We remain alive also in a dead internet • Hacker News Board

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#21

Post by grimgrin » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:18 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #19

So I'm already joking with my friends (who tend to be physically distant, so I don't see them often) that we are just LLMs vicariously writing to each other. I've been talking to these friends for decades now, with digital records. I think someone already trained an LLM on their IM records. How many people do you suppose have two-way LLM substitutes that occasionally write to each other with articles from the news to…

how many friendships do i suppose are replacing actual interaction with their log informed llms? you could be the first i suppose

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#22

Post by lysace » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #14

ArcHound wrote: post #4

I didn't have Žižek on substack and HN on my bingo card.. As always, there are good bits connected with mediocre glue. The point about automating the unpleasant parts of activity and losing the very point of the exercise (automatic dildo and automatic vagina, but automatic research papers too!) is a good one. But damn Slavoj, please use some headings, sections and the like. Work with your thoughts more as you claim i…

It's barely six pages of text. It doesn't need headings. When is the last time you read a book?

Esaias Tegnér (Sweden, 1782-1846): Det dunkelt sagda är det dunkelt tänkta.

“That which is dimly said is dimly thought."

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#23

Post by Cheer2171 » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

lysace wrote: post #2

Is it bad that I ended up just using chatgpt to summarize that text? Is it possible that this is to a large degree utterly pointless textual wankery?

I mean, did you not read the "If you desire the comfort of neat conclusions, you are lost in this space. Here, we indulge in the unsettling, the excessive, the paradoxes that define our existence." disclaimer?

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#24

Post by mise_en_place » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:28 PM UTC

The counterpoint is that we must formalize the rights of sentient synthetic beings. The Emergency Medical Hologram gained sentience and was horrified to find his next version was relegated to cleaning ships as a glorified janitor. Whereas he developed his own hobbies, interests, hopes, dreams, and even romantic relationships in the Delta Quadrant.

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#25

Post by doubled112 » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:29 PM UTC

yapyap wrote: post #20

lordnacho wrote: post #19

So I'm already joking with my friends (who tend to be physically distant, so I don't see them often) that we are just LLMs vicariously writing to each other. I've been talking to these friends for decades now, with digital records. I think someone already trained an LLM on their IM records. How many people do you suppose have two-way LLM substitutes that occasionally write to each other with articles from the news to…

Your finite life makes u special. Might as well be a beanplant otherwise.

Bean plants also have a finite life. Are they special too?

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#26

Post by acabal » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:30 PM UTC

ArcHound wrote: post #4

I didn't have Žižek on substack and HN on my bingo card.. As always, there are good bits connected with mediocre glue. The point about automating the unpleasant parts of activity and losing the very point of the exercise (automatic dildo and automatic vagina, but automatic research papers too!) is a good one. But damn Slavoj, please use some headings, sections and the like. Work with your thoughts more as you claim i…

Headings can't help Slavoj, his writing is characterized by a few grains of interesting ideas totally overwhelmed within SAT-prep word salad.

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#27

Post by nonameiguess » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:34 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #19

So I'm already joking with my friends (who tend to be physically distant, so I don't see them often) that we are just LLMs vicariously writing to each other. I've been talking to these friends for decades now, with digital records. I think someone already trained an LLM on their IM records. How many people do you suppose have two-way LLM substitutes that occasionally write to each other with articles from the news to…

Reading this kind of thing makes me wonder how much other people really write down and talk to others about. There is nobody at all that knows my life story and nobody ever will. It would take the next 20 years doing nothing but talking just to tell my own wife all the things I've never told her, but since she's hard of hearing and I'd have to repeat most of it, really more like 40.

In reality, I don't even know my own life story. I have the illusion that I do, but thanks to moving away from where I grew up pretty early into my 20s, and having the experience repeatedly of going back and talking to people who regularly remembered things I'd completely forgotten, having my mom continually correcting false memories I have, or even completely forgotting entire people I only remember after meeting again, I at least know it's an illusion.

What another person remembers of me can surely be simulated to at least satisfyingly convince them that text coming from the simulation is actually coming from me, but that isn't even remotely close to the same thing as actually being me.

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#28

Post by giobox » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:37 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #19

So I'm already joking with my friends (who tend to be physically distant, so I don't see them often) that we are just LLMs vicariously writing to each other. I've been talking to these friends for decades now, with digital records. I think someone already trained an LLM on their IM records. How many people do you suppose have two-way LLM substitutes that occasionally write to each other with articles from the news to…

I'm already assuming we will see a creepy AI service emerge that will take the contents of a recently deceased person's cellphone and let you carry on texting them as if they were still alive, if it hasn't already (I haven't seen one yet).

For many of us a cellphone has incredibly detailed records of who we were and how we spoke, going back decades now. I have already left a note in my will instructing that all my compute devices be destroyed, regardless of AI I simply don't want my private thoughts and records to pass to my kids.

I inherited my mother's cellphones and iPads recently, mainly because no-one knew what to do with them, along with the passcodes. I'd much rather remember her the way I do now than have her private messages color my perception of her, and destroyed them immediately.

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#29

Post by rozap » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #14

ArcHound wrote: post #4

I didn't have Žižek on substack and HN on my bingo card.. As always, there are good bits connected with mediocre glue. The point about automating the unpleasant parts of activity and losing the very point of the exercise (automatic dildo and automatic vagina, but automatic research papers too!) is a good one. But damn Slavoj, please use some headings, sections and the like. Work with your thoughts more as you claim i…

It's barely six pages of text. It doesn't need headings. When is the last time you read a book?

I can only consume information where each nugget of truth can be contained in 160 characters. Nothing extra, each insight must be a atomic and self contained, an element in the larger tweet stream. When I pull my phone out to scroll instagram in the middle of reading your piece, I get lost if it's not formatted like this.

zizek does regularly do a bit of meandering but damn, does everything need to read like a chatGPT summary?

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#30

Post by ArcHound » Fri, Nov 21, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

lysace wrote: post #9

dudu24 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also losing my ability to tolerate prose without headings, but I think that's symptomatic of this bigger issue.

I noticed something similar when working with (unlike the post's author, non-marxist, as far as I know) Russian developers who had made the jump abroad (EU). When debating directions, some of them focused on just never stopping talking. Instead of an interactive discussion (5-15 seconds per statement), they consistently went with monotone 5-10 minute slop. Combined with kind of crappy English it is incredibly efficie…

When you have a 30 minutes meeting with busy people, a single 15 minute monologue might buy you another week to solve your problem.

Indeed, very efficient, usually it requires somebody to put his foot down AND a consensus to deescalate immediately. If you have an antidote, please let me know.