AI whisperer, fanciful speculator, husband, dad, creator of @seedsnapp & @go4mebot. Anti-censorship but can't explain Web3 even though he totally gets it.
Tulsa, OK
Joined October 2009
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The Butlerian Jihad and You
There's a weird phenomenon going on with AI and LLMs right now that is very odd to live through.
Usually, the non-technical "normal joe" sees technology as magic. They know it is not real magic, but it might as well be as they have no internal model and cannot conceptualize it except at very basic levels.
The engineers behind this technology obviously know exactly how it works, having built every line of code and printed circuit board and component and mathematical/physical foundation over centuries of human exploration.
Usually, it is the consumer who is amazed at the new technology. The engineer might initially be amazed, but they quickly build an internal model based on their experience; the magic is quickly lost.
AI and LLMs seem to produce exactly the opposite response.
Consumers and "normal joes" seem to have little or no reaction when presented with ChatGPT, for example. To them, it's just a fancier chatbot. It's exactly what they assumed would happen; they've seen such things in Star Trek and to them it is an obvious progression.
But to an engineer who starts using and depending on them, LLMs are literally magic. The engineer has built parsers and chatbots before and knows how hard (if not impossible) it is when using formal programming logic. The engineer has a basic understanding of the underlying foundation of the LLM but cannot possibly predict the output without running it. It's like having the ability to simulate an entire universe based on some specific knowledge and then querying that universe in our shared language. Magic!
I have a feeling that this chasm between consumers and engineers will grow. Unfortunately, this will mean consumers are even more blindsided by AI taking over something in their life, which will cause even more anguish for the now-jobless protestors. Entire religions and political parties have been built on less.
All that to say this: never forget that if the real Butlerian Jihad happens, it probably won't be fought against the machines. It will most likely be fought against the engineers who create them.
Free idea: Halloween Hay Ride for ICE Agents where actors chase them like zombie protestors in blow-up trans-dinosaur costumes
🌱 Josh Painter retweeted
Correct.
Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.
Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.
Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.
Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.
Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.
SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.
That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.
End of story.
Watching our nephew play sportsball and I’m not an expert at it or anything but I have an idea to make it more fun
🌱 Josh Painter retweeted
Dyson Spheres were invented by the Vaccuum cleaner manufacturer Dyson as a proposed final branch of their corporate tech tree, a vacuum so powerful it can even suck off the sun. I mean suck on. I mean suck up I meant
Major Gwen Anderson: Why did you keep kicking him? You had already won the fight. Did you enjoy it?
Ender Wiggin: No. Knocking him down was the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones too.
@orsonscottcard
I believe Elon Musk is planning on using the Retaliator strategy to deal with aggression from the Democrats.
The Retaliator strategy is a behavior in evolutionary game theory that begins peacefully but fiercely defends itself if attacked. A Retaliator always starts an encounter acting like a cooperative 'Dove,' but if its opponent escalates the conflict, it immediately switches to an aggressive 'Hawk' tactic to fight back.
If the opponent backs down and becomes peaceful again, the Retaliator matches that shift and reverts to a Dove. This conditional flexibility allows Retaliators to cooperate efficiently with peaceful neighbors while successfully punishing bullies and predators without being exploited.
It combines a preference for peace with a credible willingness to retaliate, and in competitive terms outperforms both indiscriminate aggression and unconditional submission.
When a Retaliator meets a Bully (e.g., the Democrat Party), the interaction quickly exposes the Bully's empty bluff. The Bully begins the encounter aggressively by playing like a Hawk, which instantly triggers the Retaliator to abandon its peaceful default and fight back fiercely.
Because a Bully usually retreats when faced with real aggression, it panics and flees when the Retaliator pushes back with sufficient force. As a result, the Retaliator wins the entire resource with a low risk of injury, dominating the Bully and driving it toward evolutionary extinction.
The Doves benefit by from being around a Retaliator as well, gaining friendly interactions with it, and protection against bullies.
The Retaliator's strength lies not in seeking conflict, but in making exploitation unprofitable and unfounded agression costly. It cooperates whenever cooperation is possible, fights decisively when fighting becomes necessary, and stops fighting as soon as the threat has passed. In evolutionary terms, its success comes from aligning peaceful intentions with effective deterrence, and a willingness to use extreme measures when necessary.
It's the right choice.
🌱 Josh Painter retweeted
If the British want a Great Firewall, they're going to have to build it - and pay for it - themselves.
Foreign powers shouldn't be able to conscript Americans into their censorship programs.
PASS THE GRANITE ACT.
Foreign censors have no right to threaten Americans with fines or arrest for protected speech hosted on American soil.
Yet regulators like Ofcom can’t be held accountable for these gross violations of free expression because they hide behind the veil of sovereign immunity.
The GRANITE Act strips away that immunity so Americans can finally haul these foreign censors into U.S. court and teach them what the First Amendment means.
🌱 Josh Painter retweeted
I totally agree. Sometimes I wake from beautiful dreams with tears in my eyes, left with a faint impression of mathematical forms I can’t quite recover. What stays with me is the feeling that we understand only a small part of what can be understood, that even our greatest discoveries have barely scratched the surface.
I can’t believe mathematics has entered its heroic age. Every age is tempted to mistake the limits of its imagination for the limits of discovery. We inherit whole worlds of thought that began when someone questioned what seemed obvious. Why should that kind of transformation belong only to the past?
The idea of human imagination working with AI fills me with wonder. What might we learn to see together? What structures might become clear once we learn how to ask the right questions? As some of the fear fades, I hope we leave room for the possibility that our understanding of mathematical creativity will grow.
The struggle to understand will remain. So will our responsibility to tell the difference between a promising idea and a proof, and between a proof and an understanding of why it is true. Greater power to discover may require greater judgment.
Perhaps that is what moves me most: there may be forms of beauty beyond anything we can imagine yet, waiting beyond the questions we know how to ask. I only wish I could live long enough to understand a little of what is coming.
🌱 Josh Painter retweeted
Just launched Turret Control: Operation Lumberjack — a tank-on-rails wave shooter set in the 1945 European Theatre.
Play it here: arcade.digitalspaceport.com
Built in ~1 week with Project Maya + GLM 5.3 Maya-L (1M context, ~350M tokens @ 55 tok/s gen / 1250 tok/s prompt)
The customer is always right. Even about taxidermy.
Raccoon in a Top Hat stays. Hoarding Simulator, by yours truly, only on @spawn
🌱 Josh Painter retweeted
Ofcom Concedes Defeat in the 4chan Case
prestonbyrne.com/2026/10/20/…
My latest @spawn game is "Hoarding Simulator" because my wife and I have been helping my sister and brother-in-law clean out a hoarded out house that they recently purchased. The real life version isn't very fun so I made a game version that is just barely more fun. spawn.co/@joshpainter/hoardi…
