Stan Ranmaru Kageyama @have-you-considered-bsd - Tumblr Blog

New pinned post because my old was just kinda woefully old

My things I like ->

MCYT, The Amazing Digital Circus, Little Nightmares, Sally Face, Danganronpa, Persona, Pokemon, DDLC, UTDR, MDARC, Zeno Remake, Starlight Express, YTTD, Zero Escape, Deadlock

Blocking ->

I block freely. Most people I've blocked, I've never talked to. If you try to start anything with me, I will just block you. I'm not here to get dragged into discourse.

My tags I use ->

Good post = It's a good post and I like it a lot

Askbox Character Gacha = I went into someone's askbox, dropped a quarter, and they sent an awesome character thing in return. You should look at this

Other ->

This is my first of 26 blogs, of which I only use three consistently. This is one of those three.

I just wanted to add another colour ->

I've always wanted to make a coordinated intro post

#intro post

thoodleoo

several asks in my inbox about the nolan odyssey now that it's out so i will make my One Obligatory Post and so that i can be free to pass through the gate of false dreams and never think about it again

personally i have stopped caring about the movie itself in terms of whether it's a "good" version of the odyssey. there are things i have heard about it that i think are kind of dumb choices to make but i also like my odysseus to suck bigly and unrepentenly and tbh the version of odysseus in my head is not a very homeric one at all! it's more informed by things like the philoctetes and the aeneid because i personally find those depictions more interesting. there are also things i've heard that intrigue me but i refuse to pay money to see this movie

what i find is more important to focus on is the conversations about things like the treatment of shooting locations or the fucking iranian artifacts turned into jewlery for an american actress to wear while the us is actively waging war against iran. just as any ancient telling of odysseus's story, the nolan odyssey does not exist in a vacuum. i'm sure there are interesting things to analyze in the movie as a story but personally the issue that concerns me more is the analysis of this movie as a way for the classics to once again be interpreted and used by someone from a powerful colonizing nation for entertainment while actively appropriating aspects of other cultures. like it feels like heavy handed satire at this point except it's real. if we're going to give this movie critical attention i just think this is more important to think about than whether the movie is "good"

also i think the trojan horse looks dumb as hell and troy 2004 did a way better job at it. which is saying something.

what-even-is-thiss

The reason your snacks are unsatisfying is that you need both carb and protein.

Carb starts your engine, protein keeps it going.

No carb, engine don’t start. No protein, engine dies out fast.

what-even-is-thiss

Easy carb add on:

Fruit (canned or fresh)

Chips

Piece of bread

Popcorn

Crackers

Easy protein add on:

Nuts

Spoonful of nut butter

Cheese

Roasted chickpea snacks

Glass of milk (dairy or non dairy)

Small canned sausages or similar

what-even-is-thiss

Sugar in there.

what-even-is-thiss

I am pleased by people messaging me telling me that after adding a carb or protein to their snacks or meals they feel more satisfied all day. Yes, my plan is working. People are getting through their days with less hangry.

goodluckdetective

So Hank Green got caught using AI and it’s a whole huge blow up, and I really don’t have much interest in adding to the pile on.

However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”

Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”

The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.

And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.

And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.

Anyway, my main thought here is you are not smart enough to outwit the dopamine machine. It wants your attention and nothing more. Do not assume you can resist just because you know what’s under the hood.

goodluckdetective

Whenever you decide to use a tool, you should consider “what is this tool designed to do” and for LLM’s that answer is “maximize user engagement.” Anything else is in service to that goal.

goodluckdetective

My read of this came from Hank’s own response to the situation which you can find here. I’ve screenshotted the part in particular that drew my attention and spawned this post below:

Obvs, Hank’s situation is not the same as the scenario I laid out but I think the snippet above gets back to my main point which is these tools are built to encourage interaction and that’s a hard thing to avoid, regardless of intentions.

Some other notes:

1. As stated, I don’t bring this up to add to a pile on, just to use this as an example of something I’ve seen happen with folks trying to engage in this tech with an ethical framework. This is because-

2. Frankly, I think shame is a shit motivator. I bring all this up to try to draw attention to something I find under discussed which is what these LLMS are meant to do, and what they are advertised for which are often very separate lists. (I didn’t even get into how they’re meant to train off user data but that’s another can of worms). If you want to discourage AI use, it’s a far better strategy to listen to why the person is engaging with AI and then address that reason.

3. I don’t want to come off as someone trying to scare folks that they’ll get addicted just by touching the stuff: my point is merely that is it critical to know what something is made for before engaging with it. This actually goes for a lot of tech besides AI like Google or social media (which are also designed to 1. Capture your attention and 2. Show you advertisements). AI isn’t a special kind of evil in this way, merely a continuation of a tech trend where a product is sold to a consumer with the goal of the time of the consumer becoming the source of revenue.

4. I have book recs on this topic. As you can guess, this is an academic interest of mine. But that’s another post if folks are interested.