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Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

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Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#41

Post by richk449 »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #10
glenstein wrote: post #7

I agree and disagree. It's certainly the case that facts imply underlying epistemologies, but it completely misses the point to treat that like it entails catastrophic relativism. Building up an epistemology isn't just recreational, ideally it's done for good reasons that are responsive to scrunity, standing firm on important principles and, where necessarily, conciliatory in response to epistemological conundrums. I…

I agree with this whole-heartedly. Certainly some facts can imply a certain understanding of the world, but they don't require that understanding in order to remain true. The map may require the territory, but the territory does not require the map. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” ― Philip K. Dick

In this analogy though, maps are the only things we have access to. There may be Truth, but we only approximate it with our maps.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#42

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

saubeidl wrote: post #38
sofixa wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The fact that even the overtly Nazi Musk led xAI's Grok can't shake a "left" bias (left for the US political spectrum, which is to the right of the centre in most other developed countries) proves this wrong. The data, and reality , tend to lean "left" (again, on the American spectrum). It isn't leftists in the US talking about controlling the weather, Haitians eating pets, proposing to nuke hurricanes, dism…

Maybe it's not a left bias in the AI, but a right bias in the ruling class instead?

Fascism is the most viable option for the ruling class to sustain their status quo in a declining capitalistic world with increasing public unrest. The left, anti-capitalistic narrative therefor needs to scrubbed off the people.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#44

Post by dale_glass »

7734128 wrote: post #35
fpoling wrote: post #31

There are nice example how even after human input the translation misses things. For example, the price of the fish was stated as 2.40 rubles. This is meaningless outside the context and does not explain why it was very expensive for the old man who checked the fish first. But if one knows that this was Soviet SF that was about a life in a small Soviet town of that time, then one also knows that a monthly pension was…

Would you want a translator to somehow jam that context into the story? Otherwise, I fail to see how it's an issue of translation. If I had learned Russian and read the story in the original language, I would be in the same position regardless.

Some translators may add notes on the bottom of the page for things like that.

It's going to greatly vary of course. Some will try to culturally adapt things. Maybe convert to dollars, maybe translate to "a day's wages", maybe translate as it is then add an explanatory note.

You might even get a preface explaining important cultural elements of the era.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#45

Post by AlotOfReading »

7734128 wrote: post #35
fpoling wrote: post #31

There are nice example how even after human input the translation misses things. For example, the price of the fish was stated as 2.40 rubles. This is meaningless outside the context and does not explain why it was very expensive for the old man who checked the fish first. But if one knows that this was Soviet SF that was about a life in a small Soviet town of that time, then one also knows that a monthly pension was…

Would you want a translator to somehow jam that context into the story? Otherwise, I fail to see how it's an issue of translation. If I had learned Russian and read the story in the original language, I would be in the same position regardless.

It's pretty common for translators to do exactly that, usually via either footnotes or context created by deliberate word choice. Read classical translations for example and they'll often point out wordplay in the original language that doesn't quite work in translation. I've even seen that in subtitles.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#46

Post by derbOac »

> But as Goethe said, every fact is already a theory. That’s why facts cannot save you. “Data” will not save you. There can be no objective story since the very act of assembling facts requires implicit beliefs about what should be emphasized and what should be left out.

There may be no objective story, but some stories and fact theories are more rigorous and thoroughly defended than others.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#47

Post by randysalami »

munificent wrote: post #27

> There can be no objective story since the very act of assembling facts requires implicit beliefs about what should be emphasized and what should be left out. History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do. This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs. The companies control the models,…

"tech companies", "companies [who] control the models", "whoever"

To be more discrete, patchwork alliances of elites stretching decades and centuries back to concentrate power. Tech companies are under the thumb of the US government and the US government is under the thumb of the elites. It's not direct but it doesn't need to be. Many soft power mechanisms exist and can be deployed when needed e.g. Visa/Mastercard censorship. The US was always founded for elites, by elites but concessions needed to be made to workers out of necessity. With technology and the destruction of unions, this is no longer the case. The veracity of this statement is still up for debate but truth won't stop them from giving it a shot (see WW2).

"Whoever can get the most stories into the heads of the masses runs the world."

I'd argue this is already the case. It has nothing to do with transformer models or AGI but basic machine learning algorithms being applied at scale in apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook to addict users, fragment them, and destroy their sense of reality. They are running the world and what is happening now is their plan to keep running it, eternally, and in the most extreme fashion.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#48

Post by throwawayq3423 »

munificent wrote: post #27

> There can be no objective story since the very act of assembling facts requires implicit beliefs about what should be emphasized and what should be left out. History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do. This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs. The companies control the models,…

I think you dramatically overestimate the effectiveness of trying to shape narratives and change people's minds.

Yes, online content is incredibly influential, but it's not like you can just choose which content is effective.

The effectiveness is tied to a zeitgeist that is not predictable, as far as I have seen.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#49

Post by stereolambda »

Many historians work on manuscripts and/or large archives of documents that might not be digitized, let alone be accessible in the internet. The proportion of human knowledge that is available in the internet, especially if we further constrain to English-language and non-Darkweb or pirated, is greatly exaggerated. So there are infrastructure problems that LLMs by themselves don't solve.

On the other hand, people tend to be happy with a history that ignores 90+% of what happened, instead focusing on a "central" narrative, which traditionally focussed on maybe 5 Euro-Atlantic great powers, and nowadays somewhat pretends not to.

That being said, I don't like the subjectivist take on historical truth advanced by the article. Maybe it's hard to positively establish facts, but it doesn't mean one cannot negatively establish falsehoods and this matters more in practice, in the end. This feels salient when touching on opinions of Carr's as a Soviet-friendly historian.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#50

Post by chupasaurus »

shaky wrote: post #36
WastedCucumber wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he's... not great at Russian? I'm at a loss, same as you. And I don't have any skill in Russian, but I would say that his translation is not good, or at least was not thoughtfully made, based solely on the fact that he did not write the author's name in it.

I don't understand: the translation is not good because he omitted the author's name? He stated it plainly in his article: > As it happens, I recently translated a short story by Kir Bulychev — a Soviet science-fiction icon virtually unknown in the West. I for one enjoyed reading it! As for the article, it's on point. There will be fewer historians and translators, but I suspect those that stick around will be greatl…

> I for one enjoyed reading it!

I gave a quick look and was surprised to see that the most of the first two paragraphs simply aren't there. I guess you've read something else!

As for machine translation: currently it isn't remotely ready to deal with literature by itself, but it could be handy to assist translators.

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