Mike Driver
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YOU ARE THE REASON

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@chocolateeaglethingmug
generative AI literally makes me feel like a boomer. people start talking about how it can be good to help you brainstorm ideas and i’m like oh you’re letting a computer do the hard work and thinking for you???
There are many difficult things that were replaced with technology, and it wasn't a bad thing. Washing machine replaces washing clothes by hand. Nothing wrong with that. Spinning wheel replaces drop spindle. Nothing wrong with that.
Generative AI replaces thinking. The ability to think for yourself will always be important. People that want to control and oppress you want to limit your ability to think for yourself as much as possible, but continuing to practice it allows you to resist them.
"This tool replaces thinking," is a technology problem we (humans) have faced before. It's a snark that I've seen pro-AI contenders take as well: I bet these same people would have complained about calculators! And books!
Well. They did, at the time.
We have records from centuries -- even millennia back -- of scholars at the time complaining that these new-fangled "books" were turning their students lazy; why, they can barely recite any poems in their entirety any more! And there are people still alive today who remember life before widely available calculators, and some of them complained -- then and now -- that bringing them into schools dealt a ruinous blow to math education, and now these young people don't even know how to use a slide-rule.
And the thing is:
They weren't wrong.
The human brain can, when called on, perform incredible feats of memorization. Bards and skalds of old could memorize and recite poems and epics that were thousands of lines long. This is a skill that is largely lost to most of the population. It's not needed any more, and so it is not practiced.
There is a definite generational gap, between the people who were trained on slide-rules and reckoning and the generation that was taught on calculators. There came a year, when that first generation grew up and entered the workforce, when you suddenly started encountering grown adults who could not do math -- not even the very basic arithmetic needed to count down from one hundred. I would go into a shop, buy an item for sixteen dollars, give the cashier a twenty and a one because I want a fiver back, and have them stare at the money in incomprehension -- what do? They don't know how to subtract sixteen from twenty-one. They don't know how to calculate a fifteen-percent tip. They did not exercise the parts of their brain that handle this, because they always had a calculator to do it for them.
Nowadays, newer point-of-sale machines compensate for this; they will automatically calculate and dispense the change, no subtraction necessary on the part of the operator. Nowadays everyone carries a phone, and every phone carries a calculator, so if you need to do these calculations, the tool is right there. As more and more transactions go electronic and card, and cash fades further and further out of daily life, these situations happen less and less; it's not a problem that most people can't do math (until it is.)
The people who complained that these tools-that-replace-thinking would reduce the ability of the broad population to exercise these cognitive skills weren't wrong. It's simply that, as the pace of life changed, the environment changed so that in day-to-day life these skills were largely unnecessary.
So.
Isn't this, ChatGPT and Generative AI, just the latest in a long series of tool-replaces-thought that has, broadly, worked out well for us? What's different about this?
Well, two things are different.
1) In the previous instances of tool-replaces-thinking, the cognitive skill that it replaced was a discrete and, on a day-to-day basis, unnecessary outlay of energy. Most people don't need to memorize thousands of lines of poetry, or anything else for that matter. Most people don't need to do more than cursory levels of math on a day to day basis.
This, however, is different. The cognitive skill that is being obsoleted here is more than "how to write essay" or "identify what is the capital of Rhode Island." It encompasses the entire field of being able to generate new thoughts; of being able to consider and analyze new information; of being able to follow logical trains to their conclusions; of being able to order your thoughts to construct rational arguments; or indeed of being able to express yourself in any structured way. These cognitive tools are not occasional use; they are every day, all the time.
2) In the previous instances of tool-replaces-thinking, the tool was good at what it did.
Calculators may have replaced reckoning, but calculators are also pretty good at what they do. The calculator will, as long as you give the right input, give the right answer. ChatGPT cannot be relied on to do this. ChatGPT will tell you, confidently and unhesitantly and dangerously, that 2+2=5, and it will not care that it is wrong.
Books may have replaced memorization, and books certainly could be wrong; but a fact, once in a book, is pretty stable and steady. There is not a risk that the Guy Who Owns All The Encylopedias might wake up one day and decide -- to pick a purely hypothetical example -- that the Gulf of Mexico is called something else, and suddenly all the encyclopedias say that.
Generative AI fails on both these counts. It fails on every count. It's inaccurate, it's unethical, it's unreliable, it's wrong.
---
I remember some time ago seeing someone say (it was a video about medieval footwear, actually) that "humans have a great energy-saving system: if we can be lazy about something, we are."
This is not a ethical judgment about humans; this is how life works. Animals -- including humans -- will not do something the hard way if they can do it the easy way; this basic principle of conservation of resources is universal and morally neutral. Cognition is biologically expensive, and though our environment is not what it once was, every person still goes through every day choosing what is valuable enough to expend resources on and what is not.
Because of this, I don't know if there is any solution, here. I think pushing back against the downhill flush of the-easy-way-out is a battle both uphill and against the tide.
So I'll just close with this warning, instead:
Generative AI is a tool that cannot be trusted. Do not use it to replace thought.
Also i know I'm late but WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NOTES????? Why are likes and reblogs separate now 🥲 how am I supposed to know how many notes a post has 🥲🥲🥲
The SOTR trailer is so good ahhhhhh I can't waittttt
the only future of the internet is the following tab of tumblr. death to "for you." Death to algorithmically generated content that exists not to spread humane values or accurate information but only to monetize your attention.
In the future the internet will be dead except for the weirdos who hang out in the post-algorithmic, cratered-out ghost towns, and then and only then will the social internet finally achieve its potential.
I've been musing a bit on that one post that went around during the recent holiday season, to which someone added their family tradition of Present Practice. My god! Imagine actually telling kids what behavior is expected, instead of expecting them to intuit it and punish them when they get it wrong!!
Separate post because this topic is a little tangential to that, but I think it does a great job of unearthing one of our very well-hidden internal biases, which goes as follows:
Good people don't need to be taught.
A good person (in this case, a good child) shouldn't need to be told to be gracious and grateful when given a gift. A good child should just know that a holiday tradition of gift-giving is a social performance to strengthen family bonds and that personal preference or genuine reactions are secondary to that performance. A good child should just know how to value gifts, how to express thanks, how to praise and compliment. No caretakers in their lives should need to put any effort into instructing or modeling these things.
Good people should just know how to be good. If they were really Ontologically Good, their inherent goodness would simply intuitively guide them to correct behaviors. If they can't do that on their own, in a vacuum, in the absence of cues, that's a sign of their inherent moral lack.
.
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...Which all sounds very reasonable and obvious, and surely a mistake that only fundie christian families would make! Except that people in the social justice sphere also do this all the time. It's not anybody's job to educate you. It's 2024, how do you not know this already? If you were a Good Person, you wouldn't need to be taught. You would simply intuit the correct philosophies and gravitate to them according to your superior internal moral compass.
If you were a Good Person, you would already know that everything you were taught by your family and/or background was wrong. You should have rejected it already. You should have cut off your family, your heritage, everything about your childhood and upbringing that was Bad and Wrong. You should have known it was all a lie.
If you were a Good Person, you should be able to find the correct way yourself. You should be able to seek out the proper educational resources, and distinguish them from bad advice leading you astray, and make sense of them all according to your own internal moral code.
If you were a Good Person, you would have found your way by the proper, dignified, official channels, not by reading a comic or watching anime. You shouldn't need entertainment or art to guide you. You should just know.
And if someone can't do these things on their own, in a vacuum, in the absence of cues, that's a sign of their inherent moral lack.
Holy shit...
Just gonna sit here for a minute staring into space.
This is exactly the internalized premise that underlies possibly all of my social anxiety. I'm supposed to be good. People get mad at me if I don't do the right things. So if I don't know them magically already, I must be bad. So I must constantly observe everyone and determine what they get upset at. And never do that. Because if I do, they will get upset. And me not knowing that would make me a bad person. And I don't want to be a bad person
Wooosh
Wimdy for the old man
the best colors ever actually
for those gradient enjoyers
Aroace culture is never knowing what to say when your friend shows you a picture of someone they find really hot
I once involuntarily said “no” to a photo of someone my friend said was hot and she just. Paused and stared as if I committed some heinous crime
That is HILARIOUS omg
TIL that the reason lead levels in children’s blood have dropped 85% in the past thirty years is because of an unknown scientist who fought car companies to end leaded gasoline. He also removed it from paint, suggested its removal from pipes, and campaigned for the removal of lead solder from cans.
via ift.tt
Yep. It also correlates extremely strongly with an increasing decrease of violent crime. One of the symptoms of low level constant lead exposure is increased aggression and volatility.
“Unknown scientist”? That was Clair Cameron Patterson.
Gas companies are still so mad at him he’s “unknown scientist”, know his name
Daily reminder that health and safety standards like these are what politicians mean when they talk about “deregulation.”
Patterson died 5 December 1995.
Petition to make his date of death a Tumblr holiday celebrated by talking about cool shit the gas and petroleum industries don’t want us to know about, and fighting to continue his work.
Schedule your reblogs, folks
Remember remember
The fifth of December
For unleaded’s the reason we ought
we need to bring back inviting people over for cake and coffee. my grandma used to do that all the time and I think it's a lost art
Oh hey tomorrow is Wolfenoot.
Happy Woolfenoot everyone.
And when the end of the movie cuts to an older, present day Haymitch telling Katniss and Peeta and their children all about his games while he's on his deathbed, then what😭
“Embrace the probability of your imminent death, and know in your heart that there's nothing I can do to save you.”
𝐉𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐩𝐡 𝐙𝐚𝐝𝐚 and 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐲 𝐃𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐬 𝐈𝐕 𝐚𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐀𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐲 and 𝐀𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐫 in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬: 𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠
*SCREAMS IN PAIN AND PARALLELS*
sometimes i forget aromanticism isnt normalized until im listening to family friends complain about how relationships suck and never last and i chime in with "yeah im kinda glad im not interested in romance." and suddenly all of them turn into "oh no EVERYONE needs romance its human nature. if you think you're not interested you just need to try again." . like okay i thought we were commiserating here. i was agreeing with yall. cmon.
straight people will spend all their time making relationships sound like a chore and normalize the concept of hating your wife but if you say "idk id rather be single" you're the weird one i guess.
reminder to all 14-19 year olds girls. that grown man does not like you. you are a victim
He doesn’t like you, he likes your naivety and willingness to put up with shit most women his age probably won’t
"you're mature for your age" "you're so special" "you're so different from other girls" pls run in the other direction!
I don’t actually care if someone thinks this is derailing because it’s important.
This applies to all genders on both sides. Teen boys often get left out of these posts, but they are also preyed upon like this, by men and women and also people who are neither because no one is incapable of being a predator. This post shouldn’t be gendered. You can say it happens to girls more, and it could be true. But it happens to boys and they are less likely to talk about it when they get hurt. Less likely to get support if they do, especially if the older person was a woman. I don’t think we have an accurate statistic on how often it happens to boys because of this.
But regardless. Don’t you think they should be told how to stay safe too?
One of my coworkers told me about a good friend of his, a guy that ‘had a thing’ with an older woman in her mid-twenties that started when he was about fifteen. He talked about how their friend group thought it was cool, how they were a little jealous of him. She was pretty and interested, which is any fifteen year old boy’s dream.
The older they got, though, the weirder it got. She got pregnant by this kid when he was still seventeen. Thankfully he went to the authorities and got custody of the baby when he was an adult, but my coworker kind of laughed it off as kids being stupid. I think he thought I would just dismiss it, which is heartbreaking.
I asked him if it would have been okay if it was a fifteen year old female friend and a twenty five year old guy. He immediately replied that it would NOT have been okay, he and his friends would have beaten the guy up.
The dissonance is real, guys. There’s a kid who was groomed at fifteen and a single dad at nineteen because his friends and family only gave this message to girls. This message matters to everyone- no matter your gender, no matter the gender of the other person- if you are a child and an adult is ‘interested’ in you, RUN AWAY. They don’t have your best interests at heart, and that’s not love at all.