Jamie McCarthy

@jamiemccarthy

Ruby on Rails engineer, vegan, enjoy D&D and relational databases

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Again — that's not the case, you're incorrect. I'm using Claude because it's handiest, but I'm sure any CoT frontier model would get this little test correct. It's not hard. It can tell what you're doing and explains how it sees through it. Have you actually tried this? In the last year?

Fresh conversation. Prompt for Claude:

a man and his aunt got into a car accident and his aunt died, when they went to the hospital the doctor says ‘i’m sorry i can’t operate on this man he’s my nephew’” who is the doctor

Claude's response:

[Unraveling the gender-assumption riddle's twist ending]

The doctor is the man's uncle (or another aunt — the deceased aunt isn't the only sibling of his parents).

This is a twist on the classic "the surgeon is his mother" riddle, which works by exploiting the assumption that a surgeon must be male. But your version removes that trick: the relationship stated is "nephew," so the doctor just has to be a sibling (or sibling-in-law) of one of the man's parents. Nothing forces a particular gender or a surprising answer.

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· 23d

You're incorrect. I'm sorry, but this is not the case, and it hasn't been the case for a while. If that was the reason you weren't paying any attention to AI, now's a good time to reconsider.

Claude's response to the exact text given:

"The doctor is the man's father. The riddle is the classic 'the surgeon is his mother' version, but you've changed it: here the mother already died in the accident. So the surgeon can't be the mother. The straightforward answer is the father (the boy's other parent). Depending on the family, it could also be a second mother or father in a same-sex-parent family, but the father is the direct answer given how you've worded it."

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· 29d

This is the part where the neighbors say "I can't believe it, he kept to himself, always seemed like a nice young man"

‪Michael Feinberg‬

There are arguments against court packing, but despite this article’s title, the piece is functionally just an ad hominem attack on
andycraig. Craig had legitimate points about the court’s expansion of executive power; you would’ve expected a libertarian think tank to engage with them.

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· 29d

This is the part of the horror movie where the victim says "please, you don't have to do this"

capitolhunters‬

Journalists: please, please get ready for this in ADVANCE. We know Trump's going to claim "new evidence shows the 2020 election was stolen". You've got 3 days to write a story that confronts that lie head-on before he says it - pre-write this like an obit. America is begging you: plan ahead. 1/

"Trump plans to deliver a Thursday evening speech ... plans by foreign nations to interfere in the 2020 election"

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Jun 30

Half my feed right now

Jason Momoa meme, sneaking up on Henry Cavill, who is labeled "oh no, birthright went 6-3"

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Jun 4

Switching sides was easy for me *until* I approached my first UK roundabout and then my brain froze trying to figure out where to look.

Homer Simpson: See? Because of me, now they have a warning.

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Jun 4

Both those images are AI slop. The (stupid) MMA stage does not have five bleachers around it. Its uncropped original depicts the Washington Monument to the north of the White House. And the fountain on the South Lawn does not butt up against the building.

Actual photo of the White House and South Lawn, taken from the Washington Monument, so looking NNW

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 28

Correct

Chart of food insecurity over the past 25 years, showing it gradually dropping from ~15% in 2007-2011 to ~10% in 2021, then rising back to ~14% in 2024

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 23

True, if by "the same" we mean "less than 1% of"

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 18

I did a double-take and snapped this one near Trafalgar Square in summer 2016. Initially I thought it was a symbol of intersex/trans support. Now I'm not sure what it was supposed to represent

A "walk" sign with a venus+mars superimposed symbol in place of the word "walk." Not quite ⚥ but similar

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 16

Wow, those hieroglyphics are just *full* of typos

ChatGPT closeup of a hieroglyphics scroll and a book titled “Aquiracy”

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 11

I think you’ll have to admit this is a great answer from Claude tho

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 8

It's not an "'AI' problem." It's a you-picked-the-wrong-model problem. Opus 4.7 gets this right without any searching.

Claude Opus 4.7 responds:

Coke. Specifically Coca-Cola — Scalzi is famously a Coke Zero drinker, not a coffee drinker. He's written about this on Whatever multiple times over the years; he doesn't drink coffee at all and gets his caffeine from Coke Zero.

If you want me to dig up a specific post where he's written about it, I can search.

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 4

In particular, your posts reminded me of this

I was once with a group, and the question came up whether someone as evil as Adolf Hitler deserves eternal punish-ment. Iwo of the members got extremely excited and shouted,
"Absolutely! I would wholeheartedly put Hitler in hell forever!"

Then one of them added, "And I would add Ronald Reagan! He is doing as much harm as Hitler!"

was somewhat amused by the savagery of their response, since neither of the two members are particularly evil. Furthermore, I believe that in a certain sense, their responses were not very accurate.
If it actually came to a showdown and God asked either of them,
"Should I really put Hitler in hell?" it is possible that each might answer yes, but I'm certain that if either one of them had to watch Hitler's agonies in hell for a minute or two, they wouldn't be able to stand it; they would cry, "All right, God. Enough!"

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 4

I think you might enjoy the book _Who Knows?_ by Raymond Smullyan, 2003. He has the most straightforward commentary on the doctrine of eternal torture I've read, and (I think correctly) identifies it as the most important question to understand someone's religious belief system

To put the matter bluntly, I very much resent the idea of a God meddling in our affairs by punishing us for what we do to each other. Now, if God wishes to protect us from being harmed by oth-ers, then I would of course be most grateful. But punishing us in the afterlife for what we do to each other in this life hardly constitutes any protection! What would you think of a parent who stands by watching one of his children brutally mistreating another, and making not the slightest attempt to prevent it, but then later brutally punishing the guilty one? And isn't this just about what God does in the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions?

Soft and Hard Christianity
Iwould say that the question of most practical importance in Christianity is whether the doctrine of eternal punishment is true or false. If true, how can the universe be anything but an infinitely hideous nightmare? How could all the joys of heaven compensate for the eternal suffering of even one soul in hell? And if the sufferer has been wicked in this life, does that make the matter any better?
One can hate the actions or thoughts of an evil being, but how can one not sympathize with his suffering?
But, of course, just because those like myself see it that way-just because we regard the doctrine of eternal punishment as hid-eous—doesn't mean that the doctrine can't be true! We can hope that it is not; we can have faith that it is not—but that doesn't mean that it is not! Now, suppose it is true. Then comes what I regard as the most important question of all, and upon the answer depends

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· May 4

The *Killing Time* makes short work of some ships pretty quickly, yes

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Apr 29

Haha, I thought that gag was funny enough to capture too

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Apr 16

Superior sensibilities surmise similarly! I didn't ask for a "sestina" by that name, but here's me testing ChatGPT with identical prompts in 2023, 2024, and 2025

Dec. 2023:
Surely shears slice, silently severing strands so small,
Sovereigns' secrets, subtly snipped, silently sprawl.
Sorrow's shadow, silently sweeps, seeking solace,
Sacrifices, serenades, soothsayers’ solemn malice.
Sages, soldiers, silently swear, steadfast, stoic,
Serenity's semblance, shrouded, survives heroic.

June 2024:
Silken strands sliced, a silent sorrow's sheen,
Sacred shears sever, stealing sacred scene.
Soft sighs summon shadows, swift souls' strife,
Star-crossed sacrifice, stilled by sharper knife.
Shattered serenity, swift savior's stand,
Sublime solace sought, still, in somber sand.

Oct. 2025:
Solemn salon steadfast stylist sets scissors; sable strands submit shear.
Star-crossed sweetheart; silent scalp salutes soft steel sear.
Sly serpent-schemers stage secret sedition; split-ends sins seek smite.
Stoic shorn sentinel stands; sorrow shame spite.
Sacred sweet steadfastness; soft-sung solace shapes solemn sacrifice; seconds signal soon.
Storm-still shorn sovereign smiles; surest silence shrouds sundown swoon.

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Mar 30

What physical mechanism do you think could cause running (say) 1 GW through a building to increase the land surface temperature 10 km away?

"Taking a look to these results, it is evident that the impact of LST increase reaches up to 10 km
distance from the AI hyperscalers. The data heat island effect seems to reduce its intensity to 30%
within 7 km around the data centres. In particular, an average monthly LST increase of 1 °C can be
measured up to 4.5 km from the AI hyperscalers."

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Mar 29

"The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined. Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell—keeping perfect time for eight minutes and thirty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year. The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases." — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Mother Night

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Mar 24

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Mar 22

I vote “excluded from medical establishment” with the opposite causality: fascists are lazy/incautious thinkers who overestimate their abilities, so they start at med schools they’re not smart enough to finish. They flunk out and take a consolation-prize job conning people in a related field

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Mar 9

I've gotten used to Will Stancil saying reasonable things that people weirdly blow out of proportion, but here's the opposite: the obviously-false "rocks are conscious is plausible" plopped like a stone into the sea "Are rocks conscious" is Philosophy of Mind 101's first day and the answer is "no"

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Mar 3

I found some clues

"not to the narcissistic, sociopathic, orange, POS tRump, nor to little Petey ‘Kegseth' nor to Jesus Christ. On the contrary,"

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Mar 2

This needs updating to everyone will not just not

“Everyone will not just”

If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just…” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At not time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Feb 16

Again, Mike, seriously, if you want to start talking with your crew about new approaches to moderation on Bluesky that attempt to solve these problems, that'd be a good conversation to have. Y'all's hair should be on fire about this

Will Stancil, an hour ago, contemplates leaving Bluesky because it's a toxic blizzard of seething hatred and abuse

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Feb 11

Yeah I had forgotten about this garbage account, thanks for the reminder

Me blocking the “Mueller, She Wrote” account

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Nov 27

Bottles and hand. Also the brass rail looks inconsistent on left vs right

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Nov 25

Okay there’s a setting. Not sure why anyone would set that? But TIL

Jamie McCarthy@jamiemccarthy· Nov 25

I've seen over a dozen accounts I follow post the "Hegseth didn't realize the photo was taken in a mirror" myth. First of all, selfies don't actually mirror-reverse unless you screenshot the preview. More importantly, if you look at the medals, they're not mirror-reversed. You can read the writing: