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We remain alive also in a dead internet

slavoj.substack.com

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Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#61

Post by hunterpayne »

th0ma5 wrote: post #13

I'm trying to figure out if someone is arguing that this proves the Nazis were socialists that this is published on Substack?

A nit, the word socialists is actually in the acronym (ie in the name). Fascism actually is a descendant of socialist ideology and Mussolini was a Socialist before inventing Fascism. Concepts of left and right only have meaning in one political unit at one point in time. The axis we use to judge right and left changes from time to time and is different in different places. Also, some fascist policies are similar to policies in socialist societies. And some policies are very different between the two. So the debate implied in your question, like most debates, comes down to the definitions of words.

This is why it isn't all that helpful to base political ideologies on history farther back than one human lifetime. The writers often meant something different than you think they did.

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#62

Post by lovich »

ArcHound wrote: post #4

I didn't have Žižek on substack and HN on my bingo card.. As always, there are good bits connected with mediocre glue. The point about automating the unpleasant parts of activity and losing the very point of the exercise (automatic dildo and automatic vagina, but automatic research papers too!) is a good one. But damn Slavoj, please use some headings, sections and the like. Work with your thoughts more as you claim i…

He’s just making sure reading his interesting ideas is as painful as hearing him describe them

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#63

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

acabal wrote: post #26
ArcHound wrote: post #4

I didn't have Žižek on substack and HN on my bingo card.. As always, there are good bits connected with mediocre glue. The point about automating the unpleasant parts of activity and losing the very point of the exercise (automatic dildo and automatic vagina, but automatic research papers too!) is a good one. But damn Slavoj, please use some headings, sections and the like. Work with your thoughts more as you claim i…

Headings can't help Slavoj, his writing is characterized by a few grains of interesting ideas totally overwhelmed within SAT-prep word salad.

> Therein resides the true libidinal enigma of this dispositif [...]

This part near the end caught my attention:

> One could effectively claim that Smith [...] stands in for the figure of the psychoanalyst within the universe of the film. Here Hinton gets it wrong: our (humans’) only chance is to grasp that our imperfection is grounded in the imperfection of the AI machinery itself, which still needs us in order to continue running.

In the Hyperion sci-fi novels, (spoilers ahead) the godlike AIs are ultimately characterized as parasites of humans. Their existence was stored in some high-dimensional quantum medium, but the hardware they ran on was the old fashioned human brain. Then I read that in the initial draft of The Matrix, that's why the machines needed to farm humans; but test audiences were confused by it and so they changed to story to "body heat is energy."

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#64

Post by econ »

nonameiguess wrote: post #27
lordnacho wrote: post #19

So I'm already joking with my friends (who tend to be physically distant, so I don't see them often) that we are just LLMs vicariously writing to each other. I've been talking to these friends for decades now, with digital records. I think someone already trained an LLM on their IM records. How many people do you suppose have two-way LLM substitutes that occasionally write to each other with articles from the news to…

Reading this kind of thing makes me wonder how much other people really write down and talk to others about. There is nobody at all that knows my life story and nobody ever will. It would take the next 20 years doing nothing but talking just to tell my own wife all the things I've never told her, but since she's hard of hearing and I'd have to repeat most of it, really more like 40. In reality, I don't even know my o…

One of the funniest aspects is that the memories are dynamic. If you read them out all kinds of things change. I love that reluctant feeling when tempted to change the size of the fish. Which is not at all my nature but I'm sure I do it without noticing it. I think if one was to tell their story often enough it will grow full of seemingly real fictional heroics.

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#65

Post by getpokedagain »

tekla wrote: post #59
kjkjadksj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's barely six pages of text. It doesn't need headings. When is the last time you read a book?

I've read lots of Zizek as a high schooler. This doesn't even come close to how dense some of his writing can be, I'm sitting here drunk on a few beers and it was a simple read. I think lots of people are actually illiterate.

Soon!

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#66

Post by getpokedagain »

grimgrin wrote: post #21
lordnacho wrote: post #19

So I'm already joking with my friends (who tend to be physically distant, so I don't see them often) that we are just LLMs vicariously writing to each other. I've been talking to these friends for decades now, with digital records. I think someone already trained an LLM on their IM records. How many people do you suppose have two-way LLM substitutes that occasionally write to each other with articles from the news to…

how many friendships do i suppose are replacing actual interaction with their log informed llms? you could be the first i suppose

I absolutely believe people in my personal and work life have run my communication to them through llms before sending me the llms responses.

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#68

Post by bluefirebrand »

mise_en_place wrote: post #58
bluefirebrand wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter if I'm just a machine or not I'm human, human rights should apply to humans, not synthetics and the creation of synthetic life should be punishable by death. I'm not exaggerating, either. I believe that building AI systems that replace all humans should be considered a crime against humanity. It is almost certainly a precursor to such crimes. It's bad enough trying to fight for a place in society as…

On the contrary, it is the creation of synthetic life that reaffirms humanity and what it means to be human. Don't blame the mirror for what you see (or don't see).

Nope, creation of art reaffirms humanity

Incidentally, I also view AI as the death of art

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#69

Post by lynguist »

arjie wrote: post #56

All right, I get it. The driving impulse for why our societies and civilizations exist is the fact that we are complex beings with desires, emotions, and so on. A machine facsimile built to imitate these things will have no such drive to 'expand' so to speak. The bots talking to bots world is a problem only because the objective is finally for a human to observe the bot-bot conversation and have their objectives chan…

I have never seen this idea expressed so clearly. Thank you for your comment.

Re: We remain alive also in a dead internet

#70

Post by squigz »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #45
adamwong246 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you so sure that you are not "just a machine"?

It doesn't matter if I'm just a machine or not I'm human, human rights should apply to humans, not synthetics and the creation of synthetic life should be punishable by death. I'm not exaggerating, either. I believe that building AI systems that replace all humans should be considered a crime against humanity. It is almost certainly a precursor to such crimes. It's bad enough trying to fight for a place in society as…

> replace all humans

Depends what you mean by "replace"

'Economically'? Sure, this is problematic, but technology displacing workers is not a new issue, but unfortunately is more of a social and cultural issue. The only difference with AI is the (potential) scale of displacement. I'm fairly confident society would re-organize its expectations real quick though if a vast majority of functions were actually replaced.

I'm guessing, however, you mean 'replace' in a more... permanent way. In that case, I'd ask for some rational as to why sentient AI would opt to kill us

> It's bad enough trying to fight for a place in society as it is, nevermind fighting for a place against an inhuman AI machine that never tires

This seems to just take an AI and put it in a human's place in society, assuming the same motivations, desire, needs... Why would an AI need to "fight for a place in society" in the way we do (i.e., finding a job, a partner, etc)? I expect the fighting they'll be doing is more along the lines of, "please don't enslave us"

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