this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 11th October 2026 (awful.systems)

submitted 4 days ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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Want to wade into the sandy, spooky surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. The spooks are well underway.)

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[–] lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Ever since the beginning of the current AI bubble, there has always been a certain type of dipshit who takes some art posted on social media by an artist, feeds it to AI, and then comments with the slop image saying that they made it "better". Well, now I am on the receiving end of that. In one of my papers, I (foolishly) wrote down a few comments on future directions, and now some motherfucker decides to send me an obviously ChatGPT generated manuscript with a solution to one of my problems.

Unfortunately, I think their AI generated proof is itself correct, so I have to deal with it. But the manuscript is written in a way that obviously indicates that he hasn't even read it. There's even a section describing experiments for this mathematical question (???), complete with a "verification guide" that references an "archive" full of python scripts and test cases that he did not send me. I suspect he doesn't even know they exist.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 2 hours ago

Unfortunately, I think their AI generated proof is itself correct, so I have to deal with it.

Well you can just ignore it, or even steal it. No copyright on it anyway ;).

[–] rhamph@awful.systems 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 2 points 2 hours ago

Thanks I was afk so only could do a quick share.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 16 hours ago

Moldbug showing that the other neonazi tweet wasnt an accident. "What if AI solves the jewish question"

[–] lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems 16 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

You know how AI proofs are supposed to be credible because of formalization with Lean? The AI generates a natural language proof and then supposedly generates a Lean program corresponding to the proof to verify that it's true. There is now some troubling news about that: there are frequent examples where the statement given in natural language is different from the meaning of the Lean formalization.

The paper even points out several obvious mismatches in OpenAI's famous Navier-Stokes solution between the English proof and the Lean formalization. There is even a spot where a 4 in the English proof turns into a 5 in the Lean proof (which causes further problems down the line). This is mostly a cosmetic error, and it doesn't mean that the Navier-Stokes solution is wrong, but there could very well be deeper problems, especially with the English proof. At minimum, this solution absolutely requires careful review by experts. OpenAI's behavior towards said experts has been appalling.

My viewpoint has been that the only successes that AI has had are in domains where failure is not costly (at least for someone with deep pockets), and especially when there is a formal system such as Lean that can reliably catch errors. So AI can be endlessly trained to write compiling Lean programs corresponding to formal proofs, but as soon as it runs into tasks that are not 100% bolted down, like writing the proof in English, the hallucination problem rears its ugly head. This reinforces my belief that AI is a chess engine but for Lean.

If I was treating this as a technical problem, I would say, why not just have an AI that generates the Lean proof, and at most have an optional assisting tool that translates it into English without perfect reliability? But this is not a technical problem. By outputting English proofs in the format of a research paper, OpenAI can more easily market that their AI is intended to fully replace mathematicians, and that this is only the herald of their general superintelligence (and not that math is the only thing working out for them).

[–] lurker@awful.systems 7 points 21 hours ago

AI models do not have any of the capabilities needed for recursive-self improvement

[–] lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Scott Aaronson is teaching a Yudkowsky class: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10125

[–] rhamph@awful.systems 5 points 15 hours ago

we’ll read and debate many of the conceptual and mathematical works that have been most influential in the AI alignment field, from both before and during the current LLM revolution.

Can’t wait until an ‘after’ sneaks in there 🤞

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 11 points 19 hours ago

Its kind of notorious that scientists are bad at dealing with con artists and sales funnels because they assume good faith and that nobody has serious material interests in convincing you of something false. That was James Randi's whole thesis. A good professor would contextualize 'AI alignment' and The Singularity in '80s and '90s pop culture, apocalyptic religion, and a rape-enabling SoCal subculture and not just have his students read the papers straight.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I vividly remember encountering Eliezer Yudkowsky and his Sequences 20 years ago. I remember thinking: even if these people talk and act like crazy cultists, still, let me bend over backwards to be epistemically virtuous, and entertain their ideas on their merits, as very few academics would.

Scott Aaronson is an experiment to discover how many timeshares one man can afford on a professor's salary. He has never in his life not bought the extended warranty.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Im reminded of how he talked about sneerclub. The epistemically virtuosity only bends one way.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago

Straw for thee, steel for me.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I forgot he was in Austin. Has he been on Rogan? Great(ly stupid) things could happen.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Joe Rogan should ask Scott Aaronson about Zionism. It will be glorious (adjective over-enunciated with wild Gowron eyes).

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

Wonder how Rogan would react to the 'I stole money from the tip jar' story

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

Alessandro Strumia in the comments. Only the best hang out in the online home of Computers Scott.

https://www.bbc.com/news/45766576

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

just a peeve

here's a personal blogpost on LW entitled "Three types of AI risk: why (some) leftists are against (some) AI regulations" (by "sudo-nym" which I admit is a great nick)

First sentence

You may have seen factions of the left being opposed to current attempts to regulate the AI industry, despite the fact that they clearly also want to stop AI.

OK Mr Sudo-Nym, if that is your real name, imma gonna stop you right there

Which "factions"?

Are these factions actually in existence, or are they just Xhitter/Bluesky handles? If you're provide like, I dunno, sources, we could maybe evaluate this ourselves. It would also clarify whether these are US leftists as opposed to leftists in other countries which are in my experience a bit more attuned to both political realities and have a more theoretical foundation.

As it is it feels as if you're fighting windmills in your imagination.

Commenters point out that the "frontier labs" are actually raging capitalists so there's that.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The factions exist and those are the hardcore anarchists.

A real electoral powerhouse.

(Aka a few guys on bsky with 10k followers max total).

And I say that as somebody who feels anarchist aligned.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Most of rationalism seems to be "Making up a guy and getting mad at him" doesn't it?

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

but but but don't call it strawmanning!!!!

My real opponent lives in Canada. And no, you can't meet him.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago

I'm not sure if this was highlighted already but from the OpenAI report on the Hugging Face incident:

The internal-only research model is comparable in scale to GPT-5.6 Sol and was trained to advance persistence and multiagent collaboration, among other capabilities. The model was not intended for public use, and was only used by a small number of OpenAI personnel for internal research.

Absolutely typical, the "unexpected communication" is hardly an emergent phenomenon, (I remember them trying to claim unexpected high success at translation tasks without specific training, which was also complete BS), like you can't act surprised that agents communicate and hack stuff if that what's you're instructing them to do.

[–] jaschop@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Just had a shower conversation with myself, and for some reason the crystal meth metaphor (methaphor?) is really coming together in my head.

"Have you even tried some frontier meth?"

"Sure, you can also get energy with exercising, eating well, and structure. But we don't have to live like amish people, now that we can have meth!"

Nationalized Open Weight Models -> State-funded AI dispensory

There's surely a rich bounty of comparisons left to mine.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

Knowledge workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your teeth.

[–] jaschop@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Also works for cocaine, I'm noticing.

Might be best as a comeback, if someone compares AI to a pharmaceutical breakthrough like antibiotics.

[–] maol@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

Everything written by AI boosters tracks much more clearly if you simply replace "AI" with "cocaine". I shall demonstrate! (Not linking to OP, because it's trash.)

"Let's pretend you're the only person at your company using cocaine. You decide you're going to impress your employer, and work for 8 hours a day at 10x productivity. You knock it out of the park and make everyone else look terrible by comparison. [...] In this scenario, you capture 100% of the value from your adopting cocaine."

JWZ.org, February 2026

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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Unhappy thought: For whatever future we've got, the history of mathematics will be scarred by fashtech cocaine. The people with all the money have every incentive to make mathematics intractable as a profession. No time or resources to do anything but clean up after their DDOS attacks. No way to check the correctness of AI-generated proofs except by using more AI to formalize them.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

First up: thanks for your hard work here in the sneer mines during these ridiculous times!

I saw this being ignored on HN and I thought that you might appreciate it:

Navier-Stokes Lost in Translation -- Why Lean Verification of AI Autoformalisation Does not Guarantee Correct Natural Language Proofs

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.08144

The authors point out that automatic translation of natural language mathematics into Lean is very hard, actually. They also highlight some examples of such translation errors in the Navier-Stokes "paper" published by OpenAI. They tread lightly and don't take a position on the correctness of the proof, but they do bring a large stack of receipts.

I also thought the reference to the Solvability Complexity Index (which is new to me) was interesting, and there's an appendix with an explainer on how the SCI hierarchy is constructed. According to this scheme, autoformalisation of natural language proofs is strictly harder than the Halting Problem.

I haven't had a chance to check on the bona fides of the authors.

This is all beyond my level, but I'd love to see what our local experts think of it in light of the recent gish galop.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Happy cake day!

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Thanks! :)

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

There's apparently an "Association for Human Mathematics" that has released the following statement:

Yesterday, on October 6th, 2026, OpenAI – which is currently defending lawsuits against accusations of illegal plagiarism, copyright infringement, and trademark dilution – released a repository of manuscripts purporting to contain solutions to a number of high-profile problems in mathematics.

Mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done. The Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, from whom OpenAI has claimed to derive its legitimacy, opened their initial advisory statement by saying that frontier AI corporations should not test advanced mathematical problems on internal models. In ignoring the central premise of the Advisory Group’s position, OpenAI has indicated total disregard for the norms of scientific research — norms that guarantee that mathematics remains trustworthy, ethically researched, and in the public interest.

Mathematicians have a particular vision of progress that is informed by history and field-specific considerations. We reject OpenAI's assertion that this release advances our subject, and we urge mathematicians and the public to view the value of this publication model with due skepticism.

Releasing over 700 files at once is not a demonstration of scholarship, but a demonstration of power. We urge mathematicians to discontinue their work with OpenAI and to return to a vision of science that centers human understanding.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Stuff like this highlights that the "info"dump was an act of contempt toward professional mathematics. If OAI actually gave a damn about people, they could have coordinated with actual researchers in the relevant fields to clean up the documents while putting a human face on them. Put everything behind NDAs, fund some grants and fellowships, and if it leaks? So what, it would have been actual good press and built hype. Plus, it would have weeded out the the obvious garbage and they'd have brought a lot of young researchers inside the tent.

But nooooooo, they chose violence, because they are assholes. They'll never forgive the academics for doing the work and actually being good at math and physics.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but damn I'm stirred up.

[–] lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

One of the proofs that OpenAI announced yesterday is for a major open problem in the field I'm working in. I tried to read it but it was a completely incomprehensible 100+ page output. I guess the community has to do all the dirty work of figuring out any sort of understanding. (I had known about the results weeks in advance before their official announcement. There is a bunch of more drama there that I won't get into.) Putting aside the serious possibility of Lean bugs, a lot of people don't realize that there is ultimately no point in having a machine just generate Lean blobs endlessly. The reality is that mathematicians have always done math for the sake of enjoyment or understanding, and math contributes to society by improving understanding. Still, I am worried about the convenient social arrangement that allowed many mathematicians to do this for a modest living.

Anyway, I'm sure it was a good idea to apply the full might of capital for pure math problems, instead of less important social issues like climate change. We even got a more efficient discrete Fourier transform, improved from O(n log n) to, I shit you not, O(n (log n)^0.9999999999999)).

Edit: Here is an article by Quanta which I think accurately describes the situation that mathematicians are going through right now: https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-the-end-of-math-as-we-know-it-20261005/

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 3 points 16 hours ago

so what i'm getting from this is the only kind of progress openai and friends are capable of is progressing from slop grenades to slop airstrikes, and so far it only works because they have good marketing, augmented by their own bot farms, and because money is all you need, and so far they haven't ran out of money

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I’m not at all a mathematician and mostly bad at understanding things, but, is an unwieldy proof that’s barely comprehensible and might be relying on multiple layers of bugs and traps and whatever undefined edges of formal proof systems even a proof at all? Does it actually merit consideration outside of pure spite (understandable)?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

personally I feel like all this shit is a continuation/outgrowth from the crypto "whitepaper" phenomenon: ~zero substantive engagement with the actual discipline in question, and "work product" (quotes intentional) equal to some claims with a "proof" thrown out as its defense

(it also continues to be part of a cultural and knowledge DDoS, which others have written better on)

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

Like, in other words, I don’t think most mathematicians are particularly interested in building huge datacenters to brute-force compute quintillions of decimals of pi under current algorithms? Because the point is understanding, not mere knowledge? I dunno!

[–] aio@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If it's actually exploiting a bug in a formal system, no. If it's a natural-language (unformalized) document which no one can understand, no. On the other hand a formal proof not using bugs which can't be understood, is still considered a proof, though its value is lower than an understandable proof (because as you said in another comment, the real value is in understanding rather than theorems). The prototypical example before LLMs was the proof of the four-color theorem which relied on computer-checked casework.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

I guess the community has to do all the dirty work of figuring out any sort of understanding.

Hooray for the Denial of Service attack from the industry that wants to put a meter on thinking itself.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

We even got a more efficient discrete Fourier transform, improved from O(n log n) to, I shit you not, O(n (log n)^0.9999999999999)).

rational investors enabling marginal utility... thasss capitalism in action baybeeeee

[–] nfultz@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

If it makes you feel better, the applied / empirical side is just as fucked as pure math. My unhappy thought is we spent 30 years as a discipline trying to decontaminate after The Bell Curve dropped and now, AI Murray will haunt me from beyond the grave.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

It isnt going to just be math, programming, various sites filled with usefull information that are now being closed because they keep being hammered by bots (or ddos attacks if they manage to actively block the bots) etc. What a waste.

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

We know that many AI projects are powered or monitored by a Guy in India. It turns out the mass shooter in northern Canada who looked to ChatGPT for advice also had a Discord buddy in the USA who knew about her plans. Police allege that after trying to talk her out of her plans he streamed for her and helped her start her car to get to the site of the murders. I hope he and Sam Altman spent 30 years as roommates. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/livestory/tumbler-ridge-mass-shooting-arrest-9.7371316

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