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AI tools are making the world look weird

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Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#141

Post by TimByte »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #53
psidium wrote: post #5

Can’t recommend the book that coined this acronym enough: The WEIRDest People in the World Book by Joseph Henrich. It is such an eye-opening piece that explains so much of the world around us. He’s an anthropologist that goes into the psychology of it all. Touching on points like how religion plays a part in shaping the America of today and even how humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discer…

I have to ask (and I don't mean this combatively) - given the ongoing realization of the replication crisis, how likely is it that the book you mention reflects a summation of the "too pat" studies about human behavior that, en masse, always seem pithy in an interesting headline, but years later end up being completely bunk? I've noticed over the years many chains of reasoning - made up of what I believe someone call…

You're right to be cautious, especially given how many pop-psych books have aged like milk after the replication crisis came into full view. Henrich’s work feels a bit different to me. He’s not just stringing together catchy one-off studies; he’s pulling from a mix of anthropology, economics, history, and cross-cultural psych

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#142

Post by TimByte »

felipeerias wrote: post #17

There is undoubtedly a real effect here, but IMHO one problem with the original article is that it treats the US as the only reference point. On the one hand, this reflects the US dominant position in world affairs and the fact that probably most of the training materials come from there. But on the other hand, there are some outlier results that are left unexplained. For example, ChatGPT is even more aligned with Ja…

One possibility is that alignment isn’t just about cultural distance in values, but also about textual representation in the training data

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#143

Post by TimByte »

ManlyBread wrote: post #92

>In fact, this paper found that more than that, it thinks American. I think that's because it seems to be primarily trained on reddit and therefore mirrors everything reddit stands for. Not a good thing considering just how overrun the site is with bots and political activists of all kinds.

I wonder how much of that actually survives token filtering during training

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#144

Post by ludicity »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #53
psidium wrote: post #5

Can’t recommend the book that coined this acronym enough: The WEIRDest People in the World Book by Joseph Henrich. It is such an eye-opening piece that explains so much of the world around us. He’s an anthropologist that goes into the psychology of it all. Touching on points like how religion plays a part in shaping the America of today and even how humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discer…

I have to ask (and I don't mean this combatively) - given the ongoing realization of the replication crisis, how likely is it that the book you mention reflects a summation of the "too pat" studies about human behavior that, en masse, always seem pithy in an interesting headline, but years later end up being completely bunk? I've noticed over the years many chains of reasoning - made up of what I believe someone call…

From my own time in psychology, the thrust of the book might be good, but that specific point about Protestant work ethic sounds exactly like all the other "just so" studies that didn't replicate.

But lots of otherwise good books have these little mistakes on them, so I find it best to gloss over them and see if the point stands without them.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#145

Post by CaptWillard »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #53
psidium wrote: post #5

Can’t recommend the book that coined this acronym enough: The WEIRDest People in the World Book by Joseph Henrich. It is such an eye-opening piece that explains so much of the world around us. He’s an anthropologist that goes into the psychology of it all. Touching on points like how religion plays a part in shaping the America of today and even how humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discer…

I have to ask (and I don't mean this combatively) - given the ongoing realization of the replication crisis, how likely is it that the book you mention reflects a summation of the "too pat" studies about human behavior that, en masse, always seem pithy in an interesting headline, but years later end up being completely bunk? I've noticed over the years many chains of reasoning - made up of what I believe someone call…

I'd never heard of the replication crisis, but it mirrors what I think is a core problem with modern political discourse.

Example: Two people with similar classically liberal values hear the same "pithy take" on a politically contentious issue. One accepts it as presented, the other digs in and finds it doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all.

Almost invariably, the skeptic is ostracized, his findings met with incurious dismissal.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#146

Post by DaveZale »

johnisgood wrote: post #121
DaveZale wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard a congressman in a town hall meeting last night call a colleague "crazy liberal" - a psychotherapist called in and said don't use that word "crazy" - language is being perverted here

That is crazy.

unprofessional and divisive, for sure

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#147

Post by DaveZale »

hiatus wrote: post #28
DaveZale wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I just ordered a copy of "We Survived the Night" based on a post here. Never would have heard of it otherwise.

Mind linking to the post for the curious?

it was a link to paris review of books- here is the book

https://pioneerworks.org/programs/julian-brave-noisecat-we-s...

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#148

Post by snickerdoodle14 »

psidium wrote: post #5

Can’t recommend the book that coined this acronym enough: The WEIRDest People in the World Book by Joseph Henrich. It is such an eye-opening piece that explains so much of the world around us. He’s an anthropologist that goes into the psychology of it all. Touching on points like how religion plays a part in shaping the America of today and even how humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discer…

"better" man?

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#149

Post by cortesoft »

lelanthran wrote: post #95
cortesoft wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> women there tend to prefer to be 2nd wives of a better man rather being the only wife of a lower-ranking man This seems like a bit of a tautology; how are they 'ranking' these men?

> > women there tend to prefer to be 2nd wives of a better man rather being the only wife of a lower-ranking man > This seems like a bit of a tautology; how are they 'ranking' these men? I am not seeing the tautology. Can you explain?

Well, if their success with multiple women is used as a factor in the ranking….

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#150

Post by maxbond »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #119
maxbond wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that I am also WEIRD. Please help me to understand by referring to the specific part of the article where WEIRD was used in the pejorative.

Are you saying that self-hating westerners aren’t real? It’s an entire industry at this point.

No, I never said that. To be perfectly clear: if you want to argue that a text says X, you need to provide evidence from the text. Everything I see you commenting in this thread appears to be based your preconceptions around this acronym, nothing you've said even indicates you've read the article.

Read it or don't, it's your business, but if I ask you for evidence from the article and your response is to try to put words on my mouth (on an irrelevant tangent, at that), I'm going to write off your argument entirely.

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