ive seen hell it resides in my mind

Melli | AO3 is ImaginativeAndArgumentative | i have series called #mellisfunideas thats just prompts, headcanons, ideas that i've developed but you're free to use

[beardedmrbean]

[enki2]

[thebdelliumlady]

For anyone wondering, the PhD student's name is Myra Cheng.

Here's a link to an article about the study from the Stanford Report: link.

[chapscher]

Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.

Myra Cheng et al. "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence." Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[santhipoma]

[mellifluousoctopus]

Dog I am so tired of writing cover letters.

This job didnt even tell me what job/department I'd be doing How the fuck am I suppose to beg for a job and tell the clerk that I might be vagrant but I's still got integrity for as long as I am ins town and denying my wolvish brothers out by the milage post on the trail. I do sir. And I cant prove it, but I promise I wont give you no trouble if you give me a chance, lifting your millet bags to the patrons carts. I will do right by the half penny you'll give me for the fortnight. I wont bother you neither. Silent as a mouse, I am, quiet as my aunt Beatrice wanted me to be on sunday mornin. I don't talk to her on the account of the house fire she set, but I keep true to my word and respect my elders when they call

[natalieironside]

"'I don't know' isn't an answer" alright man then I'll just. Fuckin. Enter my philosophical mind-palace and check the fuckin akashic records. Real quick lemme just catch and cook and eat the Salmon of All Knowledge. Tell me ur question again so I can real quick climb to the highest branches of the Yggdrasil and lay it at the feet of Freda the all-wise Queen of Heaven. Dickhead.

[mellifluousoctopus]

'You can't just guess and assume if you don't know'

Fucker, you just told me not to.

I dug in the deep earth to recover a relic of logic, for your asswipe existence. I handed you the remains with the merit that my fruit of labor to your ungrateful ass was chimeric products of observation and prior knowledge with no complaints. And you have the gall to answer blankly no?

If my postulations are not to your standard then remove the stick from your ass and improve them. Whine to the heavenly Lord about bullshit for all I care I cannot hang over heaven while you poison Socrates and tell me I'd better be the fool.

[nikoisme]

i imagine being medicated would feel good as fuck. unfortunately i have to rawdog whatever's wrong with me

[animentality]

[animentality]

[rederiswrites]

Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

It's rude.

[dataandphilosophy]

“For example, if you’re trying to convince people to boycott a segregated store, your object is to convince them that boycotting the store will have a strategic effect, not that desegregation is morally important. For whatever reason, on a cognitive level human beings have a really hard time with this. Smucker cites an example of a Lefty roleplaying session where people were tasked with selling an action to people who agreed with them on principle but didn’t see the strategic merit of the action. Surprisingly, the sellers couldn’t make the conceptual switch to sell strategic merit: instead, they doubled down on THIS ISSUE IS IMPORTANT — even though it had been stressed to them that the people they were selling to bought into the importance of the issue. People react poorly to “this is important, so do WHATEVER I SAY”; they want to be convinced that what you’re proposing will work.”

Source.

[myfootyrthroat]

Also from above:

“Bob Wing, a grassroots organizer, explains this nicely: “If winning feels impossible, then righteousness can seem like the next best thing.” But righteousness is not conducive to getting normies to join your team if your team cannot demonstrate ability to, at least sometimes, win. Nor does righteousness help you make real inroads with regular people.”

[bbcwhereareyou]

Somewhat related, my favorite comic strip of all time:

[mellifluousoctopus]

Google Gemini ad where people ask how to make a host spread and then ask for the contents of the results it provided 🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩🫩 Babe just look up a picture

[mellifluousoctopus]

RIP Bill Cipher you would have such complicated emotions about RNA stem loops

[mellifluousoctopus]

What was I on? I don't even remember enough about Stem Loops to know what I was trying to say

[matchadolly]

girlie that's not a random headache u are dehydrated malnourished over caffeinated over stressed and sleep deprived

[calciumcryptid]

I feel like a lot of people get "All Art is Political" confused with "All Art is made with Political Intentions" which is not the same.

[northstareclipse]

Hyper-individualist cultures go, “Your emotions are your personal responsibility. Don’t burden others. Regulate privately. Maintain functionality. If you’re upset, process it offstage so the machine keeps moving.” Meanwhile certain collectivist or harmony-focused frameworks go, “Your emotions disrupt group cohesion. Don’t create discomfort. Don’t impose disharmony. Transcend or contain your reactions for the sake of the whole.”

Different mythology, same trembling fear that one person saying “actually, I feel terrible” will cause civilization to peel apart like wet drywall.

[tall]

[mellifluousoctopus]

What you fail to understand is that 2026 hasn't happened yet 2025 was last year 2024 is this year 2023 is tomorrow 2020 was two years ago 2016 was 4 years ago and 2017 is over a decade old