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Creeped Out [pdf]

philpapers.org

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Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#11

Post by kazinator »

munificent wrote: post #2

This paper is almost a parody of philosophical writing. It's pages and pages of telling you what it's not going to tell you, contrasting it with other things it could tell but chooses not to, mentioning other things others have told you (which will not be repeated here), disagreeing with the claims of other writers (without quite explaining the refutations), telling you what it intends to tell you, telling you in wha…

> then reminding that it told you.

You dropped the excellent play there: should be "reminding you of what it was not going to tell you, and didn't."

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#12

Post by mry2048 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #7
sdwr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as a small dog trying to pick up a big stick - he's making all the right motions but nothing's coming off the ground. I have to believe it's written by a young person who knows what papers should look like, but doesn't have the life experience to get any leverage on the topic. But yeah, difficult to read, my eyes glanced off like I was trying to read wallpaper.

I see it as someone who wishes they were special.

What’s wrong with that?

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#13

Post by iraqmtpizza »

sdwr wrote: post #3
munificent wrote: post #2

This paper is almost a parody of philosophical writing. It's pages and pages of telling you what it's not going to tell you, contrasting it with other things it could tell but chooses not to, mentioning other things others have told you (which will not be repeated here), disagreeing with the claims of other writers (without quite explaining the refutations), telling you what it intends to tell you, telling you in wha…

I see it as a small dog trying to pick up a big stick - he's making all the right motions but nothing's coming off the ground. I have to believe it's written by a young person who knows what papers should look like, but doesn't have the life experience to get any leverage on the topic. But yeah, difficult to read, my eyes glanced off like I was trying to read wallpaper.

>written by a young person who knows what papers should look like, but doesn't have the life experience to get any leverage on the topic

So basically an LLM, which by its nature (and often also by external controls) can't say anything non-trivial about love, sex, money, or death. Or even politics. Because that requires a point of view narrower than Wikipedia's and at least half as stable as nitroglycerin

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#14

Post by nonrandomstring »

Very enjoyable. A bit skittish for sure. The keyword in the whole essay is "ineffable". Creepiness is one of those pre-cognitive states, awareness before we are able to name it, and the urge to trepid investigation. The word "curiosity" doesn't appear but I think it belongs in the proximity.

Reading some comments here, people had difficulty with the tortuous prose. That reminds me where literature succeeds over philosophy. Any page from Franz Kafka contains, in essential form, this whole essay.

While the essay touches the utility of creepiness it doesn't venture into The psychological cost of being creeped out. Research shows the extremely deleterious effects of this cluster of such 'gnawing' emotions like anxiety. Those who shrug off surveillance whimpering "I have nothing to hide" are neck deep in denial and complex defence mechanisms.

In some digital self-defence classes we arrived at "Creepiness is the new cool" - simply because there's so much of it around and everyone wants to talk about it but lacks a vocabulary. I think that's how Charlie Brooker arrived at Black Mirror, not through any technical understanding, but observing the dominant emotion in the air.

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#15

Post by projektfu »

There's a weird thing in online discourse, especially Twitter, where creepy, gross and disgusting stand in for moral judgements and enforcement of social norms. Maybe it's just a current style, or maybe people choose it because it's hard to argue against a feeling the way you argue against a judgement.

I feel, though, that it's infantilizing the discussion. We are not going to find common ground if, for example, one person thinks it's gross that people aren't masking up anymore, while another is creeped out by mask wearers. But these statements of feeling seem to tickle the algorithm better than statements of fact and discussions of public safety.

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#16

Post by cubefox »

A concept that's specific to the English language is probably a rather idiosyncratic disjunction of properties and not worth writing philosophy papers about. E.g. German has no proper translation for "creepy", we would use different words for various cases described by it. It's like thinking there is some global concept "can" that includes both "being able to" and "being allowed to", just because in the English language "can" can express both. Chances are, it's just an ambiguous word.

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#17

Post by kragen »

kazinator wrote: post #10

> Being creeped out is a feeling or reaction that is valuable for some other reasons as well. A shared sense of what is creepy can make for social bonding, either in the face of a joint threat or annoyance, or just to feel fellow feelings in shared reactions. Being creeped out as a bonding circle jerk is all fun and games, until what the group is creeped out by are people from some ethnic group.

or sexual orientation, or gender, or...

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#18

Post by pmarreck »

kragen wrote: post #17
kazinator wrote: post #10

> Being creeped out is a feeling or reaction that is valuable for some other reasons as well. A shared sense of what is creepy can make for social bonding, either in the face of a joint threat or annoyance, or just to feel fellow feelings in shared reactions. Being creeped out as a bonding circle jerk is all fun and games, until what the group is creeped out by are people from some ethnic group.

or sexual orientation, or gender, or...

at some point, I noticed that “creepy“ was almost exclusively used to describe males

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#19

Post by pmarreck »

projektfu wrote: post #15

There's a weird thing in online discourse, especially Twitter, where creepy, gross and disgusting stand in for moral judgements and enforcement of social norms. Maybe it's just a current style, or maybe people choose it because it's hard to argue against a feeling the way you argue against a judgement. I feel, though, that it's infantilizing the discussion. We are not going to find common ground if, for example, one…

all of that is just a sign of a failure to understand critical thinking at a mass scale, since “wisdom of repugnance” is fallacious

Re: Creeped Out [pdf]

#20

Post by geraldhh »

projektfu wrote: post #15

There's a weird thing in online discourse, especially Twitter, where creepy, gross and disgusting stand in for moral judgements and enforcement of social norms. Maybe it's just a current style, or maybe people choose it because it's hard to argue against a feeling the way you argue against a judgement. I feel, though, that it's infantilizing the discussion. We are not going to find common ground if, for example, one…

> I feel, though, that it's infantilizing the discussion.

hard to argue with a feeling

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