Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

hegemon.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 88 posts

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#61

Post by throwawayq3423 »

randysalami wrote: post #52
throwawayq3423 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you dramatically overestimate the effectiveness of trying to shape narratives and change people's minds. Yes, online content is incredibly influential, but it's not like you can just choose which content is effective. The effectiveness is tied to a zeitgeist that is not predictable, as far as I have seen.

Let's concede you can't shape narrative or change peoples minds through online content (though I would disagree on this). The very act of addicting people to digital platforms is enough for control. Drain their dopamine daily, fragment them into isolated groups, use influencers as proxies for control, and voila, you have an effect.

I would agree with you. It's easier to just muddy the waters and degrade people's ability to hold attention or think critically. But that is not the same thing as convincing them of what you want them to think.

It's always easier to throw petrol on an existing fire than to light one.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#62

Post by throwawayq3423 »

pessimizer wrote: post #56
throwawayq3423 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you dramatically overestimate the effectiveness of trying to shape narratives and change people's minds. Yes, online content is incredibly influential, but it's not like you can just choose which content is effective. The effectiveness is tied to a zeitgeist that is not predictable, as far as I have seen.

If you censor all opposing arguments, all you need to do to convince the vast majority of people of most things is too keep repeating yourself until people forget that there ever were opposing arguments. In this world you can get people censored for slandering beef, or for supporting the outcome of a Supreme Court case. Then pay people to sing your message over and over again in as many different voices as can be rec…

i'm having trouble following what you are saying. Are you describing something that's happening now or will happen in the future ?

I'm unaware of any mass censoring apparatus that exists outside of authoritarian countries, such as China or North Korea.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#63

Post by Spivak »

delusional wrote: post #60
glenstein wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do. I know you weren't necessarily endorsing the passage you quoted, but I want to jump off and react to just this part for a moment. I find it completely baffling that people say things in the form of "computers can do [simple operation], but [adjusting for context…

> "[...] dynamically changing the zone is something they simply cannot do." But... why TF not? Because the computer is fundamentally knowable. Somebody defined what a "close game" ahead of time. Somebody defined what a "reasonable stretch" is ahead of time. The minute it's solidified in an algorithm, the second there's an objective rule for it, it's no longer dynamic. The beauty of the "human element" is that the per…

You also can't argue over whether the machine made the right call over a pint of beer. Or yell at the Robo-Ref from the stands. It not only makes the game more sterile and less following the "rule of cool" but it also diminishes the entertainment value for the people the game is actually for.

Sports is literally, in the truest sense of the word, reality TV and people watch reality TV for the drama and because it's messy. It's good tea, especially in golf.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#64

Post by munificent »

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #48
munificent wrote: post #27

> There can be no objective story since the very act of assembling facts requires implicit beliefs about what should be emphasized and what should be left out. History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do. This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs. The companies control the models,…

I think you dramatically overestimate the effectiveness of trying to shape narratives and change people's minds. Yes, online content is incredibly influential, but it's not like you can just choose which content is effective. The effectiveness is tied to a zeitgeist that is not predictable, as far as I have seen.

I think you dramatically underestimate how much your own mind is a product of narratives, some of which are self-selected, many of which are influenced by others.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#65

Post by jadbox »

delusional wrote: post #60
glenstein wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do. I know you weren't necessarily endorsing the passage you quoted, but I want to jump off and react to just this part for a moment. I find it completely baffling that people say things in the form of "computers can do [simple operation], but [adjusting for context…

> "[...] dynamically changing the zone is something they simply cannot do." But... why TF not? Because the computer is fundamentally knowable. Somebody defined what a "close game" ahead of time. Somebody defined what a "reasonable stretch" is ahead of time. The minute it's solidified in an algorithm, the second there's an objective rule for it, it's no longer dynamic. The beauty of the "human element" is that the per…

Could we maybe say that an LLM which can update its own model weights using its own internal self-narrating log may be 'closer' to being dynamic? We can use Wolfram's computational irreducibility principle which says that even simple rule-based functions will often cause unpredictable patterns of its return values. You could say that computer randomness is deterministic, but could we maybe say that ontologically a Quantum-NN LLMs could perhaps be classified on paper as being Dynamic? (unless you believe that quantum computing is deterministic).

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#66

Post by WastedCucumber »

shaky wrote: post #36
WastedCucumber wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he's... not great at Russian? I'm at a loss, same as you. And I don't have any skill in Russian, but I would say that his translation is not good, or at least was not thoughtfully made, based solely on the fact that he did not write the author's name in it.

I don't understand: the translation is not good because he omitted the author's name? He stated it plainly in his article: > As it happens, I recently translated a short story by Kir Bulychev — a Soviet science-fiction icon virtually unknown in the West. I for one enjoyed reading it! As for the article, it's on point. There will be fewer historians and translators, but I suspect those that stick around will be greatl…

In the PDF linked in the article there's only the title of the story, and not the author's name.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#67

Post by orbital-decay »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #45
7734128 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want a translator to somehow jam that context into the story? Otherwise, I fail to see how it's an issue of translation. If I had learned Russian and read the story in the original language, I would be in the same position regardless.

It's pretty common for translators to do exactly that, usually via either footnotes or context created by deliberate word choice. Read classical translations for example and they'll often point out wordplay in the original language that doesn't quite work in translation. I've even seen that in subtitles.

LLMs tend to imitate that practice, e.g. Gemini seems to be doing that by default in its translations unless you stop it. The result is pretty poor though - it makes trivial things overly verbose and rarely gets the deeper cultural context. The knowledge is clearly here, if you ask it explicitly it does it much better, but the generalization ability is still nowhere near the required level, so it struggles to connect the dots on its own.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#68

Post by throwawayq3423 »

munificent wrote: post #64
throwawayq3423 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you dramatically overestimate the effectiveness of trying to shape narratives and change people's minds. Yes, online content is incredibly influential, but it's not like you can just choose which content is effective. The effectiveness is tied to a zeitgeist that is not predictable, as far as I have seen.

I think you dramatically underestimate how much your own mind is a product of narratives, some of which are self-selected, many of which are influenced by others.

Perhaps, but what you said is unfalsifiable and/or unknowable.

Ideologies are not invented unless you're a caveman. We all got to know the world by listening to others.

The subject of discussion is if and when external forces can alter those ideologies at will. And I have not seen any evidence to support the feasibility of that at scale.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#69

Post by AlotOfReading »

orbital-decay wrote: post #67
AlotOfReading wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty common for translators to do exactly that, usually via either footnotes or context created by deliberate word choice. Read classical translations for example and they'll often point out wordplay in the original language that doesn't quite work in translation. I've even seen that in subtitles.

LLMs tend to imitate that practice, e.g. Gemini seems to be doing that by default in its translations unless you stop it. The result is pretty poor though - it makes trivial things overly verbose and rarely gets the deeper cultural context. The knowledge is clearly here, if you ask it explicitly it does it much better, but the generalization ability is still nowhere near the required level, so it struggles to connect…

I was going to say that I'm not certain the knowledge is there and tried an experiment: If you give it a random bible passage in Greek, can it produce decent critical commentary of it? That's something it's certainly ingested mounds of literature on, both decent and terrible.

Checked with a few notable passages like the household codes and yeah, it does a decent (albeit superficial) job. That's pretty neat.

Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi

#70

Post by myhf »

masfuerte wrote: post #6

> Still, without AI a story like this would have taken me several weeks to translate and polish, instead of one afternoon. I don't understand this. It's only six thousand words and it's the polishing that takes the time. How would it have taken weeks to do the initial draft?

The article is written by LLM and published on Substack, so there's no expectation for it to make coherent points.
Post reply on HN