Both Dave's and Steve's responses are useful. Thanks.
It hit me this morning reading the latest 404 media story:
https://www.404media.co/elon-musk-was-a-prolific-money-launderer-for-hackers-and-drug-traffickers-it-was-secretly-the-fbi/
Joseph has done a LOT of work. The text I read is just a lens onto that work.
The same is true of good writers. I think in both [non]fiction, but especially
fantasy. It's become (to me) fairly obvious when the author has built an entire
world and the story I'm reading is merely one of many lenses onto that world. I
never feel like the author has wasted my time if it's obvious they put a lot of
work into their story ... even if they're a terrible writer.
This is also true of science articles. I have several colleagues who seem to "phone it
in". I guess it's akin to Brandolini's Law. What the LLMs do in their chat mode just feels
like phoning it in, vapid gum flapping for no other sake. It doesn't even rise to the functions
gossip implements. Of course, some of us are less like idle gossipers and more Machiavellian,
planting seeds like your Allison Hargreeves
<https://umbrellaacademy.fandom.com/wiki/Rumor>. (Fun fact, we used to live in walking
distance from Dark Horse Comics.) When you prompt an LLM, you *could* be like Allison or you
could be like her victims.
I'd much rather play Allison's role than have the LLM play her role. When you
chat with actual humans (or dogs), you're both a little bit Allison.
I guess what I need to build are facile heuristics for world-building. That
feels, to me, a lot like detecting the presence of latent/occult structure ...
evidence for intentional balance between over- and under-sharing, and evidence
that the occult structure is stable and rich. Then pretty much anything that
person/machine generates may not be a waste of time.
On 4/7/25 07:57, Prof David West wrote:
I read because it is a compulsive addiction.
The only two "filters" I use: refusing to read anything that comes to me via an
algorithmic recommendation engine, ala Amazon, Facebook, etc.; and second, listening to my
"inner critic" that tells me pretty quickly that something is not worth finishing. The
post you included had several trigger words/phrases in the first paragraph that suggested it was
not worth finishing.
Alan Kay once said, "if you do not read for pleasure you cannot read for
purpose." I have always thought there should be a corollary, if you are forced to
read for purpose, you cannot read for pleasure. That seems to be what you are
experiencing.
On 4/7/25 10:28, steve smith wrote:
Glen -
We are all complex creatura methinks, but we are also mutually resonant,
entrained, empathetic to different degrees in different dimensions. I'm sure
my response will miss important aspects of what you were thinking/feeling when
you wrote/shared this.
first an anecdote: In my 40s I worked for a woman in her 60s who was going through a
(delayed?) midlife crisis. She confided in me from time to time but the most useful of
all confidence was when she reported something her therapist had just given her:
"your opinion of me is none of my business". I was only vaguely useful to
me in the moment, but (obviously) still haunts me (in a good way).
The point of this anecdote being primarily responsive to the topic of the
article but also to the issue of what our coupling functions are with other
people, their writings and to the point of the current fad/phase, the
synthesized fusion of the multitudes via an LLM. A feature of the LLMs is
they never seem to have (or share) an opinion of me with me.
second anecdote: in the 90s (my 40s also) my parents who I took to be pretty progressive, thoughtful people (as I grew up) had been entrained into the proto-MAGA world via Rush Limbaugh (and perhaps FOX or proto-FOX?). I generously, kindly, deferentially allowed them to talk about things in a tone and style that I didn't fully recognize from them.... myu father in particular (who was intrinsically more openly prone to judgement?) had begun to say things which contradicted what I knew of him from my years growing up where they both resisted the strongest xenophobic/judgemental/dismissive tropes of the cultures (rural, extractive industry, frontier mentality) we were embedded in. the punchline comes when after a few years of creeping negative, judgemental talk aimed in every direction that the limbaugh/fox machine directed them I very bluntly said "I am happy to talk with you about just about anything, but it is the mean-spirited style which I cannot abide". Sadly (or
conveniently or both), I don't think we discussed politics much more after that. I think I thought that simple, blunt statement would sink in. I now suspect they simply didn't understand the point? Or maybe they had finally reached a point in life (in their 70s) that the only thing they knew to do with a world that was moving onfaster than they could keep up was to judge it and blame anyone far enough from them they couldn't fight back?
Specific to the question of how "folks who like to chat with LLMs" might defend ourseles
from the time-wasting/toxicity of articles/authors/thought-provokers like Peterson or this guy you
linked: I have developed an intuition on tone not unlike what I had come to with my parents...
and with the outrageous plethora of reading out there to be offered, I no longer treat *much* as
precious. There was a time, for example, (even into the 2000s) when I could hardly force myself to
leave an issue of any magazine I might have a subscription to (e.g. SciAM, ScienceNews, WIRED) with
any article unread. I also had a hard time not finishing any book I had opened and begun reading
(beyond the intro). Since too much of my headlines/teasers comes through a TS (tiny screen), and
my eyesight so lame and my attention span so frazzled, I have learned to "cut my losses"
early.
Regarding the siren call of topics like the one presented in the article (or a lot of
Peterson's bait), I wish I had had much more "wisdom" in my early teen years
when the likes of Ayn Rand caught me... I now recognize it as (perhaps) the attraction
of grievance... the fuel of many of our modern ills, most acutely, presently MAGA.
I don't know if this rambling helps, maybe you "cut your losses" as I hope most
people do with my massive missives if/when/as they might recognize them as tangential to
their interests...
but you asked.
- Steve
On 4/7/25 8:28 AM, glen wrote:
https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2025/04/reputation-why-do-we-care-so-much-about-what-other-people-think-of-us/
Not as toxic as Jordan Peterson, but still insidious. I regret reading it. I'll
never get that time back. So why post it here and bait some other poor soul
into wasting their time as well? I think because I don't have my own defense. I
keep getting suckered into this stuff. Why? What practical things do you do to
prevent yourself from reading trash like this? I can't help but wonder what
those of you who enjoy *chatting* with LLMs (chatting is very different from
something like declarative programming) might opine.
Also, I used to enjoy the mere act of reading. I literally did not care what
the words meant. I enjoyed reading an article in the journal Ethics just as
much as, say, a long novel by Michael Moorcock. But once I started having to
read as part of my job, it grew less and less fun. Now I don't enjoy reading at
all, despite doing it all day every day. But my decision support system for
choosing *what* to read is very broken.
--
glen
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ...
--- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
