Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

jayacunzo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 242 posts

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#191

Post by computably »

placebo wrote: post #101
WalterBright wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen! And understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!

The terminator you talk about is a movie character. It might be built one day, it might not. It is also totally irrelevant considering there is a real terminator which can be described with the same adjectives and built in to every personal life that ever existed or will exist. Knowing how to deal with that seems more important than worrying about some specific scenario.

I feel your comment is deeply ironic... Just shy of self-awareness. Have you considered that the conceit of the fictional character is representing that reality?

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#192

Post by em-bee »

globular-toast wrote: post #111
falcor84 wrote: post #46

It's a well-written monologue, with a fabulous delivery, but I think it fails spectacularly for this argument. From what I just looked into, neither of the main people involved, including Damon, Affleck, Williams, Van Sant, Reiner or Goldman, had personally experienced those scenarios of fighting on the front lines and having a friend die in their arms, or of losing their spouse to cancer. But nevertheless, they had…

The speech isn't telling us what it's like to be in war or deal with cancer. It's telling us there's a difference between reading something and experiencing something. Whether it uses the real life experiences of Robin Williams or the fictional ones of his character is beside the point.

exactly this. the point is the message, that you need to experience things to really understand them. that is true regardless of how the message is delivered or who delivers it. if robin williams actually experienced all these things doesn't matter, because even if he did, matt damon listening to that would not be different from him reading about it unless matt also experienced those things.

life experience matters, and robin williams certainly had life experience at that point. i am in my 50s and i am only beginning to be able to translate my own life experience into some kind of wisdom that maybe can be shared.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#193

Post by johnfn »

klodolph wrote: post #65
munificent wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the whole speech is taking Matt Damon’s character down a peg. That's the entire point . That's why the speech ends with "your move, chief". Sean (Williams' character) is deliberately being confrontational because Will is avoiding making any psychological progress by putting on a fake mask, an avoidance strategy which has been successful with previous psychologists. Sean sees what Will doing and knows that the only…

> That's the entire point. Yeah, that’s the entire point, and I think it makes no sense. People will take off their mask if they feel like it’s safe. They don’t take off their mask because you make a big speech and confront them about it. The perspective that this speech has—it is telling me that a forceful, paternalistic approach can fix people. If somebody needs to talk but won’t, you can break down the walls. I di…

You completely nailed it.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#194

Post by Jtarii »

timacles wrote: post #50
sourdecor wrote: post #10

'Slop' getting better every nanosecond is part of the singularity curve too.

define better slop will never have substance

Slop will never be high art but it will absolutely be good enough for 90+% of people.

Marvel movies are slop, and they are the most successful thing ever made.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#195

Post by taffydavid »

arcticfox wrote: post #178
taffydavid wrote: post #175

I always thought it ironic that this beautiful speech about life experience was written by 2 20-something "scared shitless kid"s for Robin Williams to deliver.

I just heard it for the first time but why is that ironic? Isn't the point about feeling and not age?

I think it's ironic because the old man is schooling the kid, but the kid in that scene literally wrote the words for the old man.

Maybe irony is too strong, but it's amusing at least

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#196

Post by lesuorac »

sph wrote: post #148
t43562 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time one watches a romantic scene in some film you know it's fake. Actors present a totally fake version of life. Every story has to be dramatised to get over the fact that it's largely boring to people who haven't lived it. We watch so many films that they probably give us an odd impression of what reality is, what's possible, what' likely. I know what it is to sit by my mother's bed with my brain burning itse…

Not only romantic scenes, but any emotion. We are watching actors, any emotion on display is some measure of fake depending on how good the actor is. That said, we all grew up watching movies, and one could argue their way of expressing emotions are imprinted onto us, so we all ‘emote’ as actors, and their emotional acting matches our true emotions. You could expand this argument to our sexual realms, and it explains…

If you actually act a realistic way then the (general) audience will completely miss it.

You have to drop your jaws, screech, and other over the top expressions so that everybody understands what emotion is being conveyed. A quick smirk when the villain deceives the main character will get missed; it needs to be a mischievous chuckle that clues everybody (but the main character) in on the fact somebody has been duped.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#197

Post by layla5alive »

moffkalast wrote: post #113
jimbokun wrote: post #8

I agree. This Robin Williams monologue nails exactly why LLMs make us so uneasy. They speak fluently and confidently about experiences it’s impossible for them to have. They can’t taste a strawberry or do any of the things Robin Williams names. There are a number of people building these machines who literally believe the machines will replace us and because they will be more powerful than us so nothing meaningful wi…

> people building these machines who literally believe the machines will replace us and because they will be more powerful than us so nothing meaningful will be lost I have a pet theory on why that's the case and why this monologue fits so well. I think there's a variety of conditions, from straight up sociopathy, to Will's type of CPTSD, autistic masking, and probably a hell of a lot more that makes a person experie…

Have you walked any miles in the shoes of the people you're summarizing so bluntly?

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#198

Post by froggy »

synthsec wrote: post #187

What I find particularly sad is that this blog post contains many writing tells associated with AI editing and augmentation. So does the author themselves not care about the “art” of their own blogs posts?

Not sure what “tells” you’re talking about. They have a “Made with Human Intelligence” badge at bottom of the post. Are you calling them liars? If so, what do you have to gain by trying to discredit them? Are you heavily invested in AI, or is there something else motivating you?

The overall message from the post is good, and I find the attacks on it in these comments highly unusual.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#199

Post by jonhohle »

klodolph wrote: post #94
kstenerud wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Robin gave that performance, he was 47 years old. He'd been married twice. He'd been addicted to cocaine, and had partied with John Belushi the night he died from an overdose - which drove him to clean up his act. Was some of his performance made up? Absolutely. Was he overreaching? Definitely. You can't know what a war zone is like until you've been in one. Words can't describe the strange normalcy that only ge…

There are some really powerful things in Williams’s performance. You’re right about the nature of Hollywood—you work with what you got. But Hollywood also eats its own tail. Filmmakers grow up watching films, and they tend to draw from other films, the same way that LLMs just kinda rearrange pieces from ingested text (which is an oversimplification, bear with me). Like, there’s something special about The Lord of the…

I was just reading interviews with Hayao Miyazaki around the time Princess Mononoke was released. He talked a lot about how all movies about feudal Japan or samurai were based on period costume plays and Akira Kurosawa movies. He had worked hard to research history to find what the period really looked like.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#200

Post by placebo »

computably wrote: post #191
placebo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The terminator you talk about is a movie character. It might be built one day, it might not. It is also totally irrelevant considering there is a real terminator which can be described with the same adjectives and built in to every personal life that ever existed or will exist. Knowing how to deal with that seems more important than worrying about some specific scenario.

I feel your comment is deeply ironic... Just shy of self-awareness. Have you considered that the conceit of the fictional character is representing that reality?

I have no doubt it plays on the same fears - whether it was deliberately done so, I don't claim to know. My assumption was that in a discussion on AI, the comment about the terminator was not alluding to a literary metaphor but to a fear from the actual thing. There was no intent in downplaying the fear of AI - just adding a new perspective. I'm am curious to know what you think self-awareness has to do with any of this.
Post reply on HN