CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@ireneista @jepyang

Some trans people think they're morally superior too. "When I use LLMs I do so ethically", that kind of thing.

@elilla

He has some difficulty in thinking things through. If you want to verify that:

Jorge Luis Borges: La casa de Asterión

Jorge Luis Borges, aleph, ficciones, el jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, golem, dones, poema, jorgeluisborges, borgestodoelanio, cuentos

(borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com)

You can vote for more than one option, because why not.

Returning home from the Tarbuch and Loewenthal textile mills on the 14th of January, 1922, Emma Zunz discovered in the rear of the entrance hall a letter, posted in Brazil, which informed her that her father had died. The stamp and the envelope deceived her at first; then the unfamiliar handwriting made her uneasy. Nine or ten lines tried to fill up the page; Emma read that Mr. Maier had taken by mistake a large dose of veronal and had died on the third of the month in the hospital of Bage. A boarding-house friend of her father had signed the letter, some Fein or Fain from Rio Grande, with no way of knowing that he was addressing the deceased's daughter.

("Emma Zunz"; trans. Donald A. Yates)

On the burning February morning Beatriz Viterbo died, after braving an agony that never for a single moment gave way to self-pity or fear, I noticed that the sidewalk billboards around Constitution Plaza were advertising some new brand or other of American cigarettes. The fact pained me, for I realized that the wide and ceaseless universe was already slipping away from her and that this slight change was the first of an endless series. The universe may change but not me, I thought with a certain sad vanity. I knew that at times my fruitless devotion had annoyed her; now that she was dead, I could devote myself to her memory, without hope but also without humiliation.

("The Aleph"; trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni)

I know they accuse me of arrogance, and perhaps of misanthropy, and perhaps of madness. Such accusations (for which I shall extract punishment in due time) are derisory. It is true that I never leave my house, but it is also true that its doors (whose number is infinite) are open day and night to men and to animals as well. Anyone may enter. He will find here no female pomp nor gallant court formality, but he will find quiet and solitude. And he will also find a house like no other on the face of the earth. (There are those who declare there is a similar one in Egypt, but they lie.)

("The House of Asterion"; trans. James E. Irby)

No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sinking into the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the silent man came from the South and that his home was one of the infinite villages upstream, on the violent mountainside, where the Zend tongue is not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent. The truth is that the obscure man kissed the mud, came up the bank without pushing aside (probably without feeling) the brambles which dilacerated his flesh, and dragged himself, nauseous and bloodstained, to the circular enclosure crowned by a stone tiger or horse, which once was the color of fire and now was that of ashes.

("The Circular Ruins"; trans. James E. Irby)

I remember him (I have no right to utter this sacred verb, only one man on earth had that right and he is dead) with a dark passionflower in his hand, seeing it as no one has ever seen it, though he might look at it from the twilight of dawn till that of evening, a whole lifetime. I remember him, with his face taciturn and Indian-like and singularly remote, behind the cigarette. I remember (I think) his angular, leather-braiding hands. I remember near those hands a mate gourd bearing the Uruguayan coat of arms; I remember a yellow screen with a vague lake landscape in the window of his house. I clearly remember his voice: the slow, resentful, nasal voice of the old-time dweller of the suburbs, without the Italian sibilants we have today. I never saw him more than three times; the last was in 1887.

("Funes the Memorious"; trans. James E. Irby)

Like all men in Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, a slave. I have also known omnipotence, opprobrium, imprisonment. Look: the index finger on my right hand is missing. Look: through the rip in my cape you can see a vennilion tattoo on my stomach. It is the second symbol, Beth. This letter, on nights when the moon is full, gives me power over men whose mark is Gimmel, but it subordinates me to the men of Aleph, who on moonless nights owe obedience to those marked with Gimmel. In the half light of dawn, in a cellar, I have cut the jugular vein of sacred bulls before a black stone. During a lunar year I have been declared invisible. I shouted and they did not answer me; I stole bread and they did not behead me. I have known what the Greeks do not know, incertitude.

("The Lottery in Babylon"; trans. John M. Fein)

Following Jorge Gemetto's (@Jorgemet) idea, let's see how do we rank six of Jorge Luis Borges' short stories by their first few phrases, but in their English translations. His selection seems adequate to me; I've added "Emma Zunz"; my cutoff points are arbitrary and in every case make the fragment longer; the order is random; poll at the end.

Traduzco, adapto y amplío algo que escribió una persona otrora cercana que tal vez no quiera figurar acá con su nombre; espero que no le moleste:

Supongamos que tal LLM es una herramienta.

• ¿Quién la hizo?
• ¿Por qué la hizo?
• ¿Para qué sirve?
• ¿Es mejor para eso que los métodos que usábamos antes?
• ¿Por qué yo debiera usarla?
• ¿Podés demostrarme su utilidad en una situación que te proponga?
• ¿Valen la pena los beneficios a la luz de los costos?

...

¿Alguna de esas preguntas tiene respuesta?

Pero nos dicen "es una herramienta", dan por entendido que su adopción general es inevitable y habremos de acostumbrarnos, y no hay objeción que nos dejen pasar, de hecho las rechazan con falsedades y falacias.

El coraje que tiene la gente que pretende seguirme mientras desde otra cuenta promueve un LLM "latinoamericano".

¿Qué parte de mis repetidas opiniones al respecto no se entendieron? ¿"Tecnología que no tiene un uso legítimo" es muy críptico?

#subtoot

@beckermatic @limon

Ah, sí, yo no salgo de mis suscripciones y búsquedas. Nunca la página abierta porque sí, y las recomendaciones son lava.

@limon @beckermatic

yt-dlp me ha dado vida. (Sirve también para Bandcamp y bocha de otros sitios.)

@Jorgemet

No concibo que "Funes" vaya último.

@trinux

¿50% más? Qué payaso.

@trinux

Te suben el precio, se deshace la operación. Sin dudarlo. Siempre me he manejado así y sin arrepentimientos.

@whybird @timonus @wndxlori @deeje

Fair enough.

@whitequark

"Terrorism" and "WMDs", yeah, sure.

@mira @YKantRachelRead

We're indoctrinated into avoiding conflict for fear of being labeled as abusers.