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Comment by reedf1 | Hacker News Reader

Every time this gets brought up it gets called a moral panic. I'm now convinced "moral panic" is a thought terminating cliche in this case. These systems are basically algorithmically addicting, like gambling. We don't let kids gamble - so let's read the studies, see the outcomes, come up with solutions and boundaries, and legislate accordingly.

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Because it is. It might be right, but it is also indistinguishable to any other time the proposal is "the government is going to manage your recreational activities for your own benefit".

I agree, but I'd add that a stable society both allows adults to gamble and teaches kids why not to gamble, sometimes teaching by example. A simple game can be run in any classroom from 3rd to 7th grade that shows how any group of people given an artificial megaphone may end up bullying and torturing even the biggest bullies in the class. The experience of that is what enables reflection later in life when one finds oneself part of a group bullying other people, and has the thought to step back and question why they're participating in it.

Social media as it is right now leverages the instincts of bullies, and turns people into mobs. Period. It elevates the one human instinct that is a priori most antithetical to both individual liberty and social cohesion: The desire for naked attention, good bad or otherwise. The only justification it holds out for doing so is that it has identified a profitable vice, a flaw in the human operating system (like gambling) and that there's no law against capitalizing on it.

You see the de facto as opposed to aspirational rule of law constrain or even non-trivially inconvenience anything with a 1-3T notional value any time recently?

Binding, truly binding legislation or regulatory oversight is clearly the desirous end state. How in the hell we take even a single step towards that is the 1-3T dollar question.

SBF is in prison, so is Holmes, as was Madoff.

But the burden now trivially rests on the person asserting that the public has any say in the matter to show that it ever happens in the modern era.

The first rule of Crime Club is don’t steal from other rich people. The second rule of Crime Clib is: there are no rules.

> You see the de facto as opposed to aspirational rule of law constrain or even non-trivially inconvenience anything with a 1-3T notional value any time recently?

I read this sentence 3 times and I still don’t know what it means.

It means the big cap tech companies break the law with impunity now.

They launder the commons through some remarkably banal linear algebra and assert copyright on the resulting entropy coding.

They smash and partially re-hire and then smash staffing, washing out a bunch of ESOP in the process, timed to the week in many instances, not 15 years after the last time they got popped in Federal court for flagrant wage fixing.

They violate Sherman with App Store tariffs at payday loan vig, get popped for that, and fail to perform.

They pay OSHA penalties calibrated to a different monetary regime and just ignore it being illegal.

Do I really need to keep going? It’s a long list.

You misunderstand. My comment is not about your argument but about your writing. I don’t understand half the sentences in your response either. I mean how can you “launder the commons”? With linear algebra‽ I think you just mean “rich people and big companies can get away with anything, and I’m against that” but you’re not really helping.

By launder the commons through linear algebra I mean train foundation models with sufficient capacity to memorize the Internet via a degree of access to the corpus in which the scale renders any notion of competition absurd, most of which is explicitly or implicitly owned by someone or in the public domain, and then assert copyright over the model weights (slightly compressed crawl), openly and flagrantly profiteer on the back thereof, and send Open Philanthropy to go round up a kleptocratic consensus in Washington.

Numerous lawsuits are in varying stages of process around this practice, but the one shaping up to be a “test case” is currently looking to be https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-t...

They broke the first rule of Crime Club.

> train foundation models with sufficient capacity to memorize the Internet via a degree of access to the corpus in which the scale renders any notion of competition absurd, most of which is explicitly or implicitly owned by someone or in the public domain, and then

You’re just trolling me now right

There are dozens of high-profile lawsuits taking place. a16z is in the press taking positions on it (with at least some dissent). @pmarca is on the record saying that it will destroy AI if the USPTO steps the wrong way. Moskovitz is spending easily tens of millions of dollars buying up K Street.

All of this, including the legal filings are trivially searchable.

How is it me that’s trolling you?

If you disagree on a technical basis from a position of any sophistication, elaborate. If you think this isn’t serious as a heart attack, read the trade press.

I'm currently considering various possibilities

1. You're actually trolling. You're writing maximally obtuse prose to poke fun at lefties, which you're actually not. In fact, if @pmarca himself had an HN troll account I'd expect it to look a lot like yours, incl referring to himself as @pmarca.

2. You're capable of writing deeply sophisticated text, with 5 commas per sentence and metaphors for metaphors for what you actually mean, yet you truly, genuinely do not understand the sentence "I do not understand what this means"

3. You're a deeply cynical person, who'd use "I do not understand what this means" as a tactic for undermining the other person's actual argument in a sleazy way, and you think other people would do the same.

Either way, I keep saying "I don't understand" and you keep layering on more of the same argument in the same incomprehensible style. Consider that maybe I, really truly, cannot understand what you're writing, and that I'm not the only one.

I'm leaning towards 2 - I think you mean well and that you somehow really believe that I disagree with you and need convincing. For what it's worth, I agree with most of the things you wrote that I could understand. I'm a lefty too, I think the bigcos have way too much power.

We ought to frame this sequence. ;-)

I understood pretty much all of what they wrote and find it hard to understand why you keep accusing them of trolling. It's a bit obscurely worded but the point comes across pretty clearly.

That’s three times now with the accusations of trolling and the personal attacks and innuendo of being operating under a fake account, and generally the 4chan shit.

I’ve all but googled the source material for you.

Mute.

> That’s three times now with the accusations of trolling

Two times, and the second time wasn’t even an accusation.

> I’ve all but googled the source material for you.

Yeah but.. I’m not asking you to! I’m telling you that I find your words, your sentences, so full of meta-metaphors and commas and cultural references that I can’t parse them anymore. I’m telling you that I’m too stupid to understand you and that others are likely too (and judging by some sister comments, that’s true).

I should have assumed positive intent, that’s my bad, and I apologize. But I never asked you to layer on the evidence, I merely asked you to present it in simpler terms. You then ignored that completely, multiple times, and kept arguing with me on the topic at hand. But I don’t even disagree with you!

How so?

The language is florid. But the commenter makes a valid take on a complex problem.

The massive land-grab that is "AI+social media" is something we might better understand through the lens of Native American and Aboriginals. When they're not aware that they even own something, and cannot conceive the harms afoot, it's like taking candy from kids.

Oh, wait a minute... they /are/ kids in this case.

That said, these comments don't directly address the issue at hand, which is the shameless and continued use of dark pattern UX psychology against minors.

I don’t doubt it’s true and I kinda remember some of these - but a list of “crimes large corps have been convicted of” would make a great reference

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

And I want a pony, and a suitcase of cash :-)

> [Have] You see[n] the de facto [rule of law]— as opposed to [the] aspirational rule of law— constrain, or even non-trivially inconvenience, any[body] with a [$]1-3T notional value any time recently?

This formatting is surprisingly (to me) more helpful than I would have though. Alternatively the original was just worse than I realized.

Oh good I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds these comments inscrutable.

I’m happy to answer any questions you have about what I meant or clarify any confusing jargon. This set of subjects sits squarely at the intersection of “of public interest”, “fairly technical”, “fast moving”, and “emotionally charged”, so it’s not at all surprising that a set of positions held by a group that hasn’t openly gone from plurality to majority, personified in this instance by yours truly, would generate some driveby chaff.

But do ask for clarification if you don’t understand but still care enough to comment?

No will will hold the richest accountable including trillion dollar corporations. The government simply cannot prosecute what it depends on to exist.

> The government simply cannot prosecute what it depends on to exist.

That has never been truer than in the UK at present, with the Fujitsu Horizon scandal at the Post Office. We'd rather throw 3,500 lives under a bus than investigate a serious problem with a govt. preferred supplier.

FWIW I really struggled to understand what you’re saying, but the gist is that society can’t regulate cash cows?

There is nothing inherently bad about some corporations or individuals ceteris paribus generating windfall profits. Ceteris paribus is doing a lot of lifting there, because nepotism, graft, cartel collusion, bribery and generally capture are trivially the dominant terms.

The fungibility of windfall profits into induced market failure to generate more windfall profits has historically only ended one way.

You really, REALLY need to stop using big words like "Ceteris paribus". It's not helping you get your point across, (especially) when you don't even care to explain them.

Yes, China did it with Alibaba. They wrote off 1T or more in notional value.

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