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The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

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Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#191

Post by stocksinsmocks »

code_for_monkey wrote: post #172
stocksinsmocks wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5% wrong is an extremely charitable take on the NYT. I once went to a school that had complementary subscriptions. The first time I sat down to read one there was an article excoriating President Bush about hurricane Katrina. The entire article was a glib expansion of an expert opinion who was just some history teacher who said that it was “worse than the battle of Antietam” for America. No expertise in climate. No e…

were defending bushs katrina response now?

No, but I’m pretty sure a Civil War history teacher’s opinion isn’t the source you want.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#192

Post by lioeters »

drakythe wrote: post #26
everdrive wrote: post #7

Doesn't matter. We must keep building more and more technology no matter the cost. Have an idea for a business? Build it. Does your business make the lives of people worse? Doesn't matter, keep pushing. Could some new technology ruin the lives and relationships that people have? Doesn't matter, just build it. We always need more, need to do more. Every experiment is valid, every impulse must be followed. More complex…

Turns out the Torment Nexus was just democratizing Venture Capital's desire for infinite growth.

Seeking VC funding now for OpenTormentNexus: Democratize the nightmare.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#193

Post by pron »

zahlman wrote: post #190
pron wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so what is a consistent epistemology that would lead someone to (probably an American) to believe the following things: planes are safe, atoms and viruses are real, the world is a globe, vaccines cause autism, Tylenol causes autism, vitamins are helpful, mobile phones do not cause cancer, weather forecasts are usually more-or-less right, man-made climate change is not real, the government can control the weather,…

> so what is a consistent epistemology that would lead someone to (probably an American) to believe the following things: First, show me a person who believes all of them. Then, try asking that person. You are trying to ask me to justify entire worldviews. That is far beyond the scope of a single HN post, and also blatantly off topic.

I think the president of the United States believes all or nearly all of these things (or claims to).

And I did ask such people such questions - for example, people who fly a lot yet and "chemtrails" are poisoning us - but their answers always ended up with some arbitrary choice that isn't appliled consistently. Pretty much, when forced to choose between claims A and B, they go by which of them they wish to be true, even if they would, in other situations, judge the process of arriving at one of the conclusions to be much stronger than the other. They're more than happy to explain to you that they trust vitamins because of modern scientific research, which they describe as fradulent when it comes to vaccines.

Their epistemology is so flagrantly inconsistent that my only conclusion was that they're stupid. I'm not saying that's an innate character trait, and I think this could well be the result of a poor education.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#194

Post by cal_dent »

onion2k wrote: post #68
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want dopamine hints, gamification, addictive distractions, and a culture of competitive perma-hustle. If they didn't, we wouldn't be having these problems. The problem isn't AI, it's how marketing has eaten everything. So everyone is always pitching, looking for a competitive advantage, "telling their story", and "building their brand." You can't "build trust" if your primary motivation is to sell stuff to you…

If they didn't, we wouldn't be having these problems. That assumes people have the ability to choose not to do these things, and that they can't be manipulated or coerced into doing them against their will. If you believe that advertising, especially data-driven personalised and targeted advertising, is essentially way of hacking someone's mind to do things it doesn't actually want to do, then it becomes fairly obvio…

That’s true…but I do think people need to learn more that avoidance is a strategy too. The odds are too stacked against the average person to engage properly so just don’t. I don’t know. Sure there are certain unavoidable things but for a large part I think you can just choose to zone out of a lot of the consumerist world now

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#195

Post by spwa4 »

zahlman wrote: post #151
ssalka wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric Weinstein refers to this as an Embedded Growth Obligation (EGO), whereby organizations and economies at large assume perpetual growth, and that things really start to unravel when that growth inevitably slows. It is pretty mindblowing how we have basically accepted growth as the default state, it is not at all a given that things always grow and get better.

> It is pretty mindblowing how we have basically accepted growth as the default state It is completely to be expected, exactly because it is not new. It's been scarcely a generation since the peak in net change of the global human population, and will likely be at least another two generations before that population reaches its maximum value. It rose faster than exponentially for a few centuries before that ( https:/…

The reason people don't accept this is that it fundamentally changes society, it is because of what it means, not because it is or isn't possible.

Net-growth society: new wealth is being created, if you can be part of the creation you get wealth

No-growth society: only way to acquire wealth is to take it from someone else

Oh plus because essentially every society that experienced it legislated it's way into a no-growth situation. The problem was not that growth was not possible, it's that people used state power, for a lot of different excuses, to prevent growth (and of course really to secure the position of the richest and most powerful in society)

The excuses range from religion, morality separate from religion, wars, avoiding losing wars (and putting the entire economy in a usually futile attempt to win or avoid losing a war) and of course the whole thing feeding onto itself: laws protecting the rich at the direct expense of the poor (that can happen even if there is economic growth, though of course, the more growth the less likely)

Btw: "futile attempt to win or avoid losing a war" these attempt were futile not because they lead to a win or a loss, but because the imposed cost of a no-growth society far exceeded any gains or even avoided losses ...

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#196

Post by rufus_foreman »

pessimizer wrote: post #6
huijzer wrote: post #2

Yes nice article. Interesting point. One small one I do not agree with is "Are you burning VC cash on unsustainable unit economics?". I think it's safe to conclude by now that unsustainable businesses can be kept alive for years as long as the investors want it.

Nothing safer than financial scams in the West these days. Never short Herbalife.

Looks like you could have made a lot of money shorting Herbalife over the last 5 years.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#197

Post by nsxwolf »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #139
nsxwolf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID ended my trust in media. I went from healthy skepticism to assuming everything is wrong/a lie. There was no accountability for this so this will never change for me. I am like the people who lived through the Great Depression not trusting banks 60 years later and keeping their money under the mattress.

I've seen this take a few times recently, including from a relatively famous person who seemed to be on my wavelength generally but I don't quite understand what is meant by it. Could you quickly summarize how and why you felt let down by the media in regards to COVID?

I actually kept a journal of all the things I was noticing that were becoming memory holed almost day to day, just so I wouldn’t think I was going crazy. I’m not really interested in re-litigating any of it with anyone, though. Nothing good ever comes from that.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#198

Post by huijzer »

alexpotato wrote: post #8

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens fame [0], has a great quote (paraphrasing): Interviewer: How will humans deal with the avalanche of fake information that AI could bring? YNH: The way humans have always dealt with fake information: by building institutions we trust to provide accurate information. This is not a new phenomenon btw. In democracies, this is often either the government (e.g. the Bureau of Labor Statistics) or…

> YNH: The way humans have always dealt with fake information: by building institutions we trust to provide accurate information. This is not a new phenomenon btw.

Funny that he doesn’t say that the institutions have to provide accurate information, but just that we have to trust them to provide accurate information.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#199

Post by strogonoff »

spwa4 wrote: post #195
zahlman wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is pretty mindblowing how we have basically accepted growth as the default state It is completely to be expected, exactly because it is not new. It's been scarcely a generation since the peak in net change of the global human population, and will likely be at least another two generations before that population reaches its maximum value. It rose faster than exponentially for a few centuries before that ( https:/…

The reason people don't accept this is that it fundamentally changes society, it is because of what it means, not because it is or isn't possible. Net-growth society: new wealth is being created, if you can be part of the creation you get wealth No-growth society: only way to acquire wealth is to take it from someone else Oh plus because essentially every society that experienced it legislated it's way into a no-grow…

In a no-growth (or even degrowth, which I have recently learned is a thing) society taking what you need from someone else is not the only option: someone can also choose to share it.

A society like that may be quite different in innumerable ways, of course, and the idea of “wealth” in the way we understand it may not make sense.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#200

Post by mvdtnz »

pron wrote: post #12
alexpotato wrote: post #8

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens fame [0], has a great quote (paraphrasing): Interviewer: How will humans deal with the avalanche of fake information that AI could bring? YNH: The way humans have always dealt with fake information: by building institutions we trust to provide accurate information. This is not a new phenomenon btw. In democracies, this is often either the government (e.g. the Bureau of Labor Statistics) or…

The problem is that too many people just don't know how to weigh different probabilities of correctness against each other. The NYT is wrong 5% of the time - I'll believe this random person I just saw on TikTok because I've never heard of them ever being wrong; I've heard many stories about doctors being wrong - I'll listen to RFK; scientific models could be wrong, so I'll bet on climate change being not real etc.

The problem isn't "The NYT is wrong 5% of the time". It's that institutions are systematically wrong in predictable ways that happen to benefit their point of view. It's not random. It's planned.
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