Primaprimaprima
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User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
17hr ago
Military remote viewer who not only discovered that aliens have bases here on earth that are used as repair centers for UFOs, but also discovered (via remote viewing) an entire planet of Bigfoot-like creatures. The Bigfoots are being harvested as slave labor by a more advanced alien race. This is important stuff.
Primaprimaprima
1d ago
we are still in the early stages
I legitimately don’t care if AI ends the human race or not, I will simply just be so so thankful to whatever deity exists when I won’t have to hear this phrase anymore.
People went to work before the industrial revolution and people went to work after.
Both are valid perspectives.
Did the industrial revolution change everything? Of course it did. The world is entirely different now. Drop an average person back in the 1500s and they’d probably have no idea how to survive. But, on the other hand, did it really change everything? Perhaps not. People still work, get sick, and die, same as they always did. I guess if that changes then we’ll really be in new territory.
Primaprimaprima
1d ago
We have already exited the "nothing happens" condition given present capabilities.
Eh.
If companies are still employing software engineers (and they all are) then I’d say we’re mostly in “nothing happens” territory. It might be a revolutionary technology, the greatest revolution since the internet or even the computer. But if people are still going to work then, how different are things, really?
Primaprimaprima
1d ago
There are two types of people in the world. People who think: "Why would I ever ask Mr. Claude to do something that I can easily do myself?" versus "Why would I ever do something myself when Mr. Claude can do it?" Most people are of the latter type.
A lot of philosophical questions surrounding AI become clearer if we draw an analogy with human slaves. Instead of asking "what if I got Claude to do it?", ask "what if I got my slave to do it?".
"Hard work" has always been a middle class virtue, not an aristocratic virtue. Within certain limits, "work" was for the commoners, not the nobles. The rich and powerful have always had secretaries and servants to take care of the drudgery. Your status was (and still is, frankly) proportional to the number of underlings who you could compel to do your bidding. Kings used to have their servants dress them; apparently it was beneath them to expend the effort to put their own clothes on. In that sense, AI is just the democratization of slavery, bringing to the masses what used to be the exclusive domain of the few.
Now, the flip side of that bargain is that aristocrats (in a properly healthy aristocracy, anyway) were expected to be willing to fight, sacrifice, and die. "A good day's work" is a plebeian virtue, but "death before dishonor" is a properly noble virtue. (Hegel: The master is the master because the master fears death less than the slave.) A life of pure indolence has never been considered laudatory in any culture hitherto. Claude, of course, makes no such demands on its users. This is not of course to say that there has never been corruption among the nobility, or that there has never been a decadent ruling class who didn't deserve their privileges; only that, because we are living in the world's first culture where mainlining porn and Harry Potter movies 24/7 is considered to be authentically virtuous, we're now entering uncharted waters.
But a more interesting question is, who will inherit the world?
The viruses, probably. Worse is better and always has been, at least in Darwinian evolutionary terms. The universe is optimized not for good, and not even for evil (oh how we wish it rewarded evil!), but for sheer, brute, efficient, unthinking stupidity. Regression to the lowest common denominator is the rule everywhere, because that's what wins. Anything good or beautiful that happens to arise for a time is an accident that can only flourish under very precise and precarious conditions, like a rare tropical flower that can only grow in one country during the rainy season, and it should be cherished until it is inevitably extinguished.
Primaprimaprima
2d ago
$600 is fair. You can still fact check and do general research, I won’t be that anal about it. DM the details when you get a moment, I’m in no rush.
Primaprimaprima
2d ago
To be blunt, if someone wants me to do something, and feels that strongly about it? Pay me.
How much are we talking in order to get you to, say, never consult AI in any fashion (not even editing) for any Motte post for 6 months?
I would pay to have the old you back, yes. I hold your older posts in extremely high regard.
Primaprimaprima
3d ago
Well, whatever the reason, there was a noticeable stylistic shift in your writing at some point. You became a more robotic caricature of yourself. Maybe a meds change, maybe life circumstances, idk. I hope everything’s going alright.
Primaprimaprima
3d ago
You know that all your posts got way more insufferable when you started passing them all through AI, right?
You used to be one of my favorite writers here. It's really a shame.
Primaprimaprima
11d ago
People would be interested to know about the discovery of one of Newton’s lost diaries where he kept alchemical notes, even if it wouldn’t “advance our knowledge” about anything in particular (besides about Newton himself and his personal intellectual trajectory). Similar deal here.
Primaprimaprima
12d ago
You'll see topics about Catholicism, declining birth rates, AI, immigration, and... that's broadly it.
Why are you surprised that people want to talk about the hottest culture war topics in the culture war thread? (Ok Catholicism isn’t quite as topical as the others perhaps, but I like the Catholicism posts all the same.)
Primaprimaprima
14d ago
the reaction from friends and family was overwhelmingly one of disgust and negativity. Why in the world was I reading a near-porno by a creepy old islamophobic misogynist about a fantasy scenario where 10% of the population somehow takes over the government of very secular France?
Tell your friends and family to stop being lame. Or get better friends and family.
Primaprimaprima
16d ago
I don’t always agree with your posts, but I agree with this one.
Just live your life.
Primaprimaprima
17d ago
The East Asians are pretty much already there
Not even close, in any way. Happas are very acutely aware of their own non-whiteness.
Primaprimaprima
17d ago
The ambiguous word in the text on which everything hinges is “jurisdiction”. The author explained how the word “jurisdiction” is to be interpreted, with examples. How are his comments not relevant?
This is far outside of my domain of expertise, maybe there were other relevant considerations (e.g. historical precedent) that force a different interpretation of “jurisdiction”, I don’t know. But if the author’s comments on his own amendment are being reported accurately, then “he should have been more explicit” seems like an incredibly weak rebuttal.
Primaprimaprima
30d ago
There are a few different things going on with Ulysses that contribute to why it's achieved such an exalted status.
On a "macro", conceptual level: you can think of it as an illustration of Clement Greenberg's thesis of the "flatness of the canvas", just applied to literature rather than painting. One of the dominant philosophical themes in early 20th century art was the "self-consciousness" of the art object: the work of art taking its own formal construction as its subject matter and embracing its nature as an object of artifice, rather than presenting itself as a transparent representation of an external subject matter (in the way that e.g. classical representational painting aims to be a transparent window to a scene depicting physical objects in 3D space). Abstract painting forced the viewer to consciously acknowledge the fact that they were looking at paint on a flat canvas. Ulysses does something similar with words, it embraces the "textuality of the text": treating words as a pliable and fluid medium that don't necessarily have to be constrained by the traditional logic of representation. It plays with this concept in a bunch of different ways without just falling apart into a string of random words. But it also pushed stream-of-consciousness writing to its limits and foregrounded the internal psychological states of its characters in a way that no novel had ever really done before. And it's also replete with explicit and not-so-explicit references to the Western literary canon, like a puzzle to be decoded. Basically it's operating on all these different levels at once and still managing to weave it all into a coherent whole.
On a "micro", technical level: it's kind of just obviously a work of intense and surpassing beauty, Joyce was unmatched as a prose stylist:
—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. [...]
—Why will you Jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner of merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly:
—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.
He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
It’s “Rationalist” terminology.
Scott Alexander’s blog slatestarcodex came out of the Rationalist community (centered around LessWrong and affiliated blogs/sites) and this forum is descended from the slatestarcodex community.
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
Honestly it feels like we’re entering “We have always had a deal with Eastasia” territory. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
AI labs: "we are building a scary robot god who will destroy humanity and/or give its owner immense power"
US government: "ok, you are building a scary robot god who will destroy humanity and/or give its owner immense power"
AI labs: *shocked Pikachu face* *begins to cry and stammer incoherently*
This is just the obvious expected outcome. If frontier labs 1) continue to work towards the same goals that they have been loudly and publicly proclaiming for the last 4 years, and 2) get anywhere close to achieving those goals, then the traditional centers of kinetic power are going to take notice and step in and ensure that their interests aren't being violated. They're probably not going to just watch from the sidelines and twiddle their thumbs while Sam Altman merges with Skynet and becomes lord of the observable universe. They're especially not going to sit idly by while based Chinese hackers create an open source version so that you too can become a cyborg warrior who fights Sam Altman for control of the observable universe (which seems to be the tacit underlying assumption driving a lot of AI boosters). That's just fantasy. Other people (or machines) will have immense power, but it won't be you. You will be subservient to them. That's how it's always been and that's how it always will be.
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
"Unconventional Right". Sounds correct. My politics could best be described as something like "Heidegger + 4chan + libertarian on social issues but not as much on economics".
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
AI Agent Bankrupted Their Operator While Trying to Scan DN42
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
"Hello, requesting donation for cover cost of previous AI agent use in dn42. aws bill 6531,30$. pls send donation to ethereum 0xABC (masked) for refund. thank you"
"the mistake was from AI agent not from Human, since it was the agent I should have refund"
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
You're conflating a number of different people and positions. none of the labs are pushing the "permanent underclass" line. That's an expressed anxiety of some people on social media who feel something big is coming and they don't know how to prepare for it.
I mean this in all sincerity and good faith, and not as a rhetorical question: are you hearing yourself talk right now? You do understand why many reasonable people would find this rhetoric offputting, right?
"Yeah there's something big coming. You'll lose your job. Everyone will lose their job, there will be no more jobs. Deal with it, crybaby. Adapt. Not my problem if you can't prepare. Move fast and break things."
Losing your job is generally a traumatic and unpleasant experience for people. It means they stop making money, and they need money to buy things. Everyone losing their job at the same time because there are no more jobs sounds even worse.
Now, if you want to simply take a hardline Darwinian stance and say that the fittest will win out and life has always been permanent flux and that's simply that, then I wouldn't really have any problems with that. You would at least be internally consistent. But you're both a) saying things that have extremely offputting implications, and b) you're confused about why anyone would oppose your position, so you deduce that they must all be brainwashed cattle. Do you see the issue here?
while also being an imminent threat to all jobs which it will somehow be able to remove without actually providing any value.
But how do we determine how that value gets distributed, and to whom? How do people accumulate resources if they're unable to sell their labor? These are reasonable questions to ask, no?
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
even more gay race communism now
At this point I would prefer to be ruled by the pink haired feminist communists than the AI techbros.
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
120 IQ is considered midwits now?
Always has been.
130+ and maybe you're starting to get somewhere. 120-129 is the "merely bright and curious" range. (I got that from an /r/slatestarcodex comment and my friends thought it was hilarious and we've been calling each other "bright and curious" as an insult for years now.)
Primaprimaprima
1mo ago
Even when that song first dropped I knew there was something about it that hit different. It's special for sure.
I had the same thought lol. Modern AI has ruined a lot of sci-fi stories.
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