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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

#91

Post by guappa »

tgbugs wrote: post #88
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…

[flagged]

Got to love calvinist societies like northern europe. "oh you are poorer than me due to centuries of colonization? That's your own moral failing!".

And while nowadays they are mostly non religious and don't directly express the idea in these terms, the disparity of treatment is still incredibly strong.

And basically it's all down to having better weapons at a certain point in history.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#92

Post by ManlyBread »

>In fact, this paper found that more than that, it thinks American.

I think that's because it seems to be primarily trained on reddit and therefore mirrors everything reddit stands for. Not a good thing considering just how overrun the site is with bots and political activists of all kinds.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#93

Post by nonameiguess »

Waterluvian wrote: post #24
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…

> humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discern letters and words and dedicate brain power for that. I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but my gut tells me this risks being one of those bold claims that grows legs and runs for a while until we debunk it.

It's the one that immediately set off my alarm bell. I always try to put myself in the shoes of a scientist and imagine how it would be possible to design a study to test a claim. To me, this one implies humans of today are worse at recognizing faces compared to humans of the past who did not read as much or at all. That one cannot possibly be tested because you cannot test the cognitive capabilities of people of the past who no longer exist.

On the more productive side, this suggests we might develop standardized tests of human capabilities and limits that would allow people of the future to compare themselves to us.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#94

Post by mrweasel »

justlikereddit wrote: post #54

Social media reflects a silicon valley perspective and US domestic news have contaminated the entire eurozone since over a decade. Movies are also a distillate of a local culture often with a rather uniform ideological slant. AI being a clone army of corporate spokesmen from the US west coast brings sparsely little new cultural homogeneity to the already very smoothed table.

> The greater the cultural distance between a country and the USA, the less accurate ChatGPT got at simulating peoples’ values.

I'd be somewhat concerned that what is actually reflected is a cultures willingness to adopt US (west coast) values over its own. We see this constantly in some European countries where we're willing to adopt US view points and problems over our own. Either because we're constantly exposed the US problems online or because the US problems are simply more "interesting", in the sense that they are more decisive and easier for us to split into right and wrong.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#95

Post by lelanthran »

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?

> > 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?

I am not seeing the tautology. Can you explain?

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#96

Post by lelanthran »

dsign wrote: post #51
smelendez wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t read it but I think that’s genuinely interesting and not obvious. And probably could change based on the roles of first and second wives and, yes, how male status plays out and how it influences the life of the wife. We don’t have legal polygamy but in many places there’s not much stopping people from living in an unmarried multi-woman household with a man (or vice versa). But it’s not a very common arrange…

The first level "why" at least is straightforward: Christianism. Even when not directly imposed, it's still the basis of the Western system of values and morals. But it's fascinating to think about the second level "why": what made people encode monogamy and heterosexuality into their cultural canons (including their mainstream religion)? Was it property and rules about property? Was it to maximize the number of chil…

> But it's fascinating to think about the second level "why": what made people encode monogamy and heterosexuality into their cultural canons (including their mainstream religion)?

I dunno about heterosexuality being encoded[1] into cultural canons, but for monogamy it's actually quite simple: violence.

Do you really want half your testosterone-fueled 18-28 year old males unable to attract a mate? There'll be continuous fighting to kill of the excess males.

===========

[1] As far as heterosexuality goes, it's not "encoded by wilful intention" so much as "this is the default". IOW, most people are happy going with the default, so if you make something opt-out, the majority won't opt-out. Same for opt-in. This is why countries that have opt-out organ donors have more organs donated, while countries that have opt-in organ donations have a fraction of he opt-out countries.

Defaults matter.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#97

Post by suddenlybananas »

Waterluvian wrote: post #24
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…

> humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discern letters and words and dedicate brain power for that. I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but my gut tells me this risks being one of those bold claims that grows legs and runs for a while until we debunk it.

It's not completely insane, the part of the brain that gets used for recognising words is very close to the part of the brain that recognises faces. The brain likely cannibalises the part of the cortex that's used to recognise faces to recognise words and letters instead. See this study[1] where the visual word form area reacts much more strongly to faces in illiterates than in people who have learnt to read.

[1] https://www.unicog.org/publications/1-s2.0-S1364661311000738...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_word_form_area

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusiform_face_area

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#98

Post by suddenlybananas »

Terr_ wrote: post #35
Waterluvian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discern letters and words and dedicate brain power for that. I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but my gut tells me this risks being one of those bold claims that grows legs and runs for a while until we debunk it.

I'm struggling to think of any way to test the hypothesis which is (A) practical and (B) accurate. For example, suppose you sampled a group today and found an inverse-correlation between "good at recognizing many faces" and "good at recognizing written text"... That still wouldn't show that one facility grew causing the other to shrink, because maybe people are just born (or early-development-ed) with a certain bias.

The part of the brain that recognises faces quite literally shrinks in literates compared to illiterates

https://www.unicog.org/publications/1-s2.0-S1364661311000738...

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#99

Post by dgeep »

Waterluvian wrote: post #24
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…

> humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discern letters and words and dedicate brain power for that. I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but my gut tells me this risks being one of those bold claims that grows legs and runs for a while until we debunk it.

It seems that there is an study in which the part of the brain used to recognize words is also used for recognizing letters, and when one increases taking more space the other shrink. That study used brain scanners to measure and detect brain activity.

Re: AI tools are making the world look weird

#100

Post by suddenlybananas »

nonameiguess wrote: post #93
Waterluvian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans are worst at discerning faces today because we need to discern letters and words and dedicate brain power for that. I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but my gut tells me this risks being one of those bold claims that grows legs and runs for a while until we debunk it.

It's the one that immediately set off my alarm bell. I always try to put myself in the shoes of a scientist and imagine how it would be possible to design a study to test a claim. To me, this one implies humans of today are worse at recognizing faces compared to humans of the past who did not read as much or at all. That one cannot possibly be tested because you cannot test the cognitive capabilities of people of the…

There are people who are illiterate today who you can test.
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