iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Okay: So the AI paperclip problem. Humans have been destroyed, so AI can make efficient paperclips In that scenario: would bad human coding become some kind of mythology?

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Can't you just transport them into your pocket?

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

1998 here. That's a component slot for a flux capacitor.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That's correct. DJT said his uncle said something to him about the Unabomber being his student. And, that's impossible because of your point, plus John died in 1985, and the Unabomber's identity wasn't known until 1996. There's no way John Trump knew the Unabomber's identity.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I heard this interview on the radio, and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Is Elon Musk a bona fide solipsist? Absolutely, beyond insane. www.npr.org/transcripts/...

INSKEEP: I guess we need to explain for normal human beings. There are some tech people who play around with the idea that this is just a big video game, that the world is not really happening...

GIBNEY: That's right.

INSKEEP: ...That we are just characters in...

GIBNEY: That's right. We're NPCs, non-player characters. And Elon, I think, thinks he's Player 1. He's the player, in some ways. It's never exactly clear what he thinks. But he does really believe that we're living in what's called an ancestor simulation where some future AI or alien life form has exfiltrated all of the data from planet Earth and is now playing us as a video game.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I think it's worse than that. DJT's story claimed that John Trump said he taught the Unabomber. But, that could be true because John Trump died in 1985 and the Unabomber wasn't identified until 1996.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Wasn't John Trump dead before the Unabomber was identified? So there was no way DJT's story could be true...

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I'm exhausted from listening to politicians reach out to me for money. I do give money for causes that are important to me. But that only makes it worse. Stop. Opt out. Please leave me be.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

A friend of mine is working on a CS degree. He was complaining that all his classmates used AI to write the code in their assignments. Why bother to spend the money on the class, if you aren't doing the assignments yourself?

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Does that mean you feel fully recovered from the last time?

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I tried to engage my MAGA father on the issues to work through his reasoning. I asked a lot of questions about apparent contradictions in his logic. His response was usually that he couldn't articulate why my questions weren't problematic bc he "wasn't good at explaining these things."

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I recall a joke from the 1980's that went: You know what they call people who use the Rhythm Method? Parents.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Tonight, I'm watching a PBS documentary on the Chavet cave. These images are so moving to me. I wonder if an AI only planet would be able to feel what I feel about these 37000 yo images.

en.wikipedia.org

Chauvet Cave - Wikipedia

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Maybe "scrolling Instagram" is a less than perfect measure of "good" art.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

You almost got there, but maybe it's the audience that is "mid." As far as AI goes, it doesn't have semantic understanding, so it can only produce a facsimile of art.

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Reposted by σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne)

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/09/2026

this gaffe should follow Eric Schmitt around for the rest of his political life (Jack Smith was actually in Maryland at a HAWKEYES game, not in Atlanta colluding with Fani Willis as Schmitt alleged) (Win McNamee/Getty)

photo of Schmitt's team holding up a poster board that made false claims about Jack Smith's whereabouts in February 2024

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

i bet most people are not super clear why "I. i. d." is an important concept here. I'm referring to this concept. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indepen...

en.wikipedia.org

Independent and identically distributed random variables - Wikipedia

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

On this albeit theoretical basis, I disagree with the notion that the healthy "subsidize" the unhealthy in health insurance. Or, that the unlucky subsidize the lucky. That argument goes against the mathematics of how insurance is structured.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The age factors are given by CMS. We apply age factors, plus area network factors to develop a premium. This is what a publicly available document called the "URRT" demonstrates.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It is not necessary for every possible risk factor to be used to come up with an expected value for losses. The ACA allows for a per member per month cost of claims to be developed. That's the expected value of a losses for the "average" member. We also develop area and network factors.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The probability of a loss is a Bernoulli model with a .9 chance of no claim. So the premium would be 0*.9 + 10k*.1 = $1k BUT, if an insurer bundles a bunch of policies like this together in a risk pool, where they are i. i. d. then the average payout is the same, but there may be no payout.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This is true, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a method to come up with an adequate expectation of risk. The thing that I think you are misunderstanding is this: Premium is the expected value of a loss. A very basic example from SOA Exam P: an insurance policy pays $10k for a loss.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I think they hate themselves. And, by extension, they hate the world.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

What I meant by "fair share" is just the colloquial expression. I agree that some insureds never make claims and that contributes to the health of the risk pool. I also agree that Oz claims don't have any basis in reality.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The unhealthy/unlucky pay their fair share. I'm an actuary, btw. If insurance is priced properly it should cover the risk of the insured. It may not always do that exactly. But, by pooling the risks the unforeseen costs can be covered by the pool.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

...whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

That's a paraphrase and not an accurate one. "I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing;...

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's not widespread, but there are cases of brokers signing up people without their knowledge or consent for the commissions. That would be fraud as well. I disagree with the healthy pay for the unhealthy, that's not the way pricing ACA plans works.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

"Let me correct you on a few things. Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not 'every man for himself,' and the London Underground is not a political movement!" ~Wanda

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The original trilogy is my favorite, for sure, but TLJ is my favorite of the sequel trilogy.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

How do you get data on that to even begin to speculate about what the actual effects will be? I'm not asking from the perspective of denying racism, rather of measuring something historically difficult to measure.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I never thought about it till now, but that's the opposite of the situation Luke was in at the beginning of Episode 4. Luke thought he was just some farmer boy. And, he had no clue that he was destined to bring down the Empire.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

We had a "portable" computer that we never took anywhere.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I really love the way the sky is painted!! Awesome!

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Reposted by σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne)

John Sipher @johnsipher.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

It's also good to know the Fed is maintaining its independence... so far.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

You can't always do this, but polling averages are a better representation than a single poll. A one poll is one data point. It takes looking at lots of data points to understand what's happening. I really wish we had more statistics literacy in the US.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The premise is overbroad. There is no accounting for taste. And, tastes change over time. Bands that the "critics" called pretentious 40 years ago are beloved by fans now. And, songs that I hated 40 years ago are nostalgic to me now.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If you were alive and loving music at the time the band was on the radio you didn't give a shit about what "music critics" thought.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I did the opposite with stories about authoritarianism because those stories teach lessons about authoritarian tactics and the mental state necessary for resisting them.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

One WTC broke ground in April 2006, and opened Nov 2014. It took "years and years" to build - eight of them in fact.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

To do that we'd need data on the absence of his effect, and we didn't have that.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Feet are one of many things that can change about our bodies as life unfolds.

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σωφρονεῖν (sophrosyne) @infinitehydra.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The Odyssey (2026) isn't a terrible movie. But, it is unfaithful to the text in a very unsatisfying manner. The analogy that comes to mind is telling the story of the Jedi, but ignoring the part about the force.

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