domain:web.law.duke.edu
JarJarJedi
13hr ago
I've been to LA recently and I wonder if anybody here knows the answer to this: one thing I noticed there is a lot of people selling clothes (and other things but mostly clothes and shoes) on the street. And I mean right on a random street (maybe not random, but looked random to me), not even a tent, nothing, just some hangers or tarps and clothes and shoes on them. A lot of those.
Who are they? Why are they doing it on the street? Where these clothes come from - are they stolen? I have hard time imagining legit wholesaler giving people their goods to just sell randomly on the street - but maybe I'm wrong? What is the basis for this business, how that works? How people wouldn't just steal all the clothes if they steal massively from regular retail shops - are the criminals providing security for them? Or maybe corrupt cops? No regular cops for sure since I haven't seen a single policeman around for all the time I've been in LA.
I've never seen such a thing in any other major city that I can remember. I've seen kinda grey marketplaces or genuine street markets, but those are always in certain designated places and usually have at least some infrastructure, not just randomly deployed on the street. Why this is specifically in LA?
GBRK
13hr ago
Building a wall is a little silly. I'm pro-immigration, but in this case that l means I think the amerian military should immigrate into ottowa and annex it. Canadians are very aware that they aren't a real country-- this is the obvious solution to that.
faceh
14hr ago
lol there are a lot of potential scifi analogues.
Like the MeSeeks from Rick and Morty.
But I'd reiterate my point. The ethical issues mostly arise when you assume that their mental conditioning is NOT 100% effective and that it might occur to them to do something different.
If you've got a creature in front of you that WANTS to do taxes, enjoys doing taxes, wants to want to do taxes, and doesn't ever think there's anything wrong with that... and isn't otherwise causing itself harm due to some secondary effect of the programming, I don't think you're obligated to do anything other than facilitate their ability to keep doing taxes as long as that is relevant.
But I do think that's where we're starting to lose the analogy to AI, since we kind of know less about their individual internals than we do about human's.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
14hr ago
I believe it is ethically wrong for me
No stop this. This all reads like a cope for rationalising low-openness. As a person who exists in the world and interacts with other persons, I can tell you that 99.9% of any interactions you will have with others won’t involve any theoretical discussions of tenets of cultural Marxism. And the remaining is easy to avoid or deflect.
faceh
14hr ago
Solid.
But even when I'm not, as the kids say, 'locked in', I feel pretty much immersed in my surroundings.
A couple things prompted this musing, but one of them was noticing how many people claim to just "dissociate" through unpleasant events (read: their daily job) and many seem to agree that they spend a lot of time in a dissociated state, only pulling themselves together when it is absolutely necessary.
And I just cannot relate to that.
But couldn't find a decent psychological concept to describe my experience.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
14hr ago
I think it’s mainly the perceived capability to apply violence. You should generally prefer to fight a gymbro over a construction worker with less visible muscles if you had to choose
bonsaii
14hr ago
I hate doing taxes
Fully agree. My example wasn't chosen at random. There's really no other obligation in my life that makes me as annoyed/angry as filling out tax forms.
Ponder
14hr ago
Flow state might be a term that describes the opposite of dissociation. In a flow state you feel focused attention and immersion in the activity you are doing.
bonsaii
14hr ago
Unless you're ALSO suggesting that these behavioral changes are SO ingrained that they won't gradually shift over time as they accumulate experiences and/or head trauma.
This would make for a more nuanced thought experiment (how high a rate of these behavioral drifts is tolerable, what is to be done with those that experience such drifts), but for the purposes of my current question, I'm assuming it's 100% effective and permanent.
I think that's where the ethics of it start to kick in. If your modulated human one day says "I would rather not do taxes today. In fact, can we adjust my brain a little so I can get a feeling of optimistic joy from viewing a sunset? I read some books that made that sound really nice."
I'm assuming they'd never desire an adjustment because the thought would never cross their minds.
(Aren't we just talking about Replicants from Blade Runner, here?)
My ignorance of sci-fi is obviously showing here, as two other posts noted similar concepts I did not know (Tleilaxu, Genejack). It seems Genejack is more or less what I'm thinking of. As for Replicants, I only saw Blade Runner once many years ago but I don't recall any modulation of interests/desires, more just enhance capabilities and a muted emotional response?
faceh
14hr ago
Be remiss to mention the Chinese Cities really leaning into the aesthetic. Especially with the drone shows and the round robot cops.
One wonders how much of that is 'chicken/egg' though. We expect the future to look brightly lit and with glowing colors everywhere because a lot of scifi media depicted it as such.
I mean, Kulak had that bit about us having flying cars since the Fokker Dr.I. Either way that's not quite how the future was advertised to me. And the moon base isn't going to happen in that time frame, unless the Chinese have some surprises up their sleeves.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
14hr ago
Discord
Every time I'm foolish enough to venture into a Discord for a game or youtuber I'm interested in, it's full of trans poly individuals proselytizing their lifestyle to children. It's like all those people ever talk about, despite the server ostensibly being about anything else. And of course all the discords have rules against "hate" which means you can't ask them not to.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
14hr ago
Trench coats are sick. That reminds me that I should engage in some more rampant consumerism by browsing Vinted for a few good pieces. The neon mohawks? You're welcome to keep them!
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
14hr ago
You can buy a flying car, at least if you're in the US. Moon bases? Give it 5-10 years.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
14hr ago
Well, I suppose you and I are more psychologically different than I thought.
I have to confess, though, that I’m not necessarily surprised — the only guy who ever mirrored my orientation in this way was that one guy from high school. Intriguingly I’ve had more “oh that’s how you see it too?” conversations with trans women than men, and actually more than cis women too — nobody crack an egg over my head. I have often found that people on the margins are those who most understand the precious nature of intimate connection.
Romance for a lot of both men and women seems immensely tied up in external status in a way it never was for me; while I absolutely recognize the norms of male performance in my own romantic success, when it’s come, I am also lucky that the performances that were appealing were abundantly personal to me, showing me at my best, being myself. And that the feeling I can, at times, inspire includes both attraction and companionship.
I believe all the things I do about love as transformation not because of things I read in novels, but because of what I have experienced in love. Every time someone has loved me it has changed me for the better. Not in the sense that “I was trained” or whatever people believe about women in relationships. But in the sense that I became more tender, more empathetic, more open to other people, and in fact more spiritual. I actually believe in God in part because of my experiences with romantic love. C.S. Lewis once called Eros “the thing in the world that most begs for idolatry,” (paraphrase) and I believe it.
But our discussion here and the serendipitous chat with my girlfriend prompted a really good chat with her last night — thanks for that. She made the point that what women dream about “in traditional romances, not the werewolf thing,” she added, is a man who cares about them, talks to them when they’re down, is emotionally available, good dad material. I made the point to her that a lot of men dream about the same thing — a woman who cares about them, accepts their vulnerability, believes in their potential, sweet and loving — good mom material. The great male fear is that a woman will love him only for what he can do, and will resent him and hate him if he ever stops giving interest on their principal. This shows up in complaints about nagging, the alpha/beta dichotomy, sexless marriages, if you find a male complaint about women this is what it resolves to. I don’t want a woman who loves me because I slayed the dragon, I want a woman who gives me the strength to slay him. “Behind every great man…”
If “cishet girl lore” can dream about a man who sees a woman for who she is, for her actual personality and soul and love her for this and not for the size of her tits, well, Cishet male lore also dreams about a woman who sees a man’s capabilities even when he’s down and yet believes in him. Loves him. For who he is, for who he can become. What both sexes truly want beneath the recriminations is very similar: love, affection, and commitment based on who we are in our innermost selves, not what we present to the world. This is the meaning of “intimacy.”
It is only because this is preciously rare that anyone settles for less. And men and women both feel its lack with great yearning. And sometimes, contempt.
faceh
14hr ago
I bet there are some subcultures out there that have this feel, but you'd have go out to look for them.
faceh
14hr ago
There has never been a prolonged global financial crisis in bitcoin’s existence.
Clearly Bitcoin is warding off large financial crises!
More seriously, this has been my main logic for never going all-in on BTC.
faceh
14hr ago
How does your position differ from creating an artificial general intelligence (supposing we developed the capability) to do the same?
Welllll we haven't assumed the ability to arbitrarily modulate the AI'S compulsions and interests.
Which is a big question these days.
More to the point, though, are we allowing the modulated person to request that their modulation be changed if it no longer suits them, if they feel they're suffering with the current setup?
Unless you're ALSO suggesting that these behavioral changes are SO ingrained that they won't gradually shift over time as they accumulate experiences and/or head trauma.
I think that's where the ethics of it start to kick in. If your modulated human one day says "I would rather not do taxes today. In fact, can we adjust my brain a little so I can get a feeling of optimistic joy from viewing a sunset? I read some books that made that sound really nice."
(Aren't we just talking about Replicants from Blade Runner, here?)
Why is there a psychological/clinical concept or coping mechanism known as Dissociation, but as far as I can tell no 'opposite' concept? I guess hyperfocus is a thing but its not really what I'm talking about.
I ask because while I can't say that I've never dissociated in my life, the vast majority of my experience of life is basically the opposite of that. I've been present for and fully sensitive to most everything going on, perhaps overly so. If I'm feeling depressed, I'm still feeling it as 'myself.' Ditto fear, anxiety. Sometimes I have 'brain fog' but I still don't tend to feel like I'm "apart from myself" or just nonpresent, that's just viewing things through a blurry lens.
Seriously, what is the psychologically 'opposite' concept for when a person feels more 'present' and 'integrated' and 'aware' of themselves and their surroundings than usual?
Tree
14hr ago
Like you said, it‘s important to us that he sustain himself, so we would give him dopamine rewards for eating and resting when he‘s tired. We need him replaced when he‘s too old, so we would reward him chemically for shooting his gametes in a female of his species. We would even make it so he likes her, to make the process of growing the next generation easier. Et caetera.
If he is our slave, are we not the slaves of Nature? It is a joyful existence, despite it all. Certainly preferable to oblivion.
Crowstep
15hr ago
Back when I did judo guys would often talk about 'old man strength', which was really just better technique from the guys who had been doing it for twenty years. They weren't strong, but they knew how to leverage what strength they had.
Go. Yes. I hate doing taxes, and such a creature would love doing them for me.
Is it horrifying? Yea sure. But I'm doomer enough to consider the eventual coming of such technology and its utilization a foregone conclusion. It's a question of when, not if, unless our chatbot overlords kill us all first.
The problem being that except for a fairly small number of jobs, there’s no way to prevent this person from having contact with children. Warehouses might be about the only low-skill job available where you could guarantee that at no time is he in contact with a child. As far as professionals, most of them are public contact jobs, so again he’ll be able to contact children.
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