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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th November 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 2 days ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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(I get the feeling we're close to this bubble's end.)

Anyways, 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.)

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[-] lurker@awful.systems 5 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

The AI 2027 authors are back: Q3.5 Timelines Update: Looks Like the Intelligence Explosion Will Happen in 2027 After All

It’s all about that new METR data. Took a quick scroll and the whole thing is about forecasting and modelling. Its pretty lengthy so if anyones willing to take the plunge and read it all youll have my thanks

METR recently estimated that Anthropic is now making AI progress about twice as fast as its historical rate (they would not be surprised by anything from 1.3x to 3x), and guessed that “perhaps ≈80%” of the current acceleration is due to AI. If they’re right, that implies an AI-driven acceleration that is 5 months ahead of the AI 2027 scenario.

Going down a little bit:

A 1.7x pace of progress is 5 months ahead of the AI 2027 scenario. AI 2027 predicted 2x AI R&D uplift in Dec 2026; as argued above, this would imply a substantially lower pace of progress than the 1.7x AI-attributable pace of progress that METR’s estimates imply for Nov. So when exactly did AI 2027 predict a 1.7x pace of progress over baseline? We created this trajectory by modifying a few key parameters until it roughly matched AI 2027. In that trajectory, 1.7x acceleration over the 2024.0–2025.5 rate of progress happens in roughly April 2027. So by this metric, we are ~5 months ahead of schedule.

And a chart of their predictions to end it all off:

(Only one person above 50%?)

Mark your calendars everybody!

[-] BurgersMcSlopshot@awful.systems 5 points 8 hours ago

yeah but wen fuckable digital jesus.

[-] BioMan@awful.systems 5 points 15 hours ago

I have had to explain to my boss that METR are cultists

[-] lurker@awful.systems 2 points 14 hours ago

I vaguely remember it being mentioned that one of the METR staff was married to a rationalist (it was either an Anthropic employee or Paul Christiano, I forgot who)

[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 5 points 15 hours ago

It’s all about that new METR data.

Yeah, they seem to have moved on from multiplying sufficiently large matrixes is magic to thinking it's actually the code writing that'll get mystical any time now.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 15 hours ago

One more if statement bro

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 17 hours ago

TED-AI as in the meaninglessly distilled and contrived ted-talk idea of AI

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 10 hours ago

Broke: "it is AGI when it makes A BILLION DOLLARS"

Woke: "it is AGI when it does a ted talk"

[-] BurgersMcSlopshot@awful.systems 6 points 8 hours ago

by that definition we already have AGI. Not because it's that good but rather because TED was already brainrot slop well before LLMs.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 8 hours ago

If AI will not come closer to AGI, the definition of AGI will come closer to AI.

[-] lurker@awful.systems 5 points 17 hours ago

Pretty sure its just a fancier term for AGI (Top Expert Dominating AI)

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 6 hours ago

"Top Expert Dominating" is when someone with a lot of experience makes someone else discover that they're a switch after all.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 4 points 16 hours ago

I intended it as a sneer lol. Aka I don’t see a difference in meanings here

[-] lurker@awful.systems 3 points 16 hours ago

ohhhh

[-] lurker@awful.systems 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

So I went all the way down to the appendix, and found a gem:

Appendix: Ambiguity in “80% of current acceleration is due to AI”. Claude Opus 5.5 gives the following possible interpretations of METR’s claim that “we guess that a majority (perhaps ≈80%) of the current (October 2026) acceleration is due to AI.”

Claude Opus 5.5 gives the follow possible interpretations

Did…did they just say they used Claude for this?? (Ironic, because METR also used a bunch of Claude in the source article)

Also, this is the median value. No mean value and doesn’t seem much modal value. Only one paragraph where they mention that the acceleration was only on well-specified tasks (in the section titled “How large is the (AI-attributable) acceleration in the current pace of progress, really?”)

reposting this r/BetterOffline post for further context on the METR data

[-] BioMan@awful.systems 5 points 15 hours ago

For years the LW types have just been saying 'i asked claude' about EVERYTHING

this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2026
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