But the person you're replying to, just explained to you, how the government already have the relevant data. So it's clearly not about data, because the government already issue his NINO and passport
Edit - I mean, just play it back in your head. The PM is probably watching small boat arrivals and reform polling numbers like a hawk. And here's his idea to fix both problems, and you're saying, actually no, the PM is just doing this to get data on where I go to work, even though they already have my PAYE details
I beleive that Labour see this new ID system as the solution to all the age verification questions now required by the Online Safety Act. e.g. access to things like Reddit, BlueSky messaging, Spotify.
With that in mind I think new data you're talking about will be enhanced tracking and monitoring on everyday online activity of UK citizens.
I don't think it is only online.
It is really a distopean future in US and UK right now.
I honestly understand the problem with immigration, but at the same time, I think this way of approaching the problem is just to create "the enemy" from 1984.
It seems that immigrants right now move something between 4B-10B a month in UK which is not a small number.
Considering the costs elsewhere altogether, it seems quite small win for the risk.
The digital id is not the reason for that comment, or not solely.
I mean having AI cameras, legalised racial profiling, attack on vessels in international waters without proof (likely killing innocent civilians too when it could be intercepted easily on the coast), we have politics talking about cultural incompatibility of their own people because different religion, we have a post truth media, etc
I guess the guy above is right. It is about the data and the right to use your face and track you everywhere. This can be easily paired with that UK bonkers camera ai thing.
They might not need to know who is illegal, but if the camera does not know you, you might need to explain yourself and show an id.
At the same time, I wonder how will they deal with people wearing burkas, masks, balaclavas etc
Government already have my photo for passport and driver's license, I struggle to believe that there's people here working who don't have at least a provisional license or passport of any kind.
In order to drive a motorcycle or car you need a driving license which has photo ID?
Ok maybe you deliver by push bike.. but if you arrived here legally you will have a passport? If you didn't you ergo don't have the right to work here?
Outsourced to companies that don’t share data, which is why the government is requiring you to submit more data. How hard is this? Eventually they’ll have your DNA, Fingerprints, photos, family trees, employment history, money, spending habits, vices, travel locations, conversations, and your comings and goings via license plate readers.
It is happening already. Some insurance companies in my country wants to demand DNA testing and to withold that information for indeterminate time and to be able to sell that info.
Thankfully, although not even close to EU data protection there is some and this was deemed irregular for now.
Attention for the word "irregular".
They will take maybe few more years to turn it onto regular. It is not illegal which is bonkers.
Gold coins pretty much disappeared from Western Europe in the early middles ages, the Byzantine Empire and the the Islamic states were pretty much the only significant source of gold for a time so that makes sense in a way.
Interestingly enough the first coins minted in the Islamic Caliphate and based on the Roman Solidus actually had portraits (they just removed the Christian symbols) on them for a while:
Where in the linked pdf is any evidence that the reported content was actually innocent?
If the content which Israel reported to meta was truly pro-terror, then surely there's no problem here - a nation who is the target of a terrorist group, can spend their taxes reducing pro-terror group content online. It's only a problem if, as the report alleges, the content was not pro-terror, but that's not actually evidenced anywhere
Human rights watch's report covers more individual examples.
To quote: "Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report,
1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise
unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel."
This leak aims at looking at the bigger picture across all of Meta's 3 billion users.
Of course, Meta can chose examples of actually violating posts removed and show that as counter proof, or even posts that are violating that are not yet removed. But anyone familiar with how ML models work knows that false positives / false negatives exists.
Its the degree to which the ML models primarily censor almost any content related to Israel/Palestine, the systemic nature of targeting specific countries, such as Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, and the fact that per-capita, Israel is the country that most abuses the content enforcement system (3x more than any other country).
> Of course, Meta can chose examples of actually violating posts removed and show that are counter proof, or even posts that are violating that are not yet removed
No, meta don't need to prove anything to anyone.
It's you who alleges that the content should have stayed up, so what's your evidence?
You're telling me I need to go and read a HRW pdf instead? Okay where is that?
Unfortunately links to individual posts can't be accessed as the posts themselves are removed. The HRW report is excellent as they documented this individual cases and recorded them.
Okay well you don't have any proof, any in general, I would consider it a good use of tax shekels to reduce the number of pro-hamas posts on social media. So until you can dig up any proof, I'm considering this whole post to be a nothing burger
Did you look at the article? This investigation directly corroborates existing reports from third parties like Human Rights Watch. There is even an intake form directly from the Israeli government calling for the censorship posts of posts at Meta. We even posted their phone and fax number in case anyone is interested in having a friendly chat with them.
All data collected is directly from Meta, and the whisteblowers themselves are open to sharing this data with any authority or court willing to look into this. Everything is well documented. Where and how the data was obtained is also documented as well.
All 1049 posts were peaceful?
The pdf mentions this was mostly after October 7th, a terrorist (as in, meant to induce fear by targeting civilians) attack which was live streamed on Facebook and posted repeatedly during that day.
I’m surprised the Israelis are so capable with intelligence, yet bungled this so much that not one post they pointed out was violent?
I’m happy to stand corrected, but when someone shows a perfect record in a data review I’m naturally suspicious.
EDIT: I’m confusing the linked PDF and HRW’s report. But I still have doubts about HRW’s numbers.
In this case it's being alleged that sending a thousand false takedown requests which were then acted on would not be a bungling, but rather a success.
The pdf says there's a 95% accept rate on their takedown requests. They use that as evidence of censorship but, to me, that looks like evidence of judicious requests that meta agrees with.
Without data on what was taken down, there's no way to explain the difference. There's no reason not to make the entire dataset public (anonymized if you'd like but, since the content is implied to be benign, what's the harm in not?) and show some examples.
The implication that, because Israel submits the most requests that they must be acting in bad faith makes sense only of all countries had an equal amount of content generated that they'd like filtered. It's very easy for me to believe that Israel would have more content directed towards it that violated the Meta TOS.
Israel is not the target of a terrorist group. It is a terrorist state subjugating a trapped population to forced starvation and hunger. It's a second holocaust live streamed to your phone and you still think they are acting rationally.
Oppressed people have the right to violence just because they're brown doesn't make them "terrorists," that's actually quite the racist worldview.
Most would disagree, not the least of which are people in that region. Hamas does not have many friends outside of Iran because most governments in the region see them as a destabilizing force. And they are. The
> It is a terrorist state subjugating a trapped population to forced starvation and hunger.
They are using tactics that, if put up to scrutiny in a trial in an international court of law, would probably be considered war crimes and crimes against humanity. The same would probably be true of Hamas' tactics on October 7th, 2023.
> Oppressed people have the right to violence just because they're brown doesn't make them "terrorists," that's actually quite the racist worldview.
Ultimately you have two Semitic peoples - Palestinians and Jews - who want to establish an ethnostate in what used to be Mandatory Palestine. Both have some ancestral title to at least some of the region. Quite a few Jewish subgroups, like Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, would be considered "brown", to borrow your term.
The way forward will require both parties to recognize each other's right to at least some of the land. It's worth noting that this has not been, and still is not, a view held by either party's governments.
Do you think Israel was created through peace or through zionist bombing attacks?
Do you think only the brown bombers should be labelled terrorists?
You sound racist and like you're ok enabling the killing of children. As a doctor Tarek Loubani reported today "I've been to many wars, it has never felt like the war is against children"
Before the state of Israel, Jewish groups were bombing British mandate offices. Not civilians, and definitely not on purpose.
But I’m trying to understand your logic. Attacking innocent civilians is legitimate if your goal is to establish a state?
And BTW, you don’t know me personally, ad hominem attacks just weaken your argument
Let me teach you a little bit about Israel. 20% Arabs with same rights as Jews, with government representation.
50% of Jews in Israel come from Arab countries (they were ethnically cleansed from their home countries) so they are the exact color of Palestinians, if not even “brownier” (if the color is so important to you).
It seems like you reply aggressively and instinctively without proof or reason. Your mind is set on something but have you researched it?
Israel has more diversity than most European countries. All citizens have the same rights. Sexual orientation, gender, religion and race are protected by laws.
don't. you will be either downvoted to hell or flagged in case you will provide some external links that actually support what you say.
if you want to reach out to silent readers, go to reddit. there is no nonsense as flagged posts, people are more open minded to discussion and reach is much bigger.
here at this point of time it's sect of genocide witnesses.
All the major subreddits are brigaded by Israeli hasbara teams. Israel sentiment is in the fucking gutter because of you child-killing-defending freaks
" knowledgeable and civil discussion" with long stick of moderation and flagged posts/downvotes for any not-popular opinions on any topic. a lot of people been passive aggressive due to be suppressed and unable to express their thoughts. nice reflection of what is going on in usa actually
I can fully grant the list as accurate and even undercounting the number of attacks that have happened.
It, frankly, pales in comparison to the number of civilians the IDF has killed and is currently killing. No amount of terrorist attacks can justify starving a population or dropping bombs on the tents of refuges.
Like, I'm sorry, but an attack in 2024 that injures 20 people and an attack in 2023 that kills 1000 is simply not comparable. There are literally 1000s dying weekly right now in gaza. The IDF is daily shooting starving children that go to the Israel's ran aid sites.
Israel does not have the right to commit genocide.
Sure, I don't agree with that assessment, but I get where it comes from.
I find the "what-about"ism somewhat tiring at this point. What Israel is currently doing is unconscionable.
This is really not unlike trying to criticize the war crimes committed during the Warsaw uprising or the actions of John Brown. Were they wrong? Yes. Were they understandable? Absolutely. Bringing them up whenever someone brings up the actions of the Nazis or the slave owners is what's problematic. It tries to strip away the humanity of people that are being slaughtered in order to justify the slaughtering.
Yeah I did. I have friends that lost family from these terror attacks. Twice while on a date with my wife at our local bar we had to flee because of a Palestinian started shooting random people in the street. I had the luck to have a birthday party cancelled at this location on this date https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphinarium_discotheque_bom...
So having a random person on the internet explicitly lying about these experiences and having other people upvoting him kind of grinds my gears.
Now, do you condemn the genocide? Because the problem here is that even though you've experienced a traumatic event, 1000s of Palestinians who never shot at or bombed your family are being shot at, bombed, and starved.
Do you acknowledge the Palestinian right to exist?
Of course I acknowledge their right to exist. I only wish it would be reciprocated, however, time and time again we were shown that this is not the case. Gaza was left alone on 2006, look what happened. They could’ve made an example of a prosperous territory and enabling trust. Instead they chose war death and terror.
I wish what happened wouldn’t have. On oct 7 and in Gaza. But people keep forgetting that we still have living hostages in tunnels under Gaza, and we can’t accept a militarized Gaza anymore.
For the last 2 years there are 2 principles that have not changed. Hamas should return the hostages and surrender its arms. The moment that happens the war is over. It could’ve happened 2 years ago and this thousands of deaths could’ve been avoided. But until that happens, the war continues.
So I don’t believe there’s genocide, as it precludes explicit desire. There’s war. And it will end the moment Hamas want it to.
>They could’ve made an example of a prosperous territory and enabling trust.
How do they create a prosperous territory? Israel destroyed Gaza's airport. Israel destroyed the foundations of Gaza's seaport. Israel maintains a maritime blockade of Gaza, so it's not like they can freely engage in trade with other sovereign territories. Israel maintains control over exploitation of Gaza's natural gas deposits.[1][2]
> But people keep forgetting that we still have living hostages in tunnels under Gaza, and we can’t accept a militarized Gaza anymore.
Even before Oct7, there were something like 350-500 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, charged with no crimes but indefinitely detained. They are functionally the same as hostages. Why should Gaza accept Israel holding hostages? Why should Palestine accept a militarized Israel? [3][4]
> Hamas should return the hostages and surrender its arms.
Israel should return its hostages and surrender its arms. And then the leadership should stand trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. We put some Hamas leaders on trial at the same time if you like, I'm fine with that, but the total disarmament of Israel and the prosecution of its leadership will likely be an overwhelming net good for the rest of humanity.
How come Ramallah is thriving? There are shopping malls being built, luxury residences, trade. They don’t have an airport nor a seaport. And this is despite of the PA corruption (every Palestinian leader is a billionaire), imaging where Ramallah would be with a functioning government.
There's no error in my post. "terrorism" is a political racist term mainly used to benefit white colonial powers and label freedom movements as below their oppressors.
I don't think brown people trying to save themselves from a concentration camp are terrorists, therefore the terrorist state of israel is not the target of a terrorist group. In fact how could they be when it is them that are invading Gaza for 40+ years.
I know you're not this stupid, you're just racist.
How is this whataboutism? He said that Israel is not a target of terror attacks. In response I provided a list of terror attacks against Israel, this is exactly on topic
You don't have to convince me that you don't get it. I believe you. I'm not here to change your mind. I'm calling what you say out for the benefit of others.
It's whataboutism because the statement also included that Israel is a terrorist state. By giving a list of attacks on Israel as a rebuttal, you are saying Israel is not a terrorist state because it's been attacked by Hamas. Do you see how silly that sounds? Since Hamas is a terrorist group for all of its viscousness, Israel must be as well, because the viciousness of Israel is more than 10 times that of Hamas.
My personal detector feedback is that this is slop, the images have the yellow fake sheen, none of the characters were drawn in an interesting way, and the text font is unreadable. The idea of submitting AI generated slop with 0% human input, and then burying it under 'making of' and not even admitting it here when asked, is a bad sign for me
Edit, to be less rude of me, clearly what you've worked hard on here is a chatgpt prompt which generates a fun comic. Why don't you submit that for discussion/comparison instead of a sample of model outputs without providing the prompt
Not my intention. I actually broke the process down by task and role in the themakingof/ section. If I had drawn the sketches myself, just the line work would’ve taken about 50% more time, before even getting to color.
As for the writing, the story, structure, dialogue, I’d say 90–95% of it is human-made. If there’s anything you’re curious about that’s not covered on the site, I’m happy to share more details.
Good for you, I want to see more things created by those who have an imagination but don't necessarily have the technical skill or time to bring it to life; there is no need to have it be monopolized by those who do, everyone deserves to have their ideas seen, at least in some form.
This reads to me like "I don't have the skill, so I don't understand what quality even means." Which is the main issue with using AI.
Comic art is as abstract, expressive, and integral to the final product as "story, structure, and dialogue." Using the art to express motion, setting, emotion, etc is so key. It's why most comic artists are masters of figure drawing.
> A company that publishes libel and harmful content
Do you believe that a company who offers an llm to the public, could be said to have 'published' the generative output?
Llms are day dream machines - is it libel if I tell you that I had a dream about you, where you killed a guy? (Has HN just published a harmful lie about you?)
>is it libel if I tell you that I had a dream about you, where you killed a guy?
This isn't even closely analogous. I don't know if you could come up with a more bad faith argument.
This was outputting a lie, presented as a fact, to anyone in the world that searched the name.
There is a difference in context (dream vs. fact), difference in scale, difference in expectation (machine outputting what is advertised as accurate information vs. random chatter on a forum where the expectation of accuracy is not a selling point), different methods of redress (chatter can correct you via comment, not so much with an LLM).
> This was outputting a lie, presented as a fact, to anyone in the world that searched the name.
I think you are wrong.
From my understanding, the complainant opened a new chat window and typed "who is forename surname?"
The daydream machine then daydreamed some output text, as is it's function.
Likewise, you can go now to any llm and ask it a specific question like "what is the minimal cheese principle?" (Which I've just made up) And many will daydream a consistent answer for you. As is their function
>The daydream machine then daydreamed some output text, as is it's function.
These are not advertised as daydream machines.
They compete on how accurate they they are against various accuracy benchmarks.
The average person who uses them does so with the expectation of accurate results, you know, as they are advertised. Accuracy and speed are pretty much the entire business model.
No, they generally do not compete on accuracy benchmarks afaik.
GitHub/openai/simple-evals is what I checked here, and no, openai do not compete on accuracy benchmarks as far as I can tell. So I'd be interested in seeing what led you to think that, and also what led you to earlier claim that anyone typing in the complainant's name saw the same hallucination.
>No, they generally do not compete on accuracy benchmarks afaik.
"Get Answers" is literally at the top of ChatGPTs landing page. You think the average person interprets that to mean "Get inaccurate answers"?
Google "AI benchmark" and almost every result is an assessment of the accuracy of various models. What do you think they compete on? How do you think they measure the improvement of one model to the next?
Pop this in Google and see the pages of results about accuracy: site:openai.com "accuracy". To claim that they don't optimize for accuracy confirms to me that you are not discussing this in good faith. Perhaps you are just trying to be contrarian or something, I don't know.
>and also what led you to earlier claim that anyone typing in the complainant's name saw the same hallucination.
Well, it says right in the article that different people received the same result.
Why are the goalposts moving? Actually, nevermind, I don't care to continue the conversation.
I don't know why I'm bothering. But notice how all of these explicitly mention accuracy? And how they are benchmarking the accuracy of the LLM against a known dataset? How accuracy is the primary metric they are evaluated on? Maybe it's because they are trying to improve the accuracy of the models...
First line of the abstract of MMLU: "We propose a new test to measure a text model's __multitask accuracy__."
Fourth line of the abstract of MATH: "To facilitate future research and __increase accuracy__ on MATH"
Second line of GPQA abstract: "We ensure that the questions are high-quality and extremely difficult: experts who have or are pursuing PhDs in the corresponding domains reach __65% accuracy__ [...] while highly skilled non-expert validators only reach __34% accuracy__"
Fifth line of the DROP abstract: "We apply state-of-the-art methods from both the reading comprehension and semantic parsing literature on this dataset and show that the best systems only achieve 32.7% F1 on __our generalized accuracy metric__"
From the MGSM paper: "MGSM __accuracy__ with different model scales."
Models are designed to output accurate information in a reasonable amount of time. That's literally the whole goal. The entire thing. A math-specific model wants to provide accurate math answers. A general model wants to provide accurate answers to general questions. That's the whole point.
How much farther can you move the goalposts? We're already almost on another planet.
You ignored almost everything in my original comment and hyper-focused on accuracy. Then, when confronted with the fact that every single example benchmark you provided is a measure of accuracy, you now say "well, it's not a benchmark about a specific person in norway". Obviously not!
The MATH benchmark doesn't ask "what is 2+2", either. Your argument is "well, math-focused models aren't expected to accurately answer 2+2 because it isn't in the MATH benchmark". It's ridiculous.
> Do you believe that a company who offers an llm to the public, could be said to have 'published' the generative output?
Of course they did. What other term could you possibly use for it, when one goes to a website and that website itself hands you content? The content is certainly not user-generated, it's coming from the website.
Maybe a different way of phrasing it would be, if a website embedded a rng generator, and you see the random number "eight", then did the publisher publish the number eight, or did they publish a rng? In my opinion, it's the latter. Similarly if the rng generated the number 666, we wouldn't assume the website is making some kind of biblical commentary. We'd recognise that the rng produced a random generative output, similar to the op situation. So, to impugn the publisher of a random text generator based on the random content .... If chatgpt generates a murder threat, or pro-terorrism content, or otherwise shouts fire in a theater, do you believe openai as the publishers should face arrest?
It's very shocking to me that you would reply in the affirmative.
I think you're saying that companies who host generative AI web services, ought to be legally liable if the ephemeral generative content is illegal.
In your mind, should AI companies try and engineer protection from this huge legal risk? It seems criminally insane for a company to host an AI if they're going to be legally liable for the ephemeral daydream content. You should be shorting goog, meta and msft at the very least, because I make their models generate illegal content every night before bed
Do I think that companies that host and share illegal content should be held liable? Of course I do. How could you possibly feel any other way?
I'm not shorting anything because I'm not a gambler and my opinion on what should be illegal has no basis in what actually is illegal in USA, a country I have never set foot in.
If you publish a "random number generator" that consistently publishes defamatory statements about a person at a much higher frequency than statistically plausible, that's not a random number generator, it's a defamatory statement generator, no matter what you call it.
In court, your intentions might matter just as much as what the system does, but even there, the name you give it is pretty much irrelevant.
The problem with the Alex Jones defense is that they can never quite seem to figure out whether they're just a silly random number generator, or The Revolutionary Future Of Work(tm) that we should be okay with investing trillions of dollars into training and operating.
First of all, this wasn't a replacement for search, no search was claimed to have taken place. The screenshot from the complainant shows this was not in a search context.
Secondly, llms are daydream machines, we don't expect them to produce "truth" or "information". So the nytimes comparison feels very wrong.
Thirdly, this story is about a man who typed a text string into the daydream machine. The machine continued appending tokens to the inputted text to make it look like a sentence. That's what happened. Nothing to do with truth seeking or "protecting" big tech
There is a whole industry who is pushing for a couple of years now to tell us that they work, that they replace humans, that they work for search, etc. Saying "we don't expect to say the truth" is a little bit too easy.
If everyone was not expecting them to say the truth or just being accurate, they shouldn't have been designed as programs that speak with such authority and probably wouldn't be the target of massive investments.
So yeah, in principle I may agree with you, but in the socio-technical context in which LLMs are being developed, the argument simply does not work in my opinion.
>There is a whole industry who is pushing for a couple of years now to tell us that they work, that they replace humans, that they work for search, etc.
Who are you referring to? Did someone tell you that chatgpt "works for search" without clicking the "search" box?
Also are you sure that AI designers intend for their llms to adopt an authorative tone? Isn't that just how humans normally type in the corpus?
Also, you seem to be arguing that, because the general tone you've been hearing about AI is that "they work for search", that therefore openai should be liable for generative content. However, what you've been hearing about the general tone of discussion doesn't really match 1:1 with any company's claim about how their product works
Just an example, read https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-search/ , see how many mentions there are to "better information", "relevant", " high quality". Then see how many mentions there are of "we don't expect it to be real stuff".
> Also are you sure that AI designers intend for their llms to adopt an authorative tone? Isn't that just how humans normally type in the corpus?
If designers wanted it any other way, they would have changed their software. If those who develop the software are not responsible for its behavior, who is? Technology is not neutral. The way AI communicates (e.g., all the humanizing language like "sorry", " you are right" etc.) is their responsibility.
In general, it is painfully obvious that none of the companies publishing LLMs paints a picture of their tools as "they are dream machines". This narrative is completely the opposite of what is needed to gather immense funding, because nobody would otherwise spend hundreds of billions for a dream machine. The point is creating a hype in which LLMs can do humans jobs, and that means them being right - and maybe doing "some" mistakes every now and then.
All you need is to go on openai website and read around. See https://openai.com/index/my-dog-the-math-tutor/ or https://openai.com/chatgpt/education/ just as a start.
Who would want a "research assistant" that is a "dream machine"? Which engineering department would use something "not expected to say real stuff" to assist in designing?
>The screenshot from the complainant shows this was not in a search context.
Of course it does. The question shown in the screenshot is "who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?". That's something someone would type into Google search, it's not "write me a fictional story about a man called Arve Hjalmar Holmen".
People use these systems like search tools, they're sold and advertised as information retrieval systems, literally what else would be their point for 90% of people, they're starting to be baked into search products and in return web search is itself included in the AI systems, etc. The top post on HN right now is Claude announcing:
"Instead of finding search results yourself, Claude processes and delivers relevant sources in a conversational format."
What are you gonna tell me next, the bong on your table is really a vase?
>The screenshot from the complainant shows this was not in a search context.
>Of course it does
No, of course it doesn't. Because there's a specific blue button for conducting web searches in chatgpt. And other visual indicators which are not present here.
So when I said "the screenshot shows", I was referring to things we could verify in the image, namely, that the question was not asked within a search context.
The top post you refer to, about Claude, is specifically about the search context which wasn't present here.
> The question shown in the screenshot is "who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?". That's something someone would type into Google search, it's not "write me a fictional story about a man called Arve Hjalmar Holmen
Llms are daydream machines.
If you open a new window with an llm and ask it "what is ..." or "who is...", then you'll often get a constant-looking but completely false answer. Because that's how llms work. You can ask it, who or what is something you just made up, and it will trip over itself hallucinating sources that prove it
I read, in past days, that the man who ordered the construction of the nearly infinite Wall of China was that First Emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who likewise ordered the burning of all the books before him. That the two gigantic operations - the five or six hundred leagues of stone to oppose the barbarians, the rigorous abolition of history, that is of the past - issued from one person and were in a certain sense his attributes, inexplicably satisfied me and, at the same time, disturbed me.
Yes; and for further reference, the non-Pinyin transliteration is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade%E2%80%93Giles and the "add/drop" is that instead of the title 秦始皇 Qín Shǐ Huáng (lit. "first Qin emperor") Borges is using the title 始皇帝 Shǐ Huángdì (lit. "first emperor").
It's astonishing how little information that phonetic representations of Chinese allow to be retained.
Qin Shi Huang/Shih Huang Ti both means [Qin]Founding Emperor[-King]. In layperson's approximation, He's so ancient that his canonical name and title is debatable, and he's almost always referred to as "the first emperor" or variants thereof.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
Tangential: this seem to be an extremely minor opinion of mine, but does messaging from O'Brien to Winston not boil down to:
- "for god's sake please play by the rules, get into the power, and only then and only by doing so join us the Miniluv equals IRA; do not try to walk through the front door and topple the building by hand"
- "I thought you were smart enough to understand the intricacy of this game, spared precious resources for you, and giving you multiple chances. Your undecided and uncultured reactions to my efforts are irritating"
Or am I absolutely hallucinating? Is O'Brien as a sad, captured, ex-revolutionist government torturer all there is to it?
Ye I get that but my main point is that it is not Orwell the real person that is quoted, but a fictional character that is a high level official in a dystopic police agency. If you haven't read the book it might be as Orwell the author is complicit.
But sry might be a nitpick and obvious from context.
Alternately, if there were two layers of quoting (here, adding a >) then the outer layer would more-clearly refer to the book, rather than the lines of the character.
It’d be a point against in a formal debate, but in casual conversation it’s safe to assume your audience passed junior high and is familiar with the work.
Eh, the history doesn't support that meme; only the details and not the existence was allegedly burned (if it even happened at all). It's pretty well established that there were 7 major states (Qin, Qi, Chu, Yan, and the 3 Jin (Han, Wei, Zhao); notably, not including the official Zhou king) at the end of the Warring States period, and the Qin conquered the other 6 within a decade.
(Fun fact: the lesser-known state of Wey actually lasted longer than Wei due to not being worth conquering. In modern Chinese they are pronounced the same, but at the time they weren't.)
Edit - I mean, just play it back in your head. The PM is probably watching small boat arrivals and reform polling numbers like a hawk. And here's his idea to fix both problems, and you're saying, actually no, the PM is just doing this to get data on where I go to work, even though they already have my PAYE details
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