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George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

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Re: George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

#41

Post by mrexcess »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #25

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” - Dune "What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking—there's the real danger." - God Emperor of Dune

Hard times don’t create hard people, they create scarred people. I’ll take the robot farmers, undoing of wage slavery, and time to maintain participatory democracy over my favorite author’s romanticized suffering.

Re: George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

#42

Post by piekvorst »

Terr_ wrote: post #11
operatingthetan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The four books you mentioned have very different methods of control. The primary thing they share is being dystopic. --- 1984: control through fear and pain. Brave New World: control through pleasure and distraction. Animal Farm: control through corruption and deception. Atlas Shrugged: control though guilt and regulation. --- Brave New World is the most prophetic. Atlas Shrugged has horrific writing, separate from w…

> Atlas Shrugged has horrific writing, separate from what I feel about the politics. Following the tangent: I read the book "blind", when I was mind-numbling bored for a couple pre-dialup weeks at a relative's house. Eventually I decided to finish it purely out of spite so that I could confidently denounce it as trash in the future. (And today it pays off?) In short, it's a book of incredible hypocrisy which also dis…

> certain appeals to emotion or outcome are evil tools of fictional villains, while simultaneously doing the exact same thing

You would be correct if that were the whole truth about Atlas Shrugged: defending protagonists on emotional grounds.

But it’s not the whole truth. The very monologue that you dismiss is the tool that provides the emotion with the principle. You know the characters’ reasons for holding their emotions.

Ayn Rand never said that one shouldn’t feel or express one’s emotions. On the contrary, “. . . emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life” [1].

In fact, every emotional appeal used in the novel is supported by argument, sooner or later. You cannot say, for example, that the dismissal of James Taggart or Robert Stadler is purely emotional.

> The jarring transition reveals how the story was really just an afterthought

Your claim would be valid if the jarring transition were not Galt’s speech but some other nonfiction. The case is the opposite: the story and speech are very much integral.

The pause of events as such is a neutral tool, with precedents (The Battle of Waterloo in Les Miserables).

[1]: https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html

Re: George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

#43

Post by mrexcess »

operatingthetan wrote: post #8
irishcoffee wrote: post #2

[flagged]

The four books you mentioned have very different methods of control. The primary thing they share is being dystopic. --- 1984: control through fear and pain. Brave New World: control through pleasure and distraction. Animal Farm: control through corruption and deception. Atlas Shrugged: control though guilt and regulation. --- Brave New World is the most prophetic. Atlas Shrugged has horrific writing, separate from w…

Wasn’t 1984 a bit more about control through surveillance and silencing, than about pain? Everything was a lie, and every refusal to accept the lie was a signal to Big Brother.

Cast as such it seems rather more prophetic than Soma, IMO.

Re: George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

#45

Post by mmcromp »

mrexcess wrote: post #41
tracerbulletx wrote: post #25

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” - Dune "What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking—there's the real danger." - God Emperor of Dune

Hard times don’t create hard people, they create scarred people. I’ll take the robot farmers, undoing of wage slavery, and time to maintain participatory democracy over my favorite author’s romanticized suffering.

I'll believe it when I see it

Re: George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

#46

Post by mrexcess »

thrance wrote: post #10
irishcoffee wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Brave New World warns against the dangers of consumerism, hedonism and complacency. 1984 warns against fascist modes of governance, the dehumanization of individuals under totalitarian regimes. Animal Farm warns against the danger of revolutionism, and the way ideals can be led astray. Atlas Shrugged warns against... The way poor people steal from the rich? How rich people are the only productive members of society?…

Atlas Shrugged, more charitably perhaps despite its manifest flaws, seemed to me to be about the dangers of putting “the needs of the many” over individual rights, and how it can ultimately be self defeating for the whole.

Re: George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

#47

Post by piekvorst »

crooked-v wrote: post #30
irishcoffee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it’s worth I read Lotr when I was 8 and atlas shrugged when I was 12. I’m must be stupid naive about the discourse over shrugged around here. The meta-story made sense to me as much as the hero journey of frodo(and gollum) made sense to me. I mean this sincerely, I don’t understand the beef with shrugged. The idea of “a small population owns the world” not only made sense as a theme, but it what is happening…

The beef is mainly that the book portrays Galt's Gulch as both a good thing and as something that would actually function, when the real world consequences of trying to run a society like that are that your town fills up with wild bears that destroy everything and eat your pets ( https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int... ).

It is a good thing and it absolutely can function, but not as a society. Ayn Rand explicitly rejected this idea [1]:

    Q: Why is the lack of government in Galt’s Gulch (in Atlas Shrugged) any different from anarchy, which you object to?

    A: Galt’s Gulch is not a society; it’s a private estate. It’s owned by one man who carefully selected the people admitted. Even then, they had a judge as an arbitrator, if anything came up; only nothing came up among them, because they shared the same philosophy. . . . But project a society of millions, in which there is every kind of viewpoint, every kind of brain, every kind of morality—and no government. . . . No one can guard rights, except a government under objective laws. . . . Rational men are not afraid of government. In a proper society, a rational man doesn’t have to know the government exists, because the laws are clear and he never breaks them. [FHF 72]
[1]: Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A, Politics and Economics, Libertarianism and Anarchism

Re: George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

#49

Post by crooked-v »

piekvorst wrote: post #47
crooked-v wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The beef is mainly that the book portrays Galt's Gulch as both a good thing and as something that would actually function, when the real world consequences of trying to run a society like that are that your town fills up with wild bears that destroy everything and eat your pets ( https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int... ).

It is a good thing and it absolutely can function, but not as a society. Ayn Rand explicitly rejected this idea [1]: Q: Why is the lack of government in Galt’s Gulch (in Atlas Shrugged) any different from anarchy, which you object to? A: Galt’s Gulch is not a society; it’s a private estate. It’s owned by one man who carefully selected the people admitted. Even then, they had a judge as an arbitrator, if anything came…

That's a real circular answer there, "it's not a society because it's not a society". Claiming that a place specifically set up as a self-contained community hiding from the government, and hiding from government authority, is 'just a private estate' is rhetorical nonsense.

Re: George Orwell Predicted the Rise of "AI Slop" in Nineteen Eighty-Four

#50

Post by yongjik »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #25

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” - Dune "What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking—there's the real danger." - God Emperor of Dune

That's great, but I think Herbert had a vision of this incredible galaxy teeming with truthsayers, human computers, and space travel, and just needed a convenient excuse to explain away the total lack of computing devices.
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