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Primaprimaprima

Bigfoot is an interdimensional being

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joined 2022 September 05 01:29:15 UTC

"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."


				
User ID: 342


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
Primaprimaprima


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being

				
				
				

				

					2 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 05 01:29:15 UTC
				


				
					

					
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Can I ask what your background in philosophy is?




I'm just an avid reader, nothing special.




How confident are you that this is a correct summary of Freud's ideas?




It wasn't supposed to be a summary of Freud's ideas at all.  It was my own response to your claim that psychoanalysis should be dismissed because it has no "testable theories or experimental controls".  Nothing more.




At the very least, you can ask people to describe what they're feeling, and see if other people also report similar feelings.




Well yes, but that's basically what psychoanalytic theorists/practitioners do.  They read the theory and they think "yes, I do feel that this applies to my own cognitive processes and I find it to be illuminating for me".  It couldn't have survived for this long if people didn't find something compelling in it.




I think it's actually what SSC would have called a superweapon. Instead of grappling with the messy details of what someone is actually saying, you assert that the real story is some nebulous subconscious which they themselves are not even aware of, but you can tell.




I agree that this is a possible failure mode when you start to invoke the notion of an unconscious.  There's a risk of becoming too dogmatic if you're not sufficiently open to the possibility of falsification.  Certainly.


But are we just going to pretend that unacknowledged ulterior motives don't exist?  Certainly not!  It's pretty clear to me that they do exist!  Sometimes it feels like that's all political debates boil down to - accusations that the other side only claims to support X for principled moral reasons, when actually they just support it for their own self interest.  Should we just immediately dismiss all accusations of that sort?  I don't think so.  They should at least be given a fair hearing.  I think it's obvious that sometimes people are not entirely honest with others, and sometimes they're not entirely honest with themselves either.  You don't need a fancy theory to see that.


Sociological and political debates couldn't get anywhere if we weren't allowed to speculate about the unobserved mental states of other people.  Psychoanalysis is hardly doing anything too different from the average Motte thread, which is replete with speculation about what leftists and rightists "really think".


It's also worth mentioning that Lacanian clinical practice has this conception of the psychoanalyst as "the subject supposed to know" - key word being supposed to, as in a supposition, but that supposition ultimately turns out to be mistaken.  One of the central goals of Lacanian analysis is for the patient to come to realize the ways in which the therapist too is ignorant:




This mystery is in the last resort the mystery of the transference itself: to produce new meaning, it is necessary to presuppose its existence in the other. That’s the logic of the “subject assumed to know” which was isolated by Lacan as the central axis, or stronghold, of the phenomenon of transference. The analyst is in advance assumed to know – what? The meaning of the analysand’s symptoms. This knowledge is of course an illusion, but it is a necessary one: it is only through this supposition of knowledge that, at the end, some real knowledge can be produced.




(Lacan is not Freud of course, but he's been central for the reception of Freud's ideas in the humanities since the mid 20th century.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I've heard Continental Philosophy described as the attempt to reconcile Freud and Marx.




I mean, both Freud and Marx are certainly very central and influential figures in continental philosophy.  You might even be able to say that the project (or one of the projects) of the Frankfurt school was reconciling Freud and Marx.  But it would be wrong to describe all of continental philosophy that way.  There are continental thinkers who make little reference to either of them.  It also doesn't cover the historical figures like Hegel and Schopenhauer who were retroactively declared to be "continental" and who were writing before Marx!


Really the best definition of continental is "European philosophy that's not analytic".  Bertrand Russell and some co-conspirators decided that philosophy needed a reboot in the early 20th century, largely on account of his passionate rejection of Hegel, and that's the project that eventually grew into analytic philosophy.  So maybe you could also define continental as "someone who thinks Hegel isn't total nonsense and deserves at least some kind of response" (but even that's not a perfect definition, because Hegel and Heidegger, two of the biggest villains for the early analytics, are receiving increasing attention from analytics today).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I would be happy to trade complete restrictions on public AI research for complete control of society until the AI God arrives. Would that be a trade you'd be interested in?




I'm not sure if I understand the question, or how it's related to the section you quoted.


On a basic level I'd be willing to hand control of society over to virtually any individual or group if it meant being able to live in a reality where machine learning was impossible.  You can be the king, the progressives can be the kings, it doesn't matter.


The only thing that might give me pause would be the concern that such a decision would betray a lack of courage on my part.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So, do there exist two political ideologies that are both not liberal individualism, but also differ from each other by more than a "palette swap"?  Based on the way I'm reading you right now, you seem to be saying that the political universe essentially breaks down into "liberal individualism" and "everything else".  The ideologies in the "everything else" bucket may have differences from each other, but they will always be superficial differences compared to the primary difference of individualism vs identitarianism.  Is that your view?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


When I said the alternatives were woo, etc, I meant those "other types of intellectual activity".




What do you mean by "woo"?  I always understood "woo" to essentially mean "supernatural".  Is that how you're using the word?


There might be many criticisms you could make of what goes on in English departments or women's studies departments, but I don't think "belief in the supernatural" is one of them.




Perhaps you could come up with solid reasons it's a bad idea to build advanced AI, but then you'd be back in the realm of STEM.




You seem to be saying here that STEM (let's just say science) can give us knowledge of "solid reasons".  If that's the case, then what area of science is responsible for studying "solid reasons"?  What is our current best scientific theory of "solid reasons"?  If I open a physics textbook, I can find quarks, and wave functions, and black holes, but I can't find any "solid reasons".  Where are they?


This isn't just idle speculation.  It seems like in order for science to give us knowledge of X, then either we have to be able to directly observe X, or we have to have a scientific theory of X.  But neither of those criteria seems to be met here.  I can't look out my window and see any "solid reasons".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


STEM did not give us lockdowns or vaccine passes -- that was bullshitting.




Quarantines did exist in the pre-modern world.  But I think the Covid lockdowns were of a uniquely large scale, and of a uniquely pervasive character, such that they only could have existed with the aid of modern technology.  I don't think Covid would have played out the way it did without the internet (for WFH and Zoom calls), phone apps, and social media.




We already have that kind of smart feller, and they're already at universities. They don't seem to be all that useful.




Well, maybe.  But what conclusions are we supposed to draw from that?


If you think that the institutionalized critique of STEM supremacism and neoliberal market ideology ("homo economicus", as @f3zinker puts it) is genuinely vital, as I do, then I don't see why you should be dissuaded by contingent failures and defects of the university system.  Sometimes things don't work out.  That's the way it goes.  But that doesn't mean you give up.  That just means you try harder next time!


If you think it's impossible for the university to have any positive impact in this area at all, then that would be different.  But I don't see why we should accept that.  Do you think it's just impossible for the university to have any impact on culture or politics?  A number of rightists claim that contemporary progressivism can trace its roots back to the "postmodern neo-Marxism" of the Frankfurt school - i.e. it's an ideology that started in universities and percolated outward.  What do you think of those claims?


If you just DON'T think that a humanistic critique of STEM is important, or if you think it's outright pernicious, then of course you would be in favor of just turning universities into trade schools.  But then, that would just be grounded in your preexisting political commitments, not in any empirical facts about the university itself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I’m curious to be “true white” and not “expanded” white which specific barbarian tribe you needed to descend from




Why the scare quotes?  Is it really that strange to suggest that some people are white and others are not?


"White" means "people of European descent".  The majority of South Americans are of mixed European and Native American descent.


For what it's worth, I'd be fine with just getting rid of the word white and using a term like European-American instead (or whatever hyphenated neologism is appropriate to your locale).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the outcomes are due to human actions but not human design.




I’ll ask you the same question I asked Hlynka: what is your alternative, an alternative that avoids these problems that are allegedly shared by progressivism and fascism?


I don’t really understand what your comment is getting at here, but maybe you can help me understand by giving me an example.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Last week I not so popularly defended copyright, and I still believe it's the best compromise available to us. But it doesn't exist because of a fundamental right




How do you feel about software license agreements?  Plenty of software/code is publicly visible on the internet and can be downloaded for free, but it's accompanied by complex licensing terms that state what you can and can't do with it, and you agree to those terms just by downloading the software.  Do you think that license agreements are just nonsense?  Once something is out on the internet then no one can tell you what you can and can't do with it?


If you think that once a sequence of bits is out there, it's out there, and anyone can do anything with it, then it would follow that you wouldn't see anything wrong with AI training as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is it not different from the early factory laborers buildings the machines that would replace them?




They consented and were paid.  It's not analogous at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now I can live in a world where I know for a fact there are zero consequences for my actions?




One of the stipulations of going back in is that you forget it's a simulation, but, minor detail.




As any schizophrenic will tell you your perception of reality has and always will be an illusion, hostage to brain chemistry we don't understand.




Despite possibly being more sympathetic to "postmodernism" than anyone else on this forum, I've never been able to get on board with this sort of thing.  Assuming we're not already in a simulation, I think we have pretty direct access to reality most of the time.  Truck comes barreling towards you on the highway, do you think "ah but I'm trapped in a prison built out of my own perceptions so really there's no way to know what to do in this situation"?  No of course not, you get out of the way.  Looks like you rely on your senses to give you accurate information about reality after all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Would you really never think, "man, I wish I never learned that my parents weren't actually my parents and didn't really care about me"?




Of course I wouldn't think that.  I would certainly prefer to know the truth.  No question.  Now, if part of the deal is, "you can either know the truth and get kicked out, or you could never know the truth but keep receiving their financial support" then obviously it gets more complicated.  But all other things being equal, I would rather know the truth.




Would this revelation really irreversibly and unconditionally taint the memories of your childhood?




Well, I don't think it would taint them, but that's mainly because I would find it to be a fascinating story and I would enjoy being at the center of such a story.  You could say that the memories would trade one type of value for another.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not sure what the point of posting this was.


We're all quite capable of reading the post and coming to our own conclusions about it.  I don't feel the need to outsource my thinking to anyone else, human or machine.  I learn from other people, certainly, but I don't let them do my thinking for me.  The purpose of the act of thinking is to determine what I think about something.  Not to determine what someone else thinks.




"If men create intelligent machines, or fantasize about them, it is either because they secretly despair of their own intelligence or because they are in danger of succumbing to the weight of a monstrous and useless intelligence which they seek to exorcise by transferring it to machines, where they can play with it and make fun of it. By entrusting this burdensome intelligence to machines we are released from any responsibility to knowledge, much as entrusting power to politicians allows us to disdain any aspiration of our own to power. If men dream of machines that are unique, that are endowed with genius, it is because they despair of their own uniqueness, or because they prefer to do without it - to enjoy it by proxy, so to speak, thanks to machines. What such machines offer is the spectacle of thought, and in manipulating them people devote themselves more to the spectacle of thought than to thought itself. It is not for nothing that they are described as 'virtual', for they put thought on hold indefinitely, tying its emergence to the achievement of a complete knowledge. The act of thinking itself is thus put off forever. Indeed, the question of thought can no more be raised than the question of the freedom of future generations, who will pass through life as we travel through the air, strapped into their seats. These Men of Artificial Intelligence will traverse their own mental space bound hand and foot to their computers. Immobile in front of his computer, Virtual Man makes love via the screen and gives lessons by means of the teleconference. He is a physical - and no doubt also a mental cripple. That is the price he pays for being operational. Just as eyeglasses and contact lenses will arguably one day evolve into implanted prostheses for a species that has lost its sight, it is similarly to be feared that artificial intelligence and the hardware that supports it will become a mental prosthesis for a species without the capacity for thought. Artificial intelligence is devoid of intelligence because it is devoid of artifice."




-- Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant if he becomes a woman down to the molecular level, female bone structure, average female strength, etc. So no possible physical test could distinguish him from a natural woman.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Reddit bans AI art model user for too many parentheses
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have a mild suspicion that the symbol was chosen on purpose for this reason.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


My greatest fear for AI content generation is it being dominated by woke megacorps, with independent creators permanently locked out of contributing to culture.




I'm confused by this statement.  How does it "lock independent creators out of contributing to culture" if only megacorps have AI tools?


Is it because you think it's impossible to produce content without using AI?  That's obviously false.  People have produced petabytes of content without using AI.


Is it because you think megacorps will flood the world with AI-generated content and independent creators will get drowned out and won't get noticed?  That concern also doesn't really make sense.  If you're worried about getting drowned out by just a few megacorps, then giving everyone access to the tools will just allow everyone to flood the world with even more content, exacerbating the problem.


EDIT: Not sure why this is getting downvoted. This isn’t supposed to be a gotcha. I really don’t understand the concern here. I mean, I assume the intuitive concern is “the megacorps have all the AI tools and I don’t and that’s not fair”, I just think that under closer examination, you can’t say that you’re “locked out of contributing to culture” in that situation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Essentially this is the opposite of striving for efficiency




It most certainly is!




So I sat there and smoked my cigar until I fell into a reverie. Among others I recall these thoughts. You are getting on, I said to myself, and are becoming an old man without being anything, and without really taking on anything. Wherever you look about you on the other hand, in literature or in life, you see the names and figures of the celebrities, the prized and acclaimed making their appearances or being talked about, the many benefactors of the age who know how to do favours to mankind by making life more and more easy, some with railways, others with omnibuses and steamships, others with the telegraph, others through easily grasped surveys and brief reports on everything worth knowing, and finally the true benefactors of the age, who by virtue of thought make spiritual existence systematically easier and yet more and more important. And what are you doing? Here my soliloquy was interrupted, for my cigar was finished and a new one had to be lit. So I smoked again, and then suddenly this thought flashed through my mind: You must do something, but since with your limited abilities it will be impossible to make anything easier than it has become, you must, with the same humanitarian enthusiasm as the others, take it upon yourself to make something more difficult. This notion pleased me immensely, and at the same time it flattered me to think that I would be loved and esteemed for this effort by the whole community, as well as any. For when all join together in making everything easier in every way, there remains only one possible danger, namely, that the ease becomes so great that it becomes altogether too easy; then there will be only one lack remaining, if not yet felt, when people come to miss the difficulty. Out of love for humankind, and from despair over my embarrassing situation, having accomplished nothing, and being unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and out of a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task everywhere to create difficulties. I was also especially struck by the curious reflection as to whether it was not really my indolence I had to thank for the fact that this task became mine. For far from having found it like an Aladdin, by a stroke of luck, I must rather suppose that by preventing me from intervening in good time to make things easy, my indolence has thrust on me the only thing that was left.




-- Søren Kierkegaard, "Concluding Unscientific Postscript"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I notice that a lot of people on this site seem to be both utilitarian and right wing. This makes me confused, as the utilitarian case for a strong welfare state seems extremely strong on its face.




I agree, I think there's a clear tension there.  If you're not an EA working tirelessly to uplift the starving masses of Africa, then you implicitly agree that there are moral values that can take precedence over "the greatest good for the greatest number".


Although, I get the impression that the form of "utilitarianism" that most people subscribe to here is not the global moral philosophy that requires you to do the greatest good for the greatest number, but is instead a sort of hedonism where great importance is placed on immediate experiential states of personal pleasure.  Which is why we have so many people eager to plug themselves into the experience machine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it gives people who have no artistic skills the ability to translate their thoughts into images.




No, that's exactly my point.  It literally does not do that.  It might trick you into thinking it does that, but it doesn't.


If you imagine a sexy large-breasted woman and do a google image search for "sexy large-breasted woman" then it might return images that satisfy your requirements, but none of them will be "your thoughts translated into image form" because none of them will match the exact woman you were imagining.  Obviously the problem becomes more pronounced the more unique and complex the request is.


The AI is essentially doing the same thing as a google image search (in terms of how it presents results to you, not at the level of technical implementation).  Of course, through the use of Photoshop and img2img you can take the output from multiple AI prompts and start fashioning them into something closer to your original vision, but the more you involve yourself in the process, the more you would just need to rely on traditional artistic skills anyway, rather than the AI.




There is no "pseudo-creativity" and there is no "authentic creativity".




Would you plug yourself into the Matrix and live in a pleasant simulated world, assuming we could alter your memory so you wouldn't be aware it was a simulation?  If not, then you recognize a difference in value between authentic experience and pseudo-experience, and it shouldn't be too hard to apply the same concepts to creativity.  If you would plug yourself in, then our worldviews are fundamentally irreconcilable and there's probably not much we'll agree on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You see an evolution of expression that will offer infinitely more creative freedoms to people.




That is one thing it certainly does not do.  It does not expand creative freedom - it can only offer a kind of pseudo-creativity that further alienates people from authentic creativity and distorts the meaning of what creativity can and should be.


If what you want to create can be packaged into a convenient verbal "prompt", then it's probably not very creative.  There are images in my head that I wouldn't even know how to describe to a human artist, because they're barely even images - more like indistinct nexuses of concepts, emotions, and desires, that also include some visual elements.  Things like that can only be realized as what they are in the concrete working out of the thing, with all of the surprising contingencies that that process includes.  You can't just say to another agent "make it so", regardless of whether that agent's intelligence is artificial or organic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not interested in approaching the question from the perspective of, "what is permissible for an individual artist to do?".  I'm interested in approaching the question from the perspective of, "what impact will this technology have on culture and the nature of art?".


Consider the impact that AI is already having on the genre fiction market.  It's easy to imagine that writers will soon feel compelled to collaborate with AI, even if they don't want to, in order to match the output rate of authors who do use AI.  I think that's a rather deplorable state of affairs.  But that problem doesn't come into view when we only consider individual actors in isolation; it only becomes apparent when we zoom out and look at culture as a whole.


I recommend reading Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction if you haven't.  Not because I necessarily endorse his conclusions, but because his thought process is illustrative of how technology can impact the meaning and nature of art, independent of any one person's thoughts or actions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Just a year ago the predecessors of the current models were barely passable at art. One year from now, they could be exponentially better still.




https://xkcd.com/605/


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I meant SS's top level post and all its replies, most of which are directly related to Holocaust discussion, not just this particular sub-thread where we're discussing meta issues.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 3, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


because I don't feel excited, but think it's probably the right thing to do, and that I will probably be glad to have a son later on, I hope.




Did you want a daughter instead?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If only one country has a nuclear arsenal, they could conquer the world quite easily. If many countries have nukes, there is no such danger.




Right, there's value in deterrence.  But presumably you don't think that every individual on earth should have personal direct access to the nuke button - instead we try to limit that power to a small number of trusted actors.  It seems to me that everyone having unrestricted personal access to ASI is the same as giving everyone a direct line to the button.