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The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

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Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#21

Post by talkingtab »

rdevilla wrote: post #17
talkingtab wrote: post #7

Our collective learned helplessness in the face of being bombarded with advertising, propaganda and outright lies is just astonishing to me. Not an article about fighting back, or doing anything, just the resignation of a follower.

Ok. How do you propose one fights back? Do you really viscerally understand what it is you are fighting against?

fork it. Fork the internet. How about that? We have this stupid system built on people paying to target us. Is that "the" internet or is it just one internet, and not a very good one. This is supposed to be a place for hackers. So fork the internet.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#22

Post by rdevilla »

notpachet wrote: post #19

> I can think of a few good myths for today’s “AI”. Searle’s Chinese room comes to mind, as does Chalmers’ philosophical zombie. Peter Watts’ Blindsight draws on these concepts to ask what happens when humans come into contact with unconscious intelligence—I think the closest analogue for LLM behavior might be Blindsight’s Rorschach. LLM's remind me of sprites, pixies, and the like, who are situationally helpful but…

Speaking of myths, pixies, and spirits:

> I. DEFINITION:

> MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.

> (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magical language” i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct.

> I call forth “spirits” such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution is thus an act of MAGICK by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)

- Aleister Crowley, "Magick Without Tears," Chapter I, 1954. https://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_01

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#23

Post by gcheong »

jspash wrote: post #20
rdevilla wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Claude Code got mandated at my work this week. Like literally engineers must use CC.) I'm taking a break from this industry until the madness blows over. I cannot even, anymore.

With the current direction of this industry, I fear you will come back to something that is both unrecognisable and terrifying.

If there is anything left to come back to.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#24

Post by rdevilla »

talkingtab wrote: post #21
rdevilla wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. How do you propose one fights back? Do you really viscerally understand what it is you are fighting against?

fork it. Fork the internet. How about that? We have this stupid system built on people paying to target us. Is that "the" internet or is it just one internet, and not a very good one. This is supposed to be a place for hackers. So fork the internet.

I mean, I've had pipe dreams of a parallel networking stack built on IPv6 with a killer app offering real peer-to-peer networking again. But who will deploy and maintain all the new IPv6 networking gear, infrastructure, undersea cables? This is not something within the purview of the average (or even above average) hacker any more; the encumbents are too firmly entrenched.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#25

Post by andrewaylett »

embedding-shape wrote: post #13
pcdevils wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not blocked By the UK, he's put a country filter on it Like all the US sites that decided to block.the EU over gdpr because turning off tracking was too much effort

Work fine in Spain, so lets not jump on the all to typical EU-made-the-internet-suck bandwagon all too quickly. Seems this is a UK problem. But what do I know, I actually read the error message.

It's the author's problem with the UK (and the UK's Online Safety Act, which establishes requirements on hosts that can't be avoided by merely not being in the UK), rather than the UK's problem with the author.

But as much as I dislike the OSA: if you're not subject to UK law, why do you (website author) care what our government thinks of your website? It's not like they can do anything to you.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#26

Post by underlipton »

mzajc wrote: post #10

> Authors, screenwriters, et al. have a new niche to explore. Any day now I expect an A24 trailer featuring a villain who speaks in the register of ChatGPT. “You’re absolutely right, Kayleigh,” it intones. “I did drown little Tamothy, and I’m truly sorry about that. Here’s the breakdown of what happened…” May I recommend Pluribus (2025-)

There's literally an ad for Amazon's Alexa devices that features not just the gist of your example, but that specific cause of death (which is itself predated by a murderous digital intelligence doing the same thing in AMC's Pantheon series).

Guys I thought it was the fire next time.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#28

Post by groundzeros2015 »

talkingtab wrote: post #7

Our collective learned helplessness in the face of being bombarded with advertising, propaganda and outright lies is just astonishing to me. Not an article about fighting back, or doing anything, just the resignation of a follower.

Unfortunately the political movements most interested in the relationship between society and technology were wrapped up with Nazis and so the line of thinking is underdeveloped, as it has had to start again.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#29

Post by embedding-shape »

rdevilla wrote: post #24
talkingtab wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fork it. Fork the internet. How about that? We have this stupid system built on people paying to target us. Is that "the" internet or is it just one internet, and not a very good one. This is supposed to be a place for hackers. So fork the internet.

I mean, I've had pipe dreams of a parallel networking stack built on IPv6 with a killer app offering real peer-to-peer networking again. But who will deploy and maintain all the new IPv6 networking gear, infrastructure, undersea cables? This is not something within the purview of the average (or even above average) hacker any more; the encumbents are too firmly entrenched.

Collectives, cooperatives and other organizations. It's been done before, giant WiFi networks spanning countries. Freifunk, Guifi and NYC Mesh are a few of them, the two first are real and alive alternative networks built on independent hardware infrastructure.

Not sure about the details with Freifunk, but Guifi has collaborating companies who basically operate like ISPs but connect you to Guifi + you get a internet connection via the Guifi peering the installer helps you with.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#30

Post by grehbies »

rdevilla wrote: post #22
notpachet wrote: post #19

> I can think of a few good myths for today’s “AI”. Searle’s Chinese room comes to mind, as does Chalmers’ philosophical zombie. Peter Watts’ Blindsight draws on these concepts to ask what happens when humans come into contact with unconscious intelligence—I think the closest analogue for LLM behavior might be Blindsight’s Rorschach. LLM's remind me of sprites, pixies, and the like, who are situationally helpful but…

Speaking of myths, pixies, and spirits: > I. DEFINITION: > MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. > (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magical language” i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct. > I call…

  Oil is the medium of time manipulation magic. Created through ancient sacrificial rituals, it is is a substance that can be used to create aging/rot-retarding barriers, or refined into derivatives that increase the rate of plant growth and mechanical work. To be handled with care, as extended contact can lead to corruption of the body, as well as increased susceptibility to fire elemental spells.

  Simple rituals can render an inferior product from most living things; the time-manipulation abilities of such substances will be weaker, but the substance will be safer to handle, and can even be imbibed (this is a double-aged sword, reducing one's vital life force while increasing one's bodily proportions to that of a toddler).
-Me, "Early Morning Bed Thoughts", a few months ago.
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