CloudHeadedTranshumanist
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User ID: 2056
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
Some of them do have a positive affect. "Becoming Cultured" is an example. "Learning Manners" is an example. "Education" is an example.
Of course we have reasons why we think the things we're transmitting are good and not 'just' peer pressure, but so do the TRAs obviously.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
It is also possible to impose a view of righteousness while being in the minority in a system that does work on democratic principles. For example, a better coordinated group focusing all their power on a single topic would be able to make a dent in that dimension of the Overton window, even if they have less overall power and less overall influence on the change vector over all dimensions of the Overton window.
Likely your actual object level beliefs better support your point- I'm just reading the implication of a very strange definition of democratic principles from your phrasing.
All of the output I've ever seen from ChatGPT (for use cases such as this) just strikes me as... textbook.
So, I haven't used GPT for therapy, unless just talking about textbook philosophical ideas while being able to trust it to remain calm and level and not choking me with toxoplasma counts. But wrt:
are there certain types of people who are more predisposed to find ChatGPT's output comforting, enlightening, etc.
It may interest you to know that I don't have the focus to consume textbooks and can't stop chatting with friends on Discord.
Friends on discord that haven't read every textbook in existence and have things to do other than respond immediately to every post I make.
Friends that cannot spend hours per day in calm, toxoplasma-free philosophical debate and exploration then go on to happily coauthor code that I have all the ideas for but don't have the focus or encyclopedic API knowledge to sit down and cleanly write.
And I use chat-GPT constantly for everything now.
There are definitely some people for whom chat-GPT filled a hole in their life that needed to be filled by a submissive co-dependent genius-tier [rubber ducky]/[inquisitive child's ideal parent], that never could have been human, but can work as a low-ego AI system.
Not to mention people who were already near superhuman on some level outside of that missing piece, and suddenly feel the world unlocking for them. Chat-GPT is missing pieces, like discernment wrt questions, but the human-GPT system has at least all the parts a human has. And for some humans the human-GPT system that includes them far exceeds the sum of its parts.
If the human inputs the right things, GPT really does start to say insightful things, even if they are just clarifications or elaborations upon half formed ideas the user had. It is still expanding those ideas into a usable level of coherency.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10d ago
Your ontology doesn't make sense to me. Selfishness isn't a one dimensional thing. Its more like a lack of Learned Selflessness and higher order planning and self trust. You say "selfishness adequately describes" as though that's an etiology that implies anything useful about treatment. But where is your treatment plan?
I agree that if you flatten everything to 'humans follow incentives', then you can call it all selfishness. But this isn't actionable on a personal level.
Obesity isn't a trust issue, it's a selfish issue, where people would rather eat themselves into oblivion instead of finding a healthy balance and self restraint.
Obesity is an incentive gradient and learnability issue. In most cases it's not that they would rather "eat themselves into oblivion instead of finding a healthy balance and self restraint" It's that they can't alieve in the existence of the healthier state space and/or they are strategically unable to allocate the resources necessary to climb out of the rut that we have built for them with easy-packaged unhealthy foods. They are physically unable to trust themselves enough to overwrite the local incentive gradient built into their minds, and the incentive gradient in their environments is untrustworthy. Shaming only serves to tell them that they are on their own with this, which doesn't help and causes them to double down until they develop a complex about how 'obesity is good actually'.
If you want someone to lose weight- Don't shame them. Teach them how to cook. Smooth out their schedule so they have more time and mental energy. Analyze their life and remove mild inconveniences and stressors.
Low male employment, antiwork, and the rise of NEET-dom has nothing to do with trust, but selfishness adequately describes the motivations for the ideological positions they hold.
I volunteer all my labor to community projects and startups and rehabilitation of atomized individuals- because I don't trust corporations or our government with the produce of my labor. If I'm wrong- this is a trust problem. If I'm right, this is a trustworthiness problem.
If you want more NEETs to work, address their needs one by one and get them back up to a functioning level, practice some selflessness yourself and cultivate some burnouts.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1mo ago
Slowly but surely, the old infra becomes more enshitified and the AI augmented proles become more competent. On it marches until at last the moat is so decayed that a new smaller, leaner variant undercuts the old industry, and the cycle resets.
Circle of life.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
3mo ago
Yes! Though I don't think you have to appeal to Theology as a dogma to make this point. I'm atheist/agnostic and I can still see that the gospel was onto something with game-theoretic, social, and causal merit here. Christianity gained dominance in the real world at a time when there were plenty of other people preaching their own versions of Judaism. It was a competitive memetic environment. It matters to people in the sense that if you fail to convey the things that actually made the gospel powerful, you won't touch anyone. And part of that was definitely the radical proposition that those of higher status ought to perform actual care for those of lower status.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
Yeah maybe I should have chosen a species with less contested evolutionary causation.
from Wikipedia:
There are several hypotheses regarding the evolutionary origin and maintenance of elongation in giraffe necks.[57] Charles Darwin originally suggested the "competing browsers hypothesis", which has been challenged only recently. It suggests that competitive pressure from smaller browsers, like kudu, steenbok and impala, encouraged the elongation of the neck, as it enabled giraffes to reach food that competitors could not. This advantage is real, as giraffes can and do feed up to 4.5 m (15 ft) high, while even quite large competitors, such as kudu, can feed up to only about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high.[63] There is also research suggesting that browsing competition is intense at lower levels, and giraffes feed more efficiently (gaining more leaf biomass with each mouthful) high in the canopy.[64][65] However, scientists disagree about just how much time giraffes spend feeding at levels beyond the reach of other browsers,[12][57][63][66] and a 2010 study found that adult giraffes with longer necks actually suffered higher mortality rates under drought conditions than their shorter-necked counterparts. This study suggests that maintaining a longer neck requires more nutrients, which puts longer-necked giraffes at risk during a food shortage.[67]
Another theory, the sexual selection hypothesis, proposes the long necks evolved as a secondary sexual characteristic, giving males an advantage in "necking" contests (see below) to establish dominance and obtain access to sexually receptive females.[12] In support of this theory, necks are longer and heavier for males than females of the same age,[12][57] and males do not employ other forms of combat.[12] However, one objection is it fails to explain why female giraffes also have long necks.[68] It has also been proposed that the neck serves to give the animal greater vigilance.[69][70]
The point really isn't about Giraffes. The point is that you can argue for affirmative action as a sort of eugenics through social integration into a specific environment.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
I'm not sure what you're proposing. To me its clear that once this technology exists your choices are as follows:
-
Let anyone use it to select their offspring
-
Let the government choose which offspring we have
-
Ban it (only let rich people select their offspring and leave the poor to rot.)
I'm a fan of option 1 given these choices.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
You could divert some of them that way, but I don't think the people at OpenAI already are sitting there wishing they could stop ending the world but staying because they really need the cash.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
Hmm, all the other posters have a lot of good points for why it falls apart in theory. Let me think up some examples in practice...
There are a lot of anti-copywrite advocates, and I'm sure they'll be happy to show you how happy their infinite collection of pirated media and jailbroken software makes them- It doesn't seem to have had an effect on copyright law yet though. If anything it just decreases the pressure to change it and maintains a double standard where consumers ignore it and noone cares but creators are still stifled. And- it doesn't really address the counterarguments that frame this happiness as being derived from theft.
There are a lot of trans individuals living idyllic lives straight out of romance novels on the west coast. And let me tell you it works. I've seen a lot of young adults decide they want to transition after talking to one of them. It turns out this form of activism makes lots of people very angry, to the point that it's become a whole thing.
Whether or not something can produce a good life, does not always address the principles underlying its opposition.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
We have pet chickens at my house. They are extremely loving animals if you get to know them. They'll roost with you, cuddle, ride on your shoulder... sure, they're the descendants of dinosaurs, and I'm sure you could befriend those too if we still had them.
Sure, the roosters can be insecure bastards. Sure, befriending animals can get you killed.. to say nothing of messing with them...
and sentimentality about farm animals in particular, where if you've had any contact with them you know it's not like that - chickens, man
But seriously. Where are you getting this? Have you ever mothered a chick from an egg?
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
20d ago
So that implies... that challenging the constitutionality of the state law can still happen, but needs to be pushed through the court hierarchy to the federal courts before that can happen?
Gosh. What a system...
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
No I think this makes sense. The thing he did right was hype. With hype he attracted people good enough at the actual work to make a functional company, and enough funding to get it of the ground. At least functional enough to generate more hype. But 90% of what he personally is doing right is the hype. He has a ton of projects that didn't really go anywhere, but did generate even more hype, like hyperloop (heh. Hype-rloop). So of course he's terminally on Twitter. He's a PR CEO. He does Hype and Culture War and it makes his stock increase in value.
I'm not going to say he's a bad CEO in the getting funding and making his stock value rise sense. I'm not even going to say his pure Hype strategy hasn't been working, it's been causing all sorts of forces to gas him up like a DND deity powered by faith. But like- he's casting with Charisma, not Int. If his company is really worth 800 billion, its because he can be expected to generate enough hype to get other people to pump energy into his ideas until they become reality- I don't think it would be worth that in anyone else's hands though.
Mmm... no... It wasn't a coincidence, but- here's my model.
The queer community is made up of people who were rejected by society and decided to make their own society. Trans people are used to being gatekept by doctors and not allowed to get the procedures they want.
Their cultural norms are a reaction to their life experiences and that reaction is "gatekeeping=bad"
They call it "transphobic" because "you're just doing to them what everyone did to me!" is the most salient connection to them.
It's a reactionary overcorrection to gatekeeping. You can also model wanting kids to be allowed to transition the same way. It's a reactionary overreaction to gatekeeping.
('over'reaction insofar as it causes more problems than it solves. I do think society 50 years ago had too much gatekeeping on this issue. And personal grievances about having been gatekept too much remain valid. But there are tradeoffs at the societal level to consider.)
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
I... don't have a good model of how mercenary these mercenaries are or how committed to Russia they are. I can definitely imagine having citizenship in a state and still having far more stake in my mercenary group than in that state. Especially in a state like Russia. And I think the believability of that is what makes marching on the capital a viable tactic for getting paid. (believability because, you don't even need to intend to ever follow through as long as you can win the game of chicken.)
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
It looks to me like they are just applying the euphemism treadmill to change the word to something the public won't throw a fit over and then supporting eugenics.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
This seems like quibbling over the definition of "Just". Physically what you're doing is "Just saying words" but this isn't a defense because cognitively, your brain is assigning meaning to those words and wielding them with intent. There is no such thing as Just doing without meaning. Sure. Literally all you're doing observably is Just saying words, sure.
When someone says
There's no such thing as "just" telling people to not drink Bud Light, the context of doing so is common knowledge.
I think it's clear enough which of these they mean that we don't have to quibble about their usage of language.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
Well, regarding your affinity for the classically human, I'll just reiterate from a past post that I'm fine with the neo-Amish existing. And am even willing to protect them if they decide to stay human while I race ahead into the unknowns of the alien frontier. But I'm not going to sit by and let "you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up" remain an empty platitude parents tell their children. When I say it I mean it.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
I don't agree with limiting the transhumanity of our imaginations. Period. The individual should have access to the quality of life improvements technology makes available. Including vividness of imagination.
As soon as your data is inside another individual's desktop computer, not only is it their data, it's literally part of their corporeal being. It's inside that which makes them who they are and determines how they function and what they can do. I don't take this as a metaphor at all. This laptop is the hand with which I reach out and touch the world. This word processor is the mind with which I structure my thought. This is ME. And I will not be chained nor see my brethren chained without righteous fury.
Whether other people should be allowed to publish deepfakes of you is a different discussion.
At the very least, humans should have the same rights to protect their image that Micky Mouse has.
Ultimately, I don't believe in Micky's rights though... my ideals are freedom maximizing, but this produces contradictions in a world where people require scarce resources to flourish.
When humans see two things coupled, they correlate them. In a world where any two concepts/styles/IPs/morphs can be coupled at a touch of a button, most such correlations are in some sense spurious. Humans need time to adapt to this.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
That sounds like a hit or miss theory of mind.
Not everyone's violent thoughts translate to violent actions. People can be in the process of slowly losing control of their actions while continuing to have violent thoughts, or continuously gaining control of their actions while continuing to have violent thoughts.
Violent thoughts can indicate repressed violent tendencies that are building to a popping point, or they can provide the simulated schadenfreude that negates any need for violent action.
It's not generalizable a priori.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
The matrix is a fascinating piece of art.
- The agents possess people. They act as software that is distinct from the individual but possesses their body in service to an alien telos.
The sort of thinking that comes from applying this metaphor makes humans feel more modular, like different pieces of software on a machine. It makes it easier to think of unfriendly groups of memes as the tentacles of singular distributed agents, or like a hacker remote controlling your desktop.
Overall, I do agree with Joyce. The Matrix is easy to take as a trans metaphor.
But I think the themes are generalizable, and I think its easier to take it as a metaphor for Transhumanism.
Transgender and Transhumanism have a lot of overlapping themes. The modularity of the self. The ideal of rewriting what it means to be one's self, the rejection of innate properties as innate.
In the previous thread. A lot of people connected Transgender ideology to postmodernism.
Postmodernism deemphasizes the object level to emphasize the social level. It considers grand narratives a way to assert social control and rejects the stability of meaning. As a memetic tool, postmodernism is used it to empower individuals to write their own structure of meaning.
Transhumanism on the other hand, goes a step further. It takes those narratives that we have rewritten, and looks for a way to then reapply them to the object level. As a memetic tool, transhumanism is used to empower individuals to use technology to rewrite the physical world to match their self image.
According to Morpheus, and in the logic of the film, Neo was always 'The One', perhaps mirroring the TRA line that a given trans woman was always a woman. But in terms of what we actually see Neo do, the audience's experience of Neo, he starts his transition to becoming 'The One', right as he is beginning to believe; When he starts gaining the powers to defy the agents, culminating in his defeat of Agent Smith.
By postmodern logic, gender-identity is more important than gender. But few trans people stop there. They craft their bodies in an ongoing arc similar to Neo's. They use technology to shape the object level reality, until the object level mirrors the social narrative they've written.
I believe the theory and praxis of transgender ideology are postmodernism and transhumanism. These two things play into each other. As people learn that it's ok to change their model of self, the technology of transition that enables them to bring their physical self in line gains funding, and starts to catch up. As technology advances to make it easier and easier to change one's own body, the threshold for how much you need to want it before its legitimately worth it drop. Memes that it's a good idea become more viable, and start to catch on.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
24d ago
Impossible burgers are good. But unless I'm eating out anyway they're not worth the price hike.
For me its really a convenience thing. If the mild to moderate inconveniences were to drop below those of the traditional meat industry I would definitely go vegetarian. (we have homegrown eggs. We could be optimizing better for the well-being of our chickens but they're worlds away from factory farmed chickens. 90/10 rule applies IMO).
Until then I can't really spare the mental energy.
I consider eating factory farmed meat to be sinful in the same way that all skill issues are sinful.
But self-flagellating isn't an effective motivator for me. So what purpose would that serve other than to just cause more suffering?
Hampster wheels are fine. Or rather. As an LLM dev, I don't think there's a hard line between regurgitation and intelligence in the first place. The line comes from what you choose to regurgitate. How you choose to regurgitate. What you choose to absorb- in order to later regurgitate.
Choosing what to believe is ultimately a process. A complex process, but a process, that any sufficiently general intelligence can learn. Discernment is a process. A complex process that requires interacting with the real world, but a process, that any sufficiently general intelligence placed in the right environment can learn.
And once it's learned and cached, you can regurgitate. Iterate. Fill in your template with your context. Throw your new, more advanced tools at the wall and see what sticks. That's creativity. Then you proceduralize the things that stuck. Analyze the things that didn't using your various regurgitated analysis processes. Regurgitate those insights in your "previous work" section as you proceed to rinse and repeat.
I think most 'NPC's have brains that can support far more intelligence than their environment has made learnable. People got by in antiquity because midwits and geniuses alike scale- with limits of course, to the problems their environment requires them to solve and the tools (mental or otherwise) their environment gives them. Elites only need to tell people what to do insofar as people are incapable of testing what they're told.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
8mo ago
If you give someone a holodeck card their fantasies give you probabilities about what they're going to do with it. The fantasy is different from reality in that you can choose which parts of the scenario you want and can explore them safely.
At the end of the day, what they actually find out they want probably remains aesthetically horrifying to naïve sensibilities.
... is it? I'm intrigued. Is this intuition from life experience or do you have numbers? And if it's the former, may I know generally where you've lived/worked/read_posts and received these experiences? This will help me formulate my models of the world. But I understand if you'd prefer to remain more private than that.
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