BROADCASTS.com

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/another-bay-area-house-party

[Previously: Every Bay Area House Party]

Blaise Pascal said all human evil comes from inability to sit alone in a room. Your better nature - your rational soul - tells you that nothing good has ever come from attending large social events. But against that better nature stands the Devil, wielding a stick marked \u201cFOMO\u201d. If you don\u2019t go to social events, maybe other people will go and have great times and live fuller lives than you. \u201cAs the dog returns to its vomit, so returns the fool to his folly\u201d, says the Bible. And so you find yourself mumbling thanks to your Uber driver and crossing the threshold of another Bay Area house party.

\u201cHeyyyyy, I haven\u2019t seen you in forever!\u201d says a person whose name is statistically likely to be Michael or David. \u201cWhat have you been working on?\u201d

\u201cResisting the urge to go to events like this\u201d, you avoid saying. \u201cWhat about you?\u201d

\u201cOh man,\u201d says Michael or David, \u201cThe most exciting startup. Just an amazing startup. We\u2019re doing procedural myth generation with large language models.\u201d

\u201cOh?\u201d

\u201cYeah. We fine-tune an AI on a collection of hundreds of myths from every culture in the world. Then we can prompt it. A myth about snowflakes. A myth about mountain-climbing. A myth about lunch.\u201d