OpenStars

Counterpoint: the rich want to get richer, and the lapdogs want their bribes, and the lazy folks in the middle can only be motivated by fear (not even greed works anymore, e.g. for retirees who already got theirs), so to break out of this cycle would take... ... ...

I have no clue.

On the bright side, Kbin is showing a picture of absolutely gorgeous cherry blossoms 🌸 in the snow for this post. :-P

Human is stressed out bc of the implications the numbers show to the real world (maybe they are trying to solve climate change?).

AI just laughs regardless of what nonsense it spits out - it was built to resemble the form of answers, not actually make them. :-P

It seems difficult to put such people in jail for such "crimes" when for one thing, >40% of Americans think that it was a good thing, and for another thing, several congresspeople have stated that they were there and participated - some even lying about that - as a badge of honor and pride. Truth has gotten "twisted" so that it is not "True" anymore, in some people's minds. Brainwashing techniques - e.g. repeating something ad nauseam so as to bypass the logical thought processes and instill it as "simply a fact" (even/especially when it is no such thing) - are extremely powerful, and I see efforts to use it on both sides of the political divide.

Speaking of, at one point in our history we were Americans first, members of a political party second, but this is no longer true, and nowadays someone's political affiliation is the single greatest defining characteristic of them (that btw is not true - or at least might not be!? - but it seems to be many people's perception in any case:-D).

And therefore, in order to stop the badness that whatever the "other side" will do, yes even murder captured on television apparently can be excused, and even celebrated for just how "peaceful" that protest was, and b/c it was so "peaceful", perhaps it should be done again, around... oh, let's say... the time of the next election maybe?

I guess we will see what happens.

I might be guilty of misinformation here - perhaps it was a forerunner to ChatGPT, or even a different (competing) chatbot entirely, where they would read an answer from the machine before deciding whether to send it on to the end user, whereas the novelty of ChatGPT was in throwing off such shackles present in an older incarnation? I do recall a story along the lines that I mentioned, but I cannot find it now so that lends some credence to that thought. In any case it would have been multiple generations behind the modern ones, so you are correct that it is not so relevant anymore.

Learning about the philosophy of the Stoics (which frankly was not enough for me), plus this quote (which also was not, but the two together... that did help!:-D), something to the effect of: "Strong societies beget weak children, who then grow up to create weak societies, which then beget strong children, who then grow up to create strong societies" - and the cycle continues. i.e., Boomers mainly did not fight in the wars, just grew up hearing how Great America was, without having to experience first-hand the blood, sweat, and tears that made it that way (to the extent that it ever was that way ofc). Well, now things are changing in the direction that they were ALWAYS going to have to changed in - b/c evil people gonna evil it up, no doubts about that - and eventually, sheeple will get sick & tired of being sick & tired and rise up, to change things. Until then, we suffer, but not needlessly.

In other words, we've gone through the stages of denial (climate change / economic downturn / wage slavery / cultural insensitivity / whatever is NOT happening), anger (okay so it's happening but what are you going to do about it), bargaining (he tells it like it is and big daddy will fix everything & make it all great again! ironically this holds true for both Obama and Trump, loathe as I am to have ever uttered such a sentence), and now we are into the depression era.

Next comes acceptance, and that's when the healing - and the beginning of lasting change - can truly start.

Yes, and the fact that the quality suddenly declined awhile back - e.g. that article I linked to explained more - tracks along with those lines as well: when humans were curating the answers it took longer, whereas now the algorithm is unchained, hence able to move faster, and yet with far less accuracy than before.

Absolutely. Though as we were discussing elsewhere in this post, humans can be evil, and selfish, and greedy, and people can literally help bring back slavery rather than force themselves to truly look at it, call it out as "bad", and do something about it.

I somewhat understand the other side of the argument as well - like, if someone was old and just wanted to lie back and enjoy life for awhile (as we all will be someday, unless we die first), then who am I to take action or even desire to stop such a one from doing exactly that? On the other hand, someone who ACTUALLY does that causes little to no harm, whereas someone who does the OPPOSITE of that, e.g. by taking the action to vote - whether at a local school board, or on the state or especially federal level - that is when such a person's rights end, the very moment that they begin to infringe upon the rights of others.

And like, if a child were to take a book out of the library and burn it, wouldn't that child get in trouble? Maybe they would have to pay a fine, perhaps have disciplinary action taken against them such as being suspended, or if mitigating circumstances coexist then at least be sent to counseling? So how much more in trouble should an adult get into, if they likewise burn a book, or maybe... oh... let's say that they lead a violent attempt to overthrow the democratically-elected government, shitting on the constitution and in the process, cause at least one police officer to be killed, brutally, with his screams of agony caught on video - how much should such a person be punished? (That is a trick question obviously, b/c it presumes that "justice" is what is dispensed at all.) Let us call this "individual 1", but moving past that, how much responsibility would a new person hold, let's call them "individual 2" if even AFTER all of that occurred, and I mean it is not secret but rather came to light and was publicly condemned by people in positions of authority everywhere (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, in the Executive, Legislative - both House and Senate - Judicial, as in Supreme Court, DOJ, federal lower courts, etc.), this person (individual 2) actually votes for individual 1?

When we step up to become leaders, then we take on additional responsibility beyond the common man. Voting is similarly a position of responsibility, in determining what will be done in the USA. As people vote - again, whether in small, local matters such as school board issues, or even more so at the larger levels that affect so many more people besides one's own self + family + even neighbors - I would hope that they would remember the lessons of history, so that we do not have to repeat them. However, since that turns out not to be true, it seems that slavery will be coming back... it is here already in fact, in many areas in the south where there are more incarcerated black people than there ever were as slaves, and I am not entirely convinced that everyone in there is fully a "criminal" (maybe, but the systems that push for convictions based on quotas, in those for-profit institutions, lends credence to the thought that not ALL of them are that way...); plus in any case employment seems to be becoming more slave-like all the time, as the "American dream" of potentially owning a home and thereby becoming financially independent is increasingly being taken away from so very many. We are already re-walking those paths, that so long ago we turned away from in disgust, but like a dog returning to its vomit... we cannot seem to help ourselves. Finally, I want to add that many people, e.g. in WWI and WWII both, literally gave their lives to fight against fascism spreading in other countries - however, fast-forward to today and a goodly fraction of people in America are indicating that they want to fight on the side for fascism, rather than against it. We are moving backwards, and not slowly either, but practically at a run:-( (though precisely how fast nobody seems to know, and I for one do not trust any media source anymore, nor do I see that changing anytime soon, which in itself should be an extremely troubling warning sign of things yet to come).

ChatGPT was caught, and I think later admitted, to not actually using fully automated processes to determine those answers, iirc. Instead, a real human would curate the answers first before they went out. That human might reject answers to a question like "Computer: what is 1+1?" ten times before finally accepting one of the given answers ("you're mother", hehe with improper apostrophe intact:-P). So really, when you were asking for an "AI answer", what you were asking was another human on the other end of that conversation!!!

Then again, I think that was a feature for an earlier version of the program, that might no longer be necessary? On the other hand, if they SAY that they aren't using human curation, but that is also what they said earlier before they admitted that they had lied, do we really believe it? Watch any video of these "tech Bros" and it's obvious in less than a minute - these people are slimy.

And to some extent it doesn't matter bc you can download some open source AI programs and run them yourself, but in general from what I understand, when people say things nowadays like "this was made from an AI", it seems like it is always a hand-picked item from among the set of answers returned. So like, "oooh" and "aaaahhhhh" and all that, that such a thing could come from AI, but it's not quite the same thing as simply asking a computer for an answer and it returning the correct answer right away! "1+1=?" giving the correct answer of 13 is MUCH less impressive when you find that out of a thousand attempts at asking, it was only returned a couple times. And the situation gets even worse(-r) when you find out that ChatGPT has been getting stupider(-est?) for awhile now - https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/07/ai-supposed-become-smarter-over-time-chatgpt-can-become-dumber/388826/.

You are (currently) more profitable alive than dead so... no, now get back to work!

Is that... 6 hobbits, or 1 hobbit 6 times?!?

I think a lot of shows are AWESOME, but then late-stage capitalistic enshittification happens and they become... far less so, and often quite TERRIBLE even, though ostensibly still have the same title, even though nowhere near being an identical show.

One super-good example is Stranger Things, where the first season was really quite good! So many homages to nerd culture like E.T. and D&D - it was fantastic!:-) As I read though, the pair of creators had 2 rules: never use CGI, and absolutely do not "sell out", i.e. a story should want to be told, not sold merely for the sake of cash. So after the first season where they made it b/c of their love for the craft, you can guess how the subsequent seasons played out (I believe one of the pair even quit over it).

Arguably a better example is The Walking Dead - it started off REALLY good, but then... well... it too "sold out". Actually I keep trying to force myself to get through it, I even started watching it over again from the start (a couple times now) thinking that would help, but have yet to accomplish this feat.

Another is Designated Survivor. It had some big-name actors, most of whom quit (I think the show was sold to a different network... or something?), and the last season was just terrible, limping along before they finally put it out of its misery and ended it.

The really fantastic shows - like Star Trek - had to prove themselves, then the creators were given leeway to subsequently make great sequels and spin-offs and even entirely unrelated titles. Fun story: Gene Roddenberry even created shows after his death, as his wife took his unfinished notes and lead their creation under his vision, like Earth: Final Conflict.

TLDR: why offer you a good show when they can offer you a crappy show that they made for a tenth of the price, yet charge you the full amount?

(though stupidly enough, they also seem to be trying to offer us even more terrible shows that cost 50x the price to make, and yet somehow suck all the more for that!? anyway it all seems to be based on greed + arrogance - they want to make money, but they do not want to put in the effort to actually earn it, e.g. by paying the actors a decent wage)