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Dead Internet Theory

kudmitry.com

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Re: Dead Internet Theory

#401

Post by dalemhurley »

You are absolutely right...:P

I don't know mind people using AI to create open source projects, I use it extensively, but have a rule that I am responsible and accountable for the code.

Social media have become hellscapes of AI Slop of "Influencers" trying to make quick money by overhyping slop to sell courses.

Maybe where you are from the em dash is not used, but in Queen's English speaking countries the em dash is quite common to represent a break of thought from the main idea of a sentence.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#402

Post by sph »

swyx wrote: post #361

semi relatedly i stumbled upon Dead Planet Theory a while back and it stasy rent free in my head. https://arealsociety.substack.com/p/the-dead-planet-theory

That's great, thanks for sharing. So obvious in hindsight (Pareto principle, power law, "80% of success is showing up") but the ramifications are enormous.

I wonder if this does apply to the same magnitude in the real world. It's very easy to see this phenomenon on the internet because it's so vast and interconnected. Attention is very limited and there is so much stuff out there that the average user can only offer minimal attention and effort (the usual 80-20 Pareto allocation). In the real world things are more granular, hyperlocal and less homogeneous.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#403

Post by peteforde »

skwee357 wrote: post #339
peteforde wrote: post #297

I enjoyed this post, but I do find myself disagreeing that someone sharing their source code is somehow morally or ethically obligated to post some kind of AI-involvement statement on their work. Not only is it impossible to adjudicate or police, I feel like this will absolutely have a chilling effect on people wanting to share their projects. After all, who wants to deal with an internet mob demanding that you dispr…

Fine, I accept your point. You don't have an obligation to disclose the tools you've used. But what struck me in that particular thread, is that the author kept claiming they did not use AI, nothing at all, while there were give away signs that the code was, _at least partly_, AI generated. It honestly felt like being gaslighted. You see one thing, but they keep claiming you are wrong.

I admit that I got the gist of the concern and didn't actually look at the original thread.

I'd feel the same way you did, for sure.

You are absolutely right! ;)

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#404

Post by garretraziel »

nkmnz wrote: post #392
self_awareness wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is a video documenting racist behavior a racist or an anti-racist video? Is faking a video documenting racist behavior (that never happened) a racist or an anti-racist video? Is the act of faking a video documenting racist behavior (that never happened) or anti-racist behavior?

It doesn’t have to be either for it to be morally bad.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#405

Post by InsideOutSanta »

blfr wrote: post #397
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the right thing to take away from this. This isn't about one group of people wanting to be angry. It's about creating engagement (for corporations) and creating division in general (for entities intent on harming liberal societies). In fact, your comment is part of the problem. You are one of the people who want to be outraged. In your case, outraged at people who think racism is a problem. So you attack…

I agree with grandparent and think you have cause and effect backwards: people really do want to be outraged so Facebook and the like provide rage bait. Sometimes through algos tuning themselves to that need, sometimes deliberately. But Facebook cannot "require" people do be angry. Facebook can barely even "require" people to log in, only those locked into Messenger ecosystem. I don't use Facebook but I do use TikTok…

> people really do want to be outraged

No, they do not. Nobody[1] wants to be angry. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, "today is going to be a good day because I'm going to be angry."

But given the correct input, everyone feels that they must be angry, that it is morally required to be angry. And this anger then requires them to seek out further information about the thing that made them angry. Not because they desire to be angry, but because they feel that there is something happening in the world that is wrong and that they must fight.

[1]: for approximate values of "nobody"

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#406

Post by RGamma »

blfr wrote: post #397
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the right thing to take away from this. This isn't about one group of people wanting to be angry. It's about creating engagement (for corporations) and creating division in general (for entities intent on harming liberal societies). In fact, your comment is part of the problem. You are one of the people who want to be outraged. In your case, outraged at people who think racism is a problem. So you attack…

I agree with grandparent and think you have cause and effect backwards: people really do want to be outraged so Facebook and the like provide rage bait. Sometimes through algos tuning themselves to that need, sometimes deliberately. But Facebook cannot "require" people do be angry. Facebook can barely even "require" people to log in, only those locked into Messenger ecosystem. I don't use Facebook but I do use TikTok…

You may be vastly overestimating average media competence. This is one of those things where I'm glad my relatives are so timid about the digital world.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#407

Post by psychoslave »

cjs_ac wrote: post #345
GMoromisato wrote: post #153

Most of this is caused by incentives: YouTube and others pay for clicks/views, so obviously you can maximize this by producing lots of mediocre content. LinkedIn is a place to sell, either a service/product to companies or yourself to a future employer. Again, the incentive is to produce more content for less effort. Even HN has the incentive of promoting people's startups. Is it possible to create a social network (…

> Is it possible to create a social network (or "discussion community", if you prefer) that doesn't have any incentive except human-to-human interaction? I don't mean a place where AI is banned, I mean a place where AI is useless, so people don't bother. Yes, but its size must be limited by Dunbar's number[0]. This is the maximum size of a group of people where everyone can know everyone else on a personal basis. Bey…

I don’t think this is a hard limit. It’s also a matter of interest and opportunity to meet people, consolidate relationship through common endeavor, and so greatly influenced by the social super-structure and how they push individual to interact with each other.

To take a different cognitive domain, think about color. Wikitionary gives around 300 of them for English[1]. I doubt many English speakers would be able to use all of them with relevant accuracy. And obviously even RGB encoding allows to express far more nuances. And obviously most people can fathom far more nuances than what could verbalize.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Colors

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#408

Post by forgotpwd16 »

amrocha wrote: post #238
makingstuffs wrote: post #120

Think the notion that ‘no one’ uses em dashes is a bit misguided. I’ve personally used them in text for as long as I can remember. Also on the phrase “you’re absolute right”, it’s definitely a phrase my friends and I use a lot, albeit in a sorta of sarcastic manner when one of us says something which is obvious but, nonetheless, we use it. We also tend to use “Well, you’re not wrong” again in a sarcastic manner for s…

You’re absolutely right—lots of very smart people use em dashes. Thank you for correcting me on that!

If you want next, I can:

- Tell you what makes em dashes appealing.

- Help you use em dashes more.

- Give you other grammatical quirks smart people have.

Just tell me.

(If bots RP as humans, it’s only natural we start RP as bots. And yes, I did use a curly quote there.)

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#410

Post by [deleted] »

self_awareness wrote: post #395
mxkopy wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they’re just saying we should interpret this video in a way that’s consistent with known historical facts. On one hand, it’s not depicting events that are strictly untrue, so we shouldn’t discredit it. On the other hand, since the video itself is literally fake, when we discredit it we shouldn’t accidentally also discredit the events it’s depicting.

Are you saying that if there is 1 instance of a true event, then fake videos done in a similar way as this true event is rational and needed?

[deleted]
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