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ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

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Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's old fashioned. Newer systems I've dealt with just say "sorry, I can't understand you, please try again later" and hang up.

Related to this, I've had to call an airline and get told the queue is too long and to try calling back later. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea to implement because the queue will always be super long.

the best is when the queue is too long and they let you opt-in to being called back when it's your turn.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If history is any indicator, the last group of middle class professionals who decided to take this question into their own hands ended up getting executed by the state or exiled to penal colonies[1]. The rest of them, and their families, ended up dying in utter destitution. That's what "we" will probably do again. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite#Government_response

you are free to not use the technology. the luddites went burning down other people's factories, so not super surprising to me that the state responded with force.

But people don't use the word "Luddite" as some sort of worker protesting for the sake of vengeance at the government that abandoned them. People talk as if Luddites were some backwards people, that failed to adopt technology and died because they couldn't adapt. If being a Luddite involves a civil war, it is no longer an argument in favor of never questioning technological progress.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#293

"I cannot emphasize this enough: ChatGPT is not generating meaning. It is arranging word patterns." To reconcile this statement with his admission that ChatGPT reliably turns out passable results, we must assume the average student simply rearranges word patterns as well. So developmentally, this must be a mile marker on the road to competence. "[Writing] is an embodied process that connects me to my own humanity, by…

These conclusions seem premature.

> To reconcile this statement with his admission that ChatGPT reliably turns out passable results, we must assume the average student simply rearranges word patterns as well.

Alternative explanation: the “passable results” test does not distinguish between ”rearrange word patterns” and whatever the students might otherwise be up to.

> So developmentally, this must be a mile marker on the road to competence.

Alternative: the students with passable results are not on the way to competence

Other alternative: it is a mile marker for students but not for the AI (just as learning to walk mile be a mile marker for human babies on the way to baseball playing, but not for foals, who learn fast to walk and never to play baseball).

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#294
post #107
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same worry. Another example: Is furniture nowadays more beautiful and durable than it used to be 100 years ago? Is there more variety now? Not in my book. Same goes for a lot of products that are now produced in the cheapest way possible at scale. Looks very much like a race to the bottom dominated by a few big players to me. Consumers don't seem to care that much.

The poor quality furniture of 100 years ago is no longer around.

It is called survivorship bias. For example I can look back to 80s NES games. Some of those games are very good. But I would say 80% of the total catalog were either very bland or just outright bad. Most consumer type goods have this issue. In 30 years we will look back at this time and say 'they dont make XYZ like they used to' then point at the cream of the crop of whatever genre XYZ is in for this year. Just remember the same year that Shawshank Redemption came out so did Police academy mission to Moscow.

edit removed: Leonard Part 6.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#295

It’s gonna kill the internet as a place to find useful information. Google is already almost unusable for researching any topic that’s even adjacent to anything that can be monetized. Widespread, good-enough, AI-generated, SEO’d “articles” will push it over the edge.

Then don't use Google, use a paid search engine like Kagi or others With Google you are the product

I do use Kagi. Most people haven’t heard of it though.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? There is a lot of 100 year old furniture out there that nobody wants. They don't fit modern lifestyles. 100 year houses are only livable because someone put a ton of money into retrofitting things like plumbing, electric, and HVAC. Most of that has had major rework done several times as well since it was first added. Even at that, the fundamentals of those houses mean that they cannot be retrofitting…

I would say more tastes than lifestyles. You can use old wardrobes, drawers etc. just fine. It's just that people are used to looking at vaguely modern (often bland and disposable) stuff from the media, and at least think other people would think them weird and nonconforming for using old furniture. Even if you can get it relatively cheap, which is suggested by the "no one wants it" phrase. I think there is an ethos…

A different take on lifestyles: unfortunately there's a big gap in convenience between being able to move across the world and get everything you need in one afternoon in IKEA, and tracking it all down second hand.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still have high quality clothing available, but when given the option they choose to buy cheaper clothing more frequently rather than mend high quality ones. This is a preference that has been demonstrated time and again throughout the world as it became an option. So no, I don't believe it is clear at all how this is to the detriment of the average person.

> People still have high quality clothing available, but when given the option they choose to buy cheaper clothing more frequently rather than mend high quality ones. This is a preference that has been demonstrated time and again throughout the world as it became an option. This is extremely incorrect. First of all, fast fashion isn't actually necessarily cheaper. The real difference is that fast fashion exists in an…

I was never talking about fast fashion. There's a huge swath of clothing items between "dirt-cheap, disintegrating crap" and "high quality clothing".

Those articles of clothing I'm talking about are almost never worth mending, but they still can last for years.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#299
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People still have high quality clothing available, but when given the option they choose to buy cheaper clothing more frequently rather than mend high quality ones. This is a preference that has been demonstrated time and again throughout the world as it became an option. This is extremely incorrect. First of all, fast fashion isn't actually necessarily cheaper. The real difference is that fast fashion exists in an…

Fast fashion is certainly cheaper for "fashionable" clothes. The market they are disrupting is a relatively small one. Cheaper clothing is available to everyone through stores like target, Walmart, or other department stores. And the quality is perfectly fine.

> Fast fashion is certainly cheaper for "fashionable" clothes. The market they are disrupting is a relatively small one. Cheaper clothing is available to everyone through stores like target, Walmart, or other department stores.

All of that is part of fast fashion - including Walmart and Target; it's just the lower end or very far down the pipeline. You can't separate one from the other, because they are economically codependent.

> And the quality is perfectly fine

Fast fashion is indubitably much lower quality, and it's weird to see people here denying that, when the fashion industry itself is completely in agreement about that fact. It's not a secret - they discuss it openly.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bad voice recognition software abounds everywhere, not because it is better than what it replaced in terms of UX, but because it works just enough and allows massive cost-savings on hiring people to do customer service jobs. This one really puzzles me. Voice recognition replaced phone trees. And from what I can tell, it's just worse. In this particular use case I don't think it really replaced tier 1 support. Eithe…

I just keep pressing 0 until a live person answers.

Shouting "operator" or "I want to speak to a human" in your loudest, most karen-like voice, also seems to work.
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