ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
Use your mind! Create new memories! Interact! Don't just add it to a library of forgotten photographs! - Megatron
User ID: 2120
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
The fluttering hands and stressed murmurs that pass around rationalist circles every time the subject of "unaligned AGI" comes up has always confused me somewhat, and I think what you're describing is essentially the root of my fears as they relate to AI. Alignment isn't the issue we should be worried about, the whole human species is unaligned; different nation-states, corporations, religions, regional cultures and local flavor are all in contention with each other to some degree. An unaligned AGI may be an existential threat, but who cares? The third impact is mercurial, and the when/why of its arrival will be in a manner of its own choosing.
AI is dangerous because, as with all things technological, it acts as a force multiplier, amplifying the intentions and actions of its users (to a lesser degree, its creators; the author of new tech effectively dies the moment it slips into the world) to superhuman levels - users who are motivated along overtly tribal and ideological lines. I'm not afraid of Skynet, and honestly I think it's rather silly to obsess over the imagined cataclysm du jour. I am afraid, mortally so, of my fellow man's darker impulses and the paths they will walk to manifest them. Insert that one C.S. Lewis quote here
There's a wide spread, perhaps universal (in America at least), sentiment that everyone is lying to you, on some level or another, whether these are government agencies or news orgs or scientific journals. True or not, doesn't matter. What matters is these latest innovations and the timing of their release seem primed for the environment they find themselves in, where uncertainty and a dash of extraordinarily naive credulity (just look at the quantity of people who will share a screenshot of !person/thing I don't like saying something unflattering) have attainted the dream of a free flow of information.
The thing-in-itself has never been less valued, its representation more revered. Maybe I'm weird for maintaining what I view as a moral objection to AI rather than an ethical one, it just feels like so much of the discussion around this stuff avoids the obvious cultural and societal impact this will have (e.g. Replika).
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I had the impression that was due more to Dionysus' status as a deity of, in part, madness (introducing a degree of unpredictability) and because his power was vastly diminished due to his now-miniscule base of worshippers. Other god-believer relationships are portrayed somewhat differently, though this is primarily in Pale and are arguably non-central examples. Point taken though.
"Faith" in the Pactverse clashes somewhat with the Biblical definition, at least as laid out in Hebrews 11:1. When you can perform a given ritual, utter the right words, and invoke the might of a higher power it can be difficult to frame that as "belief". One doesn't need to believe when you can know, a problem inherent to the setting and as such one I'm willing to forgive.
The POV of that particular chapter is also one belonging to a literal apostate, so I can accept there being no deference paid to the Supreme Creator, whether he thought there was one or not.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I can't find the source for this, as the internet is dead and all I can sniff out are the fumes of its rotten carcass, but back when I still listened to NPR I recall hearing one of their self-promoting bumpers using glowing language to inform me that they (and I am paraphrasing from memory) "give you not just the news, but the context of the story". I thank God for those practitioners of the dark arts who speak the quiet part out loud.
In America, political positions are often... mercurial, to say the least. The "facts" (a word I wouldn't have expected to lose so much meaning even a few years ago), such as they are, are immaterial. The purpose of these facts and their position in your given tribe's narrative, is what is truly important.
Near as I can tell these narratives now serve as a kind of post hoc justification for where and how our collective nannies must childproof our shared world; the Blues/Dems want things like absolute female liberation (including from the strictures imposed by external forces e.g. the function and purpose of the womb or any extant cultural understanding between the sexes), comprehensive public assistance, aggressive tax rates increasing exponentially by bracket, explicitly uncritical social mediation on topics of sexuality and family structure. Reds/Reps want things like universally available individual armament, enshrining the social mores of a previous generation, walling off educational institutions from social movements, a more generous taxation structure for high earners1.
The particulars shift across time as well, which can safely be atrributed to the constant influx of younger generations with their own inhereted versions of these positions, as well as their shiny new takes on such topics2.
Is it now right-wing to signal distrust of Big Pharma, corporate media and opposing desert wars?
Not exactly, but a principled position held consistently across time these days is interpreted as witchy behavior, at a minimum evidence of not being a REAL Scotsman. So, in practice, yes.
1These should by no means be considered comprehensive or precise lists, but the vagaries introduced by this fractious political pantheon are inexhaustible, and I am not.
2My cynicism and hard-earned paranoia wishes to point towards an occluded cabal pulling the strings, but there's little need when simple value drift will suffice.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
What's funny is, in the loose pantheon of supplemental writing and even a brief mention in one of his interludes, there are actually "paladins" or Christian style priests who hunt down and bind and/or exorcize literal demons in the name of God. It's just never been brought up again or made relevant to his Pactverse stories.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
A book review of Twig sounds kind of fun and might even be within my capabilities (I might have to reread it, so if I were to work on this it'd be a while before posting). And I agree more or less with
I think it will invite more interesting discussion and less bashing.
though my intention with critiquing his recent works would be to have something constructive, coming from a place of love, and most importantly IMO from a perspective I'm pretty sure he doesn't have in his life (could be totally wrong about that, don't know him personally and it is better to not assume stuff like that) that could be shared with him in a digestible, non-wordpress-comment format.
The apocalyptic nightmare scenarios of his books are fine; it’s seeing shitty people make worse interpersonal decisions that gets to me.
Agree, I think that accounts for approx. 40% of the problems I have with his recent stuff.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Are you talking about Wildbow? I remember him saying something along these lines a little while ago, specifically his breakdown of the backlash he received for
Also, if there's sufficient interest in it, I have a jumbled mess of thoughts I might be able to kludge together into a top level post describing why I think he peaked with Twig, from the angle of someone who is very much in the visible1 minority (not trans, not a furry, not squeeing over various characters, not socially liberal) of his fans.
1Based purely off of a cursory examination of the online communities that bother discussing his writings in the first place.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
This reminds me, in many ways, of The Wire (one of my favorite television shows, comfortably in my stranded-on-a-deserted-island list).
The Wire is a tv show produced by HBO that's explicitly about a diverse cast (one which fairly accurately depicts the demographic makeup of the real life setting), the cycles and epicycles of violence, ethics, and both the failure modes and successes of community. Its message, from my understanding of its author(s), is intended to be a hard look at a serious problem (or set of interconnected ones, presented as one block) as written from a progressive perspective; something like the politically mirrored image of the likes of Death Wish. It achieves its goal, in my opinion, not by highlighting the absolute worst or best hypothetical examples (caricatures, if I'm being unkind) of one side or the other, instead it shows the viewer what these things and their consequences look like in reality.
I understand that TLOU is fiction, that it's a deliberately "fake" depiction of reality in a fantasy setting, that it's a post-apocalyptic narrative centered around an explicitly lesbian young girl and a damaged, morally gray aging man. Stories that focus on [pain or loss or evil or guilt] lose some meaning, value and impact when they rely on caricature and exaggeration to tell their stories. Their messages are more effectively delivered when you can understand the why of each characters motivations, even if you might disagree with the actions those motivations inspire.
Gallons of ink has been spilled on this specific property, the original game attracted a sizeable amount of discussion and praise for its story and execution. If I may attempt to cut the Gordian knot? The narrative from the very get-go was sloppy and low quality, it received orders of magnitude more praise than was deserved, and Neil Druckmann has already demonstrated time and again that he has little ability in writing compelling stories or multifaceted characters. The story here is sold through manipulating low-hanging emotional fruit, and basically all entertainment made since GamerGate which carries some sort of message isn't intended for you the individual, it's meant to to appeal to one specific tribe or another's sensibilities (not to hail back to the halcyon days of yore, exploitation movies have been around for decades).
TL;DR it's not bad because it depicts something I find categorically objectionable (though it does), it's bad because most stories told these days aren't any good.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
It might be a distinction without a difference, but I categorize visuals (the use of movie magic, set/costume design, mattes/CGI/miniatures) and cinematography (camera work, lighting and framing) slightly separately though I also lump them together for most purposes since they go hand in hand, and while TWBB has excellent cinematography it only has a couple setpieces (the oil Derrick, the church) that elevate the visual aspects of the film for me. Not to say PTA isn't an accomplished director for a visual medium.
Fraser's performance was great in The Whale, but I also found myself really appreciating the set as well. I've personally known people who've failed in life, and they all lived in a place like that, with a similar sensibility towards housekeeping (though his apartment was still too neat to be true to life, I'll accept it as necessary to keep continuity from shot to shot, hard to do if everything is covered with loose wrappers and empty food or drink containers). I've found that I have a soft spot for stage plays adapted for film, The Sunset Limited is an example of my being pleasantly surprised by such a movie.
Hard agree on Banshees, people that bemoan the state of the film industry these days just aren't looking in the right places, I think. Many of my favorite films I've ever seen have been made in the past 10 years.
Haven't seen The Assassin but I'll check it out soon, and report back. I'm always excited to watch good foreign language films, I don't have near enough of a knowledge base to start working through the best of what's out there. I'll take a look at Neptune Frost as well, looks like I might possibly receive it as well as I did Beyond the Black Rainbow (an example IMO of a movie with ZERO story or high quality performances but heavy on the visuals: I shut it off after 45 minutes, I suppose I'm not a purist for visuals) but I'll give it a fair shake. Thanks for the recs!
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
An absolutely surreal post to to read while stoned. Thank you so much for sharing this.
I will refrain from posting this until morning to see if I've passed muster.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
PBR is like the final boss of cultural baggage attached to something that's just good on its own merits.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Good question! I don't have an answer lmao, even though I'm effectively unemployed for a couple months every year in my current career, not exactly what you're talking about with a 20 hr work week (when I am working I'll put in 50-70 hours in a week, which I'm more or less fine with). I still earn enough money to keep myself comfortable and content (no spouse or kids) while still putting away about 1/4 my net every year, though I earn wayyy less than I'm guessing most here do, at least in part because my job is specialized if unskilled labor. Never went to university as I thought I was supposed to pay for it, baka that I am.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
The biggest ups for NetShaq, one of the last online content creators that is, in my opinion, worth a goddamn.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
It might have been received too many plaudits but I wouldn't say it was boring. Visually interesting and had a lot of heart (its message of unconditional love and the rebuke towards the post-ironic cynicism in our society landed nicely to me), though it leaned into the zany a little too much for my liking. I'd give it an 8/10 if you held a gun to my head. For reference I would say something like Annihilation or Oldboy (2003) are functionally perfect films for me, I love great visuals and think good acting and compelling stories are less important (not that I can't appreciate an excellent performance, There Will Be Blood is in my top 10 all time and I will sit down and re-watch it any time, if asked).
Speaking of performances, have you seen The Whale yet?
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Thanks for your analysis, any insight on if ItAOtS album cover is a yam or a drum?
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Fair enough, maybe my personality is too neurotic to find "the life of the party" attractive. Thanks for letting me ask in a place I'll get a straight answer, fans and haters alike would rattle off the weird inside baseball stuff that I know and don't care about, which can be fun and funny but is counterproductive to getting a straight answer. Sounds like it really is just a me thing.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Absolutely, though it wasn't a full litre every day, or even most, that was more of a weekend thing. I was drinking at least 500ml daily. Colossally stupid of me in hindsight, but at the time I wasn't exactly thinking about my liver, more concerned with drowning my sorrows and committing slow motion suicide (narcissistically, I thought it was kind of tragic and cool). Hindsight makes that seem laughable to me now, but at the time I very much felt that I was in a complete dead end in my life. My coolguy self-affirming mantra has since changed from "live slow, die whenever" to "live purposefully, die after around 30,000 days".
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Not germane to the discussion, but can you explain Bert Kreischer for me? I like Tom fine, think he's quick and pretty funny, most of the rest of the deathsquad guys are pretty okay at least to me, but Bert has always been a guy I just don't get. He feels to me like he isn't a real person, I've always felt like he's some kind of cutout for a PR company whose name no one knows (Bent Pixels maybe?). Am I just a hater? I'm okay with having an irrational dislike of a comedian, pretty easy for me to just not consume content that rubs me the wrong way.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
people that didn't have any apparent drinking problem proudly announcing that they've quit drinking and feel so much better
This makes sense on an intuitive level if you assume HBD (in a less CW application) is correct. Alcohol is basically poison and causes widespread if minor damage to every system it touches, and if you're a descendant of a culture or lineage of teetotalers then you might not have the same degree of resilience to/recovery from the holistic harm dealt by booze (HBD isn't necessary for this, variation amongst individuals is an equally plausible explanation).
sleep certainly has downstream effects, but I also think that you have to drink a lot for these to be all that noticeable
Speaking only for myself, I went through a period of heavy (.5-1L of cheap bourbon daily) drinking some time ago. The main reason I stopped was the general malaise that I felt, but the thing that kicked it over the edge for me was how frequent my more intense nightmares became when I would crawl into bed wasted. I still have this problem now, more than 6 drinks in a day (with very little correlation to how close to bedtime I've been drinking) is almost guaranteed to have me visited that night by the very worst my unconscious mind has to offer. As a result I don't really drink that much, when I even bother to in the first place (still enjoy the sensation of being drunk, but I have enough consistently bad dreams already that it's just not worth being haunted by myself, the hangovers have gotten significantly worse as I've gotten older too).
Scores for individual posts are hidden for the first 24 hours
Except for this one and your other reply in this thread, which was made two hours ago but apparently edited 21 hours ago (?). Paging @ZorbaTHut
Edit: nevermind, the times on these posts are what's shifting about, I grabbed a screenshot from my phone showing these as sub-1 hour. Weird.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I did eventually notice the downvotes (maybe they don't show up on mobile or something? for some reason in some views I didn't see them)
Scores for individual posts are hidden for the first 24 hours to encourage users to engage with the actual content of the OP/reply, rather than the numerical value of community sentiment. This also has the lovely side effect of curtailing the more odious forms of karma obsession, such as "E: wow, didn't expect this to blow up!" or "haha the kids are mad, tell ur mom to send more pizza rolls to the basement".
One problem with the downvotes is that it's not totally clear what they're about
A problem you and I share.
30% Your position is stupid, I'm not going to argue, just downvote, go do some research
Far and away the most reasonable excuse for the reaction you received, there's an unspoken assumption here that one needs a fairly comprehensive understanding of the differing views and narratives of sundry CW topics. I don't have a particular opinion on this norm as I can understand both positions WRT how well informed a poster should be when saying something here (pro: you are wasting peoples time by prompting them to explain something that could've been googled. con: you can't expect everyone to stay abreast at all times of the goings on in every genre of the CW in order to contribute to the discussion).
I want to hear the d*rwin story
I am confident you wouldn't once you did, it's boring forum drama and the poster in question either sublimated his rhetoric to the point he blends in with the background or just didn't bother following this forum to its current iteration.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Thank you for clarifying, I knew Pavlik was a bad example of what I was attempting to gesture towards but my collection of annotations and bookmarks is a mess right now, and I didn't want to dig through my disorganized references for a better one. Thank you for putting in the effort on my behalf. I understand that Pavlik isn't quite what I intended to describe, but it's something along these lines; authoritarian regimes (it need not be the USSR; North Korea also works and is a more contemporary example), extremist/terrorist organizations and cults as a necessary function of their position in society at large must encourage the individual to atomize, to cut away as much of the social safety net as thoroughly as possible.
I feel no discomfort over the idea someone might terminate a relationship of their own accord (up to and including, sometimes especially, family), but I do find it disturbing to see others advocate that path. It sets off just about every alarm I have in my head and makes me question the moral fibre of those recommending it. Your ideology of choice doesn't have a couch to crash on, it doesn't have that one recipe that it makes every time you visit, it won't provide comfort in your grieving, in short it can provide exactly zero aid or succor to you the human being. A person is fundamentally feeble in a universe that is very, very strong, and it's only inside of a circle of close friends and family that one can move forward, let alone make their mark on the world (there are few loners remembered by history, almost never in a positive light. They also tend to be exceptional human beings for whom a case could be made that they had no peers, at least not locally available to them. I think they can safely be considered an exception that proves the rule). The annulment of any relationship should be taken seriously, even if said relationship is trivial, and telling someone that that is their best course of action borders, IMO, on evil. In the interest of civility and because I know that my gut is imputing motives on others, I'm perfectly happy to settle for calling it inappropriate.
Wholeheartedly agree for this specific reply, it's the only one that I felt managed to answer the actual question as posed by the OP without being sandwiched between a few paragraphs of moralizing. I tried to avoid mention of specific posts and posters because I didn't and don't think that hectoring them would do any good and probably would do a modicum of bad, but that was the post I had in mind when I wrote
nearly every response I've seen them receive.(added emphasis)
Personally I violate Western best practices egregiously and comically, and avoid dropping friends regardless of political differences, psychopathy, psychiatric conditions and material conflicts of interest. It tends to work out in the long run;
Loyalty, in my opinion, is among the greatest virtues a human can hold, and I personally feel it acts as something like the metaphysical cousin to a sacrament the more irrational and unconditional it becomes. I believe that a person's relationship with his friends and family regardless of who they are should be treated as unimpeachable. The person in question may be in fact quite impeachable, as a matter of law or what have you, but the actual relationship itself should be held as sacrosanct. We, as a species, are way too messed up in the head to be able to either afford or justify easy dismissal of one another. Glass houses, and such.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Yeah, the question of whether or not the post in question was made in good faith to begin with seems to be the main source of contention here, and what I'm seeing as poor behavior is being read as good and deserved judgement. I'm on board with any idea that pushes an accusation of trolling towards something less immediate and personal, since trolling is both a legitimate problem in any online community (with an exception for those dedicated to the art form itself) and also an easily weaponized memeplex that regularly confuses actual disagreement with malice.
I also agree WRT the "vibe check", it's hardly rigorous and easily motivated by bias and shouldn't be trusted, at least in a vacuum. That's fine! My operating assumption on topics and people I do not have extensive personal experience with, is that I am almost certainly wrong about every aspect of my mental model to some degree (I'm not enough of a schizo yet to believe I've stumbled upon the Grand Narrative of Universe, just enough to have my own pet theory on it).
My assertion that themotte has pushed and is pushing towards higher Red tribe participation is purely anecdotal, based mostly off of how many individual left-leaning posters I can recall from the old SSC and theMotte subreddits, to how many have made it to the off-site, as compared to the more prominent right-leaning posters. Obviously this is selecting for more than just temperature or political bias, and probably should have been lampshaded with the usual epistemic-uncertainty caveats (I'll admit to some difficulties on that front. I don't want to misrepresent my position, I also don't want to write a small essay each time I reply to someone. Balancing precision and concision is hard and I'm awkward with both). Besides, as you point out, there are plenty of good reasons to stop participating here besides feeling unwelcome.
Your polling idea sounds interesting at the very least, and is on-brand for themotte.
I also basically agree with all object-level responses given in the thread
Same. I don't disagree that these trans friends hold an irrational, low information and censorious cluster of beliefs, but this is something I believe to be comorbid with the Human Condition™. I too hold a number of irrational or otherwise low information beliefs on a great many topics, and I suspect everyone else here does as well. The idea that one should take the advice to cut ties as a result of ignorant opinions with those in their immediate circle, as delivered by a stranger on the internet (regardless of context or object level content) seems preeminently dim to me, let alone reasonable. I'll confess to some difficulty now squaring your circle: how can someone of your background and obvious familiarity with the history of a culture that rewards filial impiety1 be comfortable endorsing a practice that is at least superficially similar in type? Or is this something you've already considered, and feel that these two are sufficiently (or completely) disparate subjects?2 Please keep in mind I do not mean that there's never a reason to cut someone completely out of your life, or that you even need a good reason for it, only that the idea of someone (who is unfamiliar with your life beyond whatever broad strokes you provide) telling you to do it for political reasons is just wild.
Perhaps we need to learn to not engage so... earnestly.
In essence, that is my point. Being met with a circling of the wagons doesn't assist in the exploration of ideas, even if the point of exploring said ideas is to eviscerate them more effectively.
Maybe we need to codify this heuristic into a rule (haven't we already?).
I also thought that there was something along those lines already enshrined, but the closest thing to such a stricture would be the rules pertaining to consensus and inclusion. Nothing said in any of the immediate replies rises, in my opinion, to the level of requiring moderator action. That said I believe that the letter of the law may rhyme with the spirit, but that they do in fact mean different things. You don't need to say "as everyone knows" when everyone coincidentally seems to know and profess the same thing. No use getting worked up over consensus building when the consensus is obviously already built.
the measure of the community is whether there is still the will to engage on proposed terms, helpfully and within the bounds of polite discourse.
I agree, and I may have gotten carried away with doomsaying; themotte is not even close to declining to the point I would stop visiting, let alone lose its value on the broader 'net. I don't believe this is a problem as it stands, but I do believe this specific ailment I have described will raise its ugly head in the fullness of time. I lack the experience, knowledge and understanding needed for maintaining an online community, and have little to offer as far as adjustments go. I only believe it's necessary to avert this particular future if this place is going to hold any value down the line, and I can at least point out what I see as the first sprout poking up from the soil.
You can notice my absence there
An amusing downside to posting prolifically is that one's absence does in fact become notable, if only for a given genre of topic.
1Apologies for the source, but the internet is inexhaustible and SEO has crippled my ability to confidently scrape for a more reputable source of my illustration in a reasonable timeframe.
2I am genuinely curious, I am not accusing you of any sort of hypocrisy or double standard. I don't even recall if it's a topic you've explored publicly here, if you have done so I'm always ready to read or reread your write ups.
I'll report in as a datapoint.
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