Interesting Links for 23-09-2025

[andrewducker]

1. Tesla influencers tried to automatically drive coast-to-coast -- they crashed within 60 miles

(tags:Tesla ElonMusk automation driving fail cars )

2. OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws

(tags:ai )

3. Girl footballers attacked for having short hair.

(tags:gender society hair football UK OhForFucksSake )

4. Exercising in nature is superior to the gym or city

(tags:exercise nature psychology )

5. UK Millionaire exodus did not occur, study reveals

(tags:tax wealth UK )

Comments

3.

[channelpenguin]

Fucking ridiculous. Glad the adults are supporting.

Part of the thinking is not new. I had short hair until I was 14-15. Strangers always thought I was a boy (I didnt care, though!).

Parents etc. are apparently often a PITA with youth football/sport. Abusing refs and so on. So it doesnt surprise me, and the kids of such parents wont learn better if nobody teaches them. It is still ludicrous how seriously some people take all sport but especially youth sport. Supposed to be fun, no?

Re: 3.

[nancylebov]

It's also interesting that gender is supposed to be such a great big deal, but then people take the shortcut of looking at hairstyles. They literally can't tell whether someone is male or female.

Re: 3.

[channelpenguin]

My philosophy has always been, "if you can't tell then it doesn't matter". But a depressing amount of people apparently think otherwise.

As I say so often people will be sick of it - a sizeable majority of humans want to believe that there are certain qualities that we are born with, that cannot be later acquired or changed EVER. At a guess they cling to this out of fear of what might otherwise be taken away from them themselves. I see this as the root of racism, nationalism sexism,feudalism, etc. And ESPECIALLY transphobia.

Re: 3.

[calimac]

Some people evidently think that hair length is an innate sex-linked characteristic.

Re: 3.

[rmc28]

Gossip from ice hockey refs tells me "parents are the worst". (I do a lot of "off-ice officiating" i.e. scorekeeping and timekeeping for assorted ice hockey games, so I know a lot of the refs or "on-ice officials".)

There's been some really nasty commentary going around about Hannah Botterman, only one of the best English women rugby union players. But she has short hair and muscles so her gender keeps getting questioned.

[juan_gandhi]

Hmm, good point regarding hallucinations. Right; linear algebra, and modern models of real numbers too, are not exactly strict, and can't be used to prove everything. We should start with logic, and make sure that LEAN is properly used.

[andrewducker]

I would delighted to have more logic in the world!

[juan_gandhi]

OTOH, it may be scary. Who knows, right?

[channelpenguin]

I would like to see if the skill of logical thought CAN be taught to (practically) everyone, but even then I don't suppose you can MAKE people practice it enough for it to be the default mode. Sigh.

30 years ago I realised 1) there are people who don't use logic as their primary reasoning tool. 2) there is no point in me discussing anything substantial with such people.

[juan_gandhi]

I mostly agree, but see, the problem may be mutual. Someone who grew in China or India perceives European logic, wired in our minds, as too simplified, compared to, e.g., Jain logic. I personally find the beliefs like "everything's Boolean", or "math is based on sets" as primitive.

And not just that. Take artists. They have their feelings, expressed deeply in what they produce. I don't see how logic can help disambiguate, which piano player understands and conveys Bach and which one is just mechanical. It's somewhere deep in us, and not in everyone.

[channelpenguin]

Gosh yes. Logic is only a tool. To be used as appropriate. But it's one that not everyone has in their toolbox and I find that hard sometimes.

I'm also a musician, songwriter and stage performer and music is definitely much more than its physics and maths!

[bens_dad]

5. It isn't the millionaires we need to worry about.
IIRC I read that if 11 families left the country that would remove 80% of the proposed tax on the rich. Those families will have homes in multiple countries and jet around quite often. Another couple of weeks elsewhere and they wont be UK residents for tax purposes (no need to worry about non-doms) and the government loses most of the tax.

Maybe we need to think about taxing where it is earned, rather than where the earner lives; though profits move much more easily than people.

[nancylebov]

2. Generally good, but there's an error in the video which displaying the importance of actually knowing what you're talking about. It says that you don't need to fact check a poem, well maybe you could count syllables in a haiku. This seems like a person who hasn't had contact with poetry since elementary school.

A good haiku has a change of mood for the last line. Recognizing whether a haiku has it or not would take a lot of knowledge of the world and human emotions.

Many poems include factual material which can be gotten right or not, and there are a lot of poetic forms other than haiku.

More generally, could you beat the hallucination problem by asking the same question of three or more hopefully independent AIs and ask them to report on what the answers have in common? Or beat at least some parts of the hallucination problem?