Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
No bio...
User ID: 102
I broadly agree, and though I don't have inspiration to say too much, I will leave a quote that captures our atheist condition rather succinctly:
...In such a world, you are living your life inside a coffin. Now, this may be a large coffin, and certain things like love and family and rewarding work or temporary artistic experiences may distract you or please you for a certain time, but that time will pass and those things will fail and die, and you will be in the coffin whether you distract yourself from that horrible reality or not
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
There is a Twitter account called "Trump history" and it's somehow the funniest thing on the internet I've seen in a while. It's like a historical trivia account, except every post alleges Trump's role in every conceivable historical event, backing it up by an AI-generated illustration.
There's something hilarious in the idea of Trump as a fixture of human civilization, guiding and guarding mankind through millennia.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
I wonder what makes this line of thinking so tenacious that I have to keep having this conversation again and again. Maybe its time to compose a copypasta for this occasion or something...
Anyway, a state with a nuclear triad just doesn't suffer the same risks as Russia did during the times of Napoleon or Hitler. It's true that any state would prefer to not have potentially hostile neighbors on its doorstep, but for Russia, this train has departed long time ago. As for Ukraine, it didn't look like they would be invited to NATO anytime soon, especially not after annexation of Crimea. (I would say that, at least, was a well executed operation, but still argue that it did Russia more harm than good).
Moreover, let's say they seized Kiev, and everything to the east of Dnipro. Now what? You still got an aggressive "anti-Russian" half of Ukraine on your border. Let's say they conquered Ukraine in its entirety. It has to be pacified, at quite a steep cost. What is achieved? Security against Western land invasion (really outlandish scenario)? Not even that, there is still Baltic border, even closer to Moscow, and Kremlin would never have the balls to invade a NATO country.
As it is, I'm actually mad at Putin for not being able to present an alternative to the West, a multipolar world as he says. He had infinite money, common cultural heritage that he could leverage to expand influence in eastern Europe, instead he preferred to get high at his own supply, believing that Ukraine is a pseudo country that would collapse the moment Russian soldier's foot stepped into it, and that Ukrainians are Russians anyway, and decided to play conqueror.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
I would guess a lot of people were betting against Russia invading because they, including myself, thought this would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Year and a half later, I stand by this assessment.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Sure many basic human needs can be satisfied using the path you outlined, at least this might make you too busy for existential frustration, but one might ask - is that what's life really about? Would it be insolent and foolish to ask "is there more?" Is that a solution, or a way of preventing yearning for a solution from driving you mad?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
On the topic of boycotting woke business: did anyone bother to make a website listing all potential boycott targets and their offenses? It seems like an empty niche that could be filled fairly cheaply, though the list will be quite long. People just forget about yet another woke commercial outrage fairly quickly, having something that could be quickly linked might go a long way.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
What a great find, thanks for sharing.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
And these zealots are basically the self-appointed enforcers of community policy for all minecraft modding?
Perhaps not all, fabric is actually quite good these days
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
The current model has many costs, and it's not obvious that the benefits are worth it or can't be achieved in other ways. More importantly, this would only justify a thin slice of what is subjected to copyright laws in practice, so it hardly deserves more than a passing mention in this context.
I never felt invested in arguing about piracy simply because how unbelievably flimsy the whole idea of intellectual property is.
Utilitarian, practical angle: we use property claims, first and foremost, to avoid conflicts over scarce resources. Ideas and combinations of zeros and ones are not scarce. Maybe IP can be justified because it brings value by incentivizing creation? In the first place, I find it questionable that we should bring certain legal frankensteins into existence to maximize GDP per capita, but is this goal even achieved? How to price in costs of legal bickering over patents and lawsuits, big actors using IP to suppress potential competition? What about indirect consequences of curtailing individual freedoms and ever multiplying victimless crime legislation? Surely there's a better way to do this.
Deontological angle: Material and Intellectual property as similar things - intuitive at first glance analogy, after all we could say that creator makes a certain "thing" that he can then "own" because he made it. However, as mentioned before, IP is not scarce and IP holder loses nothing from piracy, and often gains in exposure and influence. Surely it's clear that this analogy doesn't really work. And how applying this ethical principle looks in reality? Is an Indian kid downloading a western textbook because he can't possibly afford buying western ip for dollars committing an ethically wrong act? Do people actually believe things like this? I imagine an IP advocate might bite the bullet and say that he commits a minor wrongdoing that is balanced out by him benefiting from the "theft" a-la a starving man being justified in stealing bread, but I find this whole thing laughable. Though not as laughable as I find calling breaking IP laws piracy. Ah, yes, sea-faring robbers and murderers is a very apt analogy for downloading certain combinations of zeros and ones. It's so absurd that I can't help but like it.
Edit: strongest argument in favor of IP was voiced by one of the other commenters - basically that by disregarding certain laws of the land, no matter what they are, we compromise our social fabric in an ever so small way. It's a real concern, though it would have more weight if our governments and laws were much closer to perfection than they are. I would rather put the blame squarely at legislators for outlawing mundane, victimless actions, making sure that a big chunk of the population will find themselves committing legal crimes at some point or another, which certainly doesn't benefit society.
Now excuse me, I have some torrents to unapologetically download. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
There's a big rational component to this though. Medium is the message, speaker's appearance, tone and style of delivery are useful heuristics for determining if you should really pay attention to the particular end times prophet, or just not bother and do something more fun.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Having a goal of "the world doesn't end" does have its advantages. Can't wait until 2030, AI still doesn't kill anyone, and Yud saying "you are welcome" graciously lifting his fedora. Though who am I kidding, the world will then be in need of saving from AI killing everyone by year 20XX.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
That picture of Pope Francis in a puffer coat got me thinking:
AI generation of highly realistic images is a problem. Ideally, we would want a reliable way to distinguish truth from lies. So we train another AI to spot the difference. Then someone trains a different AI to fool both humans and AIs.
Will this be an endless arms race? Will one side win?
Well, yes, what about China? I'm not reading Lesswrong that much, but at least that Twitter link doesn't have any interesting objections. If it's so dangerous, if it's so powerful, then someone else will do that, China in particular has a lot of data. Strongest counterpoint I can come up with is that they are incompetent, silly commies and they will fail, but that sounds like wishful thinking.
I can only treat the cry for halting AI research seriously not as an actual proposal, but as a way to bring attention to the issue.
Disagree. Satisfying social needs with AI is like satisfying sex needs with an inflatable sex doll, and both will stay incredibly low-status. Especially in the scenario of dramatic automation: if you have the time, you really run out of excuses to just sit in your room and chat with computers.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Certainly! It's the kind of book that is fun to analyze.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Picked up Golden Oecumene at recommendation of someone here and got much more than I expected. Exploration of society and the individual in post-scarcity environment, immortality, AI, and other sci-fi themes. Beautifully and eloquently written, unlike so much otherwise good science fiction, and also centers around Ayn-Randesque narrative about a promethean figure going through great hardship to fulfill his potential and advance mankind, which turned out to be something I wasn't aware I had a soft spot for.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Little unrelated, but why I see "You’re unable to view this Tweet because this account owner limits who can view their Tweets" from my account, but not from incognito window? If it's a block notification it's quite amusing, because I never interacted with him in any way
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
1yr ago
Latter. I just think that the times I live in are sufficiently interesting
I'm trying to figure out what I should be thinking about AI (largely in attempt to get away from rat-sphere's alarmists and their uncomfortably plausible arguments), so I started by doing the first obvious thing: looking for notable AI skeptics.
Here's the punchline: I used chat GPT for that purpose. Not without mistakes, but on cursory look it seems like the answers are largely correct, most of these are actual people matching the criteria. It gave me five, then I asked "give me some more" and it gave me more. Few months ago something like that would take me a lot more effort in googling, unless I lucked out and someone already did the job for me and I could find it somewhere on internet's surface.
Fuck.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
2yr ago
I don't follow, why give preference to spatial-reasoning tasks when defining who is smarter? Why not the one at which women are better?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
2yr ago
You had me wondering for a minute what could possibly happen to Contrapoints that he managed to become a conservative Warhammer enthusiast.
Too late. Retrospectively, this development makes sense - Kulak always stood out from rat-influenced writers with his passionate diotribes relying less on well-thought, charitable arguments than evocative and sharp language mercilessly cutting through all the things, ideas and people many of us resent so much. Not exactly academically strict discourse, but fun to read, so whetever shortcomings he had were easy to ignore.
Alas, I strongly suspect that from now on, when stumbling on his posts I will remember that one time he managed to get his opinion entirely coincide with most hilarious excerpts from Russian state TV, chuckle a bit, and close the tab.
Farewell Icarus, it was fun to watch you fly before you burned your wings.
Idk man, "everything is futile and we are doomed, but it's fine, actually" was never a position I could wrap my head around. It feels...lazy? Indecisive? As if you are shrugging the problem off.
It might be easier for you to relate once you understand that it's not just fear we are talking of. I'm still young and full of vigor and death feels very much remote, but here we are. In the first place, it only took me a couple of years of my adolescence to surpass "obnoxious atheist" phase and think "wait a minute, something's off here"
Maybe our gap in understanding is caused by a missing element, like some inner romantic sentiment, or belief in fundamental human dignity. We are special beings endowed with the capacity to look at the material realm not only as participants, but as observers. And so, I claim, we can look beyond, see the insufficiency of mere matter. We can see that we are in a cage, so we deserve a way out. This here might cause you to raise an eyebrow, and maybe it's not the most logically robust claim, but it's fine. It's my intuitive conviction that comes from deep within, there's nothing I'm more sure of.
If all hopes come to nought and materialism is roughly correct, I'm ready to avow that it is not me, but the entire universe that is sick and misshapen and insane.
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