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AI tools are making the world look weird

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Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#71

Post by jancsika »

psidium wrote: post #5

Can’t recommend the book that coined this acronym enough: The WEIRDest People in the World Book by Joseph Henrich. It is such an eye-opening piece that explains so much of the world around us. He’s an anthropologist that goes into the psychology of it all. Touching on points like how religion plays a part in shaping the America of today and even how humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discer…

> women there tend to prefer to be 2nd wives of a better man rather being the only wife of a lower-ranking man

I bet you think "2nd" means "secondary."

I bet the parties to the marriage think "2nd" means "most recently allocated."

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#72

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

shermantanktop wrote: post #30
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen a massive uptick in the use of ‘weird’ as an insult (charitably because all the old insults get you shadowbanned on social media, less charitably because conformism is what the mainstream values more than anything), so the author isn’t even pretending to hide their agenda here.

The idea that “mainstream” values “conformism” seems like a relic of the 1980s. Have you looked around at public figures in the news? There’s less Debbie Boone and more Dennis Rodman going on. The freaks are flying their flags out there for everyone to see.

There are no ‘freaks’ flying flags. There are highly polarised groups signalling their in-group identity, each backed by their own billionaires.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#73

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #26
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen a massive uptick in the use of ‘weird’ as an insult (charitably because all the old insults get you shadowbanned on social media, less charitably because conformism is what the mainstream values more than anything), so the author isn’t even pretending to hide their agenda here.

Could you explain the agenda to those of us like me, who missed it anyway?

It’s pretty simple. ‘West => weird = bad.’

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#74

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

maxbond wrote: post #34
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen a massive uptick in the use of ‘weird’ as an insult (charitably because all the old insults get you shadowbanned on social media, less charitably because conformism is what the mainstream values more than anything), so the author isn’t even pretending to hide their agenda here.

WEIRD is not pejorative in TFA. There's no problem being WEIRD. I am WEIRD. What's alleged in TFA is that AI, as it's currently deployed, is implicitly chauvinistic towards perspectives other than WEIRD. This sort of thing has historically been a problem with AI/ML and automation in general. The classic example is cameras deploying autofocus features that fail on non-white faces (which has happened several times). Po…

When a member of a group says that a term used to refer to them is pejorative, is it now an acceptable response to simply say ‘no it isn’t’? That hasn’t been the case for decades.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#75

Post by lmm »

cortesoft wrote: post #36
psidium wrote: post #5

Can’t recommend the book that coined this acronym enough: The WEIRDest People in the World Book by Joseph Henrich. It is such an eye-opening piece that explains so much of the world around us. He’s an anthropologist that goes into the psychology of it all. Touching on points like how religion plays a part in shaping the America of today and even how humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discer…

> women there tend to prefer to be 2nd wives of a better man rather being the only wife of a lower-ranking man This seems like a bit of a tautology; how are they 'ranking' these men?

> This seems like a bit of a tautology

I don't think it is? A priori it's not at all obvious which option women would be expected to prefer.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#76

Post by bryanrasmussen »

gherkinnn wrote: post #70
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask (and I don't mean this combatively) - given the ongoing realization of the replication crisis, how likely is it that the book you mention reflects a summation of the "too pat" studies about human behavior that, en masse, always seem pithy in an interesting headline, but years later end up being completely bunk? I've noticed over the years many chains of reasoning - made up of what I believe someone call…

https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/ Here are the cocktail ideas. Hits the spot.

>No one thinks about moving the starting or ending point of the bridge midway through construction.

it is a common rhetorical device to phrase something as an absolute when the negation of it is only an edge case.

hence

>Hillel interviewed a civil engineer who said that they had to move a bridge! Of course, civil engineers don't move bridges as frequently as programmers deal with changes in software but,

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#77

Post by lmm »

ehnto wrote: post #49
tropdrop wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is worse in Russian. Example: after accurately noting that a name appeared in a particular Russian book, it asked if I wanted the direct quote in Russian. I said yes. At this point it switched to Russian output but could no longer find the name in that book, and then apologized for having used what seemed to have been "approximations" about the book before. (I did then go and check the book myself; ChatGPT in…

I was using Qwen3 locally in thinking mode, and noted that even if it is talking to me in Japanese, it is doing it's "thinking" steps in English. Not having a full understanding of how the layers in an LLM handle language connections I can't say for sure, but for a human this would result in subpar outcomes. For example (not actual output): Input: "こにちは"(konichwa) Qwen Thinking: "Ah, the user has said "こにちは", I shoul…

Perhaps it knows most users who misspell こんにちは are English speakers?

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#78

Post by bryanrasmussen »

cpursley wrote: post #58
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask (and I don't mean this combatively) - given the ongoing realization of the replication crisis, how likely is it that the book you mention reflects a summation of the "too pat" studies about human behavior that, en masse, always seem pithy in an interesting headline, but years later end up being completely bunk? I've noticed over the years many chains of reasoning - made up of what I believe someone call…

[flagged]

The cause is the Spanish Armada did not conquer England.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#79

Post by sethammons »

psidium wrote: post #25
derefr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the wildest claims in there is the one that the north of Italy is more developed today because it was part of the Holy Roman Empire while the south wasn’t. About a thousand years separate these and he finds effects still. I would note that the north and south of Italy have very different geography and climate. Which can be upstream of all sorts of things, culturally. The geography of Italy's two halves suppo…

Yes, your point and other points around the web I’ve seen make his argument about north and south Italy very controversial to say the least. He does have data to back it up, where he presents distance to nearest church as a predictor for how well a population will fare, and south Italy didn’t have the churches that north the Italy had

All the basketball players are tall. Ergo, if we want to be taller, we should all play basketball.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#80

Post by maxbond »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #74
maxbond wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WEIRD is not pejorative in TFA. There's no problem being WEIRD. I am WEIRD. What's alleged in TFA is that AI, as it's currently deployed, is implicitly chauvinistic towards perspectives other than WEIRD. This sort of thing has historically been a problem with AI/ML and automation in general. The classic example is cameras deploying autofocus features that fail on non-white faces (which has happened several times). Po…

When a member of a group says that a term used to refer to them is pejorative, is it now an acceptable response to simply say ‘no it isn’t’? That hasn’t been the case for decades.

Keep in mind that I am also WEIRD. Please help me to understand by referring to the specific part of the article where WEIRD was used in the pejorative.
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