• 10 Posts
  • 246 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • I have two main thoughts on this

    1. LLMs are not at this time reliable sources of factual information. The user may be getting something that was skimmed from factual information, but the output can often be incorrect since the machine can’t “understand” the information it’s outputting.

    2. This could potentially be an excellent way to do real research for people who were not provided research skills by their education. Conspiracy theorists often start off as curious but undisciplined before they fall into the identity aspects of the theories. If a machine using human-like language is able to report factual information quickly, reliably, and without judgement to those who wouldn’t be able to find that info on their own, this could actually be a very useful tool.



  • Having to reliably listen to bigotry and nonsense that you are obligated by social conditioning to nod along with is not only draining but an attack on your own identity by yourself. Either you’re torturing yourself by continuing to put yourself in this uncomfortable situation or you will come to tolerate it and not be as bothered by it and corrupt yourself that way. It’s worth finding someone with some clippers that doesn’t give you an identity crisis on a regular basis.







  • I just tested out the classic “She working” vs “She be working,” and the machine got it backwards. It can’t translate to AAVE, but it probably can appear to be well enough for people who wouldn’t know the difference. In terms of available written materials just by population and historical access it seems like there would be way more incorrect white imitations of AAVE to draw from than its correct usage. Like a lot of LLM issues, it’s been a problem for a loooong time but is now being put into overdrive by being automated.


  • As a dog person, I am very happy that you understand this about yourself. You will not be someone who abandons a dog. It’s not for everyone and there’s nothing wrong with anyone it doesn’t appeal to. Cats are way less work if you’re looking for animal companionship, otherwise you’re going to have to settle for (ugh) human companionship.


  • The same way to deal with depression about anything. Depression is an illness that renders one incapable of helping themselves or others and debilitates people from contributing to the solution to the problems which contributed to the depression. Depression should be treated as an illness to be cured before anything else.

    As far as being not being depressed by events beyond one’s control, it requires effort since even being aware and concerned by such problems of this magnitude is highly unnatural and highly unintuitive. It is necessary to consciously come to peace with the world and humanity as it is. The universe is chaotic and we have as much control over the collective will of billions of completely ignorant and afraid people as we do over natural disasters just with less ability to predict when issues will occur. Although it is the case that we have a good grasp of the environmental issue, we have absolutely no grasp of how get plutocrats not to behave like plutocrats having no care for anything or anyone other than increasing their personal fortunes meaninglessly or to get the majority of people to understand the degree to which it is a problem that we continue to allow this. Being upset that humans are failing to achieve stable societies just as we have always failed for the entire 10,000 years we have been trying to achieve them is having unrealistic and unfair expectations of our species. Everyone is trying their best and no one knows what they’re doing really. It may be scarier to consider how much less agency people have than they believe they have initially, but it does allow one to have the comfort of more consistently helpful expectations of oneself and others.





  • There’s weird as in unusual, which I appreciate. Then there’s weird as in creepy.

    If you see two people in a park and one is an adult skipping around catching butterflies and the other one is trying to follow women around without them noticing, that is two totally different genres of weirdness going on. I’ll happily skip around with the person following their passion without fear of judgement, but the other weirdo needs to be kicked out of the park.






  • OP, from this reception you may feel at least a little misunderstood. This is because you are being deliberately misunderstood because whiteness protects itself. Notice that no one commenting thus far has responded to you in good faith, but have only been dismissive or even reject the premise that this even could be a problem outright.

    Whiteness is interested in terminating any curiosity that challenges white supremacy. Exclusive white habitus is the expectation of those who identify with whiteness, and deviation is actively resisted. If white people didn’t do this there literally wouldn’t be white people and racism would be over. It persists because the people who maintain it are cultured to protect it by any means, especially by rejecting all challenges to it outside of an historical context.

    The reason I say all this is because I’ve attempted the same conversation you are attempting now and this has been what’s happened every single time. You can’t have a good faith conversation with anyone answering in bad faith. I think this effort is worthwhile and support it, but I advise not to waste too much time with anyone here who is more interesting in refuting you than the problem of racism.