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by simianwords 9 days ago
Strange thing to say. The post does a good job of showing that there is no evidence Claude had anything to do with the regressions.

Your problem is that this was shown? You don't value epistemics -- you care about the ideology more than truth. Even if you don't like AI you should still do it in the right way.

Your comment comes across as more unself aware and more destructive. Lets keep this place truth first and ideology second.

2 comments

This article merely showed that one particular sample (two releases of rsync) or not statistically significantly different (p > 0.05) on one particular metric (bugs per commit). All that says is that you cannot generalize group difference over the population using that sample.

This still leaves the anecdotal evidence. And anecdotal evidence is still evidence, and in the absence of better evidence, it is perfectly rational to react based on the evidence you do have.

Yeah yeah the usual "look, these anti-ai people are so EMOTIONAL and HYSTERICAL while we're very logical and fact-based", I've lurked for a while so I read that one plenty of times.

OP spends a lot of time time doing statistics, but when another person replies "hey, 2 claude-authored features is not really statistically significant", the author literally agrees and says "my point was to show that you can't draw conclusions". Direct quote:

> I'm only trying to show there's no evidence for the anti-AI hypothesis

---

And here's another thing. How exactly is it self-unaware to say "Hey, I get your frustration with people being assholes, I'm not excusing it, but it can never hurt to understand why some of them have become so extreme in their vitriol, here's a few reasons for their feelings".

Is "feelings" a curse word or something? What's so wrong with understanding the emotional component of the AI discourse?

Talking about "emotions" is not destructive when the topic at hand is literally people being driven by emotion under a github thread.

What the article is saying is "these people are acting irrational because they're evil and the enemy, so here's how I prove them wrong with statistics!", and my comment to the article was "hey, you seem to go with the assumption that this is all based on pure evil, here are a few reasons why people might get tired, and then angry, about this whole thing".

You quite literally exemplify my point when I said that the analysis is mostly just >ammo for your next "debate with your anti-AI ennemies", it's a tool that allows you to not engage and dismiss any argument as "not on the side of truth because not on the side of the numbers".

All of this even though, and I need to state this again, I never once rejected the analysis or the results that OP came to, all I did was point out that OP is also engaging in "us vs them" think with the occasional "wink wink, CLASSIC AI hater amirite?" sprinkled in the article.

If someone spouts untruths, that is a failing of theirs. Talking about how there's emotions of theirs that back this promulgation of untruths, emotions which you could understand if you tried, is putting the cart before the horse. First express things that are not trivially false, then I will try to understand what you mean by it.
You keep trying to twist what I'm saying into "guys you have to be nice to the ai haters and meet them at the middle, even when they insult you :))))". Once again you have this kneejerk reaction to the words "emotions" and "feelings" as if it would make you weak to acknowledge that "humans feeling a certain way act a certain way".

I'll once again have to remind you that all of what I said was just "yeah these guys are really pissed off, here's why they might be" and never once asked any of you to agree with them, or that their conclusions about rsync were right, or anything like that.

You act like "understanding" is only ever a gift/favor you do to someone else. While it's true that in many cases it is, "understanding" can also be something that just helps you and doesn't require interaction or agreement, it's when you think "oh there's no debating with these guys so it's probably not worth it to engage" or "oh these people are talking about X but it looks like the Y underlying issue is the actual problem, so talking about X might be a waste of time".

You completely disregard human emotions as if doing so makes you stronger, but all it does is make you more confused, surprised and angry whenever you're faced with irrational reactions you can't understand.

Now if you decide to interpret all of that as me saying "I am in moral agreement with the dogpiling and the witch hunts shown in that github thread", that is a failing of yours.

I don't think any of this relates to the post it's replying to. I appreciate the totally failed attempt to psychoanalyze my emotions, though. If you think I'm 'confused, surprised, and angry', you don't seem to be as good at the emotions thing as you keep acting like you are.
But it does relate, dunno what to tell you. You think it doesn't relate because your reasoning stops at "they're not right so there is literally nothing else that's relevant about any of this", and what I'm saying to OP is "they're not right, and here's why those people would go around being wrong on the internet, and why a big (statistically insignificant) debunk will mostly just be you preaching to the choir", I'm steering the conversation that way because I felt it would be more productive.

There's nothing more I can say that I haven't already said at this point, understanding that people have emotions (and once again, understanding!= agreement) literally has no downside for you when looking at any kind of discourse.

Call me preachy or whatever, I'm just trying to find a topic of discussion that's not just the usual yelling past eachother: "Large providers have ROI!!" vs "Large providers are in the red!!", not opening that can of worm.

What in the AI discourse is trivially false? On one side we have almost all the money in the world, owners of giant social media companies, with easy access to media, who buy ads, etc. to tell you that half of us will be out of jobs in the next 6 months, that AI superinteligence is coming next year, that singularity is upon us, that Claude Mythos will cause so much harm it has to be contained, etc. etc.

I consider all of the above trivially false untruths. But on the other hand you have rsync users who are fed up with all the lies, all the propaganda, all the fear mongering brought up by literally the richest people the world has ever seen, who have experienced AI slop first hand, who have been tricked by AI music, are fed up by all the AI generated posters at their local coffee stand, have given up on trying to correct their coworkers AI generated code during peer review. And now these rsync users see AI slop has been pushed to their favorite tools, and see a new bugs popping up at the same time.

I consider the latter a completely understandable reaction. Yes they jumped to conclusion, but in doing so they have evidence. They have both anecdotal and circumstantial evidence for their conclusions. In comparison, the AI singularity people have nothing but vibes and science fiction behind their conclusions.