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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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An accidental tab refresh ate my lengthy comment, so I'm going to be terse.

Yes, I agree that Freddie is inciting violence, not even particularly veiled. It's all, ah woe is modernity, wouldn't it be a shame if the disaffected took out their rage on their wifi routers? Anyway, it's unlikely to happen, but if you're so inclined here's [list of easy targets].

Leaving aside that unironically invoking Stochastic Parrots should be a clinical sign of mental retardation, I'll be sure to include it if I'm ever consulted for the DSM-7. LLMs don't perform well out of distribution, but when the distribution they're trained on comprises most of the internet..

At any rate, he's impotent and not just because of the meds. The appetite for political violence in the US is nowhere near as high as the overly online might like to daydream, and a decentralized bout of violent ludditism is unlikely to come about, no matter how vigorously he tries to manifest it. I value free speech enough that I don't want him deplatformed for his ranting.

If they want to be ants, the powers that be have bugspray.

To be fair, bipolar disorder with its manic psychosis is probably adaptive for the purposes of violent extremism. You need to be a little schizo, or ideally have a brain tumor, before some misdirected political violence in the comfort of the US seems remotely like a good idea.

By the time most of the masses even end up unemployed and disenfranchised, without a social safety net, that'll be when they're obsolete. Maybe they can merk an odd Google employee while they're sipping a latte, but data centers will become (and are) valuable enough that I don't suppose they'll have much success in climbing electrified fences, avoiding the robodogs and cameras and then taking a piss on a server rack.

BPD

I thought this stood for borderline personality disorder?

It does. I keep mixing the two up, despite having been corrected about the acronyms in the past, in my defense it's been a long shift. I do mean bipolar here.