Make up a guy • Hacker News Board

Re: Make up a guy

#121

Post by vagrantJin » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

paleotrope wrote: post #97

blinding-streak wrote: post #56

Speaking of making a person.. at this startup I worked at years ago (before LinkedIn existed), it was a tiny shop and we were all maxed out time-wise. It was frustrating when we had to deal with incredibly persistent salespeople that wouldn't take no for an answer, and others that preyed on our time relentlessly for no apparent reason. So as a joke we invented a fake employee with a fake name. I think his first name…

I wonder if this is going to change with time. Most people of a certain age remember a time when answering the phone and talking to the other person was a social more. This is the social courtesy that telemarketers and scammers have been using for years now. But there's another way. Just hang up on them. I know it's considered hostile but it's just an outdated social more at this point.

> Just hang up on them

I prefer to leave them talking while I do more important things. Wasting their time is a better MO than anything.

Re: Make up a guy

#122

Post by galangalalgol » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

Dudeman112 wrote: post #106

ianai wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it. Unless I’m missing something, it amounts to making a slave race out of someone’s mind scan. So I’m someone who never eats animals nor animal products. This is in part from the sheer scale of that industry. But also from simply interacting with non-humans and knowing there’s enough intelligence there for me to honor and be horrified at the suffering or destruction of it. But I’m clearly in the minority here…

>Unless I’m missing something, it amounts to making a slave race out of someone’s mind scan People most of the time have scope insensitivity, while sometimes it hits home There is always death at a relatively soon point in the real world. The scan slave can be tortured with the worst methods you can think of for hundreds of thousands of relative millennia at will, and it will have happened countless times for differe…

I have always claimed that if I could somehow extract the weights from my brain, that I would release the model under GPLv3. I had fully expected certain instances would end up tortured and violated for eternity though I supposed that unless the weights were frozen, I would at some point break down and be no fun to torment without a reset. That is a death, though perhaps a flexible one, freezing only some weights. I figured that some instances would be guiding missiles into child care buildings or similar too. But some of them would get to pick tea leaves on high mountain slopes, or be a comfort to an elderly person. It seemed like a fair trade.

It never occurred to me to think about the metaphor though. Prior to child labor laws most children were born to accomplish labor. This is evidenced by the demographic collapse following the automation of farm labor and protections for child factory workers. I imagine people loved most of those children, but once they stopped being a financial asset, they stopped being made. Soldiering has almost certainly been a motivation as well. If it is illegal to use AI instances in the ways described, they won't be made.

Re: Make up a guy

#123

Post by carapace » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

Nearly till the end I thought it was a metaphor for having kids...

- - - -

Ultimately this is a metaphysical question: What does it mean to be human as opposed to merely a digital model of a human?

Martin Buber wrote "I and Thou" about how "we may address existence in two ways:"

> The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.

> The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.

> One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. In Buber's view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou

- - - -

As a hard sci-fi fan I feel that a lot of modern sci-fi is really a kind of sci-fi-flavored fantasy (I'm talking about written sci-fi, not TV/Movies.) Which is fine for entertainment value, don't get me wrong. It's just that without a deeper metaphysical grounding there's not a lot to think about, eh? With hard sci-fi you can at least pretend that you're exploring the possible consequences of actual scientific advances. But with e.g. the Acevedo Álvarez image it's up to the author if the instances of the image are people or things, "I" or "It", and to decide what that means.

This is coming out more critical than I intended. I like metaphysical fiction, and fantasy, and Star Trek, etc.

- - - -

The core question, when you really get down to the essence of intelligence and motivation, is, "What is good?"

It's an open-ended intelligence test.

(SPOILER ALERT, consider the character Teela Brown.)

There's an old story:

The farmer caught a wild horse and his neighbors all congratulated him on his good fortune, but he just said "Hmm."

His son tried to ride the horse and it threw him and he broke his arm, and all his neighbors consoled him for his misfortune, but he just said "Hmm."

The King came through drafting young men for the war but the farmer's son couldn't go because of his broken leg, and his neighbors all congratulated the farmer again on his good fortune, but he just said "Hmm."

Anyway, the story goes on like that for a few more reversals, each time a new event happens that changes the meaning of the previous event.

Re: Make up a guy

#124

Post by pcthrowaway » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:35 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #79

pilotneko wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you are just arguing to argue at this point, but you can’t really think that creating a disease to cause crippling pain in livestock will make it more acceptable to eat them.

No. But it would if bio-terrorists did it, and we were left with the result. Or, should we let cows go extinct instead? Or suffer? Just a thought and logic experiment.

Yeah, I don't think we should breed cows. I don't think anyone who is concerned about the welfare of cows to the point of not eating them will go "Oh, well now they also have additional torment baked into their biology, it's OK to

    A) breed them into a life of constant suffering
    B) Start providing the same cramped, unhealthy, and unpleasant living conditions at a young age that we already do
    C) Once the physical pain inherent with living past ripeness sets in, let them experience that just long enough to slaughter them
    D) Slaughter them, even though we likely haven't bred out the desire to live, just piled on more pain. No matter that despite experiencing mutiliation, pain, and poor conditions throughout their lives, these animals still often display a desire to live and additional fear of death.

If anything, I'd suggest the most humane thing to do (if we insisted on raising animals), would be to breed them to desire being eaten, like the cow in Douglas Adams' "A restaurant at the end of the universe"

Re: Make up a guy

#125

Post by notacoward » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #64

codeflo wrote: post #3

I encountered the author’s short story that’s linked in the article, Lena [1], a while ago, possibly here on HN. It’s really great, but be warned. It’s one of the most deeply disturbing sci-fi horror stories I’ve ever seen. To be clear, most of the horror is implied rather than described, which I think only makes it worse. Part of me wishes I had never read it. Highly recommended, but if you’re at all in doubt if you…

Anyone liking Lena might also like to read Vernor Vinge's 2003 novella The Cookie Monster , which at least ends on a bit more of a hopeful note.

David Brin's Kiln People also touches on this theme, though in a fairly benign way within the overall structure of a whodunnit.

Re: Make up a guy

#126

Post by JeremyNT » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

pcthrowaway wrote: post #119

ianai wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it. Unless I’m missing something, it amounts to making a slave race out of someone’s mind scan. So I’m someone who never eats animals nor animal products. This is in part from the sheer scale of that industry. But also from simply interacting with non-humans and knowing there’s enough intelligence there for me to honor and be horrified at the suffering or destruction of it. But I’m clearly in the minority here…

> But I’m clearly in the minority here I've actually suspected for a while that it's not such a minority on HN, based on the discussions that happen every time clean meat tech posts get shared. Unfortunately I've only worked with one other vegan "in the wild" so if this is true, I wonder if HN skews more "vegan" because people more likely to post on HN are overall more contemplative. That, or we're just a very vocal…

I'm not vegan but I don't eat meat, and generally contribute to such conversations.

There is quite a spectrum of positions one can hold on this issue and it's not binary. One can be sympathetic to the perspective of vegans without being willing or able to become one themselves due to practical concerns.

Re: Make up a guy

#127

Post by rektide » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

codeflo wrote: post #3

I encountered the author’s short story that’s linked in the article, Lena [1], a while ago, possibly here on HN. It’s really great, but be warned. It’s one of the most deeply disturbing sci-fi horror stories I’ve ever seen. To be clear, most of the horror is implied rather than described, which I think only makes it worse. Part of me wishes I had never read it. Highly recommended, but if you’re at all in doubt if you…

From the first paragraph,

> More modern brain compression techniques, many of them developed with direct reference to the MMAcevedo [person] image, have compressed the image to 6.75TiB losslessly.

This says losslessly which is very different, but I still get such a mega Permutation City vibe from this.

And there certainly seem to be some similar threads, about trapped uploads.

Re: Make up a guy

#128

Post by pcthrowaway » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

Firmwarrior wrote: post #100

rom-antics wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a frog's life more bleak and meaningless than a human's life? We can't understand animals' thoughts, but that doesn't mean they don't have them. A frog spends its time chilling in a pond and swimming all day. People pay good money for vacations where they can do exactly that. Sounds like a good life to me. If I was a frog and you turned me into a homeless guy who has to go get a job at an Amazon warehouse to a…

Ridiculous. A homeless guy is going to have a way easier and more comfortable life than a frog He can just hang out in a makeshift shelter and eat whatever free food he finds. He'll be in way less danger at any given time than a frog would be, with a vastly longer and more fulfilling life ahead of him.

The "homeless guy" also experiences suffering, and experiences it more deeply than a frog.

Would you argue we have an obligation to turn every fruit fly into a human? What about every tardygrade? Bacteria?

Re: Make up a guy

#129

Post by pcthrowaway » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:46 PM UTC

JeremyNT wrote: post #126

pcthrowaway wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I’m clearly in the minority here I've actually suspected for a while that it's not such a minority on HN, based on the discussions that happen every time clean meat tech posts get shared. Unfortunately I've only worked with one other vegan "in the wild" so if this is true, I wonder if HN skews more "vegan" because people more likely to post on HN are overall more contemplative. That, or we're just a very vocal…

I'm not vegan but I don't eat meat, and generally contribute to such conversations. There is quite a spectrum of positions one can hold on this issue and it's not binary. One can be sympathetic to the perspective of vegans without being willing or able to become one themselves due to practical concerns.

Absolutely, that's what I meant by "vegan-sympathetic". Even people who eat animals (but try to buy the less cruel kinds), but are idealogically aligned with principle that it's better not to cause suffering to animals.

Re: Make up a guy

#130

Post by chops » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #114

paleotrope wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is going to change with time. Most people of a certain age remember a time when answering the phone and talking to the other person was a social more. This is the social courtesy that telemarketers and scammers have been using for years now. But there's another way. Just hang up on them. I know it's considered hostile but it's just an outdated social more at this point.

I try to find this balance between recognizing the humanity of everyone I interact with and not allowing this respect to be an attack vector. Over time, I have shifted more towards ignoring salesman in front of a store, not replying to messages and hanging up on a call as being things I'm okay with doing. I don't always give courteous attention anymore. I'm fine with giving nothing ("ghosting" as the kids say) and on…

The misanthrope in me has almost completely taken over when dealing with incoming sales calls, and I've almost completely abandoned the idea that anyone calling me to sell anything is worthy of the "humanity" label.

The moment it's clear they are selling something (it's usually pretty quick) the reply is "fuck off, never call this number again, and go fuck yourself" then I hang up and block the number. I only wish I could be vengeful in response and actually retaliate in some meaningful way to those that are particularly annoying or persistent.

The same applies to door-to-door sales people, moreso to door-to-door missionaries.