WhatsTheHoldup

“worth anything” were the words I used. I didn’t say LLMs weren’t new, but right now they’re just untrustworthy and people keep using them as huge crutches so they don’t need to actually learn how to do the most basic elements of their jobs

It's a tool. I can respect that to you the tool doesn't seem helpful, but there are many people who are skilled at their jobs but also have to write a lot of boilerplate maybe for unit testing, maybe for writing REST endpoints, but there will be a task where the LLM outpaces you and you just refuse to use it to find out. There's a for what and when to use it, and in those situations you unfortunately are already outpaced.

You're certainly right it shouldn't be used as a crutch for every type of work, but you're wrong that not ever using it is more efficient than using it contextually.

You will be left behind. Laughing at juniors who over rely in it is putting your guard down. Juniors become seniors with time and experience.

Also what a wild example to use colonized native Americans with the US and all its failures in quality of life(the pretty propaganda does not make the senseless poverty go away), education, and human rights. “Look, AI is like a giant shit hole and you’re just not keeping up!”

Why's that wild? I chose it for that exact reason.

AI means that you and I have to be more efficient or we will be left behind.

Being more productive doesn't benefit you or me in any way, except not losing our jobs. Our bosses are just sucking more money out of us.

But AI has landed and is colonizing us. Plugging your ears and refusing to engage with it isn't a historically successful response.

If you don't want to use AI going forward, then we need to organize to ban it. We can't individually just insist "I'm more productive without it!" because expertise is difficult for non experts doing the hiring to sus out, but productivity is easy to track via metric.

It's a shit world out here, why do you think I'm disagreeing?

Fuck that, anything “AI” worth anything is just algorithms we already had that were rebranded to take advantage of stupid people.

While what you describe does happen (and are the worst of the worst examples of shitty unnecessary bullshit) LLMs are not algorithms we already had.

Things like ChatGPT/Copilot are novel tech. You might not like them, and they can hallucinate answers, but it is new.

My life is going just fine without its nonsense, thanks.

The theory is that you will be left behind, not that your life is missing anything.

Picture the native Americans before colonialism. Their lives were going just fine, but then a money addicted hyper "efficient" type of culture appeared and they weren't able to raise armies and build weapons at the rate necessary to keep their way of life.

If you + LLM can do your job more efficiently than you alone then by supply/demand your value as an employee is going down by refusing to adapt, and your salary will reflect your comparatively lower output than your peers.

So, first off, any content made to change your mind is propaganda. Doesn't matter how true or false it is, doesn't matter if it's cherry-picking info, doesn't matter if it doesn't make any claims at all

This is the second time this has been stated. I don't know why we're going backwards, I haven't challenged the definition of propaganda.

doesn't matter if it's paid for by a state or a religious group or a single individual

Exactly. Under this law all these scenarios would be banned.

That's the conversation we're having, how to ban it.

A poster that just says "hang in there" or "just give up" can be used as propaganda if you post it all over the place to raise or lower morale. It's not making any claims, it's not pushing a certain brand, it's just trying to change what you think about. That's propaganda.

The law wouldn't target things that "can be used" for propaganda, they'd target things that are used for propaganda.

If some individual wants to go around and spend his own money putting up "Hang in there" posters, that's fine.

If they want to pay someone to hang up posters for them, that's when they'd run into issues.

If a public space or place of business wants to put up a sign, you might make exceptions for things like emergency evacuations and informational material, but anything with "intent to advertise a brand or product" would certainly be banned.

"Hang in there" might end up being allowed or not in a workplace depending on how strict you'd like to get.

Second, this whole thing assumes no one ever wants to see an advertisement.

You want to know your favorite band is playing downtown. You want to know that the roofing company across town that does good work even exists. You want to know about whatever new silly product was made that aligns with your hobbies. In order to have an honest conversation, we need to agree that not all advertising is unwanted.

Its weird you're acting like I'm dishonest. This is a pretty simple concept.

Unwanted advertisement are unwanted.

The companies are still allowed to create materials, and you're allowed to view it. They just aren't allowed to pay people to shove it in your face when you're trying to watch TV or read the news.

Of course there's value in knowing about products and deals, but if company's are the ones paying for them then the companies with the most money get seen and heard the most.

That's a problem because throwing money at ads can compensate for a sub par product. Keeping advertisements independent from the companies selling them is better for consumers as it leads to less biased info.

If you want to buy a catalog of local events, that's fine people can make those "advertisements" and sell them. It would be illegal for the people operating them to have connections or take money from the companies, and these aren't explicitly ads but genuine reviews basically.

You can print a list of bands and distribute it, you just can't advertise the band in some unrelated product.

Would PSAs be banned? Those are nothing if not propaganda.

Exceptions could be made for anything if we want.

What do you think? Would you ban PSAs? I might not.

How about billboards advertising a religious group?

100% banned. No billboards allowed.

What if I buy a magazine because it does a great job at making me aware of products I actually do often want to buy?

Still exists. The magazine just can't take money to artificially promote shitty brands who pay them so the magazine is higher quality.

(That's obviously slightly naive, we're crashing the entire magazine industry by passing this law, it's too disruptive in the short term to the economy we've set up)

As a small business owner, how do I make customers aware that I exist?

You wouldn't have to. Word of mouth and the community curated lists would talk about you if you're worth talking about.

If no one can advertise then consumers are still gonna need to find the products they need and consumers will learn how to look for local businesses and the community will learn how to spotlight hidden gems.

Or maybe that's too much effort and we all just go to walmart and you go out of business. Hopefully not, but i don't fully know tbh, it's untested.

Where is that line? We've invented so many things that amplify our speech wider than what we could do "on our own". A megaphone reaches more people than if I yell. A 10ft sign in my yard reaches more people than a tshirt. A social media account with 1 million followers reaches people than 1000 followers reaches more than 10 followers. Should I be able to make a flyer? Should I be able to use a printing press to copy that flyer? Should i be able to nail copes of that flyer all over the door of the catholic church and start a Reformation? Where is the line?

Yep, you should be able to do all of that (except the social media one possibly depending on context) because they're all actions of a single individual and no money is being spent of the distribution of the material.

(You can pay a printer to print the flyers but not hand out essentially).

If you want to rent a plane and drop them from the sky go ahead but you can't do that as a business or to make money in any way.

In summary, this is a very hard problem, but...I think the solution could be solved democratically.

I agree, it would take a lot of trial and error but we could eventually figure it out.

We won't because money is too powerful, but we could.

Ex. If you poll the people, and they say "I see too many McDonalds ads" then the people (i.e. govt) should penalize McDonalds proportionally. If we poll again, and the penalty doesn't result in people reporting seeing fewer unwanted McDonalds ads, then increase the penalty. When the penalty is high enough, it won't be worth it for McDonalds to run so many aggressive ads, and they'll have to reduce advertising in order for the people to report fewer unwanted ads in order for the penalty to drop. That's the only possible implementation I see as actually working.

I honestly don't like that idea. We're not seeing less ads, we're just seeing more diverse ads.

Genuinely consider the implications of the fact that advertisements are effective.

Think of the most irritating, scummy, clickbait, insidious advertisement you've ever seen, and then consider that it objectively made the company more money than not running it.

Realize that your small business is directly losing customers because you aren't able to compete with the marketing budgets of megacorporations.

Its not fair for your company and thus us as consumers they get to pay to hold the megaphone longer than you do and don't compete by the quality of their products/service. It's a bad problem.

That'd be great, but the "how" is a much harder question.

As with the implementation of any obvious law, of course.

What counts as advertising? Because there's a reason Google, Meta, etc. have their fingers in so many different industries: every single thing that gets attention could be leveraged for advertising, even the act of suppressing mentions of competitors.

Sure, maybe that's an interesting question.

After all television commercials and magazine inserts and pop up ads and billboards are gone we can start debating the nuance of where exactly the line is drawn.

Should I be able to say "X product has been great, I recommend it!" Only if I'm not being paid, you say?

Correct!

How could you possibly know?

You would have to report that income on your taxes and if you ever get audited and that was a substantial amount of your income they will find out and go after the major players who are profiting off it illegally at tax time.

Think about gambling or alcohol. How do we know you aren't selling unlicensed alcohol or running an unlicensed casino? We still have laws despite the uncertainty.

As discussed in the article, "propaganda" is illegal. So any discussion about how terrible trump is would also be illegal.

I feel like you're confused about the difference between speech and propaganda. Discussion about Trump isn't propaganda.

I know we currently do not, but it is possible to treat an individual and a business/corporation differently.

It is possible to hold an organizations speech to different standards than an individual.

The discussion of outlawing propaganda doesn't have to have anything to do with your individual ability to express your opinion up until the point you try to organize and artificially broadcast that speech wider than you could on your own.

How would you suggest they do that. White light near equally activates our 3 cones because all spectrums of light are in it.

White light near equally activates all 12 shrimp cones because all spectrums of light are in it.

Which spectrum of color is left out of white light that wouldn't light up a cone associated with it?

I thought zionism was a belief that Israel should exist.

No, Zionism is the belief that all of the land should belong exclusively to Jews and that assimilation of other cultures is impossible.

If you believe in a 2 state solution then you are anti zionist because you think Palestinians have a right to what Zionists consider exclusively Jewish land.

therefore I've always taken anyone who says,"I'm not antisemetic, I just think Israel shouldn't exist is a closet antisemite at best.

If someone says Israel shouldn't you're right to hear that as suspect.

But that's not anti zionism.

Like a smug dork saying,"I'm not Republican, I'm Libertarian!"

Not sure I get the point. If the Republican votes for Donald Trump and the Libertarian votes for Gary Johnson that seems like an important distinction.

Those aren't semantics.

I can say that I really think the current Israeli gov't should be exiled on St. Helena and not allowed to leave or communicate forever, but that doesn't mean I'm anti-zionist.

That means you're anti-zionist.

Do you believe the current borders should expand in Israel's favor to take more land, or remain where they are so Palestine keeps the land it currently has by international treaty.

One answer is Zionist, the other is anti Zionist.

People who are anti-zionist seem to only have a selective and limited knowledge of a few thousand years of the history of the area.

With respect, you don't even know what Zionism is and are basing your response from a dictionary entry.

Do you have thousands of years of history of knowledge?

If so, instead of the dictionary, how would Theodor Hertzl define Zionism?

It was Argentina

I don't think that's true. Half of his kids have disowned him. He has a trans child he says was "killed by wokeness" who hates his guts.

You're not wrong about his smile but can't agree he's the "most" unsettling when Mr Beast exists.

Do people read this and fail to realize that the "calling everyone I disagree with is a Nazi" rhetoric is the exact same thing?

Like how Elon can do a full Nazi salute multiple times but then throw out some rhetoric about how "they call everyone Nazis" and everyone just buys it?

Yeah I can see how they're similar.

Would that work?

Sending C&D to the people using the AI while it's being hosted by OpenAI feels similar to sending a C&D to viewers who watch a copyrighted video on YouTube instead of the channel who uploaded it.

As long as it's hosted on the platform, C&Ding users of said platform feels like a game of whack-a-mole

Many have told me about “their god” and I take their word for it.

Resultantly I believe in all of “their gods”.

I'm following so far

And I drew a conclusion about that guy.

What do you mean "that guy". I thought we just established these are multiple guys?

I think “god” is a piece of shit unworthy of praise and we should seek to destroy and erase it.

What do you mean "it"? Don't you mean "them"?

I hate god and have no respect for god-fearing people and no tolerance for their “beliefs”

Why are you talking about a singular God here? It reads like you're blaming Yahweh for Zeus' sexual behaviour and you're blaming Hanuman for the Great Flood.

These aren't the same character. Each "God" claim needs to be evaluated separately.

For example why do you hate Persephene so much? Why is she a piece of shit. You claim to believe in her right Your reasons shouldn't include examples from the Bible.

Which supernatural make-believe system (read: religion ) is tolerant of my supernatural make-believe system?

You might find company among the Satanic Temple or other Satanists.

You said "Buddhism" was ruled out but you didn't actually clarify so until you present your reasoning I'd say Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Jainism all lacking God's are partially compatible.

I mean to be fair there's not going to be a great answer because this isn't a real question but a gotcha. And I say that as an atheist.

You obviously don't actually believe in all the gods, your earlier language shows you haven't thought enough about what that means and force them all into the same one God.

The Hittites believed in "all the gods" and absorbed every new God of neighbors they conquered. But they truly believed in these gods, not as a gotcha question but they really believed in the power of these entities.

Regardless of personal moral views on their behavior, outwardly taunting that being seems silly in light of genuine faith.