As far as Australia is concerned, this isn't as much of a throwing away of principles and liberties as it might look. It's classic Australia to have a heavier hand in these types of ways. Admittedly though, less social media use generally sounds like a better culture to me.

Reason and logic lead you to only two choices, where one choice immediately begs you to abandon reason and logic and just believe what feels right? I think reason and logic can take you further than that. We can explore a spectrum of ideas without committing immediately.

The point is that you actually cannot explore a spectrum of ideas without committing immediately because you are forced to live and living forces you to commit and make moral decisions every day.

I subscribe to the notion that morals are emotion based propositions and thus aren't quite as grounded in pure logic. As in there is not an objective morality, just things we know to be good and bad that are abstracted away from direct experience. Nothing wrong with that, but as feeling beings, we don't need to hugely ponder the vast spectrum of ideas to determine within ourselves what is "good" and what is "bad". Always worth thinking about second and third and x order effects of a certain moral judgement, and this is where logic comes in to the picture, but definitely trust your intuition in the meantime and don't put yourself into a box. You're welcome to not commit to a concrete worldview until you're comfortable, while still being a decent person.

These problems arise when you ruminate instead of living.

I can’t think of many major resources left to extract. Attention seems to be the last novel one. So what’s the pivot from here? If people are increasingly digitally pacified, what genuinely new needs or industries emerge next? As a consumer, what would I still spend money on if my material needs are largely met, and my emotional needs can be managed, or at least soothed, through digital experiences? (For the record I don't see it as black and white as this- especially the ability for indefinite digital pacification - it's more food for thought) I don't believe the system as we know it is equipped to handle wealth inequality in an exhaustively exploited resource landscape. Especially not one where labour as a resource is being threatened to disproportionately lose value against assets.

Things do tend to balance out over time, but it feels like we’re heading for a real crisis before that equilibrium returns. Unless we pivot away from “productivity” and “efficiency” as our ultimate economic north stars, life for the working class could become increasingly unstable. In many ways, it already has, especially in advanced economies where housing prices have long outpaced wage growth. Not to mention the youths of the world are entering adulthood with far fewer opportunities than previous generations (even college educated). To me it looks like a potential storm of unrest brewing, that could be genuinely historically paradigm shifting.

I don't really have an overall point, but would love to encourage people that say there are naturally going to be new jobs as a result of all this to provide some speculation as to what they are and how we get to that. I don't doubt the notion that some new jobs will emerge, but to think we can find new opportunities for the displacement of even 20% of well established industries seems too optimistic to me. I think we seriously need to start to grapple with a new way of life. UBI being an obvious first step, as this is somewhat achievable as a incremental change, but that could be too little and potentially not meaningful enough. A system that values more than that which can be priced. Maybe money as a whole evolves completely with a well designed digital currency. Sustainability (not in regards to material resources) and wellbeing over exploitation, but none of this is easy to even begin to implement without a collapse of what is already there. Who knows what the future holds.

I get the sentiment of what you're saying, but I don’t think that’s totally fair to the parent. Biases aren’t automatically "bad" or "failings". they’re akin to heuristics, and it’s practically impossible to eliminate them entirely. For example, we’re all here talking about how we should treat Wikipedia with skepticism. That's a sort of "neutral" bias that doesn't conjure a strong emotion, and is perhaps more acceptable for it, and probably leads to better informational hygiene overall.

In fact, the claim that “bias can be avoided and should be absolutely”, that is implicit in your resposne reflects a bias of its own: a bias toward moral or intellectual purity, as if the parent recognizing bias is equivalent to endorsing it. I get that this is a pedantic point to make but to come at the parent with such vigour for being realistic, again seems a bit unfair

It depends on if you take the parent (err GGP) literally versus in context. My personal experience has been that people claiming that bias is unavoidable (alternatively that objectivity is impossible, or that everything is political, or ...) have usually been attempting to justify a reasoning process that supports a political or religious slant of one form or another.

A helpless "we couldn't possibly do anything about that issue" sort of mentality.

That said if we're talking literally then I fully agree with you that heuristics are a form of bias and can sometimes be a very good thing on a case by case basis.

Yep fair point. I was taking them literally, though I didn't necessarily feel the context meant their post was bad faith or concessional, just a simple truth. Your elaboration adds a fair bit to your argument though and I am pretty sure I agree for the most part.

> In fact, the claim that “bias can be avoided and should be absolutely”, that is implicit in your resposne reflects a bias of its own: a bias toward moral or intellectual purity, as if the parent recognizing bias is equivalent to endorsing it.

Nonsense. Your definition of the word "bias" includes any assertion whatsoever. Bias is distortion from reality and truth. Saying that we can avoid distortion is not itself a distortion. I never claimed that all bias should be avoided, but the post I responded to said that bias can't be avoided.

Also,

> a bias toward moral or intellectual purity, as if the parent recognizing bias is equivalent to endorsing it.

There is no conceptual connection here between "purity" and the equivalence of recognizing bias with endorsing it, nor is saying "bias can be avoided" related to, or a kind of, "purity" in any useful sense. Stop using abstract words for effect and speak simply.

> I get that this is a pedantic point to make but to come at the parent with such vigour for being realistic, again seems a bit unfair

If the parent were being realistic, they'd say that we can't even recognize bias, which is actually more agreeable to me. But instead the parent admits that we can recognize bias. Since we've gotten that far, then I can say that failing to avoid it, when we should avoid it, is merely a lack of will and integrity rather than some inescapable fate.

The parent’s point was plainly that bias is unavoidable and making it overt is realistically all we can do. It’s a pragmatic take, albeit overly terse. They could have additionally included something like “and try to minimize its effects” sure, but that to me was implicit. I may be reading that fairly charitably, but perhaps that is just my own bias. I certainly have a bias to judge it more charitably than I do someone who leaps straight to moral outrage and judgement this early in the interaction.

In this case, I simply felt your judgment of the parent wasn’t fair, and showed a moral bias. Maybe they weren’t perfectly clear, and too absolute, but your response wasn’t proportionate either. It condemned more than it understood. I interpreted it as an epistemic observation and you interpreted it as an offense. The very fact that we came away with two completely different readings of the same short sentence rather proves the point.

Thank you for putting words in my mouth regarding my definition of the word bias, but lets use your own: "Bias is a distortion from reality and truth." If that is the case, we can never hope to avoid it, because we will never have perfect information. Using that definition, we are quite literally constantly in a state of bias. Your very own definition is far more broadly supportive of the notion that bias can't be avoided and consequently suggests bias is effectively ubiquitous. This to me is the primary point the parent was making.

I was perhaps too charitable, and you not enough. We are both biased, and going by the advice of the parent, I'm pointing it out. I don't think there is much more I can do.

> They could have additionally included something like “and try to minimize its effects” sure, but that to me was implicit.

I'm not interested in talking about what could have been implied, only about what was stated. I'm arguing against an idea that was articulated, not the person who articulated it.

One of the problems of the current-day liberals, in my opinion, is that they make universal statements that they don't mean in order to sound punchy and snag a few morality points. "Believe all women," "men are trash," "defund the police," "all cops are bastards" are all things you'd hear from a person who doesn't actually mean or want any of these things, even though the root of each of those is just and good. The idea that "bias can't be eliminated, only made explicit" is another one of these. If we don't believe it, then let's not say it.

> I certainly have a bias to judge it more charitably than I do someone who leaps straight to moral outrage and judgement this early in the interaction.

I'm not sure where you're reading outrage moral or otherwise. Was it that I used the word "so" in "so harmful"? And where's your bias against someone who tells another person to go to Conservapedia if they think bias can and should be avoided?

> Maybe they weren’t perfectly clear, and too absolute, but your response wasn’t proportionate either. It condemned more than it understood.

I merely stated that the belief was untrue and harmful, I don't think that's disproportionate at all. I can only understand what is stated, and according to my understanding we ought to condemn it.

> Thank you for putting words in my mouth regarding my definition of the word bias, but lets use your own: "Bias is a distortion from reality and truth." If that is the case, we can never hope to avoid it, because we will never have perfect information. Using that definition, we are quite literally constantly in a state of bias. Your very own definition is far more broadly supportive of the notion that bias can't be avoided and consequently suggests bias is effectively ubiquitous.

This is shifting the goalposts. First, I never claimed we could know the complete truth; it was the original post who stated that we couldn't course-correct upon learning new truth ("bias can't be avoided"). And second, the context of the original statement is bias in reporting, not epistemological certainty. We're not talking about positions of atoms here. We don't need perfect information to stop being biased against women in the workplace or against black people or whatever the subject. Even as individuals.

> This to me is the primary point the parent was making.

If that is their point then they can say it.

> We are both biased, and going by the advice of the parent, I'm pointing it out. I don't think there is much more I can do.

I have to ask, if I can't avoid my bias and you can't avoid yours, then what's the point of pointing out bias at all? Is it for other people to avoid our bias? How can they do that? I guess we're trying to minimize its effects, like you said.

> I was perhaps too charitable, and you not enough.

If I lack charity, it's in response to the original uncharitableness of the person telling someone to go to Conservapedia. If he would have mercy, let him show mercy.

Honestly, I think we are arguing around each other. We simply read this notion totally differently. You're taking it to mean that "we can't correct bias" but the statement was "we can't avoid bias". It actually makes no comment on being able to correct it (within, or without ourselves). To me it read as "when interacting with the world, we can't avoid encountering bias". If this is how it is interpreted, it actually doesn't do anything to rule out the ability to account and correct for it.

I'm not saying there's a definitive interpretation with how terse it is, just that we aren't necessarily on the same page and attempts to come to any sort of agreement with each other might be a waste of time as we are practically talking about two different ideas. I take this response as pretty fair, and I think the point you're making is totally valid, I just think our respective ideas would never converge as we are talking about 2 distinct things. (Interesting how much conversation a lack of clarity can generate).

I think with the suggestion made at the end about that google would be getting out of phones (for some reason - perhaps graphene causing google long term phone margins to no longer be worth it? What are you actually suggesting?) it's hard to really know what you're going for here.

Wow this is so cool! Love a nifty but well executed little project. Editor especially is wonderful.

What a brilliant irony. Excellent comment.

I suppose "non-Von Neumann architectures" would just instead have someone else's name associated with it had it been invented by someone else.

100% agree. You'd start to think "Anna doesn't like us" and just move on. Despite what they're going through, some level of responsibility falls on them to express a sense of "it's not you it's me", if they legitimately do want to remain part of the friend group. Not engaging with the friend group is effectively the same as not being a part of it. If the "pleasant feeling of being included in the group" is the entirety of your involvement, it's actually a somewhat selfish and shallow position after a while. That's not to say that the group has to ban her, but at a certain point there is no valid reason to engage with someone (in a group context) who doesn't engage back.

If you have friends you think are depressed or have something else going on, by all means reach out, but thats not the same thing.

Hmm I don't feel like this should be taken as a tenet of AI. I feel a more relevant kernel would be less black and white.

Also I think what you're saying is a direct contradiction of the parent. Below average people can now get average results; in other words: The LLM will boost your capabilities (at least if you're already 'less' capable than average). This is a huge benefit if you are in that camp.

But for other cases too, all you need to know is where your knowledge ends, and that you can't just blindly accept what the AI responds with. In fact, I find LLMs are often most useful precisely when you don’t know the answer. When you’re trying to fill in conceptual gaps and explore an idea.

Even say during code generation, where you might not fully grasp what’s produced, you can treat the model like pair programming and ask it follow-up questions and dig into what each part does. They're very good at converting "nebulous concept description" into "legitimate standard keyword" so that you can go and find out about said concept that you're unfamiliar with.

Realistically the only time I feel I know more than the LLM is when I am working on something that I am explicitly an expert in, and in which case often find that LLMs provide nuance lacking suggestions that don’t always add much. It takes a lot more filling in context in these situations for it to be beneficial (but still can be).

Take a random example of nifty bit of engineering: The powerline ethernet adapter. A curious person might encounter these and wonder how they work. I don't believe an understanding of this technology is very obvious to a layman. Start asking questions and you very quickly come to understand how it embeds bits in the very same signal that transmits power through your house without any interference between the two "types" of signal. It adds data to high frequencies on one end, and filters out the regular power transmitting frequencies at the other end so that the signal can be converted back into bits for use in the ethernet cable (for a super brief summary). But if want to really drill into each and every engineering concept, all I need to do is continue the conversation.

I personally find this loop to be unlike anything I've experienced as far as getting immediate access to an understanding and supplementary material for the exact thing Im wondering about.