21–30 of 64 posts
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Brave New World warns against the dangers of consumerism, hedonism and complacency. 1984 warns against fascist modes of governance, the dehumanization of individuals under totalitarian regimes. Animal Farm warns against the danger of revolutionism, and the way ideals can be led astray. Atlas Shrugged warns against... The way poor people steal from the rich? How rich people are the only productive members of society?…
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“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
I mean this sincerely, I don’t understand the beef with shrugged. The idea of “a small population owns the world” not only made sense as a theme, but it what is happening in the world today. I must be too stupid to have realized the political bits.
"What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking—there's the real danger." - God Emperor of Dune
It's amazing to me how nobody seems to know about the short story "The great automatic grammatizator" by Roald Dahl. Nobody got closer than him. I feel like I should be reading about it all the time and no one seems to have ever heard of it.
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I'm old enough to feel "get off my lawn" about this: a constant for every invention is my lifetime is "everyone else is only interested in puerile sex and entertainment, $LATEST_MEDIA is ruining us, 1984" - heard this about TV, internet, iPhone in my lifetime. It's odd to hear that applied here, it's sort of torturous to apply to LLMs. They engender sloppy creation (giving us the titular AI slop), not puerile consump…
Every damaging invention in isolation isn't a big deal. The big deal is setting precedent and the accumulation.
> not puerile consumption.
I agree, it's more akin to seeing how much sawdust one can put in a rice crispy before someone notices. No one wants to eat sawdust, nor is there a mindless desire to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
For what it’s worth I read Lotr when I was 8 and atlas shrugged when I was 12. I’m must be stupid naive about the discourse over shrugged around here. The meta-story made sense to me as much as the hero journey of frodo(and gollum) made sense to me. I mean this sincerely, I don’t understand the beef with shrugged. The idea of “a small population owns the world” not only made sense as a theme, but it what is happening…