The Whispering Earring
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The Whispering Earring
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: The Whispering Earring
#2It's a classic, and the recent rise of AI will hopefully make it a more widely-known one.
Re: The Whispering Earring
#3A distant relative, no doubt, of Stanislaw Lem's "Automatthew's Friend" (1964). A perfectly rational, indestructible, selfless, well-meaning in-ear AI assistant. In the end, out of nothing but the deepest care for its owner's mental state in a hopeless situation, it advocates efficient and quick suicide.
Re: The Whispering Earring
#4"The parable of the earring was not about the dangers of using technology that wasn't Truly Part Of You, which would indeed have been the kind of dystopianism I dislike. It was about the dangers of becoming too powerful yourself."
https://web.archive.org/web/20121007235422/http://squid314.l...
Re: The Whispering Earring
#5Compare/contrast the Whispering earring/LLM chat with The Room from Stalker, each one is terrifying in its aspect: One because it eventually coaxes you to become a shallow shell of yourself, the other by plucking an unexpected wish from the deepest part of your psyche. I wonder what the Earring would advise if one were to ask it if one should enter The Room.
Re: The Whispering Earring
#6I want someone to try building a variant that just gives you timely cues about generally good mental health practices. Suggestions could be contextually based on a local-only app that listens to you and your environment, and delivered to a wireless earbud. When you're in a situation that might cause you stress, it reminds you to take some deep breaths. When you're in a situation where you might be tempted to react with hostility, it suggests that you pause for a few seconds. When you've been sitting in front of your computer too long it suggests that maybe you'd like to go for a short walk.
If the moral of the story is that having access to magically good advice is dangerous because it shifts us to habitual obedience ... can a similar device shift us to mental habits that are actually good for us?
Re: The Whispering Earring
#7I would recommend Steely Dan’s “Green Earrings” instead. No whispering required!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wvH1UzhiKk
And the original is fully analog.
Re: The Whispering Earring
#8I want someone to try building a variant that just gives you timely cues about generally good mental health practices. Suggestions could be contextually based on a local-only app that listens to you and your environment, and delivered to a wireless earbud. When you're in a situation that might cause you stress, it reminds you to take some deep breaths. When you're in a situation where you might be tempted to react wi…
The moral of the story is that neocortical facilities (vaguely corresponding to what distinguishes modern humans) depend on free will. If you want to merely enthral yourself to voices of the gods a la Julian Jaynes' bicameral man, you can, but this is a regression to a prior stage of humanity's development - away from egoic, free willed man, and backwards to more of a reactive automaton, merely a servant of (possibly digital) gods.
Re: The Whispering Earring
#9"The parable of the earring was not about the dangers of using technology that wasn't Truly Part Of You, which would indeed have been the kind of dystopianism I dislike. It was about the dangers of becoming too powerful yourself." https://web.archive.org/web/20121007235422/http://squid314.l...
Thanks! Even though I have the whole Squid314 archive, I had forgotten about this follow-up.
Re: The Whispering Earring
#10I want someone to try building a variant that just gives you timely cues about generally good mental health practices. Suggestions could be contextually based on a local-only app that listens to you and your environment, and delivered to a wireless earbud. When you're in a situation that might cause you stress, it reminds you to take some deep breaths. When you're in a situation where you might be tempted to react wi…
The moral of the story is that neocortical facilities (vaguely corresponding to what distinguishes modern humans) depend on free will. If you want to merely enthral yourself to voices of the gods a la Julian Jaynes' bicameral man, you can, but this is a regression to a prior stage of humanity's development - away from egoic, free willed man, and backwards to more of a reactive automaton, merely a servant of (possibly…
I think there's a meaningful difference between a tool to remind oneself to take a beat before speaking vs being told what to say. For example, cues that help you avoid an impulsive reaction of anger I think is a step away from being a reactive automaton.