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I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

smol-blue-bird

There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

smol-blue-bird

Thought this section was particularly interesting:

Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”

But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.

You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

theriu

Somebody in 1975 had a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is not in any way “intelligence” than the majority of today’s intellectual minds.

headspace-hotel

I've been fascinated for some time by what makes people susceptible to believing that ChatGPT is superior to their own thoughts.

I found this blog post about how ChatGPT can "enhance" journaling. The blog post itself was "co-written" by ChatGPT, and you can tell.

This is one of the most godawful pieces of writing I've ever run across in the wild; incredibly repetitive, rewording the same sentences over and over again and stacking them into interminable paragraphs of empty sludge. There is one "idea" in here, "I tell ChatGPT to ask me questions to help me reflect on myself, and I think that helps me to journal and think in new perspectives," and it is repeated in slightly different words like 50 times.

Expose a copy of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style to this slop and it'll start oozing blood from the pages like in a horror movie.

But the thing is, this guy wasn't always that bad of a writer. You see, I got to that blog post after reading this blog post from 4 years prior, which is about meditation and the difficulty in defining meditation in a way that can be operationalized for objective study, and it is much clearer, more structured, and actually contains ideas in it.

ChatGPT clearly made this guy's writing much, much worse, but he appears to believe that the opposite happened.

His problem isn't "being a bad writer," in fact, he didn't even write the whole thing, ChatGPT did some of it. His problem isn't exactly "inability to evaluate his own writing" either. You see, evaluating your own writing is about asking whether you communicated your ideas in the most effective way possible. This blog post certainly failed, because it argues that you should involve ChatGPT in your writing process while demonstrating very clearly that you should NOT do that. But that is deeper than failing to communicate effectively; that's failing to understand what ideas you have, why you have those ideas, and whether the ideas made it into the writing at all. Possibly, it's a failure to understand if you have ideas.

Is the problem the simple fact that he uses ChatGPT to help him come up with ideas? Potentially. ChatGPT does not contain ideas, it creates statistically plausible writing based upon a large body of data on how writing is constructed. If a person is or becomes susceptible to seeing "ideas" in ChatGPT's outputs, they might begin to have difficulty distinguishing between meaningful and non-meaningful writing. That is, they could lose the ability to tell what makes writing meaningful (as opposed to just technically formed into the shape of an idea)

But is everyone susceptible to that? What makes someone susceptible? Would someone have to have a weak sense of their own thoughts and ideas, or could a strong, accomplished writer that is skilled in expressing themselves fall apart with too much ChatGPT usage?

I don't know. Really interesting case study nonetheless.

jayalaw

We’d probably need a study on it. I do remember on here the posts that say no one is immune to propaganda.

There are news articles about how ChatGPT encourages delusions of grandeur and feeds egos in an unhealthy fashion. It’s possible that ChatGPT fed this guy’s ego. There’s another options

Having used Jasper in a work setting two years ago (because my coworker and I were having to write a hundred articles a month each, our boss told us to use Jasper, and our clients were dissatisfied with everything else) it does feel like producing garbage. We were desperate. I’m so glad to not be in that position anymore.

Maybe this guy started using ChatGPT a little for deadlines, and it took over. Now he’s addicted to it and how it makes his life “easier”.

headspace-hotel

Yea, I lean towards the conclusion that it will cause negative consequences for anybody.

If ChatGPT can cause people who are otherwise psychologically "normal" to lose the distinction between real and not-real, it's not hard to believe that any writer can lose the distinction between good writing and bad writing.

That being said, I think the reason that ChatGPT has its nails so embedded in so many people is that it sounds like a person and everybody is lonely. Humans are susceptible to attributing feelings and human attributes to non-living, non-thinking things. As it was once said, "humans will pack bond with anything."

Our social nature, and our ability of sophisticated communication, are some of our most distinct traits as a species, so I think we are just really, really vulnerable to something that appears to communicate like a person does.

canadianwheatpirates

One of the emergent effects from its development is that it uses a lot of the same cold reading tricks as con artists do:

The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour

headspace-hotel

Wow, this is a great article.

othersystems

urbanpineapplefarmer

It is really important to me that all of you learn about Al Bean, astronaut on Apollo 12 and the fourth man to walk on the moon, who after 20 years in the US Navy and 18 years with NASA during which he spent 69 days in space and more than 10 hours doing EVAs on the moon , retired to become a painter.

He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.

Like, look at this stuff????

It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!

Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.

And then there's this one:

The Fantasy

For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.

The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.

But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.

Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.

This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.

"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.

"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.

"We often fantasized about Dick's joining us on the moon but we never found a way. In my paintings, though, I can have it my way. Now, at last, our best friend has come the last sixty miles." - Al Bean, about The Fantasy.

futureevilscientist

There’s also Alexei Leonov, writer and artist and first person to conduct a spacewalk!

This is his art.

sevensmallgummies

You can't forget this, the first art made in space.

March 1965, Alexei Leonov made this drawing only moments after narrowly surviving the very first space walk.

sir-yeehaw-paws

"We are esteemed." Thank you Carver I'm now going to call my fabulous 'cast spell and stab' as esteemed magic.

bleedingheartzz

i miss him already

kevinbparry

Collection of me turning into random objects

ohifonlyx33

I love this because its not like cgi effects.... its practical cuts and filming the right movements and lining it all up... but it looks like live action animation sequences.

puppetmaker40

The 1984 Holmes drawing room

Photographer: Jeremy Brett

ms-demeanor

I transposed the Twin Peaks Main Theme for a Kikkerland 15 note music box more than a year ago. I messed up and skipped the fourth-to-last note so it ended wrong (you can see that the title I've written on this strip is "twin peaks - error"). Tonight seemed like a good night to fix that.

ms-demeanor

I got a music box kit and learned to use it and read about music theory and had to learn a little bit of how to play piano to make this because i looked all over the internet and couldn't find a twin peaks music box or music for one that i could punch out.

If you want to make this yourself, you can download the notation for the punch strip here.

The twin peaks main theme was the processional at my wedding. I remember hearing the music and seeing the waterfall from the intro when i was five and the show was in its original run. I went to Twedes, the filming location of the double R diner, on my honeymoon.

I'm just sad.

asmalltooth

Sandworms this, Bene Gesserit that, something I really love about the Dune books is they look you dead in the eye and tell you how fucked up parents and children are.

A huge part of the Dune novel is about subtle workings of violence and resentment in the family. The way Jessica views Paul as her creature and posession and recoils in horror from the parts of him she can't control. The way Paul sees her as a source of both his strength and his deepest fears: She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy. And in all this they still love each other. It's not the lack of love. It's the idea that birth and nurturing are inherently violent for both sides.

Just like with Duke Leto and his father. Just like with Jessica and Alia. And we see the same thing mirrored in the Harkonnens. The Baron abusing Feyd-Rautha while raising him and preparing him as his successor?? Fully aware the boy's rise to power will be his own death. The Baron himself as the book's main villain is a giant grotesque baby. Parenthood as existential horror.

The theme continues with Messiah where the birth of Leto II and Ghanima erases their parents. In Children of Dune Paul offers himself as sacrifice to the son he tried to kill and Chani nearly returns from the dead by possessing her daughter. Leto II and Ghanima are eldritch horrors trapped in child bodies. But even they come off as less cruel than Jessica in her final abandonment of both Paul and Alia. Leto II returns in God Emperor to claim humanity as his children, becoming both a god and a tyrant. Meanwhile his whole dead family lives inside his head and has to be kept from overpowering him at all times.

There is so much weird horror surrounding parents and children in the Dune books.

And I love that a lot of that found its way into Villeneuve's Jessica. That's who she is, that's why Rebecca Ferguson's performance is a horror performance even though it might not always serve the character. It captures that part of the books beautifully.

lovecraftian-frog

During my internship, I saw another strange fellow. If you like the neck flexibility of the European wryneck you sure gonna love the Little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus). This bird is in the heron family (Ardeidae) but loves to shrink itself. But be warned ! They know where your eyes are and can launch their neck and beak real fast ! One tried to attack me while I was checking its ring and I was lucky to be just 10 cm too far. Despite this vicious attack I love this funny bird and he was quite easy to untangle and to ring. With colleagues, we nicknamed it the "Accordion of death"

cronenburger

“One day the sadness will end.

But I don’t think today’s the day.”

David Lynch

cuprohastes

About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.

It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.

So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.

So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.

Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.

The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.

... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.

Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.

Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.

And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.

alexaloraetheris

OP did it hurt when Apollo's dodgeball hit you and made you write that story?

shamebats

dualumina

If every man in the world agrees to go to bed at the exact same time in a large enough bed, then world peace might just work

meckamecha

I got a laptop with Windows 11 for an IT course so I can get certified, and doing the first time device set-up for it made me want to commit unspeakable violence

Windows 11 should not exist, no one should use it for any reason, it puts ads in the file explorer and has made it so file searches are also web searches and this cannot be turned off except through registry editing. Whoever is responsible for those decisions should be killed, full stop.

Switch to linux, it's free and it's good.

kuromi-hoemie

u r absolutely right I have SO many complaints about Windows omg.

For anyone who'd like to follow along, I'm gonna share how to get around those things with group policies bc they're more user friendly and descriptive than registry editor imo :3 I'll also show how to get around needing a Microsoft account to get setup.

For the Device Setup

"OOBE" stands for Out Of Box Experience which is what that setup workflow is. But it also happens to be a folder with a little program in it that'll let you skip connecting to the internet; this makes it so you don't have to sign up with a Microsoft account and can just use a normal local one instead. And it already comes preinstalled! Here's how you get to it:

Hold Shift + F10, or Shift + Fn + F10 depending on your keyboard.

Click inside the window that pops up, type the following and press enter afterwards to run it: OOBE\BypassNRO

I believe it should restart your computer automatically, but if not then restart your computer or type: shutdown /r /t 0 /f

Now when you're brought back to the setup workflow, the page where you connect to the internet will have a new button on it that lets you say you don't have internet. Clicking that and proceeding through the rest of the setup lets you get around the Microsoft account thing.

Group Policies

You don't have to know much about them, these are just a bunch of specific settings for what your computer can or can't do that lets you decide how it works in different ways.

I'm gonna show you how to turn off the recommendations and internet stuff basically. For now bring up search and type gpedit, pick this

It'll open up to Local Group Policy Editor and we can get started :3c

Start Recommendations

In the side menu, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar. Click on Settings to sort them with all the "Turn off" ones bumped to the top.

Here's what you should set:

Turn off user tracking: enabled

Turn off feature advertisement balloon notifications: enabled

Remove Recommended section from Start Menu: enabled

Remove Personalized Website Recommendations from the Recommended section in the Start Menu: enabled

Do not search Internet: enabled

Windows Spotlight

Back in the side menu, go down to Windows Components > Cloud Content

Turn off all Windows spotlight features: enabled

Do not use diagnostic data for tailored experiences: enabled

Cortana

In the side menu, this one's back at the top under Computer Configuration. You're gonna want to go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search

Allow Cortana: disabled

Don't search the web or display web results in Search: enabled

News and Interests

In the side menu go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests.

Enable news and interests on the taskbar: disabled

Microsoft Account Login Nudges

When you don't use a Microsoft account they'll nudge you repeatedly to sign in so you can "get the most out of your experience" *gag*. The group policy for turning that off has a note that suggests it might not work with Windows 11 though (implicitly), so you can close the group policy editor window now and for this last one let's just open up the regular settings.

Go to System > Notifications > Additional settings, then uncheck all the boxes. And there ya go! (✿◠‿◠)ﾉ u are done.

Group policies are kind of a rabbit hole so while there is a lot more you could change or read into, for your own sanity's sake I would advise against it and say call it a day lol

meckamecha

This is all extremely good information, thank you very much for the addition!

shrimpblaster

I endorse this as an IT technician. I do this to every new Win11 device I set up.

As a bonus, run Chris Titus Tech's debloat tool on it.

Having Fun with Technology

It allows you to add tools, remove/disable shitty parts of windows, and easily change some settings. My default is running the preset for a desktop/laptop and applying security update settings, but there are so many options to customize. I used it on my personal laptop.

sluttyquarantinetheory

"I hate the fade." "I hate the deep roads." Well I hate fucking Denerim. Run around getting jumped every four minutes. There's a fucking plague nobody is dealing with. Some blind templar is the only one doing his job. Terrible layout. Ass of a city.

housederiva

Looks like somebody didn’t get fine dwarven crafts direct from orzammar the last time they were in the city

aropride

i get what dads r talking abt when they say theyre “just resting their eyes” this shit is awesome

bogleech

Animation unions are calling for a Laika boycott due to unsafe working conditions and sleazy hiring practices (like firing full time crew just to rehire as temps for less pay and benefits), apparently they also take the Amazon approach of treating workers like inhuman machines.

gamesception

Will Vinton brought clay to life with characters like the California Raisins and the Noid -- until Nike billionaire Phil Knight stepped in a

bogleech

Yeah here's another even better article about Laika's "founding."

The short version is that the family who runs Nike (the shoes) had a son with no talents or skills of his own so they helped Will Vinton studios financially under the stipulation they give their son a job. Then they eventually owned enough of the company to make him the boss, he fired Vinton, renamed the studio, and he's still the guy in charge of Laika to this day.

I first learned this some ten years ago, and then I moved to Portland, the actual location of all this. A lot of artists and such in this city still remember all this going down; the owner of the Peculiarium even worked under Vinton, and he still detests Laika and the Shoe Boy.

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