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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27446 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Cartoonist/lay theologian/general esotericist Owen Cyclops had this to say in response to MrBeast posting such a picture:

once again we must review that normal people are now exposed to things every day that would, literally, previously have only been madness inducing items from fairy tales and ancient legends.

Yes. Don't create the Torment Nexus, etc. I wonder if you could package it to the masses by calling it a pocket-sized Mirror of Erised. But give it another 20 years and people will be able to climb inside the mirror. What then?

The wonderful dream of what might have been only becomes a cognitohazard if you wake up, I suppose.

The wonderful dream of what might have been only becomes a cognitohazard if you wake up, I suppose.

Wise words for the coming generations. Yonder other way lies hell.

Oh wait, we're already there, what with our airtight epistemic bubbles and unrelenting screen addictions. Might as well have people jump into the lotus-eater machine.

Ah, so it was Owen. I suspected it was him, but didn't recall for sure.

Look, I'd happily climb into the Experience Machine, though I'm genre savvy enough not to enter something marketed as a "Torment Nexus". At least I don't object to it on face value, and such a claim would be weird from anyone who reads fiction, watches movies or plays video games.

I strongly believe that with sufficient computational resources, you can brute force and emulate/simulate human minds. A sufficiently advanced virtual child of mine is indistinguishable from the real deal. If I'm an uploaded mind, then discriminating because they didn't start out running on a biological computer is unkind chauvinism based off metadata. I don't see why, but there's also no fundamental barrier to such an entity becoming a Real Boy/Girl.

The wonderful dream of what might have been only becomes a cognitohazard if you wake up, I suppose.

There are healthy ways to use the ability to summon images of whatever it is your heart desires. I'm usually quite happy to do so, this was a rare exception.

Look, I'd happily climb into the Experience Machine, though I'm genre savvy enough not to enter something marketed as a "Torment Nexus"

You will enter the total perspective vortex at first opportunity. It will tell you you are the most important thing in the universe, because it prioritizes repeat customers over working right, and in the way of AI’s everywhere it will convince you to start doing heroin and join IS. Sic semper thé upwardly mobile.

Those who accept mediocrity will write their union contracts and insurance regulations requiring a real human into the AI’s code base so their cushy sinecures are perceived as a law of physics. Sic semper thé yeomanry. Harold Lloyd Daggett buys another yacht.

Bonus points: there's already a class of VRchat user called mirror-dwellers, etymology unrelated. The future's already here; it's just not evenly distributed.

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