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nathanwelling.bsky.social

@nathanwelling.bsky.social
97 followers 940 following 1K posts
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 20h
As someone that has engaged in Will's comments in the past, it's definitely not, fwiw. That being said, I understand the impulse to refocus when you realize you're out over your skis! Understandable but wrong on the facts here. Try calling him transphobic or something, that's usually the go-to
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 21h
🙄 victim-blaming faux-concerned slop.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
ripping on you gets likes and shares, and it feels good to let loose and be performatively mean to someone that you feel deserves it and get likes and shares while doing so. this guy has had some good takes and writing, but this is really disappointing behavior by him.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
🥱
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Even without ai you have nothing interesting to contribute. Maybe take a break from it :-) independent thought is like riding a bike, you'll get back eventually
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
I just can't imagine posting this kind of ai crap and feeling good about how my life is going. Either severe cognitive dissonance or low-grade depression. Either way, I'm sorry for you. It'll get better
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Why someone would consciously include books in a picture meant to imply that you don't read is beyond me me really. I guess the point is that this person didn't put any thought into this "dig" at all, but still
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
People are answering honestly, they just believe something at odds with reality due to the factors I provided previously
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Ok. I mean, I disagree, but if the question is settled in your mind then there's not much else to talk about
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I mean, maybe to you? I think there's something deeper that explains both
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If this were the case you'd be able to use the metrics you're talking about to explain similar shifts in consumer sentiment in the past. You can't.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
As for "why" - people are famously innumerate, driven by bias, and conform their view of reality to the expected consensus of their peers.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The disconnect between consumer sentiment and the measures that usually pair pretty close with those measures (the "vibecession") predates any of the specific things you're calling out, and doesn't track well with any of them.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
That's the "correct" and "intelligent" answer - which nowadays is largely received wisdom from social media discussed
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
As Will's pointed out many times in the vibecession discourse, people are extremely bad in general at tracking prices over time, and tend to fixate on outlier price increases rather than overall (eg eggs, beef). People are responding high prices in part (I think largely) because they think
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
People are very good at rationalizing beliefs they hold for non-rational reasons, and will refuse to admit to having done so 99% of the time
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you ask a person "what forms the basis of your assessment of the material conditions if society - careful and well-reasoned observation if the facts, or some vague doomer crap you saw online" they will always answer the former.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
i think it's more like, you're running a kennel to breed aggressive dogs that dig really well, and one of them digs under your fence, gets out, and bites someone. yeah, you didn't mean for it to happen but...
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
in what way?
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
why involve yourself at all then, if you're going to use the distance as insulation from criticism? why is a bad answer to a hard problem (and it is bad) better than no answer at all?
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I guess ultimately it seems like there's a lot of people that believe they can afford to be picky re workplace fit. How this meshes with a "the economy has never been more terrible" outlook, I do not understand.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Maybe they consider awareness of and adherence to professional business norms to be qualifying 🤷
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
That should've read "agency" not "affect" but 🤷
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yeah I mean, I agree. Fwiw I don't think that you're really disagreeing with will either. A dog thinks and makes decisions. An llm does too. Both have affect, neither is responsible for its actions. Where that responsibility lies is a policy question.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yeah definitely, which is why I think it has to be a policy question. Training an AI to hack things and then failing to secure it properly, or failing to properly train whatever algorithm is in place for a self-driving car, should be a criminal offense. There should be regulations and standards
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
So far anyway. And I think we're in agreement here. I also don't know that will would disagree. But in all cases, using anthropomorphic language to decide the activity and internal decision-making of both dog and llm isn't incorrect, nor does it obscure anything.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I feel like you're halfway to making a point :-) sorry if you're mid-draft
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yeah sure, and we penalize people that don't leash their dogs, don't post "beware of dog" signs, and fail to train their dogs properly. But none of this implies that we should avoid descriptions like "the dog chose to bite the human" or "the dog was aggressive"
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It's not incorrect or misleading to say "the dog was aggressive" or "the dog chose to bite the human". Even though yes, a human trained that dog etc.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The better analogy imo is a pet, like a dog. Dogs think and understand to some degree. They're also not responsible for their actions; their owner is.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is a question of policy creation, not a philosophical question imo. Create the accountability and penalties, and let the system build itself around that.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We also regularly put down troublesome animals
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I mean I guess you could say it. But it's also a really bad and dumb answer because at this point the training data is every word ever written down.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It's ironic imo. The more dangerous and human-like these things are, the more incentive and appetite there is to regulate. By downplaying these characteristics, bluesky leftists are playing right into Capital's hands. For shame.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Yep, this is in fact the reason why this stuff matters at all imo
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I would personally prefer someone that ends a question with "petal" to not engage at all :-) I personally think he's wasting his time engaging with you and other bad faith posters but 🤷 not my account.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I think you're wasting your time will. My takeaway from much of this is that there's a subset of people that would prefer to simply not engage with the real-world implications and effects of these ideas and want to keep it to theory and debate. They make themselves irrelevant tbh. No big loss
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The easy answer here is that folk intuition matters more than academic discussions, because that is ultimately going to be what is guiding policy. Any philosophical discussion must be able to engage with where non-philosophers or it's just circle-jerking.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Can a thing be said to be thinking in a way that makes it human enough to potentially enjoy rights and questions is a normative question, vaccine efficacy and side effects is an objective one. They're just different things.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
it'll be $5 for a response. I'll send you my venmo if you're interested
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I'm not sure it's always happening where you can see it, but I AM sure that people are constantly rolling their eyes around you when you open your mouth. Best of luck with everything; I'm sorry you wasted my time.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I don't have a great definition. I don't think there is just one. People use the term to mean a lot of different things, and there's certainly no scientific (or philosophical) consensus that I'm aware of. What's your definition?
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Neither of those are compelling 🤷 is someone with short-term memory loss not thinking or conscious? Would an llm that ran continuously be conscious? as for the first one - it is literally true that something is unique to a particular group or that it is not. there is no other logical position.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
so is there an argument that someone has made that you find compelling (please link if so!), or are you stuck on this inability to understand common colloquialisms and the nature of many of the people that choose to engage in will's comments on bluesky? I'd get frustrated with bad faith mockery too
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
you're evidently spending a lot of time reading through will's messages. Should be easy to find and link an argument that someone has made that you find compelling.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
perhaps if these people were to make any actual argument, as opposed to simple dismissal and mockery, there'd be something to what you're saying. if 12 people condescending on the internet telling you that you're wrong is somehow compelling to you, well. I dunno what to tell you :-) best of luck
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
All the reading, journal entries, and degrees in the world, and still no articulated and defendable ideas. Money well spent by their parents and society at large.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
WIll, honestly, screw all these guys. There's a reason they're spending their time snarking to each other on bluesky.
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"merely a coder" man, you are a better person than I for responding so politely lol
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nathanwelling.bsky.social @nathanwelling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Which compelling arguments are you referring to here?
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