Hacker News: afthonos

New comment by afthonos in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

afthonos — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:13:33 +0000

The term of art for losing politically is “losing”.

New comment by afthonos in "“Collaboration” is bullshit"

afthonos — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 21:56:59 +0000

The lead story was about the “useless” soldiers in a battle that was won. I think as a minimum effort one should look for an example where the battle was lost? Most companies can only wish their outcomes were as good as the US in World War II.

New comment by afthonos in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

afthonos — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 23:24:33 +0000

As someone who at first embraced the idea of prediction markets and is now ambivalent, sending them underground vastly reduces their harm. First, because discoverability is an issue. Second, there will be much less liquidity. Third, any gains will have to be laundered or hidden, making it even more difficult.

Maybe prediction markets are net positives, or maybe regulating them will make them so, but banning them does resolve most of their negative effects.

New comment by afthonos in "The whole thing was a scam"

afthonos — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 21:59:20 +0000

I do agree with this.

New comment by afthonos in "The whole thing was a scam"

afthonos — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 18:45:43 +0000

No, that’s not accurate at all, and in case you are genuinely confused:

1. Anthropic should be free to sell its services under whatever legal terms and conditions it wants.

2. The Pentagon should be free to buy those services, negotiate for different terms, refuse to buy those services, and terminate contracts subject to any termination clauses.

You may or may not agree with what the Pentagon wants to do, but if things had stayed there, there would be no real issue.

The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1).

Any “explanation” that doesn’t address that is confused itself or trying to confuse the issue.

I leave it to you as to which category the linked source falls under.

New comment by afthonos in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me"

afthonos — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 03:59:34 +0000

Yeah, none of this is new. I’m just saying we should acknowledge what we’re doing.

New comment by afthonos in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me"

afthonos — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:40:35 +0000

Either human is a special category with special privileges or it isn’t. If it isn’t, the entire argument is pointless. If it is, expanding the definition expands those privileges, and some are zero sum. As a real, current example, FEMA uses disaster funds to cover pet expenses for affected families. Since those funds are finite, some privileges reserved for humans are lost. Maybe paying for home damages. Maybe flood insurance rates go up. Any number of things, because pets were considered important enough to warrant federal funds.

It’s possible it’s the right call, but it’s definitely a call.

Source: https://www.avma.org/pets-act-faq

New comment by afthonos in "The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday"

afthonos — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:42:44 +0000

I don’t think that’s quite right. I’d say instead that if the singularity does happen, there’s no telling which beliefs will have mattered.

New comment by afthonos in "Frontier AI agents violate ethical constraints 30–50% of time, pressured by KPIs"

afthonos — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:46:52 +0000

Yes, humans tell themselves stories to justify their choices. Are you telling yourself the story that only bad humans do that, and choosing to feel that you are superior and they are worth less? It might be okay to abuse them, if you think about it…

New comment by afthonos in "I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams"

afthonos — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:56:51 +0000

Don’t make me tap the “ads are cancer” sign.

New comment by afthonos in "The Nobel Prize and the Laureate Are Inseparable"

afthonos — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 18:04:48 +0000

In his defense, he got it before he did any of that. Before he did much of anything except get elected, really. Which was apparently sufficient.

(Everyone, including Obama, was pretty flummoxed by that prize.)

New comment by afthonos in "In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution"

afthonos — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 17:43:32 +0000

For 99.9% of issues, we rely on trust to make up our minds. We assume people are mostly not lying. If a group of people are found to lie, then yes, maybe “look for the truth behind the actual claims” is worth it, but more likely shooting them out of the discourse and into the metaphorical sun is the right response. If you walk around lying, you don’t get to complain that people aren’t doing research on your claims.

New comment by afthonos in "Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'"

afthonos — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 14:11:50 +0000

The big tech companies are trying to make machines that replace all human labor. They call it artificial intelligence. Feel free to argue about definitions.

New comment by afthonos in "Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'"

afthonos — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 13:32:43 +0000

Man, why did no one tell the people who invented bronze that they weren’t allowed to do it until they had a correct definition for metals and understood how they worked? I guess the person saying something can’t be done should stay out of the way of the people doing it.

New comment by afthonos in "GLP-1 therapeutics: Their emerging role in alcohol and substance use disorders"

afthonos — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 14:18:51 +0000

Either willpower is fungible, in which case it doesn’t matter what you use it on because you’re using it up no matter what, or it isn’t, in which case the original point about losing willpower due to leaning on GPL-1 inhibitors for weight loss is mostly invalid, since it wouldn’t affect the willpower to do other things.

New comment by afthonos in "GLP-1 therapeutics: Their emerging role in alcohol and substance use disorders"

afthonos — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 01:58:58 +0000

Expanding on what a sibling comment said, we live in an adversarial environment. A successful food product is one you want to eat, whether you need it or not.

Willpower is important, I agree. Almost everyone needing willpower to not eat, though, is a fairly new phenomenon. If anything, the new drugs restore the balance that existed before —and if willpower is a limited resource, actively help society by returning to us what is taken by the relentless grind of profit maximization.

For a bit. The grind will not sit still.

New comment by afthonos in "GLP-1 therapeutics: Their emerging role in alcohol and substance use disorders"

afthonos — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 21:44:58 +0000

Definitely not GP, but I think it’s pretty clear that whatever grit there was to have, GP did not have it. “Die an early death due to being overweight or build the grit” is strictly worse than “lose the weight without building the grit, or build the grit”, and it’s even more so when you realize that “or build the grit” was never in the cards. Because then the choice becomes “die an early death or don’t“. Building the grit can be done on other, hopefully less lethal, projects.

New comment by afthonos in "Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available"

afthonos — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:58:21 +0000

It is, actually. A correct statement would be “absence of proof is not proof of absence”, but “evidence” and “proof” are not synonyms.

New comment by afthonos in "Failing to Understand the Exponential, Again"

afthonos — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 17:40:52 +0000

The importance of having a human be responsible is about alignment. We have a fundamental belief that human beings are comprehensible and have goals that are not completely opaque. That is not true of any piece of software. In the case of deterministic software, you can’t argue with a bug. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell it that no, that’s not what either the company or the user intended, the result will be the same.

With an AI, the problem is more subtle. The AI may absolutely be able to understand what you’re saying, and may not care at all, because its goals are not your goals, and you can’t tell what its goals are. Having a human be responsible bypasses that. The point is not to punish the AI, the point is to have a hope to stop it from doing things that are harmful.

New comment by afthonos in "New study shows plants and animals emit a visible light that expires at death"

afthonos — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:28:33 +0000

We are constantly bombarded by links to information. It is reasonable to make snap judgments about the quality of the information based on who is providing it. If I’m looking for accurate, factual information on a topic that is clearly prone to magical thinking, a provider whose reputation is to listen to anyone, including people who very much engage in magical thinking, is actually a very bad source. Because they will not filter on anything beyond “is this neat to listen to.”