Mold Transcendence

[iwait4youalexg]

Oh!

[doh007]

Thank you all, i needed further explanation - And i do find it might help me!

[elwenyere]

-- Ted Chiang, from "Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art"

[oldshrewsburyian]

I'm so glad they got Ted Chiang -- a wonderful writer of science fiction and thinker about technology, in my opinion -- to write this essay. My favorite line was this:

Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.

[chillyfeetsteak]

from this article, which is well worth the read, if only for the fun of seeing zuck get dunked on

[purplejabberwock]

My bestie's tags

[homoquartz]

i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.

[owlskitten]

When I was a kid and would go hiking with my dad and sibling on vacation, every time we would pass another group, my dad would do the smile and nod and “hey”. And then after we’d turned a corner, he would say more quietly, “I must make friendly social noises so they do not eat my young” and my sib and I would crack up laughing.

Gotta remember that we’re mammals under it all.

[danshive]

In science fiction, AIs tend to malfunction due to some technicality of logic, such as that business with the laws of robotics and an AI reaching a dramatic, ironic conclusion.

Content regulation algorithms tell me that sci-fi authors are overly generous in these depictions.

“Why did cop bot arrest that nice elderly woman?”

“It insists she’s the mafia.”

“It thinks she’s in the mafia?”

“No. It thinks she’s an entire crime family. It filled out paperwork for multiple separate arrests after bringing her in.”

[dexer-von-dexer]

I have to comment on this because this is touching on something I see a lot of people (including Tumblr staff and everyone else who uses these kind of deep learning systems willy-nilly like this) don’t quite get: “Deep Reinforcement Learning” AI like these engage with reality in a fundamentally different way from humans. I see some people testing the algorithm and seeing where the “line” is, wondering whether it looks for things like color gradients, skin tone pixels, certain shapes, curves, or what have you. All of these attempts to understand the algorithm fail because there is nothing to understand. There is no line, because there is no logic. You will never be able to pin down the “criteria” the algorithm uses to identify content, because the algorithm does not use logic at all to identify anything, only raw statistical correlations on top of statistical correlations on top of statistical correlations. There is no thought, no analysis, no reasoning. It does all its tasks through sheer unconscious intuition. The neural network is a shambling sleepwalker. It is madness incarnate. It knows nothing of human concepts like reason. It will think granny is the mafia.

This is why a lot of people say AI are so dangerous. Not because they will one day wake up and be conscious and overthrow humanity, but that they (or at least this type of AI) are not and never will be conscious, and yet we’re relying on them to do things that require such human characteristics as logic and any sort of thought process whatsoever. Humans have a really bad tendency to anthropomorphize, and we’d like to think the AI is “making decisions” or “thinking,” but the truth is that what it’s doing is fundamentally different from either of those things. What we see as, say, a field of grass, a neural network may see as a bus stop. Not because there is actually a bus stop there, or that anything in the photo resembles a bus stop according to our understanding, but because the exact right pixels in the photo were shaded in the exact right way so that they just so happened to be statistically correlated with the arbitrary functions it created when it was repeatedly exposed to pictures of bus stops over and over. It doesn’t know what grass is, what a bus stop is, but it sure as hell will say with 99.999% certainty that one is in fact the other, for reasons you can’t understand, and will drive your automated bus off the road and into a ditch because of this undetectable statistical overlap. Because a few pixels were off in just the right way in just the right places and it got really, really confused for a second.

There, I even caught myself using the word “confused” to describe it. That’s not right, because “confused” is a human word. What’s happening with the AI is something we don’t have the language to describe.

Anyway what’s more, this sort of trickery can be mimicked. A human wouldn’t be able to figure it out, but another neural network can easily guess the statistical filters it uses to identify things and figure out how to alter images with some white noise in exactly the right way to make the algorithm think it’s actually something else. It’ll still look like the original image, just with some pixelated artifacts, but the algorithm will see it as something completely different. This is what’s known as a “single pixel attack.” I am fairly confident porn bot creators might end up cracking the content flagging algorithm and start putting up some weirdly pixelated porn anyway, and all of this will be in vain. All because Tumblr staff decided to rely on content moderation via slot machine.

TL;DR bots are illogical because they’re actually unknowable eldritch horrors made of spreadsheets and we don’t know how to stop them or how they got here, send help

[tsunderebot]

Having been to several talks on modern ai I can confirm

[maxofs2d]

I always think of this tweet when I see people praising machine learning and the new kinds of AI as a panacea.

[fatliberation]

they have a point though. you wouldn't need everyone to accommodate you if you just lost weight, but you're too lazy to stick to a healthy diet and exercise. it's that simple. I'd like to see you back up your claims, but you have no proof. you have got to stop lying to yourselves and face the facts

Must I go through this again? Fine. FINE. You guys are working my nerves today. You want to talk about facing the facts? Let's face the fucking facts.

In 2022, the US market cap of the weight loss industry was $75 billion [1, 3]. In 2021, the global market cap of the weight loss industry was estimated at $224.27 billion [2]. 

In 2020, the market shrunk by about 25%, but rebounded and then some since then [1, 3] By 2030, the global weight loss industry is expected to be valued at $405.4 billion [2]. If diets really worked, this industry would fall overnight. 

1. LaRosa, J. March 10, 2022. "U.S. Weight Loss Market Shrinks by 25% in 2020 with Pandemic, but Rebounds in 2021." Market Research Blog. 2. Staff. February 09, 2023. "[Latest] Global Weight Loss and Weight Management Market Size/Share Worth." Facts and Factors Research. 3. LaRosa, J. March 27, 2023. "U.S. Weight Loss Market Partially Recovers from the Pandemic." Market Research Blog.

Over 50 years of research conclusively demonstrates that virtually everyone who intentionally loses weight by manipulating their eating and exercise habits will regain the weight they lost within 3-5 years. And 75% will actually regain more weight than they lost [4].

4. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A.J., Westling, E., Lew, A.M., Samuels, B., Chatman, J. (2007). "Medicare’s Search For Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not The Answer." The American Psychologist, 62, 220-233. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Apr. 2007.

The annual odds of a fat person attaining a so-called “normal” weight and maintaining that for 5 years is approximately 1 in 1000 [5].

5. Fildes, A., Charlton, J., Rudisill, C., Littlejohns, P., Prevost, A.T., & Gulliford, M.C. (2015). “Probability of an Obese Person Attaining Normal Body Weight: Cohort Study Using Electronic Health Records.” American Journal of Public Health, July 16, 2015: e1–e6.

Doctors became so desperate that they resorted to amputating parts of the digestive tract (bariatric surgery) in the hopes that it might finally result in long-term weight-loss. Except that doesn’t work either. [6] And it turns out it causes death [7],  addiction [8], malnutrition [9], and suicide [7].

6. Magro, Daniéla Oliviera, et al. “Long-Term Weight Regain after Gastric Bypass: A 5-Year Prospective Study - Obesity Surgery.” SpringerLink, 8 Apr. 2008. 7. Omalu, Bennet I, et al. “Death Rates and Causes of Death After Bariatric Surgery for Pennsylvania Residents, 1995 to 2004.” Jama Network, 1 Oct. 2007.  8. King, Wendy C., et al. “Prevalence of Alcohol Use Disorders Before and After Bariatric Surgery.” Jama Network, 20 June 2012.  9. Gletsu-Miller, Nana, and Breanne N. Wright. “Mineral Malnutrition Following Bariatric Surgery.” Advances In Nutrition: An International Review Journal, Sept. 2013.

Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function [10].

10. Tomiyama, A Janet, et al. “Long‐term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health?” Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6 July 2017.

Prescribed weight loss is the leading predictor of eating disorders [11].

11. Patton, GC, et al. “Onset of Adolescent Eating Disorders: Population Based Cohort Study over 3 Years.” BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 20 Mar. 1999.

The idea that “obesity” is unhealthy and can cause or exacerbate illnesses is a biased misrepresentation of the scientific literature that is informed more by bigotry than credible science [12]. 

12. Medvedyuk, Stella, et al. “Ideology, Obesity and the Social Determinants of Health: A Critical Analysis of the Obesity and Health Relationship” Taylor & Francis Online, 7 June 2017.

“Obesity” has no proven causative role in the onset of any chronic condition [13, 14] and its appearance may be a protective response to the onset of numerous chronic conditions generated from currently unknown causes [15, 16, 17, 18].

13. Kahn, BB, and JS Flier. “Obesity and Insulin Resistance.” The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Aug. 2000. 14. Cofield, Stacey S, et al. “Use of Causal Language in Observational Studies of Obesity and Nutrition.” Obesity Facts, 3 Dec. 2010.  15. Lavie, Carl J, et al. “Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease: Risk Factor, Paradox, and Impact of Weight Loss.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 26 May 2009.  16. Uretsky, Seth, et al. “Obesity Paradox in Patients with Hypertension and Coronary Artery Disease.” The American Journal of Medicine, Oct. 2007.  17. Mullen, John T, et al. “The Obesity Paradox: Body Mass Index and Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Nonbariatric General Surgery.” Annals of Surgery, July 2005. 18. Tseng, Chin-Hsiao. “Obesity Paradox: Differential Effects on Cancer and Noncancer Mortality in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.” Atherosclerosis, Jan. 2013.

Fatness was associated with only 1/3 the associated deaths that previous research estimated and being “overweight” conferred no increased risk at all, and may even be a protective factor against all-causes mortality relative to lower weight categories [19].

19. Flegal, Katherine M. “The Obesity Wars and the Education of a Researcher: A Personal Account.” Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 15 June 2021.

Studies have observed that about 30% of so-called “normal weight” people are “unhealthy” whereas about 50% of so-called “overweight” people are “healthy”. Thus, using the BMI as an indicator of health results in the misclassification of some 75 million people in the United States alone [20]. 

20. Rey-López, JP, et al. “The Prevalence of Metabolically Healthy Obesity: A Systematic Review and Critical Evaluation of the Definitions Used.” Obesity Reviews : An Official Journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 15 Oct. 2014.

While epidemiologists use BMI to calculate national obesity rates (nearly 35% for adults and 18% for kids), the distinctions can be arbitrary. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health lowered the overweight threshold from 27.8 to 25—branding roughly 29 million Americans as fat overnight—to match international guidelines. But critics noted that those guidelines were drafted in part by the International Obesity Task Force, whose two principal funders were companies making weight loss drugs [21].

21. Butler, Kiera. “Why BMI Is a Big Fat Scam.” Mother Jones, 25 Aug. 2014. 

Body size is largely determined by genetics [22].

22. Wardle, J. Carnell, C. Haworth, R. Plomin. “Evidence for a strong genetic influence on childhood adiposity despite the force of the obesogenic environment” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 87, No. 2, Pages 398-404, February 2008.

Healthy lifestyle habits are associated with a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index [23].  

23. Matheson, Eric M, et al. “Healthy Lifestyle Habits and Mortality in Overweight and Obese Individuals.” Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 25 Feb. 2012.

Weight stigma itself is deadly. Research shows that weight-based discrimination increases risk of death by 60% [24].

24. Sutin, Angela R., et al. “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality .” Association for Psychological Science, 25 Sept. 2015.

Fat stigma in the medical establishment [25] and society at large arguably [26] kills more fat people than fat does [27, 28, 29].

25. Puhl, Rebecca, and Kelly D. Bronwell. “Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity.” Obesity Research, 6 Sept. 2012. 26. Engber, Daniel. “Glutton Intolerance: What If a War on Obesity Only Makes the Problem Worse?” Slate, 5 Oct. 2009.  27. Teachman, B. A., Gapinski, K. D., Brownell, K. D., Rawlins, M., & Jeyaram, S. (2003). Demonstrations of implicit anti-fat bias: The impact of providing causal information and evoking empathy. Health Psychology, 22(1), 68–78. 28. Chastain, Ragen. “So My Doctor Tried to Kill Me.” Dances With Fat, 15 Dec. 2009. 29. Sutin, Angelina R, Yannick Stephan, and Antonio Terraciano. “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality.” Psychological Science, 26 Nov. 2015.

There's my "proof." Where is yours?

[vaspider]

I have told this story over and over again, but it bears repeating:

In 2011 or so, I started having intense pain in my legs and feet. I was sent to an orthopedic surgeon. He said, "This pain is because you are fat. Go on this diet and lose weight."

I went on the diet. I ate 1300 calories a day. I exercised until I literally couldn't stand up.

1300 calories a day is what a healthy toddler should eat. I was 34 years old. I was starving, in excruciating pain. I was angry and hungry and hurting. I really don't envy anyone who had to deal with me.

Oh yeah: and I didn't lose any real weight, no matter how hard I worked and how scrupulously I followed the diet.

By 2013, when - shockingly - I had ruined my muscle tone and was still in incredible pain, I got to a point where I couldn't walk to the bathroom at work without help. I missed my kid's chorus concerts bc I couldn't sit in uncomfortable chairs after suffering all day. And I still hadn't lost any real weight.

"Isn't there anything else this could be?" I asked.

He refused to run other tests. "You just need to lose the weight."

Two years this had gone on, and I was still in pain. Still missing out on my life. Still missing out on Cat's life, on moments I couldn't ever get back.

My partner finally got fed up and dragged me to another doctor. Dragged me back to our family doctor and told her what was going on.

She took one look at me - literally, she touched my feet once - and said, "This guy is an idiot."

Two days later, an MRI found a 2.5 cm mass adhered to the sheath of my spinal cord, compressing my spinal cord against the inside of my spine. Three days after that, I was told it was most likely malignant.

It wasn't. I was lucky. It was a benign mass, removed May 9th, 2013.

Since then, I've been diagnosed with diabetes and celiac disease, both of which my doctors think come from the bodily trauma that this all put me through - that genetic predisposition got kicked into overdrive by either the trauma of starving myself for two years or surgery. We can't be sure if it's the starvation or the surgery that did it.

We can, however, be very, very sure that the disordered eating that I have struggled with for the last 12 years comes directly from a doctor who looked at me and said, "You should starve yourself," and only saw fat, not a person.

I'm very, very lucky that it wasn't actually cancer. I know more than one person who wasn't that lucky. Some of them (z''l) have died.

Medical fatphobia fucking kills.

[approaching-the-scrungularity-d]

I think I may never be sad ever again. There is a statue entitled "Farewell to Orpheus" on my college campus. It's been there since 1968, created by a Prof. Frederic Littman that use to work at the university. It sits in the middle of a fountain, and the fountain is often full of litter. I have taken it upon myself to clean the litter out when I see it (the skimmers only come by once a week at max). But because of my style of dress, this means that bystanders see a twenty-something on their hands and knees at the edge of the fountain, sleeves rolled up, trying not to splash dirty water on their slacks while their briefcase and suit coat sit nearby. This is fine, usually. But today was Saturday Market, which means the twenty or so people in the area suddenly became hundreds. So, obviously, somebody stopped to ask what I was doing. "This," I gestured at the statue, "is Eurydice. She was the wife of Orpheus, the greatest storyteller in Greece. And this litter is disrespectful." Then, on a whim, I squinted up at them. "Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?" "No," they replied, shifting slightly to sit.

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.

Here is the aforementioned statue, by the way.

[infectiouspiss]

you have to stay alive. you're going to be such a beautiful middle aged freak. young freaks will see you in the street and know that things can be okay.

[iwritebigbellies-blog]

I was 22 when I got my first bookstore job, and at the time my entire experience of "old people" was my grandparents, none of whom had been particularly healthy, and none of whom I was close with. To my young eyes, all they did was sit around and be old. That was life after 60.

The owner of the bookstore was this grand old dame of 76 who had been in the business for 40 years. She'd had three kids with a husband who was extremely gay, and as soon as those were old enough, they split up. She read on an epic scale, was an avid follower of the opera, sang in several choirs, and scheduled arts programming for a private club. She had gentleman callers (so they styled themselves) at the store continuously the entire fifteen years I worked there--yah, into her NINETIES. She never took up seriously with any of them, because they couldn't keep up. She was impeccably dressed and put together every single day of her life, drank regularly, and said they would pry her estrogen supplements out of her cold, dead hands. She had a gang of elderly single lady friends, though, and they went out every night of the week. They knew everything and everyone, collectively. She got her first smart phone in her mid-80s and became extremely Online. I bet she's on Tumblr now. She is 96.

This blew my mind. Life didn't have to be over...ever.

We worship youth in our culture. Only the young have futures, and the aged exist to enable the lives of the young. We act as if by the time you hit forty, you've had your chance. You are now expected to step aside and scede life to others.

FUCK THAT. I have a lot of life ahead of me. I have places to go and books to read and people to fuck and food to eat and music to dance to and emotions to feel and nazis to punch and stories to tell and hearts to break and ventures to capitalize and empires to conquer. I am going to be doing this for the next fifty years, minimum.

Life has so much in it. Do it all, forever.

[mycroftrh]

I think a lot of autistic taking-things-literally goes under the radar because what the diagnostic tests and shit ask about is not what that generally looks like in an adult and often not in kids either and much more importantly it’s not what generally actually causes problems in real life instead of being irritating for caretakers or funny to bullies or easy to diagnose

I have absolutely no issues understanding metaphors or idioms. When someone says their heart is on their sleeve they mean they’re emotionally expressive and openly display their feelings, not that they have a chunk of cardiac tissue on their shirt. I very rarely have issues with sarcasm. I sometimes have issues telling when someone who’s said something mean is about to say “just kidding”, but tbh I think that’s more on them than me.

BUT

My grandmother asked me “Do you know when the trash was taken out last?” and I said “I think Eliot took it out yesterday” and a few hours later she yelled at me for “not taking out the trash when I asked you to” and I was like???? You didn’t ask me????

I dread filling out forms and am crap at filling out diagnostic tests or personality quizzes because there are always questions I don’t know the exact answers to (how am I supposed to know what day I got dental surgery seven years ago?) or don’t understand exactly what they’re asking or the wording’s unclear and they could mean this or the wording says this but I’m pretty sure what they actually meant was that and should I answer what they said or what they meant, and how does everyone else just whip through the form? Does everyone else remember the day they got dental surgery seven years ago? Does everyone else somehow understand all these questions?

I get tangled up by bureaucracy because the rules on the website say that for this you need that and for that you need the other and for the other you need something else for which you need the first thing, and I go in circles for hours or days or weeks or months or years because their stated rules say there is no way to get what I need, and when I talk to somebody else they’re like “just call them?” and I’m like “how could that help? the rules say that what I’m trying to do is impossible”

And all of that? That’s how “taking things literally” ACTUALLY affects your life as an adult. It’s not “haha you think ‘getting under your skin’ means parasites”. It’s “you have real difficulty functioning in the world because everyone else is conveying things through implication and assuming that you know that rules are flexible and questions are approximate and you’re supposed to lie on job applications and ‘it’s required’ means ‘it’s preferred’, and you don’t”.

[what-even-is-thiss]

The reason I’m not an anarchist is that in the centuries before the Americans with disabilities act people could have all installed safe wheelchair ramps in all of their buildings and they didn’t.

If you’re trying to make a system that relies on people being nice I’m not gonna go with it.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Some things

No I don’t hate anarchists. Despite largely disagreeing with them I think some of their ideas are worth looking at

Yes I’m pro-union and pro organizing

No im not a capitalist or fascist

I know more about anarchism than a lot of you seem to think I do

The way some of you describe anarchism to me just looks like the political structure of Switzerland actually

Tribal societies do participate in warfare and social higherarchies

I’m still not anarchist after all of your explanations and I stand by what I said because like I said above I know more about anarchism than a lot of you seem to think I do

Some of the way y’all describe how justice would work in an anarchist society just sounds like lynch mobs

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#you. you keep talking#whenever someones entire plan for an entire country is “People will be benevolent” i refuse to take them seriously#anarchism

👍 The people in your anarchy are the same people as the ones in your democracy. They're not just the four people you get along with at your anarchist food kitchen (which is great! Keep running that food kitchen!), they're also everyone else currently under the government you want to remove. If your community isn't benevolent and wise and pro-active enough to bring in your oppression-free and resource-abundant utopia with a democracy then they're sure as fuck not going to do it with anarchy.

What they're likely to do with no government is what humanity has always done every time they have no government in a group too large for everyone to know each other really well, which is form a government. Which if you're really, really lucky, will be closer to the 'democracy' end of capacity-for-oppression than the 'dictatorship' end, but there's no guarantee of that.

[problemnyatic]

"Punishment works!!!" We're drowning in three to four generations of people so pants-shittingly terrified of ever being wrong that half of everyone has constructed a worldview wherein they never even consider the possibility that they could be wrong and the other half behaves like one wrong move will make anything or anyone explode violently into a million irreperable pieces. I don't think it works guys

[problemnyatic]

I know this might be a bold take but maybe teaching everyone from a young age that ever making a mistake will be met with unimaginable pain and misery doesn't actually encourage learning or correct behavior. If anything it creates a sense of terror so powerful it completely suffocates curiosity and exploration, thus leading to people knowing absolutely nothing but whatever is brought directly to them, which is a big problem in a world where information is so tightly controlled that a very small number of very powerful people basically have complete power over what people see and hear on a day-to-day basis when not actively seeking new and rigorously verified information from diverse and trustworthy sources.

[problemnyatic]

if any of this sounds like you, start by looking up the definition of words you've heard and are pretty sure you know what they mean, but haven't actually double-checked for yourself. Just like, whenever it occurs to you. Great first step

[problemnyatic]

This post goes out to the "we need to bring back bullying" crowd. Just because you aren't hitting someone physically doesn't mean you aren't being punitive. Maybe it isn't actually healthy to believe it's necessary to harass and humiliate anyone who makes you upset or uncomfortable. That sounds like a you problem actually.

[problemnyatic]

Anyways, breaking the cycle of abuse starts with you and how you treat yourself. You have to give yourself grace and room for error or you'll never be able to cultivate a healthier mindset than your trauma left you with. It's not easy, but you have to trust yourself that whatever seems kinder than however you usually treat yourself is probably a good enough start. Doesn't need to be perfect, doesn't need to be The Correct Answer, just needs to be a step in the right direction, y'know? We'll figure out the details along the way.

[complainblogforthevoid]

I've finally figured out an argument that convinces coding tech-bros that AI art is bad.

Got into a discussion today (actually a discussion, we were both very reasonable and calm even through I felt like committing violence) with a tech-bro-coded lady who claimed that people use AI in coding all the time so she didn't see why it mattered if people used AI in art.

Obviously I repressed the surge of violence because that would accomplish nothing. Plus, this lady is very articulate, the type who makes claims and you sit there thinking no that's wrong it must be but she said it so well you're kind of just waffling going but, no, wait-- so I knew I had to get this right if I was gonna come out of this unscathed.

The usual arguments about it being about the soul of it and creation fell flat, in fact she was adamant that anyone who believed that was in fact looking down at coding as an art form as she insisted it is. Which, sure, you can totally express yourself through coding. There's a lot more nuance as to the differences but clearly I was not going to win this one.

The other people I was with (literally 8 people anti-ai against her, but you can't change the mind of someone who doesn't want to listen and she just kept accusing us of devaluing coding as an art) took over for I kid you not 15 minutes while I tried desperately to come up with a clear and articulate way to explain the difference to her. They tried so many reasonable arguments, coding being for a function ("what, art doesn't serve a function?") coding being many discrete building blocks that you put together differently, and the AI simply provides the blocks and you put it together yourself ("isn't that what prompt building is") that it's bad for the environment ("but not if it's used for capitalism, hm?" "Yeah literally that's how capitalism works it doesn't care about the environment" she didn't like that response)

But I finally got it.

And the answer is: It's not about what you do, it's about what you claim to be.

Imagine that someone asks an AI to write a code and, by some miracle, it works perfectly without them having to tweak it---which is great because they couldn't tell you what a single solitary thing in that code means.

Now imagine this person, with their code that they don't know how it works, goes and applies to be a coder somewhere, presenting this AI code as proof that they're qualified.

Should they be hired?

She was horrified, of course. Of course they shouldn't be. They're not qualified. They can't actually code, and even if by some miracle they did have an AI successfully write a flawless code for every issue they came across that wouldn't be their code, you could hire any shmuck on the street to do that, no reason to pay someone like they're creating something.

When actual engineers use AI what they do is get some kind of base, which they then go though and check for problems and then if they find any they fix them, and add on to the base code with their own knowledge instead of just trying different prompt after prompt until they randomly come across one that works.

People who generate code like this don't usually call themselves engineers. They're people who needed a bit of code and didn't have the knowledge to generate it, and so used a resource.

And there you go. There are people who have none of the skills of artists, they don't practice, they don't create for themselves. When they feed the prompt to the AI they then don't just use the resulting image as a reference point for their own personal masterpiece, and if they don't like it they don't have the skills to change it---they simply try another prompt, and do that until they get something they like.

These people are calling themselves artists.

Not only that, these people are bringing the AI generated thing to interviews, and they are getting hired, leaving people who slave over their craft out of the job.

And that is the difference, for the tech bros who think AI art isn't a big deal.

[queeranarchism]

I want white men to know that fascists will kill them.

I want ‘apolitical’ white men to know that fascists, once they have complete control of the state, will kill them. This may not seem obvious as fascists usually aren’t talking about killing you and that isn’t among their main intentions. But they will kill you. 

Maybe fascists will kill you because you were disobedient. A fascist regime requires strict unquestioning obedience to an illogical ever changing doctrine that frequently bites its own tail. Maybe you’ll tweet favourably about one prominent fascist and a week later he’ll fall out of favor with fascist leadership and they will kill you. Maybe they will kill you over a thing you put on your facebook ten years ago. Maybe your death will be entirely random. Because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fascist states control their population through terror and random death is part of that terror. 

Maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe you will be completely obedient, consequent in backing the right person as power changes and not a target of random state violence. In that case fascism will still kill you. 

You see, fascism loves nothing more than war. Fascism views war as an act that makes men ‘noble’. Fascism wants nothing more than to send it’s young white men off to to fight its dreamed of ‘Total War’. No really, total war is one of the ideals of fascism. And when the young white men run out, fascism will send the older men and the children and eventually it’s entire population. And since fascism values war above all else and hardly values human life, it will not hesitate to spill your blood needlessly. In 1939 there were in Germany roughly 34 million German white men who did not belong to any targetted minority group. In 1945 roughly 5 million of these were German white men dead. Do those sound like good odds to you?

Fascism, once in power, will kill you. Now that you know this, you can prevent it by making sure fascists do not get state control and by pushing back what power they already have. Targetted minorities have been pointing out the dangers of fascism for a long time. It’s time you started listening to them. They’re fighting for your lives too. 

[howieduet]

Honestly I find this baffling about fascists. How do they feel safe supporting a movement with a history of turning on former supporters as soon as it’s in power?

[bluejaysfeathers]

Okay this is actually pretty valuable to understand, and it boils down to a few options

They don’t know. Never underestimate people’s ability to not know stuff. Maybe they had bad teachers, maybe they were sick that week, maybe they were sat next to the guy who never shut up and just didn’t absorb anything.

They do know and think it can’t happen to them. Maybe they’ve bought into the lie that the Glorious Leader cares about them personally and would never turn on them. Maybe they think they’re special enough to avoid being turned on. Maybe they did learn some surface level information about historical fascism but think they know how to fix it so that THIS time will be different.

They know it can happen, and they understand it will happen, and they’re going along for other reasons. This most often (but not exclusively) applies to people in dependent positions such as children/teens, who may go along with something because sure the fascism will kill them eventually, but the fascist with direct power over them will kill them today if they resist.

Crucially, I’m not saying any of these are right, or justified, or whatever else. You have to decide that for yourself, and you probably won’t find a one size fits all answer. But it’s hard to get people to change if you don’t understand how they got the way they are now.

[queeranarchism]

In my experience most people don’t know this stuff. Fascism and how it operates is not a well-understood concept by the public because nazism and the Holocaust gets separated from the rest of history and treated as something that must never be compared to anything else.

I’d also add a 4th:

They think they’re not fascists. Most Trump supporters right now still don’t think of themselves as fascists. Neither do most supporters of the AfD, PVV, Reform UK party, etc. They clearly are fascists but they sleep at night by telling themselves that they’re not, that this is something different, that they’re the good kind of ultra-nationalist white supremacist authoritarian. And if you don’t think you’re a fascist, then none of fascist history seems to apply to you.

oh and bonus:

They think they’re going to be the one doing the purging, stabbing the inferior party members in the back, sending others to war, etc. Fascism is a supremacy ideology, and if you believe that you’re the best of the best at everything, it makes sense to believe that you’ll end up on top every time.

[technofeudalism]

this is one of the first posts i’ve seen on tumblr recently that actually bothers to outline the reason that these people are the way that they are that doesn’t fall back on “they are evil demons from the bad place.” your ideology or world view isn’t born with you. it’s shaped by both your material conditions and your genetic traits. no one starts life as an evil person. it’s the world around you, the struggles you face, the decisions you’ve made or have been forced to make and the systems you live under that mold who you become.

[glorioustidalwavedefendor]

They think they’re going to be the one doing the purging, stabbing the inferior party members in the back, sending others to war, etc. Fascism is a supremacy ideology, and if you believe that you’re the best of the best at everything, it makes sense to believe that you’ll end up on top every time.

Oh, you beautifull, tall, white, blond, blue eyed, musclular, ablebodied, straight, cis-man will do teh purging and teh stabing

And then you will gleefully and willingly throw yourself in to the meatgrinder of fascism

Becasue you chose to

“Everybody is educated to become a hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

Yes you beautifull, tall, white, blond, blue eyed, musclular, ablebodied, straight, cis-man you will die far from home, with a cheap medall pinned to your lapell

Red Army soldiers in a trench near the corpse of a German soldier, still wearing an Iron Cross, 1942

You will die far from home and no one will stand at your grave because no one will even know where you are

Corpses of German soldiers at a collection point after the Battle of Stalingrad, February 1943

[thoughtportal]

[snowie-skyes]

“If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” is a quote from Joseph Goebbels, a high ranking Nazi during the Holocaust.

[sreegs]

One of the common mistakes I see for people relying on "AI" (LLMs and image generators) is that they think the AI they're interacting with is capable of thought and reason. It's not. This is why using AI to write essays or answer questions is a really bad idea because it's not doing so in any meaningful or thoughtful way. All it's doing is producing the statistically most likely expected output to the input.

This is why you can ask ChatGPT "is mayonnaise a palindrome?" and it will respond "No it's not." but then you ask "Are you sure? I think it is" and it will respond "Actually it is! Mayonnaise is spelled the same backward as it is forward"

All it's doing is trying to sound like it's providing a correct answer. It doesn't actually know what a palindrome is even if it has a function capable of checking for palindromes (it doesn't). It's not "Artificial Intelligence" by any meaning of the term, it's just called AI because that's a discipline of programming. It doesn't inherently mean it has intelligence.

So if you use an AI and expect it to make something that's been made with careful thought or consideration, you're gonna get fucked over. It's not even a quality issue. It just can't consistently produce things of value because there's no understanding there. It doesn't "know" because it can't "know".

[sreegs]

its been just over a year since i posted this and i still encounter people saying things like "i asked chatgpt and..." or "i made this with chatgpt and...". and these arent like teenagers or students they're adult professionals using this shit for their job. i dont know how people live like this

[sreegs]

I don't know how to make this any more clear but if you use ChatGPT to do work you're only hampering yourself.

If you stop using it (or Co-Pilot or any other bullshit AI helper) you will learn and grow more, develop new skills, and become a more valuable employee at work and/or do better at school. There's no shortcut to developing useful skills, you just gotta keep working on it.

[sreegs]

SURPRISE SURPRISE

Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared”

Researchers find that the more people use AI at their job, the less critical thinking they use.

[oldshrewsburyian]

#it is easy to say this now but it was also incredibly easy to say this at the start and at every point along the way ( @qqueenofhades)

[hopepunk-humanity]

“Humans are inherently selfish--" Then why do so many cultures value hospitality, to the point of dictating it in their religions? Why is it so common for hosts to offer their visitors their best food, and as much of it as they can? At some point, multiple cultures decided that they knew what it felt like to be alone and vulnerable, and promised each other to never let those who stay with them feel that way. That doesn't sound very "inherently selfish" to me.

[wolfsteax]

"humans are the plague"

No. Humans are animals as much as the fish and the bear. We are pack animals who have survived by strong bonds and community.

Do not buy the lie that humans are inherently evil. Societies can trick you into believing this, but it's not the truth of humanity.

Humans crave being together, sharing together, and thriving together.

Capitalism just wants you to believe we're destined for selfishness.

[depsidase]

[a-great-immortal]

This is why I get so tired about “whose a real women” and “are transgender people real” and the like because it’s so irrelevant. We have group or people that have an insane suicide rate and we have a solution that reduces that by an insane amount.

No matter how you slice it no theoretical reason nor gender rhetoric can change the gender affirming care is improving more lives than it’ll ever hurt

[aster-is-confused]

i think this belongs here too

all the statistics are massively in favor of gender affirming care no matter how you slice it.

[earhartsease]

the issue is they don't want us happy of course, but we'll be happy anyway in spite of/to spite them

[sapphoandvanzetti]

even if it made people unhappy it would still be their right to do it. being a mormon makes people miserable but they're still allowed.