I wonder if it would help to make a few communities that were just like “Post whatever fun random shit you want.” like a catch all for stuff outside the main things. A lot of it is just that while a lot of us have other interests we might post about they aren’t the same interests. But if we could all get in a single community made for like ‘casual posting’ it might take off. Or just slightly more vague things. Like “Peanuts” is so fucking specific. Same with “windows11” like why not just “microsoft” for all microsoft products? Specificity can be the enemy of a communities success sometimes.

I don’t know that I’d call them happy. More like coping. A substitute will always be just that. I don’t see it as their fault so much as the fault of capitalism. Most people replace human connection with materialism to some degree. Those people just take it to the extreme.

I am also just concerned that it’s being used a substitute for human connection. With the way capitalism tends to isolate people and get them feeling all lonely. It’s easy to see how someone could get drawn in and use an LLM as a replacement for a person to talk to.

That’s not really what I was getting at.

What I am saying is that LLMs are extremely good at making things sound plausible. That is the issue I was bringing up. LLMs are much better at making things that are incorrect seem correct than many people realize, and people are not infallible.

If you have a human just entirely make something up you can usually tell it is entirely made up if you read it. A human has to put a lot of effort in to make bullshit sound convincing. LLMs do this effortlessly. So when using them it’s easy to make a mistake and let some of the extremely plausible bullshit slip through.

I don’t disagree at all that humans can create bullshit too. My concern is just that LLMs are so good at it that many people get convinced. Just look at all these cases of people using them for normal mundane things who get drawn in and fall into “AI Psychosis”.

I think it is a result of human brains just not being wired to deal with a machine that talks like a person. Psychologically it’s an issue. Even if we logically know it’s just a machine our brains do not. So people end up falling into this trap where they treat it like a person. Then it tells them insane things and they just start believing it.

Even if say 90% of people never had this issue it’s still a problem. If a new drink gave 10% of people who drank it a psychotic break we’d regulate it to hell and back. Put warning labels on everything. Make it prescription only. etc. LLMs are just out there for anyone to pick up and use like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a serious problem.

I think the very design of LLMs makes them not very useful even when used “correctly”. They are basically machines that are very good at sounding plausible. But they have absolutely 0 way of checking if info is correct or not. It’s just whatever is reinforced the most in their model is treated as correct.

I think the underlying technology likely has uses. But the way it is currently being produced into products is something that, even if you tried to use it correctly, would simply end up tricking you with some plausible bullshit. Maybe you tell it to edit a paper and it decides to “fix” one of your opinions to be the most common one. Maybe you tell it to tell you the nuance behind a historical fact and it makes up a very likely sounding story that is entirely bullshit which you then repeat to someone else without realizing.

The ability it has to sound plausible is its biggest flaw. Because an LLM will VERY rarely if ever say the words, “I don’t know.” You’d basically have to have gone in and coded it to respond to that specific question to respond with “I don’t know”. Otherwise it’ll just make something up.

I don’t see it so much as pollution as a smokescreen being put in place on purpose. It is my belief that these companies plan to so heavily flood the internet with AI generated nonsense that they can then begin to charge a premium for access to verified information.

That is why I have made an effort to collect actual physical books all printed before AI became a thing that have lots of info I can use to verify things. I have books on medical info, various crafts, construction, agriculture, copies of works from Lenin, Marx, Mao, Stalin, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, etc. Math textbooks, science textbooks. I’ve got around 80 or so right now. A lot of them I got for free and the rest I got for very cheap (anywhere from 1$ to 9$) because I go after used books. Many are from the 70s and 80s.

The idea is that say in like 2035 if I need to know something random I have a bunch of 100% human made and verified information. Even if some is a bit outdated it’s better than AI slop.

Easy to talk about dying for a flag when it’s someone else doing the dying.

What is this fantasy you live in where we just have to give Taiwan the right amount of guns so it’ll suddenly be able to defend itself enough? Should we give them nukes? All because a generation ago the US got involved in the tail end of the Chinese civil war and created this schism in the first place. The solution to the problem caused by US guns is not more US guns.

You say you wish there was a diplomatic solution. There is. But that is never going to happen while Taiwan is a battleground for 2 global superpowers. The Taiwanese island is right next to mainland China. China is a global superpower. Taiwan has about as much of a realistic chance at full independence from China as Hawaii does from the US. It will never happen. Thinking that sending more guns is going to make it happen is just fantasy. The ONLY solution is to dial down the temperature and let China feel secure enough to not need to force the issue. China has shown a willingness to wait things out as they prefer stability and diplomacy. But if their hand is forced there is no amount of US aid that can stop them from taking Taiwan. The US can’t even beat Iran for fucks sake. All giving them more weapons is doing is getting more innocent people on both sides killed by prolonging their inevitable defeat in the military conflict those very guns will be the catalyst for.

I very much think the Iranian people have a say. And they said “No.” to US Intervention in case you didn’t notice. Strait of Hormuz looking awfully based lately.

“China bad” essentially. lol. Such a nuanced and factual argument. I can’t compete!

Well if you mean in the 1950s during the civil war sure. The US is the reason that the Taiwan Island was not rejoined with China then. But to suggest that the CPCs preferred method of reunification is by military force TODAY is to show a complete lack of awareness as to how the CPC operates. They will always choose the diplomatic option whne it is available to them. Yet allowing Taiwan to be turned into an unsinkable US aircraft carrier off their coast is untenable. They would have no choice but to attack. Also, this has nothing to do with Donald Trump. You are falling for this trap of assuming US policy is led by the President. Harris would have done the same thing because the reason this is occuring is that the US has realized after its war with Iran that the war it had been planning with China is not winnable. So it is backing down.

Guess I’ll have to be the one who gets downvoted by the liberal imperialists and say this is a GOOD THING!

Taiwan would be better off if the US fucked off and stopped trying to use it as a way to undermine China. China is much less likely to attack a Taiwan that is just being annoying than one that is slowly being armed to the teeth right off its coast. The people of Taiwan do not need more guns. They need competent leaders that can negotiate with Beijing in good faith to rejoin peacefully and on good terms.

Americans who are so concerned about this should be more concerned about the fact the US is probably going to attack it’s 3rd country this year soon (Cuba) instead of whining about a hypothetical Chinese military action that has not happened, and absent the US forcing China’s hand, will not happen.

You do not have the moral high ground. You are making the situation worse by sending weapons not better. Take a good long look in the mirror. Look at what happened to other countries the US did this to (Ukraine). Stop slurping up the Anti-China slop like mindless children. The US is the bad guy. Not China.

Are you serious? Do you think 3rd party voters are “centrist”? What third parties are you looking at? 3rd parties are on the ends of the overton window in the US not the middle. If the Democrats ran a centrist to court 3rd party voters then it makes sense they lost. Because apparently they’re morons.

Well it is actually true that an integral part of Christianity itself is the imperative to spread or proselytizing. It is baked into the religion itself. Originally this was an idea to convert all Jews to the new religion, but it was Saul of Tarsus, or the Apostle Paul, who introduced the idea that this should apply to all peoples, not just Jews.

In the words of the Bible itself: Matthew 28:19–20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Mark 16:15: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”

So while you may be correct that there is a psychologal aspect to it as well, it is also true that it is simply a part of their religion. They are taught that they should do this. It is generally seen as a holy duty to convert others and save their souls.

How bold of you to claim atheists do not have a national holiday a mere TEN DAYS prior to National Donut Day!

I would push back on the idea that humans inherently want to push their religions on people. In actuality that behavior is an effect of the memetic construction of more modern religions. Memetics being the concept “viral ideas” or contagious ideas. Where an idea becomes a thing of its own and spreads without outside interference. (yes like memes). The polytheistic religions were generally not so inclined to spread their religion to others. They’d show up in a forgein land and see other peoples worshipping gods and either think those were the names for their own gods here or think that these are just the gods of this land. The Greeks for example would make offerings to Isis while in Egypt.

The more recent idea of “An imperative to spread” is an invention of christianity that was picked up by Islam as well. Over time much like our societies evolve the ideas we have evolve too. It’s natural selection. Given enough time any idea that has baked into it the imperative to spread will overtake ideas that do not. Hence the death of paganism in Europe and the dominance of Islam, and Christianity in that region by comparison over the last few centuries.

Eventually (As is already happening to some extent with political ideologies imo) a new memetic construct will come along that outcompetes christianity. Just as the christians before it absorbed paganism (Arch Angels and Demons are literally just pagan gods given new names) this new one will absorb christianity and outcompete it and the other religions into near extinction. This may be a new religion of its own, it may be a political movement, it may be something else. Whatever it is it will better fit the material conditions of the current world than the now quite outdated christianity which was more suited to a medeival time period. Giving it an advantage and leading to inevitable spread.

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