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How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

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Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#21

Post by yellowapple »

> Your soul will not remain intact while you hoover up artists’ work to train theft-engines that poison the water of communities in need.

This sentence nose-dove the article's credibility.

Intellectual property and the enforcement thereof is in and of itself a Torment Nexus. The belief that thoughts and ideas and words and images and sounds can be "stolen", and that such "theft" is somehow a bad thing (instead of the sort of free exchange of ideas that has benefited humanity for its entire recorded history) is itself mutually exclusive with having an intact soul.

Yes, artists deserve to be able to earn a living making art (absent a universal basic income that renders the notion of "earning a living" moot). Yes, it's understandable that they choose to do so by wielding IP law, because that's the most straightforward option they have in a capitalist system that actively rewards Torment-Nexus-enforced rentseeking. No, that doesn't make them any less complicit in the perpetuation of that Torment Nexus. These are the same laws that enable Disney to sue the pants off of parents who dare to decorate their dead children's coffins after said children's favorite fictional characters. These are the same laws that rob other creatives of their creative autonomy lest their works "infringe" on the "rights" of richer creatives who can afford better lawyers. These are the same laws that normalized shipping rootkits with creative works for the sake of "digital 'rights' management". These are the same laws that actively hinder the preservation of creative works for historical posterity, causing those works to be at risk of being lost forever. Intellectual property has done vastly more harm than good, and AI throwing a wrench in the ability to meaningfully enforce it is one of the exceedingly few good outcomes of AI proliferation.

Your soul will not remain intact while you parrot MPAA/RIAA "yOu WoUlDn'T dOwNlOaD a CaR" talking points in defense of collecting royalties until 70 years after you die.

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#22

Post by mindslight »

yummypaint wrote: post #7

It's pretty wild that software is the only "engineering" discipline without any concept of professional ethics or loyalty to human safety that superceeds the whims of the employer. Why do people think that is? Have there been any attempts to change this from the inside over the past decade? Where are professional associations like the ACM in all of this? It's a shameful state of affairs and reflects poorly on the who…

I agree with the crux of your point, but commonly held engineering ethics are still compatible with building weapons that directly attack other humans. The ethics basically focus on doing right by the employer/society you're working for. And for the surveillance industry, that society is the obscenely rich elites and us plebs are all just the targets.

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#23

Post by shaunxcode »

yummypaint wrote: post #7

It's pretty wild that software is the only "engineering" discipline without any concept of professional ethics or loyalty to human safety that superceeds the whims of the employer. Why do people think that is? Have there been any attempts to change this from the inside over the past decade? Where are professional associations like the ACM in all of this? It's a shameful state of affairs and reflects poorly on the who…

Because there was a very conscious attempt to destroy cybernetics. Resulting in MIT etc becoming a school that builds human calculators for Harvard/biz grads to utilize as literal machines without souls. albertm

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#24

Post by mindslight »

yellowapple wrote: post #21

> Your soul will not remain intact while you hoover up artists’ work to train theft-engines that poison the water of communities in need. This sentence nose-dove the article's credibility. Intellectual property and the enforcement thereof is in and of itself a Torment Nexus . The belief that thoughts and ideas and words and images and sounds can be "stolen", and that such "theft" is somehow a bad thing (instead of th…

I share your view of imaginary property. But pushing in the right direction is much more important than being 100% correct about everything.

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#25

Post by mindslight »

derelicta wrote: post #3

I have a friend who's working at the torment nexus factory, and whilst he knows he's helping kids getting blown to literal pieces, material conditions "dictate" him that he has little other choices besides closing his eyes and hardening his heart. Or quitting and working for someone else, but that's a tough argument to make.

Grammar nit, but it highlights how steeped in passivity we all are:

> he's helping kids getting blown to literal pieces

Helping kids [who are] getting blown to bits would be a noble endeavor. What you presumably mean is that he is helping to blow kids to literal pieces

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#26

Post by mindslight »

laughingcurve wrote: post #9
throwaway404040 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's telling how little discussion this post is generating on HN. Perhaps a little too uncomfortable for a large portion of the crowd?

Usually when crazy people get on the metro and start yelling their political opinions at no one, we all know it’s best to ignore them.

This isn't the metro, but rather a discussion forum full of your peers. And the article isn't crazy disconnected ranting, but well-founded and well-reasoned arguments.

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#27

Post by kelseyfrog »

DicIfTEx wrote: post #12
kelseyfrog wrote: post #2

If you build the Torment Nexus, it might even be ever so slightly less tormentful[1] than it otherwise could have been because you're a good person, perhaps even slightly better than most. This thing you eventually come to believe, of course, is exactly what one must believe for the Torment Nexus to be made. Sure, there are structural and economic incentives that tilt the playing field, but this is the belief that is…

Hannah Arendt considered this argument in her essay "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship": > In the tumultuous discussion of moral issues which has been going on since the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the disclosure of the total complicity in crimes of all ranks of official society, that is, of the total collapse of normal moral standards, the following argument has been raised in endless variations: We who app…

> ultimately, she finds the excuse lacking

Oh absolutely! It's my hope that detailing the psychological mechanism at play is in some way an antidote to its acceptance. It feels if anything a bit naive when faced with the possibility that there exists a group who gleefully implements the most heinous practices so this line of thinking doesn't even enter the picture.

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#28

Post by BizarroLand »

dweinus wrote: post #20
falcor84 wrote: post #19

> Tech was a sector that made us think of humankind moving forward, possibly into some happy Star Trek like future where no one needed money and pie magically appeared in your wall if you said “Magic wall, pie me!” Am I too naive in thinking that the AIs we're working on are a prerequisite step on the way towards Star Trek's post-scarcity future?

No, whether this tech could lead to a post-scarcity future is debatable. The naive part is thinking that it will lead to it, given the way we use it and the power structures that profit from it.

I personally feel like we're more on the path to the Altered Carbon-esque cyberpunk dystopia, only it will be clean and pretty and white and gleaming and only the "elect" will actually have full independent cognitive function.

Everyone else will be animal farm brainwashed into caring more about celebrities and sports and war and arguing online with strangers about pointless topics and politics while they eat their slop and work their meaningless jobs to keep the engine of civilization moving forward in a way that benefits the wealthiest, and AI will ultimately become the old school Andy Griffith cop that seems all nice and kind and helpful but will T-1000 sell us out to its true masters without remorse or hesitation no matter what.

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#29

Post by gopher_space »

philipallstar wrote: post #6
throwaway404040 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's telling how little discussion this post is generating on HN. Perhaps a little too uncomfortable for a large portion of the crowd?

I think it's just the over-simplification, not of tradeoffs of type of work vs one's own health insurance, but of just classifying some jobs as pure evil, and also the nowadays-tepid lesswrong writing style. And no gods no masters is the sort of thing you might see someone say right before they become the leader, ban religion, and cause mass starvation.

Feels like we're getting into "contractors working on the Death Star" territory (surprisingly lucid and concise refrain on the subject from Smith et. al.). The job itself isn't "evil", but anyone capable of seeing how it fits into a bigger picture will think of your death as expected collateral.

Re: How to Not Build the Torment Nexus

#30

Post by yellowapple »

mindslight wrote: post #24
yellowapple wrote: post #21

> Your soul will not remain intact while you hoover up artists’ work to train theft-engines that poison the water of communities in need. This sentence nose-dove the article's credibility. Intellectual property and the enforcement thereof is in and of itself a Torment Nexus . The belief that thoughts and ideas and words and images and sounds can be "stolen", and that such "theft" is somehow a bad thing (instead of th…

I share your view of imaginary property. But pushing in the right direction is much more important than being 100% correct about everything.

Demonizing the one good outcome of AI is the opposite of pushing in the right direction, though. It's like the author missed his own point, self-awarewolf style.
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