The pattern of personal motives fits misunderstanding. You need to show that there is an organizational pattern of "malice" (your word, not mine), rather than an organizational pattern of "we are trying to publish quickly, and quality accidentally falls to the wayside". I.e., negligence, not malice.

You haven't provided even a shred of evidence suggesting there's malice at the journalist level. Every science journalist I have met genuinely cared about the science (which is why they were writing on it), but they didn't have time to learn enough about the subjects to understand they were oversimplifying things.

Honestly, it's plain weird to say that people never just make mistakes.

PS - worth adding that "I misunderstood" and "I didn't care enough" are not mutually exclusive. You can do both, so saying "they didn't misunderstand, they just didn't care" isn't a reasonable rebuttal. But even setting that aside, there'll be plenty of folks who care but still don't understand.

Note: nearly all of the western hemisphere has obesity rates of >25%. Obesity is also high in the Middle East and Australia/NZ.

The US, with an obesity rate of >40%, is exceptionally obese, but it's not correct to say that obesity is mainly a US problem. It's quickly becoming a worldwide problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_obesity#/media...

Aren't most of these true of amphetamines/methylphenidate also, though? Except the "bad grades" part. Certainly Adderall is habit-forming for some people and has risks for abuse, just like it can contribute to mental breakdowns and psychosis.

Likewise, the psychosis-LLM link is incredibly rare.

It kinda looks like you're overstating the evidence. This is not a good comparison to 1950s tobacco -- by the 1950s, the scientific evidence for tobacco being unhealthy was already quite substantial. The problem was getting that information to the public in the midst of a disinformation campaign. Here, for contrast, the evidence that moderate LLM use in professional settings has overall negative impacts is still pretty light.

I only use LLMs rarely, and I don't have any kind of emotional ties to the issue. I just think your claims extend decently far beyond the evidence.

My understanding is that only about 35% of those who ever try nicotine become addicted.

If you are going to instead say that nearly everyone who smokes occasionally will become addicted, you need to back it up with evidence, because it's not apparent.

They're not reproducing the work for sale, no? So how does training violate CR law?

I know there's research on it for applied and basic science in general, and the rewards were massively EV+. But I can't recall whether similar research covers applied and basic mathematics research.

AFAICT, the courts currently lean towards allowing AI to be trained even without author permission, and this doesn't violate copyright law.

Copyright law says you can't sell unauthorized copies of copywritten works. Doesn't say you need to get author permission before using their works to train AI.

I remember reading literature from the 1930s, and there were quite a few folks who thought that the musicians-doing-recordings were stealing from the old-timers who played for live audiences.

History does not exactly repeat itself, but it rhymes

If I bought a cake from your bakery, and then said "I'm going to serve it at my friends' gay wedding!", you couldn't be "hey, no, I don't approve of that". You've already sold me the cake; no take-backsies.

And if I buy a hammer, the hardware store doesn't get to tell me what I'm allowed to build.

Do we?

For most of us, it seems like the EV (expected value) from such funding is quite positive. The work pays for itself in the long run. That's justification enough.

I see this also among my early retiree friends. People are quite happy just "playing" - gardening, joining a book club, making art, etc.

And I would be, too! There are times I enjoy doing bigger work, but man, I could build quite a delightful life living like a hobbit.

So, that's over, then? We changed the regime and now things are better?

Heck, some of the worst western diets are both poor in vitamins/minerals and also still rich in calories.

It absolutely can be a problem when used for organizational or ideological gain - e.g., when used by state, religion, business, or political group to spread propaganda, suppress opposition, unjustly favor an in-group, etc.

The classic case of using mass surveillance to help a burgeoning theocratic or fascist state is a pretty standard example.

"Mal", bad, in the latin

Average american already has their hands full (slash "their brain full") with local matters - family, friends, community. It's hard enough to get attention to spare to turn to national matters, much less stuff that happens on the other side of the world in non-allied poor countries.

I'm not saying it's impossible - we all know there are some long tail uncertainties to climate projections - but for the most part, it's contraindicated by a lot of the evidence, both observed and simulated.

And yet we still have some of the highest per capita emissions in the world. Nearly tied with Russia for "highest per capita emissions of major economies", see [1].

Since the IPCC was formed in 1988 and ACC widely recognized as a problem, US per capita GHG co2-equivalent emissions have dropped from 25.2 t/capita/year to 17.5, for a cumulative decrease of 30% [2]. This is a rate of -0.95%/year, which is not what I would call "rapid".

And dropping to only 70% of a really high mark still leaves us at a really high mark. But really, I just don't understand your argument.

Are you saying that a 30% drop over 40 years is a lot, when we should have been aiming for dropping by 70-100% in that time frame?

Are you saying that our emissions dropped significantly, even though we all know there was major political obstruction to plans to cut fossil fuel use?

Are you saying that what we've done is enough, even though the US is still one of the highest emitters per capita and the Earth is on track to greatly overshoot the +1.5C goal? Current best estimate is +2.7C by 2100.

I can't make the general direction of your argument make sense. Seems like you're overplaying what we've done and downplaying how far there is left to go.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states

I keep hearing this, but not from the climate science community, but from laypeople. I don't understand it. I haven't yet heard reasonable physical mechanisms that would push us past 3C by 2050, when the mean expectation from major models is still ~2.7C by 2100.

We haven't even hit 1.5C yet, not as a running decadal-ish average, using "1.5C target" the way that climate scientists traditionally meant it. How are we going to add another 1.5C in the next 25 years? That'd require 0.65C/decade. I don't understand it. The math ain't mathin'.

For what it's worth, the link you cite talks about the reasons for the acceleration. But some of those reasons (El Nino, aerosols) lead to one-off pops that don't translate to higher long-term trends. Meaning, it would be reasonable to guess that the recent acceleration will taper off some, and we'll head back towards 0.2 - 0.25 C/decade from the current 0.35C/decade. But even if we keep up the current 0.35C/decade, we aren't getting to +3C until ~2075.