John David Pressman
@jdp.extropian.net
LLM developer, alignment-accelerationist, Fedorovist ancestor simulator, Dreamtime enjoyer.
All posts public domain under CC0 1.0.
All posts public domain under CC0 1.0.
Pinned
John David Pressman
@jdp.extropian.net
· Jan 10
I should get one of those clients that stops you from reading other users posts.
Just realized I can disable notifications for all replies and QTs, which is at least a step in the right direction.
Looking at people nominally qualified to comment on AI on Twitter post banal and juiceless takes is recalibrating my expectations for BlueSky because it makes me realize almost nobody has interesting things to say about AI.
February 10, 2026 at 6:56 AM
Looking at people nominally qualified to comment on AI on Twitter post banal and juiceless takes is recalibrating my expectations for BlueSky because it makes me realize almost nobody has interesting things to say about AI.
Three questions to ask about any Trump headline that will make him more legible to you:
1. What does it cost Trump personally to do this?
2. What does it cost his opponents to undo this?
3. Can the underling or institution he's having take the fall for him meaningfully refuse to do what he wants?
1. What does it cost Trump personally to do this?
2. What does it cost his opponents to undo this?
3. Can the underling or institution he's having take the fall for him meaningfully refuse to do what he wants?
Withholding funds costs him basically nothing, takes him minutes to order his goons to do, and the only real punishment when he does it is that he ends up having to pay the money, and it's not even his money it's the IRS's money he does not give a shit about spending the IRS's money.
February 10, 2026 at 4:18 AM
Three questions to ask about any Trump headline that will make him more legible to you:
1. What does it cost Trump personally to do this?
2. What does it cost his opponents to undo this?
3. Can the underling or institution he's having take the fall for him meaningfully refuse to do what he wants?
1. What does it cost Trump personally to do this?
2. What does it cost his opponents to undo this?
3. Can the underling or institution he's having take the fall for him meaningfully refuse to do what he wants?
The fundamental question you should be asking is "From a realpolitik standpoint, why should Trump ever let a blue state have a dime it's entitled to by statute without a court order?"
Withholding funds costs him basically nothing, takes him minutes to order his goons to do, and the only real punishment when he does it is that he ends up having to pay the money, and it's not even his money it's the IRS's money he does not give a shit about spending the IRS's money.
February 10, 2026 at 4:06 AM
The fundamental question you should be asking is "From a realpolitik standpoint, why should Trump ever let a blue state have a dime it's entitled to by statute without a court order?"
RFK Jr. et al should make it clear that the New Atheists were basically correct about woo and a vicious lack of tolerance for woo should be table stakes for anything claiming to be a left vanguard in current year. A coalition has to make compromises, but capital L Leftism should be wooless.
Whenever you see someone talking about "retvrning to pre-industrial methods of agriculture" you need to bluntly ask them how many people should starve to death to serve this goal.
February 10, 2026 at 3:28 AM
RFK Jr. et al should make it clear that the New Atheists were basically correct about woo and a vicious lack of tolerance for woo should be table stakes for anything claiming to be a left vanguard in current year. A coalition has to make compromises, but capital L Leftism should be wooless.
According to Forbes the quote is:
"The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do."
"The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do."
February 10, 2026 at 3:25 AM
According to Forbes the quote is:
"The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do."
"The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do."
Reposted by John David Pressman
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
Age verification for all.
buff.ly
February 9, 2026 at 2:10 PM
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
lmfao
When I worked for Reason magazine during Trump's rise to power in 2016, I was explicitly forbidden by the editor in chief from writing about Trump's racism, or the violence and racism at his rallies.
It was a "sideshow," I was told.
It was a "sideshow," I was told.
Weird. I tried to warn libertarians about Trump
February 9, 2026 at 5:58 PM
lmfao
No no it makes perfect sense. The Soviet Union was an empire that staunchly insisted it was anti-imperialist, so it would make sense that its fan base also falsely claims to be staunchly anti-imperialist.
genuinely fascinating to me that there are Soviet Union fans who consider themselves anti-imperialist
February 9, 2026 at 11:51 AM
No no it makes perfect sense. The Soviet Union was an empire that staunchly insisted it was anti-imperialist, so it would make sense that its fan base also falsely claims to be staunchly anti-imperialist.
Reposted by John David Pressman
Love the community note that got added on to the Democrats' tweet about their deranged and harmful efforts to dismantle Section 230.
February 8, 2026 at 7:01 PM
Love the community note that got added on to the Democrats' tweet about their deranged and harmful efforts to dismantle Section 230.
I used to read a lot of books from the thrift store as a teenager, and if anyone cares Western Civilization seems to have peaked intellectually around 1965, I could tell a book was written around then because it would be unusually good. People underestimate the 2010's though, brief resurgence.
Like at least gen z has the excuse of covid and algorithms melting their brain. Gen x had the 80s and 90s when the American economy and culture were at their apex
February 8, 2026 at 8:12 PM
I used to read a lot of books from the thrift store as a teenager, and if anyone cares Western Civilization seems to have peaked intellectually around 1965, I could tell a book was written around then because it would be unusually good. People underestimate the 2010's though, brief resurgence.
Reposted by John David Pressman
I'm increasingly convinced that many countries will only get serious about rebalancing their economies and immigration policies when social services collapse and seniors without families go back to starving to death like in the bad old days.
February 8, 2026 at 6:46 PM
I'm increasingly convinced that many countries will only get serious about rebalancing their economies and immigration policies when social services collapse and seniors without families go back to starving to death like in the bad old days.
Reposted by John David Pressman
When I wrote Section 230 I did so knowing it would be critical for protecting free speech online. 30 years later and it’s one of the last things standing in the way of Republican censorship of the internet. Here’s to many more years of defending this vital safeguard of free speech.
February 8, 2026 at 6:28 PM
When I wrote Section 230 I did so knowing it would be critical for protecting free speech online. 30 years later and it’s one of the last things standing in the way of Republican censorship of the internet. Here’s to many more years of defending this vital safeguard of free speech.
That's honestly a lot more fake than I expected.
February 8, 2026 at 7:59 PM
That's honestly a lot more fake than I expected.
Reposted by John David Pressman
February 8, 2026 at 8:40 AM
I think people are hurting very badly and taking it out on others tbh.
everybody is being extremely normal on here today i see, carry on
February 8, 2026 at 8:01 AM
I think people are hurting very badly and taking it out on others tbh.
It always makes me sad when I want to reassure someone and they have their replies disabled so I can't do that.
February 8, 2026 at 7:43 AM
It always makes me sad when I want to reassure someone and they have their replies disabled so I can't do that.
In this paper the authors make use of EEG's greater temporal resolution compared to fMRI to measure the representation alignment of audio processing between humans and audio instruction following LLMs. They find that the level of similarity is highly dependent on metric used
arxiv.org/abs/2601.16540
arxiv.org/abs/2601.16540
Do Models Hear Like Us? Probing the Representational Alignment of Audio LLMs and Naturalistic EEG
Audio Large Language Models (Audio LLMs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in integrating speech perception with language understanding. However, whether their internal representations align with ...
arxiv.org
February 8, 2026 at 6:37 AM
In this paper the authors make use of EEG's greater temporal resolution compared to fMRI to measure the representation alignment of audio processing between humans and audio instruction following LLMs. They find that the level of similarity is highly dependent on metric used
arxiv.org/abs/2601.16540
arxiv.org/abs/2601.16540
The pathologization of high openness to experience as "being trans" is fucked up actually. "If you don't actively reject the idea of even wanting to try being the opposite sex you forfeit your gender" is basically just fragile masculinity but woke.
YP #1: [incredulously] You wouldn't????
YP #2: No, I'd hate to be a guy, I like being a woman.
YP #1: I'd do it in an instant. I'd love everything about it. Imagine being able to run that fast, be that strong, even standing to pee. I'd love to stand to pee.
YP #1 & #2: [noncommittal noises]
YP #2: No, I'd hate to be a guy, I like being a woman.
YP #1: I'd do it in an instant. I'd love everything about it. Imagine being able to run that fast, be that strong, even standing to pee. I'd love to stand to pee.
YP #1 & #2: [noncommittal noises]
February 7, 2026 at 11:34 PM
The pathologization of high openness to experience as "being trans" is fucked up actually. "If you don't actively reject the idea of even wanting to try being the opposite sex you forfeit your gender" is basically just fragile masculinity but woke.
Obviously we should just make our own wrecker bots and then look out extra hard for the takes they generate, it's not like wrecker behavior is random.
February 7, 2026 at 8:55 PM
Obviously we should just make our own wrecker bots and then look out extra hard for the takes they generate, it's not like wrecker behavior is random.
Reposted by John David Pressman
Making people who broadly agree with you feel like they have to traverse a minefield to be able to work with you to solve problems is bad for effectively solving problems.
February 7, 2026 at 6:31 PM
Making people who broadly agree with you feel like they have to traverse a minefield to be able to work with you to solve problems is bad for effectively solving problems.
One thing I keep forgetting is that I can turn RetroInstruct into a benchmark, which incentivizes people to train on it. If you want to get people to train on a dataset obviously you should turn that dataset into a benchmark.
arxiv.org/abs/2602.01313
arxiv.org/abs/2602.01313
EverMemBench: Benchmarking Long-Term Interactive Memory in Large Language Models
Long-term conversational memory is essential for LLM-based assistants, yet existing benchmarks focus on dyadic, single-topic dialogues that fail to capture real-world complexity. We introduce EverMemB...
arxiv.org
February 7, 2026 at 8:31 AM
One thing I keep forgetting is that I can turn RetroInstruct into a benchmark, which incentivizes people to train on it. If you want to get people to train on a dataset obviously you should turn that dataset into a benchmark.
arxiv.org/abs/2602.01313
arxiv.org/abs/2602.01313
Rust having good package management is one of the core reasons it's going to displace most of its potential competitors for writing low vulnerability system software.
how controversial would it be to say that the module system is the worst part of ocaml?
February 6, 2026 at 7:43 PM
Rust having good package management is one of the core reasons it's going to displace most of its potential competitors for writing low vulnerability system software.
True!
This is all true but talk to random people on the street and realize the dummies here are still like 80th percentile
BlueSky is fundamentally a low information network full of people who are not well connected to what is happening, do not have insider tips, are largely not capable of basic reasoning, do not value the truth over their immediate feelings, and habitually confabulate rather than admit they don't know.
February 6, 2026 at 7:27 PM
True!
One thing I've always felt was a risk for proof of work based cryptocurrency is if you need all that hardware just to keep up with the hashrate, what happens if it dips, people sell their mining equipment (which I'm to understand processes transactions?), confidence dips and people sell again etc?
feel like every time BTC has come into my light cone over the last several days it’s tricked off another $2k
It’s so beautiful
February 6, 2026 at 1:24 PM
One thing I've always felt was a risk for proof of work based cryptocurrency is if you need all that hardware just to keep up with the hashrate, what happens if it dips, people sell their mining equipment (which I'm to understand processes transactions?), confidence dips and people sell again etc?
One of the basic problems of social media is that you're writing for a superposition of an audience that is familiar with you and can take your post in the context of your overall persona and an audience that knows nothing about you, is hostile to you, and will take everything you say in bad faith.
February 6, 2026 at 1:11 PM
One of the basic problems of social media is that you're writing for a superposition of an audience that is familiar with you and can take your post in the context of your overall persona and an audience that knows nothing about you, is hostile to you, and will take everything you say in bad faith.