phainopepla2

People love to cite the Phaedrus (although usually they just cite Plato) as a reason for why we should discard the warnings or fears about the cognitive effects of new technology as baseless.

But I think that this is foolish. Firstly, the fears weren't baseless! There's no question that the replacement of an oral culture by a literate culture meant the loss of certain cognitive skills for some people.

But more importantly, even if those fears were baseless, a fear in the past being baseless does not mean a similar one in the present is baseless. From our vantage point we can see the benefits of a literate society, but are we confident that what comes next will be as beneficial? Maybe it will be far more beneficial than literacy was, or maybe it will heighten inequalities to feudal levels. Either way, it's moving at a much more rapid pace than the spread of literacy, so we have much less time to reflect. It pays to be prudent here.

Friction is not only important for learning, it's important for a meaningful life. Not all friction is good, of course, but I don't think we as a species are always great at differentiating useful friction from the other kind. It might not even be possible to remove all the bad friction from life without also removing some of the good.

What are people using these infinitely-running agents for?

Not all of us view morality through the lens of monadic individualism.

Capital constantly needs new frontiers to exploit, and therefore must remove moral and social obstacles that stand in its way. Pseudo-prostitution has already been made widespread via platforms like OnlyFans, it's only a matter of time before in-the-flesh prostitution follows, as you said.

It's curious to me that so many progressives or soi-disant leftists are in favor of dissolving these types of moral and social traditions while being fervently anti-capitalist. It seems that they (meaning the subset who are always looking for new fenceposts to tear down) are in fact the shock troops of Capital.

Eugenics was also considered "today's progress" at some point, and the people who opposed it were mostly coming from a religious perspective.

I am not opposed to any of the things your examples of progress, just felt the need to mention that your argument is begging the question.

Google pays taxes to the US government, which has launched a war on Iran that has raised the price of oil across the world.

The increase in oil prices have increased the oil profits of the Russian oil sector, which flow directly into the Russian war effort.

Google supports the Russian war in Ukraine!

You can say it’s "not direct" and it’s an "oversimplification," but the money still ends up in the same place all the same.

Willingly using Google knowing this makes you at minimum partially complicit in Russia’s invasion and ethnic cleansing of Ukraine.

It's the "semblance of understanding" you're holding on to that is keeping your demand limited. I'm holding onto it as well, but I think these companies are assuming that human understanding will no longer be relevant for most codebases going forward.

Selfishness is commonly understood as putting one's own interest above everyone else's to an excessive degree, not the interest of their family. If you redefine it to include family interests then I think everyone would agree that having a family makes people more selfish, often dramatically so.

I just object to the redefinition.

These canals aren't built to provide animal habitats. There are other, better solutions for that.

Canonically, yes, he coined the term. If you know of an earlier coinage I'd be interested to hear it.

No one said anything about using the intelligence wisely. I have always maintained that you need intelligence to reach the highest level of stupidity.

Is Jev good at detecting AI-generated text?

No, it doesn't

I think you have the etymology wrong, although there was (schizophrenic) racism involved in the coining of the term. The "glow" part doesn't come from the fact that they're white (or not dark), it comes from Terry Davis saying that "CIA n*'s glow in the dark" (i.e. are obviously spotted and can't hide their identities).

We are the standing reserve

I think we can say pretty confidently they aren't pelican-bench-maxxing

Taking refuge in a country isn't an endorsement of their political system or leadership. He was fleeing political persecution. Most of us would do the same thing in his place

Having your passwords and 2FA with the same provider carries some risk. If someone can access your Bitwarden account they will have full access to all your accounts.

France provides Ukraine with targeting information that allows Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia, including industrial targets. So France is directly contributing to attacks against non-military target in Russia, yes.

Source: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/81382

An estimated 1 in 6 drivers in Los Angeles don't have insurance. I know at least a dozen people who have been hit by uninsured drivers, and that's not counting hit and runs, who probably are also mostly uninsured.

The victim's own insurance will pay if they have uninsured motorist coverage (you'd be a fool not to have it, living in LA at least), but there is basically no punishment for the uninsured driver, assuming a fender-bender. The police won't do anything. The insurance companies don't think it's worth their time to try to squeeze out something from someone who probably has almost nothing anyway.

> Nuclear weapons can't slop the world into passing age verification laws nearly in unison

Why do you think LLMs are responsible for this? Governments all around the world copied each other with COVID laws as well, in a much shorter time frame, without LLM assistance. Social contagions exist in politicians as well as teenagers

I know a lot of people with ADHD and even more without it. I haven't noticed any correlation between ADHD and creativity or out-of-the-box thinking.

> it seems the USA has been supporting Russia in its current war a lot more than China

Don't be ridiculous. The US literally provides targeting information to Ukraine, including for long-range missile strikes deep inside Russia earlier this year.

Can you explain what about is it a gift? What are the benefits you get from it?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperstition

Not sure I should trust an article written by an LLM to make a solid judgment about what other models did or didn't do.

At the risk of sounding like one of those people at Mensa that annoyed you...

The people at Mensa aren't a valid sample of people who score high on IQ tests, because there is a such a strong selection effect for people with certain personality traits, such as wanting to join a club based on your IQ.

That's not the experience of owning a PC I remember from the 90s at all.

Satire?

Edit: looking at your other comments, the answer is yes