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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • That stops it from making stuff up

    No it doesn’t. That’s simply not how LLMs work. They’re “making stuff up” 100% of the time. If the training data is good, the stuff they’re making up more or less matches the training data. If the training data isn’t good, they’ll make up stuff that sounds plausible.



  • The modern system of prime Ministers where the executive comes from parliament seems to play out better in modern politics.

    Yes and no. The problem is that in parliamentary systems like that, if the government has a majority then they’re unstoppable. In a system with a president who has some actual authority, or a king who isn’t merely a figurehead, the Prime Minister can’t just do everything he wants. There still needs to be some negotiation.

    On the other hand, the world has a lot of authoritarians in it who wore (and in some cases still are) supported by popular votes. People seem really bad at picking leaders who want to serve out a 4-10 year term, then retire to a cushy life afterwards.


  • I think the US chose to have a president act as a sort of a king with a term limit. Other countries saw that and adapted it when they moved away from their monarchies, either giving the president king-like powers or giving them just a ceremonial role as head of state.

    What’s funny is that in the UK and in many former British colonies, there’s still a king, but it’s mostly a ceremonial role these days. So, things have basically reversed. A modern king who’s a head of state is basically a figurehead. A president who is the head of a country may have monarch-type powers.


  • If you understand how LLMs work, that’s not surprising.

    LLMs generate a sequence of words that makes sense in that context. It’s trained on trillions(?) of words from books, Wikipedia, etc. In most of the training material, when someone asks “what’s the name of the person who did X?” there’s an answer, and that answer isn’t “I have no fucking clue”.

    Now, if it were trained on a whole new corpus of data that had “I have no fucking clue” a lot more often, it would see that as a reasonable thing to print sometimes so you’d get that answer a lot more often. However, it doesn’t actually understand anything. It just generates sequences of believable words. So, it wouldn’t generate “I have no fucking clue” when it doesn’t know, it would just generate it occasionally when it seemed like it was an appropriate time. So, you’d ask “Who was the first president of the USA?” and it would sometimes say “I have no fucking clue” because that’s sometimes what the training data says a response might look like when someone asks a question of that form.


  • Canada does have a sort-of similar system. It’s just that the “president” in Canada is “the crown”, which is the Governor General representing the current British monarch. It’s much more of a ceremonial role in Canada, but technically the Governor General does appoint the Prime Minister.

    Australia has essentially the same system as Canada. In 1975 the Australian Governor General dismissed the Prime Minister and picked the leader of the opposition as Prime Minister so that he could call an election. Described like that it seems like a blatant abuse of power. But, the background was a really dysfunctional government. One party had narrow control over the house, the other had narrow control over the senate, and the senate was blocking everything the house tried to do. I don’t know the full details of what happened in that affair, but it seems like it could be a good thing if a Governor General would step in in a crisis resolve a deadlock.

    Canada also has the “confidence votes” part of the crisis in France. AFAIK in Canada losing a confidence vote immediately triggers an election, unlike in France where it can just lead to a scramble to see who can become the new PM among the existing representatives. Because triggering an election is a big deal, it doesn’t tend to happen too often. But it has happened. In 2011 Stephen Harper’s government lost a confidence vote, and there was an immediate election, but he won that election. In 2007 Paul Martin’s government also fell to a confidence vote.


  • For Americans who don’t have a similar system, a “government collapse” isn’t as big a deal as it sounds. It sounds like there’s a complete breakdown in law and order and nobody’s in charge. Really what happens is that the arrangement that so-and-so will be prime minister and his cabinet will be X, Y and Z is off.

    Sometimes it means there are new elections. But, sometimes (as in the French system) it just means that the various representatives all negotiate among themselves to choose a new prime minister. The President then appoints that person. It can vary from the president rubber stamping the decision, to the President getting involved in the negotiations and playing a key role in choosing the next PM. Once the President makes it official, that person becomes PM and then chooses a new cabinet. Before a new PM is chosen there’s a bit of chaos. The government can still vote on things, but the normal process is disrupted because there’s no “first among equals” to lead. In the case of France, normally the President doesn’t (or shouldn’t) deal with the day-to-day running of the government. But, during the previous government’s collapse Macron stepped in to do many things the Prime Minister would normally do.

    One minor twist here. In theory, a French President is supposed to handle foreign policy and defence. The Prime Minister is supposed to run domestic things, including the day-to-day government functions. One reason why this government lasted 14 hours (or 27 days if you count his full time as PM) is that Macron was seen as having too heavy a hand in picking not just the PM Lecornu (picking the PM is technically his job as President), but also in picking the PM’s cabinet (which is supposed to be something the PM does himself). As soon as Lecornu announced his cabinet, the rest of the elected reps saw that it was essentially the same as the one they just voted down a month ago. They said they weren’t going to work with Lecornu’s government, so Lecornu quit immediately.








  • I remember back when my mom was just anxious. That was bad enough, and meant that I’d avoid sharing any problems with her because she’d worry too much. Since then she’s gone off the deep end, believing just about every conspiracy theory that exists. So, now it’s not just that I avoid sharing any problems, or any deep things. I actively have to watch everything I say around her to avoid triggering a rant involving a conspiracy theory.

    I think the anxiety fed into the conspiracies. IMO many conspiracy theorists feel a complete lack of control over their lives, and conspiracy theories make them feel better because they can blame “the powers that be” for their problems. And, even if they still feel out of control, they at least feel like they know the hidden truth of what’s happening. Knowing that hidden truth makes them less anxious. The world is still scary and they have no control, but someone has control, even if it’s someone evil. It’s not just random things happening with no plan.

    Anyhow, I hope your mom just stays anxious and doesn’t go nuts like mine.