Primaprimaprima
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User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
7d ago
Apropos of last week's conversation, I'd like to propose that our good friend @self_made_human try dropping some salvia. It has a penchant for revealing the truth of things. Although, you might also get trapped in an alternate reality for 8 years and come out the other end with radical permanent belief/personality changes, so, maybe it's not worth the risk...
Primaprimaprima
10d ago
I think we've literally just had it too good for too long and people have gotten soft. You'd need WW2-style mass mobilization conditions to knock some sense into people.
Last night they were showing Mamoru Oshii's Angel's Egg, which neither I nor my fiancée had seen, but she wanted to go. The movie was incomprehensible nonsense
It's a solid film. Not my favorite or anything, but worth seeing.
the real validation came from seeing the other people in attendance. The obese; the gender-confused male attending solo, with breasts that I honestly couldn't tell if they were the product of HRT, gynaecomastia, or both; the man wearing makeup and a headscarf like fucking Professor Quirrell; the couple who smelled so bad we moved a few seats further down the aisle; and of course a gender-confused female (I think?) with a cane she obviously didn't need and which she wasn't even pretending to rely on for support.* These people truly are the dregs of society
Let's hear a few words of wisdom from the man himself:
224: Ennoblement through degeneration. - History teaches that the branch of a nation that preserves itself best is the one in which most men have, as a consequence of sharing habitual and undiscussable principles, that is to say as a consequence of their common belief, a living sense of community. Here good, sound custom grows strong, here the subordination of the individual is learned and firmness imparted to character as a gift at birth and subsequently augmented. The danger facing these strong communities founded on similarly constituted, firm-charactered individuals is that of the gradually increasing inherited stupidity such as haunts all stability like its shadow. It is the more unfettered, uncertain and morally weaker individuals upon whom spiritual progress depends in such communities: it is the men who attempt new things and, in general, many things. Countless numbers of this kind perish on account of their weakness without producing any very visible effect; but in general, and especially when they leave posterity, they effect a loosening up and from time to time inflict an injury on the stable element of a community. It is precisely at this injured and weakened spot that the whole body is as it were innoculated with something new; its strength must, however, be as a whole sufficient to receive this new thing into its blood and to assimilate it. Degenerate natures are of the highest significance wherever progress is to be effected. [emphasis mine] Every progress of the whole has to be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures preserve the type, the weaker help it to evolve. - Something similar occurs in the case of the individual human being; rarely is a degeneration, a mutilation, even a vice and physical or moral damage in general without an advantage in some other direction. The more sickly man, for example, will if he belongs to a warlike and restless race perhaps have more inducement to stay by himself and thereby acquire more repose and wisdom, the one-eyed will have one stronger eye, the blind will see more deeply within themselves and in any event possess sharper hearing. To this extent the celebrated struggle for existence does not seem to me to be the only theory by which the progress or strengthening of a man or a race can be explained. Two things, rather, must come together: firstly the augmentation of the stabilizing force through the union of minds in belief and communal feeling; then the possibility of the attainment of higher goals through the occurrence of degenerate natures and, as a consequence of them, partial weakenings and injurings of the stabilizing force; it is precisely the weaker nature, as the tenderer and more refined, that makes any progress possible at all.
Primaprimaprima
14d ago
I had the same thought lol. Modern AI has ruined a lot of sci-fi stories.
Primaprimaprima
14d 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
15d 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
15d 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
15d 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
16d 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
16d 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
17d 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
17d 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
24d 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
26d 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
28d 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.
The primary active ingredient in traditional ayahuasca is DMT, which is certainly an extremely potent drug that can have long-lasting effects; but most people who have tried both agree that salvia is on another level, just for the sheer range of potential effects it can have.
Most people tolerate weed very well, but some can have very poor reactions to it, especially if they happen to have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia or similar issues.
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