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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

#191

Post by fluoridation »

rollcat wrote: post #190
fluoridation wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a man can have multiple women, but a woman can't have multiple men, it's just a different form of oppression. There are reasons to allow only one of the sexes to have multiple sexual partners/spouses. * In a community with such liberal sexual practices, STDs spread more easily, especially in earlier centuries. * It makes marriage intrinsically more complicated simply because of the more complex interactions. For…

> In a community with such liberal sexual practices, STDs spread more easily, especially in earlier centuries. You can use a condom. TIL, rubber condoms are a mid-19th century invention; a significant upgrade over sheep gut. The alternative is called polyfidelity. > [...] what are Alice and David to each other? They're called Metamours. > Anything? Nothing? Is the entire married community a distinct entity? It's call…

>You can use a condom.

Sure. Now. But monogamy and polygyny are a little older than condoms.

>Metamours [...] polycule

You're answering rhetorical questions which, incidentally, are not about terminology, but about legal and social mechanics. Knowing what a "metamour" is, says nothing about what the formal and informal responsibilities of the parties involved are or should be with respect to each other. My whole point is that not having to define such relationships and their expectations is a reason to forbid them culturally.

>You write a will.

How did that work before most people knew how to write?

>By the way, inheritance laws are messy already as they are.

That's not an argument in favor of legally legitimizing polycules.

>the reason is to reinforce division and oppression

I mean, I gave several reasons why historically either monogamy or asymmetric polygamy would have been preferred over symmetric polygamy, that have nothing to do with oppression.

>I'd wager that an entire society built on top of that would have no lesser chance at thriving than the one we've been born into.

Sure, maybe. Personally, I'm more of the opinion that cultural features are memetic, and that memes are not uniformly successfully propagated. If monogamous and polygynous societies are more common than polyandrous and polycular societies, it's probably for a reason.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#192

Post by fluoridation »

godelski wrote: post #189
fluoridation wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Programmers would be more effective if they spend more time at the drawing board Would they, though? As you've correctly pointed out, design goals in software engineering get shifted by decision-makers because its cheaper than in civil engineering. The whole point of the ToP article is pointing out that software engineers have to account for possible future radical changes that in other branches of engineering are a…

Yeah. I find it weird to think not. Many problems are found during those planning stages. The process is iterative. Like I said, no one is omniscient. So that also means you can't just figure out everything during the planning stage. If that could be solved there then no one would ever pivot and frankly, that'd be a pretty strong case for planning in the first place lol. But think about it this way, how do you plan a…

I don't mean to be dismissive of the effort you went to in writing all that, but nothing you've said argues why software engineers would benefit from more planning. It argues for some planning, sure; I never said no planning whatsoever is good. If you intend to build, say, a website, that presents a very different set of challenges and usable tools than if you instead intended to build a microcontroller's firmware. But you seem to agree with me that in software you can turn on a dime, yet you don't don't offer any reason why more planning than what is already done would be beneficial.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#193

Post by lelanthran »

rollcat wrote: post #115
lelanthran wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's fascinating to think about the second level "why": what made people encode monogamy and heterosexuality into their cultural canons (including their mainstream religion)? I dunno about heterosexuality being encoded[1] into cultural canons, but for monogamy it's actually quite simple: violence. Do you really want half your testosterone-fueled 18-28 year old males unable to attract a mate? There'll be continu…

> Do you really want half your testosterone-fueled 18-28 year old males unable to attract a mate? There'll be continuous fighting to kill of the excess males. This is nonsense. Non-monogamy is relinquishing exclusivity. If a man can have multiple women, but a woman can't have multiple men, it's just a different form of oppression. Monogamy is possessiveness, and possessiveness is what drives violence.

> This is nonsense. Non-monogamy is relinquishing exclusivity. If a man can have multiple women, but a woman can't have multiple men, it's just a different form of oppression.

Only if your argument is that this behaviour is nurture, not nature. IOW, if your argument is "this behaviour is completely disconnected from instinct and has nothing to do with evolutionary pressure", then sure, your argument makes sense.

Many of the great apes, and indeed, other animals, don't think in terms of political soundbites, though, so we can readily observe that the behaviour "violence over mating rights" is a thing that developed in those creatures that eventually evolved into other creatures which evolved into pre-hominids which evolved into hominids which evolved into us.

Some things are instinct. It's a very large stretch to claim that violence over mating isn't instinct, but political.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that...

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#194

Post by lelanthran »

dsign wrote: post #127
lelanthran wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's fascinating to think about the second level "why": what made people encode monogamy and heterosexuality into their cultural canons (including their mainstream religion)? I dunno about heterosexuality being encoded[1] into cultural canons, but for monogamy it's actually quite simple: violence. Do you really want half your testosterone-fueled 18-28 year old males unable to attract a mate? There'll be continu…

You may be taking things from the wrong end. Violence about having an exclusive mate could be a purely cultural construct, reinforced from childhood. I can say that I always, personally, considered the idea of controlling a person abhorrent, as much as I found uninteresting the idea of orbiting my intimate life around a single person with special and very high privileges over whatever I do and think, including outsid…

> Violence about having an exclusive mate could be a purely cultural construct, reinforced from childhood.

"Could be" is not "probably is".

All the observable evidence points to "fighting for mates being purely instinctual".

The opposite, is in fact, true: not engaging in violence for mates is, in fact, purely a cultural construct.

Culture enforces that, via laws, norms, etc.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#195

Post by godelski »

fluoridation wrote: post #192
godelski wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I find it weird to think not. Many problems are found during those planning stages. The process is iterative. Like I said, no one is omniscient. So that also means you can't just figure out everything during the planning stage. If that could be solved there then no one would ever pivot and frankly, that'd be a pretty strong case for planning in the first place lol. But think about it this way, how do you plan a…

I don't mean to be dismissive of the effort you went to in writing all that, but nothing you've said argues why software engineers would benefit from more planning. It argues for some planning, sure; I never said no planning whatsoever is good. If you intend to build, say, a website, that presents a very different set of challenges and usable tools than if you instead intended to build a microcontroller's firmware. B…

  > I never said no planning whatsoever is good
Nor did I say programmers do no planning.

  > yet you don't don't offer any reason why more planning than what is already done would be beneficial.
You're selling high precision, which is impossible in this discussion. I don't know you and thus can't adapt my message to your specific needs. You'll need to think carefully about what I've said to see if it applies to you or not. Look carefully at that vacation scenario. How does it differ from how you go about solving a programming problem? Why do you think I'm stressing so much about how the ability to turn on a dime is an entirely different dimension?

You're a programmer, so I'd expect this to not be too difficult since you deal with deep levels of abstraction every day, right? You know how to generalize functions? You're aware of anonymous functions? Functors? Templates? And many other such generalizations? Why are you seeking such high precision when you can write down a function that automatically adopts to a wide range of cases and situations?

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#196

Post by rollcat »

fluoridation wrote: post #191
rollcat wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a community with such liberal sexual practices, STDs spread more easily, especially in earlier centuries. You can use a condom. TIL, rubber condoms are a mid-19th century invention; a significant upgrade over sheep gut. The alternative is called polyfidelity. > [...] what are Alice and David to each other? They're called Metamours. > Anything? Nothing? Is the entire married community a distinct entity? It's call…

>You can use a condom. Sure. Now. But monogamy and polygyny are a little older than condoms. >Metamours [...] polycule You're answering rhetorical questions which, incidentally, are not about terminology, but about legal and social mechanics. Knowing what a "metamour" is, says nothing about what the formal and informal responsibilities of the parties involved are or should be with respect to each other. My whole poin…

> You're answering rhetorical questions which, incidentally, are not about terminology, but about legal and social mechanics.

Yes, that's what I've tried to imply. You name things, so you can discuss them in more abstract terms, so you can form a social & legal framework around those concepts.

> My whole point is that not having to define such relationships and their expectations is a reason to forbid them culturally.

>> [...] not having to define [...] is a reason to forbid [...].

Suppress the concept. "We don't talk about that."

> How did that work before most people knew how to write?

How did people enter agreements?

> Personally, I'm more of the opinion that cultural features are memetic, and that memes are not uniformly successfully propagated.

Agree. It's also how dictatorships rise. Another form of oppression that concentrates power and fires back at the group who have initially supported it. Another lose-lose.

Societies often overoptimize for a local maximum.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#197

Post by Ylpertnodi »

mrweasel wrote: post #94
justlikereddit wrote: post #54

Social media reflects a silicon valley perspective and US domestic news have contaminated the entire eurozone since over a decade. Movies are also a distillate of a local culture often with a rather uniform ideological slant. AI being a clone army of corporate spokesmen from the US west coast brings sparsely little new cultural homogeneity to the already very smoothed table.

> The greater the cultural distance between a country and the USA, the less accurate ChatGPT got at simulating peoples’ values. I'd be somewhat concerned that what is actually reflected is a cultures willingness to adopt US (west coast) values over its own. We see this constantly in some European countries where we're willing to adopt US view points and problems over our own. Either because we're constantly exposed t…

>We see this constantly in some European countries where we're willing to adopt US view points and problems over our own.

'Some', being which countries?

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#198

Post by fluoridation »

rollcat wrote: post #196
fluoridation wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can use a condom. Sure. Now. But monogamy and polygyny are a little older than condoms. >Metamours [...] polycule You're answering rhetorical questions which, incidentally, are not about terminology, but about legal and social mechanics. Knowing what a "metamour" is, says nothing about what the formal and informal responsibilities of the parties involved are or should be with respect to each other. My whole poin…

> You're answering rhetorical questions which, incidentally, are not about terminology, but about legal and social mechanics. Yes, that's what I've tried to imply. You name things, so you can discuss them in more abstract terms, so you can form a social & legal framework around those concepts. > My whole point is that not having to define such relationships and their expectations is a reason to forbid them culturally…

>Suppress the concept. "We don't talk about that."

You're not disagreeing that it's a valid reason, you're just saying you don't like it.

>How did people enter agreements?

A will is not an agreement, it's a declaration of posthumous intent. It necessarily cannot work in oral form.

>Agree.

Good. I'm glad you agree. I'm just going to ignore the appeal to emotion.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#199

Post by fluoridation »

godelski wrote: post #195
fluoridation wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be dismissive of the effort you went to in writing all that, but nothing you've said argues why software engineers would benefit from more planning. It argues for some planning, sure; I never said no planning whatsoever is good. If you intend to build, say, a website, that presents a very different set of challenges and usable tools than if you instead intended to build a microcontroller's firmware. B…

> I never said no planning whatsoever is good Nor did I say programmers do no planning. > yet you don't don't offer any reason why more planning than what is already done would be beneficial. You're selling high precision, which is impossible in this discussion. I don't know you and thus can't adapt my message to your specific needs. You'll need to think carefully about what I've said to see if it applies to you or n…

Buddy, you're the one who originally made a specific claim.

>Programmers would be more effective if they spend more time at the drawing board

If you want to retract it then that's fine, but don't act like I'm being unreasonable for asking what reasons you have for making it.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#200

Post by godelski »

fluoridation wrote: post #199
godelski wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never said no planning whatsoever is good Nor did I say programmers do no planning. > yet you don't don't offer any reason why more planning than what is already done would be beneficial. You're selling high precision, which is impossible in this discussion. I don't know you and thus can't adapt my message to your specific needs. You'll need to think carefully about what I've said to see if it applies to you or n…

Buddy, you're the one who originally made a specific claim. >Programmers would be more effective if they spend more time at the drawing board If you want to retract it then that's fine, but don't act like I'm being unreasonable for asking what reasons you have for making it.

  > don't act like I'm being unreasonable for asking what reasons you have for making it.
You are though. You never had any intention of talking in good faith, and it was my mistake for engaging.

You've constructed a setting where no matter what level of planning I suggest you'll be able to say that this already is performed.

You've constructed a setting where I must make a suggestion for YOU, when I've made a note about a generalization I've observed. Did I say "all"? Of course not. I'm a programmer too, right?

You've ignored my generalization while attempting to weaponize it against me by seeking high precision.

You then use precision to argue the variability and importance of adapting to differing settings.

You've moved the goalpost multiple times.

You've actively worked against requests to help refine the conversation to settings more appropriate for you, to determine if you are included in the initial generalization or not.

So yeah, you are being unreasonable. I see that all you wanted to do was pick a fight. I want no part in your dumb game.

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