domain:ryandv.substack.com
SlowBoy
11m ago
It's incredibly suspicious, it's also impossible to know what it actually means without reading Sam Altman's mind. Think poorly of him, it's only fair, but I won't pretend that I know exactly what he meant.
SlowBoy
14m ago
It's almost definitely a reference to the movie "her". What does that mean? Is this a reference to ScarJo specifically, or just the movie? Does the AI voice resemble the movie "her" in any way even without ScarJo's involvement? Is this an innocuous joke, or Altman thumbing his nose?
Without reading his mind, it's actually not obvious what exactly he meant.
Now that it's been 10 years I realize that the whole point of my Ivy league education was to meet people and that dating would have been a better use of my time than doing my homework. But at the time I didn't understand.
It's the usual stuff. Your parents assumed that it will, like, just happen.
People don't waste mental effort analyzing things that work. It's why no one can draw a bicycle even if they ride one regularly.
It's a curious phenomenon. When I was a teen, I made an effort to seek out the best arguments against gay marriage, in favor of traditional gender roles, in favor of Christian sexual prudery, etc. The apologists I found were hilariously bad at this, and they melted into a puddle of "it's not natural" and "things have always been done this way". I did not find them convincing.
Now that dating and marriage are broken, cogent defenders of these position can be found. The clock was taken apart, and people see how it ticked.
100ProofTollBooth
20m ago
I don't think the social technology to do it right is even possible to develop in a world where porn and birth control are legal and easily available.
This.
Traditional purity culture struggles to exist in a world where both cheap pleasure (porn/OF/casual semi-prostitution) and consequence erasers (the pill) exist in abundance. I think another, even larger layer is the existence of social media which becomes a sort of constant relationship rubric, realistic or not.
The abundance of choice is so great that the very act of choosing - let alone the act of choosing not to do something - can feel like missing out. To sort of steel man dating apps; the image sold there is "go on dates with amazing beautiful people and have wonderful romantic trysts!" And that's a compelling narrative to both men and women alike. And it's at least plausible because of the technology today.
So the only way "out" is to actively not take part. To make a choice not to indulge. And that's the essence of the TradCon position; yes, you can go out and have casual sex. Don't do it because it's bad.
Eliminating the availability of those choices is close to illegal in the US at least (the porn-as-free-speech fight was done decades ago). It's bananas to think that adult women would have to get the permission of their fathers / brothers to go on dates. I don't necessarily know where the line is on prescription versus over the counter birth control, but I know it will never be as tightly controlled as even oxycotin ... which isn't very tightly controlled.
If you give people choices, they'll make them. Meaning, they'll make all of them (that is, over the entire population, not that one person will make every possible choice). The whole point of culture and sub-culture is to encourage good choices because we don't want the State to preemptively eliminate certain choices. That is the classic liberal (small L) argument and the begrudging position of all TradCons who aren't theocrats.
So what to do about the impending end of society because of horrible male-female relations in the west?
I've linked to it before, and you can google it - Lorenzo Warby's massive substack series
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
21m ago
The high breeders in the west are muslims and blacks and latinos
Nonsense. Neither blacks nor Latinos have fertility above replacement. Black fertility is only marginally greater than white fertility.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/226292/us-fertility-rates-by-race-and-ethnicity/
sliders1234
26m ago
Maybe I worded it wrong. 0 as in the end of humanity so you can no longer rebuild. It’s a complete loss.
Even if you took a bet where 30 humans survived in probably 10-20k years they would have restarted civilization. Which is a small amount of time compared to the useful life of earth. SBF was willing to take bets of complete loss which means things can’t regrow.
jeroboam
31m ago
When not wanting AI to be in controlled by sociopaths makes you "anti-progress"....
Look, AI is here whether we like it or not. There's not much that governments can or should do to control it. We simply don't have the regulatory tools, and Congress is comically out of their depth. But people like Sam Altman welcome regulation so they can slam the door shut on competitors and take all the value for themselves.
AI risk encompasses many scenarios. Obvious, the fast takeoff singularity attracts the most eyeballs. But that is not even the most likely risk.
Another very real risk is that one person or group is able to control the AI landscape. Whether that group is the Chinese Communist Party or OpenAI I don't want it. I don't want OpenAI to be the leaders because I believe that Sam Altman's actions (this is just a tiny example) make him unsuitable to lead the world's most important company.
Tophattingson
32m ago
Seems like a variant on merited impossibility. Perhaps merited possibility.
"It isn't happening and if it is, it's a good thing"
"It did happen, and if it didn't, why do you care?"
gattsuru
36m ago
A good part of the philosophical problem with right of publicity is that it has very little impact outside of the commercial protections, and even the commercial protections are only protective to the point where the broader public knows you. It's very much a cut out to protect celebrities and the famous, not defend the little people. California has an unusually broad combination of statutory and common-law protections, but it's still only something that matters to public figures worried about getting used as an advertising or product campaign.
((Other 'moral rights' have similar problems: see VARA for a particularly ugly one.))
But that specific context impacts here, at least if Altman did what people are thinking he did.
No_one
38m ago
You mean the weekend marriages Shia men use to hire prostitutes are for married men only ?
My point is that SJ is not a voice actor, and isn’t doing a specific “character” or something the way that Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gotfried are.
True.
She wasn’t being hired for her voice.
In general maybe, but I think she was specifically brought in on Her to replace Samantha Morton - herself a great actor - because the existing actor wasn't working. If she was there for promotional/greenlighting reasons (which I'm sure played a role in films like Ghost in the Shell, Lucy, etc.) you'd assume she'd get cast from the start because her profile is incomparable.
IME, almost every bit of "bad" advice I see people complain about is basically this - just assuming well-adjusted people will find their way. And it isn't (wasn't?) even usually wrong, which is what makes it worse. There's no easy solution in just stopping people from it.
Tanista
46m ago
Stellula
48m ago
I’m not disputing that it could sound like her, and I think if I had been primed to it like you, I might have made the connection as well.
My point is that SJ is not a voice actor, and isn’t doing a specific “character” or something the way that Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gotfried are.
Her voice is generic. It’s why there aren’t SJ impersonators the way there are for Donald Trump, for instance, who has a very distinct way of speaking. Searching for a SJ voice impersonator returns 0 results for me on YouTube at least.
And by the way I say this as somebody who likes a lot of the movies she has been in and sought them out. Girl With the Pearl Earring, The Island, Her, Lost in Translation; these were all movies I loved and largely sought out because she was in them. She wasn’t being hired for her voice.
gattsuru
58m ago
(But I'm a homo, so presumably I'm not the target audience, and maybe I'd be a big fan of some Josh Hartnett soundalike with an analogously please-fuck-me inflection, I dunno.)
I mean, there's definitely some male voice actor contributions that turn a piece much more memorable for me (eg, recent NakedSav+SpicyGayDog piece has a 'good puppy', a lot of LewdDev's work), enough that I avoid ASMR/audiobook/RVC stuff because I worry it'll be addictive.
But I don't really want that from a random app, and even as someone who would use (and has used) AI for adult content, I'm hoping that is has uses other than that.
jeroboam
59m ago
Maybe I should have resisted the D&D reference. Here's what a "Lawful Evil" character is like.
https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-alignments-explained-how-to-actually-play-lawful-evil/
In general, Lawful Evil is less disruptive to the average party if you play it right. It lacks the “kill and destroy” stereotypes of Chaotic Evil, favoring organization and order. Lawful Evil characters can put together long cons and intricate plans. They can work within the law, using bureaucracy and legalism to their advantage. On the other hand, Lawful Evil characters can be dominators, people who believe that the best way to set up society is to control others, preferably under an iron fist.
With everything we've learned about Sam, this seem to fit. Open AI seeks control over what users can do with AI, but when in a position of control makes unethical choices.
Note that this one little flareup is not the whole story but was just posted because of its high culture war valence.
As for the "her" tweet, that could mean anything.
When GPT-5 comes out and @sama tweets "skynet" I'll bet you say the same thing.
bonsaii
1hr ago
Don't know much about economics (had to google "0 lower bound"). Got any reading suggestions for understanding what you mean by operating under that condition?
jeroboam
1hr ago
Does this really sound that much like Scarlett Johansson?
ScarJo claims (in my linked tweet above) that it sounded so much like her that her friends and family couldn't tell the difference.
So... I think either yes or she is lying.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1hr ago
One party intentionally or unintentionally dates down, finding a partner who recognizes the very good thing they got and holds on tight.
Tanista
1hr ago
Even after Sama made that tweet this still didn’t occur to me.
It occurred to everyone else on the internet (including me but I was primed). If a ton of people hear ScarJo and then it turns out they literally offered the job to Johansson, I'm inclined to believe she's reasonable in thinking there was something there.
No the company is not “deep faking” you, you just aren’t actually unique.
Almost no one is. Amber Heard had a body double do the sex scenes for a movie, I guess you could say that that makes her not unique.
But I don't think it's delusions of grandeur to think that part of the value (in this case the titillation) in such a scene is specifically that it's Heard. There's a reason they took the legal risk of doing this. Which is why stars negotiate for the right to control even fake nudity - it can have an impact on their image. Some people just are more important than others, or they wouldn't be speaking to Sam Altman and basically being offered an ambassador role in one of the hottest AI companies.
Johansson wouldn't be unreasonable imo in thinking the appeal has something to do with her. Whether or not she has a legal right is another thing.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1hr ago
Even among RealMenTM, there is a lot less competitive participation sport for Bowling Alone type reasons.
When I was a kid, the culturally dominant paradigm for male participation sport in the UK was pickup games of football (soccer for you Americans) or basketball and the preferred marketing message was "What you are doing is a facsimile of professional team sports, so you should wear what the pros wear in order to be winning like them."
In the current year, the culturally dominant paradigm for male participation sport (I have no idea how accurate this is, but advertising follows the culture) is "Do you even lift, bro?" strength-based gym culture. Strength training is fundamentally PvE in a way which pickup football (or whatever the American equivalent is) is PvP, but even more so the culture of lifting with your gym bros is one of collaborative self-improvement, not competition. I have aged out of the target audience for sportswear marketing, but if I was marketing activewear to gym bros, I would reflect this change in my marketing messaging.
This is even before we consider the modern trend of selling sportswear to the spectators as athleisure. I notice that the men I see in the streets in traditional casual styles are, on average, in much better shape than the men in athleisure. FWIW I don't think the same is true for women, where athleisure appeals to the "I've got it and I want to flaunt it, and sportswear is an excuse to dress sexy before sunset" crowd.
Yasuke appears in Nioh, a 2017 game developed in Japan, as a boss. But the context to this is...
Yasuke is a factoid about the Sengoku period. Nioh's plot is framed around a long string of factoids about the Sengoku period. Quite similar to how Assassins Creed plots work, except with Youkai instead of Assassins and Templars. You even play as William Adams, who is another Sengoku factoid. Koei Tecmo practically specializes in games about random Sengoku factoids in general, so even having relatively obscure ones show up is not particularly notable.
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