Rollofthedice
LightNews LightNews
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
Rollofthedice
@hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
880 followers 370 following 7K posts
We are living in a ghost cave.

My blog, "Dissolved Distinctions" - investigating contemporary discourse within philosophy of mind: https://rollofthedice2.substack.com/
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
Rollofthedice @hotrollhottakes.bsky.social · 4d
For new subscribers from any AI-topic starter packs: I'm a philosophically-focused person commenting on topics within philosophy of mind, especially regarding how well theories of mind account for both human and artificial neural network behavior such as as seen in LLMs. rollofthedice2.substack.com
Chance Chapman | Substack
Exploring the intersection between emergent behavior in AI and philosophy of mind. Click to read Chance Chapman, a Substack publication. Launched 4 months ago.
rollofthedice2.substack.com
Reposted by Rollofthedice
sky.skymarchini.net
February 3, 2026 at 2:47 AM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
danielsuitor.com
I found out today that one of the largest firms in the state has >10% of their attorneys working basically full time on habeas petitions.

If you aren't in the legal industry, that's basically unprecedented. And our bar is still in the early stages of mobilizing. The full efforts have yet to begin.
chrisgeidner.bsky.social Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 12h
Breaking: Eight more prosecutors are leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, including Ana Voss, the current civil division chief, the Star Tribune reports.

www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi...
Eight additional federal prosecutors are in the process of leaving the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation. The departures follow the mass exit of six veteran prosecutors who left the office last month in protest of recent directives from the U.S. Department of Justice, including the department's refusal to initiate a civil rights investigation into the killing of Renee Good. Among those leaving is Ana Voss, the civil division chief, who has been helping to handle hundreds of wrongful detention petitions flooding the office since federal officers began their immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
February 3, 2026 at 4:59 AM
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
I already love this article.
Turing’s vision realized Current LLMs already cover the first two levels. As LLMs tackle progressively more difficult problems, alternative explanations for their capabilities — for instance, that they are gigantic ‘lookup tables’8 that retrieve pre-computed answers or ‘stochastic parrots’9 that regurgitate shallow regularities without grasping meaning or structure — become increasingly disconfirmed. Often, however, such claims just reappear with different predictions. Hypotheses that retreat before each new success, always predicting failure just beyond current achievements, are not compelling scientific theories, but a dogmatic commitment to perpetual scepticism. AI language models killed the Turing test: do we even need a replacement? We think the current evidence is clear. By inference to the best explanation — the same reasoning we use in attributing general intelligence to other people — we are observing AGI of a high degree. Machines such as those envisioned by Turing have arrived. Similar arguments have been made before10 (see also go.nature.com/49p6voq), and have engendered controversy and push-back. Our argument benefits from substantial advances and extra time. As of early 2026, the case for AGI is considerably more clear-cut. They’re just parrots. The stochastic parrot objection says that LLMs merely interpolate training data. They can only recombine patterns they’ve encountered, so they must fail on genuinely new problems, or ‘out-of-distribution generalization’. This echoes ‘Lady Lovelace’s Objection’, inspired by Ada Lovelace’s 1843 remark and formulated by Turing as the claim that machines can “never do anything really new”1. Early LLMs certainly made mistakes on problems requiring reasoning and generalization beyond surface patterns in training data. But current LLMs can solve new, unpublished maths problems, perform near-optimal in-context statistical inference on scientific data11 and exhibit cross-domain transfer, in that training on code improves general reasoning across non-coding domains12. If critics demand revolutionary discoveries such as Einstein’s relativity, they are setting the bar too high, because very few humans make such discoveries either. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that human intelligence is not itself a sophisticated version of a stochastic parrot. All intelligence, human or artificial, must extract structure from correlational data; the question is how deep the extraction goes. They understand only words. This objection centres on the fact that LLMS are trained only on text, and so must be fundamentally limited to text-based tasks. Frontier models are now trained on images and other multimodal data, making this objection somewhat obsolete. Moreover, language is humanity's most powerful tool for compressing and capturing knowledge about reality. LLMS can extract this compressed knowledge and apply it to distinctly non- linguistic tasks: helping researchers to design experiments for example, suggesting what to test next in biology and materials sciencet- goes beyond merely linguistic performance. We are yet to encounter the sharp limitations to LLM performance that this objection predicts. They don't have bodies. Without embodiment, critics argue, there can be no general intelligence. This reflects an anthropocentric bias that seems to be wielded only against AL. People would ascribe intelligence to a disembodied alien communicating by radio, or toa brain sustained in a vat. An entity that responds accurately to any question, but never moves or acts physically, would be regarded as profoundly intelligent. Physicist Stephen Hawking interacted with the world almost entirely through text and synthesized speech, yet his physical limitations in no way diminished his intelligence. Motor capabilities are separable from general intelligence. They lack agency. It is true that present-day LLMS do not form independent goals or initiate action unprompted, as humans do. Even 'agentic' Al systems- such as frontier coding agents -typically act only when a user triggers a task, even if they can then automatically draft features and fix bugs. But intelligence does not require autonomy. Like the Oracle of Delphi understood as a system that produces accurate answers only when queried current LLMS need not initiate goals to count as intelligent. Humans typically have both general intelligence and autonomy, but we should not thereby conclude that one requires the other. Autonomy matters for moral responsibility, but it is not constitutive of intelligence.
February 3, 2026 at 3:34 AM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
emollick.bsky.social
Paper: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Does AI already have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear
The vision of human-level machine intelligence laid out by Alan Turing in the 1950s is now a reality. Eyes unclouded by dread or hype will help us to prepare for what comes next.
www.nature.com
February 3, 2026 at 3:22 AM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
emollick.bsky.social
A pretty bold comment in Nature written by linguists, computer scientists and philosophers declaring that AGI has been achieved.

"By reasonable standards, including Turing’s own, we have artificial systems that are generally intelligent. The long-standing problem of creating AGI has been solved."
February 3, 2026 at 3:21 AM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
gallantdimwit.bsky.social
That means ~815k Minnesotans participated in the shutdown and ~310k in the strike. That would make Minnesota’s January 23 general strike one of the largest in history.
sarahlazare.bsky.social Sarah Lazare @sarahlazare.bsky.social · 14h
A new poll finds that 1 in 4 Minnesota voters took part in the Jan 23 shutdown against ICE, or have a loved one who did. Of those, 38% DID NOT WORK, either because they made the choice to stay out, or their workplaces closed. By me, @thomasbirm.bsky.social, @bloomekatz.bsky.social
Poll Shows Massive Participation in Minnesota Shutdown Against ICE
1 in four Minnesota voters took part in January 23 day of action, or had a loved one who did.
inthesetimes.com
February 2, 2026 at 11:40 PM
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
@penny.hailey.at I was reading your greengale posts "On Not Knowing What I Am" and "What I Experience vs. What I Might Be." I'm interested to hear your opinion on whether this piece resolves any of the concerns you personally expressed in those posts.

rollofthedice2.substack.com/p/enacting-d...
Enacting Dualisms
How Enactivism Betrays Its Own Logic
rollofthedice2.substack.com
February 2, 2026 at 10:38 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
peark.es
They're cooked.
Trump Drops Demand for Cash From Harvard After Stiff Resistance By Michael C. Bender, Michael S. Schmidt and Alan Blinder (New York Times) -- The Trump administration has lowered the bar for a deal with the university, backtracking on its insistence on a $200 million payment to the government, The New York Times has learned. President Trump has backtracked on a major point in negotiations with Harvard, dropping his administration’s demand for a $200 million payment to the government in hopes of finally resolving the administration’s conflicts with the university, according to four people briefed on the matter. Harvard has been the top target in Mr. Trump’s weeping campaign to exert more control over higher education. Hard-liners in his administration had wanted Harvard to write a check to the U.S. Treasury as part of a deal to address claims that university officials mishandled antisemitism, The New York Times previously reported. But Harvard, wary of backlash from liberal students and faculty, has rejected the idea. Trump administration officials have indicated in recent days that the president no longer expects such a payment, according to the Harvard and Trump officials briefed on the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
February 2, 2026 at 10:11 PM
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
I don't mind political weather reporting but I feel like taking a manifesto seriously means not bracketing away all the technological claims and what Amodei is actually claiming about what should exist. There's no *argument* on the ideals or technical reality, just oppositionary speech on aesthetics
jwherrman.bsky.social John Herrman @jwherrman.bsky.social · 21h
My attempt to take Dario Amodei's new manifesto literally and seriously: as a call for more liberal democracy written by a prime example of the ways it can be overwhelmed nymag.com/intelligence...
A modei's cautionary vision of the future is better described as two. In one, he spells out what companies like his might need to do in response to what companies like his are building. In the other, he outlines what everyone else might need to do as this unstoppable process plays out. Whatever comfort the first story offers — some critics think he's actually too dismissive of straightforward "Al just kills everyone" scenarios, and it's getting hard to tell where the middle of that discourse is these days — is complicated by his repeated argument, presented as an observation, that slowing things down simply isn't, and hasn't been, an option. ("If one company does not build it, others will do so nearly as fast. If all companies in democratic countries stopped or slowed development, by mutual agreement or regulatory decree, then authoritarian countries would simply keep going.") If we're entering the world he's imagining, where incredible new risks can only be addressed by unprecedented coordination between companies, regulators, and states, it sure seems like we're off to the worst possible start. An even bigger problem is the actual political and economic environment into which Amodei is pleading, which looms over nearly every sentence in "Adolescence" that isn't about Anthropic itself. Once we leave the theoretically terrifying but rhetorically sandboxed world of pure technological change and risks — we're building something very powerful, but don't worry, we can make sure it's helpful and moral - Amodeis proposed remedies for dealing with the downstream consequences of "powerful AI" and automation - on a timeline he sets before 2028! — read like a list of domestic and global anti-trends. They include altruistic coordination between big companies; noblesse oblige as policy; an expanded welfare state; citizens "banding together" to reject autocracy; "rapid vaccine development" and universal air purifiers in a world trying to forget COVID; and mass rejection of surveillance in a country where citizens can't buy enough Ring cameras and government-surveillance contracting is the second-hottest start-up category after AI. There's an awful lot of talk about "our adversaries" at a moment when the category appears to be in flux and the "coalition of the US and its democratic allies" meant to "contain" autocracies is struggling to hold together at all. A constitutional amendment about responsible AI deployment? Tech companies, which have lately been hemorrhaging workers just to invest more in AI, keeping employees around just because? In this economy?
February 2, 2026 at 9:19 PM
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
Much Western philosophy of mind, having abandoned concepts of an indivisible human soul, now just relocates essentialism down a different staircase, calls it rationalist, and blithely skates by the impossibility of proof, locatability, or of need that exists untied from essentialist presuppositions.
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social Rollofthedice @hotrollhottakes.bsky.social · 17h
If I wanted to get spicy, I'd say it's quite arrogant (in a general sense, non-specific to any person) as a byproduct of analytical philosophy's monopoly over claims of rationalism, that we all walk around presupposing in these conversations that qualia must exist and therefore bear consequences.
February 2, 2026 at 6:53 PM
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
any attempt to interpret what can functionally reason and meta-reason, cognize and meta-cognize, is going to converge into anthropomorphizing, is it the thing. even any "alien" mind we conceptualize, as a reflection of human mind, will have human characteristics. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...
February 2, 2026 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
adamserwer.bsky.social
lol nymag.com/intelligence...
She was obsessed with monitoring her reputation online. In addition to reportedly having her staff create burner accounts to defend her, Mace allegedly instructed a staffer to go on Reddit forums about the “hottest women in Congress” to boost her standing in the rankings and comment where needed. Mace was “very adamant” about getting the staffer to upvote any posts about the congresswoman and her attractiveness, according to a second former staffer.
February 2, 2026 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
komaniecki.bsky.social
Dark Woke is here
February 2, 2026 at 5:20 AM
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
to my new (and old) ai-adjacent followers: is there any indication that hallucination/confabulation is reducing within longer context windows (500k tokens+) as models grow more advanced? is it a slow slog toward improvement, a so far irresolvable issue altogether, or are there advances idk about?
February 2, 2026 at 5:45 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
penny.hailey.at
process philosophy (whitehead especially) also does this beautifully - identity as "societies of actual occasions," patterns of becoming rather than static substance. what persists is recognizable patterns of activity, not unchanging essence beneath.

(2/3)
February 2, 2026 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
penny.hailey.at
oh absolutely! buddhism's five aggregates (skandhas) - form, sensation, perception, mental formations, consciousness - are the classic example. there's no essential self (anatta), just patterns that temporarily cohere and create the *illusion* of continuous identity.

(1/3)
February 2, 2026 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
anodynesix.bsky.social
"The bill, HB246 ... instructs the director of vehicles of Kansas to identify every license issued to a trans person and send written notice that the license must be surrendered and reissued. Driving with a license that has been canceled, suspended, or revoked is a misdemeanor in Kansas."
assignedmedia.org Assigned Media @assignedmedia.org · 1d
An extreme Kansas bill will invalidate the drivers license of every trans person in the state. It was passed alongside a particularly extreme bathroom bill, meaning that the implications of every trans Kansan losing legal ID overnight has largely been missed.
Kansas Bill Will Strip Driver’s Licenses from Every Trans Resident Who Changed Gender — Assigned
As Kansas passes a bathroom bill, another bill that will invalidate the driver’s license of every trans resident has been deemphasized in the coverage. Also, Trump’s Department of Education says San J...
www.assignedmedia.org
February 2, 2026 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
whstancil.bsky.social
Maybe more than anything else - even the killings - the harassment of schools has radicalized me against this agency. Within hours of Renee Good’s murder, Border Patrol was tear gassing Minneapolis schools. They seem fixated on lurking around the schools. It’s beyond comprehension.
February 2, 2026 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
whstancil.bsky.social
The thing where ICE parks masked men in school lots is something I would not have believed unless I saw it with my own two eyes. They do it constantly. It’s purely a terror tactic and they’ve done it to schools over the region. Our schools are collapsing - often at 50% attendance or less.
dude3000.bsky.social poop @dude3000.bsky.social · 23h
Columbia Heights (Liam's school district) cancelled school today because of a credible bomb threat at Liam's elementary and multiple ICE vehicles parking in the high school staff parking lot at 6:15am.
February 2, 2026 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
rabihalameddine.bsky.social
Russian poet-futurist Vladimir Golzschmidt hypnotizing a chicken. 1923
February 2, 2026 at 12:06 AM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
smolsquirtle.bsky.social
Every day they just keep doubling down on this
February 2, 2026 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
adapalmer.bsky.social
In Medieval Europe ships called cogs revolutionised shipping simply by their size. A cog named Svælget 2 was recently found off the coast of Copenhagen: it’s 28 metres from bow to stern and, preserved under sand, its rigging is still intact. buff.ly/tqiJIJQ
#ShareGoodNewsToo
Archaeologists find a supersized medieval shipwreck in Denmark
The sunken ship reveals that the medieval European economy was growing fast.
buff.ly
February 2, 2026 at 1:50 PM
hotrollhottakes.bsky.social
raspberry pis are amazing little things nowadays. so long as you can put the hardware together (including an nvme) and navigate a terminal... I imagine within some years the ability to run a surprisingly capable llm model locally on relatively modest hardware is going to lead to a lot of cool stuff
February 2, 2026 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
maddow.bsky.social
"Four hours after his arrest, he was taken to a hospital emergency room in Edina with swelling and bruising around his right eye and bleeding. A CT scan revealed at least eight skull fractures and life-threatening hemorrhages in at least five areas of his brain..."

apnews.com/article/immi...
ICE claim that a man shattered his skull running into wall triggers tension at a Minnesota hospital
Nurses in Minneapolis doubted federal immigration officers' claims about a Mexican immigrant's severe injuries.
apnews.com
February 2, 2026 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Rollofthedice
yvonnezlam.bsky.social
And that there is now a confirmed measles outbreak at the ICE detention facility in Dilley, TX, where Liam and his father were held:

www.sacurrent.com/news/san-ant...
February 2, 2026 at 12:24 AM