Ok. How do you propose one fights back? Do you really viscerally understand what it is you are fighting against?
fork it. Fork the internet. How about that? We have this stupid system built on people paying to target us. Is that "the" internet or is it just one internet, and not a very good one. This is supposed to be a place for hackers. So fork the internet.
The application layer has way more gravity than the networking one right now. You'd need to fork that for anything to happen.
What's the difference between the idle imaginings of a god's mind and a universe scale simulation? I always got advanced AI vibes from Devs, that it was a mind interfacing with reality in some sort of weird inception / simulation / manifestation way.
In the show the device is not autonomous, humans use it.
That can be a type of mind, though? It can also be a type of interface - a tap into a system not fully understood, controlling the perspective or view but not the process. The whole "mind of god" Deus/Devs, etc - I think it's left ambiguous on purpose for the hook but I always took it to be an AI flavored story at the core.
A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician, and which is therefore not very useful as a distinction.
If you called him on it he would say that was on purpose, then talk your ears off about how. He was a ferociously effective charlatan, which is why people still remember the name he made up for himself. (And even invented a rhyming couplet to prate as a pronunciation guide!)
These don't sound like convincing indicators of being an "effective charlatan". Am I to see the Notorious B.I.G. in the same frame?
Best line: > I am concerned that ML systems could ruin our lives without realizing anything at all. It's hard to say it's not actively happening. And we don't even know it, don't realize it? don't care? (Claude Code got mandated at my work this week. Like literally engineers must use CC.)
> And we don't even know it, don't realize it? don't care? People here are warning about this daily. And outside this tech bubble full of people trying to profit from it, higher percentages of people elsewhere do realize and do care.
That's a good point. But I also think about the unprecedented adoption of chatGPT. Global mass consumer adoption of all ages, and people giddy about offloading their jobs to chatGPT not connecting the very simple straight line to "you think your boss is going to pay you to ask chatGPT?"
Our collective learned helplessness in the face of being bombarded with advertising, propaganda and outright lies is just astonishing to me. Not an article about fighting back, or doing anything, just the resignation of a follower.
There's a lot of people who are comfortable (socially or professionally) with diagnosing and analyzing problems. Those same people are often indifferent or outright hostile to people proposing solutions, not least because solutions that brought about change would make the analysts less relevant.
Frankly, who are these people? Because this is just another "they" idle conspiracy theory.
"They" are against me.
Ironically I could cite a very specific group this applies to: fitness influencers in the wake of ozempic. "Natural weight loss" and FUD about the drug took off when it hit mainstream awareness because it really was a direct threat to them. Of course this group also tends to heavily abuse other drugs as they age out - because being a trim fitness inflencer is easy in your 20s, keeping it going into your mid-30s is a lot more difficult.
I mean, I've had pipe dreams of a parallel networking stack built on IPv6 with a killer app offering real peer-to-peer networking again. But who will deploy and maintain all the new IPv6 networking gear, infrastructure, undersea cables? This is not something within the purview of the average (or even above average) hacker any more; the encumbents are too firmly entrenched.
Personally, I am guessing it is the other way around. Not first killer app, but first a parallel networking stack, etc. The idea that anyone is too firmly entrenched is always true. Until it is not. We are not still using horses, nor casting bronze tools. Nor do most ships sail. We (mostly) don't burn coal anymore. It would have been utterly insane to imagine replacing any of those entrenched technologies. That is th…
I think Heidegger provides a framing for why these are just musings in, as you put it, a firm entrenchment and the whole ordeal is looking quite bleak. I honestly can't imagine a way out of the technological frame and I am simply not seeing my generation in common spaces. Even my ability to meaningfully connect with my peers through conversation is deteriorating by product of the sheer scale of potential engagements one has at any moment. It is quite overwhelming and I am afraid there is no technological answer here.
Ok. How do you propose one fights back? Do you really viscerally understand what it is you are fighting against?
fork it. Fork the internet. How about that? We have this stupid system built on people paying to target us. Is that "the" internet or is it just one internet, and not a very good one. This is supposed to be a place for hackers. So fork the internet.
But like...why?
This is basically "just don't use things you don't enjoy" and the trouble of our time seems to be the number of people who can't or won't do that.
It's somewhat an age thing but also definitely a lot of people in all generations never learn it: you can just stop using things. Walk away and suddenly find you never want to look back, and if you do it's entirely unappealing.
> Authors, screenwriters, et al. have a new niche to explore. Any day now I expect an A24 trailer featuring a villain who speaks in the register of ChatGPT. “You’re absolutely right, Kayleigh,” it intones. “I did drown little Tamothy, and I’m truly sorry about that. Here’s the breakdown of what happened…” May I recommend Pluribus (2025-)
Yes. The creator has said he didn't have AI in mind while writing the show, but I think it's still a very stimulating AI parable despite that.
The sycophancy, the grinding inevitablity of assimilation, the homogeneous entity that speaks out of a billion mouths. It's all there.