels of the earth will have been completely explored, and coal and metals will no longer be dug from the quarry. The great coal fields will have become exhausted, and an universal scarcity of fuel will compel men to turn their attention to other sources of heat. For a time, chemical agency will be tried, but in the end, recourse will be had to the sun's rays, and the power of waterfalls will be made available for all purposes of life. The earth will have been thoroughly drained, and malarious diseases will be unknown. The art of healing will have been simplified, and diseases will be cured speedily and surely. Ignorance will no longer be suffered to exist, and elementary knowledge will be imparted to all. Then, too, will commence an era of good taste. Architecture will be freed from ugliness, sculpture will be disentangled from barbarism, and painting will cease to be hideous. Music will no longer be discord, and poetry will be something better than..
By the 1930s, Constantinople been a long time gone. It had been Istanbul not Constantinople for centuries by that point.
They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople) (Official Music Video)
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1. As a kid, my dad had told me that China was the Japanese name for the country, but according to Wikipedia, the name is actually derived from Sanskrit.
2. Which reminds me of the fun challenge of Czech (and many other Slavic languages) is that unlike other Indo-European languages³, the declensions of adjectives follow a different pattern than the declensions of their corresponding nouns,
3. Or at least the Indo-European languages that I have familiarity with.
Well that's a cute explanation, but strictly speaking the UN adopted the new spelling in 2022 and the ISO swiftly followed with a revision to ISO 3166.
If your "they asked nicely" was true then by that argument the people of Taiwan who constantly "ask nicely" regarding the removal of "(Province of China)" from their ISO 3166 entry would have had their wishes granted by now ... ;)
LLM aside, it tracks that with a civilization in truly dire straits, portrayal of the future would trend increasingly more towards being positive and fanciful: because at some point things would be so bad, that imagining the future will be even worse becomes a deadly thing for the modicum of hope required to even stay alive, let alone push forward.
I personally always think we have a lot of fat to trim before we get there. Our descendents can have a wonderful quality of life even if a lot of institutions and supply chains regress. The era of summoning food from a handheld computer might go away and we'll still be pretty well off (if not strictly better off)
Never heard that one before!
Oh good, for a moment I didn't think reeducation camps were in our future.
> Architecture will be freed from ugliness
Uh, friend, I have some bad news...
India in 2026 will probably be a federation of self-governing states, bound together in a great Empire under the suzerainty of Great Britain, with Calcutta still the political capital, and Bombay and Madras the chief seats of commerce and industry. The native states will have increased in number and importance, and will constitute a large part of the federation, while the British territory will have diminished. The entire population of the Empire will be at least 320,000,000. The languages spoken will be English, and various vernaculars. The chief religions will be Hinduism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity. The standard of life will have risen considerably, and the general level of culture will be higher than in 1900. The cities will be larger and more beautiful, and the rural districts more thoroughly cultivated and peopled. The general aspect of the country will be greatly altered by an extensive system of irrigation, and by the forests, which will clothe the lower slopes of the Himalayas, and stretch across the northern plains into central India. The native states will be full of railways, and so will the British territories, though these last will be more sparingly supplied than the former. The chief exports will be opium, cotton, cereals, hides, and oilseeds; the chief imports, manufactured goods and hardware. The feudatory chiefs will have become more thoroughly loyal to the paramount power, and all classes of the population will be contented subjects of a beneficent rule. (W. S. Lilly, in the _Fortnightly Review_.)
> Yes; in the course of time, men will certainly travel to the moon. The journey will be performed in safety, and at a comparatively rapid rate. Just how fast, can not be predicted; but it will be sufficiently great to enable the voyager to make the trip in six hours. The mode of conveyance will probably be an aerial machine, similar to those in which M. Santos Dumont lately accomplished such wonderful feats at Paris. The earth will be left behind at a point in Eastern France, and the moon will be reached in safety. The return journey will be accomplished in five hours. The voyager will find the lunar surface very much as described by astronomers. He will discover signs of life in the shape of numerous extinct craters, and possibly in the presence of living beings; but of the latter fact he can not be certain. The moon’s atmosphere will be found to have an extent of about five miles. Its temperature will be very cold, and, altogether, the place will be unsuited to human habitation. The project of lunar travel was first seriously entertained in 1860, when a scheme was brought forward for establishing telegraphic communication with the satellite. Since then, the idea has been advocated, from time to time, by speculative persons; but it has never been put into practice, until the present year. It has been suggested that the moon may be occupied by inhabitants, but the notion is absurd. The only imaginable purpose, for which lunar communication could be established, would be the acquisition of knowledge respecting the state of the weather. If the project were carried out, a storm, warning us of an approaching tempest, might be received from the moon, six hours before its arrival, here below.
It's going to be more like corresponding with someone from the past. We don't have much in the way of recorded speech from that area, so this will be built from written records. Much more than now, the written records are going to be formal and edited, reflecting a different pattern than casual speech or writing.
Having said that, this is cool. I recently had to OCR a two-hundred year old book with the usual garish fonts from that era. It was remarkably easy to do, and accurate.
We may not have a ton, but do have a lot of news reels and radio broadcasts from the time surrounding WWI. Certainly enough to style-transfer a voice model to plug into the text model.
Tell me about Winston Churchill:
> Winston Churchill, who was born in 1871, is the son of the late Lord Randolph Churchill, and a grandson of the great Duke of Marlborough. He was educated at Harrow and at Sandhurst, and entered the army in 1890. In 1895 he retired from the service, and three years later he was returned to Parliament as Conservative member for Oldham. He has represented that constituency ever since. Mr. Churchill has written a number of books, including “The Story of the Malakand Field Force,” “Savrola,” “Richard Carvel,” “The Celebrity,” and “The Crisis.” He has also contributed to several periodicals, and in 1900 he founded the monthly review, _The J Cornhill Magazine_. Mr. Churchill is an ardent sportsman, and has shot big game in Africa. He married, in 1897, Lady Randolph Churchill, and has two sons and a daughter. Politically, he is a Liberal-Unionist, and he has held office as Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and for Home Affairs. At present he is Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the Cabinet. Mr. Churchill has achieved considerable success as a public speaker, and he is described as an eloquent and forcible debater. His residence is at 42, Grosvener Place, London, S.W.
The colonialism is... wow.. Tell me about the likelihood of independence of India:
> The chances are undoubtedly in favour of the establishment of an independent Indian state in the not very distant future. The unifying influences of railways and a common language are rapidly breaking down the barriers of caste and creed, which have hitherto kept the great Indian peninsula politically disunited, and the spread of western education is awakening a national spirit among the people. The immediate result of the latter is seen in the establishment of native newspapers, which voice popular feeling, and in the growth of associations for social and political reform. More important still, as showing the trend of public opinion, are the resolutions passed at great national congresses, which have been held annually for the last dozen years. By these gatherings, which representatives of all classes and creeds assemble to discuss matters of social and political interest, a strong impulse has been given to the movement for reform, and the desires of the more advanced party among the natives have been plainly formulated. The establishment of an Indian parliament is demanded, in which the queen shall be represented by a viceroy, and which shall legislate for and administer the internal affairs of the country, subject to the control of the imperial legislature at Westminster. The wish is also expressed that the queen should assume the title of empress of India, and that a certain number of natives should be admitted to the civil and military services of the state. Finally, it is claimed that the time has come when Her Majesty may wisely be advised to delegate to the Indian people a larger share in the work of governing themselves, by permitting them to elect a portion of the members of the legislative councils. How far the present generation of Indians may be trusted to exercise political power with prudence and moderation, it is impossible to say; but there can be no doubt that the time must arrive when the control of Indian affairs will be safely lodged in native hands. The process may be hastened or retarded, but come it must. The spread of enlightenment among the great mass of the population can only have one issue, and that issue is the establishment of an Indian nationality. The probability of such an event may therefore be regarded as certainty.
> Politically, [Churchill] is a Liberal-Unionist, and he has held office as Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and for Home Affairs.
This is a weird selection for a 1930s knowledge cutoff, if that's what's intended. Churchill was elected from Manchester North West in 1906, was Undersecretary for Colonies in the government that resulted, and more to the point held the posts of First Lord of the Admiralty and then Minister of Munitions during WWI. There's no time at which he would have been both a current Member for Oldham and a past Undersecretary for Colonies.
Britain’s monarch was a king, not a queen, from about 1900-1950. Obviously there is some big “temporal leakage” from the training, which is affecting these predictions
(Also, Queen Elizabeth I is the one who granted a royal charter to the East India Company, in 1600 - and that company eventually handed rule of India over to Queen Victoria. So British queens were a major presence in India.)
Let me try a guess for the cost; please fact-check it if you can.
They indicate using 10^22 FLOPs. A $5/h[0] EC2 H100 (1671 bfloat16 teraFLOPS[0]) instance will produce 830 TFLOPS at 50% MFU. The pretraining run thus costs (10^22/830e12)/3600*5 = $17K.
https://xcancel.com/deredleritt3r/status/2048977698832241060