Ryan Butner
@rsbutner.bsky.social
Data scientist and internet-experiencer
Reposted by Ryan Butner
The UN climate change conference (COP30) having rooms shut down both to flooding and an extreme fire is a bit metaphorically excessive.
November 20, 2025 at 5:49 PM
The UN climate change conference (COP30) having rooms shut down both to flooding and an extreme fire is a bit metaphorically excessive.
Its actually the first challenge any alternative to current politics needs to figure out before even bothering with anything else.
Everyone left of center still engages politics as a TED talk, everything right of center is optimized against minimal information and attention.
The winner is obvious
Everyone left of center still engages politics as a TED talk, everything right of center is optimized against minimal information and attention.
The winner is obvious
The woke 2 cultural and political movement sure needs to preemptively figure out what to do about weaponized trolling as politics if it’s going to get off the ground
November 2, 2025 at 10:41 PM
Its actually the first challenge any alternative to current politics needs to figure out before even bothering with anything else.
Everyone left of center still engages politics as a TED talk, everything right of center is optimized against minimal information and attention.
The winner is obvious
Everyone left of center still engages politics as a TED talk, everything right of center is optimized against minimal information and attention.
The winner is obvious
Reposted by Ryan Butner
Has anyone written about the now widespread problem with AI bot crawlers swamping web hosts across the net as being a kind of distributed denial of service attack by the largest and/or most well-capitalized corporations against the entire rest of the web and the businesses that operate on it?
October 19, 2025 at 1:04 AM
Has anyone written about the now widespread problem with AI bot crawlers swamping web hosts across the net as being a kind of distributed denial of service attack by the largest and/or most well-capitalized corporations against the entire rest of the web and the businesses that operate on it?
Reposted by Ryan Butner
Going to get trains banned by telling people how much water they use
September 28, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Going to get trains banned by telling people how much water they use
We're all "Kids left alone with mom's tablet who fall into an Elsa-gate style algorithm sink" now
I just logged into FaceBook for the first time in years and it’s filled with the most insane AI slop
July 29, 2025 at 2:34 AM
We're all "Kids left alone with mom's tablet who fall into an Elsa-gate style algorithm sink" now
I've felt this pretty acutely in my own work, esp. when put against growing pressure from my leadership to mentor junior/less domain-familiar peers.
I dont use LLMs for particularly exotic applications, but its actually making it *more difficult* to mentor than to just augment myself with an LLM
I dont use LLMs for particularly exotic applications, but its actually making it *more difficult* to mentor than to just augment myself with an LLM
I have to admit that LLMs do make for good software coding partners when asking how to do stuff (not vibe coding), but man it's hard to square the morality of even that use case with the broader systemic issues about them
July 28, 2025 at 1:22 AM
I've felt this pretty acutely in my own work, esp. when put against growing pressure from my leadership to mentor junior/less domain-familiar peers.
I dont use LLMs for particularly exotic applications, but its actually making it *more difficult* to mentor than to just augment myself with an LLM
I dont use LLMs for particularly exotic applications, but its actually making it *more difficult* to mentor than to just augment myself with an LLM
Reposted by Ryan Butner
Reposted by Ryan Butner
the computer knows where it is at all times. it knows this because of unregulated bulk resale of user data and metadata (2025)
July 27, 2025 at 8:52 PM
the computer knows where it is at all times. it knows this because of unregulated bulk resale of user data and metadata (2025)
Reposted by Ryan Butner
The most misleading thing that you will get from people describing their process of solving a problem is how many things didn't work. Elite troubleshooting is constantly hitting your head against walls. You think the experts don't run into this, but they do. They just know all the walls to hit.
July 24, 2025 at 4:23 AM
The most misleading thing that you will get from people describing their process of solving a problem is how many things didn't work. Elite troubleshooting is constantly hitting your head against walls. You think the experts don't run into this, but they do. They just know all the walls to hit.
Reposted by Ryan Butner
ICML’s Statement about subversive hidden LLM prompts
We live in a weird timeline…
icml.cc/Conferences/...
We live in a weird timeline…
icml.cc/Conferences/...
July 23, 2025 at 12:50 PM
ICML’s Statement about subversive hidden LLM prompts
We live in a weird timeline…
icml.cc/Conferences/...
We live in a weird timeline…
icml.cc/Conferences/...
Efforts to fight the war against misinfo on the basis of information lost it by overlooking attention.
It’s interesting that people, like Simon here, have been talking about information overload for over half a century, and yet we still have this scalar view of information (and data) as being a voluminous good instead of it being a complex quality of human behavior, attention, sense-making, etc
July 24, 2025 at 2:47 AM
Efforts to fight the war against misinfo on the basis of information lost it by overlooking attention.
"In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."
There’s actually too much information
The information wasn't exactly hidden. I'm not disagreeing, to be clear, just noting that the larger issue seems to be that the buffet of bullshit allowed for some highly selective consumption. Most everyone knew he was running on mass deportations of 15-20 million. They chose not to believe it.
July 23, 2025 at 4:01 AM
"In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."
Reposted by Ryan Butner
After this week’s display, we’re going to see increasingly coherent and successful attempts at legislating AI knowledge products into mandatorily generating regime-approved “facts”, now that it has been shown that such control is and can be exerted
July 10, 2025 at 3:30 AM
After this week’s display, we’re going to see increasingly coherent and successful attempts at legislating AI knowledge products into mandatorily generating regime-approved “facts”, now that it has been shown that such control is and can be exerted
Reposted by Ryan Butner
In news about people citing AI-fabricated nonexistent works, it sure seems like way too many professionals keyword search sources and drop them directly into a paper as citations without ever reading the articles or assessing the relevance to their argument; which is NOT how research works!
July 7, 2025 at 5:20 AM
In news about people citing AI-fabricated nonexistent works, it sure seems like way too many professionals keyword search sources and drop them directly into a paper as citations without ever reading the articles or assessing the relevance to their argument; which is NOT how research works!
Reposted by Ryan Butner
Tech companies only have five ideas: robot slave (actually just human slaves), hallucinatory counter-reality, untaxable money, The Everything App, and Clippy
June 23, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Tech companies only have five ideas: robot slave (actually just human slaves), hallucinatory counter-reality, untaxable money, The Everything App, and Clippy
Reposted by Ryan Butner
If my computer wasnt offline during house painting I'd dig up the crazy glazing pro-Obama threads on 4chan /b/ lol.
He was cited as the "first meme President."
He was cited as the "first meme President."
June 23, 2025 at 4:30 AM
If my computer wasnt offline during house painting I'd dig up the crazy glazing pro-Obama threads on 4chan /b/ lol.
He was cited as the "first meme President."
He was cited as the "first meme President."
Eventually you need to realize this is less a condemnation of the powers that be than it is of the perennial opposition who is otherwise incapable of doing anything about it.
"Do you want America to be at war with Iran?"
No: 85%
Yes: 5%
YouGov / June 22, 2025
No: 85%
Yes: 5%
YouGov / June 22, 2025
June 23, 2025 at 4:03 AM
Eventually you need to realize this is less a condemnation of the powers that be than it is of the perennial opposition who is otherwise incapable of doing anything about it.
And yet if this war is so unpopular/illegal, why is it still happening anyways?
Check mate, nerds.
Check mate, nerds.
More than 3 times as many Americans believe the Chupacabra either definitely or probably exists than wants war with Iran
June 23, 2025 at 3:44 AM
And yet if this war is so unpopular/illegal, why is it still happening anyways?
Check mate, nerds.
Check mate, nerds.
Reposted by Ryan Butner
While everything is indeed horrible, you are not obligated to solely focus on the horror. The availability of a constant stream of bad news does not make that news valuable by itself. Paying constant attention is not "doing something." So if the information isn't actionable, filter it.
June 23, 2025 at 3:37 AM
While everything is indeed horrible, you are not obligated to solely focus on the horror. The availability of a constant stream of bad news does not make that news valuable by itself. Paying constant attention is not "doing something." So if the information isn't actionable, filter it.
Facebook is great - it shows me all the recent AI trends.
But lately the vibe has been "body horror with a substantial carbon footprint"
But lately the vibe has been "body horror with a substantial carbon footprint"
May 31, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Facebook is great - it shows me all the recent AI trends.
But lately the vibe has been "body horror with a substantial carbon footprint"
But lately the vibe has been "body horror with a substantial carbon footprint"
The inflection point for me on LLM skepticism was in utilizing the models for something outside my wheelhouse/realm of expertise. The model can't outperform me 1:1 at things I am good at, but it can enable me to be passably performant at everything else I suck at.
May 28, 2025 at 3:29 AM
The inflection point for me on LLM skepticism was in utilizing the models for something outside my wheelhouse/realm of expertise. The model can't outperform me 1:1 at things I am good at, but it can enable me to be passably performant at everything else I suck at.
I dont even recall the last time I attempted to look in on X for this very reason. Screenshots that leak out of the platform at, for the most part, the only reason the platform still has any ability to reach the outside world.
One consistently hilarious thing is that people who still maintained their X accounts have NOOOO idea how bad the logged out experience is for non-X users. You can't see shit. Journalists especially who don't understand this are really fooling themselves.
I do love the expectation that everyone can see X accounts or their posts
May 23, 2025 at 3:53 PM
I dont even recall the last time I attempted to look in on X for this very reason. Screenshots that leak out of the platform at, for the most part, the only reason the platform still has any ability to reach the outside world.
Reposted by Ryan Butner
ai has already kind of materially ruined the basic act of looking at pictures
May 19, 2025 at 11:35 PM
ai has already kind of materially ruined the basic act of looking at pictures
Reposted by Ryan Butner
The European mind cannot fathom every American household has two gigabins
May 18, 2025 at 2:13 AM
The European mind cannot fathom every American household has two gigabins