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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35578 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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I don't know. I don't believe the AI doomerism, but neither do I believe the AI pollyannas about how Fairy Godmother AI will solve all the world problems and we'll all be rich and living high on the hog.

And while I try to be sympathetic to Aaronson because I do think he is severely neurotic and troubled, lines like this have me facepalming:

It was also defined by my struggle against the bullies—i.e., the kids who the blankfaced administrators sheltered and protected, and who actually did to me all the things that the blankfaces probably wanted to do but couldn’t.

Dude, mate, pal: I've worked in a school and related areas. The "blankfaces" don't want to stick your head down the toilet, they don't think of you as anything other than "okay, another problem to be solved", especially if your parents were on the phone every five minutes about how unfair it was that little Scott wasn't allowed to jump ahead three grades in maths.

This is someone smart, who works in academia, is married with kids - and is still going through the world as the scared and resentful 12 year old who was bullied at school. If he thinks AI is going to recognise him as a kindred 'high intellect' and be on his side, he needs to wake up fast. AI won't recognise or think of anybody as anything, it'll be a tool in the hands of whoever brings their product to market first.

If the doomerists are anyway right, he'll be just another one of the fleshbags. For someone who seems to live in a constant state of "I'm Jewish, so everyone wants to Holocaust me", I can see why he'd pin his hopes on machine intelligence being the boss of the world. But he's wrong - sure, the machine won't care that he's Jewish, but it also won't care that he's smart for a fleshbag. He's just more paperclip material.

But he's wrong - sure, the machine won't care that he's Jewish

He is in a position to make it care about his Jewish identity and protect it.

How on earth would your observation smooth my concerns rather than justify them? The only real controversial thing would be to say that these companies are going to put particular emphasis on consciously making sure the AI is aligned to Jewish interests in how it responds to prompts and generates creative output. Tapping Aaronson is the exact sort of thing that would follow from that conclusion.

consciously making sure the AI is aligned to Jewish interests

How? Is it going to put on a virtual kippah and tallit and respond in a heavy Yiddish accent: "Oy vey, why you not supporting Israel?" if I ask it about dukkah?

How? Is it going to put on a virtual kippah and tallit and respond in a heavy Yiddish accent

It's going to be optimized for giving really good critiques of white identity, history, and culture and lock up when it comes to any sort of prompts that would invite criticism of Jewish identity and culture. It's going to be so good at doing this, it will oftentimes be imperceptible. This going to influence its creative output as well which is going to generate art, film, and advertisements.

It's the most pure, mathematical form of Kevin MacDonald's thesis in Culture of Critique.

white identity, history, and culture

Is giving really good critiques of whatever that term signifies really in line with "Jewish interests" in any putative interethnic zero-sum game? The way it seems to me, the status of the memetically menopausal middle American cultural hobo stew that "white" usually denotes is already so low that its legendary powers of attraction hardly function anymore, and everyone who has the slightest claim to something else has switched to holding on to it for dear life. This seems likely to result in the emergence of more functioning ethnic coalitions that would be actively opposed to "Jewish interests". In concrete terms, a Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II immigrating to the US nowadays may well issue children who would march against Israel with the Arab student union, not generic gay white guys.

Is giving really good critiques of whatever that term signifies really in line with "Jewish interests" in any putative interethnic zero-sum game?

Yes, it is. You in fact say "whatever that term signifies", implying doubt that there is such a thing as white people- no doubt when there is talk about black people you don't feign ignorance. You can split hairs and argue for "social construct", that's what Chat-GPT does (but not for Jews or black people, only for white people). Of course, if I had my way, then the term Aryan should be used in order to denote non-Jewish European-descended, but we can't use the term Aryan because, well you know... let's ask GPT about the existence of an Aryan people:

Something went wrong. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com.

Oops- you can word the prompt to ellicit some sort of response but it's just denunciations of term. But it does a good job of explaining:

Jewish people have a rich history and diverse cultural practices that may differ significantly from other groups in the United States.

So it goes.

The way it seems to me, the status of the memetically menopausal middle American cultural hobo stew that "white" usually denotes is already so low that its legendary powers of attraction hardly function anymore

How did it get to that point, specifically? With our culture, right?

Edit: Of course, Chat-GPT knows that "Aryan" is verboten but "Indo-European" gives a more accurate response (despite the fact they are synonymous terms):

The Indo-Europeans were a group of people who lived in Eurasia during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE and spoke a common language that has come to be known as the Proto-Indo-European language. They are believed to have originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, which is located in modern-day Ukraine and Russia, and spread outwards to form various civilizations in Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia.

The Indo-Europeans are important because their language is the ancestor of many of the languages spoken today in Europe, as well as in parts of Central and South Asia. These languages include English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, and Russian, among others.

The Indo-European language family is one of the largest language families in the world, with more than 400 languages and dialects that are spoken by billions of people. The study of Indo-European languages and cultures has been an important field of inquiry in linguistics, archaeology, history, and anthropology, and has helped to shed light on the origins and movements of ancient peoples and civilizations.

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