This author seems a tad obsessed. 15 times they threw the word fascist around. DHH certainly has some controversial views that many (including myself) find distasteful, but the idea that he will use his funding to suppress and take funding from politically opposed founders and push fascism is nothing short of conspiracy theory.
Use Omarchy if you like the OS. Don't use it if you don't like it. A political analysis of the founders and leadership behind every product you use must be an exhausting way to live your life
He's on the record supporting Tommy Robinson, who is one of the most prominent fascists in England. He's on the record calling for "remigration" (which is a specific word with specific meaning and context, it's not just synonym for deportation, it's a fascist dog whistle).
I think that's plenty evidence, I'm not waiting for him to tatoo "I am a fascist" on his forehead.
Also, a minimum awareness of the politics of the people producing the stuff you use is actually pretty necessary when fascism is on the rise all around the world. Might be exhausting, sure, but it's better than the alternative
Robinson being fascist is dubious. If you look at the wikipedia on him it doesn't say he is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson It has "Tommy Robinson, is a British far-right, anti-Islam activist", he was a member of the BNP briefly and called Islam fascist.
A bit disingenuous to say "he was a member of the BNP briefly" - that almost makes it sound like he left the BNP by choice!
In reality, he was kicked out because he insisted on prioritising violence over politics (contradicting the BNP's "political soldier" leadership, who said that both should have equal weight). It was this disagreement that led to him coming to prominence in the first place, and he's traded on his "too violent for the mainstream fascists" image ever since.
Accusations of fascism are rarely made in good faith either. As I pointed out in response to @undeveloped, Merrian-Webster's definition doesn't seem applicable to DHH.
or Fascist, plural Fascists : a person who advocates or works to further the aims of fascism : an adherent of or participant in a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition
As far as I can tell, the only thing DHH has that is consistent with this definition is racism/nationalism, but:
1. He hasn't spoused actual collectivist beliefs, like "nothing out of the state, everything within the state" kind of BS (YET), just intra-race and national solidarity, so "exalts nation and often race above the individual" is argueable;
2. I don't see him promoting a supreme leader style of leadership, so "that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader" is not applicable;
3. I also don't see him pushing for stronger state control over the economy. If anything, he probably wants a more developmentists/startup culture economy given point 2 and 3 in (https://world.hey.com/dhh/three-sacred-cows-that-must-die-so...), so "severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition" is out.
Overall, he just seems like a white supremacist atm. Not every white supremacist is fascist.
Central autocratic government, run by a cult of personality leader, seeking loyal disciples willing to subsume themselves into the project. Proud claims to heritidge. Obsession with a veneer of beauty...
I don't know why people are finding this so hard to pin down. Maybe not nationalistic facsism but it sure dresses the same, walks the same, barks the same.
>Europe’s first fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, took the name of his party from the Latin word fasces, which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome. Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.
If you think him getting money from Jack Dorsey and Michael Dell has no political implications, I have a bridge in Brooklyn and a tower in Paris to sell you. This isn't conspiracy theory, this is following incentives.
We should be aware of the motivations of the software we use. This is why we've had licensing fights for decades.
>If you think him getting money from Jack Dorsey and Michael Dell has no political implications,
And the device you type this on is made by which company? Apple? Google? Microsoft? Lenovo? They all involved in politics and lobbying. And it's powered by which ASICS? Apple? Intel? AMD? Nvidia? All of them are involved in lobbying and politics you might disagree with. And yet you still use them and nobody is giving you shit about it.
You're a pot calling the kettle black here. If you wanna get online and do work, unless you're fabbing chips and laptop boards in your garage, you're gonna be directly or indirectly funding some tech business involved in politics you might not like.
So it's pretty hypocritical and somewhat mental of you to spend so many comments here trying to dunk on people willing to use Omarchy just because the owner has politics you disagree. Why can't you live your life and let others live their own in piece without turning discussions into your own political war (which BTW is also against HN rules)?
I am much more likely to get someone to stop using omarchy and actually learn something about computers doing this than I am to convince someone to stop using a Google product. If I be can active when something like this is fresh, I will. And if you think this is just about DHHs politics, think again, its also about having that maniac in any kind of position of power anywhere. I'd say the same if he were an MLM or Kim family fanatic, but those people dont really exist, where weirdo racists do, and in large numbers.
I really dont care about the guidelines on politics here. They seem to have been made by children who are afraid to have their monied friends political passion projects criticized by smart people.
Without knowing what makes consciousness possible, the paper cannot justify biology as necessary - it mistakes a lack of evidence for conscious AI for proof that conscious AI is impossible.
I do not believe current AI or LLMs are conscious, but there is no proof one way or another that they can or cannot be. The paper authors are making up their own definitions and building an argument from them
Your argument requires that there is some objective truth for what consciousness is. It will always hinge on what definition one accepts.
I, and apparently many others, don’t think it would be any useful to describe the mathematical properties of an AI as consciousness. To me it is inherently a way to describe the “experience” arising from physical processes in biological beings as ourselves.
That’s what the argument comes down to for me. Could an LLM “fall unconscious”?
I think you, and apparently many others, are hiding behind mathematical strictures to avoid the discussion. Your argument is actually "what requires an objective truth" Or else you could admit there's no real difference between zapping amino acids with electricity and zapping silicon with electricity.
I would make one further argument: as the top-of-the-food-chain species which originated the concept of consciousness, we get to define it however we want.
Consciousness is defined in the human context. We can just say “hey buddy that’s not biological enough to qualify.”
> the obvious astroturfing that occurs on this site (along with reddit, etc.) when it comes to Grok isn't helping. All I hear about Claude, GPT, Gemini, etc., are how terrible they are, yet any discussion of Grok seems to always revolve around sensible, but confident, assertions that it's actually a great product and every new release is the point where Grok finally catches up.
this is the exact opposite of my experiences on HN and Reddit. In my experience, Grok is typically reduced to hitlerbot and CSAM generator and rarely taken as a serious competitor. People let their hatred of Musk blind them to the tech of his companies
We have Google, Figure, Tesla, Boston Dynamics, and literally dozens of Chinese companies building humanoid robots and making huge improvements in the tech. Not there yet by any means as a general-purpose home assistant, but I don't think it will be too surprising if at least one of them succeeds
If you can't see cases for it you may need some glasses. Replace the graph in the docs of Top-level planner -> mid-level planners -> worker leaf nodes and you get an org chart of CEO -> executives, N-levels of management, and ICs at the leafs. It directly maps to almost any office-based company that can operate completely digitally.
It's obviously in its infancy but fully agentic companies are becoming a possibility, given the right harness, models and tools
Lets separate "workers" from "decision seats", you might need a lot of workers which typically don't actual require inference and might actually just be cheap solvers but actually less decision seats. So i guess it depends on what you are calling agents in your scenario.
1. it's not consciousness we really value, it's intelligence 2. LLMs are not tasty
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