theincompetencetheorist
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User ID: 1270
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
If you ever try to link to JWZ to Hacker News you will be redirected to an image of a hairy testicle in an eggcup with the text. '"Hacker" News a venture capital company's fan club. Finance-obsessed man-children making the world worse'. So he is frustrated too.
I've seen HN comments that threads full of "techies" incorrecting each other and a grayed out downvoted comment with the someone who really knows. I think I've been doing software longer than some of the commentors have existed, and they are occassionally hilariously wrong about tech too. Not infuriated anymore I just don't read the comments that often.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Why do you not want your comments used to train LLMs anyways?
well my concern isn't around LLMs in itself, it is slightly more abstract possible abuse of this data for behavior modification of crowds. I'm not an AGI doomer but I see the outlines already with inciting compulsive use with various apps like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram where it might be possible to use data like reddits to create similar compulsive loops for text as we have for video. I don't know if it is possible but it might be.
But my comment is more of that I made a decision a couple of years ago and this just proves that don't give a shit of the people who use their service, so I'm patting my own back.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Advertisers are not usually receiving data wholesale, it is a process of that the advertisement targets are determined by the data "owner" so they can take a portion of the ad sale. The whole cambridge analytical scandal was just that they mined Facebook data for personality profiles and bragg about behavior modification based on that data, despite it going against an actual contract with Facebook. Now in hindsight the media narrative was overblown and there where a bunch of claims that didn't turn out to be true. But that a company that wasn't supposed to keep the data and use it, kept the data and used it is true.
Trust in what?
That they are sensible people running the place. Look I was one of the 10 000 first users of Reddit. I was naive in thinking that it was run by people who wanted people on the internet build communities. My leaving predated everything with API blackout and this whole LLM mess. I saw admin crackdown on small communities that did nothing wrong and power mods bullying regular users accross multiple subreddits without the admins lifting a finger. The LLM sale is just aligned what I saw. They don't give a shit about the users of the site, I got wiser...
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
So reddit is selling data to AI training now according to Bloomberg. [Archive] . Well I for one isn't suprised! A huge bunch mediocre data nicely cleaned up by unpaid mods and community sentiment encoded in the karma. When I left reddit I removed all my posts and comments. I lost my trust way before the API debacle and seeing what is happening now, it just validates me. Anyone else?
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Also if you're going to offer "you're trapped in algorithms" as one side of the explanation, and "everyone else is trapped in algorithms" as the other, you've made your theory unfalsifiable.
I'm aware of that I recreated Baudrillards reasoning why we can't escape Platos Cave, unlike him though I do believe escape is possible.
You have to find other people who aren't trapped in algorithms. Both of us have taken steps to try not to be trapped by algorithms. But the point I was trying to get across we need a critical mass of non-trapped people to get back to the old word of mouth to be effective again.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Everyone else is also trapped in the algorithms and in a mindset their personality is what they consume. Well one thing that personalization has put on its head is that the concept of "hype" is obsolete. The good thing is that you should decide for yourself what you enjoy and look for like minded people that enjoy the same "thing". Hype is about making you conform to the latest thing, and I've personally found that hype has been co-opted by big business to create artificial need, so I don't miss it.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
yet all of our art sucks (my opinion obviously but it seems to be shared)
May I suggest that you might not be looking at the right place? Especially if your suggestions for new "art" comes from an soulless algorithm trying to prolong your engagement with a particular service. Because it will only present with more of the same stuff that you indicated with past behavior that you are willing to spend time on, it is not going to present something new because it means that you might disengage your attention. So either you stop using the algorithms or you find a way to trick the algorithms to present new stuff for you.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
You can joke all you wan't but the same critical theory addled minds are deciding allowing dirty talk with chatbots is not safe and don't consider bad medical advice as an safety issue since you should never seek medical advice from it.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
To sum up, this is essentially a rehash of the year-old ethical kerfuffle around Stable Diffusion, as well a direct remake of an earlier crackdown on AI Dungeon along the same lines, so technically there’s nothing new under the AI-generated sun. Still, with the seedy undercurrent getting more and more noticed, I thought I could post some notes from the underground, plus I'm curious to know the opinions of people (probably) less exposed to this stuff on the latest coomer tech possible harms of generative AI in general.
I haven't been following this particular development, but in general that there is very little counter arguments has been made to the critical theory wielding elites when it comes to this type of discussion. I already noticed it with Campaign against sex robots back in 2015, where it was totally okay with arguments that sexual activities with inanimate woman shaped artifacts is akin to rape (but assfucking a adult male shaped artifacts seems to be OK according to them, but I digress). But from my point of view it is inability by these people to see the difference in fantasy and reality, why would we have these people decide on how we interact with these artifacts?
This whole line of thought go back to ELIZA a chat bot from 1967 when people are tricked into thinking that the machine has human qualities. People who that chatted with with it sometimes were asking to be left alone for a therapy session. It is a magic trick and even when people were told how it worked they still anthropomorphised it. Now we have ELIZA on steroids with LLMs and people still do the same stupid mistake of treating it like a human and attributing some real world harm if I'm allowed to talk dirty with it.
theincompetencetheorist
11mo ago
My highly personal pet theory is that the culture war is changing is combination of
- Twitter changes with community notes, needing an account to see replies and so on
- Reddit changes, like shutting down alternative clients that "Culture Warriors" both users and mods relied on.
- The fall of highly polarized news blogs like Vice and Gawker Media properties mostly due to high interest rates. As it turns out activists aren't profitable, especially when the main platform to spread rage bait Twitter is changing(see point 1, some rage bait is just killed of with a community note).
I believe that the masses of culture war is not participitating anymore in the same way because of these things and the "heat" is turned down.
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
I find this immensely funny for some reason that no one is incentivized to issue an public correction. Reuters parroted anonymous source claiming a breakthrough and backtracking on that well is a loss of credibility, and OpenAI can't go just "there is no breakthrough" without hurting the for profit investments part of the org. I read the breakthrough claim and did a little further digging and just threw out there with Russel's Teapot!
Yeah other people have come to a similar conclusion: What OpenAI shares with Scientology
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
There is a good portion of intellectual laziness in why people become tribal. Because that what I read out of your post as a lament of "tribalism". Most people find it cumbersome to build a correct theory of mind of the opposition and currently we are being rewarded for not having them, because it is way too easy for us get approval from our tribes with social media likes or biased personalized social media news feeds. It is something that has served humanity in the past but in the current "global village" of interconnectedness it is becoming a problem, because it eroding social and cultural cohesion that makes cooperation harder in society.
I would prefer to put the issue at an axis of language and status rather than knowledge and power. These people us language to try to bolster their status in their tribe, there is no actual knowledge there to exert power over someone else. Everything about the intellectual laziness is about accumulating status for their tribe with the least amount of energy i.e. just changing the words and behavior they use so to be seen as members of their tribe.
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
That Mr. Ellul wrote similar things I think more proves my point than refutes it (I believe you both that he wrote similar things, but I'm not sure to what extent he rejected or endorsed violence to spread his ideas) - it's perfectly possible to have such views and advocate for them in normal and peaceful ways.
Ellul is the originator of the ideas and he also rejected violence to spread them. Last time I checked the wikipedia article wasn't that bad. And to quote wikipedia... 'Ellul explained his view in this way: "By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence."'
I think that, considering the public image TK has gained from his bombing campaign (since we're all talking about him), it's perfectly reasonable to point out the holes in his ideas and remind people that he did make the decision that his ideas were important enough to justify aggressive violence - not even towards specific people responsible for opposing him or rejecting his ideas, but people he felt were part of the industrial system that he wanted to tear down.
This is the main reason I think you got caught in such a critical response. It is that there is no separation of the ideas that Kaczynski based on Elluls work and Kaczynskis campaign of violence. It is not clear what are Kaczynskis contributions that you are criticizing here or if you are criticizing Ellul.
I could counter-argue that while I am no expert on such lifestyles, he in turn may not know much about just how complex the logistical chain is that makes available all of the modern goods that we take for granted and exactly what life may be like when they are completely impossible to obtain. I specifically mean the "safety net" concept that I mention elsewhere in this thread. It may not be terribly hard to live a lifestyle superficially similar to what is described by TK, presumably Ellul, and others - I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people in the continental US voluntarily living like that is in the hundreds of thousands. But it's only superficial if you still have the grocery store to solve any food production problems that come up, the hospital to solve any medical problems, the hardware store for any tools you can't fabricate, etc. Even if you never actually go to any of those, the mere fact that it's possible tends to change peoples' behavior. How many people volunteer to put all of those perpetually out of reach for their entire extended family for all eternity?
The Amish reject modernity but when their children come of age they get to decide through 'Rumschpringe' if they want to join the community or get access to all of modernity has to offer. Also the Amish are not hunter-gatherers so there is that.
I'm not here to accuse you of being ignorant but I could claim that there is not enough imagination what it could mean to resist industrialized society. The ideas resisting it has continued with people of like Paul Kingsnorth. But because someone decided to mail out bombs you are rejecting the ideas around resisting "the machine" even if there are people that have ideas that predate and supersede it without violence.
For me it is a reasonable answer. There is a bias that you are upfront with that the ideas you are critiquing are from a terrorist, thus you are not separating the ideas from the man. But the thing is that it is not TK who is the originator of the ideas. It is Ellul! The core is simple, humanity is not supposed to serve the "machine" but the "machine" is supposed to serve humanity! And you wrote several paragraphs saying that we are supposed to serve the machine because it benefits all of humanity. I'm not so sure...
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
I used to have a good experience with subscriptions and recommendations it contributed, but somewhere along the line the algorithm decided to show me "outrage bait". Things that I deliberately avoid by not going on Twitter, Reddit(when it got worse there) and so on... for my own sanity. So it is something in my personal feed that triggered it but it became like everything else that I've identified dragging me down.
The thing is that it is personalized by the very definition not everyone is going to have the same poor experience I did. So if you are seeing things that enrich your life go for it. I'm just informing other people that might have identified something similar in their life and that it might be something worth a try.
Yeah I've done that too, but those extensions don't work on the TV. This applies to the TV and the YouTube app on your phone too.
Finally YouTube did something useful. If you have an YouTube account and turn of your watch history, YouTube stops recommending you videos. The final piece of my day to day internet experience free of outrage bait that was making me depressed. If I want to be recommended videos I can always log out.
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
Well for me I can think of three ways of trying to do it interesting and natural: Star Trek:DS9 has the Trills which for me always has worked as perfect way of sneaking various aspects of trans concepts right under our noses, but not being about trans. Further looking a specific subgenre of transhumanist sci-fi literature we have things like the Culture series by Iain M Banks where humans are so advanced in technology that changing back and forth human physoilogy between genders isn't an obstacle anymore. And there is a scene in the Netflix Series Altered Carbon(haven't gotten around to read the books yet) where a womans mind was transfered into a male body. The thing all of the three have in common is the identity/mind/soul transcending the physical body in some way and making the transcending of the physical limits not about gender but a feature and possibility of it.
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
Both sides see themselves as righteous oppressed victims fighting against the evil empire of the other side, but for both it is less a Star Wars vision than a Terminator vision. War machines running over skulls at night-time, death and lasers.
The footsoldiers of the culture war are passive nihilists screaming other peoples ideas hoping for attention by the algorithms of big tech. Big tech are the arms dealers of this war.
But at the end of the day the modern culture war is just a continuation of Yellow Journalism which was transfered trough the age of television and now is on Youtube, Twitter and so on. But it is still the same thing. Having passive nihilists fighting each other over stuff that isn't relevant in their lives so they give up a tiny percentage of their income and get their consent on political projects that goes against the publics interests.
Maybe it is possible to move in some orthogonal direction and flank this whole conflict from a side that has the breath of fresh air behind it?
Don't consume the content that is designed to have you worried about problems you don't have. It is the simplest way of finding fresh air. Who knows maybe you will start creating that fresh air after you found it.
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
ah damn... sorry. I'll edit.
Note: This was wrong of me... but I'll keep it for posterity
Old irrelevant comment:
Of course they are distinct but I'm not confused, I'm claiming there is a way of doing a study that could disconnect if they are truly distinct or show that they are related some way. Then I'm also parroting without reference a claim that these studies are stopped with reasoning of being "transphobic". I don't think that it is an unviable hypothesis that could be proven or disproven that "gender dysphoria" and "body dysmorphia" could be related for a specific group like teenagers. I'm not making any claim that they are related though so there is no confusion here.
I’m not sure exactly how culture war-like this idea is, but I’ve never actually heard anyone else compare Anorexia with trans people before.
This is very much a big issue in the Culture War! If you don't want to be banned or harrased e.g. on certain subreddits you need to avoid this line of reasoning. Because you are supposed to say: "they have always been there they are more comfortable to express in the modern day". One of the first things you notice is that you haven't heard of it: my claim for the reason is "media bias" and gender ideologs.
I don't see a reason why a study in academia couldn't be constructed that could prove or disprove a link between eating disorders and gender dysphoria. I've seen claims made by various people that this research is not being funded or passing an ethics board because the research would be deemed "transphobic".
theincompetencetheorist
1yr ago
Maybe it is how it is supposed to be. Because there is a difference in Science and "science" and the pattern here is that Science has remained but "science" gets kicked out. We have gotten rid of concepts race biology for eugenics and phrenology because it is "science", but when we get rid of one other takes it place like "Gender Studies" and CRT and we are about to repeat that cycle by getting rid of it and replacing with some other junk.
I'm trying to think a little more deeply about this. Geminis generation of nonsense because of the guardrails is essentially the tension of the Enlightenment ideals which the AI is springing up from and Postmodern ideas in critical theory, which I have hard time seeing how it can be reconciled. It is one of the ideas that I hold on to which I've trying describe but have a hard time crossing the "inferential distance". AI does not have a "lived experience" since it isn't living and what these people are trying to encode "lived experience" with these guardrails. They are trying to encode empathy into something that we are not like and failing in that they in demand encoding sympathy into a machine without emotions. There are no mirror neurons and there is no accurate theory of mind even if they try to claim it with emergent behavior of ingesting large amounts of text. So how is the machine supposed to know that someone would get hurt feelings by what it generates?
We are already here with human writers but the results aren't that good. They are supposed to create entertaining and compelling stories with these biases and failing miserably with a leg up on the machines of the human experience. Because it doesn't connect with the audiences human experience. I have a hard time seeing machines being able to connect with a large audience.
My great worry with AI is though that it is able to create behavior modification on an individual level and create the compulsion loops of addiction, since it doesn't require a theory of mind to trapping us in the loop. We have Youtube, Instagram and TikTok (and in some extent Reddit and Twitter/X) where it has happened. But it can't supplant our experience of reality and other people.
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