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Is anyone "zoom" on this and "doom" on AI++ with other professions and/or their audience?

Seems to me that benchmarking a thing has an interesting relationship with acceptance of the thing.

I'm interested to see human thoughts on either of these.


Someone please tell me we are not living in a time where the kids are pro-regulation. I'm not doubting you, it's just sad if it's true.

When I was younger, the youth were anti-establishment - that was cool and rebellious.

I guess this is what happens when the rage against the machine becomes part of the machine. Now we need the machine to do our raging for us?

I feel old now, thanks.


>Someone please tell me we are not living in a time where the kids are pro-regulation

Hard to say. I'm not really "old" nor "young" per se. I'm a late millenial so I probably have pieces of both millenial and Gen Z in my experience. I'd love to know how this makeup really is at large, but from my observation:

>When I was younger, the youth were anti-establishment - that was cool and rebellious.

The "Gen Z" side me me spent its life seeing my parents (late Gen X) struggle through the results of '08 where we didn't regulate banks enough, and under a ruling that basically deregulated election spending. Then I graduate into a term of a president wanted to deregulate everything and am entering part 2 of such.

The "millenial" side of me just barely escaped the explosive costs of rent and college, but still felt the beginning of that impact. And got to experience almost a decade of decent work before seeing the job market completely turn on America. Because we spent decades de-regulating collective bargaining.

So I would not be surprised if Gen Z proper does want more regulation to reel in those who exploited deregulation. But that "cool and rebellious" mentality is still there given last year. It seems they already learned the results of that rebellion, though.

> Now we need the machine to do our raging for us?

Pretty much. When minimum wage can't even cover rent, you get less time to rage yourself, outside of the ballot box.


This is a very thoughtful response; thank you.

I'm not arguing that pro-regulation is a bad stance just noting that my image of youth is wounded by thinking that the new youth are hands down in favor of it in general.

This is a silly and sad sentiment. Part of me just wants to think that some among us are crazy or naive enough to tend towards resistance. I don't blame anyone for not being so.


> this is what happens when the rage against the machine becomes part of the machine. Now we need the machine to do our raging for us

That's an excellent way to put it.


Thanks. Not an original idea of mine, but I struggle to recall where I got it from.


The "we" that knows central planning doesn't work and the "we" inclined toward central planning are the same?

If so, I've not met this group of people, but I'd like to share your first point with them because I tend to agree.


If central planning didn't work, why does every corporation under the sun use it internally? Why don't they just let everyone do what they want, and then sue eachother when it doesn't result in great outcomes?


Central planning does work at small scales. Everyone "centrally plans" their own life. Can you imagine doing it any other way?

The issue is that as the context expands, we lose the ability to make accurate predictions. To some extent we can't even predict our own lives although we try our best. When you expand that to the size of a corporation it's mostly just guessing. Corporations fail all of the time. When we expand that to a society, we are just guessing for everything but the most simple of predictions.


What is the average age of a corporation?

I say that as someone who actually thinks a little central planning is good.


Clarify that, please? Maybe you mean "most corporations are short-lived due to excess central planning", or then again "most corporations are full of crusty old dudes who love the tradition of central planning", or ..?


I may believe both of those things, but no that's not actually what I meant. I simply meant look at the stats for how long corporations actually live. Are we sure that's how we want to structure our government?


Some corps live 1 year and others have been around for 150+ and they all use central planning. This seems unrelated.


Without comparing the management styles of different corporations it's difficult to say if it's related or not. For example, it's possible that long-lived corporations are run in a more laissez-faire style compared to ones that fail.


Interestingly, one marker for longevity is distributed ownership, aka profit share or co-op structures, or family run businesses. Co-ops specifically have much longer longevity than traditional corporations.


Is that a useful metric in a vacuum like that?


Look at the history of art itself to find several movements where artists make the point that difficulty in production is not the key feature of art. You might even find proof that human connection and humanity are not the key features. In fact, it's pretty hard to nail down an objective definition of art, but we can say what it doesn't have to be.

Gold doesn't share this nebulous sort of definition. Same with diamonds, what's their price now that we have figured out the "alchemy" for those?

What is it about these sorts of questions that escape those that write articles like these? Better yet, if the authors did ask these sorts of questions, could they write at all? Put another way, must there be a lack of depth in order for these sorts of ideas to be properly viral?

Maybe my feed just sucks. Someone please tell me where I can read what I describe. Thanks in advance.


I think gold was mentioned to give the nod to alchemy.

Diamonds are an interesting example. My understanding is that synthetic diamonds are largely used in industrial process (esp. abrasives). Synthetic diamonds in jewelry are cheaper alternatives, but jewelers can still sell natural diamonds for a premium. I think jewelry diamond prices are down in recent years, but not a crash. I think the market largely split.

The value of diamond jewelry feels quite nebulous to me. I remember looking at diamonds when picking an engagement ring and the jeweler had me look through the loope to examine microscopic imperfections, trying to upsell me on a different stone. Realizing the absurdity of using a microscope to assess jewelery which would otherwise only ever be seen by naked eye, the illusion of value broke and I purchased none.


The resale value of any diamond jewellery should tell all about real value of it. Unless it is actually rare and special piece my understanding is that value drops massively moment the payment clears.

Compare this to gold, silver etc. which do have labour, but still difference is mostly that and some buy/sell margin.


Artificial means of creating gold has not made it less scarce. Diamonds on the other hand should be less expensive, its value is based on proving your love to someone. Diamond resale value sucks. Diamond hasn't changed at all in the process.


I was content to write the original off as "to each his own", but this one I feel you on.

Maybe the problem is sharing without caring and/or without being aware.

Case in point, folks capture large blocks of text as you mentioned and paste it into slack which converts certain characters unless included in a code block. This can be much worse than sharing a screenshot.

Please know the best way to share what you are sharing when you share. I've had to come to expect this request will not be honored.

I also might be guilty of not honoring sharing with caring myself. For example, I didn't read this entire thread before posting; others may have made this exact point already.


And where on the web has someone shared a human effort at doing the same?


you could literally hire a human to do that, not everything needs to be on the web.


Where on the web do hallucinations come from?


I think it's some part of the Dark Web, or I wish it was.


I did not know how to do X so I Y.

It would be interesting to know what kinds of responses humans offer across different values of Y such as:

1) looked on stack overflow 2) googled it 3) consulted the manual 4) asked an LLM 5) asked a friend

For each of these, does the learner somehow learn something more or better?

Is there some means of learning that doesn't degrade us as human beings according to those in the know?

I ask as someone who listens to audiobooks and answers yes when someone asks me if I've read the book. And that's hardly the extent of my transgressions.


At least if you're copy/pasting from stack overflow you presumably glanced at the change you are copying if only to ensure you select the correct text.


Good point. We also sometimes leave comments in code noting the thread we referenced.


Yeah because the code on stack overflow has a license.


That would be a great reason to include the link. Would have been good idea for me to think about that 5-10 years ago. I just did it because I thought it might be helpful and it's cheap. Woops!



You forgot to read the readme


I did! How could I forget that and RTFM? The code is self-documenting! Lol.


If that's what people wanted, they could have created a woman account or a western white male account on a rest-of-the-world dating site.

If it's not? Oh well, suffer. It's still better than the "average western male on a dating site" experience.

Note: I really like the metaphor. My apologies if I abused it or stretched it to far or in the wrong direction.


I want to keep reading your thoughts on this. How can I get more or can you source your influences?


Probably best to start here with the original paper and then search for related material as the idea has been kicked around for a while: http://www.marketingvp.com/download/mer-data.pdf


Thanks for that!


I wish we were talking about what's next versus what's increasingly here.

How can infinite AI content be strictly awful if it forces us to fix issues with our trust and reward systems? Short term, sure. But infinite (also) implies long term.

I wish I had a really smart game theorist friend who could help me project forward into time if for nothing other than just fun.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to reduce the value of "ouch, it hurts right now" stories and responses.

But damned if we don't have an interesting and engaging problem on our hands right now. There's got to be some people out there who love digging in to complicated problems.

What's next after trust collapses? All of us just give up? What if that collapse is sooner than we thought; can we think about the fun problem now?


From a game-theory perspective, if players rush the field with AI-generated content because it's where all the advantages are this year, then there's going to be room on the margins for trust-signaling players to advance themselves with more obviously handspun stuff. Basically, a firm handshake and an office right down the street. Lunches and golf.

The real question to ask in this gold rush might be what kind of shovels we can sell to this corner of hand shakers and lunchers. A human-verifiable reputation market? Like Yelp but for "these are real people and I was able to talk to an actual human." Or diners and golf carts, if you're not into abstractions.


That gets my brain moving, thanks. What do you think those who are poor/rich in a trust economy look like? How much of a transformation to trust economy do you think we make?


Long airlines and corporate credit cards


> How can infinite AI content be strictly awful if it forces us to fix issues with our trust and reward systems?

You're assuming they can be fixed.

> But damned if we don't have an interesting and engaging problem on our hands right now. There's got to be some people out there who love digging in to complicated problems.

I'm sure the peasants during Holomodor also thought: "wow, what an interesting problem to solve".


how can crime be bad if it forces us to police crime?


Depends on the observer and your definition of "bad".

The police are happy they are paid. The victims are sad they are hurt. Is society better as a whole because it can handle crime? I'm not sure.

What does bad mean? Seems like an overloaded concept, ask around and good luck.

You can have a lot more fun by completely reducing the original question and plugging in different values for "strictly awful" and "AI content" and "it forces us to..."

How can eating be good if we just get hungry again? Implies eating is bad despite the value we derive from it.

How can hard work be bad if it produces meaningful results? Implies hard work is good despite the pains we take on from it.

I would argue that this kind of reduction and replacement significantly changes the original question, but it is a fun thing to explore. I'm not sure we'll get closer to an answer to the original, though. And I'm not sure it's safe to take the answer from one of the derived questions and use it for the original.

But don't take my word for it, I'm mostly restating one of the key points from Thinking Fast and Slow.

Can I safely assume that what you were implying is that AI content is undesirable because it is a strain on human systems? I think that's the point the article was trying to make.


it was more a simply reply to

>How can infinite AI content be strictly awful if it forces us to fix issues with our trust and reward systems?

I should have quoted what I just did in my original reply, I feel like I wasted your time by not including it. Still you did post interesting things so not all is lost.

>how can crime be bad if it forces us to police crime?

crime can be bad whether we police it or not. we actually police crime because its bad, at least in societies that are so inclined to have a police force. a desire to reduce somethings occurrence is not speaking positively of such occurrences.

> How can infinite AI content be strictly awful if it forces us to fix issues with our trust and reward systems?

this is neither a disqualifier for being "strictly awful", nor the newly arrived unique event finally necessitating fixes to trust and reward systems. I would hope that we dont evaluate the goodness of AI based on whether we have functioning trust and reward systems.


Fair points, and thanks for clarifying.

Your last point helps me tease out what I think rubs me the wrong way. Another analogy, "these newly introduced, extremely fast cars make it entirely unsafe to drive drunk."

Of course to be fair, we'd have to point out that the purchase, operation and production (and more) of said vehicles has a terrible impact.

I'd just love to hear that we are going to crack down on drunk driving which was even a problem when we were going slower. Obviously, the metaphor falls apart - trust and reward are much more interesting nuts to crack.

It's a really hard point to make because expressing an interest in wanting to see one part of the problem solved seems to indicate to others that I don't care about all the other aspects.


We're not cracking down on LLMs in any meaningful way. They're built on copyright infringement on an unprecedented way. It's the kind of thing where the law is looking at the other way while people's lives are destroyed, and some, if lucky, will be compensated 30 years from now, probably with pitiful amounts of money.

Corruption generally works by inflicting a diluted, distributed harm. Everyone else ends up a bit worse off except for the agent of corruption, which ends up very well off.


I don't have the time to read all four stories that ChatGPT turned up right this minute, but I now have cause to believe that at least some minority of those peasants you refer to did find fun in solving their problems.

I'm with that group of people. What was your point in bringing this up?

Wait, was I just trolled? If so, lol. Got me!


I suggest we go back to before and be human about things - and build trust in-person.


Dunbar's number leaps to mind. I wonder what our systems look like at large when we have cause to strengthen our 150 meaningful connections.

Would this truly be a move back? I've met people outside my social class and disposition who seem to rely quite heavily on networking this way.


This is exactly the reason

Human biological limits prevent the realization of stable equilibrium at the scale of coordination necessary for larger emergent superstructures

Humans need to figure out how to become a eusocial superorganism because we’re past the point where individual groups don’t produce externalities that are existential to other groups/individuals

I don’t think that’s possible, so I’m just building the machine version


This resonates with me.

I'd love to see the machine version or hear more of your thoughts about what goes into it.


If you’re really interested at the furthest depth then take a look at my paper:

https://kemendo.com/GTC.pdf

If that resonates further let me know at my un on icloud domain


Thanks, I will read. I haven't considered what it's like to be interested at the furthest depth, but I will do that now.


Thanks! Happy to answer and questions you have or if you have any feedback I’m open to it


This is childish thinking. Whatever we do, we cannot go back to "before". Which "before"? How do we go back?

You can't regress back to a being a kid just because the problems you face as an adult are too much to handle.

However this is resolved, it will not be anything like "before". Accept that fact up front.


Unfortunately there’s no “roll back to last stable” - the current version is actually still the most stable

If you try to “go back” you’ll just end up recreating the same structure but with different people in charge

Meet the New boss same as the old boss - biological humans cannot escape this state because it’s a limit of the species


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