Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#371

Post by ladberg » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:13 PM UTC

hospitalJail wrote: post #356

ladberg wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're being facetious or just don't understand the reality of living in NYC... I can probably walk to a dozen different big grocery stores in 15m and they're ALL more expensive than the cheap fast food in the same area. Not including the smaller expensive bodegas where you can pick up stuff 24/7 every block (kinda like the equivalent of a gas station). A half gallon of milk is $4 at any of the big stores…

Shoot me a cross street, I'll go visit it and take some prices.

Bleecker and 7th Ave

For comparison: I'm trying to beat the numerous dollar pizza and food carts nearby, not normal "fast food" like the more expensive Five Guys on that intersection.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#372

Post by GuB-42 » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:13 PM UTC

I hate the term "post-truth". As if lying, rumors and disinformation didn't exist before that.

I can't count the amount of bullshit I heard on the news before social media was a thing, and fact checking was much harder. There is no "truth world", just an arms race between truth and fakes. AI tools can generate fakes but also detect them. Social media can be used to spread rumors but also cover an event like never before.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#373

Post by aero-deck » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #350

aero-deck wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dunno what "TFA" refers to here, but it seems like we're heading into a argument regarding epistemology, which is not a discussion that HN handles well. IMO "truth" is distraction here because what is at stake here are people's values, not their understanding of math and physics. When people worry about "post-truth", they're worried about liberal values no longer being the unquestioned default. It is absolutely a mar…

TFA = the f'ing article, something quite commonly understood on HN for time immemorial. Its snark is borne of the community's distaste of the kind of people who dive into comment sections without engaging with the very subject of and reason the comment thread exists in the first place. The fact you don't recognize this acronym calls into question your authority on what HN can or can't handle. But anyway, that's besid…

> the public's inability to engage with epistemological problems on systemic scales

The public's inability? What about everyone's inability. No one deals well with epistemological problems on a systematic scale, not even the technologists who delude themselves into thinking that they're driving anything.

I am exactly talking about psychological limits. The difference is that I don't think the psychological limits of the creators are any different from those of the users. If anything, I think the creators are more psychologically limited than the users. This is because the creators need to explain to themselves why they are creating the thing - everyone else just puts up with it. When you say ppl will either be duped or completely check out of discourse, don't forget about yourself.

Also, of course I didn't read the article....

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#374

Post by joebiden2 » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

I'm soooo tired of bullshit like this. Fear of your job, fake news, yadda yadda, I get it. It is just boring. Almost as if written by an AI.

The whole post-truth, fake-news agenda is foreign to me even without AI, I don't know anyone save a few "flat-earth" like freaks who would fall for the classical disinformation trope.

No, nothing substantial follows. This was just a rant :)

PS: I feel the talk about disinformation, fake-news etc. is doing more of the stated purpose of fake-news and disinformation as disinformation and fake-news itself. I'll try to substantiate that claim in the near future, I promise.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#375

Post by dan_quixote » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

systems_glitch wrote: post #346

legendofbrando wrote: post #326

Counter point: sure they are. Humans are highly adaptable and like other changes to information availability in the past they will adapt. This is what societal norms and cultural memes are for. “Don’t believe everything you hear” “Don’t believe what you see on TV” “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” These are all ways that the human species uses memes and cultural norms to teach ourselves how not to f…

It is estimated that between 50% and 70% of folks have no inner monologue.

Got a decent citation? I can't even fathom what that would be like. I'd bet my daily inner monologue is 100X what I actually speak out loud.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#376

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #53

The comment by Yuval Noah Harari seemed insightful to me. If you argue against a bot about a political matter, not knowing it’s a bot - you always lose on a long enough timeline. ie you can never pursuade the bot but it can wear you down / eventually find an argument that works. The only winning move is not to play. So I could see this having a chilling effect on all discourse Aside from the whole skynet thing the ab…

[deleted]

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#377

Post by mkl » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:18 PM UTC

systems_glitch wrote: post #346

legendofbrando wrote: post #326

Counter point: sure they are. Humans are highly adaptable and like other changes to information availability in the past they will adapt. This is what societal norms and cultural memes are for. “Don’t believe everything you hear” “Don’t believe what you see on TV” “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” These are all ways that the human species uses memes and cultural norms to teach ourselves how not to f…

It is estimated that between 50% and 70% of folks have no inner monologue.

One of them was Albert Einstein: "The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought." -- https://www.creativitypost.com/article/aping_einstein#:~:tex...

Your comment seems like a non sequitur.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#378

Post by aero-deck » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:20 PM UTC

cvoss wrote: post #363

aero-deck wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want an an appropriate degree of emotional engagement with discourse, which is 1-1 with how much discourse is happening. People being too angry is caused by people discoursing too much and vice-versa. There are opposite problems associated w/ too little discourse, but we don't suffer from those. Things are hyper-polarized right now and there is no magic political synthesis that is right over the horizon if only we…

Personally, that's not been my experience at all. I often find that when I have two friends with highly disparate and deeply held beliefs, the intense emotions they associate to these ideas are due to them not actually engaging each other but, instead, taking their emotional cues from their respective ideological silos (where no real discourse is occurring), and then proceeding to talk past each other. Learning how t…

engaging w/ someone is different from discoursing with them. "engagement" is what social media companies say they provide - but really they just offer "discourse".

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#379

Post by pjerem » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

personjerry wrote: post #365

legendofbrando wrote: post #326

Counter point: sure they are. Humans are highly adaptable and like other changes to information availability in the past they will adapt. This is what societal norms and cultural memes are for. “Don’t believe everything you hear” “Don’t believe what you see on TV” “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” These are all ways that the human species uses memes and cultural norms to teach ourselves how not to f…

50 years ago humans weren't prepared for a smartphone, internet "post-connected" world and here we are. We adapt and grow.

No hasty conclusions.

We switched to this always connected world only 10-15 years ago and I think we are far from having seen all the consequences.

Algorithmic bubbles, mass surveillance, addictive algorithms and applications are fairly recent and we can already see really disgusting consequences.

Our civilization is resilient so it takes time to erode but since a few years, I have hard time imagining a positive technological future. All I see is technology made to exploit human breaches for money.

Humans don’t look like they are adapting to Tik Tok properly so I’m not confident they’ll understand this new AI powered world.

(I have no doubt that powerful and dominant humans will adapt)

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#380

Post by krapp » Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

personjerry wrote: post #365

legendofbrando wrote: post #326

Counter point: sure they are. Humans are highly adaptable and like other changes to information availability in the past they will adapt. This is what societal norms and cultural memes are for. “Don’t believe everything you hear” “Don’t believe what you see on TV” “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” These are all ways that the human species uses memes and cultural norms to teach ourselves how not to f…

50 years ago humans weren't prepared for a smartphone, internet "post-connected" world and here we are. We adapt and grow.

Someone would argue that humans still haven't adapted to smartphones or the internet post-connected world and that constant connectivity is a cancer that's destroying our minds, emotions and civilization at large.